Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866

IN VINCULIS;

OR,

THE PRISONER OF WAR.

_________

CHAPTER I.

Absit omen.—Cavalry advancing.—To the front.—Choice of weapons.—Company E, Twelfth Virginia Infantry, A. N. V.

IN the blessed days of the troubadours, no contest, personal or political, was deemed lawfully begun unless some stalwart stentor, yclept a herald, chosen, if I rightly remember my Froissart, with a double reference to his strength of lung and proficiency in lying, made a preliminary flourish to prepare the world for the performances about to ensue.

Very much after this fashion it is religiously believed by young ladies who swear by L. E. L., and are neglectful of tucking combs, that the fates, in advance of every important event of our lives, provide, mercifully, some premonitory omens of the approaching stroke, that no man may lawfully challenge his doom by exclaiming with university dunces, "Not prepared, sir."

There never was a more groundless fallacy in the long list of errors of opinion, chargeable to these dear victims of dyspepsia and dactyls.

Dame Fortune commences hostilities in ninety percent. of her wars without blowing a trumpet, launching a proclamation, or firing the mildest of blank cartridges across our doomed bows, quietly ambushing the best of us in the most flowery valleys, buffeting and persecuting us to the top of her bothersome bent, without so much as, "By your leave, sir."

Small marvel then that the 9th day of June, 1864, dawned—I suppose it did, but never can swear of my own knowledge to dawns—with as fair a face upon me, and as bright a promise as the best of her lovely sisters in all that queenly spring.

No croaking crow cawed unusual presages of evil to our quiet little city; no friendly geese cackled their "qui v’là?" to intruding barbarians, winning the immortal gratitude of modern Quirites: there were no portents in earth or air; and though on the day in question, I, and many a better man, came to exceeding grief, I had not the remotest cause to apprehend that I should fail that day to relish my two meals (the third long since sacrificed to patriotism), in intramural comfort, and "turn in" at night to as sound a sleep as though I was not compassing the destruction of "the best government the world ever saw." Heaven forgive me.

* * * * * * * *

I was sitting in my office peacefully engaged in endeavoring to extract from the Richmond papers, just received, something like an idea of "the situation," when, as though our city were blessed with a patent fire-telegraph, all the available bell-metal in the corporation broke into chorus with so vigorous a peal, and a clangor so resonant, as to suggest to the uninitiated a general conflagration. Not being connected with the fire-brigade, and being otherwise totally disinterested on the subject of inflammable real estate, I might have remained absorbed in my inquiries, and thus escaped my fate (and you these pages), but for the general understanding, if not order, that this signal, theretofore consecrated to the annunciation of fire, should thenceforth in Petersburg serve the purpose, further, of heralding the approach of another "devouring element,"—the Yankees. Thus it came to pass, that in most indecent haste I let fall my journals and hastened into the street, to learn from the first excited passer-by that the enemy’s cavalry to the number of twenty thousand—so ran the tale—were approaching the city, and already within two miles of where my informant stood! The "usual discount" of seventy-five percent. still left the tale uncomfortable to a degree.

"What forces have we on the Jerusalem plankroad (the road by which they were approaching), do you know?"

"Not a d—n man (we had not had—I remark parenthetically—a revival of religion in our town for some time, and Confederate whisky would make a nun swear) except Archer’s Battalion, and not a hundred and fifty of them."

Archer’s Battalion was an organization of militiamen, armed for local defence, and formed of the non-conscribable population. It was, therefore, composed of citizens least fitted for military service, but in preparation for the gigantic struggle which, General Lee foresaw, the vast Federal superiority of numbers would impose on him, he could spare no young arm well from his ranks.

Here was what the gentlemen of the P. R. would call "another bloody go."

Military criticism was, however, obviously out of place just then, though, like all my fellow Americans, I affirm my competence, and claim my right to hold forth on that theme as the spirit moves, so I turned the key in my office door—destined, alas! to remain untouched by hand of mine for many a moon—and calling by my home to replenish my commissariat, I sallied forth prepared (morally speaking let it be understood) to do battle à l’outrance, against all comers of the Yankee persuasion, though they had been as numerous as Abe’s jokes, Ben. Butler’s thieveries, or the leaves in that umbrageous Spanish valley which has done such incalculable service to simile-mongers since the days of our greatest great-grandmothers.

Admonished by the example of Tristam Shandy, whose amiable desire to acquaint his friends and the world with every thing possible to be known of himself, leads him into most indecorous developments in the first three chapters of his autobiography, I shall not undertake to explain, but only state the fact that I was at that time not in "active service" in any capacity—though it is due to my family, to say that I was not in the Nitre and Mining Bureau, a member of the society of Friends, nor the editor of a newspaper. One result of this unattached condition was, that like "Black Dan" in the halcyon days after Tippecanoe was translated, I was somewhat puzzled to know "whither I should go." Another difficulty was, the vagueness of my idea what to do when I got there; but a the place to be useful was obviously the line of the enemy’s approach, I turned my face thither and soon found myself in the camp of Major Archer’s Battalion, where all was preparation. This was about two miles from the city, or a mile southeast of the Blandford Cemetery, and exactly at the point known in the subsequent operations around Petersburg as Rives’ House—not very far from "The Mine."

I found here a very stimulating degree of excitement. The battalion understanding perfectly well that a fight at very great odds was before it, and being so small that the accession of a single volunteer was not to be slighted, was marching by companies to assigned positions in the little earthwork before its tents; and breathless couriers, racing at the highest speed possible to Confederate steeds, were momently arriving with news of the leisurely advance of General Kautz.

Reporting to the first captain I met, he made the obvious suggestion that I should get a musket; and I hastened to the ordnance officer to supply myself. This gentleman courteously invited me to make intelligent choice between three specimens of smoothbore military architecture, universally known in the army as "altered percussions"—guns originally with flint locks, and therefore demonstrably a quarter of a century old, but modernized by the substitution of the percussion hammer and tube. These hybrids, without bayonets, were the weapons with which that handful of militia were to resist (or fly before) the picked cavalry (and many regiments of them) of the Yankee army.

One of these formidable arquebuses had a trigger with so weak a spring that the tenderest cap ever turned out of a laboratory would successfully resist its pressure; the second was so rusty that its ramrod shrank from sounding its oxydized depths; while the third, which had the "spic and span" appearance of an assistant surgeon or a regimental adjutant on dress parade, proved on examination to be so bent and wrenched that you could not see light through it when the breech-pin was unscrewed! I now began to be overwhelmed with apprehensions that I was destined to act exclusively as a lay figure in the drama about to be put on the boards, and my vanity not a little recoiled from the prospect of playing dummy in the game, when a friend, commiserating my perplexity, handed me a gun left in his tent by a comrade who had gone to town "on leave" that morning, and who was not likely to return. I soon balanced the "provant" which filled one of my pockets with ammunition enough to fill the other; and accounting myself "armed and equipped as the law directs," I stepped forward to the earthwork.

Several months had elapsed since I quit soldiering proper, leaving behind me at Orange Courthouse the noblest company of gentlemen that ever perilled their lives as private soldiers in any cause or country; and I longed for them that day, with the immortal "Twelfth Virginia," in which they marched, that they might stand by their sires at the portal of their home, and "keep the gate."

Glorious boys! There is not an acre in the long line of the circumvallation of Petersburg that is not vocal with some gallant deed of their achieving; and when the death-struggle came they abandoned their city, not their cause, fought their weary way to Appomattox Courthouse, dealt the last successful blows at the foe, and ere they stacked arms for the last time divided among them the tatters of their untarnished flag, that memory might never want a souvenir of a career glorious and unsullied from its first hour to its last.

The fairy days are passed, and my comrades came not for my wishing; and I who had been proud to stand amid the sons, was content to stand that day amid their sires. Sang azul I suspect, for, as that morning’s work showed, as stout hearts beat beneath gray locks as beneath gray jackets.

CHAPTER II.

The battle opens.—The first charge repulsed.—Artillery coming to help us.—Overpowered.—A prisoner.

THE sun was clambering up the sky—a figure which astronomy has perpetually but vainly tilted against since the great Italian’s day—and the town-clock had struck ten, many minutes before, when a pair of frantic videttes—one of them without his hat—tore into camp on foaming steeds, with the news that the enemy, not more than a half a mile away, were rapidly approaching in a body consisting of several regiments of cavalry, and at least four pieces of artillery. Our "position" was an open earthwork—the front face of which was cut at right angles by the Jerusalem plankroad—a thoroughfare which, some outside barbarians may not know, opens up to deserving Petersburgers, in times of peace, the beatific vision of Sussex hams and Southampton brandy. This work, intended to accommodate two pieces of artillery, but then all innocent of ordnance, was accompanied by a line of low breastworks running out on either flank to afford shelter to such infantry as might be destined to support the guns, while beyond, on each side, lay a level and accessible country, inviting easy approach to man or beast. There was nothing in the character of the position to give the assailed any advantage other than that which the breastwork offered in case of a direct attack, the ground being almost a dead level in every direction, and when Major Archer, our commandant, disposed his little force of about one hundred and twenty-five men along the extended line—six hundred yards, I presume—it was perfectly evident that twenty thousand cavalry, or any respectable minority of the same, would make short work of us. In conformity to universal civilized precedent, the major addressed us a word of cheer and counsel before he assigned us our position; but there was eloquence incomparably superior to all the witchery of words in the hundred homes which stood but a scant cannon-shot behind us, and in the reflection that, according as we did our devoir, there might be, then and thenceforth, grief or rejoicing to them and to many more. Small marvel then, that as I looked down our little band, sparsely stretched over our extended and exposed front, and noticed how well the best of my townsmen were represented in its ranks, I felt that they would give an account of themselves that no wife or mother, sweetheart or sister, would blush to hear or remember, though every Cossack that ever swam the Don should charge our line that day—an account that the brave boys keeping watch and ward before Grant’s legions would toss their tattered caps in air to hear.

We expended a few moments in closing our lines at the point at which the road cut them, with an old wagon and a score or two of fence-rails disposed à la chevaux de frise, and waited.

We had not long to wait: a cloud of dust in our front, told of the hurried advance of cavalry, and the next instant, the glitter of spur and scabbard revealed to us a long line of horsemen, rapidly deploying under cover of a wood that ran parallel to our line, and about half a mile in front of us. Then we missed our cannon: our venerable muskets were not worth a tinker’s imprecation at longer range than a hundred yards, and we were compelled, per force, to watch the preparations for our capture or slaughter, much after the fashion that a rational turtle may be presumed to contemplate the preliminaries of a civic dinner in London. A little of that military coquetry called reconnoissance, determined our enemy to feel us first with a small portion of his command, and on came, at a sweeping gallop, a gallant company of troopers with as confident an air as though all that was necessary was that they should "come" and "see" in order to "conquer." Every one saw that this was a party we could easily manage, and we possessed, therefore, our souls in great patience, till we could see the chevrons on the arm of the non-commissioned officer who led them—a brave fellow—and then there broke forth (from such amiable muskets as could be induced to go off) a discharge that scattered the cavaliers like chaff,—three riderless horses being all of the expedition that entered our lines.

The incident was trifling in the extreme, but it saved Petersburg, and probably prolonged for months the surrender.

The Federals now became convinced that no cavalry charge would frighten these ununiformed and half-armed militiamen from their posts, and that a regular attack au pied must be made. For this purpose two regiments of their cavalry were dismounted and deployed on either side of the road, in a line double the length of our own, and it was evident that they had determined to flank us on both sides.

The welcome rattle of artillery horses brought now a cheer to every lip as we observed two field-pieces falling into position on our right, and the sharp shriek of a shell curvetting over the Yankee line, was an agreeable variation of the monotonous silence in which, to the right and left, their skirmish line was stretching away to encompass us. This occasioned another check, and provoked an artillery response, which continued for twenty minutes, with about the effect currently attributed to sacred melodies chanted in the hearing of a certain useful hybrid, deceased. But these were all golden moments for Petersburg—cannon and horses were pouring into town. Graham’s and Sturdivant’s batteries were wheeling into position, and Dearing was hastening to the scene with his cavalry,—Dearing, the gallant trooper, who gave away his noble life in the gathering gloom of the last hours of the Confederacy. "Green be the turf above thee!"

Meanwhile, the long line of foemen was stretching around us—manifold more than we in numbers, and, as we soon found, armed with the Spencer rifle, repeating sixteen times. And there we fought them; fought them till we were so surrounded, that the two nearest men to me were shot in the back while facing the line of original approach; till both our guns were captured; till our camp, in rear of the works, was full of the foe; till the noblest blood of our city stained the clay of the breastwork as they gave out their lives, gun in hand and face foeward, on the spot where their officers placed them. Their faces rise before me now, the calm grave countenances of Bannister and Staubley; the generous, joyous frankness of Friend and Hardy; the manly, conscientious fire of patriotism in all—Bellingham and Blanks, Jones, Johnson, and the rest—all gallant gentlemen and true; one of whose lives was well worth a hecatomb of the bummers and bounty-jumpers before them; and I could but ask myself then as now, the prophetic question whose answer has in all ages sustained the martyrs of freedom as of faith, "Can such blood fall in vain?"

Truly, the cause is lost, but no man, in all the ages, died for what he thought the right and true, in absolute fruitlessness.

One by one, my comrades of an hour fell around me—Bellingham, the last: and as I turned, at his request, and stooped, to change his position to one of greater comfort, the enemy trooped over the earthwork behind me, and the foremost, presenting his loaded carbine, demanded my surrender with an unrepeatable violence of language that suggested bloodshed. All avenue of escape being cut off, I yielded with what grace I could to my fate, captive to the bow and spear of a hatchet-faced member of the First District Cavalry, greatly enamored of this honorable opportunity of going to the rear.

He conveyed me to Major Wetherell, the provost-marshal of General Kautz’s command, who was gathering the animate and inanimate spoils of the day—the latter consisting of our muskets, all of which, with utter disregard for their age and manifest infirmities, he incontinently smashed. At this point I had the satisfaction of seeing a Yank, whose haste to destroy our guns was so great, that he would not take time to withdraw the load, blow a very ugly hole in his thigh—an accident whereon his Yankeeship is probably moralizing to this hour.

The cavalry, who had not dismounted, now swept by us towards the city, whose spires were in full view, in confident expectation of an easy capture, and as soon as they passed, the prisoners were bought together to be enrolled.

An inexcusable weakness for looking at the droll side of every thing overcame, for a moment, my apprehensions for the safety of the city, and my sorrow and shock over the loss of my friends; though the latter sentiment, has, alas! received rude treatment many a time and oft during this bloody war.

And indeed a graver personage might have been pardoned a smile, for a more varied collection of heroes never blessed the eyes of man in the same compass, I suspect.

Several of my comrades were many years over fifty, while some had not passed their second decade, and their pursuits were as diverse as their ages. Although so few in number, I noticed among my fellow-captives, tradesmen and farmers, clerks and school-masters, merchants and millers, manufacturers and magistrates, the city chamberlain, a member of the legislature, and a chaplain! In the matter of uniform and soldierly appearance, we were as motley a crew as the memorable squad of recruits that Sir John swore he would not lead through Coventry.

Among the prisoners were two old gentlemen who had been taken up while attending to the business of their farms; not only non-combatants, but in the case of one of them, a man so deaf that he had heard no voice that was not a shout for a dozen years. Yet his generous captors refused him permission (the only favor he asked) to go to his home, which was not a hundred yards off, and see that his children (all girls) were safe from the bullets and the brutes that were sometimes found in conjunction in the Federal armies.

He was silenced while appealing for the poor boon with a threat against his life and a volley of oaths, and was subsequently hurried off to prison with the rest of us, where he contracted a fever which broke a hearty constitution, and ultimately hastened, if it did not cause his death.

When I add that he was perhaps the most uncompromising Union man in Eastern Virginia in the great struggle of 1860, no one within her limits will fail to recall that generous friend, that sterling patriot, and that honest man, Hon. Timothy Rives, of Prince George, the war-horse of Democracy.

In the fall of ’65, we buried him in the midst of the desolation with which war had scourged his happy home, within sight of the spot where he had such an vain for permission to give a farewell and a blessing to his motherless daughters.

CHAPTER III.

