CPRNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 E 611.M82 
 
 Bastiles of the confederacy, a reply to J 
 
 3 1924 009 292 313 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924009292313 
 
CAPTAIN FRANK E. MORAN 
 
Bastiles of ti?e (^opfederaey 
 
 A REPLY TO 
 
 JEFFERSON DAVIS 
 
 Being a Narrative of the Treatment op Union 
 priboneits in the military prisons of the south 
 
 DURING THE WaR OF THE REBELLION. FROM 
 
 official records of the united states war 
 Department, reports by Committees of Con- 
 gress, CAPTURED Confederate archives, and 
 
 FROM evidence TAKEN AT THE TRIAL OF CAPTAIN 
 
 Henry Wirz, in 1865, and from the personal 
 experiences of the author during twenty 
 
 months CAPTIVITY IN SiX MILITARY PRISONS OP 
 
 THE South. With a Review op the Exchange 
 Controversy. 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANK E. MORAN 
 
 Late Captain of Company " H," 73d New York Volunteers, and late Historian of 
 
 the National Association of Union Ex-prisoners of War. 
 
 Author of " Colonel Rose's Tunnel at Libby Prison" (Century Magazine), 
 
 and of "Sketches of Field, Prison a^d Escape" in the 
 
 Philadelphia Weekly Times and 
 
 other journals 
 
 Printed for the Family of the Author 
 
 1319 Argyle Ave. 
 
 Baltimore, Maryland 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IN adding this modest contribution to the annals 
 of the Civil War, the writer has been actuated 
 by motives sufficiently stated in the introductory 
 pages, and not with the intention, much less the wish, 
 to cast a shade of disparagement upon the more 
 voluminous narratives of such writers as John Mc- 
 Elroy, Warren Lee, Goss, Ambrose Spencer, Albert 
 D. Richardson, Junius Henri Browne, Willard, Glazier 
 and others, whose pens have pictured with graphic 
 fidelity and eloquence the tragic and pathetic scenes 
 which they witnessed while sharing captivity with 
 him in the military prisons of the South. 
 
 If a reason is required besides those given in 
 the text for this publication at this time, it seems to 
 be supplied by the posthumous paper of Jefferson 
 Davis on " Andersonville," begun in BelfordCs 
 Magazine for the present month (January, 1890). 
 The writer has at irregular intervals since the 
 war contributed to the newspapers of Philadelphia, 
 New York and other cities a large nurnber of sketches 
 and reminiscences of his twenty months' experiences 
 and observations in six of the chief war prison^ of 
 the South. These sketches have been mainly con- 
 fined to the narration of personal adventures of his 
 comrades and his own in their various escapes and 
 recaptures, and of the less sombre features of prison 
 
iv. PREFACE. 
 
 life, a series appearing in 1881-2 in the Philadelphia 
 Weekly Times; his latest contribution being his 
 illustrated article in the Century Magazine for 
 March, 1888, entitled "Colonel Eose's Tunnel at 
 Libby Prison." 
 
 In none of these fragmentary memoirs of his 
 captivity has he touched, beyond brief and incidental 
 mention, the subject of the treatment of the Union 
 prisoners in the South. That he has ventured to 
 do so now was not an act of his personal choice 
 wholly, but one which circumstances, amply set 
 forth elsewhere, seemed to render a public and 
 patriotic duty. 
 
 As a soldier bearing four wounds received in 
 battle, with the deeper physical hurts inflicted in 
 the prisons of the South, and as the only one of 
 three wounded brothers who has survived the cruel- 
 ties in those fearful death-pens, he feels that after 
 four years of humble but faithful service to the 
 country in its need, he and his prison comrades have 
 at least as legitimate right to be heard as Union 
 witnesses in Northern magazines and newspapers, 
 as have their jailers. 
 
 That the post-mortem account of Andersonville 
 by Jefferson Davis will attract the interest of a vast 
 number of readers, is fully assured by the conspic- 
 uous place he filled in war history; by his recent 
 death; and by reason of the peculiar relations that 
 inseparably link his name with the treatment of the 
 Federal prisoners. It would be fortunate for his 
 
PREFACE. V. 
 
 fame if it could also secure bim the acquittal lie 
 seeks thus tardily, and in the last year of his life, of 
 the awful iniquity with which an overwhelming 
 majority of his countrymen have charged him, and 
 believe him guilty. 
 
 Late in the evening of his days, and a quarter 
 of a century after the grave has closed over sixty 
 thousand Union martyrs of those cruel prisons, he 
 awakened to the truth that the plaudits of a Section 
 is not the verdict of a Nation, nor the final judgment 
 that history will carry to posterity. 
 
 There is something painful and pathetic in the 
 spectacle of this aged and enfeebled man as he 
 charges his last publishers (after a peevish quarrel 
 with the others), to send his last plea of innocence, 
 unmutilated, to the country. 
 
 His wronged but forbearing countrymen will 
 not grudge him this parting favor; but the truth 
 must stand and the irrevocable verdict awaits. 
 
 The mighty crime and guilt of Andersonville 
 will cling to the name of JefPerson Davis when his 
 monument is dust, when the records of the bloody 
 sectional revolt which he led are eaten by worms, 
 and until the Divine hand shall draw over the men 
 and deeds of time the mantle of oblivion. 
 
 THE AUTHOE. 
 
 Philadelphia, January, 1890. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IF an alien unfamiliar with our history had landed 
 on these shores anywhere south of Mason and 
 
 Dixon's line during' the first fortnight of De- 
 cember, 1889, and had seen the National flag half- 
 masted on the public buildings, and populous cities 
 festooned with sable symbols of mourning, he would 
 have been justified in the conclusion that the Ameri- 
 can people had been bereaved by the death of some 
 patriot or statesman of the first magnitude. Nor 
 would the impression have been dispelled when he 
 opened the morning papers that announced the death 
 of Jefferson Davis, and read the eloquent tributes 
 paid by Southern contemporaries to his public career 
 and character. The absence of these signs of public 
 regard and sorrow at the North — ^and at the National 
 Capital in particular — would have been so conspicu- 
 ous as to excite the traveler's surprise, and would 
 have led him to seek a solution of the interesting 
 problem which these striking contrasts presented. 
 Such an investigation would have acquainted him 
 with the story of the Great Rebellion of 1861-5, and 
 with the stirring political events that led to the with- 
 drawal of the Southern states under an avowed con- 
 stitutional right and by the act of secession. 
 
 It is not purposed in this narrative, however, 
 to review the political creed or career of the dead 
 Southern chief or his followers. Nor will it be 
 
^jjj INTRODUCTION. 
 
 attempxed to belittle the renown of soldiers like Lee 
 or Jackson, nor to dim the splendor of Southern 
 valor so conspicuously displayed, and, alas! so de- 
 plorably wasted upon a thousand battle-fields. It is 
 rather sought to submit the honest and candid re- 
 view by an untitled Union Volunteer of a series of 
 events in many of which he participated. He will 
 deal with that pathetic chapter of the Rebellion 
 which treats of the Union prisoners of war, and the 
 relation of Jefferson Davis thereto. He will present 
 a glimpse — -a description is not possible — of their 
 unexampled sufferings in military prisons in the 
 South, and show in how great a measure their heroic 
 sacrifices and devotion through a fearful ordeal, 
 hastened the overthrow of the rebellion, and earned 
 them the veneration of their country. 
 
 A committee in Congress, after an exhaustive 
 inquiry into the subject, declared but recently that 
 " The treatment of the Union prisoners by the rebel 
 authorities must be considered in the light of history 
 the most cruel and inhuman known among civilized 
 people in modern times." In support of this we are 
 not compelled to rely on the testimony of the suf- 
 ferers or their friends. The flood of testimony^ that 
 proves the fearful iniquity of Andersonville, Florence, 
 Richmond, Salisbury and Belle Isle leaves an honest 
 doubt unhappily impossible. The facts stand proveii 
 even without the evidence of a single Union soldier 
 who has survived a confinement in those dreadful 
 pens of cruelty, pestilence, and death. 
 
INTRODUCTION. jx. 
 
 It is not unnoticed that there is a numerous and 
 respectable class of our people who, from mixed 
 motives, are opposed to the public discussion of this 
 subject at this time. A class at the North profess to 
 regard its ventilation as impolitic, arguing that it 
 will tend to kindle anew the sectional passions and 
 prejudices engendered by the Civil War and delay a 
 return of the fraternal concord so essential to assure 
 the peace and permanence of the Union. The South- 
 ern wing of this class who took part in or actively 
 sympathized with the "lost cause" are naturally 
 desirous that their fallen leaders shall pose in history 
 as defeated patriots in a righteous cause who yielded 
 only after a mighty defense to superior force, and 
 that their cause and its leaders shall have a respect- 
 able if not heroic sepulchre. 
 
 Fully appreciating the motives that inspire the 
 opposition of these worthy people to a recapitulation 
 of this phase of our war annals, the writer who spent 
 twenty months in six military pirisons in the South 
 cannot, in the light of his experience then and his 
 observations since, concur in their conclusion, nor 
 indorse their method of insuring sectional harmony, 
 that most devoutly wished-for consummation. 
 
 If a reason is sought for shedding all possible 
 light on the history of Southern prisons while a part 
 of the captives as well as of their guards yet survive, 
 that reason is at hand. The shelves of our public 
 libraries are already bending beneath the weight of 
 Southern books, pamphlets and printed addresses. 
 
X_ INTRODUCTION. 
 
 all uniting in a chorus o£ denial of the atrocities in 
 Southern prisons, notwithstanding the clear and 
 positive evidence with which both the survivors and 
 the guards of those places have overwhelmed them. 
 
 The " Southern Historical Society," under the 
 management of ex- Confederates, has been espebially 
 active in collecting and publishing the essays of 
 Southern writers on the subject of these military 
 prisons. These authors have labored with a patience 
 that is heroic, and with sophistry that is hopeless, 
 to secure an acquittal of those who are charged with 
 the fearful responsibility for Andersonville's appal- 
 ling cruelties. 
 
 Pollard, in his " Lost Cause," whistles the 
 charges of systematic cruelties do^vn the wind. 
 Jefferson Davis, in his book " The Eise and Fall of 
 the Confederate Government," pronounces the dread- 
 ful indictment a malignant fiction of the North. He 
 boldly justifies the meditated slaughter of twelve 
 hundred Union officers by the powder mine under 
 Libby Prison in 1864, when the gallant Colonel 
 Ulric Dahlgren made his daring but ill-fated attempt 
 at their deliverance ; and when that intrepid young 
 Pennsylvanian fell at the head of his daring little 
 band, Jefferson Davis permitted the ghoulish muti- 
 lation and insult to the body of Dahlgren almost in 
 sight of his own window. The infamy was fittingly 
 crowned by burying the dead and dreaded leader in 
 a grave concealed from his father and mother with 
 malignant care until a Union man, Mr. Lohman, who 
 
INTRODUCTION. xi. 
 
 was a mtness of the night burial, remoyed the 
 remains to the farin of Mr. Richard Orrick, ten miles 
 from Richmond, where they were hidden until the 
 Confederacy fell and Davis was a fugitive from the 
 Nation's righteous wrath. 
 
 Jefferson Davis selected as his chief agent for 
 the torture of Union prisoners the inhuman John H. 
 Winder, whom he describes as a "humane and Chris- 
 tian soldier," and Wirz, the Andersonville monster, 
 as a typical martyr in a holy cause and a sanctified 
 victim of Yankee vengeance. He denounces the 
 shocking flood of evidence given in the Wirz trial 
 in 1865 by the survivors of Andersonville ; the sworn 
 testimony of Confederate officers, guards and sur- 
 geons. Southern citizens. Catholic priests, Protestant 
 ministers; the terrible confirmation of their state- 
 ments by a joint committee of Congress ; the report 
 of the United States Sanitary Commission, and the 
 verdict of the most skilled surgeons and physicians 
 of the time in our country, as " worthless romances," 
 maliciously designed to justify a harsh political con- 
 trol of the South, to malign its chosen leaders and 
 "fire the Northern heart" against the Southern 
 people. 
 
 Scores of ex- Confederates less eminent have, in 
 books, newspapers and essays, labored for a genera- 
 tion, and are laboring yet with unabated industry to 
 disprove the dreadful charges of inhuman cruelty to 
 Federal captives. They vainly seek by ingenious 
 pleas of poverty to excuse or mitigate the crime of 
 
xii. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 siarving as well as freezing Union soldiers to death 
 at Andersonville, Salisbury and Belle Isle. These 
 efforts not only to acquit Jefferson Davis of criminal 
 responsibility, but to exalt him and his deeds, have 
 been boldly aided in speeches by ex- Confederates in 
 both houses of Congress, by orators in political cam- 
 paigns and on the lecture platform. 
 
 It is within recent memory that an ex-Confed- 
 erate, who occupied successively the positions of 
 United States senator, cabinet officer, and justice of 
 the Supreme Court of the United States, solemnly 
 declared Davis to be a pure patriot, destined and de- 
 serving to be revered like Washington, Lincoln and 
 Grant. It is but recently that the " fallen chief " 
 made a triumphal "progress" through the South, and 
 almost in sight of the fourteen thousand graves of 
 the Union victims of Andersonville he was hailed 
 with an enthusiasm and courted with an adulation 
 that resembled the "progress" of Charles the Second 
 from Dover to London at the time of the Restora- 
 tion. 
 
 Such, then, are a few of the reasons that justify, 
 if they do not render imperative, a candid resume of 
 the facts in the history of Southern prisons and the 
 public relation of Mr. Davis to them. 
 
 No reasoning person will expect that a full and 
 comprehensive history of those prisons could be 
 ^iven within the limits of a single essay, nor indeed 
 embraced within the covers of a single volume, for 
 such a task would comprise the experience of an un- 
 
INTRODUCTION. xiii. 
 
 armed army outnumbering the host that Lee led 
 against Meade at Gettysburg. 
 
 It will answer the purposes of the present to 
 give the more essential and marked features of that 
 portion of our Civil War records. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. fAGE. 
 
 The Exchange Controversy 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Cruelty and Confiscation — Ballets and Bloodhounds 27 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Evidence Concerning Andersonville 38 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Andersonville — More Evidence 47 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 From Official Records and Confederate Archives 81 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Federal Prisoners Under Fire of Union Batteries — Cause- 
 less Shooting — Colonel Rose's Tunnel 101 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Dahlgren's Raid and the Libby Powder-Mine 120 
 
 XV. 
 
xvi. CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 Responsibility for Interruption of Exchange — Choice of 
 Prisoners for President — The Assassination — Arrest of 
 Jefferson Bavis 134 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 After Chickamauga — General Grant Appears — Battle of 
 
 Lookout Mountain — The March to the Sea 155 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Release of Union Prisoners — Under the Stars and Stripes 
 
 Once More — Home! 171 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Twenty-five Years After — "Peace on Earth, Good Will 
 
 Toward Men " > 196 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAQB. 
 
 "Handed the Offices in Chaege a Papee " 14 
 
 "The Commandant's Doo was Kii-IjED, and Eaten with 
 
 zest" 32 
 
 The " Mansions " of Andeesonville 39 
 
 " Dead Amonq the Living " 45 
 
 "He Stepped Aoeoss the Dead-Line and Begged to be 
 
 Shot" 61 
 
 A Sample of John Windee's " Kindness " to Union Peis- 
 
 ONEBS 65 
 
 "The Man Climbing the Teee Repbesents Holm, and I 
 
 AM Repbesented Lung Undee the Teeb " 79 
 
 MuBDEE of Lieutenant Gebson 106 
 
 " Death of Uleio Dahlgben " 122 
 
 " Shot by the Guabd at Libbt " 144 
 
 "The Sight op Theie Flag" 178 
 
 "Peace on Eaeth, Good Will Towaed Men" 196 
 
Bastiles of the Confederacy 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 The Mxcbange Controversy. 
 
 ^"^TJBING the first year of the war no formal 
 \y agreement for an exchange of prisoners 
 existed, captives being exchanged by mutual 
 consent of opposing commanders. But as the opera- 
 tions of the armies on both sides extended, the neces- 
 sity for a better method became so apparent that, on 
 the 22d of July, 1862, a cartel of exchange was 
 drawn up and agreed upon by General John A. Dix, 
 and General D. H. Hill, representing the respective 
 belligerents. By its terms all prisoners of war were to 
 be discharged on parole in ten days after their cap- 
 ture, and the prisoners then held and those subse- 
 quently taken were to be conveyed to the points 
 mutually agreed upon at the expense of the capturing 
 party. The surplus prisoners on one side or the other, 
 who were not exchanged, were not permitted, by this 
 agreement, to go back to service until declared 
 
2 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 exchanged. The provisions of the instrument were 
 to remain binding on each party during the war. 
 
 The cardinal idea of this contract was that all 
 prisoners should be delivered within ten days after 
 their capture; then if the opposing party had an 
 equal number of prisoners in their hands, an exchange 
 was to be made. Thus the discharged or released 
 men were not necessarily exchanged until so declared 
 under the terms of the cartel. 
 
 Aikin's landing, on the James Kiver, thirty 
 miles from Richmond, and Vicksburg, on the Mis- 
 sissippi, were the first points chosen for the delivery 
 of prisoners under flag of truce. General Lorenzo 
 Thomas was the first Federal Commissioner of Ex- 
 change, and Judge Robert Ould acted in a like 
 capacity for the Confederates. 
 
 For a year after the cartel was agreed upon, 
 exchanges progressed without any 'serious friction, 
 the excess of captures during that period being some- 
 what in favor of the Confederates. But the captures 
 made by the Union commanders at Gettysburg, 
 Vicksburg and Port Hudson in July, 1863, turned 
 the tide and left a large surplus in Union hands. 
 
 Various causes of dissatisfaction had been fer- 
 menting on both sides for many months, but now 
 developed into a more serious rupture. Charges of 
 
COLONEL STREIGHT'S RAID. 3 
 
 bad faith and violations of the cartel began to be 
 passed between the belligerents through the commis- 
 sioners. These unfortunate disagreements, after per- 
 sistent efforts to adjust them, culminated at last in 
 an entire cessation of the exchange, and their essen- 
 tial points will be now referred to. 
 
 In the spring of 1863 Colonel A. D. Streight 
 with a mounted brigade set forth on an extended 
 raid into Northern Alabama, by order of General 
 Rosecrans, then in command in Tennessee. This 
 force, after doing much danaage by destroying 
 bridges, railroad tracks and military stores, pene- 
 trated as far as Rome, Gra., where it was overpowered 
 and compelled to accept terms of surrender by the 
 Confederates under General N. B. Forrest. It 
 happened that a number of negroes had followed 
 Streight's column from Alabama, and these being 
 captured with him were turned over by Forrest to 
 the State authorities. Streight and his officers were 
 paroled and furnished a copy of the terms of sur- 
 render, which stipulated for their exchange " as soon 
 as practicable." 
 
 The Richmond authorities, however, refused to 
 approve of the terms granted by Forrest, and Colonel 
 Ludlow, who was now the Federal commissioner of 
 exchange, was informed that Streight and his officers 
 
4 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 were to be returned to Alabama in compliance with 
 a requisition made by Governor Shoiter, in order 
 that they might be tried by the State courts there 
 for abducting slaves. 
 
 About this time one hundred Confederate officers 
 were brought, under flag of truce, to City Point for 
 exchange, but there being no equivalent for them at 
 Richmond except Streight and his officers, and the 
 release of these being refused for the reasons stated, 
 the boat returned with the Confederates to Fortress 
 Monroe, and Streight and his officers were confined in 
 Libby Prison. 
 
 This was, of course, an absurd display of "bun- 
 combe" on the part of Governor Shorter, and a direct 
 violation of the terms of the cartel by the Richmond 
 authorities. 
 
 For some different but equally frivolous reason 
 the Confederates refused to release the officers of 
 General Milroy's command, who had been taken at 
 Winchester about the middle of June, 1863 — Davis 
 having so specially directed in a proclamation. 
 
 Another violation of the cartel occurred in the 
 following manner: A number of small Federal 
 parties, foragers, stragglers, and the like, had been 
 captured at various times and places by small 
 "independent" commands under Mosby, Imboden, 
 
SLAVES NOT RECOGNIZED AS SOLDIERS. 5 
 
 Ferguson, McNeil, Morgan, and Quantrel, and 
 paroled at the places of capture to avoid the trouble 
 and expense of conveying them to the points of 
 exchange specified in the cartel. This was a violation 
 of contract; but nevertheless these "paroles" were 
 regularly charged against the Federal authorities, 
 who promptly and rightfully ordered the men thus 
 improperly released back to duty. 
 
 A still more glaring violation followed when the 
 whole force of Pemberton taken by Grant at Vicks- 
 burg were at once restored to active service in the 
 Confederate army. 
 
 Another flagrant disregard of the cartel and 
 infraction of the usages of war was the detention, as 
 prisoners, of citizens, army surgeons, and chaplains, 
 many of these having been taken in Lee's Penn- 
 sylvania campaign. 
 
 By a proclamation of Davis issued after negro 
 enlistments had begun at the North, it was ordered 
 that runaway slaves who had enlisted in the Federal 
 army should not, if captured, be recognized as 
 soldiers,, but should be returned to their former 
 masters through the State authorities. Tlie white 
 officers commanding negro troops, when taken, were 
 treated with every form of indignity that malice 
 could devise, at Libby, Charleston, and other prisons. 
 
6 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 The colored soldiers of the gallant Colonel Shaw's 
 54th Massachusett's regiment, taken in the assault 
 on Fort Wagner, were locked up in the Charleston 
 jail with murderers, thieves, and like malefactors. 
 A large number of Fejderal oflScers were at different 
 times and places, and on the most trivial pretexts, 
 placed in close confinement, subjected to harsh and 
 unusual treatment, and held as hostages for regularly 
 convicted Confederate spies in Federal prisons. 
 
 Major Nathan Goff, of West Virginia, who was 
 held prisoner at Libby for a time, was taken thence 
 and closely confined as a hostage for one Major 
 Armsey, a Confederate whose home was in the same 
 county as that of Goff. Some time in 1863 Armsey 
 returned in citizen's clothes to his native place, and 
 at once proceeded to enlist recruits clandestinely 
 inside the Federal lines for the Confederate army. 
 He was recognized, apprehended, tried, and con- 
 demned as a spy, and in strict accordance with 
 military law was sentenced to be hanged. This 
 sentence, however, was commuted by President 
 Lincoln to fifteen years' solitary confinement at Fort 
 Delaware. It need scarcely be added that Major 
 Goff, who was then very young, had violated no 
 provision whatever of military law, but being of a 
 loyal family of wealth and high social standing in the 
 
EXCLUDED FROM EXCHANGE. 7 
 
 midst of secessionists, was singled out for special ill- 
 treatment, in too evident obedience to -local enemies 
 at his home. As Secretary of the Navy under Presi- 
 dent Hayes, as an honored and able representative in 
 Congress since, if not as the present rightful Gov- 
 ernor of his State, the name of this gallant soldier 
 and gentleman of West Virginia commands to-day a 
 National respect. 
 
 Major Harry White, of the 67th Pennsylvania, 
 who had been captured at Winchester in June, 1863, 
 was subjected to all conceivable forms of petty perse- 
 cution, and his name excluded with malignant care 
 from several lists of officers marked for exchange in 
 that year, for the acknowledged reason that he had 
 been elected a member of the Pennsylvania State 
 S^ate, which body was then politically a tie, and 
 needed his vote to give the " war party " a majority. 
 He was removed from Libby Prison and . on Christ- 
 mas day, 1863, was placed in solitary confinement in 
 Salisbury, N. C, where ho was held until the fol- 
 lowing year, when he fortunately escaped to the 
 I'ederal lines at Knoxville, Tenn. 
 
 At another time General Neal Dow, of Maine, 
 was removedfrom Libby and placed in solitary con- 
 finement at Pensacola, Fla. ; but after a time he was 
 returned to Eichmond, without ever learning wiy he 
 
8 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 had been treated with this special mark of the Con- 
 federate officials' displeasure. 
 
 In the summer of 1863 Captain Henry W. Saw- 
 yer, of the 1st New Jersey Cavalry, and Captain John 
 Flynn, of the 51st Indiana Infantry, both prisoners 
 at Libby, were condemned by lottery to be hanged, 
 and under circumstances so peculiarly dramatic and 
 interesting as to call for narration in some detail here. 
 
 One day in the spring of 1863 two mounted 
 men in the uniform and equipment of Federal cap- 
 tains appeared at a fortified Union camp in East 
 Tennessee and presented an order from the War 
 Department at Washington commanding them to 
 make a careful survey of the post and an immedi- 
 ate report as to the number and condition of the 
 troops present, the character of the earthworks, #id 
 the general facilities for defense in case of assault. 
 
 In obedience to this order the colonel then in 
 command of the post received the messengers cour- 
 teously and afforded them every possible facility for 
 the performance of their duty. Having made full 
 and careful drafts of the breastworks, and sketched 
 their surrounding exposures, they dined with their 
 obliging host, who gave them all further verbal infor- 
 mation they sought, thanked him for his courtesy, 
 mounted their horses and departed. 
 
SPIES ARRESTED AND EXECUTED. Q 
 
 It chanced that at this very moment General 
 James H. "Wilson rode up to the tent, and casually 
 glancing at the two officers leaving, and thinking 
 vaguely that he recognized in one of them a former 
 acquaintance whom he could not place, inquired 
 carelessly of the colonel the names of his visitors. 
 In answer the War Department's order was handed 
 him, and this he proceeded to read with an interest 
 that soon increased to suspicion, and, finally con- 
 vinced that all was not right, he directed that the 
 two men, who had now a good start on their return 
 journey, should be overtaken and returned to his 
 presence for further inquiry as to their mission and 
 identity. 
 
 A small but well-armed squadron was instantly 
 mounted, and advancing rapidly by a parallel road, 
 the two men were soon intercepted and informed that 
 their immediate return to the camp was desired by 
 General Wilson, who awaited them. Their protests 
 were vigorous, but as they were informed that these 
 orders were not debatable, and as a successful resist- 
 ance was not possible, they sullenly accompanied. their 
 escort back to headquarters. The men were sharply 
 interrogated by General Wilson; but they calmly 
 reiterated their previous statements to the colonel, 
 and pointed with cool dignity to the order of the 
 
10 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 War Department in confirmation of their authority 
 and identity. 
 
 General Wilson, confronting the man whom he 
 first recognized, asked him directly if he was not 
 so-and-so (calling him by name)', whom he- had 
 known at a certain time prior to the war, at West 
 Point, and if he was not now an oflScer of the Con- 
 federate army, and his companion also. The officer 
 with emphasis answered, "No;" whereupon General 
 Wilson stepped quickly to his side, and, without cere- 
 mony, drew the officer's sword half-way out of the 
 scabbard, and behold, upon the blade was the name 
 by which the General had addressed him, and under 
 it the tell-tale initials, "0. S. A." 
 
 Further denial was useless, and was not at- 
 tempted ; the men were disarmed and placed under a 
 strong guard, and a full and immediate inquiry 
 respecting the prisoners and their alleged ' mission 
 was wired to Washington. Secretary of War Stan- 
 ton promptly replied, pronouncing the purported 
 order a forgery, and directing the immediate trial of 
 the njen who had presented it. 
 
 A court-martial was at once convened, composed 
 of officers of the post. The evidence was clear and 
 conclusive, a verdict of guilty was unanimously ren- 
 dered, and in conformity with the stern military law 
 
MEASURES FOR RETALIATION. H 
 
 and usages of war relating to spies, the bold but un- 
 lucky adventurers were hanged the next morning. 
 Both were men of uncommon intelligence and high 
 courage, and when the tragic ending of their mission 
 was announced in Bichmond, where each had wide 
 social and official influence, their execution was 
 fiercely denounced as a high-handed Yankee out- 
 rage. The Confederate authorities, fijled with savage 
 resentment, at once decided upon a summary meas- 
 ure of retaliation. 
 
 A few days later the commandant at Libby 
 Prison summoned into one of the lower rooms of the 
 prison all the Federal captives " of the rank of cap- 
 tain." Many of the prisoners, fondly hoping that 
 this unusual summons betokened their exchange, fell 
 into close ranks and were boisterously merry. 
 
 But an ominous silence ensued as they looked 
 into the colorless face of the Confederate officer as 
 he opened with a nervous hand an official-looking 
 document and proceeded to read it in a voice that 
 revealed his strong agitation. It was an order from 
 iis superior, General John H, Winder, commanding 
 that, "by direction of the Confederate Secretary 
 of War," two Federal captains should be drawn by 
 lot from among those now present for immediate 
 execution, this measure having been decided upon in 
 
12 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 retaliation for the " lawless execution" of two Confed- 
 erate officers in Tennessee by the Federal commander 
 of that department. The method of the drawing was 
 with grim courtesy left to the captives present who 
 were now to take their chances in the lottery of 
 death. 
 
 The suppressed but intense emotion caused by the 
 reading of this unlooked for decree was easily traced 
 in the blanched faces of the bravest there, and the 
 depth and direction of each soldier's thoughts at this 
 solemn moment can be left to conjectiire ; it can be 
 witnessed and remembered now like many episodes 
 of prison life, but not described. 
 
 The full name, rank and command of each man 
 was plainly written on white ballots, cast into a hat, 
 and shaken up. There was now a painful hesitation. 
 No one present could be persuaded to perform the 
 hateful but imperative duty of drawing the ballots 
 that were to mark two of their comrades for an 
 ignominious and immediate death. But the duty 
 must be done, as delay could not be allowed, and at 
 last, at the urgent and united request of the 
 prisoners, an aged Union chaplain then in Libby 
 was induced to make the drawing. 
 
 The venerable man, with his eyes bandaged and 
 with a silent and fervent prayer on his lips, drew 
 
"WITH HEAVY HEARTS AND SOLEMN FACES." 13 
 
 fortli the first ballot; and the Confederate officer, 
 amid the stillness of death, announced the name of 
 Captain Henry W. Sawyer • as the first victim, and 
 the next slip bore the name of Captain John Flynn. 
 
 The doomed men received the announcement of 
 their fate with the composure that became brave sol- 
 diers. They were taken to a small, dark cell in the 
 middle cellar, to there await their execution, which 
 was to take place within a few days, and the rest of 
 the officers were sent back to their former quarters; 
 and with heavy hearts and solemn faces, as they 
 thought of the tidings that would soon be borne to 
 two Northern homes. 
 
 It chanced that on the following day Bishop 
 Lynch, of South Carolina, arrived in Eichmond on 
 some mission of his office, and among the items of local 
 news he read the notice of the impending execution 
 of Sawyer and Flynn ; and casually learning that the 
 latter was a member of his chiu'ch, his sad situation, 
 and indeed the situation of both the condemned men 
 so awakened his benevolent interest, that he resolved 
 to exert his influence with JefEerson Davis, with 
 whom he was on terms of cordial friendship, in the 
 hope of obtaining— if not a commutation of the death - 
 sentence — at least a reprieve for ten days longer, to 
 afford the men that brief season of preparation for 
 death. 
 
14 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDEBAGY. 
 
 Despite the good Bishop's powerful influence 
 and merciful intercession, Davis remained immov- 
 able, and the execution of the two men was fixed to 
 take place the next day at Camp Lee, near Rich- 
 mond, the usual place for military executions. Both 
 men wrote tender messages of farewell to their loved 
 ones, and at an early hour next morning they left their 
 cells, and mounting horses — ^the death-sentence having 
 been first read to them — they proceeded, under a 
 strong mounted guard, toward the place of execution. 
 
 Few words were exchanged by the prisoners or 
 guards as the solemn procession advanced; the silence 
 among the sober-visaged men — guards and pris- 
 oners — was painful, and already they were near the 
 fatal ground when an officer, overtaking them on 
 horseback, rode to the head of the escort and handed 
 the officer in charge a paper. 
 
 Ordinarily so common and trifling an occur- 
 rence as this would scarcely have attracted remark, 
 but this sudden arrival, at a moment when the men's 
 nerves were strained to a high tension, sent a visible 
 current of excitement through the ranks, and 
 awakened unutterable interest in the breasts of the 
 condemned men. But their hearts beat faster yet, 
 and a wild gleam of hope thrilled them as they saw 
 the commanding officer open and read the paper with 
 
'Handed the Officer in charge a paper." — See page 14. 
 
CHECKMATED BY GENERAL BUTLER. 15 
 
 a visible flush of satisfaction. He saluted and dis- 
 missed the messenger with a few inaudible words, 
 and giving the command "right about!" the squad- 
 ron, without receiving any explanation as to the 
 nature of the message, save that which their imagin- 
 ation could invent out of the incident just witnessed, 
 began a brisk return in the direction of Eichmond. 
 The news was soon given to Sawyer and Flynn ; the 
 jeyful tidings moistened their eyes. 
 
 Davis at the last moment had thought it wise to 
 yield to the appeal of Bishop Lynch and give the 
 men ten days more of life, determined as he was 
 oipon their final execution. The men were returned 
 to their cell in Libby to_ wait for the good or ill 
 fortune that their short respite might bring, and 
 neither of them forgot Bishop Lynch in their prayers 
 that night. 
 
