Author 
 
 ^'i*Op 
 
 O 
 
 Title 
 
 „...X- 
 
 Imprint 
 
 16—47372-3 SP 
 
A FASTIDIOUS PRISONER 
 
 ALBERT E. WINSHIP. 
 
 A REPLY TO 
 
 COLD CHEER AT CAiMP MORTON." 
 
 A work of fiction in the April Century. 
 
 [ Reprinted from Boston Traveller, Cleveland Leader, Chicago 
 Inter-Ocean, Indianapolis Jourttal, New Haven Paladium, and 
 other journals in which it appeared simultaneously.] 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 3 Somerset Street, 
 
" Ez fer war, I call it murder, — 
 Ther you hev it plain and flat ; 
 I don't want to go no furder * 
 
 Than my Testyment fer that." 
 
 Lowell. — The Biglow Papers. 
 
 " The land that is not worth our death 
 Is not worth living for." 
 
 " In the good time coming 
 Nations shall not quarrel." 
 
 " War, that mad game the world so loves to play." 
 
 " Thank God ! the fathers need not blush to own the 
 sons to-day " ( 1861 ). 
 
 " There was war in the skies ! " 
 
 " At the wars, do as they do at wars." 
 
 " War is as ancient as human nature." 
 
 " Civil war is a hideous and repugnant thing." 
 
 " Caesar's spirit raging for revenge." 
 
 " Farwell ! Othello's occupation's gone." 
 
 " Not one can choose his attitude of doing." 
 
 " The worthy cause has triumphed." 
 
 " The cruel war is over." 
 
 " War wins an awful glory." 
 
 " Hurrah ! sheathe your swords ! we have won ! we 
 have won ! " 
 
 
J 
 
 i 
 
 "COLD CHEER" INDEED, 
 
 A FASTIDIOUS REBEL PPvISONER OBJECTS 
 TO YANKEE TREATMENT. 
 
 He Complains that Camp Morton Lacked 
 the Usual Comforts of Home. 
 
 fROM luxurious apartments on Madison 
 avenue, a professional gentleman, a 
 Confederate soldier, a prisoner at Indian- 
 apolis in 1864, writes a work of liction for 
 the April Century^ under the title, " Cold 
 Cheer at Camp Morton." 
 
 Both the adjectives and illustrations are 
 chosen for their effect, rather than for 
 their relation to fact. If the article were 
 sure to be carefully read, there would be 
 no occasion to reply to it, for it furnishes 
 its own internal evidence of unreliability. 
 For twenty-five years the writer has 
 undoubtedly been giving private rehearsals 
 
of prison experiences, enlarging upon 
 them as his imagination broadened and 
 intensified, until at last he has gone into 
 print, more anxious to live up to his oral 
 versions than to keep within the bounds of 
 reason. Upon this theory only can one 
 account for such a story. When the 
 adjectives and the overstatements are 
 eliminated, this recital of " Cold Cheer " is 
 little more than a petulant complaint that 
 as prisoners of war they were not feasted 
 and feted as distinguished guests. All 
 that we ask is that it be read with the 
 distinct understanding that its author 
 writes of war times ; that he was a prisoner 
 of war, and was fed and clothed by the 
 government. 
 
 He makes four general charges : abusive 
 treatment, cruelty, starvation, and freezing 
 to death. He bases the charge of abusive 
 treatment upon the fact that prisoners 
 were sometimes struck because they would 
 not cease talking when an officer was pass- 
 ing. It is a matter of official report that 
 it was practically impossible for an officer 
 to go through the camp without being 
 
insulted. It was more difficult to disci- 
 pline the prison in this regard than it was 
 our own camp. The prisoners would 
 stroll near the sentrj- and mutter epithets, 
 for which, if spoken under other circum- 
 stances, they would have been imme- 
 diately chastised. I recall a Sunday when 
 they were holding open-air services. The 
 preacher, in a prolonged prayer, plied 
 anathemas so "thick and fast,'' amid 
 jubilant "x'Vmens," that I asked for 
 authority to see that he ceased praying to 
 he heard of men. This was not granted, 
 and he continued to shout his abuse of 
 the soldiers, officers, Yankee land, and the 
 President. I never knew a case in which 
 a man was slapped in the face for it, but I 
 knew a thousand men who were ready for 
 such a fray. I presume some men yielded 
 .to the provocation when officers or visitors 
 were insulted. Suffice it to say that the 
 abuse was provoked. 
 