The advance checked.—Gilmore fails.—Marching off.—An escape.—At Kautz’s quarters.—First prison feed.—An interview with the general.—Transferred.

A LIEUTENANT was busily engaged in recording our names and companies—here I was forced to improvise, as I did not know the letter of mine—and we were conjuring up sad images of the sack of our city by the profane devils around us—and who ever heard such profanity as the Federal army was filled with?—when a shell came booming over us with a welcome whistle, for it betokened resistance at a point where we thought our city defenceless. Another and another! and emerging from the lane down which, a few moments before, they had turned with such evident anticipation of easy conquest, we saw the rear, now by a "bout face" the front, of the Yankee column retreating with Gilpin speed.

The propriety of postponing all formalities respecting the prisoners became now quite evident, and, under a heavy escort, we were ordered back to camp.

A direct route to the pontoon bridge which Butler the Eminent had stretched across the Appomattox at Point of Rocks, and which we would have to cross, would have required perhaps ten miles of travel. As it was, we marched twenty-six.

General Gilmore, who had been intrusted with the infantry attack, had failed, and it was thought prudent, therefore, to follow the apostolic example and "fetch a compass." I think we "boxed" it.

Jaded with the fatigue, excitement, and exposure of the fight, and urged at the sabre point by the cavalry, who, whether through spleen or fear, seemed bent on driving us like cattle, we had a dolorous time of it, and on arriving within half a mile of the river, at eleven P. M., a more forlorn set of Confederates never trusted in "Deo Vindice."*****

Once or twice I got a "lift" from some benevolent trooper, who recognized the difficulty which bipeds experience in matching the speed of animals of more liberal ambulatory endowments; and before we had gone very far, the assistant provost-marshal, Lieutenant W. E. Bird, introduced himself by an inquiry after his uncle, a well-known citizen of Petersburg. This introduction was fruitful of certain liquid comforts, to which it is needless to make more particular allusion; and long before we arrived at our journey’s end we had established a rapport—a canteen being the medium.

This is a circumstance I mention most unblushingly, inasmuch as it is my religious conviction that neither Father Matthew nor John B. Gough would have been able to stand the temptations, social, mental, moral, physical, digestive, and patriotic, that lay in wait for the starving Confederates during the last two years of their unequal struggle.

Before crossing the river, we were halted, as I have said, and the roll called, when, to the surprise of some, the provost-marshal’s bill of lading did not correspond with the consignment—there was one man missing, the Reverend Mr. Hall, chaplain of the Washington Artillery, that gallant corps of Crescent City gentlemen, who, under Walton, won their spurs at Manassas, and bore their banner bravely under Eshelman to the death.

Mr. Hall had come out to the trenches after the fight began, in order to bring news to a lady in Petersburg at whose house he was stopping, of the fate of her husband. Though unarmed, a non-combatant, and a mere spectator, he was seized by the Yanks, put into line with the rest, and hurried off despite his protest, and despite the fact that, by solemn agreement, army chaplains had been exempted on both sides from liability to detention as prisoners of war. On the march I was introduced to him—misery acquainting us oftentimes with agreeable as well as strange bedfellows, and found that he had serious apprehensions of falling into Butler’s hands—a worthy whose tender mercies he had enjoyed in New Orleans, and whose character and acts he had characterized in just, and therefore disagreeable terms, in a publication in the Southern newspapers shortly after the Beast drove him from the city.

Unwilling, therefore, to fall again into that saint’s power, he contrived to escape by obtaining permission to ride in an ambulance, which soon got separated from that portion of the column in which the rest of the prisoners were; and when the party stopped he quietly slipped out of the wagon, plunged into the woods, the night being as dark as the population of Mitcheltown, and thus escaped.

The provost-marshal’s wrath was excessive and profane at this contretemps, and he endeavored to shield himself from the charge of neglect, by insisting that Mr. Hall had given his parole not to attempt to escape—quite a likely story.

While stopping here, the rest of the discomfited brigade overtook us, and filing by, crossed the pontoon bridge before us. We followed them, entered Chesterfield County, tramping along a well-beaten road lined with tents, and with all the appointments and appearance of a huge camp.

It was past midnight as we neared General Kautz’s headquarters, some three miles from Bermuda Hundreds. A filthy log-hut, which was used as a guardhouse, was pointed out to us as our hotel; and footsore, weary, hungry, and blanketless, we threw ourselves on the ground to take our first sleep as captives.

I had hardly disposed myself for a nap when I heard my name called at the door; and on answering, was invited to accept a blanket and a berth in the tent of my canteen acquaintance, Lieutenant Bird. I accepted nem con.

Of course, I ought now to have spent at least an hour meditating on the stirring and unusual events of the day, planning measures of escape, congratulating myself on the safety of Petersburg, berating the Yankees, or wafting to the sympathizing stars affectionate messages to—none of your business whom. Alas! with much humiliation do I confess, my hand on my mouth and my face in the dust, not all nor any of these things did I. Doffing my shoes—no old soldier sleeps in his shoes—I stretched myself on the floor, wrapped a blanket around me, and with a "Good-morning, Bird," fell straightway into so profound a sleep, that if eyes soft or stern flashed on me in dreams that night, they left no trace on my waking memory then, nor leave they any now.

It was broad day when I shook myself out of my blanket, at the instance of a friendly-voiced son of Vaterland, who administered a little spirituous consolation, besides furnishing me with a bucket of water and a towel; and in a few moments I was ready for a visit to my comrades, whose complaints of their several discomforts during the night argued a very indifferent appreciation of the lodging accommodations of their quarters.

It was not long before all other sources of complaint vanished before the gnawing claims of vulgar hunger, which, in healthy subjects, gobbles up minor calamities as incontinently as Aaron’s rod swallowed the wands of the Copts; and we utterly refused to be comforted, because rations were not.

It was quite nine A. M., when a barrel of "salt horse" and a couple of boxes of "hard tack" were deposited at the door of our pen, and flanking them, was a keg of most odorous sourkrout, and a small supply of potatoes.

Salt horse is army for mess beef, as hard tack is for the dry, hard crackers with which armies in motion are generally fed. Potatoes are the inspiration of Irishmen! sourkrout is——the devil!

We were dividing out our "provender" with soldierly equity, when, very much to my amazement, an orderly hallooed at the door that General Kautz wished to see me, and hoping that there might be some good news for the citizen prisoners, several of whom were in our party—possibly their release—I abandoned my rations (an insanity I ought to have been above falling into), and in a few minutes found myself in the presence of the celebrated raider. Kautz is a man of about five feet ten inches in height, I should suppose, though I only saw him in a sitting position; has a swarthy complexion, a square massive German head, wears his hair and beard cut close, speaks slowly and thoughtfully, and has the breeding of a gentleman. He desired me to take a seat, offered a cigar, and we were soon engaged in a free conversation, which was protracted for a couple of hours.

I did not hesitate to tell him how insignificant the force opposed to him in his attack of the previous day was, and asked him, with as innocent an expression as I could assume, why he did not enter Petersburg after passing us? He very frankly replied:

"Only because I did not know how I could get out again. The failure of the expedition on the river roads, which was relied on to support me, made it necessary to be cautious, and while I might have dashed into town and burned some property, I might have lost my command."

In the course of the conversation I learned that he was a West Pointer and the schoolmate of General Pickett, as well as several other Confederate officers about whom he inquired. He was, by education, an infantry man, and observed that he thought the Government had spoiled a good infantry soldier by giving him a cavalry command. I discovered also that the general was somewhat piqued at his failure to receive credit with the Southern people for what he had done. He claimed to have planned and led the expedition that resulted in Morgan’s capture on the Ohio the year before, and yet had hardly been mentioned in connection with it. But what surprised him most was, that in the late raid which he had made around the south of Petersburg, his name had escaped notice except in one or two instances, where it was misspelled, while the credit or discredit of the expedition was divided between Colonel Spears, who served under him, and General Custer, who was not present.

The alleged superiority of Yankee cavalry seemed to inspire him with great confidence in the early subjugation of the "rebels," and he did not hesitate to express the opinion that the war would be closed by successful raids, and by the greater efficiency and better discipline of that branch of the Federal service. I thought of all this with very unchristian satisfaction some months later, when Hampton entered the Yankee store-room and cut out splendid cattle by the thousand under Kautz’s very nose; and again, later still, a week or two, when Hoke captured his last gun, and sent his last squadron flying in irremediable confusion, down the Darbytown road, to the very foot of Birney’s infantry.

One thing I found General Kautz fully impressed with and very frank to acknowledge—the splendid fighting qualities of the Southern people. "I may safely say this," he remarked, in the course of our conversation, "whatever be the issue of this war, we shall have a higher respect for your courage and military skill forever hereafter." He appeared very much annoyed at certain acts of outrage committed by his men in Greensville and Surry, on his last raid, of which he heard the first, as he informed me, from my lips, and deplored the impossibility of preventing such acts, especially among cavalry, where it is so easy to leave and return to the column, and so difficult for officers to prevent misconduct.

He remarked, however, that we in the East had no idea what the depredations and violence of war were. To see and feel these, one must make a cavalry campaign in Tennessee or Missouri. Subsequent events, reaching to this hour, confirm General K.’s observations; for the savageism is producing its bitter harvest of proscription and death to this day in those States, as though the war, in the language of the monster who rules one of them, "had ended two years too soon."

On the whole, I was quite favorably impressed with this officer, and regard my interview with him as among the most pleasant episodes of my sojourn in partibus infidelium.

The arrival of Colonel Spears put an end to our conference, and I returned to my comrades to find the hard-tack dwindling, and potatoes gone, and nothing left of the "krout" but an odor so strong and so diabolical that I am firmly persuaded that he who examines the site of that log-hut a century hence will find that—

"The scent of the sourkrout will cling to it still."

I had little time to indulge regrets, however; for before many minutes we were ordered to fall in for General Butler’s headquarters, and our baggage being as scant as that of the Hibernian, who refused to buy a trunk, because, if he put any thing in it, he would have to go naked, we soon got into line, and a half-hour’s march brought us to the headquarters of the Beast—a personage who, on many accounts, deserves a separate chapter.

CHAPTER IV.

Beast Butler.

ON approaching Butler’s quarters, which were quite handsomely located, out of reach of all intrusion, the first thing that attracted attention was the presence and prominence of the negro. So far we had only seen one or two of the negro soldiers on duty at the pontoon bridge, and the night being as dark as themselves, we could with difficulty distinguish them—but there Abyssinia ruled the roast. It was "nigger" everywhere; and although the white soldiers were obviously annoyed at the companionship, the terror of Butler’s rule crushed all resistance even of opinion, and the colored brethren knew, and presumed on, their secured position and importance.

We were ranged out in front of His Majesty’s tent, and there kept standing hour after hour in one of the hottest suns that I ever felt in any month or at any place. Most of the party were men past middle age, and, with hardly an exception, they had but one meal, and that a miserable one, for twenty-four hours. When I add that they had fought two hours and marched nearly thirty miles in the same interval, and that a sufficient shade was within a couple of hundred yards of us, it may be easily imagined that our first impressions of "the brute" were not by any means rose-colored.

The afternoon was about half-spent, when an order came for the first three men in line to report to him; and as I chanced to head the list, I heard my name handed in first by his orderly, and was soon summoned into the general’s presence. There were two other persons in the tent: one a clerk or amanuensis, who recorded in short-hand the somewhat protracted conversation which subsequently occurred; the other a complacent individual, whose only and obviously agreeable occupation consisted in admiring his new uniform. My eyes were, of course, fixed principally on Butler, and the first and most pervasive thought that crossed my mind was one of profound gratitude to God, who creates no mortal enemy to man without clothing it with features that excite the instant and instinctive aversion of the entire human race. How deadly would the cobra and tarantula be, if Providence had not made them as loathsome as they are venomous! To Benjamin F. Butler’s face scarce an element is wanting of absolute repulsiveness. Rapacity finds appropriate expression in his vulture nose—sensuality in his heavy pendant jaws—despotism in his lowering eyebrow; and to these facial charms is added an optical derangement which permits him to scrutinize you with his left eye—the one he seems to place most dependence on—while the right, revolving in a different plane, and concerned, you would imagine, about separate objects—wanders away in another field of vision. Add to this a cool complacency of speech and gesture, which assures you that he is on the best of terms with his portly self; and I fancy you will have a description which, if not accurate enough for photography, will, at least, convince you that Nature has hung out the sign of villain in every lineament of the Brute’s physiognomy.

Congreve pictured him to the life in his "Double Dealer:"

"A sedate, a thinking villain, whose black blood runs temperately bad."

He has a large and active brain—far the most acute of any that New England has contributed to this war—a voluble tongue, pleasant voice, and can be, they say, as gracious, when engaged in a particularly successful hunt after spoons or specie, as "the mildest-mannered man that ever cut a throat or scuttled a ship." But the ineradicable expression of his features must excite suspicion, if not aversion however impartial the gazer. It is popularly supposed that his defect of visual arrangement constitutes his unattractiveness—but this is a mistake. Mere physical infirmity is only a negative evil to any man, unless it constitutes him a monster. An ugly or deformed man lacks the indorsement of nature, which smooths the way for his more favored fellow, but in time he counts for whatever he is worth. John Wilkes, who was toothless, cross-eyed, and otherwise ugly, was wont to say (and contemporaries assure us it was no idle boast), "Give me twenty minutes’ conversation, and I will beat the handsomest man in a race for the favor of the finest woman in England;" and history is full of celebrated and attractive men, who were cursed with some personal drawback. Alexander was wry-necked; Cæsar, bald; Hannibal and Claudius Civilis, one-eyed; Homer, Milton, and Huber, blind; Beethoven, deaf; Byron, club-footed; Pope and Scarron, horribly crippled; Alcibiades, a stammerer, who could not pronounce "r;" Ovid, abnormal in the nasal department; Mirabeau, pock-marked and "boar-headed;" Attila and Pepin, dwarfs, with enormous cranial developments; Demosthenes, wry-shouldered and a stutterer; Æsop, a hunchback; and the list might be extended to a length extremely consolatory to those of us who would not do for fashion-plates, yet among these were some of the most popular, agreeable, and beloved of the race. In the coruscations of the great tribune’s magnetic intellect, women forgot that Mirabeau was a fright, as under the witchery of La Valliere’s voice, men thought not of her painful lameness. But if Butler were an Antinoüs, with his present expression of face, he might reasonably aspire to the presidency of the ugliest of all the ugly clubs. Certainly, he is just the man who would delight to torture women—only, I presume, preferring, if he could have the choice, the plundering of men. Reverdy Johnson hoped to be the Cicero of this Verres, but the catalogue of the satrap’s villanies was so black that even his master could not stomach the exposition, and the obnoxious truths were suppressed. The experiment was repeated by a Yankee Virginian, but the Brute laughed at the helpless indignation of his feebler foe, and pursued his speculations and peculations in sublime indifference to all criticism that did not cut off his supplies.

It was only when Smith & Co. threatened, and finally sued him, for the $50,000 in gold he took from them, and kept under false pretences, that he roused himself to the exertion of defence—and finally reached the sacrifice of restitution.

That he established and maintained order in New Orleans and Norfolk, is undeniable—but it was such order as reigned in Sicily in days of old, and in Warsaw, in later times—the order of sullen, abject, physical fear—a political coma, which is itself death, yet in which there was one thing very lively—stealing. The world will never know the truth of this creature’s vileness and success, until it shall become safe for the hundreds he has robbed and outraged, to tell the story of their wrongs and his robberies. You can hear them in private conversation in Norfolk and New Orleans, from numberless mouths, who now content themselves with whispering what should be proclaimed from house-tops; and yet I sometimes hope he may get his deserts, for even Sherman thinks he will content the homeless, starving wanderers of South Carolina and Georgia, by asking them, as I read in the papers of to-day (January 15, 1866,) how much better off they are than if Butler had the plundering of them!

But I beg unlimited pardon, oh, impatient reader, for all this sermonizing. So, I give my prosy pegasus a rowelling, whereat the old cob frisks his tail, and puts himself out for a faster pace.

Quite a lengthy conversation ensued between myself and Butler—(Mem. I have reflected on the subject and do not think common self-respect will allow me to place his name first)—which proceeded on this wise, the clerk busily recording it all:

"What is your name?"

"Mr. Blank."