 The facts were reported to General Butler at 
 Fortress Monroe, and were by him swiftly transmitted 
 to Washington. The case was discussed in Cabinet 
 meeting, and aroused- deep indignation at the North. 
 Mr. Stanton was authorized to place the matter in 
 the hands of General Butler, "with full power," and 
 Butler acted with characteristic promptness and 
 vigor. He politely notified the Confederate author- 
 ities at Ili«hmond, and without argument, that on 
 
16 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDEBACY. 
 
 the same day and hour that Captains Sawyer and 
 Flynn should be executed, he would hang General 
 W. H. F. Lee and Captain Winder, both of whom 
 were then his prisoners at Fortress Monroe. The 
 former was a nephew of General E. E. Lee, the latter 
 a son of Jefferson Davis' particular friend John H. 
 Winder, Commissary General of Federal prisoners. 
 
 The checkmate was superb and complete. The 
 sacrifice of two Confederate officers thus powerfully 
 related could not be well indulged in, as the 
 sagacious Butler knew with exasperating precision, 
 even to gratify the imperious humor of " the Presi- 
 dent " ; and thus Sawyer and Flynn were saved in 
 the very shadow of the gallows. 
 
 When General Butler was made Commissioner 
 of Exchange, the Confederate Commissioner was 
 directed not to recognize or communicate with him, 
 because Mr. Davis had, with great solemnity, declared 
 him an " outlaw " by proclamation, because of the 
 General's rigorous government of New Orleans in 
 1862. The Confederates soon saw the folly of this 
 step, however, and escaped general ridicule by an 
 early and sensible retreat. Judge Ould admits with 
 candor, that of all the Federal' representatives with 
 whom he came in contact in the exchange negotiat, 
 tions. General Butler was the most tru,ihful and just 
 
PROPOSAL FOR GENERAL EXCHANGE. 17 
 
 and gratefully testifies to his personal courtesy to 
 him and his humane treatment of Confederate 
 prisoners. 
 
 During the month of July, 1863, Judge Ould 
 submitted a proposal for a general exchange, a 
 condition being that the surplus held by either party 
 should be released on parole; but as the proposal 
 did not silggest a satisfactory remedy for the griev- 
 ances that were the main grounds of Federal dissat- 
 isfaction, it was rejected, a large excess of prisoners 
 being at this time in Union hands. 
 
 Meantime the prisons at Richmond and else- 
 • where were being rapidly overflowed; the ratio of 
 deaths rose to an alarming degree, and sickness and 
 suffering increased daily among the unfortunate 
 captives, as the full blaze of midsummer beat on 
 them with dreadful power. 
 
 Having thus noted the chief causes with which 
 the Federal authorities justified their refusal to con- 
 tinue the exchange, justice demands that the Confed- 
 erate side of the question should be presented in its 
 material points. This indeed has been attempted by 
 _ many Southern writers with more zeal and rhetoric 
 than accuracy. But Judge Ould, whose position as 
 Commissioner of Exchange afforded him more than 
 any other an acquaintance with the facts on the 
 
18 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 Confederate Bide of tlie caeie, lias presented it in an 
 ingenious and attractive narrative published some 
 years since in the Philadelphia Weekly Times. In 
 this he directs attention to General Orders Nos. 59 
 and 100, issued by the Federal War Department in 
 1863, which provided that "no paroles unaccom- 
 panied by actual possession and delivery at the points 
 designated in the cartel would be recognized," but 
 declared further that " if a parole should be given 
 under different circumstances, and the United States 
 did not approve of the same, the paroled officer must 
 return into captivity." 
 
 He also refers to General Order No. 207, issued 
 at Washington July 3d, 1868, which declared that 
 " all captures must be reduced to actual possession, 
 and all prisoners of war must be delivered at the 
 place designated, there to be exchanged, or paroled 
 until exchange can be effected." This general order 
 did not contain the provision of the others, that the 
 paroled officer, if he gave an unauthorized parole, 
 should "return into captivity." 
 
 "The application of these general orders to the 
 facts connected with exchanges," Judge Ould says, 
 "produced the first serious difficulty." He admits 
 that the position assumed in these geaeral orders 
 " may have been strongly supported by the language 
 
CLAIMS OF JUDGE OULD. 19 
 
 of ttie cartel," wMch. required " all prisoners of war 
 to be discliarged on parole in ten days after capture, 
 and the prisoners now held, and those hereafter taken, 
 to Be transported to the points mutually agreed upon 
 at the expense of the capturing party j" bnit claims 
 that the practice up to May, 1863, had been for both 
 parties to. recognize paroles given at the time and 
 place of capture. He contended that th& cartel 
 touched only ^— BO far as deliveries were concerned 
 — *such prisoners as were in captivity, or held by 
 either party in depots or military prisons, and had 
 been removed from the battlefield or place of capture 
 aad reduced into actual possession, and that it still left 
 the force and effeet of military paroles to be inter- 
 preted by the usages of war; that there often arose 
 contingencies in which a prisoner might give a valid 
 parole without violating the manifest purpose or 
 language of the cartel; and instances a parole given 
 Oolonei Leroy Stone^ of the 14:9 th Pennsylvania 
 Volxinteers, captua^ed at Gettysburg, who, being 
 wotinded, a^d unaware of the existence of the gen» 
 eral order (207) issued on th« day of his capture, 
 accepted ihe parole to avoid a painful Journey to th© 
 rear. 
 
 The existence of this general order was unknown, 
 in iaidt, t© lihe most of the army ; or iat least was un- 
 
20 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 known to the subordinate Confederate commanders 
 at the time; for the -writer, who was woundad and 
 captured at Gettysburg, in the second day's action, 
 was present with a column of captured Federal offi- 
 cers at Fairfield Gap, on the 5th of July, when a 
 parole of these prisoners was already in progress, 
 when an order countermanding it was received by 
 Major Fairfax, of Longstreet's staff. 
 
 Lee's wagon train, seventeen miles long, en- 
 cumbered the roads, and the care of several thousand 
 prisoners greatly increased the difficulty of his retreat 
 across the Blue Ridge to the Potomac; a fierce rain 
 storm had set in on the 4th, and continuing all night 
 had made the mountain roads almost impassable. 
 Hagerstown and Williamsport seemed floating in 
 lakes of mud. 
 
 The Federal authorities insisted that the pro- 
 visions of the latest General Order (207) should be 
 retroactive, and hence that paroles given at the time 
 and place of capture should, notwithstanding previous 
 practice, be inoperative. It was claimed by the Con- 
 federates that the execution of this order unfairly 
 deprived them of the advantage of many captures 
 made by them during the preceding four months, 
 and, therefore, they refused assent to this arrange- 
 ment, but proposed, instead, that previous practice 
 
COLORED FEDERAL SOLDIERS. 21 
 
 should be operative up to the date of the order's 
 issue. 
 
 Finding that the Federal commissioner was 
 immovable respecting the class of paj-oles men-_ 
 tioned, Judge Ould informed the Federal commis- 
 sioner that he need not send any more Confederate 
 officers to Qitj Point with the expectation of receiv- 
 ing as equivalents only those who were in captivity, 
 i. e., those officers of Streight's and Milroy's com- 
 mands then in Libby, and the officers taken at Get- 
 tysburg, and closed his letter in these words: "If 
 captivity, privation and misery are to be the fate of 
 officers on both sides hereafter, let Grod judge between 
 us. I have struggled in this matter as if it had been 
 a matter of life and death with me. I am heartsick 
 at the termination, but I have no self-reproaches." 
 
 "The inevitable effect of the new rule," says 
 Judge Quid, "would be to confine exchanges to the 
 officers and men who were in captivity, leaving the 
 surplus in prison, and would, therefore, have directly 
 ignored the terms of the cartel." 
 
 Touching colored Federal soldiers, he elsewhere 
 makes the remarkable observation that no officer of 
 the Federal army during the progress of the war 
 was ever punished in any way for commanding or 
 leading negro.troops, though the Confederates had 
 
22 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 many such in captivity. For a man occupying the 
 position he did at the time, this denial displays a 
 lack of information that is startling, to use no harsher 
 .term; for the fact that this class of Federal officers 
 was singled out and specially ill-treated in nearly all 
 the Southern prisons is so well known to hundreds 
 of surviving witnesses, North and South, that it seems 
 like absurdity to cite instances. The writer will, 
 however, venture to present one instance which 
 occurred while he was confined at Libby Prison 
 
 J 
 
 with over a thousand Union officers in 1863-4. 
 At that time no prisoners were detained there save 
 commissioned officers, except occasionally for a single 
 night while in transit to other prisons where enlisted 
 men were held. 
 
 A small apartment about twelve feet square was 
 specially constructed at the north end of the kitchen, 
 and here several white officers were locked in with a 
 number of negro privates who had been captured 
 under their command. A thousand officers liad daily 
 access to this "kitchen," and from it all could see 
 through cracks the inmates of the small apartment, 
 but were forbidden by Turner, the prison command- 
 ant, to talk with them. 
 
 Perhaps Judge Ould does not rate this a " pun- 
 ishment." And does he invite us to believe, then 
 
LEGISLATION "IN TERROREM." 23 
 
 that the Confederates went to the trouble and ex- 
 pense of building this apartment and placing special 
 sentinels at the door in order to give greater seclu- 
 sion and comfort to this class of prisoners than to 
 their brother officers ? 
 
 Again he says that " the Confederate law which 
 authorized the delivery of negro soldiers to the State 
 authorities was never enforced, but was to be re- 
 garded at the time as legislation 'w terrorem,'' and 
 hence did not present any 'practical difficulty.'" 
 Would he also ask us to believe that it would not 
 have been enforced, like the sentence of Sawyer and 
 Flynn, if the Federal authorities had not had the 
 means at hand to frustrate it by Butler's vigorous 
 remedy ? 
 
 He relates a three days' visit to Fortress Mon- 
 roe, where he and General Butler agreed upon a 
 practical return to and compliance with the main 
 provisions of the cartel of 1862,' and proposed to 
 "flank" the single point of disagreement relating to 
 the captured negro slaves who had fled from their 
 masters and enlisted in the Federal army by leaving 
 the future adjustment of such cases to such measures 
 of retaliation as might be found practicable and ex- 
 pedient, and declared that he had now the authority 
 and desire to sign the new agreement in that shape. 
 
24 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 General Butler, however, refused to sign until the 
 proposal should be submitted to his Government for 
 approval ; and as this was not obtained, the deadlock 
 continued, and Judge Ould returned to his lines. 
 
 General Grant, to whom the Government a year 
 afterwards referred the matter, refused to assent to a 
 general exchange under existing circumstances, and 
 in a letter to General Butler, said: "If we begin a 
 system of exchange now that liberates all prisoners, 
 we shall have to fight on until the whole South is 
 exterminated. Whereas, if we hold on to those now 
 in our hands, they count for no more than dead men. 
 It is hard on our soldiers to keep them in Southern 
 prisons, but it is mercy to those left in the field to 
 fight our battles." 
 
 It would be tedious and unprofitable to recapitu- 
 late the details of the exchange controversy that 
 followed the events above narrated during the blazing 
 summer and unusually severe winter that ensued. 
 Enough to say that new grievances were vigilantly 
 hunted and found on both sides, and the prisoners' 
 wild hopes of liberation died in their despairing 
 souls. About one hundred thousand prisoners were, 
 at the date of General Grant's letter, held on both 
 sides, a great majority of these being in Federal 
 hands. 
 
''ROBBED THE CRADLE AND THE GRA VE." 25 
 
 When it is borne in mind that Lee's army was 
 at this time struggling for the life of the Confed- 
 eracy in the Petersburg trenches, and that Grant was 
 daily tightening his grasp upon it, and that Hood 
 was striving with a disheartened and already de- 
 feated army to check the victorious advance of Sher- 
 man before Atlanta; and when it is remembered that 
 the Confederate prisoners at the North were well 
 sheltered, fed, and fit for immediate service with 
 Lee's and Hood's depleted forces, to strengthen 
 which the Confederacy had already "robbed the 
 cradle and the grave '" ; and when it is finally borne in 
 memory that at this critical time not one in fifty of the 
 emaciated Union captives at Andersonville, Macon, 
 Salisbury and Richmond could more than barely stand 
 upon their feet — much less march and fight for many 
 months, if indeed' ever afterwards— the earnest, 
 almost pathetic appeals of the Confederate authori- 
 ties for an exchange on almost any terms will not 
 ■excite surprise, nor will the decision of General 
 Grant, deeply as it is known to have wrung his gen- 
 erous heart to leave for a time the unfortunate Union 
 prisoners to the mercy of merciless keepers like 
 Winder, Wirz and the Turners, lessen the country's 
 confidence in his sagacity nor dim the lustre of his 
 patriotism and fame. 
 
26 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 While there were other minor causes of disa- 
 greement besides those enumerated, it is believed 
 that the foregoing statement embraces the essential 
 causes that resulted in the cessation of exchanges in 
 the midsummer of 1863, and in this form it is sub- 
 mitted for impartial judgment. 
 
 However honest minds may divide on the merits 
 of the unhappy dispute, they must unite in the 
 acknowledgment that the prisoners themselves were 
 the victims and not the authors of the quarrel that 
 proved the forerunner of the most gigantic and 
 hideous crime that ever stained the annals of 
 Christendom. 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 Cruelty and ConAscation — Bullets and 
 Bloodhounds. 
 
 rr 
 
 ROM the time of this deplorable disagree- 
 ment in regard to exchanges, in the summer 
 of 1863, until a month prior to the surrender 
 of Lee, the military prisons at Andersonville, Salis- 
 bury, Belle Isle and Florence were the scenes of 
 torment, cruelty and death in such forms and 
 excess as to defy a portrayal by the historian's 
 pen or the painter's brush. It is not an exaggera- 
 tion to say that the Andersonville stockade, swarm- 
 ing at one time in 1864 with thirty-five thousand 
 Federal prisoners, witnessed cruelties and sufferings 
 that transcended in studied and systematic barbarity 
 the devilish inventions of the Spanish Inquisition, 
 the terrors of the French Eevolution, and all the 
 dread tempests of war that have swept over Europe 
 since the Crusades. 
 
 At Belle Isle, in the James river opposite Rich- 
 mond, the situation of the captives was pitiful during 
 
 27 
 
28 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 the winter of 1863-4, which was the most rigorous 
 known in that latitude for many years, freezing the 
 James so solidly that teams with heavy loads crossed 
 easily on the ice to and from the Richmond shore. 
 The area of the Island was about one hundred acres, 
 and the prisoners, varying from one to ten thousand 
 in number, were hemmed in by guards on its bleakest 
 part, most of them without shelter, and but a few 
 found partial shelter in ragged tents. Eight men 
 froze to death in the ditch that skirted one side of 
 the camp. They had crawled into it to escape the 
 cruel blasts of a winter night. One hundred and 
 twenty -three perished from cold there that winter. 
 
 In this, as well as in all the other prisons, all 
 money and articles of intrinsic value, and even such 
 articles of clothing as their captors fancied, were 
 taken from them, the Confederate officials having in 
 their hands at one time, fifty-five thousand dollars 
 belonging to the starving and freezing men on Belle 
 Isle. 
 
 By an arrangement between the Exchange 
 Commissioners, an amount of blankets and clothing 
 was sent them by the U. S. Sanitary and Christian 
 Commissions through the Government, but hundreds 
 had perished from exposure before this relief reached 
 them. 
 
"MADE HALF-INSANE." 29 
 
 The food dealt out to tliem — chiefly corameal 
 from which the husk had not been removed — was so 
 scant in quantity and wretched in quality, that the 
 whole crowd of ragged and shivering wretches were 
 made half insane by the ceaseless pangs of hunger 
 and the varied diseases to which it led. The dog 
 belonging to the Confederate, commandant straying 
 into the camp one day was killed and eaten with 
 eager zest. Because the wagons bearing their daily 
 supply of rations met with an accident on one 
 occasion, the prisoners were deprived of their food 
 that day, nor was the loss ever replaced. While 
 these scenes were passing daily at Belle Isle, the 
 Confederate capitol where the Southern Congress 
 met, and the house of Jefferson Davis were within 
 sight of the Union sufferers. 
 
 Boxes sent to the Union officers confined in 
 Libby Prison that winter by friends at the North 
 were brought from the flag of truce boat at City 
 Point and stored, thousands in number and for 
 months, in Kerr's warehouse, in full sight and within 
 fifty feet of Libby Prison, from whose east windows 
 the famishing owners could plainly read their names 
 on the covers. These boxes contained both food and 
 clothing, books and such God-sends as the love of 
 wives, sisters and parents could thoughtfully suggest 
 
30 BASTILES OF TBE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 and their purse supply. The Confederate agent had 
 received them under a flag of truce, and by the 
 agreement had pledged the honor of himself and his 
 government to their inviolate and prompt delivery; 
 yet the shameful truth must be recorded, that but a 
 portion of those boxes ever reached the hands of the 
 owners, aud most of these were plundered before 
 delivery of their most valuable articles, both food 
 and clothing. The rest of the stored boxes were 
 leisurely appropriated by the Confederate officials 
 and soldiers, who had free access to them day and 
 night. 
 
 A box sent from home to the writer in January, 
 1864, was robbed of its entire contents, and to refine 
 the theft a written list was left in the bottom to 
 remind him of the treasures he had missed. In 
 order to get the empty box for a seat — a luxury in 
 Libby — he was laughingly told by " Dick" Turner 
 that he "must sign for it;" he did so, to save his 
 keepers that trouble, and the following day Turner 
 sent a file of guards up stairs and took away the box. 
 
 On the entrance of the writer to the prison from 
 Gettysburg, where his eye was destroyed by a wound, 
 he was brutally struck in the face, which was still 
 bandaged and inflamed, by this same Turner, who, 
 having pilfered his pockets of everything else, struck 
 
f'OiV THE VERGE OF STARVATION." 31 
 
 this brave blow as a reply to the writer's request to be 
 permitted to retain a small fragment of shell which 
 had wounded one of his comrades at Gettysburg. 
 
 A parting testimony of his regard was paid in 
 February, 1864, when he locked him up among the 
 rats in an underground cell, without covering or light, 
 for his participation in the famous tunnel escape, it 
 being his ill-fortune to be re-captured after getting 
 thirteen miles from Richmond. 
 
 Another box sent to him from home in 1864 
 was found still in storage with thousands of others 
 in Eichmond when the Union army entered the city, 
 and was expressed to him in New York by General 
 Mumford, in August, 1865, twenty-one months after 
 the Confederates had received it. It would have 
 indeed been , joyfully welcomed, with its edibles, 
 clothing and shoes, for while it was withheld from 
 him he was on the verge of starvation and was 
 shivering in the filthy tatters of a summer uniform, 
 and with frozen, swollen and shoeless feet, in an un- 
 sheltered, open field, with twelve hundred famishing 
 Union officers at Camp Sorghum, near Columbia. 
 
 This shameful breach of faith and inhuman 
 deprivation prevailed in all the chief prisons at 
 the South, with a few honorable exceptions, and 
 was a piece of the general "system" that had been 
 
 3 
 
32 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 deliberately decided upon at Richmond in the treat- 
 ment of prisoners^ and with the desperate and despic- 
 able purpose of bringing the Federal authorities to 
 terms, and meanwhile insidiously disable the army of 
 captives in their hands for future service in the field, 
 should any portion of it survive the infamous oper- 
 ation of the "system." 
 
 The two prisons, Camp Sorghum and Camp 
 Asylum, at Columbia, S. C, where the Federal 
 officers were confined during the winter of 1864-5, 
 were scenes of shameful cruelties, the captives suf- 
 fering dreadfully from the beggarly allowance of 
 shelter, fuel and food. Near Camp Sorghum a citi- 
 zen was employed by the keepers to track, with blood- 
 hounds, prisoners who had escaped, and several men 
 were dreadfully injured by them. One officer was so 
 badly torn by these savage beasts that he soon died. 
 Two of the dogs strolled into the camp one day and 
 were killed while their owner was in the commandant's 
 tent arranging for another chase of Federal fugitives. 
 The infuriated owner was allowed the revenge of 
 casting the carcasses of the beasts into the stream 
 outside the guard line by the sympathizing com- 
 mandant. This was the only water accessible to the 
 prisoners. 
 
jv^f"' 
 
 
 
 See page 32. 
 
THREE OFFICERS KILLED 33 
 
 A group of officers were one night singing the 
 " Star Spangled Banner " in the centre of the camp, 
 when a sentinel deliberately fired into them and killed 
 an officer. 
 
 During a roll- call one day a guard who was to 
 be on duty that night proposed to a Rhode Island 
 captain that for a consideration of fifty dollars in 
 greenbacks and his watch he would allow him to 
 approach his beat at a given signal, about eleven 
 o'clock, and, after handing him these valuables, he 
 would be permitted to escape unmolested. At the 
 hour designated the officer, in answer to the prom- 
 ised signal, advanced and handed the demanded price 
 of his liberty to his tempter, who pocketed his wages 
 and shot the giver dead. For this achievement the 
 warrior was allowed to keep his spoils, and was fur- 
 loughed and promoted. 
 
 Another guard on the same post, envious of his 
 comrade's laurels, shot and killed Lieutenant Turbain, 
 of the 66th New York, within a few yards of where 
 the writer was standing, and for no other shadow of 
 reason than that the Lieutenant had, in passing 
 around his tiny hut "in broad daylight, approached 
 within half a dozen feet of the "dead line," and 
 more than fifty feet from his assassin. The promis- 
 cuous firing of shots through the camp was at night 
 
34 BASTILES op THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 a common and mirth-provoking pastime of the sen- 
 tinels around this pen of misery. 
 
 The prison at Salisbury, !N. 0., ranked well up 
 with the deadly pen at Andersonville in the variety 
 and excess of its horrors, as well as in the number of 
 its victims, the number of deaths there being twelve 
 thousand, one hundred and twelve. The prison was 
 a brick factory four stories high, 40x100 feet, with 
 five buildings formerly used as boarding-houses. A 
 board fence surrounding these inclosed about five 
 acres, and here in November, 1864, ten thousand 
 prisoners were crowded. The buildings were soon 
 filled with the sick and dying, and within a short 
 time more than half of them perished. 
 
 Driven by their sufferings to desperation, the 
 prisoners in November attempted an organized escape 
 by forcing the guard, but a regiment happening at 
 the moment to arrive by a train, the unarmed and 
 emaciated men were soon overpowered, the artillery 
 opening on them with grape and canister, and con- 
 tinuing to fire for some time after the captives had 
 surrendered, while many poor tottering wretches 
 who could take no hand in the break-out were beg- 
 ging for mercy. 
 
 In the following month General Winder urgently 
 pressed the Bichmond. authorities to remove the pris- 
 
" OPEN FIRE ON THE STOCKADE:' 35 
 
 oners from Salisbury and Florence to a place of 
 greater security. It may be said ■with truth and 
 without levity that he was not wholly forgetful of 
 himself, for at this period the ominous reports that 
 were daily reaching him of Sherman's advance did 
 not increase his hours of sleep nor give his dreams 
 of capture by that hard hitter a very rosy tint; and 
 particularly as he remembered now a certain order of 
 his own issued at Andersonville when Sherman had 
 taken Atlanta, and in which order he had commanded 
 that when Sherman's troops should " approach within 
 seven miles of this post [Andersonville] the battery 
 of Florida artillery on duty will open fire on the 
 stockade [prison] without further orders from these 
 headquarters." 
 
 Throughout the entire winter the captives suf- 
 fered intensely from cold at this prison, and at Flor- 
 ence the same deplorable conditions prevailed. The 
 allowance of fuel, of which there was a great abund- 
 ance close by, was not half sufficient to cook the 
 scant daily rations of coarse meal supplied the men, 
 much less to keep up fires to warm their skeleton 
 and half-naked bodies, and they sank rapidly and 
 died in thousands, as the cold winter blasts swept 
 pitilessly over them. 
 
36 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 The pathetic and daily appeals of the sufferers 
 to John H. Gee, the keeper, to allow them to chop and 
 haul wood for "themselves under a guard, was met by 
 that unconscionable apology for a soldier with curses 
 and the vilest abuse. 
 
 Captain Hall, Confederate Inspector, made a 
 report at the time when this iniquity was at its 
 height at Salisbury, stating that fifty unused horses 
 were standing in the Quartermaster's department 
 stables, with plenty of good timber adjacent to the 
 prison, and also an abundance of straw for which 
 there was no use. 
 
 It is quite needless to say that this was but one of 
 the many forms of atrocious cruelty practiced in this 
 counterfeit of Hades under the authority and imme- 
 diate supervision of John H. Winder, whose head- 
 quarters were as near by as the deadly odors of the 
 pen and his personal safety would permit him to 
 venture. 
 
 The reader will be glad to be spared the farrow- 
 ing and almost incredible details of individual suf- 
 fering inflicted upon the Union captives at this fear- 
 ful prison; but the references made are truths that 
 will carry conviction to every enlightened and unpre- 
 judiced mind as to the undoubted and unholy exist- 
 ence of the "system" that had been hatched at 
 
"REVOLTING TO HUMANITY." 37 
 
 Eiclimoiid in tlie treatment of Federal prisoners, a 
 plan — revolting and shameful as it was to tlie com- 
 monest instincts of humanity — that was as deliber- 
 ately studied and approved beforehand as was any 
 campaign of the Civil War. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 Evidence Concerning Andersonville. 
 
 ^J OME of the leading facts, and a necessary few 
 (jj of the illustrative incidents in the history of 
 Andersonville Prison will now be reviewed 
 as briefly as an intelligent conception of the place, 
 its creators and keepers may require, and the means 
 and ability of the writer permit. The facts here 
 submitted are established by evidence adduced at the 
 trial of Captain Henry Wirz, at Washington, in 1865, 
 from official records at Washington and Confederate 
 archives. 
 
 The stockade at Andersonville was located in 
 December, 1863, by W. S. Winder, son of General 
 John H. Winder, the agent of the Confederate Gov- 
 ernment, upon a narrow stream, not more than six 
 feet wide, which had its rise in a swamp. Its banks 
 were marshy and swampy. The water was of a dark 
 color, and when allowed to stand for a short time 
 would deposit in the bottom of the glass a thick, 
 loathsome sediment. Such was the condition of the 
 stream at the time the location of the stockade was 
 decided upon; its condition after it became the sink 
 for the use of the camp will be described elsewhere. 
 
 38 
 
^ 
 
 :■■ ;**; >,% 
 
 The "Mansions" of Andersonville. 
 
"NATURALLY UNFIT FOR USE." 39 
 
 WitHn half a mile of the stockade ran Little Sweet 
 Water creek, a stream varying from fifteen to twenty- 
 five feet in width. The water in this creek was clear 
 and good, and the land on either side much better 
 adapted for a prison camp than the spot on which it 
 was located. 
 
 Major-General J. H. Wilson says of this stream: 
 " The stream here called Little Sweet Water, about 
 fifteen feet in width and five feet deep, runs only about 
 two hundred and fifty feet from the corner of the 
 hospital inclosure. If the main inclosure had been 
 enlarged simply so as to cross that creek, which 
 could have been done very easily, it would have 
 supplied all the troops that could have possibly been 
 put there, with ample water both for culinary pur- 
 poses and for the purposes of police. 
 
 *'iL' -if. •if. fix. itf. tlf tif 
 
 Tp ^ ^ 91? 71. -^ flJJ 
 
 "The water of the stream which ran through 
 the stockade, naturally unfit for use, was rendered 
 still worse by being made the sewer to carry away 
 the impurities and filth of the prison cook-house, 
 which was located on its banks just above the 
 stockade, the grease and refuse from which covered 
 the stream and floated sluggishly into the limits of 
 the prison. The rebel guards were also encamped 
 on the stream above the cook-house and emptied 
 
40 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 their filtli into it. Can the mind conceive a greatet 
 mockery than this pretense of furnishing water for 
 the prisoners to drink, which, even when used to 
 bathe wounds, often produced gangrene?" 
 
 The prison space was surrounded by a high 
 wall, from which the sentinels had a full view of the 
 captives within, and the "dead line," marked by 
 rows of stakes with narrow strips nailed to their tops, 
 followed the wall about fifteen feet from its interior 
 side. When the stockade swarmed with thirty-five 
 thousand men in the summer of 1864, the space for 
 each prisoner was ascertained by actual measurement 
 to be six square feet. Artillery bore upon the stockade " 
 on three sides from without,' and when "Winder pre- 
 pared it for the prisoners he had every tree within . 
 cut down. 
 
 To afford an idea of the place and the condition 
 of the prisoners, the following extracts are offered 
 from the report of Joseph M. Jones, M.D., Professor 
 of Medical Chemistry in the Medical College of 
 Georgia, at Augusta, who made a thorough inspec- 
 tion of Andersonville prison, under instructions from 
 the Surgeon-General of the so-called Confederate 
 States. He says: 
 
 " Scurvy, diarrhoea, dysentery and hospital gangrene 
 were the prevailing diseases. From the crowded condition 
 
"FRIGHTFUL ULCERATION AND GANGRENE." 41 
 
 bad diet and dejected, depressed spirits and condition of 
 the men, their systems had become so disordered that the 
 smallest abrasion of the skin from the rubbing of a shoe, 
 or from the effects of the sun, or from the prick of a 
 splinter, or from scratching, cr from a mosquito bite, in 
 some cades took on frightful ulceration and gangrene. 
 The long use of salt meat, oftentimes imperfectly cured, 
 as well as the almost total deprivation of vegetables and 
 fruit, appeared to be the chief causes of the scurvy. I 
 carefully examined the bakery and the bread furnished 
 the prisoners, and found that they were supplied almost 
 entirely with corn-bread from which the husk had not 
 been separated. This husk acted as an irritant to the 
 alimentary canal without adding any nutriment to the 
 bread." As far as my examination extended, no fault 
 could be found with the mode in which the bread was 
 baked; the difficulty lay in the failure to separate the 
 husk from the cornmeal. 
 
 " I strongly urged the preparation of large quanti- 
 ties of soup made from the cow and calves heads with 
 the brains and tongues, to which a liberal supply of 
 sweet potatoes and vegetables might have been advan- 
 tageously added. The materials existed in abundance 
 for the preparation of such soup in large quantities with 
 but little additional expense. Such aliment would have 
 been not only highly nutritious, but jt would also have 
 acted as an efficient remedial agent for the removal of 
 the scorbutic condition. 
 
 " The sick within iJie stockade lay under several 
 long sheds which were originally built for barracks. 
 These sheds covered tw'o floors, which were open on all 
 sides. The sick lay upon the bare boards, or upon such 
 
42 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 ragged blankets as they possessed, without any bedding 
 so far as I observed, or even straw. 
 
 "I observed a large pile of combread, bones and 
 filth of all kinds, thirty feet in diameter and several feet 
 in height, swarming with myriads of flies, in a vacant 
 space near the pots used for cooking. Millions, of flies 
 swarmed over everything and covered the faces of the 
 sleeping patients, and crawled down their open mouths 
 and deposited their maggots in the gangrenous wounds 
 of the living and in the mouths of the dead. Mosquitoes 
 in great numbers also infested the tents, and many of 
 the patients were so stung by these pestiferous insects 
 that they resembled those sufifering with a slight attack 
 of measles. 
 
 "The flies swarming over the wounds and over 
 filth of every kind, the filthy, imperfectly washed and 
 scanty supply of rags, and the limited supply of washing 
 utensils, the same washbowl serving for scores of 
 patients, were sources of such constant circulation of the 
 gangrenous matter that the disease might rapidly spread 
 from a single gangrenous wound. 
 
 " Finally, this gigantic mass of human misery calls 
 loudly for relief, not only for the sake of suffering 
 humanity, but also on account of our own brave soldiers 
 now captives in the hands of the Federal Government. 
 Strict justice to the gallant men of the Confederate 
 armies who have been or may be so unfortunate as to be 
 compelled to surrender in battle demands that the Con- 
 federate government should adopt that course which will 
 best secure their health and comfort in captivity; or at 
 least leave their enemies without a shadow of an excuse 
 for any violation of the rules of civilized warfare in the 
 treatment of prisoners." 
 
"SHOCKED AT THE APPEARANCE:' 43 
 
 John C. Bates, acting Assistant Surgeon under 
 the Confederate authorities at Andersonville, testified 
 as follows on the trial of Wirz: 
 
 " I reported to Dr. Stevenson, who assigned me to 
 the third division of the miUtary prison under Dr. Shep- 
 pard; I was assigned to the fifteenth ward as then 
 designated. 
 
 "Upon going to the hospital I went immediately to 
 the ward to which I was assigned, and although I am 
 not an over sensitive man, I must confess I was rather 
 shocked at the appearance of things. The men were 
 lying partially nude, and dying and lousy, a portion of 
 them in the sand and others upon boards which had been 
 stuck up on little props, pretty well crowded together, a 
 majority of them in small tents that were badly worn. 
 
 "I got to learn practically the meaning of the term 
 'lousy;' I would generally find some upon myself after 
 retiring to my quarters; they were so numerous that it 
 was impossible for a surgeon to enter the hospital with- 
 out having some upon him when he came out. If he 
 touched anybody or anything save the ground, and very 
 often if he stood still merely any length of time, he 
 would get them upon him. 
 
 ]lf at ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 
 "As a general thing the patients were destitute; 
 they were filthy and partly naked; there seemed to be 
 a disposition only to get something to eat. The clamor 
 all the while was for something to eat. They asked me 
 for orders for this, that, and the other -^^ peas, or rice, or 
 salt, or beef tea, or a potato, or a biscuit, or a piece of 
 corn-bread, or siftings, or meal. 
 
