War Memories of an Army Chaplain
H. Clay Trumbull
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898
War Memories of an Army Chaplain
H. Clay Trumbull
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898
CHAPTER XI - Page 253
PRISON EXPERIENCES
From Charleston we were taken by a night train to Columbia. We were in a
comfortable first-class car, with our accompanying guard. We slept and waked
by turns as we rode, with an occasional glimpse of some peculiarly Southern
sight of those war-time days. At Branchville, an important junction, where we
made quite a stop, lunch-tables in the open air were along the
station platform, at which negro “mammies” were selling “snacks” of fried
chicken and corn-cakes, with hot rye coffee, to Confederate soldiers, who were
the only white men we saw on the route, while blazing torches of “light wood”
(pieces of dense pitch pine), swung by negro men, or piled on standing
mortar-boards on the platform, cast their weird glare over the picturesque
scene, sending their clouds of smoke outward and upward as a relieving
background.
Reaching Columbia in the early morning, we were taken to the office of Colonel
Preston, the post commandant, where we waited for his representative to appear.
On the arrival of the adjutant, he received us as prisoners from the
Charleston guard, and we were taken to Richland jail for confinement. It is
not often that going to jail is a joy to a soldier; but, in view of my
Charleston experiences in solitary confinement, it was with a glad heart that I
passed the doors of the jail in Columbia, and found myself once more in the
companionship of my friend Adjutant Camp, and his fellow Union officers.
Prison life in Columbia was more tolerable than prison life in
Charleston, although it was still prison life, and therefore hard for a soldier
in war time. The jail itself was more like a large private dwelling than like
a fortress. It was near the center of the city, on one of the principal
streets, close by the Town Hall, underneath which was the city market. The
jail windows were iron-barred, but light and air had free ingress, and it was
pleasant for us to watch the signs of life outside, day by day.
A central passageway from front to rear divided the six rooms on the lower
floor. Back of the jail was an open yard, with rude barrack structures, on the
one hand for laundry work and storage, and on the other hand for extra
prisoners in an emergency. Beyond this was a large printing and lithographic
establishment, in where were prepared the treasury notes of the Confederate
government, and through the windows of which were to be seen bright-faced young
women at work. Sentries paced their beat on all sides of the jail building,
day and night. Two connecting rooms on one side of the lower floor were
occupied by our Union army officers at the time I entered. In the third room
on that side, at the rear, were Confederate prisoners, conscript deserters, and
others under special charges. Across the hall from our rooms there was a small
room near the front, in which was a Union officer from Tennessee, under
suspended death sentence as a deserter from the Confederate army. He was
watched day and night by a soldier chained, or secured, to him, so as to
preclude all possibility of escape. The back room on the same side was at that
time used as quarters for the prison guard. The middle room was just then
vacant, but it was subsequently occupied by naval officers captured in Admiral
Dahlgren's unsuccessful assault on Fort Sumter.
On the second floor of the jail were confined for a time a hundred and more of
our enlisted men, taken prisoner on Morris Island, and in another room various
Confederate prisoners. Enlisted men of the navy, captured in the assault on
Fort Sumter, were, when brought in, assigned to the barrack buildings in the
back yard.
The only furniture in our two rooms was a rude two-story bedstead, or pair of
berths, looking like one plain table set on top of another, capable of holding
eight officers; also a long pine table, on which three more officers could
stretch themselves at night. The other officers slept on the floor, with such
covering as they could obtain from outside. If we had money, as some of us
had, we could purchase little conveniences through officers of the guard.
Adjutant Camp and I purchased a bed-tick of common brown sheeting, and had it
filled with dry pine needles; also a similar pillowcase filled with corn-husks.
An officer of the guard loaned us a blanket. This fitted us out very
comfortably for the night, and the bed, when rolled up, was a good seat by day.
On the tower of the Town Hall near us was an iron-railed balcony, just below
the clock face, where a vigilant lookout paced his nightly rounds. At 8.45 the
curfew bell was rung vigorously as a signal for the housing of negro slaves all
over the city, and the making ready for the night. Fifteen minutes later, when
the clock had ceased its strokes of nine, the watchman's voice rang out in a
peculiar tone that could be heard afar in the stilly night:
“Pa-ast ni-i-ne o'clock!”