"Your profession or pursuit?"

"I am a lawyer."

"You were captured yesterday, near Petersburg?"

"I was."

"How many men were in the trenches with you?"

"About one hundred and twenty or thirty."

"All militiamen?"

"All, with less than half a dozen exceptions."

"And you repulsed, I learn, for two hours, General Kautz’s brigade of cavalry?"

"You have been rightly informed."

* * * * * *

(Here ensued certain energetic expressions respecting the aforesaid cavalry, which bordered on the extremely profane.)

"Well, Mr. Blank,"—and here he slid forward in his chair, till his head rested on the back, and lit a cigar,—"will you tell me how many soldiers were in Petersburg at the time of General Kautz’s first appearance?"

Now the truth was, that to the best of my knowledge and belief, there was not, at that time, in town, as much of a soldier as would entitle the United States Government to declare martial law, and every one knows a half a conscript would serve that purpose. So I bethought me that mystery was my cue, and replied with, I flatter myself, well-affected solemnity:

"I decline answering."

"Oh, you need not decline. I know there was not a soldier there."

"Well, sir, there is no need to ask, if you know; but I am curious to know how you know that?"

"By this infallible induction: if there was a soldier in town, no lawyer would get into the trenches!"

I joined in the smile that followed,—and which Butler enjoyed hugely,—more in compliment to the truth than the wit of his inference, and replied:

"You speak of Northern lawyers, I presume. We have contributed our full share to this fight for freedom. If I may speak of myself, I entered the service on the 19th of April, 1861, and thousands of the profession volunteered as early."

"Yes, yes, I understand all that. I volunteered a couple of days before you, but I never got into the trenches, and by the help of Heaven I never shall. That is quite another matter, you perceive."

He here took up a note from his desk, held it within four inches of his left eye—what marvel that a man should have a sinister expression, whose vision is left-handed?—and continued:

"I would like to know the position of your government, and particularly of your people, on the subject of negro exchange. I have just received this note from Colonel Ould, in which the question is not met at all, and it is now a month since I applied for a categorical statement of the position of Mr. Davis’s government on this topic."

"As I have no official character, I am of course not entitled to speak by authority, and as to the President’s individual views, I know nothing."

"Of course, I know you are not a commissioner, but I would be glad to hear your views. I think a white man is as good as a negro, and would be willing to give one of your negroes, if a soldier, for one of my white soldiers. But your government takes the position that the negro is better than a white man, and you will not give up one of my negroes to get back one of your best soldiers."

"My government, I presume, takes no such absurd position—she merely contends that the right of property in a slave is no more affected by his running away to your army, than by his flying to your States,—least of all by your kidnapping. You are entitled to demand the exchange of your negro soldiers, not slaves, just as England would be entitled to claim her Sepoys, and France her Algerines, in the event of war between us and either of those powers. But, both your constitution and your positive statutory enactments, guard the title of the owner against disturbance from any quarter without the jurisdiction of the master’s State."

"Ah, yes, but that is the law of peace. You claim the slave as a chattel: now, if I capture land, and it is recaptured, it reverts to the original owner, but if I capture a chattel, a horse for example, on its recapture it becomes the property, not of the original owner, but of your government, and is doubtless so treated. Thus the capture of realty divests title only during occupancy; the capture of personality divests it forever. How do you make the slave an exception?"

"There is plainly no reason, in the nature of things, why one description of property should be less sacred than another, and the discrimination against personal property only arises, I presume, from the difficulty of identification,—which does not exist in the case of the slave. Hence, the Roman law, if I rightly remember, excepted slaves, and common sense excepts them from the operation of the general rule regarding personality. So, I presume, would any property be treated that could be easily and certainly identified. For example, a Federal general goes to New Orleans, or Norfolk, and steals my house and all that it contains—furniture, pictures, clothing, jewelry, every thing—but before he has a chance to send them to his wife in Boston or New York, the city is recaptured;—I presume my government would restore me my house with all its contents, and the conquering general would hardly think of holding an auction on my premises."

"I am not certain that he would not have the right. But how do you answer this? Public law authorizes the United States to declare that a slave fleeing to her shall be free: she so does declare in the case of every slave that comes to her."

"I answer that by denial, first of the fact, and then of the right. And though both were true, I do not see how they could affect the power of our own government and laws, to re-establish the original relation, when all parties come again within their jurisdiction."

"Well, sir, it is to be regretted that our governments cannot agree about this, as there will be no more exchanges and no communication till the point is yielded."

"How is it then, general, that while you made this demand on my government a month ago, you continue to communicate, as I see from Colonel Ould’s dispatch?"

"Oh, Mr. Davis moves very slowly, and I was giving him time to make up his mind. He has now had abundant time, and I am going to stop all intercourse."

Our conversation then took quite a wide range, during which I recalled to his memory his own secession at Baltimore, from a certain Democratic convention, and indulged in some references not altogether complimentary to the cruelty and avarice***** of certain Federal generals. This seemed to provoke his wrath, and he dismissed me with the emphatic and disagreeable intimation, that my imprisonment would end with the war! Diis aliter visum, my dear Brute.

One or two of my comrades were successively ordered into Butler’s presence, but his inquiries were few, and chiefly directed to the ascertainment of the force in our city. I do not think he learned much, as we had a little private understanding on this matter beforehand, and we were soon after ordered to "right face" preparatory to a move.

CHAPTER V.

To Bermuda Hundreds.—Black-guard.—Awful swearing.—A cold night.—Down the river.—Prison thieves.—Andersonville and Wirz.—Leaving Fortress Monroe.—Maryland.

THE scorching sun was well on the wane when we again struck the trail—this time for Bermuda Hundreds, some two miles off. Sundry mounted officials passed us, wondering very much at the civilian appearance of our squad, and I began then to observe the first indications of the "orderly" epidemic, which I afterwards found to be a universal affliction of the Yankee military. Every one has an "orderly," from the Lieutenant-General, down to the most subordinate pedler in tracts and ginger-bread, that wears the badge of the Sanitary or the Christian Commission. To ride a mile without an obsequious varlet in his wake, whose chief business seems to be to intercept the mud from his horse’s heels, is a humiliation which no "free and equal" cavalier of the Great Republic could brook an instant; so, from commissary to commander-in-chief, there’s a Sancho for every Don. I attributed this weakness to the novelty of the position of most of these Yanks. To the Southern people their education and labor-system gives the habit of command, and they attach little importance to the possession of a servant, from the generality of the fact of such possession. But most of these democratic centurions never before had the power to say to this one, "Go," and to that one, "Come," and to the other, "Do this;" and as all essentially vulgar minds take delight in the parade of such a power, it is not, perhaps, surprising that many of these Cedrics make a show of their "born thralls" on all occasions; and, sooth to say, Gurth wears his collar with most servile satisfaction.

Past these masters and serfs, past crowds of sutlers and camp followers, past rows of grinning Ethiops, dirty, oleaginous, and idle, we wended our way to the river, which soon was marked out to us by scores on scores of masts; and as twilight fell upon us we arrived in front of a provost-marshal’s office, where we answered dutifully to our names, and were turned over to a new authority. A frame building, whose only other tenant was a negro in irons, was allotted to us for the night; and stationing myself in a window, I began, in the little light still left, to amuse myself with drawing a lead-pencil likeness of Butler, when, for the first time, I noticed that our new guards were black! An odorous Congo, with a claymore two-thirds his length, a Nubian nose, boundless buttons, and the port of Soulouque, was strutting up and down before me in most amusing enjoyment of his responsible position. Like every other negro soldier I met, with three exceptions, he was as black as Mason’s "Challenge," and as surly looking a dog as ever brake bread. Before he had been on duty ten minutes, he picked a quarrel with a brother black who dared to cross his post; and straightway both drew their sabres, to my infinite satisfaction, as I presumed I was about to be favored with a sample of ebony chivalry according to "the code;" but I soon found, to my great grief, that the sabres were only designed to give impetus and a finish to a fusilade of oaths, which, for number, force, and unrelieved profanity, I never heard equalled but once. On our return from Gettysburg, while crossing the mountains, I saw a first-class army "stall,"—scores of wagons blocked up in a narrow mountain-way on a down grade of about two thousand feet to the mile,—every thing with wheels running into every thing else, and a herd of Pennsylvania beeves filling up the small and constantly varying intervals between the vehicles. Then broke forth from the trained lungs and exhaustless vocabulary of a hundred lusty teamsters such a torrent, cataract, avalanche, whirlwind—yea, very "cyclone"—of imprecations as passed competition of the most terrible swearing in Flanders. The common expletives, in which surcharged gall finds vent with ordinary mortals, found no room in that Lodore of cursing—they were obviously thought unworthy the occasion,—and a new set "horrendum, ingens, informe," blasted the ears and eyes, head and heart, legs and body, mane and tail of every individual mule and muleteer in all that involved mass; while the interest of myself and my fellow-soldiers received a spicy fillip from the fact that we had to creep round the edge of this struggling mass, which left but a few inches between the outside rank and an inviting precipice, a half a thousand feet sheer! Then only did I hear superior swearing, before or since, although my experience therein, especially since my capture, has been very large—whereof more anon.

Getting an old stump of a broom, I swept up a small space in one corner of our jail, and, without blanket or overcoat, laid my head on my arm and was soon, asleep. The nights of June are proverbially cool, and our clothing being saturated with perspiration from the heat, exposure, and exercise of the day, I fell into a dream of hunting Frankenstein through the northwest passage, in the midst of which I woke, just in time to save myself from a plunge through a treacherous seal-hole into the Polar Sea! I found myself chilled through and stiff with cold. There was no fire to be had within, and the darkey at the door incontinently refused to permit me to walk out, so I was constrained to restore circulation by certain frantic gymnastics, in which I was, before long, joined by sundry comrades similarly uncomfortable.

Like every thing sublunary (except Coleridge’s talks), the night came, perforce, to an end, and we were allowed to go out, two at a time, to wash our faces,—a rather superfluous ceremony in the absence of soap and towels, and the most striking necessity for both. Salt-junk, coffee, and as much "hard-tack" as we wanted, were issued to us by our "colored brethren," and at eight and a half A. M., a guard of twenty, from the same regiment—the First United States Colored Cavalry—formed around us with drawn swords—a white officer at their head—and, thus convoyed, we proceeded aboard a fine riverboat, the "John A. Warren."

A few minutes after getting aboard, an officer came from shore with a dispatch from General Butler, commanding the return of three of our party (whom he designated by name) to his headquarters. This manœuvre, I believe, never received satisfactory explanation: the men were detained several days by Butler, and eventually sent to the same prison with the rest of us. Before another half-hour passed we heard the tinkle of the engineer’s bell, the gang-plank was drawn aboard, the paddles began to revolves lines were cast off, and we felt indeed that we were turning our backs on home. It was the "bluest" moment of my imprisonment. There seemed such a cruel injustice in tearing a party of men, some of whose heads wore the gray honors of many a winter, from families and friends, and all that men hold dear, for the crime alone of standing before their own hearths and homes, and resisting assassins and burglars, bent upon the desecration of both, that I called in vain on philosophy for consolation, and as we glided along by the well-remembered and ancient plantations of our beautiful river, seen then the first time for three years, and to be seen again——alas, when! I recalled the days when those deserted and wasted mansions, the homes of the Carters, the Seldens, were the abode of a courtly, generous hospitality, worthy of the baronial days of "merrie England," until I filled my mind and heart with such memories and such regrets as are wont to moisten sterner eyes than mine.

We sailed past two long pontoon rafts, in preparation for the move of General Grant across the river, soon to take place with such pomp and trumpeting; past the cloud of transports, that the supply of his vast army, so soon to change its base, demanded; past the Atlanta, so easily captured not long before in the Savannah; past steamers hurrying to the front with recruits to fill the gaps that Lee’s legions were tearing in the Federal lines; and a little before five came abreast of Newport News, and in sight of Old Point and the resident fleet of Hampton Roads. When I saw that harbor again, there were two thousand guns upon it, and such an Armada as the world never saw before. Landed, we were again marched before a provost-marshal, and required to answer our names; and then, under our negro guard, marched to Camp Hamilton, a little west of the large structure formerly known as the Chesapeake Female College, of Hampton.

This "camp" was a two-story wooden barrack, with a small yard, the whole surrounded with a fence some fifteen feet high. Into this inclosure we were marched, our line straightened out, the perennial roll-calling again gone through with; and then we were dismissed, and told to find room to sleep in as best we could.

I had hardly left the ranks when a jolly son of Erin—a Federal soldier—stepped up to me, beckoned me aside, and informed me that the lower story of the building was occupied by Yankee prisoners, incarcerated for various villanies, and that into that apartment I must, under no circumstance, venture, as they garroted and robbed every Confederate soldier they could inveigle into their den. I asked, with some surprise, whether complaint was never made. "Oh, yes," he said, "greenies do complain, and the officers laugh in their faces." I needed no further warning, and steered clear of the "below stairs" in that mansion. Five minutes had not elapsed before one of our party emerged from that lower door, swearing like an irate moss-trooper. One of the Yankees had offered him some coffee, for which he was, of course, very grateful, and invited him in to drink it; but he had hardly entered the den before a blanket was thrown over his head, and he was pulled to the earth, his pockets rifled, and even the gold buttons wrenched from his shirt!

This was our first introduction to Yankee privates off duty, and we were not surprised afterwards when we learned that at Andersonville the prisoners had to hang a number of their comrades on account of their incorrigible villanies committed against their fellow-prisoners.

I cannot speak of Andersonville, without recalling the monstrous travesty of trial which resulted in the murder of Wirz. That he treated harshly many prisoners, may be true, but when their own fellow-soldiers were compelled in self-defence to hang some of them, an enemy might be justified in much severity towards them. That Wirz was not the monster whom that scandalous tribunal declared him, is to my mind conclusively proved from a single fact. Hundreds of Federal prisoners were exchanged from Andersonville, and a delegation from the pen went north, to endeavor to induce the Secretary of War to waive for a moment his preference for the negroes, and consent to an exchange. Now, if Wirz had been the murderer which the court-martial declared him, would not the Northern press, so anxious to catch up any pretext for casting odium on the "rebels," and with so many witnesses of his crimes at hand, have rung with denunciations of the brutal jailer? Yet, I have never met ten men North or South, since the evacuation, who had ever heard the name of Wirz before the surrender! Had he been such a wretch as McNiel or Butler, the whole world would have echoed with denunciations of his name, and he would have been excluded from all parole.

The crime for which Wirz suffered was failure, and his hangman was the Republican majorities in New York and New Jersey. Mais revenons!

After this exhibition of the idiosyncrasies of my enemies I thought it time to get up-stairs among some honest Confederates, and so mounted to the second story, where I had the good fortune to meet two old friends who had been incarcerated there some time, for the unpardonable offence of running away from the Confederacy without bringing with them money enough to convince Butler of their loyalty! Having been there some time, they had made themselves quite comfortable, and invited me to a bunk and a good supper, for both of which they have now, as they had then, my benediction; and having washed my face after a civilized fashion, I turned in to a sleep which the excitement of the past three days made very desirable—and very profound. The next day was Sunday, our first in prison.

"I think that those people, the rituals of whose churches comprise prayers for the captives, never utter these petitions with sufficient unction. I’ll mend my fervor in that behalf hereafter." Such is the memorandum in my diary, under date of June 12th. I commend it, pious reader of mine, to your attention—make a note on’t.

There is in the Roman Catholic Church an order called the Redemptorists, whose members, besides taking the usual monastic obligations of poverty, chastity, and obedience, in the early days of the order, also bound themselves by a vow to dedicate their lives to the redemption of captives, particularly those taken by the Moors; and so faithfully did they devote themselves to this pious vocation, that in the event of any of them failing to compass otherwise the release of at least one captive, he considered himself bound to volunteer to take the place of some Christian prisoner thus confined, and restore him thereby to his family. Cases of this wonderful self-denial were of constant occurrence; and, strange to say, the barbarians kept faith with the good monks with surprising scrupulousness. We concluded while in bonds that something of that sort was desperately needed at the present day, if our Federal friends would only be as honest as the pirates.