44 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 " There was in my ward a boy of fifteen or sixteen 
 years in whom I felt a particular interest. My attention 
 was more immediately called to him from his youth, and 
 he appealed to me in such a way that I could not well 
 avoid heeding him. He would often ask me to bring him 
 a piece of bread, a potato, a biscuit, or something of that 
 kind, which I did; I would put them in my pocket and 
 give them to him. I would sometimes give him a raw 
 potato, and as he had the scurvy, and also gangrene, I 
 would advise him not to cook the potato at all but to eat 
 it raw, as an anti-scorbutio. I supplied him in that way 
 for some time, but I could not give him a sufficiencv. 
 He became bedridden upon the hips and back, lying 
 upon the ground; we afterwards got him some straw. 
 Those bedridden sores had become gangrenous.. He 
 became more and more emaciated — until he died. 
 The lice, the want of bed and bedding, of fuel and 
 food, were the causes of his death. 
 
 "I was a little shy. I did not know that I was 
 allowed to take euch things to the patients, and I had 
 been so often arrested that I thought it necessary to be 
 a little shy in what I did and keep it to myself. I would 
 put a potato in my pocket and turn around and let it drop 
 to this man or that. I did not wish to be observed by 
 anybody. When I first went there I understood that it 
 was positively against the orders to take anything in. 
 
 "I can speak of other cases among the patients. Two 
 or three others in my ward were in the same condition 
 and there were others who came to their deaths from the 
 bad condition of things and the lack of necessary sup- 
 plies. That is my professional opinion. 
 
 "In visiting the wards in the morning 1 would find 
 persons lying dead; and sometimes would find them 
 
"DEAD AMONG THE LIVING." 45 
 
 lying among the living. I recollect on one occasion 
 telling my steward to go and wake up a certain one, and 
 when I went to wake him tip myself he was taking his 
 everlasting sleep. Upon several occasions, upon going 
 into my own wards I found men whom we did not expect 
 to die, dead from the sensation of chilblains produced 
 during the night. 
 
 "This was in the hospital. I was not so well 
 acquainted with how it was in the stockade. I judge 
 from what I saw that numbers suffered in the same way 
 there. The effect of scurvy as it developed itself upon 
 the systems of the men there was the next thing to 
 rottenness. 
 
 vp Tif T^ 7p 77* 'I* ^ *rr 
 
 " The miasmatic effluvia emanating from the hospital 
 was very potent and offensive indeed. If I had a scratch 
 on my hand — if the skin was broken or abraded in the 
 least — I did not venture to go into the hospital without 
 protecting it with adhesive plaster. I saw several sores 
 originating from the infection of the gangrenous effluvia 
 saturating the atmosphere. I thought when I was in the 
 stockade that the effluvia was worse there than in the 
 hospital. In the stockade the men were more thickly 
 huddled together like ants or bees or something of that 
 kind. It was a hard matter to get through them. We had 
 some pretty cold weather for Georgia that winter; once or 
 twice I think I saw ice; it was thin, perhaps; we never 
 have much ice there. 
 
 "Immediately upon the west side of the stockade, and 
 between, there and the depot, there was timber scattered. 
 On the north side, beyond the cook-house a little, there 
 was plenty of timber ; on the south side plenty had been 
 
46 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 cut in logs and lay there, and down by the hospital there 
 was plenty. That is a woody country, and there was 
 plenty of wood within a mile. It was fine timber, and 
 could have been made into shingles or clapboards. I did 
 not see any of it used to make shelter for the prison- 
 ers. I regret to say that the supply of wood was not 
 sufficient to keep the prisoners from what we'term freez- 
 ing to death." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Andersonville — More Evidence. 
 
 ^^ UGH is a small portion of the horrors and 
 >^\ needless cruelties revealed in the testimony of 
 ^•-^ Professor Jones and Doctor Bates, both Con- 
 federates. Let us now listen to Lieutenant-Colonel 
 D. T. Chandler, Inspector General for the Confed- 
 eracy, testifying before a committee of Congress 
 appointed to investigate the treatment of prisoners. 
 He says: — ■ 
 
 "I was in the service of the Confederate govemoent 
 from February, 1863, until the close of the war. I held 
 the appointment of Lieutenant-Colonel in the Adjutant- 
 General's Department, and latterly was assigned to duty 
 as Inspector General. I was the ofiScer who made the 
 report, signed 'D. T. Chandler,' which was read to the 
 Court yesterday. I have no retraction whatever to make 
 in regard to the condition of the prison at Andersonville, 
 as represented in my report. I devoted about a week — 
 something less than a week — to an inspection of that 
 place. The report was based upon information conveyed 
 to me in official communications from General Winder, 
 and the officers of his staff, inspection of the books and 
 papers, the records of the difiPerent of&ces of that post, 
 and actual inspection of the troops, the stockade, and the 
 hospital. I will frrrther state that I had some conversa- 
 
 47 
 
48 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 tion with the prisoners in the stockade. I noticed that ^ 
 General Winder seemed very indifferent to the welfare 
 of the prisoners, indisposed to do anything, or to do as 
 much as I thought he ought' to do to alleviate their suf- 
 ferings. I remonstrated with him as well as I could, and 
 he used that language which I reported to the depart- 
 ment with reference to it.^' 
 
 " Question ; What particular language do you allude 
 to?" 
 
 " Answer : When I spoke of the great mortality 
 existing among the prisoners, and pointed out to him 
 that the sickly season was coming on, and that it must 
 necessarily increase unless something was done for their 
 relief — the swamp, for instance, drained, and proper 
 food furnished them, and in greater quantity, and other 
 sanitary suggestions which I made to him — he replied 
 to me that he thought it was better to let half of them 
 die than to take care of them. 
 
 " I would like to state to the court that before he 
 used this language to me, my assistant who was with me. 
 Major Hall, had reported to me that he had used similar 
 language to him. I mention this to show the court that 
 I am not mistaken, that my recollection is clear. My 
 assistant. Major Hall, had reported to me officially that 
 General Winder had used this language in conversation 
 with him about the prisoners. I told him I thought it 
 incredible; that he must be mistaken. He told me no; 
 that he had said it not only once but twice; and, as I 
 have stated, he subsequently made use of this expression 
 to me. 
 
 " I think the commissary might have been compelled 
 to purchase some green corn that could have been had 
 
URGED BEMOVAL OF GENERAL WINDER. 49 
 
 in limited quantities. I think so from consultation with 
 the officers there. I saw plenty of it, and cabbages in 
 limited quantities might have been had. I made an 
 estimate in my report that, exclusive of the swamp and 
 streets, there was left about six square feet to a man 
 within the stockade. 
 
 " I urged on the department the removal of General 
 Winder as the radical cause of many of the difficulties 
 there. I believe that with another head of the establish- 
 ment a good deal might have been done. He had not 
 the inclination to exert himself. I also recommended the 
 removal of the assistant commissary. General Winder 
 was made Commissary General of prisoners after I had 
 made my report. 
 
 "On my return to Richmond in October I spoke to 
 Colonel Chilton, Chief of the Bureau, with reference to 
 my report, and he told me it had not yet been acted 
 upon, that it was still on the secretary's desk. I returned 
 again to Richmond the first week in February, and found 
 from the same source that it had not then been acted on. 
 The former secretary had been relieved, and General 
 Breckenridge appointed secretary. At my instance, 
 Colonel Chilton urged the department to take the matter 
 up, for the reason that General Winder had rather 
 denied the correctness of some statements that I made, 
 and I made a counter report, furnishing evidence of the 
 accuracy of my report. I went myself to Judge Camp- 
 bell, and asked him to take it up, and he promised that 
 he would do it. I do not believe it was ever taken up ; 
 that is to say, I do not believe it ever was decided. 
 Judge Campbell might have been considering it at the 
 time of the evacuation. 
 
50 BASTILES -OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 "I do not pretend to say that I think the President 
 did not know there was a prison at Andersonville, and 
 the condition in which it was; I speak only of my 
 individual report and the accompanying papers. 
 
 " The stream that flows through the stockade is 
 formed by two smaller streams that meet some hundred 
 yards, as well as I remember, before entermg the 
 stockade. The banks of that stream are hilly, and there 
 were troops, the Georgia reserves, camped on it, and the 
 washings from the camp came down into the stream, 
 and flowed through th^ stockade. This I pointed out to 
 General Winder as wrong, and bef ore'I left there he had 
 moved one regiment, and the other was under orders to 
 move. I made no recommendations with reference to it; 
 the men themselves complained of the stench arising 
 from the vicinity of the stockade. I should think that 
 after General Winder had been made Commissary 
 General of prisoners he reported to the War Department 
 through the Adjutant General. I suppose he was 
 •appointed by the Secretary of War. The order was 
 dated War Department, and was signed by the Adjutant 
 General." 
 
 While the events described in Colonel Chand- 
 ler's testimony were , transpiring at Andersonville, 
 Confederate officers and citizens of repute, as well as 
 Southern newspapers located near the various prisons 
 throughout the Confederacy, were depicting in letters 
 and articles addressed to Jefferson Davis the deplor- 
 able candition of the Federal captives, and begging 
 for the sake of God and humanity, and for the honor 
 
" HORRIBLE NATIONAL SIN." 51 
 
 of the Southern people and cause, that the shameful 
 spectacle they were witnessing daily might be re- 
 moved from human sight and ^ remedy speedily 
 applied. 
 
 In illustration of this fact the following letter 
 addressed to Jefferson Davis, and which was among 
 the captured Confederate archives at Richmond after 
 his flight, will serve as a type of hundreds of other 
 similar appeals: 
 
 "SiATESBUKa, S. C, October 12, 1864. 
 " To Jefferson Davis, President C. S. A., 
 "Richmond, Va. 
 "Dear Sir: — Inclosed you will find an account of the 
 terrible sufferings of the Yankee prisoners at Florence, 
 S. 0. In the name of all that is holy, is there nothing 
 that can be done to relieve such dreadful sufPering ? If 
 such things are allowed to continue, they will surely 
 draw down some awful judgment on our country. It is 
 a most horrible national sin that cannot go unpunished. 
 If we cannot give them food and shelter, for God^s sake 
 parole them and send them back to Yankee land, but 
 don't starve the miserable creatures to death. Don't 
 think that I have any liking for the Yankee; I have none. 
 Those near and dear to me have suffered too much from 
 their tyranny for me to have anything but hatred for 
 them,; but I have not yet become quite brute enough to 
 know of such suffering without trying to do something 
 even for a Yankee. Yours respectfully. 
 
 " Sabina Dismukes." 
 
52 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 Mr. Disimikes inclosed in this letter an account 
 printed in the Sumter Watchman descriptive of the 
 horrible condition of the Federal prisoners at Flor- 
 ence, S. C, and its receipt in Richmond is shown by 
 Mr. Davis' private secretary's endorsement, and also 
 those of four other officials. 
 
 Among the interesting witnesses in the Wirz 
 trial was Ambrose Spencer, a citizen residing during 
 the war about nine miles from Andersonville. A 
 portion of his testimony was as follows: 
 
 " I visited Andersonville during its occupation as a 
 prison very frequently. I have seen the prisoner Cap- 
 tain Wirz very frequently. I was there nearly every 
 month during the time it was a prison; I doubt whether 
 a month passed in which I was not there while it was in 
 its crowded condition — every month except, perhaps, 
 during March, 1865. I was at Andersonville constautly — 
 nearly every month, as I have remarked. I had frequent 
 opportunities of seeing the condition of the prisoners, 
 not only from the adjacent hills, but several times on the 
 outside of the stockade where the sentinels' grounds 
 were. I had opportunities of talking at different times 
 with the prisoners, not only at Andersonville, but after 
 they had escaped in several instances, when they came 
 to my house. I can only answer the question by saying 
 that their condition was as wretched and as horrible as 
 could well be conceived, not only from exposure to the 
 .Sim, the inclemency of the weather, and the cold of the 
 winter, but from the filth, from the absolute degradation 
 which was evident in their condition. I have seen that 
 
''MUD TWELVE INCHES DEEP." 53 
 
 stockade after three or four days' rain wlieii the mud, I 
 should say, was twelve inches deep on both the hills. 
 The prisoners were walking or wading through that mud. 
 The condition of the stockade perhaps can be expressed 
 most aptly by saying, that in passing up and down the 
 railroad, if the wind was favorable, the odor from the 
 stockade could be detected at least two miles. 
 
 "I believe I am familiar with the surrounding 
 country. That section of Southwestern Georgia is well 
 supplied with mills, both grist-mills, flour-mills and saw- 
 mills. One of them, a large one, is owned by a gentle- 
 man named Drew. There are four others of considerable 
 capacity. There is one saw-mill at a distance of six 
 miles from Andersonville, owned by Mr. Stewart, that 
 goes by steam. There is another saw-mill about five 
 miles from Andersonville that goes by water. There are 
 saw-mills on the road above Andersonville. As for grist- 
 mills, there are five in the neighborhood of Andersonville, 
 that farthest off being about twelve miles distant. Of 
 these mills the water-mills are run nearly the entire year, 
 except occasionally in the summer months ; in the months 
 of July and August they may be temporarily suspended 
 owing to the want of water, but not for any length of 
 time. It is a very heavily timbered country, especially 
 in the region adjoining Andersonville; it may be termed 
 one of the most densely timbered countries in the United 
 States. As for its fertility, Southwestern Georgia is 
 termed, I believe, the 'Garden of America.' It was 
 termed the Garden of the Confederacy, as having sup- 
 plied the greater part of the piovisions of the rebel army. 
 It struck me that there was an uncommon supply of 
 vegetables in 1864 Heretofore at the South there has 
 
54 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 been but little attention paid to gardens on a large scale; 
 but last year a very large supply of vegetables was 
 raised, as I understood, for the purpose of being disposed 
 of at Andersonville. Indeed, there was not a day that 
 passed that the trains were not loaded going from Ameri- 
 cus up to Andersonville with persons carrying vegetables 
 there. I know that some officer at Andersonville (I can- 
 not say who it was) had agents at Americus to purchase 
 vegetables, and large amounts of vegetables were sent up 
 daily or weekly. 
 
 "I know of lumber having been used at Anderson- 
 ville. I was there during June and July very frequently, 
 at the time when Governor Brown had called out the 
 militia of the State. The militia of Southwestern Georgia 
 were stationed at Andersonville, and their tents were all 
 floored with good lumber, and a good many shelters of 
 lumber were put up Ijy the soldiers. I noticed a good 
 many tents that were protected from the sun by boards. 
 There seemed to be no want of lumber at that time 
 among the Confederate soldiers. 
 
 "I did not take any regular thermometrical observa- 
 tions during the summer of 1864 and the winter of 1864-5, 
 but I had a thermometer, and every day, sometimes two 
 or three times a day, I examined it. I generally made it 
 a rule to look at it in the morning when I got up, again 
 about noon, and then in the evening. So far as I 
 remember, the range of the thermometer during the 
 summer of 1864 was very high. I think I have seen it 
 as high as 110 degrees in the shade. Once, and only 
 once, I put the thermometer out in the sun on an 
 extremely hot day in June, 1864. It ranged then, if my 
 memory serves me right, from 127 to 130 degrees that day. 
 
"HE WAS NEARLY FROZEN:' 55 
 
 "Last winter, according to my experience during 
 more than twenty-five years' residence in Georgia, was 
 the coldest winter we have ever had there. I have seen 
 the thermometer as low as twenty and twenty-two 
 degrees above zero, from eight to ten below the freezing 
 point; one night it was colder than that; it was the night 
 of the 4th of January. It is very distinctly impressed 
 on my memory. During the night I was waked up by 
 my wife, who told me some one was calling me in front 
 of my house. I opened the window (it was excessively 
 cold) and asked who was there. A. voice replied '^A 
 friend.' I answered that I had no friends at that time 
 of night and very few anyhow in that country. He said 
 that he was a friend of mine and wanted to come near 
 the fence to speak to me. I told him my dog would bite 
 him if he came to the fence. He then approached and 
 said he was an Andersonville prisoner, and asked me, 
 calling me by name, if I lived there. I told him I was 
 the man and to wait a moment. I dressed myself, went 
 out and chained my dog, and brought the prisoner in. 
 He was nearly frozen; he could hardly stand; he had on 
 only one shoe, and that was a poor one, and had a 
 stocking upon the other foot. He was clad in the thin 
 army flannel of the United States, badly worn; he had on 
 a pair of light blue pantaloons which were badly worn. 
 This was on a Wednesday morning, and he told me he 
 had made his escape from Andersonville on the Saturday 
 previous; that he had been apprehended and taken to 
 Americus, where he had made his escape from the guard 
 the night before and was directed to' my house by a 
 negro. I asked him if he was not nearly frozen ; he said 
 he was. I looked at the thermometer then, and it was 
 
56 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 eighteen degrees above zero. This was about two o'clock 
 in the morning — between one and two o'clock. 
 
 "I know that efforts were being made by the ladies 
 of my county to relieve the prisoners at Andersonville ; at 
 one time a general effort was made. All that I know -is 
 that a gentleman nam«d Mr. Davies, a Methodist presiding 
 elder, exerted himself to induce the ladies to contribute 
 clothing and provisions to the Federal hospital at Ander- 
 sonville. A large amount of provisions was collected — 
 some three or four wagon-loads, if I am not mistaken — 
 and sent up there. I believe that the efPort failed. 
 First, the provost-marshal refused a pass to carry the 
 provisions to the hospital; and when application was 
 made by Dr. Head, who acted as spokesman for the 
 ladies, to General Winder, it was positively refused to 
 them. I had a conversation with General Winder three 
 days afterward. The same matter then came up. Gen-eral 
 Winder stated, accompanied with an oath, that he 
 believed the whole country was becoming 'Yankee,' and 
 
 that he would be d d if he would not put a stop to it. 
 
 If he couldn't one way, he would in another. I remarked 
 that I did not think it was any evidence of 'Yankee ' or 
 Union feeling to exhibit humanity. He said there was 
 no humanity about it; that it was intended as a slur on 
 the Confederate Government and a covert attack on him. 
 I told him I had understood it was done at his request; 
 that he had requested Mr. Da'ties to bring this about. 
 
 He said it was a d d lie; that he had not requested 
 
 anything of the kind; that for his own part he would as 
 
 lief the d d Yankees would die there as anywhere 
 
 else; that, upon the whole, he did not know but that it 
 was better for them. That was his language, or words 
 
"HOUNDS TO CATCH ESCAPED PRISONERS." 57 
 
 to that efPect. Captain Wirz was not present at that 
 time; my wife was with me at the time. There were 
 other ladies present, but I don't think I knew any of 
 them. They were not part of the committee." 
 
 " Question. In what way did General Winder speak 
 of the ladies and their humane effort ? " 
 
 " Answer. He used the most opprobrious language 
 that could possibly be used — language that no gentle- 
 man could listen to, especially in the presence of his wife, 
 without resenting it in some way — language utterly 
 unfit to be used in the presence of ladies. 
 
 " I know Turner who had the hounds very well ; his 
 name was Wesley W. Turner." 
 
 " Question. What did you ever hear him say as to 
 his duties there and what he was receiving?" 
 
 ^^ Answer. li was some time in the early part of 1864 
 — March or April, I think. He had purchased a piece 
 of land up in the same district in which iny place is. I 
 met him one day in Americus, and asked him if he was 
 going to settle that land. He said he was not; that he 
 was making more money now than anybody in that 
 country. I inquired how he was making it. He said 
 the Confederate government was paying him for keeping 
 hounds to catch escaped prisoners. I. asked him if he got 
 his pay from Richmond. He said ' No, he did not trouble 
 Richmond; that old Captain Wirz was his paymaster.' I 
 asked him how much he received; my impression is that 
 he did not tell me what he received. He told me he was 
 making more money than any one else in that country; 
 better than Cultivating ground. That was early in the 
 history of that prison ^ — I think during March or April. 
 It was while he was there on duty; he told me that he 
 then had a pack of hounds, and was employed there. 
 
58 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 "I know W. S. "Winder— 'Sid' Winder, as he is 
 called. I paw him at the time he was laying out the 
 prison, between the 1st and 15th of December, 1863. I 
 went up to Andersonville with him and four or five other . 
 gentlemen, out of curiosity to see how the prison was to 
 be laid out. When we had arrived there the limits of the 
 prison had all been marked. They were then digging a 
 trench to put the stockade posts in. Workmen were busy 
 cutting down trees in and about where the stockade was. 
 
 "In the course of conversation I inquired of W. S. 
 Winder if it was proposed to erect barracks or shelter of 
 any kind inside the stockade. He replied that it was not; 
 
 that the d d Yankees who would be put in there 
 
 would have no need of them. I asked him why he was 
 cutting down all the trees, and suggested that they would 
 prove a shelter to the prisoners, from the heat of the sun 
 at least. He made this reply, or sornething similar to it: 
 'That is just what I ara going to do; lam going to build 
 
 a pen here that will kill more d d Yankees than can 
 
 be destroyed at the front.' Those were very nearly his 
 words, or equivalent to them." 
 
 " Question. What was the general temper and spirit 
 of his talk with regard to those prisoners ? " 
 
 "Answer. The opinion that I formed of him was 
 anything but creditable to his feelings, his humanity, or 
 his gentlemanly bearing. I am not aware that I ever 
 had a conversation with General Winder that he did not 
 curse more or less, especially if the subject of Anderson- 
 ville was brought up. I can only reply to your question 
 by saying that I considered him a brutal man; that I 
 drew from his conduct and conversation as I observed 
 them. I looked upon him as a man utterly devoid of 
 all kindly feeling and sentiment." 
 
" THEY DIED SO FAST." 59 
 
 " Question. How generally, so far as you observed, 
 were the sufferings and horrors of the Andersonville pen 
 known throughout the South ? " 
 
 "Answer. So far as my knowledge and information 
 went, the knowledge of those sufferings was general; it 
 was so at least throughout the southern part of the 
 Southern States; I cannot speak specially in regard to 
 the neighborhood of Richmond. The matter was dis- 
 cussed in the newspapers constantly, and in private circles. 
 Perhaps I might have heard more of it than most because 
 it dwelt more on my mind; but it was a general subject 
 of conversation throughout the entire Southern part of 
 the Confederacy." 
 
 Testimony of Eev. William John Hamilton, on 
 the Wirz trial: 
 
 " I am the pastor of the Catholic church in Macon, 
 Ga. I visited Anderson ville three times; it was one of 
 the missions attached to my church. I went there, I 
 think, in the month of May, 1864, and spent a day there. 
 The following week I went there and spent three days 
 among the prisoners and then returned and wrote a report 
 on the condition of the hospital and stockade there to my 
 bishop, in order that he might send the requisite number 
 of priests to visit the prisoners; and I visited it again 
 after the prisoners had been removed from Anderson- 
 ville to Thomasville. I visited the hospital and the 
 stockade, discharging my duties as a priest of the 
 ^Catholic Church. On this, my second visit to the 
 stockade, I found, I think, twenty-three thousand pris- 
 oners; at least the prisoners told me themselves there 
 were that number. I found the place extremely crowded, 
 
60 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 with a great deal of sickness and suffering among the 
 men. I was kept so busy administering the sacrament 
 to the dying that I had to curtail a great deal of the 
 service, for the reason they were so numerous. They 
 died so fast, I waited only upon those of my own church; 
 they were the only persons who demanded my ministra- 
 tions. When I speak of the number of dying I mean 
 those among the members of my own church, and do not 
 include others." 
 
 " Question. Give the court some idea of the condi- 
 tion of the stockade." 
 
 "Answer. I found the stockade extremely filthy; 
 the men all huddled together and covered with vermin. 
 The best idea I can give the court of the condition of the 
 place is perhaps this : I went in there with a white linen 
 coat on, and I had not been in there more than ten min- 
 utes when a gentleman drew my attention to the condi- 
 tion of my coat. It was all covered with vermin, and I had 
 to take my coat off and leave it with one of the guards, 
 and perform my duties in my shirt sleeves, the place was 
 so filthy. The first person I conversed with on entering 
 the stockade was a countryman of mine, a member of 
 the Catholic Church who recognized me as a clergyman. . 
 I think his name was Farrell ; he was from the north of 
 Ireland. He came over toward me and introduced him- 
 self. He was quite a boy; I do not think, judging from, 
 his appearance, that he could have been more than 
 sixteen years old. I found him without a hat, and with- 
 out any covering on his feet, and without jacket or coat;« 
 He told me that his shoes had been taken from him on 
 the battlefield. I found the boy suffering very much 
 from a wound on his right foot; in fact, the foot was 
 
' He stepped across the dead line and begged to be shot." 
 — See page 6 1 . 
 
"REQUESTED THE GUARD TO SHOOT HIM." 61 
 
 split open like an oyster, and on inquiring the cause they 
 told me it was from exposure to the sun in the stockade, 
 and not from any wound received in battle. I took off 
 my boots and gave him a pair of socks to cover his feet, 
 and told him I would bring him some clothing as I 
 intended to return to Andersonville the following week. 
 I had to return to Macon to get another priest to take 
 my place on Sunday. When I returned the following 
 week, on inquiring for this man Farrell, his companions 
 told me he had stepped across the dead-line and re- 
 quested the guard to shoot him. He was not insane at 
 the time I was conversing with him. It was three or 
 four days after that when I was asking for him. I think 
 it was the latter part of May, 1864. 
 
 " When I went into the hospital I found it almost as 
 crowded as the stockade was; the men were dying very 
 rapidly from scurvy, diarrhoea and dysentery ; and as far 
 as I could observe, I could not see that they received 
 any medical treatment whatsoever, or any medicines at 
 all. They were in tents; the hospital was composed of 
 tents arranged in avenues; and I did not see that they 
 had anything under them but the ground; in some cases 
 I think they had dried leaves that they had gathered 
 together. In my ministrations at the hospital I saw one 
 surgeon, the surgeon in charge there at the time. Dr. 
 White. 
 
 " When I visited the stockade there was no shelter 
 at all so far as I could see, except that some of the men 
 who had their blankets had put them up on little bits 
 of roots that they had abstracted from the ground; but 
 I could not see any tents, or shelter of any other kind. 
 
62 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 I got the names of several prisoners who' had relatives 
 living in the South, and wrote to their friends when I 
 returned to Macon, and I had some tents introduced 
 there; they were sent down and the men received theoL 
 
 " During my second visit to the prison I was told 
 there was an Irishman over at the extreme end of the 
 stockade who was calling for a priest. I suppose he 
 had heard that 1 had visited the prison the day before, 
 and he was very anxious to see a priest and was calling 
 for one all over the stockade. 
 
 "There is a branch that runs right through the 
 centre of the stockade, and I tried to cross the branch, 
 but was unable to do so as the men were crowding 
 around trying to get into the water to cool themselves. I 
 could not get over the branch, and had to leave the 
 stockade without seeing the man. The heat was intoler- 
 able; there was no air at all in the stockade. The logs 
 of which the stockade was composed were bo close 
 together that! could not feel any fresh air inside; and 
 with a strong sun beaming down on it and no shelter at 
 all, of course the heat must have been insuflFerable; at 
 least I felt it so. 
 
 V ^p ^P ^ ^ ^Jt 9|r sjt 9|t 
 
 " I would frequently have to creep on my hands and 
 knees into the holes the men had burrowed in the 
 ground, and stretch myself alongside of them to hear 
 their confessions. I found them almost living in vermin 
 in those holes; they could not be in any other condition 
 but a filthy one, because they got no soap and no change 
 of clothing, and were there all huddled up together. 
 
"FORTY DIED DURING THE NIGHT." 63 
 
 "I was in there early the next morning, and in going 
 down one of the avenues I counted from forty to sixty 
 bodies of those who had died during the night in the 
 hospital. 
 
 " I have seen the men making little places from a 
 foot to a foot and a half deep, arfd stretching their 
 blankets right over them. I have crawled into such 
 places frequently to hear the confessions of the dying. 
 They would hold from one to two; sometimes a prisoner 
 would share his blanket with another and allow him to 
 get under shelter. 
 
 "When I returned from the stockade after my 
 second visit to it at the latter end of May, I represented 
 these things to General Cobb. I wrote to my Bishop 
 and told him that these men were dying in large num- 
 bers; that there were many Catholics there, and that 
 they required the services of a priest; and he sent up 
 Father Whelan. Father Whelan expressed a desire to 
 see General Cobb before he went down to the stockade. 
 I called upon General Cobb; I told him I had been 
 there, and gave him a description of the place as well as 
 I could, and he asked me what I would recommend to be 
 done, as he intended to write to Richmond with regard 
 to the condition of that place. 
 
 "After- I found out from his conversation that 
 nothing more could be done for the bodily comfort of the 
 men, owing to the stringency of the blockade, etc., I 
 advised him to parole those men upon their own word of 
 honor, and take them down to Jacksonville, Fla., and 
 turn them into the Federal lines. Whether that recom- 
 mendation was acted on or not I do not know; he asked 
 my opinion and I gave it. At that time when I told 
 
64 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 him of the condition of things as I found them there it 
 was known to the whole country, for it was published in 
 the newspapers of the South. 
 
 " When General Cobb asked me to give him a descrip- 
 tion of the condition of the place, he remarked, I think, 
 that he was going to write to Bichmond, and wanted me 
 to give him some information on the point. He remarked, 
 also, that he would like me to give him a description 
 because he knew the relations that existed between a 
 Catholic priest and members of his church, and that they 
 would be more unreserved in communicating with me 
 than with others." 
 
 The witness William M. Peebles, Confederate 
 clerk, sworn: 
 
 " I saw several men in the stocks. I did not learn 
 their names. They were Federal prisoners. I was pass- 
 ing around one day during a hard rain, aild saw a pris- 
 oner in the stocks. He seemed to be near drowning. I 
 rode up and put an umbrella over him; I passed up 
 to Captain Wirz's headquarters and told him the 
 prisoner was there and might drown. He remarked, 
 ' let him drown,' using an oath. His words, as well as I 
 
 can remember, were — 'Let the d d Yankee drown; 
 
 I don't care.' In a few moments some one from his 
 headquarters went down and released the prisoner — 
 took him out from the stocks. It was during a very 
 hard rain. The man's head was kind of erect, and it 
 was raining down in his face; he looked as though he 
 would drown; that was what caused me to make the 
 report." 
 

 A sample of John Winder's " Kindness" to Union Prisoners — 
 See page 65. 
 
" WHEN THE VICTIM WAS 'PUT UP.'" 65 
 
 H. M. Davidson, a Union prisoner of war, for 
 a time paroled for duty as surgeon's clerk, whose 
 statement was also incorporated into the report of 
 the committee of the House on the treatment of 
 Union prisoners of war, speaking of punishments 
 inflicted at Andersonville, and their life there, says : 
 
 "The prisoner upon recapture was subjected to 
 several grades of punishment, the first of which was the 
 standing stocks ***** 
 
 Above these bars, and at right angles with them in the 
 middle of the frame, were two other bars containing a 
 notch for the neck, which also had a lateral and perpen- 
 dicular motion, the latter to enable them to be adjusted 
 to the height of the culprit. At the bottom were two 
 similar and parallel bars, with notches for the legs. 
 When the victim was 'put up,' his feet were first fastened, 
 and then his arms extended on a line parallel with the 
 shoulders, and also fastened, and finally his neck ' shut 
 in,' when he was left to his misery for twenty-four hours. 
 In this painful position, unable to change in the least 
 degree, starving, thirsting, bleeding, with the hot sun of a 
 July or August day pouring floods of liquid fire upon his 
 unprotected head, the sufferer paid the initial penalty of 
 his rash attempt to regain his liberty. 
 
 "After the stocks came the ball and chain. For this 
 punishment two men were usually required; a thirty-two- 
 pound cannon ball was fastened to the outside leg of 
 each with a chain about two feet long, and another ball 
 weighing sixty-four pounds chained between them. The 
 chains by which these balls were attached to the legs 
 were so short that they could be carried only by attach- 
 
66 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 ing a string to the thirty-two-pounder and raising it by 
 the hand; the sixty-four-pound weight was supported by 
 a stick when the victims wished to 'walk out.' The 
 'jewelry' was continued on the men for three or four 
 weeks, or during the whim of Captain Wirz. 
 
 " There was one refinement on the ball and chain 
 which deserves special mention. It was devised by Cap- 
 tain Wirz himself, and did great credit to his fiendish 
 nature and his hellish gust for torment. It was denom- 
 inated the 'chain gang,' and was used only in one 
 instance. The gang at first contained twelve men. They 
 were first fastened together with short chains twenty 
 inches to two feet in length, which were attached to iron 
 collars riveted around their necks, each man being thus 
 chained to the man on his right and left, and the twelve 
 forming a circle. To one leg of each a thirty two -pound 
 ball was chained, while one sixty-four-pounder was 
 fastened to every four by the other leg. There was no 
 possible manner in which the men could lie down, sit 
 down, or stand erect with any degree of ease; yet they 
 were kept in this state for four weeks in the open ground 
 outside the stockade, exposed alike to storm and sun, 
 with no covering but their ragged clothing and no pro- 
 tection against the cold dews of the night. One of the 
 gang was sick with chronic dysentery, but the surgeon's 
 clerks were all forbidden to give him any medicine, and 
 he died under the torture. He was taken out of his 
 irons after he was dead, and the remaining eleven forced 
 to carry his share of the weight attached to themselves 
 until the period of their torture had expired. The crime 
 for which these men were 'put up ' in this atrocious man- 
 ner was an attempted escape; some of them had broken 
 
" DELIBERATELY POISONED BY VACCINATION." 67 
 
 from the hospital, and others had been recaptured once 
 before. 
 