 The charge of cruelty is broadly made. 
 But the writer admits that the most bar- 
 barous act of cruelty was perpetrated by 
 himself. According to his story, there 
 
were some fellows among the prisoners 
 who would eat from the hospital swill bar- 
 rel. Patients were allowed some luxuries 
 denied the other prisoners. Uneaten por- 
 tions went into the swill. Finding a 
 fellow who had yielded to this tempta- 
 tion, Wyeth and a few companions 
 ducked him head foremost in the hospital 
 swill barrel. This was by far the most 
 heartless and indecent thing ever done 
 in the history of Camp Morton, and this 
 Century article has revealed for the first 
 time the name of one of the perpetrators 
 of this outrage. It was " cold cheer," in- 
 deed, for one prisoner. 
 
 Here are some of the gravest charges 
 of cruelty : — 
 
 Arrived at Camp Morton at 10 o'clock 
 P. M. in early October, where, " no pro- 
 vision having been made for us, we slept, 
 or tried to sleep, through the cold night in 
 the open air upon the ground^ Well, 
 well ! What did he expect ? Speak out, 
 Grand Army boys, and recite tlie in- 
 stances in which you have arrived at 
 camp where no provision had been made 
 
for you. Did you ever sleep, or try to 
 sleep, through an early October night in 
 the open air upon the ground ? Why, 
 you could fairly make his blood curdle by 
 reciting your experiences ! 
 
 He was taken with a chill in the morn- 
 ing, could not be admitted to the hospital 
 till two o'clock in the afternoon, and was 
 given a bed upon which a man had died. 
 This may be a strange experience for a 
 Southern soldier, but it was common 
 enough with the "boys in blue." The 
 incoming of a large number of unexpected 
 guests, who had not sent on notice of 
 their physical condition, might naturally 
 surprise a hospital ; and a few hours of 
 waiting in the middle of the day by a 
 person not wounded, who simply com- 
 plained of a chill, will hardly be accepted 
 as cruelty by the average Union soldier. 
 Unfortunately, it was not the custom of 
 the Union army to destroy the couches 
 upon which men chanced to die. It is 
 evident that the authorities did not realize 
 what a fastidious youth they had on 
 hand. 
 
The camp had been a fair ground, the 
 stables of which were used as barracks. 
 These were shingled, he admits, and did 
 not leak, but there was no floor. This 
 was a grave omission I It was simply 
 cruel for the United States government 
 not to floor the spare chamber in which it 
 was entertaining distinguished- guests; but 
 in that day the aesthetic nature was not 
 developed in the ''wild and woolly West," 
 as at present. The sides of the building 
 were not clapboarded, but were battened, 
 and on one occasion there was a draft. A 
 careful examination of the official records 
 shows that no complaint was ever made of 
 this draft, so that the government is 
 really not responsible for allowing such 
 exposure. 
 
 " The entrance was through a large 
 barn door at each end." As there was an 
 abundance of room to pass out and in, 
 there could be no objection to this, except 
 from the aesthetic standpoint. 
 
 There were four tiers of bunks, the 
 lowest one foot from the ground, the sec- 
 ond three feet above that, and the third 
 
three feet higher. As this is precisely 
 the height from the floor and the space 
 allowed in a Pullman 'palace, car^ — for 
 which we pay two dollars a night, — we 
 incline to think this charge should be 
 turned over to some modern reformatory 
 society. 
 
 "No straw for bedding." Come, "boys 
 in blue," speak up. Aren't you ashamed 
 to think of a " boy in gray " being forced 
 to spend a night in a bunk without straw? 
 Why didn't you share your luxurious bed- 
 ding with this tender youth ? Let every- 
 one who luxuriated on straw, feathers, or 
 a hair mattress at once send a note of 
 apology for such a lack of hospitality. I 
 know one regiment, at least, which would 
 have been willing to give him all the 
 straw it ever had. 
 
 " Each man was allowed but one 
 blanket." Cruel boys ! why did you not 
 give him some of your spare blankets? 
 But possibly, like a regiment I knew, 
 you had but one blanket each, which had 
 to serve as bed and coverlet. 
 
 " There were but four stoves to each 
 
\ 
 
 10 
 
 barrack." I have heard of barracks in 
 which one would have been a luxury. To 
 think that these guests had but four stoves 
 is the depth of humiliation. T never heard 
 anything like it. If he ivill go to Indian- 
 apolis now^ he will stand a chance of a 
 ivarmer reception. 
 
 He paid fifteen cents for an ear of corn ! 
 Now, I paid twenty-five centsfor an ear of 
 corn, and was right glad to get it at that ; 
 but that doesn't count, for I was a Union 
 soldier, and was not expected to receive 
 the same treatment as our guests. If Ave 
 could find out who was so discourteous as 
 to charge anything, we would punish him 
 by some mild process. We could hardly 
 have the heart to " duck him head-fore- 
 most in a hospital swill barrel." 
 
 " Our letters were scanned at the camp 
 post-office." This is not an uncommon 
 prison experience in times of peace, and 
 needs no comment. 
 