About sundown we were marched back to Old Point, and with a hundred or more compatriots huddled into the bow of the Louisiana, a well-known boat of the old Bay line to Baltimore. Here it was our fortune to succeed, in the tenancy of our premises, to an invoice of horses brought down by the boat on her preceding trip; and any thing being thought good enough for the rebels, the ceremonies usual on converting a stable into a human habitation were dispensed with! In these savory quarters we were packed away; the frowning fortress with her diadem of cannon soon faded into distance, and by eleven o’clock we made Point Lookout. Why this cape is so called I am at a loss to imagine, as there is nothing in the prospect to make the most curious inhabitant "look out" in any direction. This matter of nomenclature has puzzled wiser heads than mine, and I am free to admit that Point Lookout is far from an exceptional case. A certain group of islands in the Pacific is denominated "Society," because there is no society there, I suppose; and another denominated "Friendly," although the kindest office the inhabitants perform to strangers is to eat them. Geography has many a lucus a non lucendo. The tide being down, we were landed by means of a little tug that came puffing and fussing alongside; and hungry, sleepy, and half-frozen, we set our tired feet on the friendly shores of "Maryland, my Maryland."

CHAPTER VI.

Point Lookout.—A brute.—The Pen.—Lyon’s Den.—A friend in need.—The demoralization of prison-life.

IT was our misfortune to fall straightway into the hands of a polished scamp—a variety extremely prevalent at Point Lookout, as we afterwards learned. It was scarcely midnight when we landed on a long pier, which jutting out into the Potomac caught the full sweep of the sharp Nor’wester, that screamed and rattled down the channel of the river. The guard, though comfortably clad and furnished with heavy overcoats, suffered acutely; and although the officer who met us as we landed told them that we could not be received until morning, the soldiers did not imagine that their duty required them to stay themselves, or keep their prisoners on the exposed extremity of the long wharf, and they accordingly marched us a few score steps to land. Huddling ourselves together, we were endeavoring to coax a wink from Morpheus, when some ill wind blew the receiving officer, one Lieutenant Phillips, again before us. He straightway opened a torrent of profane abuse upon us and upon our guard, ordered them to take us immediately back to the end of the pier, and waited to see his orders executed, breathing unmentionable execrations against the whole of us. Shivering and utterly miserable, we were marched back, and spent the night in vain efforts to find heat in exercise—sleep being out of the question. The guards themselves, with blanket and overcoat, complained bitterly of the fierce blast; while we had to endure it in light summer costumes, some even without a coat or roundabout. The hours dragged heavily on, and not until seven o’clock in the morning were we allowed to come off the river.

Another provost-marshal’s office soon hove in sight, before which we were ranged in a double rank, and the inevitable roll-call again followed. All being right, Lieutenant Phillips, our worthy of the night before, appeared again, rejoicing in mutton-chop whiskers and a grape-vine cane; and, in a gruff, peremptory voice, ordered the first four of us to step out to be searched. This was accomplished by himself and couple of assistants, and consisted in turning the contents of our pockets on the ground, and then taking off all our clothing, except what was absolutely next the skin, and part of that also. This was done to enable the examiners to search thoroughly our persons for money—a commodity which was pretty generally stolen at Point Lookout, either formally or informally—and in case of Lieutenant Phillips, this ceremony was universally varied by tearing the lining out of the hats and pantaloons of such unfortunates as fell to his lot.

Through indolence or good nature some of the guard discharged this duty too gingerly for this creature’s ideas of official obligation, so with a volley of oaths he shouted, "That’s no way to search damned rebels;" and proceeded to strip off the very last garments and tear out the last shred of lining.

Having thus stolen every thing of any value we had on our persons, Phillips graciously permitted us to dress ourselves, and our line being again formed, we were marched off to "THE PEN."

The military prison, or rather prisons, at Point Lookout, consisted of two inclosures, the one containing about thirty, the other about ten acres of flat sand, on the northern shore of the Potomac at its mouth, but a few inches above high tide, and utterly innocent of tree, shrub, or any natural equivalent for the same. Each was surrounded by a fence about fifteen feet high, facing inwards, around the top of which on the outer face, and about twelve feet from the ground, ran a platform on which twenty or thirty sentinels were posted, keeping watch and ward, night and day, over the prisoners within. Besides these precautions, a strongly fortified palisade stretched across the tongue of land on which the prisons stood, from the bay on the northeast to the Potomac on the southwest. Within this palisade, but of course outside of the "pens," were usually two regiments of infantry, and a couple of batteries of artillery, and without the fortification two or three companies of cavalry, while, riding at anchor in the bay, one gunboat at least was always to be seen. One face of each of these "pens," the eastern, fronted the bay, and gates led from the inclosures to a narrow belt of land between the fence and the water, which was free to the prisoners during the day, piles being driven into the bay on either hand to prevent any dexterous "reb" from flanking out. A certain portion of the water was marked off by stakes driven into the bottom, for bathing purposes, and most of the prisoners gladly availed themselves of the privilege thus afforded; although, as the same locality precisely and exclusively was devoted to the reception of all the filth of the camp, I admit a squeamishness which deprived me of sea-bathing as long as I stayed there.

Allons, mes amis! we have been outside as long as the gentleman of the grape-vine and mutton-chop will permit—let us enter.

The first thing that struck me as peculiarly prominent within the fence was a row of eight or ten wooden buildings, jutting out from the western face of the pen, a hundred feet long, perhaps, by eighteen in width, and one story high, with four tables running down the entire length of each. At the end next the fence, a partition divided off about twelve feet of the structure. These were the mess-rooms and cookhouses. Here all the public cooking and eating of the premises was conducted. A street, twenty feet in width, ran along the front of these houses, and at right angles to this street were long rows of tents of all imaginable patterns, and of no pattern at all, to within twenty or thirty feet of the opposite face of the inclosure. Each of these rows of tents was designed to contain one thousand prisoners, and at the time of our advent there were ten of these nearly filled, and another just begun. We were assigned to various "divisions," as the rows of tents were called, and dismissed. I was informed that Company "B," fourth division, was my "command," and reporting forthwith to the sergeant of the same, he designated my place as No. 15, in a dirty Sibley tent, which the tenants—from some freak, strongly suggestive of danger, however—had christened and duly labelled, the "Lyon’s Den." (I disclaim all responsibility for the orthography.)

I approached the structure with about as heavy a heart as any unregenerate Daniel might be supposed to possess, on presentation to a location with so fearful a name, but the sight that met my eyes as I stooped to pass in, barred my further progress. It is not necessary to enter more particularly into details, than to intimate that my prospective messmates were anxiously on the war-path after certain animals of the parasite order, whose name—infandum—has the same origin as that of la belle passion!

Marius, amid the ruins of Carthage; Belisarius, begging the obolus; Coriolanus, when his ma was plaguing him, or Miss Gunnybags, in the first instant of her discovery that Flora McF.’s face was a half-inch deeper than her own—not the grief of any or all of these (except possibly the last), could equal the mute misery with which—hungry, sleepy, dirty, tired, angry, robbed, and rebellious, I stalked away (if five feet eight and a half can stalk), with a sigh and a groan, from the "Lyon’s Den."

I had not gone far before I was hailed by name in a voice perfectly familiar, though I had not heard it before for some time, and, turning in the direction whence it came, saw a well-known face, my vis-à-vis aforetime in many a game of "prisoner’s base," or "chermany," in the blissful days of boyhood. I think he must have known intuitively both the character and the depth of my misery; for his first question was: "Where are your quarters?" Quarters, indeed! I had rather be quartered, hanged, and drawn besides, than to have passed my time as No. 15 in the den aforementioned. I mentioned the dread name with a sickly attempt at a smile, which was a signal failure, when my friend, a ten months' resident of the prison, invited me around to his shebang (Anglice, domicile) until I could better provide myself.

I wended my way thither assailed by sights and smells as numerous and noxious as Coleridge found in the savory descendant of Colonia Agrippina, and in ten seconds—such is the expedition of prison etiquette—was made acquainted with, and on the most social terms with such of my comrade’s friends as I had not before known.

Sleep was what I wanted most, so borrowing a blanket from my good Samaritan, I availed myself of his invitation, and before many minutes was happily indifferent to all terrestrial affairs. Physiologists have amused themselves with recording the order in which the several senses go to sleep: my own opinion is that, under such circumstances, they make a lumping business of it, and fall by platoons; certainly such was my experience.

I now began prison-life in earnest, and none but those who have experienced it can approximate an idea of its wretchedness. This does not consist in loss of liberty, in absence from home, in subjection to others' control, in insufficient food, in scant clothing, in loss of friends, in want of occupation, in an exposed life, in the absence of all conveniences of living. God knows, all these are bad enough, and contribute in the aggregate greatly to the enhancement of the misery of a prisoner. I think, however, that the great overshadowing agony of imprisonment, to persons of any culture, is isolation—

——"the dreary void,
The leafless desert of the mind,
The waste of feelings unemployed."

The world, friends, fellow-citizens, home, are things as remote as though in another sphere. Death brings its compensation, aside from the consolations of religion, in the remembrance that it is irreversible, and we choke down and eradicate, if we cannot exalt and purify those emotions, whereof the lost were the objects, insensibly changing our social schedule to meet the new order of things. But the prisoner preserves affections and interests without being able to indulge them, and thus with straining eyes and quickening pulse, he dismisses continually the dove for the expected emblem, but it returns forever with flagging wing and drooping head, not having found whereon to rest its weary foot. Thus, there comes that despair which is the aggregate of many, or the supremacy of one disappointment—and from despair comes always degradation. Men become reckless, because hopeless—brutalized, because broken-spirited, until from disregard of the formalities of life, they become indifferent to its duties, and pass with rapid though almost insensible steps from indecorum to vice—until a man will pick your pocket in a prison, who would sooner cut his own throat at home.

The evidence of the prisoners at Andersonville establishes this, and confirms the unanimous experience of those who have pissed any time in confinement. The men there became such utter outlaws, that the prisoners were compelled to organize themselves into vigilance committees and deal swift and mortal vengeance on their murderous companions.

As I believe there never was in the Confederate army any such body of thieves, and ravishers, and house-burners, and hardened wretches, as the "bummers" of Sherman’s host, so I doubt if such a set of outlaws ever assembled in any prison as were congregated at Andersonville; yet that which happened there occurred, if not with the same flagrancy, wherever large numbers of prisoners have been congregated.

To assemble large numbers of men in crowded quarters, apart from the restraints of home and friends and female society, and so keep them for months deprived of sufficient food for body or mind, and with no employment except at rare intervals, or in exceptional cases, and deprived also of liberty, is certain to make them hogs, and very likely to make them devils.

CHAPTER VII.

Order of exercises.—Fabrications of the Sanitary Commission.—History of the pen.—Official clothes thieves.—The guards.—Blackguards again.

THE routine of prison-life at Point Lookout was as follows. Between dawn and sunrise a "reveille" horn summoned us into line by companies, ten of which constituted each division—of which I have before spoken—and here the roll was called. This performance was hurried over with as much haste as is ascribed to certain marital ceremonies in a poem that it would be obviously improper to make a more particular allusion to; and those whose love of a nap predominates over fear of the Yankees, usually tumble in for another snooze. About eight o’clock the breakfasting began. This operation consisted in the forming of the companies again into line, and introducing them under lead of their sergeants into the mess-rooms, where a slice of bread and a piece of pork or beef—lean in the former and fat in the latter being contraband of war—were placed at intervals of about twenty inches apart. The meat was usually about four or five ounces in weight. These we seized upon, no one being allowed to touch a piece, however, until the whole company entered, and each man was in position opposite his ration (universally pronounced raytion, among our enemies, as it is almost as generally called with the "a" short among ourselves, symbolical, you observe, of the shortness of provant in Dixie). This over, a detail of four or five men from each company—made at morning roll-call—formed themselves into squads for the cleansing of the camp; an operation which the Yankees everywhere attend to with more diligence than ourselves. The men then busied themselves with the numberless occupations which the fertility of American genius suggests, of which I will have something to say hereafter, until dinner-time, when they were again carried to the mess-houses, where another slice of bread, and rather over a half-pint of watery slop, by courtesy called "soup," greeted the eyes of such ostrich-stomached animals as could find comfort in that substitute for nourishment.

About sunset, at the winding of another horn, the roll was again called, to be sure that no one had "flanked out," and, about an hour after, came "taps;" after which, all were required to remain in their quarters, and keep silent.

The Sanitary Commission, a benevolent association of exempts in aid of the Hospital Department of the Yankee army, published in July 1865 a "Narrative of Sufferings of United States Officers and Soldiers, Prisoners of War," in which a parallel is drawn between the treatment of prisoners on both sides, greatly to the disadvantage, of course, of "Dixie."

An air of truthfulness is given to this production by a number of affidavits of Confederate prisoners, which made many a Confederate stare and laugh to read.

They were generally the statements of "galvanized" rebels, "so called;" that is, prisoners who had applied for permission to take the oath, or of prisoners who had little offices in the various pens, which they would lose on the whisper of anything disagreeable, and their testimony is entitled to the general credit of depositions taken "under duress."

But among these documentary statements, in glorification of the humanity of the Great Republic, is one on page 89, from Miss Dix, the grand female dry-nurse of Yankee Doodle (who, by the by, gave, I understand, unpardonable offence to the pulchritude of Yankeedom, by persistently refusing to employ any but ugly women as nurses—the vampire)—which affirms that the prisoners at Point Lookout "were supplied with vegetables, with the best of wheat bread, and fresh and salt meat three times daily in abundant measure."

Common gallantry forbids the characterization of this remarkable extract in harsher terms than to say that it is untrue in every particular.

It is quite likely that some Yankee official at Point Lookout made this statement to the benevolent itinerant, and her only fault may be in suppressing the fact that she "was informed," etc., etc. But it is altogether inexcusable in the Sanitary Commission to attempt to palm such a falsehood upon the world, knowing its falsity, as they must have done. For my part, I never saw any one get enough of any thing to eat at Point Lookout, except the soup, and a teaspoonful of that was too much for ordinary digestion.

These digestive discomforts were greatly enhanced by the villanous character of the water, which is so impregnated with some mineral as to offend every nose, and induce diarrhœa in almost every alimentary canal. It colors every thing black in which it is allowed to rest, and a scum rises on the top of a vessel if it is left standing during the night, which reflects the prismatic colors as distinctly as the surface of a stagnant pool. Several examinations of this water have been made by chemical analysis, as I was told by a Federal surgeon in the prison, and they have uniformly resulted in its condemnation by scientific men; but the advantages of the position to the Yankees, as a prison pen, so greatly counterbalanced any claim of humanity, that Point Lookout I felt sure would remain a prison camp until the end of the war, especially as there are wells outside of "the Pen," which are not liable to these charges, the water of which is indeed perfectly pure and wholesome, so that the Yanks suffer no damage therefrom. The ground was inclosed at Point Lookout for a prison in July, 1863, and the first instalment of prisoners arrived there on the 25th of that month from the Old Capitol, Fort Delaware, and Fort McHenry, some of the Gettysburg captures. One hundred and thirty-six arrived on the 31st of the same month from Washington, and on the 10th of August another batch came from Baltimore, having been captured at Falling Water. Every few weeks the number was increased, until they began to count by thousands.

During the scorching summer, whose severity during the day is as great on that sand-barren as anywhere in the Union north of the Gulf, and through the hard winter, which is more severe at that point than anywhere in the country south of Boston, these poor fellows were confined here in open tents, on the naked ground, without a plank or a handful of straw between them and the heat or frost of the earth.

And when, in the winter, a high tide and an easterly gale would flood the whole surface of the pen, and freeze as it flooded, the sufferings of the half-clad wretches, many accustomed to the almost vernal warmth of the Gulf, may easily be imagined. Many died outright, and many more will go to their graves crippled and racked with rheumatisms; which they date from the winter of 1863—4. Even the well-clad sentinels, although relieved every thirty minutes (instead of every two hours, as is the army rule), perished in some instances, and in others lost their feet and hands, through the terrible cold of that season.

During all this season the ration of wood allowed to each man was an arm-full for five days, and this had to cook for him as well as warm him, for at that time there were no public cook-houses and mess-rooms.