 *3A^ «^ ^* «b mt* U. U. U^ 
 
 "The prisoners who had not been recently vaccin- 
 ated were compelled under severe penalties to undergo 
 this operation, the surgeon having been requested, it was 
 said, by the United States Governraent to do this as a 
 preventive against the small-pox. It seemed strange to 
 us that here, where instances of that disease were so 
 extremely rare, such an order should be given; but the 
 sequel showed the devilish cunning of the authorities at 
 Andersonville. The virus was impure, and if the inocu- 
 lation with the poison failed (as it did in many instances) 
 of carrying off the patient, the wound would not heal 
 under the influence of the heat, starvation and impure 
 air, and invariably terminated in horrible-looking ulcers. 
 I have said that the virus was impure; I judge it to have 
 been so from its effects and not from a chemical analysis 
 of it; but there were cases of inoculation which had been 
 made at Danville three months previous to our removal 
 to Camp Sumter that took the same form as every case 
 assumed after our incarceration there. The worst cases 
 at Andersonville were caused by the vaccination. The 
 ravages of the scurvy, it is true, were fearful, and it 
 worked in slight scratches and slight sores caused by 
 the bite of insects, but in none of these did it assume the 
 horrible form that characterized the inoculated wounds; 
 and the only inference that can be drawn from this fact 
 is, that our prisoners were deliberately poisoned by vac- 
 cination. 
 
 ********* 
 
 "From my position (as surgeon's clerk) I could see 
 the men as they came into the inolosure, and trace the 
 
68 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 line far back into the stockade itself. There on the road 
 running nearly across the area, the wretched invalids 
 had gathered in a dense crowd. Some were standing, or 
 leaning, faint, emaciated and weak, upon their stronger 
 comrades; others were lying down upon the bare ground, 
 and over all there hovered a hideous spectre of death, 
 which was reflected upon their squalid forms and upon 
 their thin, pale faces, and in their large, hollow eyes 
 that stared glassily upon us. Tbe earth was black with 
 human beings — a living, writhing, famishing mass of 
 agonizing life. 
 
 " Three thousand men daily visited the surgeons at 
 this place for remedies, besides those to whom medicine 
 was administered without a daily examination. On my 
 own book there were at one time nine hundred and forty- 
 five names of sick men under treatment by one surgeon. 
 Taking this as a basis the fourteen clerks would have in 
 charge thirteen thousand, two hundred and thirty patients ; 
 and these were exclusive of the men who refused to report 
 at sick-call, and those who were confined in the hos- 
 pitals — the latter numbering about two thousand men. 
 
 " At this time it is believed that there were not five 
 thousand well men among the thirty-two thousand con- 
 fined in the stockade. Those who had been longest 
 in the stockade, and those who had come amoilg us 
 in a destitute condition were the earliest and greatest 
 sufPerers. It required time, even in that den of filth and 
 disease and upon the scanty allowance given us, to break 
 down the strong constitutional health of those men; but 
 time did effect it, though some' struggled long and 
 bravely for life. 
 
 " The scurvy is another and most frequent disease, 
 and like the gangrene can receive only temporary relief 
 
" DEADLY VAPORS FROM THE SWAMPS." 69 
 
 here. l!Tearly one-half of the mimber of patients examined 
 daily were afflicted with this fearful scourge, very few 
 of whom recovered, some of them lingering for weeks 
 before the fatal termination of the disease. 
 
 * ** *-^* * * * 
 
 "The patients must inevitably die; some of them 
 may live a few weeks • long«r. Eighty of those eighty- 
 seven men who came to-day for relief for other diseases 
 besides scurvy, will lie beneath the turf, in yonder 
 Golgotha, beyond the reach of the atrocious tortures 
 that have made their last days a hell. 
 
 " In the month of June, 1864, there wore twenty-two 
 days of rain, and the sky was not clear of clouds during 
 all that dreary period for a moment. At times the heavens 
 opened and poured floods of water down upon us; then 
 the sun forced its way through a rift of clouds, and for a 
 (few minutes scorched us with its flames, when his fire 
 was extinguished by another toiSrent. The men were 
 drenched in their open pen during the day, and at night 
 they lay down, still drenched, to sleep upon beds of sand 
 which were saturated with water. When the long rain 
 ceased at last the hot sun burst out upon them, raising 
 deadly vapors from the swamps, which they breathed, 
 and scorching and parching thein with fire. The ther- 
 mometer stood at 104 degrees in the shade, and in the 
 open ground the heat was terrific. In consequence of 
 this storm, malignant fevers broke out atnong the pris- 
 oners, and for a long time they raged with fearful 
 violence. Pneumonia prevailed to a very great extent, 
 . and hundreds fell victims to its ravages. These cases 
 continued for many weeks, and we find their diagnosis 
 upoh every clerk's list during the months pt July and 
 
70 BASTILES OF THE CONEEDEUACY. 
 
 August. Erysipelas also appeared, but its career was 
 soon run, for the unhappy patient died within a few 
 days, unless the little washing of iodine which was 
 applied to the infected spot, succeeded in checking it at 
 once. The glaring sun had smitten men with blindness, 
 and they groped their way darkly among their com 
 rades. 
 
 "Yet in all this misery, squalor and filth there was 
 not a ray of hope. The men must suffer on without suc- 
 cor and without help; the weary days seemed months, 
 and the weeks an eternity, till it was as if they had been 
 removed to a land of fiends, which the omnipresence of 
 God could not reach, and a demon more merciless, more 
 relentless than the prince of hell ruled over us. 
 
 " From eight o'clock until two the work of examining 
 the sick continued. Day after day, for weeks and months, 
 those surgeons labored, breathing the unwholesome air, 
 and in constant contact with those horrible diseases ;' but 
 they were patient, faithful men, and their sympathy with 
 the victims often benefited them as much as the medicine 
 they prescribed. But they were compelled to act under 
 the orders of General Winder and of Captain Wirz, and 
 could do little beyond expressing their abhorrence of 
 the barbarity with which we were treated, and their wish 
 to alleviate our sufferings. I gladly record the little acts 
 of kindness performed by them, for they were verdant 
 spots in that vast Sahara of misery. Doctors Watkins, 
 Bowzie, Thornburn, Beeves, "Williams, James, Thompson, 
 Pilott and Sanders deserve, and will receive, the lasting 
 gratitude of the prisoners of Andersonville. 
 
"FAMINE, FAMINE, EVERYWHERE." 71 
 
 " I have seen the field of battle, and walked among 
 the dead many days after the conflict, and witnessed the 
 unburied bodies of men thrown together in heaps by a 
 bursting shell, slowly decaying in the hot sun, but the 
 stench arising from them, and their horrid appearance 
 were less sickening and less repulsive than this. I have 
 seen men in this hospital sufPer amputation again and 
 again in a fruitless effort to stay the ravages of this 
 fearful gangrene; and under the knife, and while lying 
 on the ground blistering and burning, the ceaseless gnaw- 
 ing within forced from their otherwise silent lips the low, 
 moaning, pleading cry for food; and I have listened to 
 this heartrending call, and looked upon those emaciated 
 limbs till my blood boiled with helpless rage against the 
 worse than brutal villains who planned those atrocious 
 crimes and the coward who delighted in carrying out 
 their details. 
 
 " No language can describe this bed of rottenness. 
 Since the tongue of man first learned to syllable his 
 thoughts such cruelties were never yet devised and 
 practiced, and words are wanted to depict them. The 
 surgeons made their reports, in which were represented 
 the true condition of these' dying men, and begged for 
 reform, for food and covering; but they might as well 
 have sought mercy from death — better have done so, for 
 death is merciful sometimes, but our tormentors never. 
 The gangrene wards were the worst in the hospital, but 
 the others were shocking. Faminie, famine, everywhere. 
 
 *!le. lie. ale. sle. lb. ^ ^ 
 
 Tf: yft ^ vft ^ ^ ^Ti 
 
 " The dead house had been constructed of insuffi- 
 cient dimensions to contain the bodies of all that died. 
 Sometimes forty, often thirty, were placed upon the 
 
72 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 ground outside its limits, where they lay in the open air, 
 with some vain attempt at uniformity in their arrange- 
 ment. Within and around this place the final results of 
 our treatment were to be seen. Here, indeed, were the 
 fruits of the 'natural agencies' which were to do the 
 work ' faster than the bullet.' Nor were the number of 
 the dead few and occasional. During the month of 
 August two thousand nine hundred and ninety bodies 
 were deposited in the d«ad house previous to burial, an 
 average of more than ninety six per day, exceeding by 
 one thousand the largest brigade engaged in the battle 
 of Stone Kiver, and being nearly seven-eighths as many 
 as the entire division of Brigadier General Van Cle-ro in 
 that famous engagement. But during the latter part of 
 the month the mortality was much greater than at the 
 first, the number of dead being 100, 110, 120, 125 and 
 140 per day. , 
 
 " In the early morning the dead-cart came for the 
 bodies; this was an army wagon, without covering, drawn 
 by four mules and driven by a slave. The bodies were 
 tossed into the cart without regularity or decency, being 
 thtown upon one another as logs or sticks are packed in 
 a pile. In this manner, with their arms and legs hang- 
 ing over the sides, and their heads jostling and beating 
 against each other, as the sable driver whistling a meiTy 
 strain hauled them to the grave, hurrying rapidly over 
 roots and stumps, the Federal prisoners were carried out 
 to the burial. 
 
 "The cemetery was located northwest of the stock- 
 ade, and nearly a mile from the hospital, upon a beauti- 
 ful open spot surrounded by the forests of pine, and 
 slightly sloping toward the northeast. The dead were 
 
« THE LITTLE WORD ' UNKNO WN: " 73 
 
 buried by a squad of paroled prisoners selected for tliis 
 purpose. A trench running due north and south was 
 dug about four feet in depth, six feet wide, and of suffi- 
 cient length to contain the bodies for the day. In this 
 the bodies were placed side by side, with their faces to 
 the east, and the earth thrown in on them. A little 
 mound a foot in height was raised- over each body; a 
 stake, branded with the number on the label, placed at 
 the head of each, and without a prayer said over the 
 dead, without a tear from the strangers that performed 
 the last rite, the ceremony was ended. The number 
 upon the stake referred to a register kept in the office of 
 the chief surgeon, by Mr. Atwater, a paroled prisoner, in 
 which were the number, name, rank, company, regiment 
 (when these were known), date of death, and name of 
 disease. This register was kept with great care, and if 
 it is still in existence, will correctly refer the inquiring 
 friend to the spot where the loved one lies. But some 
 of those who died in the stockade expired without reveal- 
 ing their name; of such only the number is recorded, 
 and the little word ' unknown ' comprises all that is left 
 of marfy a brave man's history." 
 
 Warren Lee Goss, a Union soldier and non- 
 commissioned- officer, who was confined for many 
 months in six prisons besides Andersonville, has 
 vividly depicted the scenes of cruelty and suffering 
 he witnessed in them all. The following are brief 
 extracts from his sworn statement: 
 
 "One of the great instruments of death in the 
 Andersonville prison was the ' dead-line.' This line con- 
 
74 BASriLES OF TME CONFEDERACY. 
 
 sisted of a row of stakes driven into the ground, with 
 narrow board strips nailed down upon the top, at the 
 distance of about fifteen feet from the stockade on the 
 interior side. This line was closely guarded by sentinels 
 stationed above on the stockade, and any person who 
 approached it, as many unconsciously did, as in- the 
 crowded condition of the prison was often unavoidable, 
 was shot dead, with no warning whatever to admonish 
 him that death was near. 
 
 "An instance of this kind came to my notice. the 
 second day I was in prison. A poor, one-legged cripple 
 placed one hand on the dead-line to support him while 
 he got his crutch, which had fallen from his feeble grasp 
 to the ground. In this position he was shot through the 
 lungs, and laid near the dead-line, writhing in torments 
 most ^of the forenoon, until at last death came to his 
 relief. None dared approach him to relieve him through 
 fear of the same fate. The guard loaded his musket 
 after he had performed this dastardly act, and, grinning 
 with satisfaction, viewed the body of the dying murdered 
 man for nearly an hour with apparent pleasure, occasion- 
 ally raising his gun to threaten any one who" from 
 curiosity or pity dared to approach the poor fellow. 
 
 ,%lfl ^ ^l£ ^l£ Alt ^l& ^l£ ^ ^l£ 
 
 " Scarcely a night or, day passed but the sharp crack 
 of a rifle told of the murder of another defenseless vic- 
 tim. Men becoming tired of life committed suicide in 
 this manner. They had but to get under the dead-line, 
 or lean upon it, and their fate was sealed in death. 
 
 "An incident.of this kind came to my knowledge in 
 July. A New York soldier had tried once or twice to 
 escape, by which means he had lost his cooking utensils 
 
"STARVATION AND DISEASE." 75 
 
 and his blanket, and was obliged to endure the rain and 
 heat without protection, and to borrow, beg or steal 
 cooking implements, eat his food raw, or starve. Lying 
 in the rain often at night, followed by the tropical heat 
 of the day, was torture which goaded him to desperation. 
 He announced his determination to die, and getting over 
 the dead-line was shot through the heart. 
 
 "The stench polluted and pervaded the whole 
 atmosphere of the prison, and to get outside it seemed 
 like a new development of creation, so different was it 
 from the poisonous vapors exhaled from this cess pool 
 with which the prison air was reeking. During the day 
 the sua, drank up the most noxious of these vapors, but 
 in the night the terrible miasma and stench pervaded the 
 atmosphere almost to suffocation. 
 
 ********* 
 
 " Nothing ever before seen in a civilized country 
 coujd give one an idea of the physical condition to which 
 starvation and disease had reduced these men. It was 
 only strange that men should retain life so long as to be 
 reduced to the skeleton condition of the great mass of 
 these men who died in prison. During one week there 
 are said to have died thirteen hundred and eighty men ! 
 Death lost all its sanctity by reason of its frequent 
 occurrence. Death by starvation and exposure was pre- 
 ceded by a mild kind of insanity, or idiocy, when the 
 mind felt not the -misery of the body and was unable to 
 provide for its wants. During July one could hardly 
 step without seeing some poor victim in his last agony. 
 The piteous appeals of these famine -stricken men, their 
 
76 BASTILSS OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 bones in some cases worn through their flesh, were 
 enough to excite pity and compassion in hearts of stone. 
 
 "I have spoken of a mild kind of insanity which 
 precedes death by starvation, and a brooding melancholy 
 in which the mind wanders from real to imaginary 
 things. Private Peter Dunn, of my company, was an 
 instance of this kind. At an early date of his imprison- 
 ment he lost his tin cup, which was with him — as was 
 commonly the case about the prison — the only cooking 
 implement. His blanket was also lost, and he was left 
 destitute of all shelter and of every comfort except that 
 which was furnished him by companions who were suf- 
 ferers in common with himself and not overstocked with 
 necessaries and comforts. Gradually, as he wasted away, 
 his mind wandered, and in his imagination he was the 
 possessor of those luxuries which the imagination will 
 fasten upon when the body feels the keenest pangs of 
 hunger. With simple sincerity he would speak of some 
 luxury which he imagined he had partaken of. Sud- 
 denly a gleam of intelligence would overspread his face; 
 he would speak of the prison, and say: 'This is a dread- 
 ful place for the boys, isn't it ? I don't enjoy myself 
 when I have anything good to eat, there are so many 
 around me who look hungry;' and then, gazing in my 
 face, in the saddest modulations I ever heard in a human 
 voice: ' You look hungry, too, Sarg. ; ' and then, sinking 
 his voice to a whisper, added: 'Oh dear! I'm hungry too 
 sometimes.' 
 
 " Poor Peter! He soon died a lingering death from 
 starvation and exposure. In the lucid moments that 
 preceded death he said, as I stood over his poor, famine- 
 
"POINT HIS FINGER TO HIS PALLID LIPS.'' 77 
 
 pinched form, 'I'm dreadful cold an<? hungry, Sarg.' 
 He again relapsed into a state of wandering, with the 
 names of ' Mary ' and ' Mother ' upon his lips ; and the last 
 faint action of life, when he could no longer speak, was 
 to point his finger to his pallid, gasping lips in mute en- 
 treaty for food. 
 
 " Charles E. Bent was a drummer in my company — 
 a fine lad, with as big a heart in his small body as ever 
 throbbed in the breast of a man. He was a silent boy, 
 who rarely manifested any emotion, and spoke but 
 seldom, but, as his comrades expressed it, ' kept up a 
 thinking ' I observed nothing in his conduct or manners 
 to denote insanity, until one afternoon about sun-down 
 one of his comrades noticed the absence of a ring com- 
 monly worn upon his hand, and inquired where it was. 
 'When I was out just now,' he said, 'my sister came and 
 took it and gave it to an angel.' The next day as the 
 sun went down, its last rays lingered, it seemed to me, 
 caressingly upon the dear, pallid . face of the dead boy. 
 His pain and sorrow were ended, and heartless men 
 no longer could torture him with hunger and cruelty. 
 
 " C. H. A. Moore was a drummer in my company — 
 the only son of a widowed mother. All the wealth of 
 maternal affection had been fondly lavished upon him. 
 In him all her hopes were centered, and it was with great 
 reluctance that she finally agreed to his enlistment. In 
 prison he gradually wasted away until he died. The day 
 previous to his death I saw and conversed with him, 
 tried to ejicourage and cheer him, but a look of prema- 
 ture age had settled over his youthful face, which bore 
 but little semblance to the bright, expressive look he 
 wore when he enlisted. He was perfectly sane and con- 
 
78 • BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 versed with uneoOimoii clearness and method, as though 
 his mind had been suddenly developed by intense suffer- 
 ing. His face bore an unchanged, listless expression, 
 which I have noticed in prison betokened the loss of 
 hope. He spoke of home and of his mother, but his 
 words were all in the same key -^ monotonous and weary, 
 with a stony, unmoved expression of counteiianoe. On a 
 face so young I never saw such indescribable hopeless- 
 ness; he was despair petrified! and when I think of it 
 even now, it pierces me to the heart. His was a linger- 
 ing death by starvation and exposure, with no relief from 
 unmitigated misery." 
 
 From-iestimony of Thomas If. "Way, of the 1st 
 
 Ohio Volunteers: 
 
 "I knowt)f the use of hounds at Andersonxille; 
 they caught me three times. I remember about a soldier 
 being torn to pieces by hounds. He was a young man 
 whose name I don't know. I knew him by the name of 
 Fred. He was about' seventeen years old. When we 
 heard the dogs coming, I and another prisoner who was 
 with me, being old hands, climbed a tree. Fred tried to 
 do so, but he had not got up when the hounds caught 
 him by the foot and pulled him down. In less than 
 three minutes he was torn to pieces. Turner, who owned 
 the hounds, was close behind. He got up just as the 
 man was torn up and secured the hounds and we came 
 down. Fred was all torn to pieces and died. Turner 
 
 said: 'It's good for the • ; 
 
 I wish they had torn the three of you to pieces.' " 
 
 Felix De La Baume, 35th New York Volunteers, 
 an Andersonville prisoner, testified regarding the 
 blood-hounds: 
 

 "The man climbing the tree represents Holm, and I am represented 
 lying under the tree." — See page 79. 
 
"THE DOGS CAUGHT HOLD OF HIM." 79 
 
 ■'I and Holm, who escaped with me, hid oarselves 
 tmder a very large tree in a kind of mud-hole among the 
 boshes and remained there over an hour; then we heard 
 the dogs bark. An old Indian had once told me that in 
 case of being overtaken by blood- hounds, I should pre- 
 tend to be dead and the hounds would not attack me. 
 So I told Holm to remain quiet in the bushes and ndk 
 make any noise, but he was so frightened by the dogs 
 that he tried to get up a tree so as not to be torn to 
 pieces by them. While he was trying to get up the tree 
 the dogs came up and caught hold of him by one of his 
 legs, biting quite a large hole. I have drawn a repre- 
 sentation of that s^ene. The man climbing the tree 
 represents Holm, and I am represented lying under 
 the tree. My comrade was torn very badly. We were 
 brought'back by a sergeant and the men who had the 
 dogs." 
 
 E. Bartley, of Alleghany City, Pa., a Union 
 
 officer and prisoner of war, states as follow^: 
 
 "I was a lieutenant in the United States Signal 
 Corps; was signal officer with Colonel Dahlgren's 
 expedition to Richmond when he was killed and his body 
 mutilated. With other officers of Colonel Dahlgren's 
 force I was kept in close confinement with negro enlisted 
 men in Libby Prison for five months and fourteen days, 
 as felons not entitled - to the treatment of prisoners of 
 war. We Were treated as brutes by the prison officials 
 "by orders from James A. Seddon, Eebel Secretary of 
 War. When taken out of the cell to be carried South, 
 the projecting bones of- my body were cutting through 
 the skin^from starvation, which has left me permanently 
 disabled, having lost the use of my eyes. I have known 
 
80 BASTILES OF THE GONFEDERACY. 
 
 o£Scer8 to be shot and bayoneted "for no cause; and as 
 for robbery, it was one of the lesser evils to which w© 
 were subjected." 
 
 One might suppose that the extracts of testi- 
 mony by Confederate doctors and officers as well' as 
 •Union prisoners quoted in the foregoing pages, re- 
 vealed a chapter of atrocities difficult to extend and 
 almost impossible to conceive. As a matter of fact 
 they are wholly inadequate to picture to human un- 
 derstanding the unutterable woes and unnamable 
 cruelties that transcend the realm of fancy, eclipsing 
 Dante's Inferno and Milton's Hell. 
 
 Dr. Valentine Mott, of New York— the foremost 
 surgeon of his time, who expired on hearing the 
 tidings, of the assassination of President Lincoln, 
 whose friend he was — declared before a committee 
 
 # 
 
 of Congress, that in the active practice of his profes- 
 sion as a physician and surgeon covering a period 
 of over fifty years, and accustomed as he was to wit- 
 nessing human suffering in all its most painful 
 phases, none of the scenes witnessed in his per- 
 sonal or professional l^fe could begin to compare 
 with the condition in which he found the released 
 prisoners of Andersonville, Salisbury and Florence. 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 From OfRcial Records and Confederate 
 Archives. 
 
 ■^ ET us group some of the facts relating to 
 I Southern prisons as they are substantiated 
 
 ^^ both by the captured Confederate archives 
 at Richmond and the oflBcial records at Washington. 
 The first batch of prisoners reached Anderson- 
 ville on February 15, 1864. The whole number 
 received during its existence as a prison was 49,485. 
 On August 9th, 1864, there was found to be in the 
 stockade 33,006. The number of deaths, as shown 
 by the register kept in the chief surgeon's office at 
 the prison, was 12,631 ; number of graves, 13,705. 
 It freq^uently happened that from fifty to one 
 hundred prisoners were found dead on the ground 
 within the stockade when the gates were opened in 
 the morning, and the dead wagon had to make several 
 trips to carry off the corpses, which were piled in 
 the wagon like cordwood, and the same wagon would 
 on its return trip be used to bring the prisoners their 
 rations of meal for the day. The deaths on one day 
 reached one hundred and forty. 
 
 81 
 
82 BASTILBS OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 The shallow stream that ran through the camp 
 and which supplied the prisoners with water, was 
 constantly swarmed with thousands of sufferers, 
 ragged and alive with vermin, many suffering with 
 frightful gangrene, scurvy, and other diseases then 
 raging with fearful violence, until the water was 
 liquid filth, and the banks on either side were 
 trampled by the shoeless multitude into a festering 
 morass that sent up fumes of pestilence and death. 
 It was learned by actual count on one day that a 
 prisoner died at Andersonville every eleven minutes, 
 counting the whole twenty-four hours. 
 
 Three hundred and twenty-eight escapes were 
 made from the stockade. Of these, many who 
 escaped and were re-taken were so savagely punished 
 that they died under the torture. More than fifty 
 died by being torn by the hounds regularly employed 
 by the Confederate authorities to track escaping 
 prisoners. To the number who died at Andersonville 
 prison over five hundred must be added who died 
 after their release and before they could reach their 
 homes. 
 
 For the burial of the dead, trenches varying 
 from one hundred to two hundred feet in length were 
 dug daily, and there were often bodies enough to fill 
 them when placed side by side in an uncoffined, state. 
 
"NEARLY ONE-FOUBTH OF ALL." 83 
 
 The thumbs and toes of each corpse were held in 
 burial position by bits of string. A small rude pine 
 board was placed at each of their heads, on which 
 was placed a number corresponding with the same 
 number on the hospital register. 
 
 The whole number of Union prisoners in Con- 
 federate hands during the war was 188,000, The 
 death-rate among the survivors of Southern prisons 
 from the close of the war up to 1880 is estimated at 
 seventeen per cent. The records of the War Depart- 
 ment at Washington show that the mortality among 
 the Confederate prisoners at Fort Delaware was for 
 eleven months two per cent; and at Johnson's Island 
 during twenty-one months there were 134 deaths out 
 of six thousand prisoners. 
 
 The deaths at Andersonville from Feb. 24, 
 1864, to Sept. 21, 1864 (seven months) numbered 
 9,479. Per cent, of deaths, 23.34, or nearly one- 
 fourth of all the prisoners confined there. The War 
 Department estimates that twenty per cent, should » 
 be added to these figures for good reasons. Among 
 these, the fact that all deaths were not recorded. 
 This is sustained by this fact: 
 
 Number of deaths shown by hospital records . . . 12,631 
 
 Number of graves 13,705 
 
 Difference 1,074 
 
 . 7 
 
84 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 The report of Captain Wirz for August, 1864, 
 shows the following: 
 
 Prisoners on hand 31,678 
 
 Died during month 2,993 
 
 Average daily deaths 100 
 
 Monthly per cent, of deaths 9.45 
 
 Yearly per cent, of deaths *113.40 
 
 The War Department report shows the follow- 
 ing captures by the Confederates during the four 
 years of the war: 
 
 Federal officers 7,092 
 
 Enlisted men 179,091 
 
 Union citizens 1,962 
 
 Total 188,145 
 
 Per cent, of deaths, counting all Eebel prisons. 38.70 
 The number of men who entered the Union 
 
 armies was, by the War Department record . 2,835,951 
 Number of Confederates captured by Union 
 
 armies 476,189 
 
 Paroled 248,599 
 
 Number actually confined in Northern prisons . . 227,590 
 Mortality of Confederate soldiers ascertained 
 
 by graves 30,152 
 
 Per cent, of deaths 13.250 
 
 If the monthly mortality among Confederates 
 held in our prisons had been as great as in Southern 
 prisons, taking the whole number of captures as a 
 basis, the deaths in Northern prisons, instead of 
 
 ♦Showing that all the prisoners wonld have died in less thaa 
 ten and one-half months. 
 
"WHO DIED OUTNUMBERED THE SLAIN." 85 
 
 30,152, would have been 92,000. In other words, 
 nearly two out oi five, or forty out of each one 
 hundred^ died in their hands; while one in seventeen, 
 or six of each one hundred, died in our hands. 
 
 The number killed and who died of wounds 
 during the war, counting officers and men, white and 
 colored, was 78,231. This, as against the 60,000 
 who died in prison, or immediately after being 
 released, shows a difference of but 18,231 more men 
 killed in action and dying of wounds received in 
 action than died from confinement in Confederate 
 prisons. 
 
 More men died in Andersonville prison alone 
 than were killed in battle and died of wounds during 
 the whole Mexican war. The prisoners who died in 
 that prison outnumbered the slain in the battles of 
 Waterloo, Gettysburg and The Wilderness combined. 
 Yet Andersonville,! with its terrors and appalling 
 harvest of death, was but a type of a score of other 
 military -prisons that existed throughout the Con- 
 federacy under the personal supervision of Mr. 
 Davis' confidential friend and agent, John H. 
 Winder, a man infinitely more •merciless and cruel 
 ■ than Marat. 
 
 Careful estimates show that the average length 
 of life in Andersonyille was ninety-five days, assum- 
 
86 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 ing that a prisoner entered it in good health. Well 
 might Winder haye inscribed over its portal the fate- 
 ful sentence: " Who enters here leaves hope behind.'''' 
 
 The sick and dying were left without attendance, 
 medicine, or even a drink, and scores of the dead 
 were left to decompose under the blistering sun and 
 pollute the air which the more miserable living were 
 forced to breathe. The sentinels looked down from 
 their elevated posts upon thirty -five thousand fam- 
 ishing men. Hope died within brave hearts that 
 had never faltered at the cannon's mouth. Heaven 
 never looked down upon a spectacle so pitiable, and 
 although every detail of that cruel scene was familiar 
 to Jefferson Davis, it had not the power to awaken a 
 chord of pity in that frozen heart. 
 
 In every rain it was a common sight to see poor 
 sufferers whose weak stomachs revolted against the 
 sickening water of the dirty ditch, lying on their 
 backs in the sand with their mouths open to catch 
 the pure drops that descended from the clouds, or 
 holding up some rag of clothing to absorb a drink 
 to slake their burning thirst. Many of the fainting 
 creatures crept into holes in the ground to escape the 
 fierce flood of fire poured down by a noon-day sun, 
 and a rain following at night the miserable victims, 
 unable to drag themselves out, were drowned in tha 
 
BULLETS, POISON AND BLOODHOUNDS. 87 
 
 pits that in daytime gave them shelter and at night 
 a grave. 
 
 During the existence of the prison not less than 
 three hundred men were shot by the guards on the 
 dead-line. Not less than fifty perished by the blood- 
 hounds of Turner. From the compulsory vaccination 
 with impure virus one hundred men at least lost the 
 use of their arms, and from the same cause about 
 two hundred died. An alphabetical list of the 
 Andersonville dead copied from the hospital reg- 
 ister and printed by the New York Tribune makes a 
 volume nearly the size of the Century Magazine, and 
 forms indeed a sad directory o£ a dead city ! 
 
 In illustration of this brief, sad and last record 
 of the dead martyrs, the following is the entry of 
 death for the sixteen-year-old brother of the writer, 
 wounded and captured in Sherman's march through 
 Georgia: 
 
 " Moran, T., Co. C, 89th Ills. Sept. 18, '64. 9187." 
 
 Another brother, Patrick Moran, a private in the 
 5th Michigan Infantry, who was wounded and taken 
 at the .Weldon Eailroad, Va'., was in the Salisbury 
 prison when the attempt to force the guard was made. 
 He was released the same day as the writer, March 
 1st, 1865. at Wilmington, and the fearful exposures 
 through which he had passed soon hurried him to his 
 grave. 
 
88 ' BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 lu a- speech delivered in Congress a few years 
 ago Mr. Blaine declared the responsibility of Jeffer- 
 son Davis in these -words: 
 
 "Mr. Davis was the author, knowingly, delib- 
 erately, guiltily and wilfully, of the. gigantic murder 
 and crime of Andersonville ; and I here before God,' 
 measuring my words, knowing their full extent and 
 import, declare that neither the deeds of the Duke 
 of Alva in the Low Countries, nor the massacre of 
 Saint Bartholomew, nor the thumbscrews and en- 
 gines of torture of the Spanish Inquisition begin 
 to compare in atrocity* with the hideous crimes 
 of Andersonville." 
 
 , These words were either true or^ they were atro- 
 cious. They were certainly the utterance of a man^ 
 who had closelv read and studied all atta,inable evi- 
 dence on the subject; and they were declared from 
 a public prominence that challenged the attention of 
 the world a generation after the war. 
 
 Mr. Davis, commenting on Mr. Blaine's speech, 
 tooLhis customary refuge behind "hisi people," and 
 instead of making the fiill and specific denial- which, 
 conscious innocence would have eagerly sought, and 
 which his assailed honor demanded both for himself 
 and for the South, he sought content in an undig- 
 nified and whining lettei: to a friend in-Gon^resS; 
 
''IN TUB WHITEST HEAT OF THE WAR." 89 
 
 who, stung by the lance of Mr. Blaine, implored 
 Davis to defend himself. The appeal was as vain as 
 the entreated performance was impossible. In the 
 few feeble sentences of a letter which his friend un- 
 wisely published, he reiterated the faded and only 
 excuse he has foolishly fondled to the end, namely: 
 That the dreadful accusations of Mr. Blaine and of 
 others equally emphatic were merely partisan attacks 
 upon the Southern people, "by whose authority and 
 in whose behalf,^'' he says, "my deeds were doney 
 That he should have ventured even in the dismay of 
 defeat to seek so false and ignoble a refuge as this 
 displays the amazing estimate he put upon the 
 patience of the Southern people, who are thus 
 dragooned into an endorsement of the hideous 
 iniquity of Andersonville. 
 
 No tongue or pen in the North, in the whitest 
 heat of the war, ever pronounced upon the Southern 
 people or the Southern army a libel so gross and 
 groundless as this of the man to whom they had 
 entrusted their honor and their cause. The spec- 
 tacle of this base effort to escape the penalty of his 
 offenses will dignify by comparison the female attire 
 in which he sought to elude his captors in Georgia 
 — the grotesque act that closed his public career. 
 
90 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 An enlightened world can never be made believe 
 that the generous and brave people of the South ever 
 authorized or approved such infamy as starving and 
 freezing to death their Ndrthern countrymen whom 
 their soldiers had taken in honorable battle. No, 
 it was not the South that invented and superintended 
 such counterfeits of hell as Andersonville, Salisbury 
 and Belle Isle. Not the" Southern soldiers who broke 
 Grant's stubborn lines at Shiloh when Albert Sidney 
 Johnston fell. Not the veterans who died with " Pat " 
 Clerbourne and Bishop Polk. Not the " foot cavalry " 
 in whose van Stonewall Jackson fell at Chancellors- 
 ville, and who followed Ewell to the Susquehanna in 
 '63. Nor yet the bronzed men of Pickett who bore 
 the torn cross of the South with Armsted over the 
 dismantled and, smoking guns of Cashing to the 
 Bebellion's high-water mark at Gettysburg. 
 