At 9.15 his encouraging cry in the same tone was:
“All-s we-ell!”
At the half-hour his cry was as at the full hour, and at the third quarter as
at the first. This continued through the night. It was a pleasant survival of
the old English custom, which had its attractions because its suggestions of
watchfulness. If the Southern air had been cooler in July and August, and
mosquitoes and vermin had been fewer and less active, we might have slept
composedly on our prison-floor bed.
Daily rations were furnished us of beef or ham, and corn-meal and rice. These
we must cook or have cooked for ourselves, and, if we desired anything more, we
could purchase it at our own cost. Slave women were coming and going, in the
early morning, in the vicinity of the market, with supplies of fruits and
vegetables, and coffee and its substitutes; and from them we could purchase
what we would, with the permission of our guard. We employed a slave woman to
cook for our officers' mess. After several experiments in this line, we
settled down on “Old Maggie,” a typical Southern mammy. She was perhaps
seventy years old, a gray-haired, yellow-skinned, wrinkled granny, barefooted,
and wearing a red-and-white checked turban, and a scant-skirted homespun gown.
Quite short, very thin, active, and animated, she was efficient and
determined, and served us faithfully. She had sixteen children, and
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in corresponding numbers. Her owner
lived up in the country, and she hired her time of him at two dollars a week,
while she had a stall in the market, and did outside jobs. Two of her
great-grandchildren were her immediate attendants. While ordinarily
good-natured, she could, on occasion, scold and swear immoderately.
Prices for fruit and vegetables in their season were reasonable; but those for
coffee, milk, and sugar, were beyond all reason, in Confederate money. Rio
coffee cost seven dollars a pound; therefore it could not be afforded as a
daily beverage. We used in place of it ground parched-rye, or barley, or
Indian corn. The daily question was, “Shall we have Ri-o coffee or ry-e
to-day?” Milk was then fifty cents a quart, and butter was three dollars a
pound. Poor tallow candles cost us seventy-five cents each. A common crockery
plate cost two dollars, and a bowel the same. Two iron spoons were bought by
us for a dollar. We paid three dollars for a horn comb, and two dollars for a
tooth-brush. Yet we were glad to have these things at even these prices.
Each day we were permitted to have an hour in the yard for exercise, a few
officers at a time. This was a great relief. We were like school-boys at
recess. Wrestling, quoit-pitching, leap-frog, hopscotch, and boys' games
generally, were the order of the hour. We also did our own clothes washing at
such times. There was a hydrant in the yard, but water from the pipes was too
warm for drinking. The special privilege was given us of going out, two at a
time, under guard, to draw water from a cool well at a considerable distance
from the jail. This was a coveted service. It was looked upon as a promotion
to be “a drawer of water” for our comrades. Little honors were great ones in
prison. After a while this privilege was taken from us, because of its offense
to citizens, who disliked the appearance of Yankee prisoners on their streets.
One day, as Adjutant Camp and I drank from the bucket on the well-curb, two
little boys were watching us. As we turned away, one of them said feelingly:
“I was goin' to ha' drinked, but them Yanks ha' spoiled the well.”
And it was too bad.
The officers of our guard were soldiers temporarily disabled for more active
service. As soldiers they gave us soldierly treatment. We were grateful for
their immediate course towards us. Yet we were their prisoners, and as such we
were necessarily in a hostile attitude toward them. We represented the Federal
government; they represented the Confederacy. They held us in confinement,
without any promise on our part. It was our duty to escape if we could. It
was their duty to prevent our doing so. We were desirous of getting
information from without. They tried to keep it from us. All this called for
alertness on both sides.