An additional refinement of cruelty was the regulation which always obtained at Point Lookout, and which I believe was peculiar to the prison, under which the Yanks stole from us any bed-clothing we might possess, beyond one blanket! This petty larceny was effected through an instrumentality they call inspections. Once in every ten days an inspection was ordered, when all the prisoners turned out in their respective divisions and companies in marching order. They ranged themselves in long lines between the rows of tents, with their blankets and haversacks—those being the only articles considered orthodox possessions of a rebel. A Yankee inspected each man, taking away his extra blanket, if he had one, and appropriating any other superfluity he might chance to possess; and this accomplished, he visited the tents and seized everything therein that under, the convenient nomenclature of the Federals was catalogued as "contraband"—blankets, boots, hats, anything. The only way to avoid this was by a judicious use of greenbacks—and a trifle would suffice,—it being true, with honorable exceptions, of course, that Yankee soldiers are very much like ships: to move them, you must "slush the ways."

In the matter of clothing, the management at Point Lookout was simply infamous. You could receive nothing in the way of clothing without giving up the corresponding article which you might chance to possess; and so rigid was this regulation, that men who came there barefooted have been compelled to beg or buy a pair of worn-out shoes to carry to the office in lieu of a pair sent them by their friends, before they could receive the latter. To what end this plundering was committed I could never ascertain, nor was I ever able to hear any better, or indeed any other reason advanced for it, than that the possession of extra clothing would enable the prisoners to bribe their guards! Heaven help the virtue that a pair of second-hand Confederate breeches could seduce!

As I have mentioned the guards, and as this is a mosaic chapter, I may as well speak here as elsewhere of the method by which order was kept in camp. During the day, the platform around the pen was constantly paced by sentinels, chiefly of the Invalid (or, as it is now called, the Veteran Reserve) Corps, whose duty it was to see that the prisoners were orderly, and particularly, that no one crossed "the dead-line." This is a shallow ditch traced around within the inclosure, about fifteen feet from the fence. The penalty for stepping over this is death, and although the sentinels are probably instructed to warn any one who may be violating the rule, the order does not seem to be imperative, and the negroes, when on duty, rarely troubled themselves with this superfluous formality. Their warning was the click of the lock, sometimes the discharge of their muskets. These were on duty during my stay at the Point every third day, and their insolence and brutality were intolerable.

Besides this detail of day-guard, which of course was preserved during the night, a patrol made the rounds constantly from "taps," the last horn at night, to "reveille." These were usually armed with pistols for greater convenience, and as they are shielded from scrutiny by the darkness, the indignities and cruelties they oftentimes inflicted on prisoners, who for any cause might be out of their tents between those hours, especially when the patrol were black, were outrageous. Many of these were of a character which could not by any periphrase be decently expressed,—they were, however, precisely the acts which a set of vulgar brutes, suddenly invested with irresponsible authority, might be expected to take delight in; and, as it was of course impossible to recognize the perpetrators, redress was unattainable, even if one could brook the sneer and insult which would inevitably follow complaint. Indeed, most of the Yankees did not disguise their delight at the insolence of these Congoes.

CHAPTER VIII.

Shelter at Point Lookout.—Cracker-box houses.—A prison adventure.—Prison ingenuity.—The washerwomen.—Contributions to prisoners.—The war a people’s war.—A woman.—A loyal negro.

I HAVE said that the only shelter supplied by the Yankee government to the prisoners at Point Lookout was canvas. Tents were issued to the prisoners at the rate of one "A tent"—covering about six feet square—to each squad of five; or one Sibley tent—covering a circle whose diameter is about fifteen feet—to every eighteen men. The camp uniformity was, however, agreeably diversified by mansions of aristocratic proportions and finish, which from their material were styled "cracker-box houses." Top-boots and a cracker-box house fill the measure of any genuine Point Lookouter’s ambition. To want these, was to be the subject of envy—to possess them, was to be its object (I speak Kant—as many a better man before me). It was only as a very special favor that a rebel was allowed to wear boots there at all, but the other blessing being attainable by all by means of a little cash and much diligence, was a lawful object of universal ambition. They were made on this wise:

A large proportion of the bread used at all prisons consists of square crackers made of flour, water, and salt alone, and thoroughly baked, which are put up in fifty-pound boxes, and everywhere denominated "hard-tack." The boxes in which these crackers are packed, are made of white pine or some other light and easily-worked wood, and are, I suppose, about thirty-two inches long, by twenty broad and twelve deep. They are the perquisites of the prison commissary, who sells them at from ten to fifteen cents apiece, according to the demand. These were knocked to pieces carefully, the nails all saved, and the boards put away, until longer pieces of wood in sufficient numbers to make a frame were procured from outside. This accomplished, and the boards nailed on carefully, the "A tent" was slit up the back, and stretched across the ridge pole of the new domicile to form the roof. If newspapers, especially illustrated ones, could be procured, the walls were papered inside, increasing the comfort as well as bettering the appearance of the room; a fireplace was made in the end, of sun-dried bricks of home manufacture, which having been raised four or five feet, was surmounted by a flour-barrel; the floor was spread with sand from the beach, a table and a couple of chairs were improvised, bunks constructed, a name painted (with a composition of soot and vinegar) over the door; and the family moved in—men of mark and consequence forever thenceforth in the chronicles of Point Lookout!

Most of these buildings were put up by Marylanders, whose proximity to their homes enabled them to command a larger exchequer than the other prisoners, and they were very creditable specimens of the taste, ingenuity, and industry of artificers, whose only tools usually were a jackknife and a piece of the iron hoop of a beef-barrel filed into the semblance of a saw.

Many of the names by which these mansions were designated were purely fanciful, as, "Here’s your Mule," "The Alhambra," etc., but sometimes they were more significant. I noticed a very neat one at the end of the division in which I slept, labelled "Home Again;" and on inquiry learned that the appropriateness of the title depended on the following incident. It was erected on the ground of a former structure of the same kind, tenanted by the same parties, which came to grief as follows. Its occupants, an ingenious party with considerable mechanical skill, had contrived to accumulate cracker-box lumber in large quantities without exciting suspicion, under pretence of building a larger house; and by watching their opportunities, had fashioned their material into two canoes, each capable of containing two or three men. These boats could be carried under the arm, the various parts disjointed, without exciting suspicion; and could be readily fitted together, even in the dark, by those who were familiar with their construction. Every thing promised success, and they were awaiting a night of favoring darkness, having made the necessary arrangements for getting outside of the inclosure—that is to say, bribed the guard. In their frail boats they had resolved to trust themselves, for love of sweet liberty, to the mercy of the river, which at its mouth is exceedingly rough, when, unfortunately, the Yanks got wind of the daring project. They sent a guard to the house, found the canoes, made a bonfire of them, and then razed the castle to the ground, leaving not a bit of it standing, "from turret to foundation-stone." For some time the baffled tenants wandered around, pensioners upon the charity of their comrades; but at last they ventured on rebuilding their palace, and having accomplished this unmolested, they gave modest vent to their satisfaction, as well as a visiting card to their friends, by writing over their door, "Home Again."

As I have spoken of the architectural performances of the "rebs," I may as well do scant justice here as elsewhere to the surprising ingenuity and skill displayed by them in the various devices with which they contrived to beguile the tedium (and buy the tobacco) of prison-life.

The larger portion of the manufactures of the prisoners consisted of rings, chains, breastpins, shirt buttons, lockets, etc., of gutta-percha. These were beautifully carved, in an infinite diversity of style and design; and inlaid with gold, silver, and pearl, in an endless variety of ornamental device. The rings were chiefly made of coat-buttons; the chains exclusively, I believe, from a certain long hollow tube of gutta-percha, used as a needle in some description of knitting or crochet, by sawing the cylinder into rings, slitting one side of each, and thus linking them together; and the other ornaments were made principally of what is known as block gutta-percha, the masses of which, being of greater thickness, afforded the means of heavier work. A large needle, to drill the holes for the pins which confine the inlaid material, a hand-lathe which was easily made in a half-hour, and a knife, one blade of which was filed into a saw, were the only instruments required for this manufacture, though many who had been long at the business had supplied themselves with graver’s tools of every variety.

A more ambitious class of workmen confined themselves to carving in bone; and I remember a "Greek Slave," a "Paul in chains,"***** and a "crucifix," by one of these, which would not shame an experienced artist, and yet the maker had never carved a pipe, even, until he was a prisoner. I feel no hesitation in mentioning the name of the ingenious gentleman who wrought thus beautifully, nor any delicacy in giving this public expression to the hope that Mr. W. W. Marstellar will do himself and his native State, Virginia, the justice to cherish and mature the talent he so obviously possesses in unusual degree.

While these were the regular occupations of camp, no division was without one or two shoemakers, and as many tailors and barbers, who contrived somehow to obtain both the tools and materials of their trades; while here and there throughout the camp, you would find gingerbread and molasses-candy of domestic manufacture for sale, and, strangely enough, one or two regular eating-houses, where a very respectable dinner could be obtained for fifty cents! The solvent power of money triumphs over every obstacle.

Well and wisely wrote that rollicking son of Venusium:

——————"rem facias: rem
Si possis recte, si non, quocunquo modo rem."

For with that useful rem what has not been and may not be accomplished.

Before my arrival at Point Lookout, two of its most celebrated pieces of workmanship had been sold outside. One of these was a locomotive, with a camp kettle for a boiler, and the other a watch, which filled a common canteen! both of which worked admirably, as I learned from many who inspected them. The handsomest, and, considering all the difficulties, the most surprising sample of mere mechanical ingenuity which I saw, was a violin made of a cracker-box, wherein all the curves and undulations of that preternaturally twisted instrument were reproduced with the utmost fidelity. This curiosity stood the crucial test of practice, for I had the pleasure of hearing as honest a jig extracted from its sonorous body as ever tried the endurance or evidenced the skill of dame or demoiselle in all the tide of time.

The locomotive was, as I learned, purchased for Barnum’s Museum—such, at least, was the belief inside the pen; so, I presume, it was resolved into its original elements in that terrible fire, so eloquently and accurately described by the New York World, when the mermaid had her tail burnt to a cinder before she knew she was a-fire, and the whale was devoured in a sauce made principally of his own spermaceti, after having been boiled to unusual liveliness in his narrow tank.

Another source of extensive profits in prison was the pursuit of the washerwomen—if that phrase may be used without compromising the conscript liability of the subjects. The labors of these useful ouvriers were conducted on the beach at low tide. The beating of the waves against the bank, which is formed just here of a tenacious clay, leaves a little bluff some two or three feet high, along the bay face of the prison, which, as I have before mentioned, was free to the prisoners during the day. Here the washers most did congregate. Their first duty was to make a stove. This was effected by digging a round hole in this clay bluff, about eight inches in diameter, and as many deep, the outer rim of which was some four or five inches from the edge of the bluff. A second hole was then tunnelled in the face of the bluff, at such a distance below the surface as would allow it to strike the bottom of the first hole, so that the two apertures had the general form of the elbow of a stove-pipe; and the furnace was complete. A fire was made in the larger cavity, over the mouth of which the boiler was placed, being raised from the ground by a few pebbles that the draught might be perfect. The washerwoman rolled up his pants, and waded out a few yards, to clear water, filled his bucket with the salt tide, and was soon under weigh.

The washerwoman did not, however, monopolize this belt of ground, unfortunately. Its most numerous occupants were gamblers, who, under hastily constructed booths, which they erected every morning, and slept on every night, carried on every game of cards at which money is staked, from aristocratic "faro" to cut-throat monte. Here the dice rattled, and the cards were shuffled from morning till night; every thing representing value, from a "hard-tack" up, being freely offered and accepted as legitimate currency. In truth, the "hard-tack" may be considered the unit of value in prison. One of them would purchase a single chew of tobacco anywhere in camp; eight would buy a United States postage stamp; ten, a loaf of bread, etc. Indeed, the air resounded, from rosy morn to dewy eve, with such sounds as, "Here’s yer tobaccer for yer hard-tack." "Here’s envelopes for yer hard-tack," and the like. There was quite an amount of this commodity always in circulation, from the fact that many of the prisoners were not dependent on the Government rations; so they drew their supplies, and either gave them, or sold them, to less fortunate neighbors.

Whence came the money for all this gambling you naturally ask, and I confess I was for a long time puzzled by the phenomenon. The regulations of this prison not only prescribed that all money should be taken from prisoners on their entry, but that, under no circumstances, should money be delivered to them. When friends, therefore, transmitted them supplies of this sort, they were taken possession of by the commandant of the camp, who notified the prisoner, and the latter was then permitted, in one form or another, to draw on the deposit thus made. At Point Lookout, under the régime at the time of our capture, the money was issued in sutler’s checks or tickets, which the sutler was forbidden to receive again from any one not a prisoner. Subsequently, the plan was devised of handing to each prisoner who had money to his credit, a pass-book, on the first page of which he found himself credited with the money sent him, and debited with the cost of the book, and by taking this account-book to the sutler, purchases could be effected to the amount of the balance due. But, under whatever form, money obtained, by some means, admission. Rebel ingenuity managed it, and I am overwhelmed with regret, oh, most indulgent of readers, that "the exigencies of the public service" do not permit me to say how. I know you are not satisfied, but "odds bodikins!" how can I help that? Curiosity has brought many a man and woman to condign grief since our common grandmother's unfortunate escapade, and, doubtless, will continue to be the vestibule to misery till the crack of doom. Ruminate thereon, and be comforted, for tell you, I am resolved beyond hope of repentance, I will not.

The fact of its receipt constituted the great difference between the prisoners of the two peoples. A Federal prisoner had no sympathy arising from any other sentiment than mere humanity at the South. The war was the war of the people. In it every hope and interest and energy and affection of a brave people were centred. The effort to prejudice the cause of the South by declaring the war to have been the act of a few discontented politicians, was necessary to justify the North before the eyes of the world. If it had once been admitted that the people of ten States with great unanimity desired independence, the unexampled wickedness of a war for their subjugation by a people themselves the creation of a revolution which asserted the people’s right to change their governments at will, would have been manifest to the world. Hence the ear of the earth was filled with the averment that the people had no heart in the war. But no assertion was ever more false. Like every other war ever begun in earth’s history, the people did not originate it, but no war in history ever was so popular when once begun. Its failure was the crushing by brute force of the aspiration of eight millions of people for liberty, and history will so record it.

The war-party in the Union now admit it, because it is now their interest to do so. They declare that there is no true Union sentiment in the South; that no Union man can be elected to any office; that the rebels are subjugated, not converted; that the mass of the people are sullenly hostile to the Union. What is all this but a proclamation to the world that the Southern war for liberty was the people’s war, and that the North, in liberating four millions of blacks, enslaved eight millions of whites?

This plain view of the matter was taken by many thousands in the North, and was expressed while expression was free. After awhile, Seward’s little bell began to tinkle; and the holders of obnoxious opinions were Bastiled into silence, if not orthodoxy.

But one method of expression was left open, and freely availed of—charity to the prisoners. It was noble, princely—divine. Insult, outrage, imprisonment, threats—nothing could stem this noble tide, until the generous, liberal, magnanimous Federal Government forbade the Express companies to carry packages for rebel prisoners!

If the prayers and gratitude of thousands of men and thousands of women and children, widows many and orphans, could reward the noble people in the Northern States who thus gave their testimony for the great right of self-government, they have it a thousand-fold—there is nothing else left us with which to make a return.

In the South, on the other hand, every Yankee soldier was looked on as a foe who had invaded our homes to enslave us. We tried to impose no government on them; they were attempting to force one upon us. We disclaimed in the heydey of our fortunes any purpose but separation; they everywhere and always proclaimed their design to be, to force us into a union with them. We assured them we abhorred that union: they thirsted for the unwilling embrace.

It is not much wonder, then, that there was no individual sympathy for those who were captives among us, and that when the Government issued rations to them such as it had to give, they were dependent on that alone for subsistence.

Revenons! I must not forget to mention that among the convicts was a woman! She was captured in the Valley of Virginia, I was informed, while acting as a member of an artillery company, and her sex discovered, probably, on the usual search for valuables. Common civility suggested a conversation with her; and one day as I was passing the little tent which was assigned to her exclusively, I approached her for the purpose of making some inquiries, as well as letting her know that we were disposed to serve her in any way possible to prisoners. She seemed, however, indisposed to converse, and I was compelled to give up the chase. Why the Yanks detained her I can’t imagine, as I believe, in the rare instances in which these Amazonian propensities had brought the sex to trouble theretofore, on either side, their exchange was promptly made.