 " Jewelry was stolen from our mail." 
 This was indeed cruel. It is too much to 
 believe. If he can identify the wretch, 
 we will try to have him court-martialled, 
 
11 
 
 even at this late day, for it was a ''cruel " 
 thing to steal jewelry from the mail of a 
 pris(jner of war. There was never sirch a 
 charge made regarding Andersonville, 
 Libby, or Belle Isle. 
 
 " We were forced to dig a ditch to pre- 
 vent ourselves from escaping." I have no 
 language with which to express my indig 
 nation at such cruelty. We would have 
 dug it ourselves, had we realized how it 
 was going to sound twenty-five years 
 later, when the Qentunj presented it in 
 such " Cold Cheer." 
 
 The fence was twenty feet high and 
 smooth, and the sentries were upon the 
 parapet outside, and the prisoners could 
 only see their heads and shoulders. The 
 lamps were so placed that the sentries 
 could see the prisoners, but it was with 
 difficulty that the prisoners could see the 
 sentries, and their beats were so ar- 
 ranged that there was never more than 150 
 feet unguarded at one time. 
 
 These are, indeed, grave charges. The 
 fence ought not to have been more than 
 six feet high, should not have been smooth. 
 
12 
 
 and the sentries shonld certainly have had 
 more than their head and sliouklers ex- 
 posed. The lamps ought certainly to have 
 been faced the other way, so that sentries 
 could have been seen while they could 
 not see. It would seem as though a hun- 
 dred and fifty feet was as much unguarded 
 parapet as could have been reasonably 
 asked ; but, of course, that is a matter of 
 taste. 
 
 One man, havingsuccessfully scaled this 
 smooth, twenty-foot fence, despite the 
 lamp, wrote to his comrades that he was 
 all right in Kentucky. This tempted 
 seven others to try it. " Four brave 
 fellows," of these seven, were captured, 
 and they were placed with their backs 
 against a tree, their arms extended above 
 their heads, and there they had to stand 
 through the night. He waxes eloquent 
 upon this terrible cruelty. It was, indeed, 
 unkind not to put them in bed and care- 
 fully nurse them, so that they would have 
 strength to make a successful break the 
 next time. He describes in detail the 
 chivalric way these "brave fellows" 
 
treated the sentry. Some forty picked 
 men organized themselves for escape and 
 made ladders, '■'■armed themselves with 
 stones, pieces of ivood, and bottles,'" and 
 '■'•made a rush, pelted the sentries, and the 
 entire assaulting party gamed the outside. 
 Some few men were recaptured, but the 
 majority reached Canada or the South." 
 I was on guard that night, and shall 
 never forget our indignation that no 
 punishment was meted out to the " brave 
 fellows " of stone, ivood, and bottle fame 
 who were recaptured. 
 
 A detail composed of prisoners was 
 selected to accompany the garbage wagon 
 to some distant point outside the walls. 
 Five persons at a preconcerted signal 
 seized the two guards, disarmed them, and 
 escaped. At another time two men " were 
 mortally wounded by a ball, the assassin 
 doing his work so well that the same ball 
 passed through both bodies." Upon this 
 he dwells with unusual bitterness. It 
 was a "brave fellow " always who iArew 
 stones, ivood, and bottles, who seized and 
 bound the guard ; it was an assassin 
 
14 
 
 always who objected to being bound. 
 
 As to the general charge of starvation. 
 He says they had daily a dish of vegetable 
 soup, a loaf of bread, seven inches long 
 and three and a half deep and wide, and a 
 piece of meat.- On this diet, he says, 
 multitudes starved to death, and were 
 always so hungry that a rat or dog could 
 not come within reach without being 
 killed and eaten. There is no account- 
 ing for taste. If a man with a full loaf 
 of bread, a piece of meat, and a dish of 
 vegetable soup desired rats and dogs for 
 dessert, it is no concern of ours ; but 
 when he says that men were starving to 
 death upon such diet, we decline to 
 revolutionize the history of a quarter of a 
 centur}^ upon such testimony. 
 
 The remaining charge is that multi- 
 tudes froze to death. Not that they were 
 cold or uncomfortable, but literally /ro^e 
 to death. The camp was in a grove, and 
 was inclosed by a close fence twenty feet 
 high. They were all quartered in bar- 
 racks ; each having four stoves ; each man 
 with a blanket. He says that each four 
 
15 
 
 men formed a combine, using one blanket 
 under them and three over them, and then 
 they froze to death! He saw eighteen 
 frozen to death one morning ! I No imag- 
 ination in this, of course. No enhirge- 
 ment of the facts in twenty-five years ? 
 
 That same night the sentry was walk- 
 ing upon a bleak parapet, twenty feet in 
 the air. In the howling wind, blinding- 
 snow, or stinging cold, as the case might 
 be, he had not a single blanket in that ex- 
 posed place, and yet he never froze so 
 much as an ear. 
 