We could almost always depend on the slaves to aid us to the extent of their
ability. They tried various ways of getting to us the daily papers, which we
were denied by the authorities. At first they concealed a paper in their
garments, and managed to deliver it under the eye of a corporal or sergeant of
the guard, who always came in with our cook. Some of us would get between him
and her, and engage him in conversation, or arrest his attention by some
altercation, while she passed over the paper. When this plan was discovered,
the cook was searched before she entered, and we had to try another way. For a
time the small newspaper, closely folded, was put inside of a large loaf of
corn-cake, hollowed out for the purpose; but when they learned of this, they
cut open every loaf before it was given to us. Then we tried a new plan.
Picking up in the back yard a tin blacking-box cover, we fitted its plate into
the lid of the coffee-pot in which “Old Maggie” brought our steaming-hot rye
coffee. The blacking-box plated served as an inner liner to the coffee-pot
cover, being secured in place by the bending down of slots in the rim of the
cover with corresponding notches in the plate. The newspaper, closely folded,
was packed in the space between the two covers thus secured to the coffee-pot.
When the coffee-pot was opened, as it always was, for examination, before our
guard would leave it with us for the morning, the outcoming steam would so far
confuse his sight that he never suspected there was anything contraband there.
Of course, the paper was wet with steam when taken out, but it was handled
carefully and dried thoroughly before we read it. Thus, in one way or another,
we had the news of the day, with very rare exceptions, during all our
imprisonment.
Although we were supposed to have no direct communication with prisoners in
other parts of the jail, we had little difficulty keeping up full
correspondence with them. By a series of agreed signals with the Confederate
prisoners in the room back of ours, we knew when it was safe to pass a word
along. Then we would send a letter from our room to theirs, through a break
in the plaster of the intervening partition near the floor. That letter would
by them be attached to a bent pin, lowered by a thread through the ceiling and
floor above, and be drawn up by our enlisted men. In like manner a letter
would come back to us, or be lowered to our naval officers on the opposite side
of the hall. In this way plans for escape were considered, and important
information was communicated.
In sight from our jail windows was the office of one of the daily newspapers.
Its bulletin-board was near by, at the corner of two of the principal streets.
The conduct of those who stopped to read these bulletins gave us a pretty good
idea of the nature of any fresh intelligence. When men read slowly, and moved
off with downcast heads, we took courage as to the progress of affairs in the
great struggle. When they showed delight at what they saw, and evidently
congratulated one another on the good news, we were correspondingly depressed.
We saw reinforcements for General Bragg at Chickamauga, on their way from
General Lee's army, passing in sight of our windows, and it was hard to be
unable to notify our commanders of this movement of troops. Prisoners from the
army of General Rosecrans, in the battle which followed that movement, were
taken toward Salisbury, before our eyes but beyond our greeting, when we longed
to give them words of sympathy and cheer. News of Federal losses and defeats,
and rumors of retaliatory measures which should cause the wholesale execution
of prisoners of both sides, were inevitably depressing, and it was so hard to
be inactive while intense action seemed the only life worth living.
We had our occupations and diversions in our jail rooms. Two German-American
officers gave us lessons in German. Two others were our instructors in
phonography. We whittled out a set of wooden chessmen, and had a series of
competitive chess games. Adjutant Camp was a fine player, having been
president of the Yale Chess Club while in college. He was sometimes personally
matched against all the other good players united, while the rest of us watched
the contest with interest. As we were shut up to our dull life in common, with
not opportunity to work off surplus feeling in any outside effort, it was easy
to get up an excitement without much seeming provocation. Some of our more
mischievous fellows would take advantage of this, and stir up an unexpected
breeze when there seemed a dead calm.
One of our phonographic teachers was an enthusiastic admirer of Pitman's
system, the other inclined to Graham's modification of Pitman. Often they
discussed the rival systems earnestly. The rest of us took no part. One
evening, when things inside were peculiarly dull, the Pitman man ventured a
remark in praise of his favorite. A waggish young officer whispered to me:
“Who is that other fellow that they talk about?”
“Graham,” I answered.
Then he spoke aloud:
“I've understood that Graham's system is a good deal better than Pitman's.”
This was an unlooked-for friend of the enemy. The Pitman man was aroused.