Another "rara avis"—the remainder of the line is even more pointedly appropriate—"nigroque simillima cycno"—was a genuine "Old Virginity" negro, named "Dick," whilom a servant at the Bollingbrook Hotel in Petersburg, who was taken while in the service as cook to some mess, during the Gettysburg campaign. Dick had been importuned, time and again, to renounce the Confederate cause, come out of prison and accept work and good wages outside; but he resisted with Roman fortitude—protested that he was a "Jeff. Davis" man, that he was going back to his home, and wanted nothing to do with the Yankees.

Dick’s loyalty to his section, tempted and persecuted as he was on all sides, and especially by the negro soldiers when on duty, was very exhilarating. It involved, of course, many sacrifices; but Dick rose superior to them all, sublimely indifferent to all mortal woes except such as are supposed to be inseparable from the pursuits of any honest washerwoman—that being Dick’s profession.

Dick remained a prisoner until near the end of the war, having been in durance twenty months, and is now at his old home in Petersburg, where we hope he may live long and happily. The advent of our party was to him a source of mingled mortification and delight. He obviously regretted to see us in bonds, but he was glad to hear news of many who had been dead to him for a year, and his gratification took the practical turn of placing his purse and labor at our disposal.

Day now followed day in tedious progression, little occurring to break the monotony of a life which has all the stupidity of a tread-mill without its exercise. The few incidents that marked it, I cannot, perhaps, more conveniently dispose of than by extracting from my diary, with a little amplification for greater clearness.

CHAPTER IX.

Black patriots on the rampage.—Major Weymouth’s inspection.—Foul water.—Columbia.—Rumored capture of Petersburg.—Peculiar costume.—The rationale of rations.

Thursday, June 16th.—A prisoner a week to-day—it seems a year. Last night the negro regiment which constitutes part of our guard, and which has been raiding over in Westmoreland and the adjacent counties, returned with great beating of drums and blowing of fifes. The captives of these brave soldiers of the Republic consisted of a hundred head of cattle—principally poor women’s cows—several ploughs, buggies, primeval sulkies, harrows, beds, chairs, etc., and from twenty to thirty decrepit citizens! This is the service in which these demons are regularly employed. Every month, and sometimes more frequently than once in thirty days, they are sent across the river on a plundering tour. The Yankees are too much ashamed of this to fill their papers with the doings of these valiant "swash bucklers," but they are glad of the means of keeping alive, by this promise of stated plunderings, the martial ardor and fidelity of their black brethren, and, of course, are not unwilling to share the spoils. These raids, which were usually made in a country entirely devoid of Confederate soldiers, are, of course, without any earthly justification or purpose, except to gratify the malignity and feed the beastliness of their new allies, whose delight in these safe robberies is, as may be expected, boundless. The old men are usually kept a short time in an uninclosed camp outside, under guard of the negroes, and then returned to their homes, the Yankees even not having the audacity to detain them—perhaps not the humanity to feed them. These thieves were generally accompanied by a Doctor——,and those who knew him in the prison spoke very indignantly of the vulgar boasts they ascribed to him on his return, of the plunder he seized.

Saw to-day, for the first time, the chief provost-marshal, Major H. G. O. Weymouth. He is a handsome official, with ruddy face, a rather frank countenance, and a cork-leg. He conducts this establishment on the "laissez faire" principle—in short, he lets it alone severely. Whatever the abuses or complaints, or reforms, the only way to reach him is by communications through official channels, said channels being usually the authors of the abuses! It may be easily computed how many documents of this description would be likely to meet his eye.

Two or three times a week he rides into camp with a sturdy knave behind him, at a respectful distance—makes the run of one or two streets, and is gone, and I presume sits down over a glass of brandy and water, and indites a most satisfactory report of the condition of the "rebs," for the perusal of his superior officer, or plies some credulous spinster with specious fictions about the comfort, abundance, and general desirableness of Yankee prisons. Major bears a bad reputation here, in the matter of money; all of which, I presume, arises from the unreasonableness of the "rebs," who are not aware that they have no rights which Yankees are bound to respect.

Friday, June 17th.—A salute of thirteen guns heralded this morning the arrival of General Augur, who commands the department of Washington. About twelve M., the general, with a few other officials, made the tour of camp, performing, in the prevailing perfunctory manner, the official duty of inspection.

Nothing on earth can possibly be more ridiculous and absurd than the great majority of official inspections of all sorts; but this "banged Bannagher." General Augur did not speak to a prisoner, enter a tent, peep into a mess-room, or, so far as I saw, take a single step to inform himself how the pen was managed.

Weymouth probably fixed up a satisfactory report, however, when the general’s brief exhibition of his new uniform to the appalled "rebs" was over.

Visited all my comrades to-day, and, with one exception, found them all suffering like myself from exhausting diarrhœa, induced by the poisonous water.

Sunday, June 19th.—The New York papers received to-day are blatant with accounts, most detailed and circumstantial, of the capture of Petersburg. The back-door of Richmond is now secured, say the editors, and bets are freely offered in Grant’s army, according to the correspondents, that the "Fourth of July" will be celebrated under the shadow of Washington’s statue, on Capitol Square, in Richmond! All this I believe, with unhesitating faith, to be a lie of the first-water, explicable alone in the light of the circumstance, that the regular mail for Europe left yesterday. Such of General Grant’s officers as celebrate the next "Fourth" in Richmond, will perform that patriotic service in the Libby, and to-morrow’s papers (the steamer being gone) will contradict the falsehood of to-day. And yet—here’s the psychological paradox in the matter—the credulous Yanks, though thus deceived, on a moderate calculation, three hundred and sixty-five times in every year of grace since the war began, are as ready now to be deluded as in the earliest hour of the earliest day, and the enterprising geniuses who control, or furnish news for, the press of the North, play the game of wholesale lying, with the same profound audacity and superb success this blessed day, as when they first gave American circulation to the European simile, "Lying like a bulletin." Mein Gott vot a beebles!

To-day we were blessed with our first practical experience of the beauties of a Yankee inspection. The massacre of the innocent (blankets) was wholesale and very provoking. I performed an acceptable service for a fellow-prisoner, by appearing in line with his extra blanket in my hand, not having one of my own. Our division being a new one—for though sleeping in the Fourth, I answered roll in the Twelfth—the prisoners had but little superfluous cloth of any sort, and the Yank who did the stealing from us, was obviously mortified at the scant game he bagged.

While waiting dutifully, hour by hour, for our inspector to approach and perform his task, the gates of the prison opened, and a batch of "rebs," numbering a couple of hundred, entered. Among them were several of our fellow-citizens of Petersburg, captured in the attack of the preceding Thursday, I believe, by Baldy Smith and Hancock, which gave rise to the flaming particulars of the capture of the gallant Cockade, so ostentatiously displayed in the journals of Saturday. They assure us that our little city is still safe, but the accounts they bring of the distress of the inhabitants, on the day after our capture, are heartrending. I can well imagine it. Only a drop it was, truly, in that fierce tide, each refluent wave of which comes to the shore of the South crested with the shattered wrecks of the best, and dearest, and noblest of her sons; yet to those mourning homes in Petersburg, shuddering with the agony of an unexpected and bloody woe, that drop was a consuming flood. Her young men had gone into the war with a noble prodigality of their lives, and health, and comfort, that proved them worthy of the ancient fame of their little city, and of the priceless heritage they coveted; and when they fell, they were mourned indeed, but it was a sacrifice anticipated and in some sort prepared for. But on that day, the fathers and grandfathers fell—the bullet cheated the grave. The blood-stained locks were gray—the pallid cheeks were wrinkled. It was not mothers that wailed the lost, but daughters, and daughters’ daughters! Yet, how well and worthily these heroes shed their blood, let the record of the villanies now staining, as I write, the track of Sherman, attest!

These lines were written with the news of the doings of the drunken fiends in Columbia before my eyes. When the terror of prison and fire is raised from Southern pens, let some South Carolinian, whose sick wife was taken on a sheet from her bed and laid in a gutter by humane soldiers, while their comrades tore the earrings from her bleeding ears, and prayed her to look what a fine blaze her house was making, write the record of that great campaign. The curses of widows and orphans followed it, and will forever follow those who are responsible for it. We have no illustrated papers to multiply and exaggerate the story of these horrors, if they can be exaggerated, and no courts-martial and military commissions to brand with infamous punishment the guilty, but the tale must be told. Let the fathers and mothers tell it to their offspring, and bequeath the memory.

"As a rich heritage unto their children."

The day will come in this century or the next for History; and—if there is a God, whose wrath is still kindled by brothers’ blood—for vengeance.

Tuesday, June 21st.—As I expected, the capture of Petersburg was a mere falsehood, which having accomplished its purpose, be the same financial or political, is now shelved as quietly as the same versatile people sacrifice a principle or decapitate a general, when either has served their turn.

When news comes from a great distance or through many hands, these astonishing departures from truth may be accounted for, but these dispatches were written at City Point, within nine miles of Petersburg, and where their authors must have known they were false.

The further issue of cracker-boxes to the prisoners was prohibited to-day, so that an elegant arrangement by which I proposed, in company with five or six others, to become a P. L. aristocrat is postponed, if not prevented utterly. As our rulers do not vouchsafe any excuse for this act, which was probably a mere freak, we are of course left to conjecture as to the cause, and guesses at the motives of the conduct of these worthies are not likely to prove signally profitable.

Io triumphe! I received to-day a letter! To ordinary mortal eyes this may seem nothing more than a common quadrangle of MS., distinguished by the imprimatur of a certain official outside the "pen," who stamps our correspondence "Prisoner’s Letter, Examined," but to me, hungering and thirsting after news of home, this was as grateful as the first golden distillation of the grape to our pluvious progenitor in the earliest autumn after the deluge. (N. B. This simile is copyrighted.) The regulations of all the prisons prohibit prisoners from sending or receiving a longer letter than one page. At Point Lookout the ellipsis which may be supposed to follow the word "page," in the "general order," is filled with the words "of note paper." So that one had to acquire a telegraphic habit of writing, or be content to say little. Some geniuses whose fancies refused this mathematical curb, were in the habit of writing their letters at the usual length, and cutting them off by the page and sending them "by detail," very much as ships are said by Baltimore men to be built "Down East," by the mile, and then cut off to suit purchasers:—while others cultivated a microscopic penmanship, which must be eminently useful to them on their return to Dixie, unless paper falls in the market meanwhile.

Tuesday, June 21st.—On the prison bulletin-board—an institution by which general information is conveyed to prisoners—a list was pasted this morning, containing the names of parties for whom there were boxes or packages to deliver, and to my considerable joy, my name appeared among the rest. These presents to, or purchases by prisoners, are delivered at a door in the south side of the inclosure, which opens through the fence and into an office or store-room, where the packages are received, opened, examined, and all that escapes the regulations (and the regulators) turned over to the owners. As before remarked, this performance is conducted on the most ascetic principles as respects clothing, no one being allowed to take any articles of outside wear, from hat to shoes (boots are mala prohibita), unless he deposits the corresponding article of his existing stock. It becomes necessary, therefore, if one has any article of apparel, that he is not exactly prepared to turn over to his merciful masters, to find some method of evading the laws. This was not very difficult. All that was necessary, was to buy, or beg, or "flank" a suit of clothes, to surrender which would involve no other sacrifice than that purely emotional one which founds our attachment to certain things, on account of an absurd veneration for antiquity. Accordingly, I beat up quarters for half an hour, till I accumulated a suit that would have entitled me to an exalted position among the raggedest vagrants in Naples or Constantinople. My shoes had to be coaxed to stay on, by an arrangement after the fashion of a surcingle, which strapped them to my feet. My hat only deserved the name from the circumstance that in some mythical era of the past, it was attached to certain other, and relatively very extensive portions of organized matter, now, alas, long resolved into their original elements,—the combination of which constituted the article in question; though I am free to say, it would have required the anatomical intuition of a Cuvier to have deduced the castor from the fragment. It being a warm summer-day, I conceived it would excite no suspicion to appear without a coat, so my only other article of external costume was one which, with great and many misgivings, I venture to enter on the catalogue of pantaloons. Verily, verily, never since the martial ancestors of the gay Parisians invented these indispensable institutions of dress (and I have Gibbon’s authority for the assertion, that they deserve that credit), did such a travesty on costume disgust the eye of taste. Innocent of buttons, both legs out at the knees, stained by time and less tender agencies out of all approach to its original color, with an enormous quadrilateral carved out of it in a location which indeed could best spare so large a tax, but which modesty forbids me to make more particular reference to, it was only by a diligent and scientific application of pins that I could induce it to preserve even a bifurcate appearance, while the assistance of one hand was necessary to keep the entire compilation from demolition, and the wearer from the miserable fate of Parson Adams, in his celebrated nocturnal encounter in the inn. Long ere this, oh, most comical of costumes, thou hast found appropriate service in the terrifying of crows; or—more noble fate—"the paper-mill hath claimed thee for its own."

Thus caparisoned, however, and assuming an air of such desolation as might be considered appropriate to preserve the tout ensemble, I wended my way to the office. As I passed along, my ragamuffin appearance excited, of course, a little comment, which I bore with philanthropic patience till one villanous "reb," presuming on the position of the hand that was doing the duty of a pair of suspenders, suggested, with a solemn wag of his head, "Maybe a little Jamaiky ginger mout help yer, mister!" The charitable motive disarmed any resentment I might have felt at the insult to my appearance.

To the office I went, however, but my preparations turned out to be all in vain. My package consisted of a beef tongue and a can of "solidified cream." I returned to my quarters with my plunder, gave myself a denuding shake, which reduced my dress pretty much to the condition of the memorable "one-horse shay," and summoning my messmates, soon forgot both the troubles and the farce of costuming, in diligent application to the "provant." Oh, Dalgetty, prince and prototype of the military Bohemian, with what wisdom and justice did you assign the highest place in the soldier’s scale to "rations!"

It is quite humiliating to those whose idea of the superior dignity of humanity is so very exalted, to confess how much of the good and evil, great and little, objective as well as subjective of life, is dependent on the average dinner a man gets, but the fact is indisputable. I claim no originality for this reflection. Forty years ago Byron wrote—

————"all human history attests
That happiness for man—the hungry sinner—
Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner."

And whoever troubles his brain with the unfashionable labor of thinking, will be apt to conclude with me that much besides happiness hangs on the same thread. What is the reason that the Romans conquered the world? Merely this—they were generous feeders. Who can account for the fact that the hardy Scotsman has not been able to hold his own against his less stalwart neighbor below the Tweed, except as a result of the fact that oatmeal, though flanked by usquebaugh, is no match for wheat flour with only beer for an ally? Why have the Hindoos so steadily and so extensively bowed their necks before the English? Preachers, and philanthropists, and editors, and place-men, all have their ready-made theories to account for the phenomenon; but the patent fact, which they won’t confess, because it don’t suit their hypotheses, is, that Nana Saib ate rice, but Havelock roast-beef. Why was Cassius a conspirator? Because he was "lean and hungry." Why did Napoleon lose Waterloo? Merely because he was too fat, or, as some irreverent historian affirms, because he had the stomach-ache, as he confesses. Why won’t revolution succeed in Ireland? Depend upon it, the root of the mischief is the potato. Who could be humane on raw beef and Cognac, or virtuous on truffles and Lynnhaven oysters? Caramba! the thing cannot be.

Shakspeare recognized the general connection in his broad assertion, "Fat paunches have lean pates," and many a long century before him, the candid Horace, regardless of the danger he ran of having his criticism turned on his jolly, rotund little self, uttered the same thought—

"Pingue pecus domino facias, et cetera, prœter,
Ingenium."

Indeed, I am not sure that those philosophers were wholly in the wrong who located the soul in the stomach; and being an optimist, I find great comfort in the thought that if this be true, few will be lost for voluntary want of attention to this tabernacle of the nobler part of man.

CHAPTER X.

Officers moving.—Negro insolence.—Fires out across the dead line.—Improvising furniture.—Designs on a "nail kag."—Negro regiment to the front.—A new prison at Elmira.—The Fourth of July in vinculis.—Noble Maryland.