 No! It was none of these who left the shame- 
 ful blight of Andersonville upon our history, and 
 not for these that the survivors of Southern prisons 
 or the Northern people have reproaches. That 
 crime was hatched by men of different mould, and 
 the agents for its execution were tools and underlings 
 of more ignoble caste. The men whom JefPerson 
 Davis selected to consummate the atrocious deed 
 were chosen after mature deliberation. They were 
 
"FOR DEEDS THAT SOLDIERS SCORN." 91 
 
 men whom he intimately knew, and whom nature had 
 coined and habits prepared for deeds that soldiers 
 scorn. They were the Winders and the Turners, 
 miscreants like Wirz, and thugs like Northrop and 
 Gee — men who covered under the mask of a sol- 
 dier's uniform the instincts and infamy of assassins; 
 men who never in prayer sought mercy of God and 
 never in deed gave mercy to man. 
 
 In these progressive and tranquil days when a 
 new generation sees the roses of peace climbing over 
 the broken cannon of the war, it would seem impos- 
 sible for the mind to imbibe the belief that a plot so 
 diabolical and revolting in extent and detail could 
 have been conceived by enlightened Americans, and 
 agents found for its execution, were it not that the 
 finger of history points out to us the graveyards of 
 the past, and the names of men who, impelled by the 
 unholy lust for power and lured by the ignis-fatuus 
 of ambition, have gone down with red dripping hands 
 in the maelstrom of ruin and death — men who, to 
 attain supremacy over tribe or nation, were ready 
 
 "To wade through slaughter to a throne, 
 And shut the gates of mercy on mankind." 
 
 In the month of August, 1887, the International 
 Medical Congress met in Washington for an inter- 
 change of counsel, and all information tending to 
 
92 BASTILES OT THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 advance the beneficent interests and objects of med- 
 ical science. Among the most interesting matters 
 presented for pathological study in this congress was 
 the authenticated fact that, great as was the aggre- 
 gate in casualties among the Union troops in the 
 field during the rebellion, it did not exceed in battle 
 two per cent, in the whole four yfears ; whereas the 
 death-rate among the Union prisoners at Anderson- 
 ville was proven to be twenty-four per cent, in seven 
 months. 
 
 Can rhetoric exaggerate the inhuman treatment 
 of Union captives which these figures presented by 
 the combined medical talent of America and Europe 
 reveal ? And will any sane person assert that a state- 
 ment like this, made by a congress like this, twenty- 
 two years after the war closed, was the utterance of 
 irresponsible partisans to foment sectional discord, 
 and to "fire the Northern heart! " 
 
 At Salisbury even this was eclipsed ; for there, 
 out of ten thousand prisoners admitted to the prison 
 from September, 1864, to February, 1865 (five 
 months), five thousand died, or fifty per cent! 
 
 Every survivor of those pens of pestilence and 
 systematic murder, and every representative in Con- 
 gress from the North who has dared to publicly 
 reveal and honestly denounce the matchless iniquities 
 
"'BLED IN FIELD AND STARVED IN DUNGEON." 93 
 
 of Southern prisons, has been fiercely maligned and 
 falsely misjudged for a quarter of a century by 
 Jefferson Davis and his echoing essayists of the brand 
 of Stevenson, whom he selected vrith the Winders to 
 preside over the medical features of the Anderson - 
 ville system. Nor does, the writer of this fragment 
 of prison history expect or crave any different treat- 
 ment at their hands than that of his comrades and 
 countrymen. He and they, having done their humble 
 share in the preservation of this Union in field and 
 dungeon during four of the bitterest and bloodiest 
 years of its existence, have a right to insist that the 
 true history of the war in all its phases shall be 
 fully, fairly, and fearlessly written; that the record 
 shall stand inviolate and neither be distorted nor 
 expunged to suit sectional tastes or political expe, 
 diency. 
 
 It should not only be the privilege but the 
 duty of our soldiers to relate their experiences, 
 while among us, and thus furnish the warp from which 
 future years may weave the enduring fabric of his- 
 tory. Heaven forbid, then, that ever in our country, 
 from the Virginias to the Dakotas, the soldiers who 
 bled in field and starved in dungeon for their com- 
 mon preservation shall be denied the right to publicly 
 tell the story of their campaigns or captivity. And 
 
94 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 Heaven forbid that ever in tMs Eepublic a mighty 
 crime shall be condoned, much less dignified, because 
 of the eminence of the criminal. 
 
 More than a century ago Snrajah Dowlah, a vice- 
 roy of India, besieged and captured the little English 
 colony of Fort William at Calcutta, in Bengal; and 
 having robbed his prisoners, he promised to spare 
 their lives, but turned them over to the mercy of the 
 guards, who drove one hundred and forty-six of them 
 into a one-story brick structure about fifteen feet in 
 height, and having an interior grchind space about 
 twenty square feet with narrow and iron-barred 
 apertures near the eaves of the roof. Forced into 
 this dungeon at the point of the bayonet, the heavy 
 door was closed and bolted upon the victims, on a 
 jnid-summer night, "when" — says Macaulay — "life 
 in Southern India is only made endurable to Euro- 
 peans by high ceilings, and moving fans." The hor- 
 rors of that night as the strongest fought fiercely 
 for places near the small openings through whicH the 
 merciless guards mocked the shrieking victims by 
 sprinkling drops of water through the gratings, was 
 beyond the descriptive genius of the greatest of 
 historians. 
 
 When morning at last came and their agonizing 
 cries grew fainter, and at last ceased, the door was 
 
" UNION PRISONERS WHO FROZE TO DEATH." 9S 
 
 opened and twenty-three ghostly and speechless 
 victims staggered into the air. A lane was made, 
 and one hundred and twenty-three dead bodies on 
 which decomposition had already made rapid and 
 loathsome progress were carried out. A pit was 
 dug, the victims thrown into it in a ghastly heap 
 and covered from sight. 
 
 History has recorded how the tragedy shocked 
 all Christendom, and how relentlessly and terribly 
 the crime was avenged by the English. And thus 
 for more than a century the "Black Hole of Cal- 
 cutta" has stood in every Christian land as the sym- 
 bol of all that was barbarous in warfare. But its 
 author was a debauched, superstitious and benighted 
 savage of India, to whom the infliction of pain upon 
 man and beast had from his childhood afforded the 
 keenest pleasure, and who was subject to no rule but 
 that of his savage passions. The dreadful cruelty in 
 this instance was confined at least to a few agonizing 
 hours, and cost one hundred and twenty-three lives 
 — the exact number of Union prisoners vfho froze to 
 death at Belle Isfe. The savage Hindoo could not 
 but see in his captives the representatives of power- 
 ful foreign foes whom he had fi-om early youth been 
 taught to hate with all the fierceness of his nature 
 and recognize as the conquerors and oppressors oi 
 
96 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 his race. How much there was of reason to inflame 
 his malevolence against the English invaders who 
 were enriching themselves out of the resources of* 
 his country was many years later revealed at the trial 
 of Warren Hastings in Sheridan's greatest speech 
 and in the superb eloquence of Edmund Burke. 
 
 But Andersonville was a place where all the 
 conceivable horrors of hades were concentrated and 
 revelled in for thirteen months, and caused the death 
 of nearly fourteen thousand men and practically dis- 
 abled for life a large majority of its survivors. Its 
 responsible author was an enlightened American, 
 educated in the highest military school of the coun- 
 try, and at its expense ; and the victims were his own 
 countrymen. He wore the garb and external de- 
 meanor of a Christian gentleman, and on each Sab- 
 bath he went with sober steps into the house of 
 worship to listen to the psalms; and with the guilty 
 knowledge of Andersonville in his heart he listened 
 with bowed head to the Lord's Prayer, and heard 
 unmoved the sweet lessons of charity taught by the 
 Prince of Peace. And now, at thfe age of four-score 
 years, he seeks with bold falsehood and ingenious 
 sophistry to cover his mighty offenses from the view 
 of his countrymen and claim a patriot's laurels from 
 mankind. 
 
"THOSE WHO DIED MIGHT HAVE BEEN SAVED." 97 
 
 "When the condition o£ Andersonville, Salisbury 
 and other prisons was minutely and accurately 
 reported to "the President" by Confederate phy- 
 sicians and officers who were specially sent there to 
 investigate them ; when Catholic bishops and priests . 
 confirmed the shocking story of inhumanity ; when 
 the newspapers throughout the Confederacy were 
 sounding the warning to Richmond in the boldest 
 terms ; when citizens and reputable Confederate com- 
 manders were writing letters of entreaty to Jefferson 
 Davis to spare the South from the shame of utter 
 barbarity, and when the dead-carts were gathering 
 each morning from the ground a hundred corpses at 
 Andersonville and at Salisbury, a telegraph wire 
 connected the gates .of those pens, and more than 
 twelve counterparts of them, with the sumptuous 
 home in Richmond in which he dined and slept! 
 
 " I feel myself safe in saying," says the Con- 
 federate Doctor John C. Bates in his testimony, 
 "that at least seventy-Jive per cent, of those who died 
 might have been saved, had those unfortunate men 
 been properly cared for as to food, clothing, bedding, 
 etc.'' 
 
 Colonel D. T. Chandler, Inspector General of the 
 Confederacy, who spent a week of investigation at 
 Andersonville, uses these words in his testimony: 
 
98 BASTJLES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 "I also urged on the department the remoyai of 
 General Winder as the radical cause of many of the 
 difficulties there. I believe that with another head 
 of the establishment a good deal might have been 
 done. He had not the inclination to exert himself. 
 I also urged the removal of the assistant commis- 
 sary." 
 
 To the remonstrances of Colonel Chandler and 
 his assistant, Major Hall, concerning the fearful 
 condition of the prisoners, with the sickly season 
 near, Winder replied with brutal blasphemy that he 
 ^^ considered it better that half of them should die 
 than take care of the men.'''' 
 
 These humane Confederate officers, not being in 
 the dastardly plot, and yet unsuspecting its existence, 
 never doubted that when their reports of the con^ 
 dition of things at the prison were read in Eriehmond, 
 a speedy remedy would follow, and insure the early 
 appointment of a competent and humane successor to 
 John H. Winder. But the effect of their reports, 
 and the reports of Professor Jones and Dr. Bates as 
 well, after being maturely considered at Richmond, 
 enlightened and astounded them, and when soon 
 after they read the announcement in General Orders, 
 that John H. Winder, whom they deemed unfit to 
 have charge of the Andersonville prison, was 
 
"WILL KILL MORE YANKEES." 99 
 
 " hereby constituted Commissary General of all the 
 military prisons in the Confederacy," they learned 
 with honest dismay and mortification what special 
 qualities constituted "competency" in a jailer for 
 Union prisoners, according to the Richmond lexicon, 
 and what line of treatment harmonized with the 
 "system" whose operations, as now fully and 
 authoritatively ascertained, would soon verify the 
 prophetic words of Winder to Ambrose Spencer a 
 few days before Christmas in 1863: "J am going to 
 
 huild a pen here that will kill more d d Yankees 
 
 than can he destroyed at the front!'''' 
 
 ' That this was no idle boast, let the graves of 
 thirteen thousand seven hundred and five martyrs 
 who sleep at Andersonville bear their mute but 
 eloquent testimony. Let crippled and disease-racked 
 survivors of Winder's Temple of Death attest the 
 ingenuity of the architect as they meekly limp to the 
 pension office, there to be denied a pittance from the 
 overflowing treasury of their country, because they 
 have no "hospital record," and their comrades and 
 witnesses are dead at Andersonville! The record 
 of a Union prisoner at Andersonville, Florence, or 
 Salisbury, under John H. Winder's rule, was as 
 laconic as Osesar's dispatch, " Veni, Vidi, Vici" and 
 was summed up in three words: "Stockade, Hos- 
 pital, Jemetery" 
 
100 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 The writer of these pages ventures respectfully 
 to invite the considerate attention of the Senators 
 and Bepresentatives in Congress and of his Excel- 
 lency the President of the United States to this long- 
 standing defect and injustice in the operation of 
 existing pension laws in the cases of this class of 
 Union soldiers. 
 
CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 Federal Prisoners tinder Fire of Union 
 
 Batteries— Causeless Shooting — 
 
 Colonel Rose's Tunnel. 
 
 SHE writer was among tlie six hundred Union 
 officers who were removed from the stockade 
 at Macon and taken to Charleston, and there 
 placed under fire of the Union batteries on Morris 
 Island, from July, 1864 to October, when all were 
 removed to Columbia. 
 
 At Charleston the Union officers were confined 
 in the jail, workhouse. Marine and Boper Hospitals, 
 all of which were adjacent to each other and at the 
 margin of the "burnt district." An equal number of 
 officers from the Macon prison were at the same time 
 held at Savannah. 
 
 Although the placing of these officers under fire 
 of their own guns was clearly an infraction of the 
 laws of war, it resulted in no serious consequences, 
 as General Gilmore was kept thoroughly posted as to 
 the location of the prisoners and regulated the direc- 
 tion of his fire accordingly. The Confederates made 
 
 101 
 
102 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 eager and constant efforts to discover the source of 
 Gilmore's secret information, but all their search and 
 vigilance failed. 
 
 It is a pleasant satisfaction as well as a duty to 
 record the fact that, in none of the six prisons in 
 which the writer was held during a year and eight 
 months were the prisoners so well housed, fed, and 
 humanely treated as in the city of Charleston. The 
 prisoners who were confined there in the summer 
 and autumn of 1864 will bear united and willing 
 testimony to the soldierly treatment received from 
 the officers and men of the 32d Georgia regiment 
 that constituted their guard there. 
 
 Another incident will be gratefully treasured in 
 memory: the noble Christian benevolence of the 
 Sisters of Charity who often, in disregard' of burst- 
 ing shells, entered like ministering angels, bearing 
 bread and tobacco to the captives and delicacies to 
 the sick. Among the deplorable accidents of the 
 firing upon the city was the destruction by fire of the 
 convent of these noble ministers of mercy, and the 
 generous appropriation for its re-establishment made 
 by Congress subsequently was actively fiirthered and 
 applauded by the Union recipients of their unselfish 
 and sweet charity. 
 
"SHARED THEIR LAST FEW BISCUITS." 103 
 
 The writer will not permit this opportunity to 
 pass without testifying his fervent gratitude for 
 numerous kindnesses extended him in the Marine 
 Hospital by Mrs. Hart and her little daughter 
 Fannie, whose home was near by. It is indeed a 
 pleasant duty to record amid all the cruelties and 
 sufferings he witnessed such gentle and welcome 
 deeds of kindness. He gratefully recalls the fact 
 that the remnants of Pickett's Division, who guarded 
 for a time the Federal prisoners taken with him at 
 Gettysburg, stood guard over the captives a few hours 
 after their famous and fatal charge, shared their last 
 few biscuits with them in the retreat, uttered no un- 
 civil word, but bore themselves as nobly with their 
 prisoners as they had bravely with their armed foes. 
 
 In one of the writer s escapes from Charlotte, 
 N. C, in February, 1865, after tramping the swamps 
 for many days and nights without food or warmth, 
 with a few thin and tattered rags clinging . to his 
 emaciated frame and with shoeless, torn and frozen 
 feet, he fell into the hands of a squad of Confeder- 
 ates about two o'clock in the morning. They took 
 him to the house of Dr. Sidney A. Johnston, a rela- 
 tive of General Albert Sidney Johnston, where he was 
 guarded until the next day. Dr. Johnston and his 
 family, although ardently devoted to the cause of the 
 
104 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 Confederacy, were typical Southerners with whom 
 hospitality was a religion. They prepared a meal 
 which, although it did not include the luxury of 
 coffee or tea, provided an abundance of good milk 
 and substantial hot edibles to which the writer's 
 starved stomach had been a stranger for the greater 
 part of two years. After a warm and refreshing bath 
 for his swollen and lacerated feet, a good bed with a 
 real pillow was made for him before a cheerful log 
 fire, and he soon forgot the misfortune of his fifth 
 recapture in the Confederacy in blessed sleeps 
 
 The guards were mounted men who had seen 
 active service, and the sergeEtnt in charge, seeing 
 that the writer could not walk with his bare and, 
 swollen feet over the frost-covered ground without 
 extreme pain, and not having an extra horse, gener- 
 ously dismounted and gave his prisoner his horse; 
 and although suffering himself from an unhealed 
 wound, he allowed the writer to ride, and walked 
 beside him in the road to the railroad station (where 
 he was obliged to, deliver him toother guards), a dis- 
 tance of about twelve miles. The writer regrets that 
 he has forgotten the name ofthis chivalrous soldier* 
 but gratefully remembers his deed. That man would 
 never have suited John H. Winder. 
 
"UTTERLY CAUSELESS SHOOTING." 105 
 
 The promiscuous and utterly causeless shooting 
 of Union prisoners already referred to was practiced 
 in all the main prisons, and the list of the slain and 
 maimed victims would make a startling and ghastly 
 chronicle of wanton cruelty. Of the very many in- 
 stances of this species of murder that were personally 
 witnessed by the writer during his captivity he does 
 not recall one case of shooting for which there was 
 the faintest shade of provocation. He has already 
 referred. to the murder of Lieutenant Turbain, which 
 he witnessed at Camp Sorghum, near Columbia. 
 Not less atrocious and unjustifiable was the killing 
 of Lieutenant Otto Gerson of the 45th New York at 
 Macon, Ga., which was also done in his presence. 
 
 This brutal murder occurred in the early part of 
 a sultry night. The writer, being ill with fever and 
 suffering with keen thirst, started with his tin cup to 
 the spring near the south end of the stockade. This 
 spring, which supplied the camp with drinking water, 
 was protected by a sunken barrel and was always 
 accessible day and night to the prisoners, being a 
 dozen feet or more inside the "dead-line" and fully 
 twenty- five feet from the post of the nearest sentinel 
 on the stockade, from which it was at all times in 
 full view. As he approached within a few yards of 
 the barrel he observed two or more prisoners, cup in 
 
106 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 hand, on the same errand, and one of these was just 
 rising to his feet after getting a drink when the 
 report of a musket rang out and the man, dropping 
 his cup, fell with a groan to the ground. The writer 
 with several others sprang to his side, and raising 
 his head from the sand-bank was horrified to recog- 
 nize in the victim Lieutenant Gerson, a brave and 
 gentlemanly officer whom he knew. He was alive 
 and conscious when we placed him in a blanket and 
 bore him to shelter, but his hurt was fatal and he 
 died after a few suffering hours. 
 
 This brutal murder was deliberately committed 
 by a sentinel on the stockade in idle sport to win a 
 bet made with another sentinel beside him ; and in the 
 hearing of the several officers who had preceded the 
 writer to the spring, he had boasted that he "would 
 shoot a Yankee before he slept." 
 
 At Libby prison there was a standing order to 
 the sentinels to shoot a head if seen at the windows, 
 or at a hand if placed on the bars that secured them. 
 Nor did .they always wait for even thjs wretched 
 justification, but frequently fired random shots into 
 the windows in wanton and brutal mirth. In this 
 manner Lieutenants Burns and Hammond were shot, 
 utterly without cause, as were Lieutenants Huggins 
 and Kupp, and others. 
 
»•■ 
 
 Murder of Lieut, Gerson.-See page 106. 
 
"SHOT THROUGH THE HEAD." 107 
 
 The writer vividly recalls the sight of Captain 
 Forsyth, of the 100th Ohio Infantry, lying dead in 
 a pool of blood on the floor of the upper middle room 
 in Libby. He was shot through the head while 
 reading a newspaper, and fully eight to ten feet from 
 the nearest window. In his narrative, "Col. Rose's 
 Tunnel at Libby Prison," published in the Century 
 Magazine of March, 1888, the writer incidentally 
 referred to this affair, denouncing it as an unpro- 
 voked and wanton murder. The stricture brought 
 forth a letter from a person claiming to have been 
 one of the prison guards at the time, in which he 
 avers that the shooting of Captain Forsyth was done 
 by a man named Weber, and that the gun was dis- 
 charged accidentally. If this is true — and it is pos- 
 sible — the writer gladly hastens to give circulation 
 to his defense, as he has neither motive nor wish to 
 charge him with responsibility for the death of an 
 unarmed and unoffending prisoner in his charge. 
 He knows, however, that it was unanimously believed 
 in Libby to have been wilfully done, and it is certain 
 that the united call of the Federal officers for a 
 satisfactory explanation of the killing was at the time 
 treated by Major Thomas P. Turner, the commandant, 
 with silent disdain. If there was an investigation 
 that exonerated Mr. Weber, it was not authoritatively 
 
108 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 announced to the officers; yet it is decidedly to the 
 credit of the unfortunate Confederate soldier that he 
 remembers and regrets the sad incident that cost a 
 noble young life and inexpressibly pained all our 
 hearts in Libby Prison. 
 
 The prisoners being confined in the two upper 
 lofts of the building, the order forbidding them to 
 approach the iron-bound windows was as needless as 
 it was brutal. Twelve hundred men were for long 
 and terrible months smothering in the six rooms 
 whose aggregate area gave each of them a space of 
 less than five square feet; and when a new batch of 
 prisoners arrived, the older ones were kept busy in 
 preventing the newcomers from going to the 
 windows, where the sentinels were watching for a 
 shot at the sufferer who, unaware of his peril, sought 
 a breath of fresh air at them. 
 
 During the month of August, 1863, the writer, 
 who was ill, climbed through the scuttle to the roof 
 many times at the risk of life, when, towards evening, 
 the heat of the sun was somewhat diminished from 
 the blistered roof, to escape for an hour the stifling 
 atmosphere of the swarming rooms beneath; and, 
 hiding behind the chimney from the sight of the 
 prison sentinels or passing Confederates on Dock 
 street, would wait, in dread for the approaching 
 
"THE HOT HUMAN BIVE," 109 
 
 moment when he must leave the pure air and the 
 sight of the sky to return to the hot human hive that 
 sent up a burning stench through the opening that, 
 to his fancy, seemed like a shaft that led to hell. 
 
 A circumstance not wholly unlooked for soon 
 ended these visits to the roof. While .resting his 
 head ag^nst the chimney one afternoon, a runaway 
 horse tearing down along the canal near the prison 
 brought him instinctively to his feet for a fuller view 
 of the frightened animal. A sentinel, who had 
 evidently' been informed by some one of the writer's 
 position, had left his post, and from the sidewalk 
 east of the prison took aim and fired. The bullet 
 flattened itself against the chimney and uncomfort- 
 ably near the head of its intended victim, who 
 dropped as quickly to the roof as though the shot 
 had succeeded. In cautiously rising, his hand 
 rested on the third of a detached brick which, 
 together with the danger he had escaped by a hair, 
 and with the recollection of a long series of bitter 
 wrongs crowding upon him, instinctively reminded 
 him that he had an enemy in sight and a weapon in 
 his hand. The enemy was loading his gun for a 
 second shot, and meantime had been joined by two 
 other soldiers without arms, and a citizen. He was 
 about to ram home his cartridge when a cry of 
 
110 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 "Lookout!" Btartled him. The alarm came near 
 being late, for that brick descended with a speed that 
 would have done credit to a crack baseball pitcher, 
 as it grazed his head, knocking the ramrod from his 
 hand. In his fright he dropped the gun, as he saw 
 his Yankee assailant detaching another brick; the 
 panic-stricken quartet in their haste sprang for 
 shelter, but the lack of any organized plan and 
 mutual understanding embarassed them visibly, for 
 they fell in a tangled heap ; and as the writer hastily 
 left for the scuttle, he was gratified to see the citizen 
 on top of the animated pyramid. 
 
 This little incident supplied the guards of the 
 prison with mirth for several days, in which the 
 shooter did not join with any perceptible enthusiasm. 
 He appeared with the guards in the morning in the 
 rooms of the prison at roll call, and if his sulphurous 
 observations, as he eagerly sought through the ranks 
 of the Yankees "for the man that threw that brick," 
 were such as could be decorously printed, they would 
 be cheerfully inserted in his behalf. Thus ended 
 the stolen visits of the writer to the roof of Libby. 
 
 The frequency with which the guards fired into 
 the windows renders it amazing that more men were 
 not killed ; and that the casualties were not greater 
 was possibly due to the fact that by the time a man 
 
"TOOK A GOOD MARKSMAN TO HIT HIM." HI 
 
 had lived a few montlis on the prison rations he was 
 so reduced in physique that it took a good marksman 
 to hit him. 
 
 "Indignation," remarked a sufferer, "is the only 
 thing the Confederacy ever filled a prisoner with." 
 There was indeed an exception, and one so remarka- 
 ble as to call for special mention. It was in the 
 person of a German captain of a New York Cavalry 
 regiment, who had been ' captured in 1863. This 
 officer was a very giant in stature and must have 
 weighed fully three hundred pounds. His coming 
 was an event among the prisoners at Libby, and pro- 
 voked some witticisms in the newspapers as well as 
 some variegated personal remarks among the mob 
 that followed him through the streets to the prison 
 door. He was an excellent officer by repute, and an 
 intelligent and sedate German gentleman who. 
 deserved and enjoyed the cordial esteem of his fellow 
 prisoners. Although his means and mode of life 
 had accustomed him to generous living, he adapted 
 himself bravely to circumstances and subsisted 
 patiently on the scant daily ration of coarse cornbread 
 with which in happier days at home he would have 
 scorned to affront his dog. Nor was this all. To 
 the unspeakable amazement of everybody in Libby 
 he ndt only maintained his huge avoirdupois, but 
 
112 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 grew fatter daily! The phenomena excited the 
 prison and was the theme of eag^er and even heated 
 debate among envious and attenuated rivals. The 
 Federal doctors in Libby lectured on and about him, 
 and the Confederates pointed with pride to him (when 
 an investigating committee of the Southern Congress 
 visited us) as a stupendous refutation of the "Lin- 
 coln lie" that the Yankee prisoners were being 
 starved by the Confederacy. He immortalized him- 
 self and gave a crowning surprise to his friends and 
 foes by escaping through the famous tunnel dug by 
 Colonel Kose and his party in February, 1864.* 
 
 The writer, who escaped through that hole, 
 which was fifty-seven feet long, was several times 
 wedged fast in it, although then of slight physique, 
 and regards it as an impenetrable mystery how his 
 . big German comrade ever made the passage through 
 that narrow, long, horrible grave! Nor did he suc- 
 ceed without a heroic and supreme effort, for the 
 writer vividly remembers how the big man got fast 
 in the middle of the tunnel that night and delayed 
 him, among others, for nearly an hour in the midst 
 of a frenzied mob of prisoners struggling fiercely to 
 
 *Au illustrated narrative of this remarkable plot and 
 escape, written by the author, appeared in the Century Magazine 
 for March, 1888. 
 
" FREED HIM FROM THE VISE OF DEATH." 113 
 
 be Twxt, and who, learning the cause of the delay — 
 every minute seeming an hour — hurled curses on 
 the blockaded German's head, or rather stomach. A 
 supreme struggle freed him from the vise of death 
 and he was soon panting and perspiring in the sweet 
 open air of a winter night outside the old Bastile. 
 
 It is a pleasure to record the fact that he suc- 
 ceeded in bringing his entire person safely into 
 General Butler's camp on the Peninsula, although 
 the brave projector of the plot was, like the writer, 
 retaken in sight of the Union troops. 
 
 It is related that a Representative in Congress 
 from the " Hoosier State," speaking with Mr. Lincoln 
 afterwards about the famous escape, told the Presi- 
 dent that he was one of the one hundred and nine 
 officers who had passed through the tunnel. To 
 which Mr. Lincoln replied, that while the escape 
 had interested and gratified him, it did not in his 
 particular case surprise him at all; "For," said the 
 homely and lamented prince of wits, "my experience 
 in politics convinced me long since that there never 
 was a hole so small in the Confederacy, nor in Wash- 
 ington either, that an Indiana Congressman couldn't 
 crawl through it." 
 
 When prisoners first entered Libby they were 
 relieved of all their money and valuables. There 
 
114 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 was, indeed, some pretense of keeping a record of 
 the sums taken and of the names of the owners, and 
 in cases where the amount was considerable, small 
 sums were at fixed intervals returned to the owners, 
 in Confederate money, and at such rates of exchange 
 as the whim of the keepers determined (as a matter 
 of fact a comparative few ever saw either their green- 
 backs again or their Confederate equivalent), and 
 even this soon went in purchases of extra ai-ticles of 
 food through Turner's assistants at enormous prices. 
 Not a third of the current premium on United States 
 greenbacks was allowed to the robbed captives, who 
 in a constant state of semi-starvation took "Hobson's 
 choice" and bought and devoured their extra bread. 
 
 "Time was," said a newspaper wit of Richmond 
 at the time, commenting on the depreciated and 
 despised "scrip" of the Confederacy, "when we went 
 merrily to market with our money in our purse and 
 brought home our provisions in a flowing basket; 
 but lo, the change.! Our wife now totes our money 
 to the dismal ruin of the provision temple and 
 meekly returns home with her market purchases in 
 our pocketbook." 
 
 When the brutalities at Libby and Belle Isle 
 were scandalizing the self-respecting people of the 
 South as well as their soldiers in the field, Henry S. 
 
"PROTESTED AGAINST THE INIQUITY." 115 
 
 Foote, a venerable member of the Confederate Con- 
 gress, who had earned the implacable enmity of Jef- 
 ferson Davis once by defeating him in a memorable 
 political campaign in Mississippi, boldly denounced 
 and solemnly protested against the iniquity that was 
 shaming the South. So fiercely was his protest 
 resented by the subservient tools of Davis in Con- 
 gress that his life was threatened, and finding him- 
 self powerless to avert the impending shame, he fled 
 to the Union camps. 
 
 The writer saw a Union of&cer passing bits of 
 bread through a hole in the floor in Libby to a lot of 
 starving men in the room beneath, who scrambled 
 for the falling crumbs like famished wolves. An 
 unobserved guard below watched his chance and 
 plunged his bayonet with a savage thrust into the 
 floor an inch from the generous giver's hand. 
 
 An order forbade the spreading of a blanket on 
 the floor of the prison in day time, and the rooms 
 being entirely bare of bunks or seats, the men sat on 
 the floor, resting their backs against the walls or 
 eupporting-posts, or moved about for such exercise 
 as the crowded pen would allow. A newly arrived 
 prisoner, too ill to stand on his feet and as yet ignor- 
 ant of the rule referred to, spread his ragged blanket 
 on the floor to ease his aching limbs. He had 
 
116 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 scarcely laid down when Dick Turner entered from 
 the adjoining room and, seizing the blanket behind 
 the prostrate sufferer, kicked him twice with brutal 
 force in the middle of the backj and dragging the 
 .blanket from under the fainting victim bore it away 
 and "confiscated" it. 
 
 Some wounded and sick men were one day 
 brought in a wagon to the door of the prison hospital 
 room on the ground floor of Libby. The writer 
 ventured near the window above to see the men 
 taken from the wagon into the room beneath, and 
 one emaciated man, thinking he could walk unas- 
 sisted into the hospital, climbed from the wagon, and 
 in the attempt to walk across the cobble-stone pave- 
 ment fell from weakness full length upon his face. 
 Dick Turner, who was standing by, seized the fallen 
 and bleeding invalid by the collar, and dragging him 
 violently to his feet, kicked him brutally several 
 times and flung him with his full strength into the 
 hospital room — from whence next day his dead body 
 was borne out for burial. 
 
 A squad of prisoners were passing the prisop 
 one day, among whom Colonel Ely, of the 18th Con- 
 necticut — a Libby prisoner — recognized a sergeant of 
 his regiment. He had the good fortune a few days 
 before to get a box from home containing, with other 
 
"BLOW UP THE TWELVE HUNDRED." 117 
 
 things, a small ham. Knowing well that his less 
 fortunate comrade was very nearly starved, he gen- 
 erously threw the ham to him. The man ran eagerly 
 to catch the prize, when a guard, raising his gun and 
 threatening to shoot him if he moved, deliberately 
 picked up the ham and bore it away in great glee 
 that was heartily enjoyed by Turner, who stood by 
 and witnessed the mean and cowardly act. 
 
 Cruelty was this man's pastime, and probably 
 his greatest' life disappointment was that the 
 fortuitous circumstance of Colonel Dahlgren's death 
 deprived him of the crowning pleasure of his career, 
 namely: to explode the powder mine under Libby 
 and blow up the twelve hundred Union inmates vfche 
 moment the hoofs of Dahlgren's approaching cavalry 
 should be heard in thg streets of Richmond. "The 
 minute Dahlgren got into this y'her town," said this 
 disciple of Winder and Wirz, speaking of the afPair 
 to a Union officer afterwards, "I would have blown 
 every one of you Yankees to h — 1." 
 