Like a flash he sprang to the defense of his hero, and the follower of Graham
replied vigorously to his opponent. Soon the air of the jail was thick with
excited controversy, and it was more like a theological or scientific combat
between friends and foes of Higher Criticism, or of Evolution, than like a
quiet military prison. Meantime the waggish officer who set the thing
agoing was laughing in his sleeve – if he had on a sleeve just then – over the
combustibility of tinder under flint and steel.
Occasionally we had a share in a special entertainment in the neighboring Town
Hall. Our stage-box in the jail was secured to us for the season for whatever
performances went on there, and we had no fear of being crowded out by a rush
of other spectators. We could hear the speeches in political meetings there,
and no one took more interest than we in what was said. A negro minstrel
performance by imitation negroes seemed to us a poor substitute for the genuine
article, as we had been familiar with it in New Berne and on St. Helena Island;
but it was a great deal better than nothing, and we retained our box through it
all.
By and by there came a Madame Ruhl, a refugee from New Orleans, with a corps of
good assistants, and gave several concerts. We were all on hand those nights.
Every jail window-seat that looked toward the hall was crowded. Earnest faces
were pressing between the bars above and below. Strains of stirring and of
plaintive music coming through the still air across the starry night, with
their thrilling associations of former times in other places, touched our
hearts with unwonted power. We held our breath at her sweetest strains, and we
dared not show one another how deeply the music moved us. When at last she
sang “Home, Sweet Home,” it was more than we could bear. It was harder than
ever to sleep that night in the dreary jail, as we tried not to think of home.
With all the occasional lights on its gloom, our life in prison was still
gloomy prison life. With all the soldierly treatment of their soldier
prisoners by the Southern officers immediately over us, we were subject to the
caprices of their enlisted men, volunteers, or conscripts, sometimes coarse,
ignorant, and even brutal, in spirit and conduct, who were on guard in charge
of us, and even the officers themselves were at times compelled to carry out
orders from those above them, which they could not but regret.
The Confederate prisoners on the floor above us were even more severely dealt
with than ourselves. They were forbidden to stand near the iron-barred windows
looking out into the yard. One afternoon we heard several shots in succession
and a subsequent commotion in the rooms above. In a few minutes we learned
that one of the guard, concealed in an outbuilding in the yard, had, without
warning, fired at Confedesrate prisoners who were quietly looking out of their
windows, and killed two of them within five minutes. The sergeant of the guard
told us boastingly that that man had killed two men in firing only three shots.
As there had been no outbreak among the prisoners, but merely careless looking
out of the window into the jail yard, we chafed indignantly under this cruel
severity on the part of those who were over us. When the bodies of those dead
prisoners were brought from the upper floor past our room doors, it was hard
for us to contain ourselves in our helplessness.
A few days later, one of our fellow-officers, who had been severely wounded,
and had lain several weeks in the hospital, had taken his seat in one of the
windows looking toward the Town Hall, in order to get a little fresh air on a
hot afternoon. We had not been forbidden to keep back from the windows, but a
brutal sentry came up from outside and told the wounded captain to get out of
his place or he would shoot him. Our poor weak companion attempted to comply
with the sentry's demand. But one of our number sprang up into the
window-seat, and, putting his body in front of the captain, said indignantly:
“If you want to shoot anybody, shoot a well man; don't be so cowardly as to
shoot down a poor, sick, wounded officer. Take a well one, if you must shoot
anybody. We shouldn't be in here as prisoners if we hadn't been willing to
face shooting. Shoot away, then, it you want to.”
Instead of firing, the sentry lowered his musket from his shoulder, and moved
off on his beat. The noise of the altercation was heard by the lieutenant on
duty. He came in to inquire its cause. Learning the facts, he put another man
on that sentry's beat, and said that we might occupy the window-seats as we
pleased. These incidents were not composing to the intense nature of a soldier
prisoner, and it was hard to keep an equable frame of mind.
For a while two of our naval officers were held in irons in a separate room, as
hostages for two Confederate officers held by our government on a charge of
piracy. Two of our army officers were similarly shut away from their fellows,
because of an attempt to escape. Such things increased and intensified our
prison-life trials.