Thursday, June 23d.—The officers who were confined in a pen near us were to-day removed, preparatory to sending them to Fort Delaware. It has been determined to keep no commissioned prisoners at this point. To-day the negroes are again on guard, and are very insolent. Like all the rest of these sable patriots, they seem to have exhausted the resources of darkness to form their complexions, and their conduct is as black as their skin. They curse and swear at the prisoners, level their guns at them, and threaten to fire, "jis to make de dam rebs scatter;" will not allow a group of three to talk together, and at night bully and beat every prisoner that they meet. A whisper in a tent loud enough to be heard by these patriots is a signal for their entrance, when they steal what they want, and drown remonstrance in a volley of oaths, if they are sober; and likely enough, balls, if they are drunk.

An order was issued to us to-day, prohibiting the lighting of any more fires in camp; so that the extra cooking which we have been able to give our half-raw rations is foreclosed. This order was given, as we were officially informed, to prevent the fouling of the camp which cooking occasioned; but the truth was, as I found to my cost, it was designed to prevent the prisoners from making their food fit to eat.

As the washermen were still permitted to boil their clothing on the beach outside the pen, I carried my chips there, and made up a fire to cook the raw meat we were furnished with at the mess-room. An ebony "man and brudder" soon invited me to "put out dat fire, or I’ll put you out dam quick;" and convinced me of the propriety of obedience by certain manipulations of his musket which were not agreeable.

The "nig" followed me with his eye, anxious, as I soon found, to pick a quarrel. He was soon gratified on this wise. Little bridges of couple of planks were placed across the dead-line opposite the gates of the pen, to enable wheelbarrows and other vehicles to pass in and out; but pedestrians could as easily step across the fatal trench, since it was only a few inches wide, and they constantly did so. On this occasion, as a great many were passing out of the camp over the bridge, I stepped across the ditch. I heard some one cry," Halt!" but, conscious of violating no order, I had no suspicion that the summons was addressed to me, when I was startled by some one crying out, "Take care, he is going to fire!" Turning round out of curiosity, I found my sable friend making preparations for my funeral!

As soon as I faced him, he shouted out with a vulgar oath, "Come across dat line and walk over the bridge, you dam rebel."

I of course stepped back across the ditch, and accommodated his sable highness by crossing it on the plank as directed.

So I carried my salt horse and my pot of unboiled water back to my comrades with exceeding disconsolateness.

Before nightfall our Yankee sergeant visited the various tents in our division and "confiscated" the light-wood we had purchased and stored away as fuel. It was a trifling matter, unquestionably, but the air of satisfaction with which this worthy, "clothed in a little brief authority," performed his task, gave to each motion of the vulgarian the sting of a personal affront.

The members of the Fourth division came to exceeding grief to-day. Some of the tin cans in which our slops were furnished were missing from the tables of that division after breakfast, and when the "rebs" of that section marched up for their dinner they were quietly told to expect no rations until the missing cups were found. The Edinburgh Review rose, according to Sydney Smith, by "stress of politics," and I suppose the return of the missing tin-ware may be coerced by stress of starvation. At all events, the Fourth division "rebs" must test the efficacy of the system through much alimentary tribulation.

I find I am becoming sybaritic, and though a crumpled rose-leaf might not interfere fatally with my sleep, the planks on the floor of my kind host’s house certainly do. This morning, therefore, I conceived a French bedstead—this evening it is un fait accompli. An empty flour-barrel and two poles about six and a half feet long constituted my stock. I knocked the barrel to pieces and nailed the staves across the poles, placed about two feet apart and parallel. Then nailing over all the hoops, which I had straitened out for the purpose, I had a comfortable, springy bedstead, which in the daytime I shall place on its end at the back of the ranche out of the way, and in the night-time extend at length, between the bunks with which our house is already supplied. This is the cheapest and best of improvised bedsteads, and I commend it to gentlemen of expensive tastes who may be similarly circumstanced.

The boys are laughing at the summons which S., one of my fellow Petersburgers, got to-day from a negro sentinel. S. had on when captured, and I suppose still possesses, a tall beaver of the antique pattern, considered inseperable from extreme respectability in the last decade, and for many a year before. While wandering around the inclosure, seeking, I suspect, "what he might devour," he accidentally stepped beyond "the dead-line," and was suddenly arrested by a summons from the nearest negro on the parapet, who seemed to be in doubt whether so well dressed a man could be a "reb," and therefore whether he should be shot at once.

"White man, you b’long in dar?"

"Yes."

"Well, ain’t you got no better sense den to cross dat line?"

"I did not notice the line."

"Well you better notice it, an’ dat quick, or I’ll blow half dat nail kag off!"

It is needless to say that the owner of the "nail kag" "stood not upon the order of his going."

Friday, July 1st.—To-day one of the negro regiments that has been guarding us—the Thirty-sixth United States Colored—left this point for the front, their places being taken by the Fifth Massachusetts Colored Cavalry and another black regiment, ordered here, it is said, by Butler, for cowardice in presence of the enemy (good joke for Butler). Negro-like, the outgoing regiment left singing, in a most orthodox plantation whine, the National (African) Anthem, "John Brown’s body lies mouldering in the ground."

One of the disgraced (!) darkies was standing near me as the regiment passed our gates with every jaw extended, and with a knowing wag of the head, he observed, "Niggers is such fools. Dey is gwine away wid der moufs open, but dey’ll come back wid ‘em shet, I ‘speck." On they travelled, making the welkin ring with—

"John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the ground,
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the ground,
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the ground,
But his soul is a-marching on."

All of which, and much more of the same sort, was chanted with that monotonous cadence that many a time and oft we have all heard at camp-meetings and corn-shuckings, under the inspiring influence of religion in the one, and—horresco referens—rot-gut in the other. It was not many weeks before their mangled bodies were clogging up that horrible valley of death which the fatal mining of Grant clove in a certain memorable hill-side of Petersburg, where, for nearly an hour, at short grape-range, the cannoneers of the Army of Northern Virginia dealt destruction from their safe embrasures upon the writhing, powerless, and baffled columns of assault.

Saturday, July 2d.—A notice was posted on the public bulletin-board to-day, requiring all prisoners who were brought from Belle Plain on the 23d of May to fall in at the gate at nine A. M. This is preparatory to a move somewhere; and the rumor is that Elmira, New York, a sort of fungus of the Erie Railroad, is to be the point of destination. I hope our turn will not be long coming, or this infernal water will settle the question of exchange, as far as regards me personally, in a very unsatisfactory manner. I am not at all superstitious in the manner of sepulture, but if I have an antipathy thereanent, it is to being buried at Point Lookout. I hardly think the example of Wellington in the old world, or Webster in the new, both of whom died by the salt water, could reconcile me to such a fate just now.

Monday, July 4th.—This is the day that all America was wont to dedicate to lemonade, ice-cream, picnics, and patriotism. I remember well one "Fourth," so long back that I decline to enter into any vulgar arithmetic about it, when, in obedience to a custom almost as universal as that sanguinary Indian rule which denies the privileges of the tribe to a young man until he scalps an enemy, I, who write to you, assumed the toga virilis by means of a Fourth of July oration, and worked myself into a perspiration, and my amiable auditory into demonstrative gratification, over the glories and greatness, the prowess and the perpetuity of the Union! And here am I, this blessed day of grace, suffering condign pains and penalties, at the hands of the successor of Washington, for the——but hang politics. I made a vow twenty days ago, that unless mightily moved by some Yankee, I would eschew all thought of politics until I saw my own good flag once more; and as you have done me no particular harm that I wot of, most courteous reader, I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say, that Point Lookout, July 4, 1864, and Petersburg, July 4, 18—, were about as different dates, in all their relations to the writer, as any two points of time could well be. On the latter occasion, I enjoyed various exhilarations, which now, in the retrospect, refuse to arrange themselves in any regularity or method, but present a confused melange of ice-cream, Declaration of Independence, sherry-cobbler, military procession, national salute, fruit-cake, toasts, orator of the day, excessively wet shirt-collar, millions of fans,—I wont qualify as to the number,—pretty women (mainly from the country!) congratulations, and an immense dinner—admire the climax! But the other date ushered in divers miseries, and nothing but hard-tack and fat pork! Verily, verily, Plautus is right, "The gods have us men for footballs."

"Enimvero Dii nos, quasi pilas
Homines habent."

All this, and much more of the same sort, which I charitably spare you, ran through my mind as I took my usual morning promenade on the beach to-day, and watched the streamers and flags spreading from maintop to bowsprit over the wicked-looking gunboat that watched (and showed its teeth, for that matter) like a naval Cerberus over the gates of our "pen." At twelve M. the Stars and Stripes were flung out, and the national salute of thirty-I-do-not-know-how-many guns fired, amid the piping and drumming and braying of "Yankee Doodle," from divers bands ashore and aboard. The "rebs" had no idea, however, of permitting the Yanks to monopolize the fun; and on a couple of the patrician mansions of "Cracker-box Row" there might be seen diminutive copies of our own Southern Cross, gayly flung out "to the bold breeze of heaven," after the manner detailed in one of the many metrical villanies which have been palmed off on the long-suffering Southern people, under the name of National Anthems, any time these four years back.

I noticed particularly on the "Home Again" house a pretty Confederate flag, which must either have been manufactured inside or conveyed very surreptitiously from the outside by some ingenious sympathizer—a woman "for a ducat"—who had the courage to dare, and the wit to baffle, Yankee jealousy of every thing suggestive of the hated Confederacy.

This house was occupied by Marylanders; and the mention of the name suggests to me that I will not have a better opportunity than this to challenge for these exiles from that noble State, a reversal of the unjust reproach which has been cast upon her from various quarters, and in various forms, in the South. It is doubtless true, that there are cowards and knaves in Maryland, and it is not less true, that every Southern State and Northern could furnish many a sample to place by the side of those who have earned so much reproach for her. But it is quite as true, that no people in any part of the world have furnished more illustrious examples of pure, unselfish, uncompromising, all-sacrificing devotion than now distinguishes the citizens of that gallant State. I knew much of this before. I had seen her brave sons suffering a long and bitter exile from all that was dear to them—uncheered by hope of speedy return—cut off from their families—hurled, in many cases, from affluence to poverty—condemned to the disheartening spectacle of witnessing their possessions enjoyed, their friends imprisoned, their State controlled by an abhorred race, imported from New England to colonize and convert Maryland. And yet, I had seen them gallantly bearing a banner, which no hand of ours has been able to maintain on any spot of Maryland’s soil, for thirty days, hoping against hope, while the weary years rolled on, for the day of deliverance, and faltering not, nor failing, though their hearts sank in the pain and palsy of that hope forever deferred. So have I seen her fair daughters, many of them tenderly and delicately raised, forced to choose exile as the alternative of a jail—perchance for some act of common humanity to a Confederate soldier—or voluntarily embracing the perils and hardships, because in their generous, loyal hearts, approving the principles and sympathizing with the sufferings of our beleaguered Confederacy, spending their days near the hospital cot, and devoting their nights to the toils of the busy needle, for an army that has never yet been strong enough to give them an escort for one short day to their hospitable city of monuments. All this have I seen, and have seen it oftentimes repeated, and I have placed it to the credit of that noble State against the recreancy of the few Marylanders who have skulked among us, and the many not Marylanders, who have counterfeited the name to cloak their cowardice. But it was not till I became a prisoner that I appreciated to the full the devotion of her children. When I saw them cheerfully enduring the privations of a long imprisonment, almost within sight of their own homes, many of them persecuted with solicitations from their nearest relatives to come out, take the oath, and enjoy every comfort that wealth and society can offer, all of them conscious that a word would unlock the prison-gates, and send them forth to their families, with no one to question or reproach them; and then learned, that of the many hundreds of Marylanders, at various periods, who were tenants of that pen, some of whom are prisoners of over a year’s standing, not five in all had taken the oath of allegiance to the Yankee Government, I felt that the best of us might take a lesson from their patriotic constancy. And when, a few months afterwards, I saw some of these very men marched like felons through their own fair city, without permission to whisper a word—scarcely to cast a look at mothers and sisters standing by, who were heart-hungry for the poor privilege of a mere greeting, and yet saw no cheek blanch, no muscle quiver, no weakening of their proud resolve to fight the fight out for principle, through every sacrifice and every peril—calmly, nay, with a smile on their lips, half of triumph, half of scorn, answering the taunts of their keepers—they marching from prison to exile, while I was marching from prison to my home—I felt as I now feel, the wish that the Confederacy was peopled with such men. Let not their names nor their deeds die—let some pen, meet for the task, gather now, while the events are fresh, the memorials of her children in this war for freedom where they have so little to hope—so much to fear, and though the fortune of war should separate them and the Confederacy from their beloved State, let history do justice to the faithful living, and let a nation’s gratitude lay immortal laurels o’er

"The sacred grave
Of the last few who, vainly brave,
Die for the land they cannot save."

A year has elapsed since these sentences were penned, and every thing has since changed; yet I cannot find it in my heart to alter a line then written. I hoped then that the deeds of the second "Maryland Line" might have a fitting historian, and that in the joy of the birth of a new nation, they might find a recompense for the travail they so freely shared. There is no nation to bless them now, and her daughters sit like Judah’s by the waters of Babylon, weeping over the lost hopes of their kindred; and her sons, proscribed and persecuted, denied the poor privilege, in many cases, of merely living in the noble State that bore them, are scattered over the land. Yet the immortal seed of freedom was not in vain planted there by Baltimore, and Carroll, and Howard, for while I write, an honored son of that State famous in statesmanship and in law, is pleading with majestic eloquence in both forums for the preservation of the poor remnant of civil liberty that fanaticism has spared.

CHAPTER XI.

More arrivals.—The sinking of the Alabama.—"Miss Gilbert’s Career."—Old Jubal after the Suabians.—A disagreeable order.—Working details.—Changing quarters.

Tuesday, July 5th.—Another batch of prisoners, those who arrived here on the 8th of June, received a summons yesterday to be in readiness to leave, and were carried out of camp. As we were the next tenants to these in the order of time, I presume we will be next called.

Two items of news are furnished us by the papers to-day—one, the anticipation of a raid by Early into Maryland—the other, the destruction of the "Alabama" by the "Kearsage." Fortunately the two came together, so we managed to endure the latter with some composure, though both surprised and mortified that Semmes should have lost his ship, and the Confederacy his invaluable services, for a time at least, on a point of professional etiquette. Still it may be said of most naval as well as most other duels, that the result is purely an accident. The exploding or failure to explode of a particular shell—an event utterly beyond the skill or control of any one aboard—may, and in this instance did, settle the whole matter. No one suggests a doubt of the courage and coolness with which Semmes pursued his chivalric resolve, and the result might well have been anticipated, aside from the intervention of chance, when we reflect that one vessel was a merchantman in fact, as far as regards its pursuits, with a crew of common sailors with but one battle experience, while the other was a man-of-war with a crew trained especially and exclusively for this description of duty. And yet the Yankees themselves admit that if a certain shell that penetrated their stern had exploded, Messrs. Winslow & Co. would have been very thankful to the "Greyhound" for any such little favors as were subsequently extended to the Confederates; while the French account adds that Captain Semmes endeavored from the first to discard the element of accident from the fight, by getting to close quarters, and settling the question in a fair, stand up, hand to hand encounter—a manœuvre that the Yank had no stomach for, and successfully used his superior sailing qualities to avoid. Still it is a great victory for Doodledom, and no higher compliment could be paid the "Alabama" and her gallant company, than is furnished in the extravagant joy of our enemies over the loss of the "great pirate." The "old flag" may again perchance steal up to the "top" of the boasted merchant marine, a half a million tons of which the dreaded "pirate" drove from the seas in six months! The hundreds of pious frauds whereby nominal transfers of Boston and New York bottoms were made to English and French owners, so that the "Yanks" might pocket the receipts without taking the risks of the carrying trade, will now be repented of and renounced—said frauds being no longer profitable. Commodore Vanderbilt may make the run from Panama without a convoy, and Cape Cod may fish in peace.

Selah!

Meanwhile the Suabians in the Quaker State are hurrying off their beeves and blinding their horses,***** and General Wallace is putting Baltimore in a state of defence,—an operation that seems "always doing, never done."