 There was one lonesome trait about this man 
 Turner that mitigates and softens in some measure 
 the remembrance of his offenses. There was no 
 vacancy in his nature for hypocrisy ; his daily deeds 
 of brutality were done with open and scrupulous 
 honesty, and the" long record of his infamy was an 
 
118 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 open book to which he pointed with pride. " He 
 knew what he was there for," and he never shirked 
 his duty simply because he was drunk; if he had, his 
 face would not have been familiar around Libby. 
 He loved whisky, it is true, but he would not desert 
 the prisoners. He did not embroider his cruelties 
 with the stately phrases and fine rhetoric of his 
 responsible employer at the Executive Mansion; his 
 blows were brutal, but his was not "the hand of 
 steel under the glove of velvet." He was a civilian, 
 and to his credit be it said, he scorned to mask his 
 real trade under the uniform of a soldier. When he 
 locked the writer up in an underground cell, without 
 light, food or fire in the cold of February, 1864, with 
 thirty-three others crowded in a space twelve feet 
 square, for escaping through the tunnel, and when 
 he was told by an officer that the writer would 
 probably die one terrible night, he replied with 
 
 perfect and unaffected candor: " Well, d n him, 
 
 let him die; thaVs what he's here for.'''' But though 
 a sick man, he refused to die ; and not only lived to 
 make four more escapes, but saw the hour arrive 
 when Turner was himself an inmate of that cell, and 
 his master a fugitive. 
 
 By the irony of fate, the famous Bastile around 
 which cluster so many sad memories of the war has 
 
''AFTER THE LAPSE OF A GENERATION." 119 
 
 itself travelled from its old home on the banks of the 
 James, and now, after the lapse of a generation, 
 attracts the curious tourist and the patriotic visitor 
 on the shore of Lake Michigan. 
 
CHAPTER YII. 
 
 Dahlgren's Raid and the J/ibby Powder- 
 Mine. 
 
 WHEN, at the end of the war, the details of 
 the dastardly plot to blow up Libby 
 Prison, with its twelve hundred Union 
 inmates, at the time of the Dahlgren raid in Feb- 
 ruary, 1864, were revealed in the secret documents 
 captured among the Confederate archives, compara- 
 tively few people in the North seriously believed that 
 there were men in authority at Richmond who ever 
 really meditated the slaughter, until every desperate 
 device for concealment had failed, and the actors in 
 the plot were forced to the shameful confession. 
 
 In his work, "The Lost Cause," Pollard refers 
 freely to the affair, and boldly defends the villainy. 
 Both he and Jefferson Davis quote the excuse for 
 its intended consummation made secretly by a com- 
 mittee of the Confederate Congress. In this com- 
 mittee's report, after reciting the impending danger 
 of Dahlgren's entrance to the city and the conse- 
 quences to ensue in the release of the Federal pris- 
 
 120 
 
"A MINE WAS PREPARED." 121 
 
 oners, these terms are used: "A mine was prepared 
 under Libby Prison, and a sufficient quantHy of 
 gutipowder was placed therein, and care was taken 
 to inform the prisoners that any attempt on their 
 part to escape would be effectually defeated.^' 
 
 The conduct of this famous raid, one of the 
 most remarkable and daring during the war, was 
 entrusted to two men whose intrepid courage had 
 been proven by the highest tests in battle — General 
 Kilpatrick, the chief in command, leading one column 
 of cavalry, and Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, a son of the 
 Admiral, the other. While the former moved rapidly 
 on Eichmond, approaching it from the north, the 
 latter contemplated crossing the James' river with 
 his smaller column above Eichmond, and, sweeping 
 down its south bank, release the prisoners at Belle 
 Isle, cross to Eichmond from Manchester, liberate 
 the prisoners at Libby and other buildings, and 
 moving rapidly unite with Kilpatrick's forces on the 
 Peninsula. 
 
 But Dahlgren was fatally misinformed by the 
 negro guide, and the attempted crossing at Mannakin 
 Town being found impossible, his situation with so 
 small a force became one of great peril, as the 
 change of plan thus forced upon him rendered the 
 junction with Kilpatrick both diflScult and haz- 
 
122 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 1 
 
 ardous. After Beveral sliarp eucoumters -with thp 
 enemy in the suburbs of Riclimond, he decidpd to: 
 join the main column, and made a rapid detour 
 around the defenses that skirted the city on the 
 north and^ toward the Cbickahominy. While riding 
 at the head of his little band through the daftness, 
 about midnight of the 2d of March, he was passing 
 along a narrow road leading through a dense and 
 dismal wood, when suddenly he was startled by the- 
 rustle of leaves and crackling twigs a few feet in 
 advance. His hand quickly sought his pistol,, but 
 before he could draw, it upon his foes, or even see 
 them, a quick cry rang through the woods on the 
 flank of his column; the flash of , a volley lit the 
 scene for an instant, and the youthful leader fell 
 dead from his saddle to the" roadj pierced by four 
 bullets fired from the distance of a few yards, and 
 from flank and rear. A few only of his men escaped, 
 
 > 
 
 iji the pitch darkness, from the . fatal ambush. ■ The 
 rest were killed, wounded or captured. 
 
 The pockets of the dead leader were rifled; and, 
 his watch, together with a pocket- wallfet containing a 
 few cigars and some papers, were taken by a young 
 home-guard named Littlepage ; he handed them to 
 his lieutenant, who returued the cigars but retained 
 the papers. It was yet dark, but the identity of 
 
'Death of Ulric Dahlgren "—See page 122. 
 
"BRUTALLY HACKED OFF." 123 
 
 Dahlgren was revealed by the lad's mentioning that 
 the dead man wore an artificial leg; whereupon a 
 recaptured Confederate , officer exclaimed: "It is 
 Colonel Dahlgren!" The false limb was rudely 
 wrenched from the body, and a finger on which the 
 leader wore a plain gold ring, the memorial of a 
 beloved and dep.d sister, was brutally hacked off for 
 its prize. The savagery, was continued until the 
 mutilated body of the dead and dreaded leader was 
 stripped of nearly all its clothing, then carted to: 
 Richmond and for several days lay in the open part 
 of a railroad depot, exposed to the view and coarse 
 jibes of an idle mob attracted from the corners and 
 slums of the city. When the piteous spectacle had 
 been sufficiently enjoyed by the rabble, the mangled 
 remains were taken in the night to a lonely spot by 
 a chosen party and secretly buried. 
 
 "While these atrocities were being perpetrated, 
 the wallet found in Dahlgren's pocket was playing 
 an interesting part in this drama. Its contents were 
 borne to Eichmond by Lieutenant Pollard and given 
 into the hands of a Richmond editor who was, it is 
 understo.od, a relative. Through what hands those 
 papers passed thereafter has been religiously con^ 
 cealed, and the matter must be left to conjecture; 
 but it is certain that a true history of their mutations 
 
124 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 embraces a bold forgery that was designed to fix the 
 brand of a would-be assassin upon Colonel Ulrie 
 Dahlgren. whose lips were now sealed in death, and 
 thus seek some shred of justification both for the 
 shameful mutilation and insult to his remains, the 
 inhuman treatment of his captured officers and men, 
 and for the meditated crowning infamy of blowing 
 upLibby Prison; then swarming with twelve hundred 
 Union officers. 
 
 The tidings of the approach of two such leaders 
 as Kilpatrick and Dahlgren at a time when Kich- , 
 mond was stripped of veteran troops and defended 
 chiefiy by untried home-guards caused the utmost 
 dismay, and Mr. Davis, his cabinet and the city 
 authorities were seized with a contagion of fright 
 bordering on convulsions. But fortuitous circum- 
 stances already narrated frustrated the daring and. 
 noble mission of the expedition. Dahlgren was dead , 
 and the match was not applied to the Libby Prison 
 mine. The danger passed, and with the, return of 
 cooler reasoning power that the soothing sense of 
 safety restored to Mr. Davis and his intimate advisers, 
 some sense of responsibility for the iniquitous steps 
 that had been taken in the haste and fierce resent- 
 ment that succeeded fear began to dawn upon them 
 all. 
 
"AND A TOOL WAS FOUND." 125 
 
 It would now be necessary to put forth a justi- 
 fying cause for an extraordinary and unprecedented 
 act that would satisfy the chivalrous people of the 
 South and the conscience of an enlightened world, 
 and not utterly paralyze their industrious ambassa- 
 dors then abroad seeking in lobby and court the 
 recognition of the Confederacy. A hint from the 
 masters was enough, and a tool was found. 
 
 In Dahlgren's wallet was found some unused 
 sheets of paper bearing the printed letter-heading 
 of the Union Calvary Corps — a custom with com- 
 manders — and enough written memoranda in other 
 unimportant papers to show the general characteris- 
 tics of his handwriting. On one of these sheets the 
 confidential penman produced a bogus order pur- 
 porting to be addressed to Dahlgren's command, and 
 announcing the objects of the expedition, one of 
 which was to be the liberation of the Union prisoners 
 at Libby and Belle Isle, and the other to " burn the 
 hateful city and see that Davis and his traitorous 
 crew does not escape." By this it was to be under- 
 stood Mr. Davis and his cabinet were to be killed or 
 carried off as prisoners. 
 
 To this production Dahlgren's name was signed 
 and the forgery was speedily on its mission through 
 the newspapers and to the country. Desperate and 
 
126 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 cunning efforts were now made to hush up the min- 
 ing of Libby and to impress upon the prisoners that 
 the whole thing was an innocent stratagem to intimi- 
 date them. Not until the fall of Richmond and the 
 capture of the Confederate archives was the official 
 acknowledgment of the Confederate Congressional 
 Committee known to any one outside of Mr. Davis 
 and those having close connection with the plot four- 
 teen months before. 
 
 "Your committee," concludes this remarkable 
 document, "does not hesitate to make known the 
 facts [the mining of the prison], feeling assured that 
 the conscience of an enlightened world and the law 
 of self-preservation will justify our country and her 
 officers. in all that has been done." 
 
 It is, however, notably significant that the 
 enlightened world was not taken into the confidence 
 of the conspirators until the light was turned on by 
 Union hands more than a year afterwards. Nor is 
 it at all probable that the enlightened world would 
 ever have heard of the Libby powder-mine, except 
 as an unauthenticated war rumor, had it not been for 
 the memorable dispatch of Lee from Petersburg, 
 handed to Mr. Davis in church that Sunday 
 morning, on April 2d, 1865, that drew his attention 
 with such rude abruptness from his devotions to his 
 
"AWED AND KEPT DOWN." 127 
 
 baggage, an episode described in Pollard's book, 
 "The Lost Cause," witli graphic force and stinging 
 sarcasm. 
 
 "Care was taken," says the Confederate com- 
 mittee, "to inform the prisoners that any attempt on 
 their part [to accept their liberation] would be 
 effeofualty defeated''''; and adds: "Dahlgren was 
 killed, his command captured or scattered, the 
 prisoners in Libby were awed and kept down." 
 
 The writer does not remember that much formal 
 ■ care was taken to inform the prisoners ; they were 
 indeed informed in the first place slily, and by a 
 loyal negro employed at the prison, who excitedly 
 related to the prisoners how he had assisted in 
 digging the mine and charging it with a quantity 
 of powder which his lurid fancy increased to tons. 
 Whatever credit we all gave to Dick 'Turner's sub- 
 sequent announcement relating to the mine and its 
 purpose, the colored man's report was the one that 
 carried conviction to our minds, and thus in one 
 lonesome instance in the war the much-derided 
 "intelligent contraband" was vindicated. 
 
 As to the committee's remark, that the prisoners 
 were "awed and kept down" that night, the sur- 
 vivors of Libby will unanimously confirm them. 
 The writer, speaking for himself, declares with the 
 
 10 
 
128 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 utmost candor, that as he lay on the prison floor that 
 night, just over the mine, with the slave's fresh and 
 ghastly message mixed up with the Lord's Prayer, 
 which he now remembered with uncommon distinct- 
 ness, he certainly experienced an awe which hia 
 publishers are requested to print in italics. A flood 
 of thoughts and an irresistible yearning to be home, 
 or at least farther north, crept over him; and as he 
 lay upon the hard floor, looking upwards in the 
 darkness, and listened for the expected sound of 
 Dahlgren's carbines, which was to be the signal for 
 the explosion, and pictured in his imagination the 
 pyrotechnics which the Confederacy had prepared 
 for its guests; as he saw in his busy fancy the 
 njangled remains of himself and his twelve hundred 
 comrades ascending skywards in a volcano of timber, 
 brick, iron and mortar, and thought of Dahlgren, 
 then a few miles distant, and of the man with the 
 fuse only a few yards off, he admits now, when he is 
 twenty-six years older and somewhat cooler, that he 
 was awed. 
 
 His chief agony of mind was caused by the 
 harrowing uncertainty as to how many minutes 
 more he could be "kept down." He would have 
 listened with respect, if not with favor, to any 
 proposition of the Confederates for a conference and 
 
"AN INDIFFERENT MARKSMAN." 129 
 
 compromise that did not necessarily involve the 
 actual sacrifice of his honor or his limbs. Although 
 he would not deny that he had participated in some 
 unpleasant affairs in which several Confederates had 
 been hurt, there was no absolute proof that any of 
 his shots had taken effect, for he was but an indif- 
 ferent marksman even when he was cool. Besides, 
 if the Confederates were bent on making an example 
 of their enemies, surely the blowing up of one-half 
 of his comrades would have been an example'suf- 
 ficiently frightful for practical purposes. 'He felt 
 assured that his maintenance was not a severe burden 
 upon the South. Perhaps a truce or respite of ten 
 days or so might be effected. The writer had lived 
 in the South previous to the war, and had friends 
 there. He had been baptized a Catholic. There 
 were, in fact, many Catholics in Libby. Bishop 
 Lynch would have been astonished at the number, 
 had he called that night. Was the Bishop in town? 
 He had influence with the President, and had secured 
 that precious respite of ten days for Sawyer and 
 Flynn, and Sawyer was a Protestant. He was but 
 human, and he thought bitterly of that fatal delay in 
 the tunnel caused by his fat comrade but three short 
 weeks ago ; but for. which he might now be home. 
 That German was probably at this very moment 
 
130 bastiLes of the confederacy. 
 
 sipping wine with his friends in New York, with a 
 new uniform on, and a thirty days' furlough in his 
 pocket. He hoped the stray shots so frequently 
 heard about the streets of Eichmond would not be 
 mistaken for the proper signal, and he did fervently 
 trust that Dick Turner, who, he understood, had 
 charge of the fuse, was sober. He was but nineteen ; 
 and he longed for daylight and a mirror, that he, 
 might see if his hair was still black. 
 
 But the long night passed, and he rose with 
 mingled feelings of gratitude and surprise; he fully 
 expected to rise earlier. 
 
 The captives at Libby and Belle Isle rose that 
 morning still ignorant of the fact that within the 
 distance of a gunshot the heroic young Pennsyl- 
 vanian who sought to be their deliverer lay pierced 
 with bullets and in the hands of his foes, and that 
 by that circumstance alone the most barbarous crime 
 in the Christian era had been prevented. 
 
 The statement repeatedly made at Eichmond 
 that the order said to have been found in Dahlgren's 
 pocket had been sent into the Union lines and there 
 pronounced genuine, is false; the only color of truth 
 in the statement being that photograph copies of the 
 alleged order were shown to a few persons, not one 
 of whom was competent by familiarity with his hand- 
 
''TEE FORGER BLUNDERED." 131 
 
 writing to judge of its genuine character. But truly, 
 says the Bard of Scotland: 
 
 " The best laid schemes o' mice and men 
 Gang aft aglee." 
 
 The forger blundered! In signing the order he 
 misspelled DahlgrerCs name, and wrote "U. Dalh- 
 gren," misplacing the h in the first syllable. Its 
 spurious character is further shown by the use of 
 the initial "TJ." instead of the full name "Ulric," 
 which it was Dahlgren's unvarying custom to use in 
 signing. In an examination of scores of his last 
 letters written to his home from the field, not one 
 was found where this rule had been departed from, 
 even to the last one addressed to his father from 
 Stevensburg four days before his death. 
 
 To suppose that order genuine, we must first 
 believe that Ulric Dahlgren, an intelligent and edu- 
 cated young man but a short time out of college, did 
 not know how to spell his own name and wrote it 
 wrong in a document of such supreme importance. 
 
 Again, if he wrote that order, where are its 
 duplicates, and where the officers and men of his 
 command who ever saw or heard of it? None were 
 ever found, but on the contrary Lieutenant Bartley 
 and all the officers who were with the expedition, and 
 
132 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 General Kilpatrick, who was the senior in command, 
 deny that that order or any like it was e^er known 
 to them, and pronounce it bogus in the most 
 emphatic terms. 
 
 To apply the name assassin to this young 
 soldier, then in his twenty-second year, who had 
 lost a leg in battle and had been promoted to 
 a colonel's rank for distinguished valor on the battle- 
 field, who had been reared and beloved in a Christian 
 family, and who in nature was gentle and the 
 personification of chivalrous young manhood, is as 
 monstrous as the insults to his dead body were 
 cowardly and despicable. 
 
 The Bufferings of the Union prisoners had 
 touched the deepest soundings of his noble nature, 
 and to compass their deliverance was the most ardent 
 ambition of his heart. Inexorable fate denied him 
 the prize, but fame, more kind, has placed his effort 
 beside the greatest of victories and beyond the reach 
 of def amers. To employ the figure applied by Eoscoe 
 Conkling to Grant — "The name of Ulric Dahlgren 
 is like a torch in the night: The more it is shaken 
 the brighter it burns;" and as long as our history 
 lasts and the story of the Union prisoners is remem- 
 bered, that name will be cherished with affection and 
 veneration. 
 
" CAN PERSUADE AN ENLIGHTENED WORLD." 133 
 
 A single circumstance aside from all others 
 proves beyond possible donbt tbat the employment 
 of the forgery to justify the meditated murder at 
 Libby and the ghoulish treatment of Colonel Dahl- 
 gren's body, was an afterthought. Many hours 
 before Dahlgren was ambushed and killed, and there- 
 fore before it was even claimed by the conspirators 
 that the order had been seen or that it existed, the 
 mine under Libby Prison was prepared, and that the 
 atrocious deed would have been consummated had 
 the entrance to the city been effected at the time is 
 as certain as human evidence ever foreshadowed the 
 intended execution of a crime; and that crime would 
 have been committed whether the column of rescue 
 was commanded by Dahlgren or Sheridan, and 
 whether they had announced their intentions in orders 
 or not. 
 
 The eulogists and biographers of Mr. Davis 
 will indeed be singularly fortunate if, in the light of 
 these established facts, they can persuade an enlight- 
 ened world to believe that the massacre of the Libby 
 prisoners was never really intended, but was a blood- 
 less stratagem of war, and should be regarded merely 
 in the light of what Judge Ould softly describes in 
 fine Latin as "legislation in-terrorem." 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 Responsibility for Interruption ofMxcbange 
 
 — Choice of Prisoners for President 
 
 — The Assassination— Arrest 
 
 of Jefferson Davis. 
 
 IN his account of Andersonville published in Bel- 
 ford's Magazine, Mr. Davis, after charging the 
 United States Government with responsibility 
 for the interruption of the exchange, says: 
 
 "Andersonville, Ga., was selected after careful 
 investigation for the following reasons : It was in a high 
 pine woods region in a productive farming country, had 
 never been devastated by the enemy, was well-watered 
 and near to Americus, a central depot for collecting the 
 tax in kind and purchasing provisions for our armies. 
 The climate was mild, and according to the best informa- 
 tion there was in the water and soil of the locality no 
 recognizable source of disease. 
 
 " A stockade was constructed of dimensions adapted 
 to the number of prisoners who might probably be con- 
 fined there. It was on a hill overlooking the valley of 
 the Sweetwater, a tributary of which stream flowed 
 through the prison enclosure. 
 
 ******** 
 134 
 
" POTENT A GENTS OF DISEASE AND DEA TH." 135 
 
 "The difficulties encountered in the care of the large 
 and ever-increasing number of prisoners may be briefly 
 enumerated thus : 
 
 "1. The exceptionally inhuman act of the North 
 in declaring medicines to be contraband, to which there 
 is but one, if indeed there be one, other example in 
 modern war. 
 
 " 2. The insufficient means of transportation and 
 the more inadequate means of repairing railroads and 
 machinery, so that as the war continued the insufficiency 
 became more embarrassing. 
 
 " 3. The numerical inferiority of our army made it 
 necessary that all available force should be at the front; 
 therefore the guards for prisons were mainly composed 
 of old men and boys, and but a scanty allowance of these. 
 
 " 4. The medical officers were not more than were 
 required with the troops, and contract physicians dis- 
 liked the prison service, among other reasons, naturally, ' 
 because of the impossibility of getting the proper medi- 
 cines. 
 
 " 5. The food was different from that to which most 
 of the prisoners had been accustomed, particularly in the 
 use of cornmeal instead of wheat flour. Of the latter, it 
 was not possible in 1864 to get an adequate supply in 
 Andersonville. It was not starvation, as has been alleged, 
 but acclimation, unsuitable diet and despondency which 
 were the potent agents of disease and death. These it 
 was not in our power to remove." 
 
 Continuing, Mr. Davis refers to his own ill- 
 treatment by General Nelson A. Miles at Fortress 
 Monroe, whom he scolds as a heartless vulgarian 
 
136 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 under whose care he was reduced to little more than 
 a skeleton. " The selection o£ a gentleman," says 
 Mr. Davis, " was not suitable to the cruel purposes 
 of E. M. Stanton," then Secretary of War. 
 
 Speaking of the choice of General Winder to 
 rule over Federal prisoners, he says: "He was 
 selected, among other reasons, because of confidence, 
 in his kindness to prisoners, as specifically stated by 
 James A. Seddon, Secretary of War; S. Cooper, 
 Adjutant General; Geo. W. Brent, and Jefferson 
 Davis." 
 
 Seddon, in 1875, wrote a letter to W. S. Winder, 
 in which he says of General John H. Winder: "I 
 thought him marked by real humanity toward the 
 weak and helpless, such > as women and children for 
 instance" — a tribute which Mr. Seddon wrote cer- 
 tainly with Ms tongue in his cheek, after the fashion 
 of sly humorists. 
 
 Then comes Mr. Davis' tribute to his old friend, 
 written from Montreal in 1867 to Dr. Stevenson, 
 chief surgeon in charge at Andersonville, who was 
 writing a book to exonerate himself and those who 
 consorted with him in the iniquities there. He says: 
 "I have never doubted that all had been done for 
 the comfort and preservation of the prisoners at 
 Andersonville that the circumstances rendered pos- 
 
" CRUELTY TO THOSE IN HIS POWER." 137 
 
 sible. General Winder I had known from my iBrst 
 entrance into the United States army as a gallant 
 soldier and honorable gentleman. fJruelty to those 
 in his power, defenseless and sick men, was incon- 
 sistent with either the character of a soldier or a 
 gentleman. I was always, therefore, confident that 
 the charge was unjustly imputed." 
 
 General Imboden is quoted at length by Mr. 
 Davis on the subject of AndersouTille — for what 
 reason is not clearly disclosed, as the former says he 
 knew Wirz but slightly, and his statements show 
 that he knew nothing about the prisoners or their 
 keepers worth quoting. 
 
 He complains that he was not called on as a 
 witness in the Wirz trial to tell all he thought he 
 knew; and when he wrote it up for the New York 
 Herald, the editor declined to publish the account, 
 which at last found a receiver in Mr. Davis. 
 
 Undoubtedly The Herald did the General a good 
 service in declining his MSS., having seen some of 
 his efforts at war history, for which he had a con- 
 suming penchant that often annoyed General Lee 
 and exasperated his commanders. Mr. Davis does 
 the General the honor to quote him in saying that 
 the murderer Wirz was a humane and innocent man 
 selected as a victim to the " bloody Moloeh of 1865 " 
 — whatever that was. 
 
138 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 It seems hard tliat tlie General vto proved such 
 a terror to Federal sutlers in the Valley during the 
 war should have his name given wrong in so con- 
 spicuous an article by his old master. Such is fame 
 and the lot of those who put their faith in princes. 
 
 There is no reason to suppose that General 
 Imboden would himself Jiave permitted any cruelty ' 
 to the prisoners if he had had any real and perma- 
 nent authority over them. But the truth is, being 
 incapacitated for active service, he was sent to l6ok 
 around the prisons for a little time, for want of other 
 employment, and was simply tolerated by Winder as 
 a visitor, and had no real authority, as he would have 
 easily discovered had he gone further than a mere 
 offer of suggestions, and these Winder treated with 
 silent disdain. 
 
 The Union prisoners taken in the Gettysburg 
 campaign will remember General Imboden, whose 
 men had charge of them during the march from 
 Gettysburg through the Shenandoah Valley to 
 Staunton. Beyond a habit of exchanging hats and 
 any loose wearing apparel with the prisoners while 
 they were asleep, the writer, who was with the 
 column, saw no vicious ill-treatment of the pris- 
 oners ; in fact, the guards who indulged in these 
 "swaps," as they termed them, made it a rule when 
 
" CLOTHED ONLY IN SUNSHINE." 139 
 
 they took an officer's hat or coat to leave their own 
 gray raiment beside the sleeping prisoner — a thing 
 that never would have been tolerated for a moment 
 by the guards of Winder. These "swaps" went on, 
 however, to such an extent that our Union officers 
 who left Gettysburg very blue grew prematurely 
 gray; and so much so that in passing through the 
 various towns in the Yalley they received cheers and 
 pie as Confederates from enthusiastic citizens. Had 
 John H. Winder been in charge, instead of General 
 Imboden, the Union prisoners would have gone 
 through the towns of three States clothed only in 
 sunshine and covered only with theii- blushes. 
 
 In army reminiscences General Imboden, 
 although not faultless in the matter of strict 
 accuracy, is always entertaining ; and his career ae a 
 commander is tolerably well described in the phrases 
 of our national game; he was not much of a batter, 
 but he was fair jn the field, and, like his comrade 
 Kosser, he " ran bases with great speed." 
 
 Mr. Davis quotes some resolutions said to have 
 been adopted by prisoners at Savannah in Sep- 
 tember, 1864, and to which is appended the name of 
 one P. Bradley, chairman of a committee in behalf of 
 the prisoners, one of which reads: 
 
140 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 " That while allowing the Confederate government 
 all dae praise for the attention paid to the prisoners, 
 numbers of our men are consigned to early graves; and 
 
 "Resolved, That ten thousand of our brave com- 
 rades have descended into untimely graves, caused by- 
 difference in climate, food, etc. ; and 
 
 " Resolved, That we have suffered patiently, and are 
 still willing to suffer if by so doing we can benefit the 
 country; but we most respectfully beg leave to say that 
 we are not willing to suffer to further the ends of any 
 party or clique, to the detriment of our families or our 
 country." 
 
 This irresponsible and inaccurate expression of 
 a few malcontents who had borrowed the familiar 
 excuses of their keepers about "difference in climate, 
 food," etc., and which utterly belies the sentiments 
 of the vast majority of the Union prisoners, strongly 
 suggests the high-sounding proclamation of the 
 three tailors of Tooley street, whose resolves began: 
 "We, the people of England," etc. That Mr. Davis 
 should be driven to the necessity of seizing this 
 straw with such ludicrous eagerness is a painful 
 signal of distress. Nor will the date of the resolu- 
 tions lose significance, near as it preceded the Presi- 
 dential election of 1864, in which Mr. Davis had so 
 keen an interest. When from this he descends to 
 quote an anonymous letter-writer in the New York 
 
" CUBSING THE LINCOLN ADMINISTRATION." 141 
 
 Daily News (anti-war paper), who was "said to be 
 an AndersonTille prisoner and a member of General 
 Sheridan's staff," and in which the writer endeavors 
 to prove Wirz a humane man and his comrades all 
 thieves, liars, and cowards who had brought on them- 
 selves all the miseries of which they complained, 
 etc., Mr. Davis confesses with amazing candor his 
 pitiable poverty in defensive resources. 
 
 A manifest object is to show that the expres- 
 sions of a few malcontents (doubtless coached by 
 the rebel authorities), who, if they live, will read 
 with mortification in 1894 their words of 1864, was 
 to create the impression that the Union prisoners in 
 the autumn of that year were in a mutinous state, 
 "cursing the Lincoln administration," and longing • 
 to so express themselves at the polls in November. 
 
 The narration of an incident well remembered 
 by the prisoners will effectually dispose of this flimsy 
 falsehood which Southern newspapers were indus- 
 triously circulating in the Confederacy at the time. 
 
 In an election held in the Andersonville 
 stockade in October, 1864, for the purpose of show- 
 ing the choice of the prisoners between Mr. Lincoln 
 and General McClellan, the opposing candidates for 
 the Presidency, General McClellan received fifteen 
 hundred votes and Mr. Lincoln six thousand. At 
 
142 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 "Camp Sorghum," near Columbia, S. C, where the 
 writer was confined with the Federal officers, and 
 where an election was held during the same month. 
 General McClellan received less than three hundred 
 Totes, while Mr. Lincoln received eleven hundred. 
 
 It is quite needless to add that none of the 
 Southern newspapers to which' these returns were 
 sent saw fit to publish them, although the editors 
 must have known that it would have been interesting 
 news to their readers, contrasting strongly as it did 
 with their previous representations. 
 
 In referring to these facts, no impeachment is 
 made of the patriotism of the minority who cast 
 their ballots for their beloved old commander whom 
 they had foUowfed on the Peninsula. The^r suffrages, 
 justly interpreted, evinced no waning of love for the 
 Union and no diminished faith in its restoration. 
 They fought as bravely in the field and suffered as 
 patiently in prison as did their comrades ^of the 
 majority ; but no honest man will assert and no sane 
 man will believe that the famishing patriots who cast 
 this ballot were "cursing the administration of Mr. 
 Lincoln," nor yet condemning the just and necessdry 
 stand taken by our Government to hasten the end of 
 the Confederacy, then gasping for life, by spiking 
 the rifles of fifty thousand fat and healthy Confed- 
 
''TBE RED DEW OF ONE BAPTISM." 143 
 
 erate prisoners, then held in the firm grip of Grant. 
 In field and prison the Union soldiers, Democrats 
 and Eepublieans, fought, suffered and died side by 
 side ; the same trench covers them at Andersonville 
 and Salisbury, and the "red dew of one baptism is 
 over them all." 
 
 It is clearly manifest that in this, Mr. Davis' 
 final statement on Andersonville, he makes no whole- 
 hearted attempt to disprove the charges of inhuman 
 and systematic cruelty inflicted upon the Union 
 prisoners, and that his only real hope and his para- 
 ^pount object was to divide the public verdict on 
 the question of his personal responsibility. 
 
 It is not seriously required to analyze his own 
 weak inventions for defense, nor the worthless 
 indorsements of the disreputable coadjutors whom 
 he quotes, six of whose names appear with his own 
 in the specifications and chaiges on which Wirz was 
 found guilty and hanged. To expose their feeble- 
 ness and falsity is as needless as to use a sledge- 
 hammer to crack a filbert; but they are interesting 
 exhibits of unparalleled effrontery, and furnish a 
 fitting sequel to the most gigantic villainy that ever 
 this country witnessed. 
 
 The guileless air with which his partners in 
 
 guilt are introduced with himself, and the grotesque 
 11 
 
144 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 spectacle of Stevenson, Seddon, "Wirz and the Winder 
 trio as they gravely proceed to exchange certificates 
 of character and innocence with each other, is proof 
 that Mr. Davis, in his eighty-first year and in his 
 feeble health, still retained amid the dismal wreck 
 of his fortunes some lingering sparks of a humor 
 that had often diverted his friends in earlier and 
 happier days— monstrous as it may seem that the 
 tragedy of Andersonville should have been chosen 
 as the theme for its exercise. 
 
 But even this performance is outdone by his 
 old friend and servant Seddon, who, writing a letter 
 for publication in 1875,. and speaking of Winder, 
 says: "I thought him marked by real humanity 
 toward the weak and helpless, such as women and 
 children, for instance — by that spirit of protection 
 and defense which distinguishes the really gallant 
 soldier. To me he always expressed sympathy and 
 manifested a strong desire to provide for the wants 
 and comforts of the prisoners under his charge," etc. 
 
 The posting of this pious certificate of holiness 
 on the tomb of John H. Winder, who, if alive, would 
 have resented it as an intolerable impertinence, will 
 be a revelation to the acquaintances of Mr. James A. 
 Seddon who never suspected his latent genius as a 
 satirist. 
 
'Shot by the guard at Libby." 
 
"MAY GOD HAVE MERCY!" 145 
 
 This will be the better appreciated as the name 
 and deeds of the subject are recalled to the memory 
 of his afflicted countrymen. The day after Winder 
 left Kichmond to take charge of Andersonville, a 
 Richmond paper said: " General Winder left yester- 
 day for Andersonville to take charge there. May 
 God have mercy on the Yankee prisoners!" 
 
 So well, indeed, was he known at Kichmond, 
 that the Confederate soldiers and citizens bestowed 
 upon him, even early in the war, the descriptive title 
 of "Hog Winder," an aggravated and unprovoked 
 libel that must have wrung a unanimous and indig- 
 nant grunt of disgust from every maligned porker in 
 the Confederacy. 
 
 How he "was marked by real humanity toward 
 the weak and helpless, such as women and children, 
 for instance," was displayed in his blasphemy and 
 blackguardism in the presence of the humane and 
 Christian ladies whose donation of food for the 
 starving prisoners was brutally refused admission at 
 the prison gate; and when the monster Wirz, his 
 subordinate, uttered insults and abuse so filthy and 
 vile in the presence of those noble ladies, that Avit- 
 nesses would not repeat it at his trial. 
 
 Says Mr. Davis: " General Winder I had known 
 from my first entrance into the United States army ; 
 
146 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 cruelty to those in his power, defenseless and sick 
 men, was inconsistent with the character of either a 
 soldier or a" gentleman." 
 