 There used to be some tall swearing 
 done by the sentries on those nights, as, 
 in their loneliness, they braved the 
 weather, while the prisoners were com 
 fortably freezing to death, shut in by the 
 high fence, amply protected by the bar 
 racks, with four stoves, and under three 
 blankets. 
 
 If anybody cares to believe that eigh 
 teen prisoners froze to death under these 
 circumstances, he is welcome to his faith 
 in the " Cold Cheer " story. We have no 
 interest in the opinion of any man who 
 
16 
 
 can read tliat article and believe that 
 there was much unjustifiable abuse or 
 serious cruelty, who can believe that one 
 man ever starved or froze to death. In 
 one respect "• Cold Cheer " is cheering. 
 What a world of possibilities it opens up 
 to the Union soldiers. All that is needed 
 is a few years for the play of the imagina- 
 tion to do its perfect work, as it has done 
 in the case of the author of " Cold Cheer." 
 Thus much for the work of fiction as 
 illuminated in the Century. Now a word 
 as to the facts. General Henry B. Car- 
 rington of the regular army, a graduate 
 of Yale, a scholarly gentleman, a thor- 
 ough business man, was in command 
 of the departjuent of Indiana, and de- 
 voted himself faithfully and conscien- 
 tiously to making Camp Mortoii a model 
 prison camp, and his pride in his charge, 
 if nothing else, would have prompted 
 hira to keep it in first-class condition, for 
 it was constantly visited by the digni- 
 taries. General Alvin P. Hovey, in an 
 official report, September 4, 1865, says : 
 " I repeatedly, with pride, conducted visi- 
 
17 
 
 tors to Camp Morton to show the military 
 discipline and the order and neatness that 
 prevailed throughout the barracks and 
 prison." It was scrupulously neat and 
 every way comfortable for army life, but 
 it may seem very cruel and non-aesthetic 
 and insufficient to the gentleman, in his 
 spacious Madison - avenue apartments. 
 Why, it seems cruel to some of the Union 
 soldiers to think of having but thirteen 
 dollars a month for self and home. 
 
 General Carrington, in a detailed official 
 report of July 2, 1866, says : " In 1863-4, 
 when daily visits to every camp were nec- 
 essary, this duty was of the most exacting 
 kind. More than eleven thousand men 
 were in camp at one time. They had to 
 be fed and mainly clothed." From copies 
 of his official correspondence at the time, 
 it appears the barracks used by prisoners 
 were first used by our own troops. When 
 the prisoners arrived, these barracks icere 
 given to the prisoners, and the Union sol- 
 diers occupied tents and temporary sheds. 
 The barracks occupied by the prisoners — 
 *'barn doors"' and all — were every way 
 
• 18 
 
 the same as those occupied by the Union 
 soldiers. 
 
 The only instance in which there was 
 any uncleanliness or raggedness was at 
 the time of an unusual influx of prisoners 
 after the fall of Donaldson. The men 
 were in a terrible condition — broken 
 down physically, ragged, uncleanly, pale, 
 hungry, even emaciated. The death rate 
 following their arrival was large, due 
 partly to previous starvation. The atten- 
 tion given to their comfort and health by 
 the officers and troops was as great as it 
 could have been for the " boys in blue. " 
 Hospital tents were pitched, and, as by 
 magic, plastered buildings were erected 
 for them. 
 
 There was never a day, even under the 
 greatest pressure, that the food was not 
 Avholesome and of full quantity. I well 
 remember the attention shown Colonel 
 Morgan and his party. They requested 
 to be by themselves, and were given tents 
 with flies, and, at their request, oyster 
 stew was furnished for supper upon the 
 evening of their arrival. The prisoners 
 
19 
 
 always had as good food as our troops, 
 slightly lighter in quantit}', because they 
 did no duty. 
 
 I was at Camp Morton a few months 
 since. It is a fair grcumd once more. 
 Beautiful horses are stabled there. Each 
 has corn, for which he does not pay fifteen 
 cents an ear : each has one blanket, and 
 straw upon which to lie. There are no 
 end "barndoors" to his barracks; there 
 is no draft, and there is a floor to his spare 
 chamber. He does not have the mail in- 
 spected, and no jewelry is ever witldield. 
 His camp is kept scrupulously neat, and 
 he never has to go with the garbage wag- 
 on. He never eats rats or dogs, and is 
 never ducked head foremost in the hos- 
 pital swill barrel. 
 
 Looking upon these isleek animals, 1 
 said, " What a contrast between the way 
 these dumb animals are housed, fed, and 
 petted and the way the Union soldiers 
 lived!" It was a crnel war, but we all 
 fared well for army life, and the prisoners 
 at Camp Morton fared luxuriously for 
 prisoners of war. 
 
mmm 
 
 
 
 liii'^^'i 
 
 
 ifiliii 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 013 704 655 6