 Beside these tributes to the righteousness of 
 John H. Winder, let us place this memorable evi- 
 dence of his chivalry: 
 
 " Headquaetebs Militakt Prison, ) 
 " Andeesonville, Ga., July 27, 1864. \ 
 "General Orders No.- 13. 
 
 "The officers on duty and in charge of the battery 
 of Florida artillery at the time will, upon receiving 
 notice that the enemy has approached within seven miles 
 of this post, open upon the stockade [prison] with grape- 
 shot, without reference to the situation of affairs beyond 
 these lines of defense. 
 
 "John H. Winder, Brig. Gen'l Commdg." 
 
 This would seem to be the place for Judge Ould 
 to re-appear and explain that this order, like the 
 sentence of Sawyer and Flynn, the Confederate law 
 consigning colored United States soldiers back to 
 slavery, and the meditated slaughter of twelve 
 hundred Union officers by the Libby powder-mine, 
 was also to be added to the ever-increasing acts in 
 the Confederacy classed as "legislation in-ter- 
 rorem.'''' 
 
 When this miscreant was suddenly stricken 
 down on hearing that Sherman had reached the sea 
 
"BE SUBE AND CUT DOWN." 147 
 
 three months later, and near the very gate of 
 the stockade that held his starving and freezing 
 victims, it is said (whether true or not, the expres- 
 sion was perfectly characteristic) that, realizing that 
 he must go, he braced himself up and uttered these 
 words: "My trust is in Christ; I hope I shall be 
 saved yet. Be sure and cut down the Yaiikee pris- 
 oners^ rations." 
 
 There can be no doubt that had he lived until 
 the tenth day of November, 1865, he would have 
 expiated his crimes on the scaffold beside his sub- 
 ordinate Wirz. 
 
 A countless number of his acts during the 
 war might easily be cited to show the fearful 
 depravity of the man whom Jefferson Davis, with 
 eternity near, declares he selected to rule over Union 
 captives because, after a lifetime acquaintance, he 
 believed him "to be kind to prisoners!" 
 
 Among the Southern people to-day, evidence 
 could be easily multiplied to show the depravity of 
 the man whom Davis and Seddon vouch for ; but to 
 borrow the quaint metaphor of Mr. Davis' benevo- 
 lent bondsman, Horace Greeley, "in order to test the 
 quality of a ham, it is not necessary to eat a whole 
 hog." A little of "Winder goes a good way. 
 
148 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 Mr. Davis wastes great and unnecessary energy 
 in his endeavor to show that Wirz would not and 
 could not, from personal knowledge, show that he 
 was in the personal confidence of the former in the 
 iniquitous plot that was afoot at Andersonville, and 
 there is indeed a reasonable doubt that he ever 
 was. His well-known gust for cruelty and readiness 
 for murder when it was deemed necessary for his 
 purposes were the special qualities that determined 
 the selection of the fiendish Swiss captain — not as a 
 trusted manager, but as a reliable and relentless 
 underling who could be used in his own special 
 sphere without being admitted to the inner counsels 
 of his employers. A human monstrosity and mur- 
 derer he was, but his intellect was feeble, and his 
 lack of finesse excluded him from the close inquisi- 
 tion and from any compromising confidence. 
 
 Winder, who was Davis' bosom friend for thirty- 
 four years, and Stevenson, the " scientist" and vac- 
 cinator who had charge of the medical branch of the 
 Andersonville business, were more to his taste in 
 carrying out the "system." They did not receive 
 their instructions in writing from Eichmond, but 
 they knew every hour of the day and night " what 
 they were there for," namely: to see that "natural 
 agencies " should not be interfered with in doing the 
 
"HIS SENTENCE WOULD BE COMMUTED." 149 
 
 work "faster than the bullet." This brace of worthies 
 were not much given to letter-writing about 
 the real condition of things at Andersonville, but 
 both were in close and constant conference with the 
 Richmond authorities; a telegraph wire connected 
 their headquarters with the "President" and his 
 Secretary of War. 
 
 Poor old Father Boyle, the confessor of Wirz, 
 is drafted into the service of Mr. Davis as a witness 
 fifteen years after the war, and made to repeat the 
 story of how through him "a high cabinet officer" 
 offered to commute the sentence of Wirz the night 
 before the execution if he would implicate Mr. Davis 
 in the crime of Andersonville. 
 
 "The high cabinet officer" is not named, but it 
 is not difficult in the light of Mr. Davis' previous 
 expressions to conclude that Mr. Stanton is the 
 person meant. 
 
 Father Boyle, Wirz, and his counsel Schade are 
 each reported as saying that they were called upon 
 by a man whose name neither of them knows, and 
 who told them separately that he was authorized by 
 "the high cabinet officer" to assure Wirz that his 
 sentence would be commuted on the condition named, 
 and that Wirz, having no personal or positive knowl- 
 edge of Mr. Davis' part in the Andersonville crime. 
 
150 BASriLES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 refused to give the compromising testimony, and was 
 hanged next morning, and as a matter of course pro- 
 testing his own innocence. 
 
 If this alleged emissary's story is true, we are 
 compelled to assume that the Secretary of War and 
 the President of the United States declared through 
 a nameless messenger to the murderer Wirz, his law- 
 yer and his confessor, their readiness to prostitute 
 their high offices in a shameful bargain to secure the 
 conviction of Davis and subvert the law that 
 demanded the murderer's life, and that they were 
 willing to tmst the dangerous knowledge of such a 
 contract to hosts of eager and implacable political 
 and personal foes. 
 
 That Edwin M. Stanton, the greatest of War 
 Ministers, was immaculate or over-scrupulous in 
 methods amid the extraordinary circumstances that 
 environed him during the war, his warmest partisans 
 will not claim ; but that he was the reckless,- clumsy 
 fool that Mr. Davis paints him in this instance, his 
 bitterest foes will not believe. 
 
 That a nameless man approached the three 
 persons named, as they declare he did, may be 
 assumed as true, but the inferential charge that he 
 came with the knowledge and authority of the Secre- 
 tary of War and the President is preposterous and 
 
"GUILELESS BENEVOLENCE." 151 
 
 infamous. To reasoning minds a far more plausible 
 theory is that the emissary came not from a "high 
 cabinet officer " to save the life of Wirz, but from 
 astute partisans of Davis then infesting the capital, 
 and was a bold device adapted for effect and to 
 improve the uncertain fortunes of Mr. Davis, then a 
 prisoner at Fortress Monroe. 
 
 As to Father Boyle's expressed confidence in 
 the innocence of Wirz, it indicates nothing but the 
 direction of his sympathies, and proves nothing but 
 the guileless benevolence of the good old priest's 
 heart and his susceptibility to the wiles of the subtle 
 conspirators who were using him. 
 
 But even if this whole story were true and the 
 nameless man was really the emissary of the Secre- 
 tary of War, it would still leave the real question 
 about Andersonville absolutely untouched, as Mr. 
 Davis well knew; and herein lies the proof of what 
 has already been said in this narrative: that Mr. 
 Davis in his final writing on Andersonville does not 
 seriously attempt the impossible task of disproving 
 the charges of systematic cruelties to Federal pris- 
 oners in the South, but that his paramount object 
 and hope was to divide with a plea of poverty and 
 ingenious sophistry the public verdict as to his share 
 in the atrocious plot. 
 
152 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 It was indeed a deplorable situation for a man 
 in his eighty-first year, to whom nature and training 
 had given brilliant capacities, and to whom fortune 
 had presented great opportunities, to be at last com- 
 pelled to resort to the subterfuge and sophistry that 
 characterizes his last defense and emphasizes his last 
 lamentable failure. 
 
 Technical provisions and impediments of consti- 
 tutional law interposed in 1865, with the unprece- 
 dented condition of the country emerging from civil 
 war and in the chaos of the early stages of recon- 
 struction, seemed to render it impolitic, if not impos- 
 sible, to single out Jefferson Davis for trial on 
 charges of treason ; and amid such an unparalleled 
 condition of affairs he escaped . the just penalties of 
 his deeds at Andersonville, Salisbury and Belle Isle. 
 Our highest jurists and statesmen knew then, and 
 our country knows now, that the people of the South 
 and a large portion of mankind would have charged 
 the North with the malicious deception of trying 
 Davis for the Andersonville crime, while in reality 
 persecuting, condemning and degrading him as the 
 leader of Secession. 
 
 Mr. Davis and his more sagacious partisans were 
 not slow to see and take advantage of the situation. 
 From the moment the gates closed upon him at 
 
"■THE PUBQHASE OF A WHITE ELEPHANT:' 153 
 
 Fortress Monroe he was posed as a martyr, and to 
 the study and enactment of this his last rol6 his 
 remaining days were studiously devoted; and cir- 
 cumstances singularly combined to aid him. 
 
 The North, amid the flush of joy that followed 
 Appomattox, was stricken by the assassination of Mr. 
 Lincoln. Jefferson Davis was a fugitive, and the 
 fierce resentment that rose against the vile brood of 
 assassins paralyzed for a time the national reason, 
 and a few irrational men in authority at Washington 
 unwisely and unjustly coupled the name of Mr. Davis 
 with the assassination plot. 
 
 Then came the lamentable folly and flaming 
 offering of an immense reward for his capture, and 
 the consequent arrest of a large number of belated 
 loyal citizens who wore whiskers under their chins, 
 and who indignantly shaved on learning that they 
 had been mistaken for i' Jeff Davis." 
 
 Fortunately for Mr. Davis and,, unhappily for the 
 whole country, be was taken, and a hundred thousand 
 dollars of the public treasure was thus wasted in the 
 purchase of a white elephant, and to the well-known 
 disgust of General Grant and other men of his 
 sterling good sense. 
 
 The wisdom of Lincoln was never more forcibly 
 illustrated, nor his secret wishes more dextrously 
 
154 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 imparted than in regard to the then probable capture 
 of Mr. Davis, when he related to General Grant 
 (who had delicately invited some expression of his 
 wishes) the story of the Irishman who, feeling that 
 he could no longer keep the temperance pledge, sug- 
 gested to the priest who had handed him a "soft" 
 drink, that he'd be "moity glad if his riverence, 
 while his back was turned, would drop a little 
 whisky in the lemonade unbeknownst to him." 
 
 But the wise Lincoln was no more, and greedy 
 and rapacious political adventurers swarmed to the 
 capital like the locusts to Egypt. Buncombe and 
 cheap jingoism succeeded in drowning out the voices 
 of wise counsellors; the boast and bluster of dema- 
 gogues succeeded the words and deeds of tried 
 patriots; the armies of Grant and Sherman struck 
 tents and left for their farms and homes; political 
 hacks who had survived the draft inasqueraded in. 
 "loyal" colors; and a survey of the situation about 
 the national capital recalled the pithy saying of Sam 
 Johnson, "that patriotism was the last refuge of a 
 scoundrel." 
 
CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 After Chickamauga — General Grant Appears 
 
 — Battle of Lookout Mountain — 
 
 The March to the Sea. 
 
 5 WE fact that more than fifty Union prisoners 
 were killed and twice that number cruelly 
 injured by the dogs employed at Anderson- 
 ville, is not squarely denied by Mr. Davis, as the 
 ambiguous and significant reference to that atrocity 
 will show. "I have been informed since the war," 
 says Mr. Davis, "that there was not one bloodhound 
 at Andersonville prison, but some deer or fox hounds 
 were kept to follow prisoners who, when paroled for 
 voluntary service, broke faith and fled." He care- 
 fully refrains from any reference to the countless 
 number of times he was informed by citizens of 
 Georgia, humane Confederate offieers and Southern 
 newspapers about the barbarous contract between 
 Winder, Wirz and Wesley W. Turner, the latter the 
 owner of the pack of fierce bloodhounds during 
 the war. 
 
 The following accurate description of one of 
 these beasts, well known to still- surviving prisoners, 
 
 155 
 
156 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 will hardly pass at a bench show as the portrait of 
 Mr. Davis' fox or deer hounds among dog-fanciers: 
 
 G. F. Elliott, formerly of the Ist Marine 
 Artillery, an Andersonville prisoner, says: "I have 
 a pretty lively recollection of a Cuban bloodhound 
 named 'Spot' at Andersonville ; weight, one hundred 
 and fifty pounds; height, three feet four inches; 
 length from tip to tip, six feet five inches. Rather 
 a queer kind of a fox or deer hound. He mangled 
 more than one poor fellow who strove to get back to 
 'God's country' without permission from Jeff Davis 
 or Wirz." 
 
 Negro soldiers were not deemed socially good 
 enough to serve the Confederacy as soldiers until 
 Lee declared that the Southern cause would be lost 
 in the spring of 1865 without their help, and not 
 until two months before his surrender did the 
 Southern Congress pass the law authorizing their 
 enlistment. Up to that time the black man was not 
 thought worthy to serve with Lee in Virginia, but, 
 by Davis' admission, dogs were good enough sub- 
 stitutes for Southern soldiers to serve with Winder, 
 to track, maim and kill Union prisoners in Georgia. 
 
 Perhaps it may soften the grief of wives and 
 mothers in the North to learn, after the lapse of so 
 many years and from so high an authority as Jeffer 
 
" THIRTY-FIVE THO VSAND STAR VED SKELETONS." 157 
 
 son Davis, what particular kind of hounds they were 
 that tore their protectors to death at Andersonville. 
 
 Mr. Davis says: "Andersonville was selected 
 for the reasons that it was in a high pine-woods 
 region, in a productive farming country; had never 
 been devastated by the enemy ; was well- watered and 
 near to Americus, a central depot for collecting the 
 tax in kind and purchasing provisions for our armies ; 
 and it was on a hill overlooking the valley of the 
 Sweet Water." 
 
 So far as the prison stockade was concerned, it 
 was indeed in the midst of a high pine woods, every 
 tree of which was cut down within the stockade 
 before a single prisoner entered it; and in August, 
 1864, when the thermometer ranged from 110, 120 to 
 127 and 130 degrees, thirty -five thousand starved skel- 
 etons stood in the fiery flood of the sun and looked 
 over the "deadline" and wall into the inviting shade 
 of those same tall pines as lost souls might gaze 
 from Hades into the Garden of Eden. 
 
 "It was on a hill overlooking the Sweet Water." 
 Precisely so. That clear, deep and beautiful stream 
 flowed past the fainting multitude just two hundred 
 and fifty feet outside the hospital and prison wall. 
 The prisoners' only drink came from the sluggish 
 ditch, a "tributary" of the Sweet Water, and which 
 
 12 
 
158 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 was already the sink of a Confederate camp before 
 it entered the prison inclosure, the stench of which, 
 citizen Ambrose Spencer swears, could be detected 
 at a distance of two miles. The water of that, the 
 only stream accessible to the prisoners, was so 
 polluted that even when used for bathing it produced 
 gangrene in numerous instances. 
 
 Mr. Davis continues: "It-was near Americus, 
 a central depot of supplies, for cbllecting the tax in 
 kind and purchasing provisions for our armies." 
 Correct again. It was in the midst of the " Garden 
 of the Confederacy" the stockade was built. The 
 Union prisoners starved with plenty in sight. They 
 blistered, fainted and died in the sun's fiery flood 
 with the shade of the tall-pine region in full view. 
 They died with agonizing thirst around the poison- 
 ous prison ditch, with the crystal stream of the Sweet 
 Water, fifteen feet wide and five to ten feet deep, 
 flowing untouched, cool and delicious, two hundred 
 and fifty feet beyond the "dead line"! 
 
 What, then, shall we say of Mr. Davis' wretched 
 mockery of excuses in the light of these facts proven 
 by witnesses living and dead. Union and Confed- 
 erate ? 
 
 " The insufficient means of transportation !" The 
 supplies were within the radius of a few miles, and 
 
" THE DONATION REFUSED BLASPBEMdUSLY." 159 
 
 long trains passed the gate of the stockade by day 
 and night bearing supplies to Lee's army in Vir- 
 ginia from the " Grarden of the Confederacy," in the 
 midst of which the Union prisoners were starving. 
 
 Transportation! When Christian men and 
 women brought food for the prisoners and furnished 
 the transportation the donation was refused blas- 
 phemously and insultingly at the prison gate by 
 John H. Winder! And this was the man whom Mr. 
 Davis asserts he selected to rule the Southern 
 prisons "because of, his confidence in his kindness to 
 prisoners" ! 
 
 " The act of the North declaring medicines to 
 be contraband!" Did the stringency of the blockade 
 at Savannah, Charleston and Wilmington that shut 
 out tea, cofiPee and quinine dry up the Sweet Water 
 creek and destroy the shade of the tall-pine region? 
 Were the cabbages, sweet potatoes and corn of the 
 "Garden of the Confederacy" contraband? Was it 
 not proven on the Wirz trial the amount of such 
 garden vegetables raised about Andersonville in 1864 
 was unprecedented? Did the blockade make it 
 necessary for the doctors and nurses there to use 
 gangrene-infected rags several times over to dress 
 fresh wounds, as Professor Jones and Dr. Bates 
 declare they saw done? "It was impossible," says 
 
160 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 the former, "for any wound to escape contagion 
 under these circumstances." 
 
 Imported medicines, coffee, tea, and other 
 foreign products were indeed scarce in 1864. But 
 the South was not destitute of rags, shade, straw, 
 fuel or fresh water, and the Confederate Dr. Bates 
 solemnly declares that in his professional opinion 
 the allowance of these easily obtainable necessities 
 would have saved the lives of seventy-five per cent, 
 of the prisoners who died. 
 
 So unmistakable was the evidence of the exist- 
 ing murderous plot, and so jealously did the vile 
 brood of conspirators guard the operations of the 
 "natural agencies," that this humane physician con- 
 cealed raw potatoes in his pockets and dropped them 
 surreptitiously to prisoners suffering with scurvy, 
 as an anti-scorbutic, even after he had been warned 
 that it was strictly forbidden to take anything in to 
 the prisoners and after he had been arrested many 
 times. 
 
 Mr. Davis continues: "The food was different 
 from that to which most of the prisoners had been 
 accustomed, particularly in the use of cornmeal 
 instead of flour, and of this it was not possible in 
 1864 to get a supply at Anderson ville." 
 
 Did the scarcity of flour prevent the separation, 
 of the husk from the meal, the prisoners' only food, 
 
^ " WORK FASTER THAN THE BULLET." 161 
 
 which, as Professor Jones says, acted as an irritant 
 to the alimentary canal _without adding anything to 
 the nutriment of the bread? Was it not shown at 
 the time that the unvarying use of this food rapidly 
 prepared the victims for the ravages of scurvy which 
 swept them away by thousands? Was not the use 
 of meal supplied in this way the very thing which 
 was boldly recommended by a miscreant high in 
 authority in the commissary department at Rich- 
 mond? Did not that villain ingeniously point that 
 husk out to the Richmond authorities as one of the 
 "natural agencies" that was to do the work "faster 
 than the bullet"? 
 
 When Professor Jones recommended the making 
 of soup for the sick out of the cow and calf heads, 
 adding a few vegetables such as sweet potatoes, cab- 
 bage and corn, which, he says, would have been 
 highly nutritious and with little additional cost, and 
 the materials for which soups, he says, existed in 
 large quantities, was it done ? No; those heads were 
 thrown into the ditches outside the stockade, and 
 instead of putting life in their soup, they were left 
 to rot and put death in their drink and pestilence in 
 the air. 
 
 The statement of Mr. Davis that the prisoners 
 
 were removed in the autumn of 1864 "to other points 
 11 
 
162 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 suitable for their safety and health" is misleading 
 and characteristic. 
 
 The prisoners were removed from Andersonville, 
 not to preserve their health, but to prevent their 
 threatened capture by Sherman, then confronting 
 Hood before Atlanta. In this connection the words 
 of Hood are interesting and show how valuable was 
 the service which even the starving prisoners were 
 rendering to the Union cause and tying the hands of 
 an army: "The presence of thirty thousand Fed- 
 eral prisoners in my rear \ Andersonville^ prevented 
 me from moving on his [S/ierman'sJ rear and de- 
 stroying his depot of supplies at Marietta." (See 
 "Advance and Eetreat," by General J. B. Hood.) 
 
 General Joseph E. Johnston, whose retrogade 
 conduct of the campaign had depressed the spirits of 
 the Southern people and occasioned clamorous pro- 
 tests from the alarmed people of Georgia to Rich- 
 mond, gave Mr. Davis a long desired pretext to 
 remove him, and the less sagacious but more aggres- 
 sive Hood was made his successor. 
 
 Davis came to Atlanta, the old infirmity for 
 interference having again taken possession of him, 
 and demanded a radical change. Hood was com- 
 manded to take an army back to Tennessee, to fall on 
 Thomas and destroy him, and do other things that 
 
"SERENELY ON HIS GREAT MARCH." 163 
 
 would compel Sherman to loosen his hold on the 
 throat of Georgia. In a bombastic public speech lie 
 virtually announced the intended movements of the 
 army; and his positive assurances that there was to 
 be no more retreats through Georgia delighted the 
 citizens and ladies, dismayed the corps commanders, 
 and greatly obliged Sherman, who read the speech 
 next day at his headquarters, and governing himself 
 accordingly prepared to strike for the sea. 
 
 The country kno(vs the sequel: how~ Sherman 
 kept serenely on his great march, and how thoroughly 
 and handsomely Thomas, "the Eock of Chicka- 
 mauga," disposed of Hood is a chapter of history 
 that Mr. Davis remembered with bitter mortification 
 to the latest day of his life. The bitter cup was 
 subsequently filled to the brim when Slocum planted 
 the Union flags over Atlanta, and when at last a 
 fierce public clamor and a dire military necessity 
 forced upon him the restoration of Johnston, whose 
 advice and aid he humbly solicited when Lee had 
 surrendered. Kichmond had fallen, and he who 
 could but shortly before dictate to the Confederate 
 Congress and armies was a powerless and despairing 
 fugitive. 
 
 It was not the first time that the Confederacy 
 had paid dearly for Mr. Davis' interference with 
 commanders in the field. 
 
164 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 After the bloody battle of Chickamauga and the 
 retirement of the Union forces to Chattanooga in 
 September, 1863, Mr. Davis had paid a visit to 
 Bragg's army, which had Rosecrans' army shut up 
 there. From the palisades on Lookout Mountain he 
 examined with his glass the position of the Federal 
 troops ; he saw them hemmed in, with the Tennessee 
 at their back, and their lines of supplies and com- 
 munications held by the Confederates. Before it, 
 the Chattanooga Valley and Missionary Bidge 
 stretching to the river on the north, and Lookout 
 towering over Moccasin Point below the town like 
 an impregnable Gibraltar; all frowning with their 
 batteries upon their half-famished foes, who were 
 reduced to their last few crackers, and burning roots 
 for fuel. Ten thousand horses and mules had died 
 of starvation, and there were not animals enough 
 left to drag a field battery. 
 
 Mr. Davis saw it all and smiled exultingly. He 
 felt assured that the surrender of Rosecrans' army 
 was only a question of a few days, or a few weeks at 
 the farthest. Bragg could and must now spare a 
 corps to send to Knoxville and crush Burnside, 
 Accordingly, Longstreet was withdrawn from Look- 
 out, which with its natural strength could be 
 securely held by a comparatively small force. 
 
"THE SILENT BUT INVINCIBLE GRANT." 165 
 
 Having fully submitted his views to Bragg, and 
 deeming his present mission ended, he left for Eich- 
 mond; and as he rode he doubtless began the con- 
 struction of a proclamation that was to be the 
 greatest effort of his life in heralding to the Confed- 
 eracy the destruction of two Federal armies, and 
 swelled with pride at the anticipated applause that 
 was to reward his military genius. 
 
 But events soon followed that wrought a mar- 
 velous change in the "President's" programme, and 
 taught him once again the vanity of human aspira- 
 tions. 
 
 The silent but invincible Grant came riding 
 over the mountains without escort but his staff, and, 
 passing in sight of the besieging Confederates, 
 entered Chattanooga. Rafts were floated past 
 Bragg's pickets at the base of Lookout in the night; 
 the Confederate force at Brown's ferry was sur- 
 prised and captured, and a pontoon bridge was laid 
 across the Tennessee. _In a few hours communica- 
 tions were opened with Bridgeport, thence to Nash- 
 ville, and soon an abundanqe of . supplies was 
 flowing into the beleaguered camps amid Union 
 cheers and music. The master had come, and 
 victory was in his eye. 
 
 On the 24th of November the gallant Hooker, 
 with Geary, stormed and carried the heights of 
 
166 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 Lookout, and the next rising sun revealed to the 
 cheering army in the valley beneath the Union 
 banner floating from the mountain summit. The 
 Confederates were at bay on Missionary Ridge, 
 Sherman having crossed on pontoons the Tennessee 
 on the north; Hooker, following the routed forces 
 from Lookout, crossed Chattanooga creek toward 
 Rossville, while Thomas confronted Bragg's center. 
 
 In the afternoon, Hooker having succeeded in 
 crossing the creek with his artillery, a signal gun 
 fired from Grant's headquarters on Orchard Knob 
 was answered by cheers as the whole Union line 
 advanced upon the frowning ridge lined at base with 
 Bragg's entrenched infantry, and crowned at the top 
 with cannon in heavy breastworks. 
 
 Sherman assaulted the Confederate right, 
 Thomas the center, and Hooker the left. Sheridan 
 led his division on foot up the steep ridge under 
 the belching guns of the "Star fort" and its flanking 
 trenches. Hooker carried tlie hills to the Confed- 
 erate left, and doubled it up in wild disorder, "Pat" 
 Clerbourne's force on the right toward Tunnel Hill 
 fought with stubborn valor and resisted Sherman's 
 savage assaults long and bravely, and Bragg sent 
 reinforcements there. Grant, observing it, dis- 
 patched a division to strengthen Sherman. By sun- 
 
" WITB SHERIDAN HOT AT BRAGG'S HEELS." 167 
 
 set Thomas had pierced the Confederate center near 
 the headquarters of Bragg, who, with his stafP, 
 barely escaped capture. The Federal artillery of 
 Osterhaus from an elevated point on Hooker's line 
 raked the Confederate left and rear, and, panic 
 seizing it, the whole line crumbled away and fled in 
 mad confusion down the eastern side of the ridge, 
 leaving artillery, flags and prisoners in the hands of 
 the charging and cheering Union victors. The rout 
 continued pell-mell toward the Georgia line, with 
 Sheridan hot at Bragg's heels until darkness ended 
 the pursuit. 
 
 Had Longstreet's fine corps been left on Lookout 
 instead of being sent away at the suggestion, or rather 
 dictation of Mr. Davis, the result migkt have been 
 different. The presence of the "President" came to 
 be regarded in the army as the shadow of coming 
 defeat. 
 
 General Grant, speaking of Mr. Davis' well- 
 known and fatal weakness, remarks with grim humor 
 on this campaign: "It was not the first time that 
 Mr. Davis came to the relief of the Union armies by 
 reason of his superior military genius." 
 
 ******** 
 
 History furnishes no nobler example of heroism 
 than is shown in the readiness with which the Union 
 
168 BASTILES OF THE GONFEDEBACY. 
 
 prisoners met death in its most dreaded forms, and 
 spurned the guilty bribes of liberty and life offered 
 by their jailers. When death was reaping a ghastly 
 harvest, and more than a hundred a day were borne 
 out of the death pen at Andersonville, there was a 
 standing offer of liberty to those who would renounce 
 their allegiance to their country. Among the cap- 
 tives were skilled workmen of every trade, whose 
 services as mechanics were eagerly desired by the 
 Confederate authorities, and were sought on assur- 
 ances of freedom, good pay, shelter, food 'and all 
 bodily comforts. 
 
 A beggarly corporal's guard only were induced 
 in all those fearful months to yield to the tempters, 
 out of the f«rty-nine thousand Union captives con- 
 fined at Andersonville — a bit of heroism that called 
 forth one of the most eloquent speeches ever delivered 
 by Garfield.* 
 
 On one occasion a number of the prisoners who 
 were known as masters of various trades were brought 
 out of the stockade where General Cobb, it was 
 announced, wished to address them. The prisoners 
 were under immediate charge of sergeants selected 
 by themselves from the stockade, and faced Cobb in 
 closed ranks and with close attention. He proceeded 
 
 * Garfield's speech to Union ex-prisoners at Toledo. 
 
"SACRIFICE THEIR HONOR AS SOLDIERS." 169 
 
 with all the^ bland persuasive sophistry of which he 
 was master, to express regret for the hardships which 
 circumstances compelled them to suffer as prisoners 
 of war; referred to the liberal terms upon which the 
 Confederate Government had struggled to effect an 
 exchange, and feelingly deplored their rejection by 
 the Federal authorities. • By gradual advances he 
 reached the point: 
 
 It must be clear to every soldier before him that 
 the Government of the United States had abandoned 
 them; and having done their duty as soldiers in 
 battle, and risked their lives and lost their liberty 
 and submitted patiently to the privations of prison 
 life, that Government had no right to utterly sacri- 
 fice their lives in captivity merely to carry out a 
 policy that seemed to promise some temporary mili- 
 tary advantage. Under these circumstances, were 
 they not justified in accepting their liberation on the 
 conditions which he was authorized to offer, and 
 which he felt they could do without a scruple or 
 sacrifice of their honor as men and soldiers! They 
 would, as a matter of form, be required to renounce 
 under oath their allegiance to the Federal Govern- 
 ment; they would not be required to serve at the 
 front with the Confederate army, but would be 
 assigned to certain kinds of work with which their 
 
170 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 training had acquainted them as mechanics, etc. He 
 finished his speech, and scarcely had his last sentence 
 been uttered, when every prisoner faced promptly to 
 the right and without a single word of response 
 marched with measured steps back into the stockade. 
 Cobb, if he still retained a fragment of conscience, 
 must even in his embarrassing -failure have felt a 
 glow of pride in such an enemy, and must have con- 
 trasted in his mind at that moment the heroic 
 fidelity of these men as they passed through the gate 
 through which few of them would ever return alive^ — 
 with his own record in the past toward his country. 
 
CHAPTBK X. 
 
 Release of Union Prisoners — Under the 
 
 Stars and Stripes Once More — 
 
 Home ! 
 
 SHE fortunes of my life had made me a par- 
 ticipant in stirring events and a witness in 
 thrilling scenes. My birthplace was within 
 a few miles of the Falls of Niagara, and often in my 
 yonth I had stood on the cliff and looked into the 
 river beneath as it bounded away, after its mighty 
 leap, in braiding billows of foam through the rock- 
 bound gorge to Ontario. I had listened in awe to 
 the deep thunder of the cataract and gazed spell- 
 bound and in dumb wonder upon the majestic picture 
 formed in the splendor of a rainbow. 
 
 I had seen a beautiful city in flames and 
 mothers with their children weeping amid the ruins 
 of vanished homes, and had seen the ocean in its 
 fiercest wrath from the deck of an imperilled ship. 
 
 As a soldier, I had witnessed victory and defeat 
 in the campaigns of McOlellan, Pope, Btimside and 
 Hooker; had seen an army corps surprised and in 
 
 171 
 
172 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 the full tide of rout and panic amid bursting shell 
 and showering bullets before the cheering and 
 charging line of Stonewall Jackson a few hours 
 before he fell in the front of my regiment at Chan- 
 cellorsville. 
 
 As a wounded prisoner at Gettysburg, I stood 
 behind Pickett when his division melted away in my 
 sight in the blaze from Hancock's line, and saw 
 Cemetery Kidge fringed with the waving banners of 
 the Union victors. 
 
 I marched as a captive with Lee's retreating 
 train through the mountain pass at midnight, beside 
 the wagons filled with shrieking wounded, amid a 
 fierce storm and crashing thunder, when the vivid 
 lightning revealed only to the struggling men and 
 beasts the narrow and perilous road that overhung 
 the deep mountain gorge, while the wind howled 
 through the bending pines like lost souls and hosts 
 of pursuing demons. 
 
 But none of these scenes, vividly as I recall 
 them, ever thrilled and touched me with such depth 
 and power as did the release of the Union prisoners 
 which I participated in and witnessed in a North 
 Carolina meadow on the first day of March, 1865. 
 Fortune and fame would have rewarded the artist 
 
"NO FALTERING IN LOVE FOR THE UNION." 173 
 
 who could have painted that picture, or the pen that 
 could fittingly describe it. 
 
 The days of the Confederacy were numbered, 
 and a general exchange of prisoners was decided 
 upon; but hope seemed to have died out in the 
 hearts of the Union captives so utterly that little 
 credence was given to the assurances of the Confed- 
 erates that their liberation was agreed upon, not- 
 withstanding the fact that a marked change in the 
 demeanor of the guards and their officers was mani- 
 fest during the last fortnight of February. Tet 
 amid all this suffering and despair there was no 
 faltering in their love for the Union, or a whisper of 
 diminished faith in the ultimate triumph of our holy 
 cause. Unconquerable love and faith amid unspeak- 
 able sufferings was the'crowning glory of the Union 
 prisoners. 
 
 Those who had their hopes awakened by external 
 signs about them gave them no tongue, but jealously 
 secreted them as if possessed by some superstitious 
 fear that speech might banish the blessing for which 
 their souls were wildly ^thirsting, and which they 
 felt by some indefinable instinct was hovering near. 
 They moved about mutely, like spectres, among each 
 other; a spark of pity seemed at last to have entered 
 the hearts of their jailers. The guards relaxed 
 
 13 
 
174 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 tteir vigilance, and conversed with freedom and 
 some approach to humanity with the poor defense- 
 less creatures; there was indeed now little need of 
 guards, for not more than a corporal's guard of 
 them had physical, strength enough to have walked 
 to the Union lines if every sentinel had withdrawn. 
 
 The guards began to let the captives approach 
 their path, and even pass it, to get good water. They 
 began to hand them tobacco and bread from their 
 haversacks, like real battlefield soldiers. The angel 
 o£ peace had whispered to friend and foe. The dead 
 line had vanished forever! 
 
 In the last few days of February the 'prisoners 
 of Andersonville, Salisbury, Florence, Millen and 
 other places broke camp, and boarding freight trains 
 and open platform cars, usually a hundred or more 
 to a car, started towards Goldsboro and Raleigh. 
 The Union officers who, a few days before, had 
 arrived at Charlotte from Columbia, where they had 
 been confined during the winter, were also put on 
 board of a freight train and started North. Opinion 
 was about equally divided between them as to 
 whether this was to be a journey to liberty or to 
 another prison. 
 
 The assurances of the Confederate officer in 
 charge that they were really on their way to ba 
 
"UNUSUAL CIVILITY OF THE CONFEDERATES.'" 175 
 
 exchanged was by many whose hearts were sick from 
 deferred hope interpreted as a ruse to prevent 
 attempts at escape; but the unusual civility of the 
 Confederates toward us, and the lax manner in which 
 the train seemed to be guarded, sent "exchange 
 stock" higher than it had touched for a year; and 
 although none dared to acknawledge their hopes it 
 was impossible to conceal the deep excitement which 
 every brightening eye betrayed and the hungry 
 yearning that was possessing every heart. 
 
 At Goldsboro the train on which I was with 
 fourteen hundred Union officers halted for a few 
 hours, and here at daylight several long trains of 
 platform cars arrived at the depot packed with our 
 poor fellows from Florence, Salisbury and other 
 points. The night had been keen and frosty, and it 
 was impossible to 'tell whether the shivering and 
 almost naked spectres were white men or negroes. 
 Our guards permitted us to approach them, and we 
 scanned their thin, wild faces in search of acquaint- 
 ances. My brother was among them, and I passed 
 the platform car where he was several times, as I 
 learned next day. They could hardly answer our 
 questions intelligently, or articulate more than to 
 piteously appeal to us for a piece of cornbread, a 
 
176 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 bone, or anything, or to let them warm themselves a 
 bit at some fires we had built outside the depot. 
 
 The officers promptly made way and ranged the 
 sufferers around the fires, gave them bits of their 
 own rags, and gathered fragments of bread which 
 they craved but could not masticate with their 
 swollen gums and teeth loosened by scurvy. A very 
 few had hats or shoes. Some kind women of the 
 town brought milk and we fed the weakest with 
 spoons. 
 
 Many had died during the cold night ride, fi,nd 
 I and others took the dead from among the dying on 
 the open gravel cars. A humane Confederate officer 
 to whom I applied gave me permission with a few 
 other comrades to carry a number of the dying to the 
 boiler-room of an old saw-mill some distance outside 
 the guard line, simply on our promise to return. 
 The proprietor of the mill, a kind-hearted man, 
 readily allowed us to arrange the poor fellows in 
 easy positions before the cheery fires, with bits of 
 blankets, old clothes, and some straw under them. 
 Those who could not speak expressed their gratitude 
 in smiles and looks of mute pathetic eloquence. We 
 pressed their hands and then left them — and for- 
 ever. 
 
 Next morning, March 1st, the long trains of 
 captives started toward Wilmington. I was with the 
 
"■PUT PAIN IN EVERY HEART." 177 
 
 officers in the advance train, and while I live I shall 
 remember the oppressive, strange silence of the men 
 as the train approached the Union -outposts, with a 
 large white flag floating over the locomotive. There 
 were several stops for water or other purposes, and 
 during these delays the faces of the men was an 
 interesting study of speechless but keen agony. The 
 stop of a few minutes only brought cold perspiration 
 to their foreheads and put pain in every heart, and 
 once when the locomotive backed the cars for a short 
 distance, a cloud of despair settled like a pall over 
 the mute sufferers and a fervent prayer trembled on 
 every lip. 
 
 Conversation was affected at times, but it was a 
 dismal failure. One thought — one hope was in full 
 possession of their souls, and that none dared to 
 utter. The day wore on, on leaden wings, and the 
 train seemed to be creeping like a snail. At last it 
 rounded a curve in the woods and entered a broad 
 meadow which was bordered at its eastern side by a 
 tall pine forest. On entering this opening the loco- 
 motive slackened speed, snuffed like a horse scenting 
 a hidden danger, sent up a shrill whistle," and 
 stopped! 
 
 A prisoner in our crowded freight car, with dis- 
 tended eyes and a face that revealed his agitation, 
 
178 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 rose trembling to his bare and bruised feet and 
 tottered to the side door and looked out ahead. Every 
 eye was on him .as he clutched the side of the door, 
 and, springing into the air as I have seen men do in 
 battle when struck with a bullet,* he screamed three 
 words that electrified every heart and brought the 
 weakest to their feet: " There it is!" 
 
 We crowded to the door; the sentinels made 
 way and laid their muskets against the car as we 
 leaped to the ground in a tangled heap. Yes, thank 
 God, there it was at last — The Stars and Stripes! 
 
 One piercing scream of joy went up from the 
 famished multitude as they bounded and fell from 
 the doorways of the cars, and tears streamed down 
 every stained and worn face as -the beloved banner 
 of the Union, so long hidden from them, floated 
 in full beauty and majesty from the top of a tall 
 pine. 
 
 Another minute and a quick, eager eye caught 
 another sight, and again a wild shout rang over the 
 meadow: "There they are!" Yes, thank God, out 
 from the tall pines a troop of men wearing the loyal 
 blue came at a quick measured step, their bayonets 
 flashing and an officer leading them toward us! 
 
 Some of our poor fellows, demented by their 
 long trials, not understanding what it all meant, but 
 
The sight of their flag. — See' page i 78. 
 
" IN BAGS AND WITH WILD EYES." 179 
 
 with the old instinct of escape upon them, in the 
 cunning of insanity took advantage of the guards' 
 negligence and the prevailing excitement, and hid in 
 ditches, or crept under the cars and ran as fast as 
 their bare and bruised feet could bear them in the 
 direction of their old prisons. The strongest of the 
 prisoners chased and brought them back without the 
 assistance of the guards, who now paid no attention 
 to sentinel duty, but mingled with the excited 
 prisoners, and were bidding them a kindly good-bye. 
 
 Other trains followed, and soon a -countless 
 multitude of blackened, hatless and barefooted skele- 
 tons in rags and with wild eyes swarmed out of the 
 freight cars, the strongest carrying those who could 
 not stand. 
 
 All were ordered to stand and wait for the pre- 
 liminaries in progress. The Confederate guards left 
 us, and, led by their commanding officer, started to 
 meet the Union detachment approaching in the 
 meadow. They met, halted, and facing each other 
 presented arms in military courtesy, and came to an 
 order arms, leaving a lane fifteen feet wide between 
 them. The opposing commanders shook hands, con- 
 versed aside a few minutes, and drew pencils and 
 books from their pockets. 
 
 The eager captives were eyeing these proceed- 
 ings in a fever of excitement. The Confederate 
 
180 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 commander raised his hand and beckoned them to 
 advance. Each man, clasping the hand of some 
 weak comrade, moved forward, and a silence fell 
 over all, as if conscious that they were treading 
 hallowed ground. 
 
 As I re-entered our car to recover some trifle, I 
 observed a young soldier lying on the floor, where 
 his comrades in their wild excitement had forgotten 
 him. At first I thought he was dead, but his eyes 
 looked beseechingly into mine as I came to his side. 
 He was a. boy, apparently not more than sixteen; he 
 was in rags and barefooted, and a mere skeleton. In 
 answer to my question his thin lips moved, but his 
 tongue could give no utterance. I remembered now 
 that he had been put in our car at Baleigh, and was 
 said to be a New York soldier from Andersonville 
 prison; but no one knew his name, his acquaint- 
 ances, if he had any in prison, being dead. 
 
 I bent over him and told him that we were 
 exchanged, that our troops and flag were in sight, 
 that we were going home, and that he must go 
 with me; I would carry him to Wilmington. The 
 feeble smile and sudden light that came into his 
 eyes told me touchingly that I was understood. 
 I resolved that he should not die a prisoner. I 
 picked the boy up tenderly; his weight was not 
 
"STREAMED IN SCREAMING HUNDREDS." 181 
 
 more tlian a child's, and a sentinel helped me reach 
 the ground with him. 
 
 Meantime the prisoners began to pass through 
 the lane between the Union and Confederate troops ; 
 and as I bore the poor boy through the gate to 
 liberty, the eyes of the Union, soldiers glistened with 
 tears, for all could see he was near the end. As the 
 prisoners passed the point of release in the meadow, 
 they broke into a run — those who could run — and 
 streamed in screaming hundreds to the woods, near 
 which a colored regiment was drawn up along the 
 road to salute the prisoners. They were the first 
 colored troops I had ever seen, and as the prisoners 
 tottered by them in their rags, tears were on their 
 dusky cheeks. 
 
 Friendly hands had reared an arch over the road, 
 and in leaves and evergreehs we read the words, 
 " Welcome, brothers." 
 
 The released prisoners had now increased to 
 thousands, and as they tossed away their rags and 
 threw their wrecked hats into the air, the forest 
 rang with their screams of wild joy. The band was 
 playing the national airs, and the strongest men and 
 the bravest, who had never faltered at the cannon's 
 mouth, now gave way to nature's majesty. They 
 embraced the trees and kissed the ground, and 
 
182 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 falling upon their knees the sufferers raised their 
 skeleton arms above them, and, with eyes streaming 
 with tears, sent up an impassioned thanksgiving to 
 God as did the delivered tribes of Israel. 
 
 Some good genii that day seemed to have hung 
 Aladdin's lamp over our rags. We had but to touch 
 it and the earth blossomed with blessings, and 
 heavenly mercy seemed descending like the gentle 
 dew over the famished but freed captives. Above 
 them the flag of their country waved welcome to the 
 wanderers ; a flood of thoughts came thick and fast 
 upon them, and their hearts were leaping wildly in 
 their breasts. Already sweet visions rose before 
 them. Already their homes were in sight. The 
 sweet melody of their children's voices and holy 
 sounds of peace and home fell on their ears; and 
 wives, mothers and loved ones were waiting at the 
 gate! 
 
 " 'Tis sweet to hear the honest watch-dog's bark 
 Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home; 
 'Tis sweet to know an eye will mark our coming, 
 And look brighter when we come." 
 
 In pathos that scene beggars description, and can live 
 only in the memory of its witnesses. 
 
 I carried my poor burden to the margin of the 
 wood, and laid him tenderly down under a tall pine 
 
" ON LIBERTY'S BRIGHT EDGE." 183 
 
 from whose top the Union flag was floating full to 
 the breeze, and where the unknown boy might see it 
 wave its benediction over its dying defender. A few 
 comrades joined the sad little group and knelt. We 
 were not long delayed; I held his thin hand and a 
 prayer was said; and thus on liberty's bright edge, 
 with his failing eye resting on his country's flag, 
 somebody's darling lay while the angel of death 
 touched his cruel fetters and they fell, and his 
 immortal spirit mounted to its eternal freedom ! 
 
 As I looked into the tear-dimmed eyes of brave 
 men that day, the words of the sweet old song came 
 with their truth and power to my memory as never 
 before: 
 
 "Go watch the foremost rank in danger's dark career; 
 Be sure the hand most daring there has wiped away a 
 tear." 
 
 We followed the road like a disorganized mob; 
 no one seemed to be in charge, but soldiers in the 
 camps that we were constantly passing pointed us in 
 the direction of Wilmington, and soon it came in 
 sight. There was a group of prisoners who had in 
 the different prisons been my most intimate com- 
 panions and several of them had shared with me in 
 the perils and sufferings of five escapes. Those 
 whom I shall here name had but a week before 
 
184 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 escaped with me from Charlotte by running the 
 "dead-line" at night under the fire of the sentinels. 
 None of our party was hit, but a bullet through my 
 blouse collar showed a close escape. One poor 
 fellow on the same night, in making the attempt to 
 escape, was shot and killed. His bride, hearing of 
 the prospective exchange, was waiting for him at 
 Wilmington. 
 
 My immediate companions were Lieutenant 
 Wm. Bierbower, Lieutenant Eugene Weeks, Captain 
 Harry G. Dodge, Captain George L. Schell, and 
 Captain Wm. H. Nash. This group formed a subject 
 for which a painter might have sought in vain within 
 the range of civilization. We had all retained the 
 staffs used to help us through the swamps in our late 
 escape, and our appearance collectively suggested 
 the witches in Macbeth. Who ever has seen Char- 
 lotte Cushman in the character of Meg Merrilies 
 would see her costume outdone in that of Bierbower. 
 Weeks' chief covering consisted of half a blanket 
 which he boasted had gone through the Mexican war. 
 The number and size of its holes invited from Dodge 
 the observation that the rebellion had gone througL 
 the blanket. Dodge wore on his head the rim of a 
 Confederate hat, and his long light hair floated in a 
 fantastic tassel through the crown; his pantaloons 
 
"FOND MEMOBIAL OF HIS CAVALRY SEBVICE." 185 
 
 resembled in their varied patches the ruin of a 
 crazy quilt; he had on one foot a broken shoe of 
 immense size, while the opposite leg was hidden from 
 view in the top of a tall cavalry boot; but as there 
 was no foot whatever to it, we all suspected that he 
 retained it simply as a. fond memorial of his cavalry 
 service. 
 
 Schell had no hat at all, his head being wrapped 
 in an ancient bandana; his shoes he had made him- 
 self out of the sleeves of his coa^ and as he had no 
 shirt his arms were entirely bare. The ragged 
 remainder of the coat was secured at the throat with 
 a piece of rope, which gave one the impression that 
 he had just escaped lynching as a witch. 
 
 Nash, who was the tall man of the party, had 
 months before in some unknown way come in posses- 
 sion of a pair of tight riding pants several sizes too 
 small for- him, the bottoms barely reaching his knees. 
 He had on his feet an old torn pair of carpet slip- 
 pers, and as he had no stockings nor underclothing, 
 and had a hood made from a piece of an army 
 blanket on his head and a portion of a gray jacket 
 dinging to his shoulders, he would have preserved a 
 small farm easily from the devastation of crows. 
 
 As for myself, I was a poem in rags. I had the 
 mere remnant of the summer blouse and pantaloons 
 
186 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY^ 
 
 I had worn when captured at Gettysburg twenty- 
 months before. The sleeves of the blouse I had 
 long since sacrificed to make stockings with, and now 
 my feet were covered only with the sleeves of my 
 old red flannel shirt. Strings and wooden skewers 
 kept my tattered raiment clinging to my frail form, 
 for I had not one button in my entire wardrobe. I 
 wore on my head the rim of a chip hat, and what was 
 left of my old flannel shirt I clung to desperately; it 
 had now no sleeves, and from my frequent and 
 unskilful washing it had shrunk to such a degree 
 that persons at a distance might have mistaken it for 
 a coral necklace. Since it was of no visible use 
 except for my sore throat, I was openly charged by 
 my friends with wearing it around my neck for mere 
 style. If my mother had met me then, I had no 
 apparent means of convincing her that I was her son,' 
 except possibly by my vaccination marks. 
 
 Thus our group entered Wilmington on the first 
 day of March, 1865. 
 
 Several thousands of the released prisoners had 
 preceded us, and as we walked on in the middle of 
 the street without any fixed destination, soldiers and 
 citizens gazed on the tattered multitude from the 
 sidewalks and windows. None of us presumed to 
 walk on the sidewalk beside clean and civilized 
 
"MY TORN COSTUME AND DISMAL PLIGHT," 187 
 
 people; we kept the middle of tlie street, and 
 trudged aimlessly, homelessly, and happily on. 
 
 Suddenly from a group of soldiers and citizens 
 on the sidewalk I heard my name called, and looking 
 up saw a citizen approaching with extended hand. 
 Instantly, to my joy, I recognized Mr. William 
 Gutter, formerly the sutler of my regiment. How 
 he knew me he could hardly explain himself, as he 
 surveyed me in my torn costume and dismal plight. 
 In a few words he gladdened me with the informa- 
 tion that he was now the proprietor of a large store, 
 where, he said, I could get "anything from a needle 
 to an anchor," and -pay for it when Uncle Sam paid 
 me, that solid old relative being then in my debt for 
 nearly two years' pay as a* lieutenant. 
 
 He insisted that I should go with him forth- 
 with and be scrubbed, clothed and fed, and restored 
 to some semblance of a Christian. I gratefully 
 accepted his generous offer, only on the condition 
 that my destitute companions might share in my 
 good fortune, to which he cheerfully assented; and 
 after presenting them severally we followed our kind 
 friend to his store, keeping at a respectful distance, 
 that kept him laughing the whole way. 
 
 We entered his store, a substantial three-story 
 brick building, filled with soldiers making all kinds 
 
 14 
 
188 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 of purchases, and saw at once tliat the extent and 
 variety of its commodities fully justified his descrip- 
 tion. We pushed our way to the back of the store; 
 a clerk proceeded to take our measures for neat blue 
 fatigue suits, shoes, hats, and all. This done, we were 
 led up- stairs and given "something to warm us" in 
 our host's private apartments. 
 
 After a merry chat, a stout and smiling colored 
 servant entered and, bowing, electrified us with the 
 announcement: "Gemmen, yo' baffs is ready!" A 
 bath! Clean clothes! Our dinner ordered! The 
 steamer at the dock to take us to Annapolis next 
 morning, where two years' pay and a thirty days' 
 furlough awaited us! 
 
 It was too much for poor tramps to have 
 crowded into one day. We all cried again, and bit 
 our fingers, and stuck ourselves with pins, to see if 
 this was not another of those visions of sleep that 
 had so often illumined the darkness of those fearful 
 prisons. 
 
 We followed our dusky guide to the upper loft, 
 which was unoccupied save by some miscellaneous 
 storage. There was a large tub for each of us, two^ 
 thirds full of clear water in a tepid state ; beside each 
 was a chair on which was laid a heap of good rough 
 towels and a generous chunk of castile soap. I 
 
" WOULD BE BASE INGRATITJJDE." 189 
 
 smelt the soap, fondled it, and had a strong impulse 
 on me to eat it. 
 
 Several more servants entered and laid our new 
 clothes out on the floor. These outfits were com- 
 plete, and included underclothing, neat shoes, stock- 
 ings, handkerchiefs, tooth-brushes, etc., with our 
 names pinned to our property. There was an abund- 
 ance of good running water in the room. The 
 colored man swept our piled rags out the back 
 window, and they were promptly set fire to ; he then 
 left us with the assurance that we would not be dis- 
 turbed; we bolted the door, gave three cheers, and 
 "went in." ' 
 
 But, as the novelist would say, "let us draw the 
 curtain over this scene." If the reader thinks this 
 is giving undue prominence to so ordinary a thing 
 as a bath, let him put himself in our place, and bear 
 in mind that to us such a bath was no ordinary 
 thing, but a blessing rich and rare, and to ignore it 
 in this narrative would be base ingratitude. 
 
 When, in half an hour, arrayed in our new 
 suits, we came down to Mr. Cutter's rooms, where he 
 awaited us with "something to keep the chill off," he 
 pointed us out with pride to several Union Generals 
 who had "called in to see a man." Here the fra- 
 grance of an approaching dinner reached our senses 
 
190 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 that made us quickly lose interest in tlie conversa- 
 tion. But our kind host was not quite done with our 
 preparation, and the dinner was to be ready in three- 
 quarters of an hour. 
 
 He led us down the street a couple of squares 
 and into a neat barber shop, where in a few minutes 
 each of us was given a chair. Our long locks were 
 neatly cropped. We were shampooed, polished with 
 stiff brushes and combed until our scalps fairly 
 glowed, and we stepped into the street fragrant with 
 cologne. We started towards Mr. Cutter's, passing 
 on the way several groups of our late fellow pris- 
 oners, who, being still in rags, made way for us, and ! 
 gazed after us with the puzzled look of men who 
 vaguely thought they had seen us before. We each 
 felt certain that never before had these men looked so 
 utterly poverty-stricken. We returned with proper 
 courtesy the salutations of' those who recognized us, 
 but as we had an engagement we did not encourage 
 extended conversation. 
 
 We had gone but a little distance when I 
 recognized Lieutenant John Davidson, of the 6th 
 New York Heavy Artillery, an old fellow-prisoner, 
 approaching. He was accompanied by an emaciated, 
 blackened and tattered spectre. Davidson, pointing 
 to his companion, asked: "Do you know this com- 
 
"THE BLOODY PEACH. ORCHARD." 191 
 
 rade?" I looked at the poor wreck, and a strange 
 instinct rather than any external sign told me, in 
 spite of dirt and rags, that I knew that face and 
 form ; but before my scrutiny was completed, . the 
 Toice that pronounced my name revealed to me — my 
 brother Patrick. He had, unknown to me, been 
 wounded and captured near Petersburg the year 
 before, and had suffered at Danville, Salisbury and 
 Florence while I was held at other prisons. He was 
 my eldest brother aild a private in the 5th Michigan 
 •Infantry. This was my first meeting with him since 
 half an hour before the battle opened in the bloody 
 Peach Orchard at Gettysburg, where he had bade 
 me good-bye, his unvarying custom on the eve of a 
 battle. 
 
 He was indeed a sad wreck. I could not, how- 
 ever, induce him to return with me to Mr. Cutter's 
 store, to be provided for like myself, preferring, he 
 said, to wait until he reached Annapolis, for which 
 place he was to 'leave with other enlisted men by 
 steamer that evening. I got him to accept some 
 refreshments and some money, however, and promis- 
 ing to meet me soon at home he went off radiant 
 enough, enjoying a good cigar, which could ever 
 make him happy. 
 
192 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 Poor fellow! the cruel marks of His captivity 
 and wounds were afterwards carried to his grave. 
 As each of us stood there that day of our happy 
 deliverance, we little dreamt that our dear young 
 brother Thomas had died at Andersonville six months 
 before! It was a merciful ignorance that gave us 
 that one day of happiness in our soldier lives. 
 
 Our transformed party returned to Mr. Cutter's 
 store, and were taken upstairs to the private dining- 
 room and seated around a large circular table. A 
 door opened, and the aroma that assailed our senses 
 was positively overpowering. Heaven only knows 
 how welcome it was to men who had known the 
 dreadful torment of ceaseless hunger for so many 
 fearful months. We were surveying the white table 
 cloth, the napkins, the shining glasses, bright knives 
 and dishes, and several general officers had asked as 
 a special favor to be allowed to stay in the room and 
 see us eat that dinner. 
 
 It was soon borne in by waiters and laid smok- 
 ing hot before us. How can I hopS to describe that 
 banquet! I will not desecrate the delightful 
 remembrance of it by a tame and tasteless chronicle 
 of the savory edibles; let it be remembered that 
 in all those terrible months we had never tasted 
 coffee or tea, and now it was steaming before us in 
 neat cups, hot and delicious. 
 
" SPRINKLED THEIR PIE WITH HAPPY TEARS." 193 
 
 How the steaks, eggs, ham and smoking 
 potatoes, hot biscuits and sweet butter melted away 
 before us! How we winked and exchanged with 
 each other in pantomime the speechless expfessjpn 
 of our happiness! Schelland Dodge sprinkled their 
 pie with happy tears, and the rest of us could barely 
 z'esist the impulse of putting the remnants of the 
 repast in our pockets. 
 
 The banquet over, we lit cigars and went forth 
 for a stroll over the town, and with an air of pro- 
 prietorship that created a positive shade of coolness 
 between us and our late prison comrades, whom we 
 were frequently passing. What a smiling, friendly 
 look everything about us seemed to have! How we 
 all talked at the same time, like roystering school- 
 boys, about the happy home-returning, now so near! 
 
 It is not often in the lives of men that so much 
 of happiness follows so swiftly upon so much suffer- 
 ing, and is showered upon them in a single day. 
 
 It is said that death is sometimes caused by 
 both sudden grief and sudden joy. Certain it is that 
 many deaths occurred that day among the released 
 prisoners, and, judging from what I saw then among 
 men whom long and cruel sufferings of mind and 
 body had reduced and unnerved to the danger point, 
 I am convinced that in the wild tumult of their 
 
194 BASTILBS OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 sudden happiness there was more than one instance 
 where the feeble spark of life was extinguished in 
 the flood of joy that overwhelmed them on the bright 
 BHbre of liberty. 
 
 On March 2d we boarded the steamer General 
 Sedgwick and steamed out to Cape Fear in sight of 
 Fort Fisher, upon whose ramparts our brave com- 
 rades had so recently planted the Stars and Stripes ; 
 and after a rough night ofE the North Carolina coast 
 we entered the Chesapeake and landed at the Naval 
 Academy, Annapolis, where we were greeted with 
 music and cheers and a royal welcome. 
 
 The quaint old Maryland capital was soon 
 swarming with prisoners; the enlisted men finding 
 comfortable quarters and good fare in the barracks 
 at " Camp Parole," adjacent to the town, while the 
 officers, having the liberty of the city, sought 
 quarters in the hotels, or were given accommodations 
 in private residences. The little postoffice and the 
 telegraph office were soon besieged by eager throngs 
 of the prisoners, and mails were soon speeding and 
 every wire humming with the glad tidings of their 
 liberation to their loved ones. 
 
 Within a few days, under a general order, three 
 months' pay proper was given to the men "on 
 account," and this generous promptness of the Gov- 
 
"HOST OF THEIR MARTYRED BROTHERS." 195 
 
 ernment, wliicli for once in history broke loose from 
 red tape, was quickly followed by the issuance of 
 thirty days' furlough to each officer and soldier. 
 
 And thus, after unparalleled trials in which 
 enduring affection for each other had been welded in 
 the fire of long suffering,, old comrades bade each 
 other a loTing God-speed and farewell, and forgot 
 not to shed their tears of sympathy for the host of 
 their martyred brothers sleeping at Andersonville, 
 Salisbury, Millen, Florence and Belle Isle. 
 
 I was made happier still by the prompt and 
 kind notice of my Colonel, Michael W. Burns, of my 
 promotion from Second Lieutenant to Captain of my 
 company, my commission from Governor- Fenton 
 dating the first of March, 1865, the day of my 
 release from a captivity of twenty months in six 
 prisons, during which I had made five escapes, being 
 each time re-taken. In a few days, with my f arlough 
 in my pocket and happiness in my heart, I was on 
 the train speeding home. 
 
 A month from then the curtain went down at 
 Appomattox. The great Eebellion, with its blood, 
 bitterness and tears, and the cruel Bastiles of the 
 Confederacy, were things of the pathetic past. 
 
CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 Twenty-live Years After — "Peace on Earth; 
 Good Will Toward Men." 
 
 ON the second of July, 1888, exactly twenty-five 
 years after I had been wounded and taken 
 prisoner near the gate of the Sherfy house 
 at Gettysburg, I re- visited the great battle-field. I 
 stood with my daughter beside me, and some visit- 
 ing comrades and friends, on the summit of " Round 
 Top." A group of visitors, including some Confed- 
 erates, with their wives beside them, around us, their 
 children mingling with those of the Union veterans, 
 were searching in merry and eager rivalry for bul- 
 lets and stray mementoes of the battle. A guide was 
 pointing out the places and objects of greatest inter- 
 est to the audience, as all gazed in rapture over the 
 magnificent valley stretching away before us, clothed 
 in the emerald robe of summer. 
 
 A few yards behind us rose the rocky spur 
 where a stone marks the spot where Vincent and 
 Hazlett died together in the hot struggle for Round 
 
 Top. Beside us, the steep declivity up which our 
 
 196 
 
p. ^'^ 
 
"BLOODY AND INACCESSIBLE GRAVES." 197 
 
 Union artillerists had dragged their guns with ropes 
 in those critical moments in which the gallant, 
 quick-eyed Warren had bid the signal flags keep 
 waving, as he . dashed away to hurry up the 
 approaching infantry. Below us, from the glen, rose 
 the moss-bearded and weird rocks of Devil's Den, 
 whose crests and niches had given shelter to the 
 crouching Southern sharpshooters, and whose .deep, 
 ghostly caverns had given them bloody and inacces- 
 sible graves. 
 
 Among us stood a group of Signal Corps 
 veterans with their flags, and these were waving to 
 the distant Seminary Bidge, not the old signals of 
 battle, but the nobler messages of peace. Inter- 
 preted, these were the words: "Peace on earth, good 
 will towards men"; and they were borne across the 
 battle-field to the Seminary cupola from which Lee 
 had watched the struggle in '63. 
 
 Prom the base of the hill where we stood, a 
 narrow, quiet lane stretched along and bordered the 
 wheat field, passing monuments that stood like white 
 sentinels to mark the line where the Emmetts- 
 burg road enters the bloody Peach Orchard and goes 
 creeping toward the town. Along this angled line it 
 was that the Third Corps, under the gallant Sickles, 
 had met the savage assault of Longstreet in the 
 
198 BASTILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 second day's battle, and where the soldiers of the 
 North and South lay across each other in mangled 
 and ghastly heaps. 
 
 To the right, beyond the low ewale, still stood 
 the "little clnmp of trees" on which Lee had fixed 
 his eyes at the supreme moment in the last day, and 
 where he cast the losing die of Confederacy in 
 Pickett's furious onset. 
 
 Still beyond rose the slope to the beautiful 
 Cemetery Hill, with its semi-circle of graves. Sum- 
 mer" vines and roses canopied the little pavillion 
 where the martyred President and Emancipator had 
 uttered words of eloquence that will outlast the 
 monuments that symbolize the nation's gratitude to 
 its slain defenders. From her white throne rising 
 above the green summit the fair Liberty goddess 
 looks lovingly down upon the peaceful graves of her 
 sleeping sons. 
 
 Beyond the town and valley the Blue Mountain 
 wall goes rolling through fair Maryland, and rocky 
 gateways curtained in soft haze mark the mountain 
 paths to the valley of the Cumberland, once the 
 blazing path of the invader from the Susquehanna to 
 the Potomac. 
 
 As we gazed in awe over the superb scene, 
 recalling the hour when these hills rocked under the 
 
"LEE'S RETREATING AND DEFEATED HOST." 199 
 
 deafening thunder of cannon, and looked upon the 
 fields beneath us smiling with golden-bearded wheat 
 and tasselling corn, where death once gathered a 
 cruel and crimson harvest and two great armies had 
 faced each other for three days in a leaden hurricane 
 of death, what memories the scene invoked! What 
 blood and tears, what heartburn and woe our country 
 had known since last I saw this field in the battle 
 smoke! What mighty events and marvellous changes 
 in the land since I crossed yonder mountains in a 
 fierce midnight storm with Lee's retreating and 
 defeated host! 
 
 The fields were now humming with the sounds 
 of peace; monuments rose on every hand; and as far 
 as the eye could reach showed patriotic pilgrims and 
 gray-haired veterans where horse, rider, friend and 
 foe had gone down in one red burial. 
 
 From the branches of a cedar a red-breasted 
 robin was sending up his melody of peace — a love 
 greeting to the living and a tender requiem for the 
 dead; while over all the majestic panorama the 
 descending sun shed its divine halo. 
 
 The soldier who has learned amid suffering the 
 true significance of the words "my country" cannot 
 look upon such a picture unmoved. None caa love the 
 child like the mother who has suffered for its sake. 
 
200 BA8TILES OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 None can love the land like the soldier who has bled 
 and endured all for its preservation in battle-field 
 a'nd dungeon. To know how sweet a thing is liberty, 
 it must be seen through prison bars. To see the 
 beauty of our flag and comprehend the true signifi,- 
 cance of the beloved emblem, it must be hidden 
 from the eyes of its followers in arctic nights, and 
 from its defenders suffering for months and years in 
 the cruel dungeons of the foe, then suddenly through 
 the night of despair shine forth from the shore of 
 liberty like the rainbow and the glow of the aurora. 
 The soldier who thus stands on Round Top and 
 views the majestic picture before him, and remem- 
 bers the story those hills and valleys tell, will find 
 the words of Scott whispering to his heart: 
 
 " Breathes there a man with soul so dead 
 Who never to himself hath said: 
 ' This is my own — my native land!' " 
 
 A soldier's benediction on our country, from the 
 pebbled beach of Superior to the everglades and 
 orange groves along the southern gulf, and from sea 
 to sea! 
 
 Hail and God-speed to the ship of state, with 
 her precious freight of freedom! New dangers may 
 indeed arise, and false lights seek to lure her to 
 dangerous rocks and treacherous shoals. But the 
 
"HER HIGH AND HOLY DSSTINY." 201 
 
 same divine hand that guided her through the red 
 tempest of the Eebellion will be her pilot still. 
 Patriots yet unborn will be on her decks to defend 
 her, and Washington's warning, "Eternal vigilance 
 is the price of liberty," will ever be her watchword 
 as she speeds majestically on her course to the 
 shining shores of her high and holy destiny. 
 
 "Fear not each sudden sound and shock; 
 'Tis of the wave, and not the rock, 
 'Tis but the flapping of the sail. 
 And not a rent made by the gale. 
 In spite of rock and tempest roar, 
 In spite of false lights on the shore. 
 Sail on! nor fear to breast the sea; 
 Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee; 
 Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 
 Our faith triumphant o'er our fears. 
 Are all with thee, are all with thee." 
 
iiiSS