I have been suffering for some days past for something to read, and to day, by accident, stumbled over a very fresh-looking volume in one of the cook-houses, entitled "Miss Gilbert’s Career,"—brilliant in all the gorgeousness of clear print and faultless binding.

The title-page announces that it was the twentieth thousand, a circumstance I can only explain, in common justice to Yankee taste, by supposing that the twentieth thousand was printed before the first ditto. Such a common-place vulgarity as Miss Gilbert, I undertake to say, never could have been produced on any soil of earth other than "Massachusetts Bay and Providence Plantations." There are situations, however, wherein any thing in print is endurable, and I waded, with the patience of a professional proof-reader, through every sentence and syllable of the dreary platitudes of Miss Gilbert! I record this incident solely as a contribution to the next edition of Abercrombie on the Mind, since it establishes beyond cavil the enormous vis inertiœ of the human intellect; and I commend the book to all those who believe that the brain, like the muscles, can be strengthened by subjection to unusual and repeated strains. Dr. Winship, the modern Hercules, boasted that he could raise three thousand six hundred pounds—a capacity he acquired by constant effort in that direction, and I have no doubt that equal diligence in the mental line would insure results equally marvellous. If any one wishes to try the experiment, I recommend mental calisthenics with a pair of such books as the aforesaid "Career," as I consider it about as heavy as the stout doctor’s dumb-bells (the source of all his marvellous strength), which weighed as much as a flour-barrel apiece!

Wednesday, July 6th.—More rumors. Grant, say the correspondents, has demanded the surrender of Petersburg. Peut-être! Early is playing the wild with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and, greatest grief of all to us, the sutler informs us that the further sale of articles of luxury and food to us will be suspended, as the authorities are informed that our sutlers are prohibited from selling such things to their prisoners. As to the luxuries, the inhibition in Dixie is not likely. The sutler who could contrive to get such an article as an orange or a box of Mason’s blacking, would deserve burning at the stake, being conclusively guilty of dealing with the devil. As to necessaries, the government of the Confederacy would be very glad if the sutlers would take the Commissary Department entirely off their hands. My old friend, Colonel Northrup,***** is terribly exercised on the subject I know.

"Hail Columbia! Happy land, etc."

But the reason of the order is of no consequence to us, it is the order which troubles us. On hearing the announcement, I made my moan to the first acquaintance I met, who happened to be an old prisoner. He greatly calmed my fears by assuring me that this was an old dodge in the pen, designed to bring in rapidly the sutler’s checks in order to the entire disposal of the stock on hand, which was probably larger than he desired to keep this hot weather. This was very reassuring, as I had just received notice that there was a "money letter" in the major’s hands for me, whose advent and use I anticipated with much watering of the mouth.

The ruse of course succeeded, and the sutler’s "powerful" butter, game herrings, animated cheese, and sour meal began to disappear with a celerity that must have been very satisfactory to him, if not to the deluded Confederates, who were thus seduced into an unusual quantity of purchases.

Thursday, July 7th.—The supply of water is getting very scant, and the quality very infamous. Guards have been placed over some of the pumps to prevent waste, and these being "negroes," it is necessary, in order to get a drop, to ask permission in respectful terms of the sable sentinels, who, to do them justice, do not seem disposed to abuse their position. I attribute this to the circumstance that these are negroes who have been in service; and any soldier will tell you that an active campaign inspires very humane sentiments towards soldiers. With every precaution, the amount is still so insufficient that a water-boat had to be sent down from Baltimore to-day to furnish a supply to the hospitals; and a detail has been engaged most of the morning wheeling in barrels of it for the use of the sick.

There is quite a contention for the privilege of working in this, as on other details, there being some privileges attached thereto. Almost every day there is some description of labor to be performed outside of the pen, for which volunteers are sought and easily obtained among the prisoners. Those selected for the work are mustered into a company, their names taken down, and under Yankee guards they are carried outside to the scene of their work. This consists principally in the unloading of vessels at the wharf, in building hospitals, commissary store-rooms, stables, etc., etc. The legitimate benefits of these details are: first, occupation; second, a little liberty; third, the chance to hear some news; and fourth, a small piece of tobacco. The semi-legitimate benefits are: the gathering up of refuse pieces of plank, old iron, nails, and the like, which command a high price (in tobacco or hard-tack) within the "pen" The illegitimate, and I fear the most operative inducement with some of the unregenerate "rebs," is the opportunity of pilfering along the wharf and among the vessels whose cargoes they are discharging, which the nature of their duties frequently affords. From one cause or another—generally, I suppose, from a combination of several—the detail list is always full, and places thereon command a premium.

In the earlier period of Point Lookout history, there was an additional advantage in these details, inasmuch as the opportunity of escape was thereby frequently afforded and embraced, but the multiplication of the precautions which experience of "rebel" ingenuity occasioned, has rendered the blockade for several months past pretty effectual.

Friday, July 8th.—No newspapers permitted to be brought into camp to-day. Early is doubtless frightening Father Abe prodigiously, and he fears the stimulating effect on his misguided enemies in prison. The weather has been furiously hot for a week past, and as the earth is a sparkling sand, and every thing about us is a glaring white, many, besides myself, are suffering with inflamed eyes,—a chronic disorder here.

Saturday, July 9th.—To-day is the first mensiversary of my imprisonment. Any super-fastidious reader who objects to my word-coinage, is hereby informed that he is at perfect liberty to draw his pencil through the obnoxious polysyllable and substitute therefor any word, or form of words, that will better please him, but I hold it, nevertheless, to be a perfectly defensible creation.

Our rations grow daily worse—the soup more watery, the pork fatter and more rancid, the beef leaner and more stringy; and the poor devils who have no "sutler’s checks" hanker after the loyal flesh-pots.

Another month here and I shall become a candidate for one of the piled-up pine-boxes that flanked us on the left as we entered the pen, grimly suggestive of the fate so singularly bewailed in Ecclesiastes, "dying without a burial," or any thing deserving the name of one.

Hooray! which is Irish for evoe! and incomparably better. Hooray, Company B, Thirteenth Division, among others is summoned to the gate, and as I had the fortune to be transferred to that squad a few days ago, I pack my diminutive wallet, glad to leave this hole, though for Spitzbergen. We were marched to the provost-marshal's office, counted and listed, and turned into the "officer’s pen," where we were kept until our muster-rolls were made out. Here we were permitted to change our "checks" into greenbacks, and in the midst of this interesting piece of financiering our former hero of the grape-vine cane and mutton-chop whiskers appeared at the gate, and ordered, us to "fall in."

Between one and two o’clock, two hundred and eighty-two of us were marched to the wharf and put aboard a narrow log of a propeller, rejoicing in the sounding title "El Cid."

Down a crazy ladder into a reeking hold, where the heat and stench would have overpowered any other animal than a Confederate prisoner, we trooped along, packing ourselves away in the fashion which the mellifluous Wilberforce was so fond of expatiating on, under the name of "the horrors of the middle passage," until the last "Southern Confederate" crossed the taffrail, the gang-plank was drawn in, and at two P. M. we turned our backs on Point Lookout, we hoped forever.

"O wer weis, etc.,"—you’ll find the rest in Schiller's Don Carlos; but lest the great German play may not be at hand, I recall a good, if free, translation in Robby Burns’ proverb,

"The best laid schemes of mice an’ men
Aft gang agley."

CHAPTER XII.

Deliverance against sea-going.—A disgusting trip.—A friend in need.—Nectar.—New York harbor.—On the Erie Railroad.—Sympathizers.—At Elmira.—El Cid anathematized.

THE man who first invented going to sea was an infidel and a fool, a misanthrope, and probably a marauder, a supereminent donkey and a filibuster, hostis humani generis, and should have been outlawed accordingly. The element is proverbially treacherous, the dangers are great, the inconveniences infinite, the results moonshine, and, to crown all, beneficent Nature has implanted in every human stomach an instinctive and vigorous protest against the practice, which ought to satisfy any reasonable being that it never was designed that a creature innocent of fins, tail, or a shell, should go out of sight of land. I admit that the whale-oil supply was for a long time an obstacle to the general acceptance of my view of the case, but the vast fields of petroleum recently discovered knock the wind out of that argument, and allow me to indulge the reasonable hope that if Pit Hole holds out, and Oil Creek does not suffer from a drought, I shall one day have the satisfaction of participating in a general auction of all marine properties, "on account of whom it may concern."

The fact is, there is nothing redeeming about the infernal sea-going system. You get up in the morning, and there is no newspaper; you stroll out to settle your bitters, and a dozen paces in any direction will introduce you to a shark; you stagger in to breakfast, and the coffee slides into your beefsteak, and both into your lap; you get up, and in ten minutes you discover, in the language of the luckless Yellow-plush, "Wot tin basins was made for;" the day passes, and there is no post-office, no business, no counting-room, no children run over, no street cries, no omnibus, no dog-fight, no civilization: it snows, and you can’t go sleighing; it is fair, and you can’t take a drive; it rains, and you can’t roll ten-pins, or get satisfactorily drunk; pale spectres with pendent jaws and watery eyes, all by a strange centrifugal force flying towards the outside of the ship, pass you at every instant; and after a day dismally dragged through in every conceivable discomfort, you turn in at night to a closet not large enough to swing a cat in, and tumble into a berth which looks so much like a coffin, that you dream, before you are well asleep, of attending your own funeral!

So your days creep along, if you have vitality enough to survive, destitute of fox-hunts or flirtations, law or literature, politics or opera, fashion-plates or scandal, telegrams or taxes; and if the old scythe-bearer comes to your relief, you are sewed up in a sack with a thirty-two pound shot at your heels, and tossed to the fishes as remorselessly as the beef bones from yesterday’s soup!

Gonzalo was a very Solomon. Hear him:

"Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground: long heath, brown furze, any thing. The wills above be done, but I would fain die a dry death."

All these objections are valid, if you are a first-class passenger aboard a first-class steamer. "Phancy our feelinx," then, when you remember that we were packed like sheep on a cattle-train, in the hold of a villanous tub, in the middle of July, with no ventilation, except what was afforded by two narrow hatchways (there being no side-lights), and permission to put our heads above the deck being only accorded to two at a time, and then for five minutes, so that it required one hundred and fifty times five minutes, or over half the day, to elapse before you could get your second gasp of fresh air! And then our ship was such a crazy and unseaworthy craft, that in the event of a storm there was little prospect of our ever seeing land again, except on the consoling hypothesis of Pisanio, that

"Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered."

In this delightful situation, the sun melting the pitch in the seams over our heads, and not air enough stirring to raise a "ripple, we stretched ourselves on the lower deck in a desperate state of disgust, with only energy enough to pray for a short passage or a heavy gale,—blessings craved in vain. Many of us were seasick, all were hungry, and there was a unanimous devotion of all Yankeedom to the devil. During the night I stole aloft once, but was ordered down by a sentinel with the manners of a hog and the accent of a New England clock-pedler.

Any thing short of a wheelbarrow ought to make the run from Point Lookout to New York (our destination) in thirty hours, or thirty-five at the most; it took us just forty-six, although the sea was as calm as a river, nothing breaking the smoothness of its treacherous surface, except that infernal stomach-pump, known as the "ground-swell,"—a submarine wave which constantly beats from the shore, and was intended by beneficent Nature to prevent her children from the folly of navigation, by circling the whole ocean with this (unheeded) warning against leaving land.

Sunday, the 10th, was a brilliant day. I took my five-minutes’ ration of the deck at sunrise this morning. How the calm, superb majesty of such a scene, the golden god scattering his largesse of rubies over the great deep, crowning each wavelet with a gem; the swelling ocean broken by no ruffling storm, but surging with long unbounded waves to the very gates of the morning; a sky warm and glorious with the purple flush and splendor of the full dawn,—how such a scene, in its beauty, grandness, immensity, tranquillity, contrasts with and rebukes the petty blustering and passions and paltry ambitions of men! How their vanities, envies, prides, wranglings, worldliness, stand abashed in the serene presence of these august emblems of the Eternal—Sun and Sea and Sky!

From ten A. M., Saturday the 9th, until we arrived in New York harbor, a period of over fifty hours, our only food was one ration of bread and a couple of ounces of adipose; and what with this and a slight dose of sea-sickness, I was consummately miserable by the time we got into "the Narrows," early Monday morning. I stole up on deck, and hunting up the officer commanding the guard, asked permission to purchase a cup of coffee from the cook, and leave also to remain on deck till I could drink it. He assented readily; and having made the contract with the presiding genius of the galley, I took my seat on a "bit" forward, and drank my fill of the beautiful scene around me.

As we got well up in the channel a little boat rowed off from shore to us, we stopping the while, and with about ten seconds of conversation to the captain, its tenant rowed back with a fee in his pocket. He was the incumbent of the most lucrative office probably in America—the New York Health officer. The screw revolves, and again we are off.

Those who have entered New York harbor by this channel—and what Southron has not, in those days when Gotham was our Ostium and Piræus?—will remember the richness and luxury of the Jersey coast for thirty miles below the city. The land is high, handsomely wooded, and almost every summit is crowned with a stylish country villa—the urban residences of the princes of Wall-street and Broadway;—while in every reach of shore where a surf breaks, a handsome hotel fronts the sea, and rows of piquant little cottages dot the hill-slopes to their tops. As you approach the city, these evidences of wealth and taste increase in number and in magnificence; and you are ushered into the teeming port of the American Venice through a highway of palaces, with here and there a powerful fortress interspersed, to give security to all this rural luxury and elegance.

I was musing on all this, indulging my taste for the beautiful, but amazingly hungry and uncomfortable withal, when a Yankee corporal, a German Jew, named Bernstein, as I afterwards learned, came to where I sat, with a smoking cup of coffee in his hand, his own ration for breakfast, and with a courteous apology for having nothing better to offer, insisted on my drinking it. It was idle to tell him that I had engaged to get some from the cook, for he replied, that the cook might not have it to give me, and on my objecting that he would lose his own breakfast, he assured me that he could get another cup, and would be offended if I did not take it. So I accepted it very gratefully. Not all the sherbets that ever Persian poets sung; not Byron’s memorable thimble-full of essence frozen out of a bottle of champagne; not "Lachryma Christi," beloved of Sue; not Perkins’ "best pale" to a Briton; nor Swartz’s imperial "lager" to a Bavarian; nor poteen to a Wexford man; nor usquebaugh to a Highlander; nor train-oil to a Laplander; nor spermaceti candles to the late Czar, could have matched in refreshment that pint of black coffee to me; so true it is that our joys and griefs in this world are nothing after all but questions of arithmetical proportion.

There is no likelihood that these lines will ever meet his eye, but I could wish that such might be their fate, that my friend Bernstein might see that his little act of kindness is not, and will not be forgotten. Before I had finished, he hunted up his haversack, and laid before me as many "hard-tacks" as I could eat, so that when, half an hour afterwards, the cook told me he had a breakfast for me, I was able to administer alimentary consolation to a couple of hungry "rebs" below.

It was near midday when we hauled up the channel just off and below the Jersey City end of the lower ferry to New York; and there we lay till the train on the Erie Railroad, whose eastern terminus is here, was ready. I am quite familiar with New York harbor, and many a spire of the city was as easily recognized as that of my Virginia home. Every thing seemed as busy, as "alive," as stirring, as in the same month, four years before, when I last saw the gay city. The war was apparently little felt here. The docks were as crowded; the same unvarying hum filled the sultry air; the ferry-boats passed with the same surcharged loads; the wharves were crowded with the same rushing hordes of porters, hackmen, stevedores, newsboys, and thieves; and I doubt not, Broadway echoed to the same endless tide of wheel and foot, and Wall-street choked its crooked throat with as excited and thronging a congregation as have ever "bulled and beared" it in the shadow of old Trinity, on any July day this quarter of a century past. In the face of all this wealth, development, material power—all these vast appliances of conquest—I felt a new pride in our beleaguered Confederacy, which has had nothing to oppose to this unexampled affluence of resource except the unconquerable gallantry of her children, and yet has fought this fight against such odds as have never yet stood in the way of freedom, with a calm confidence in the cause, a noble acceptance of sacrifice, an undaunted courage, a patient hope, a chivalric devotion, that fearlessly change the comparisons of history.

While I am indulging in these moralizings, a little boat is shooting out from shore, and in a moment more an officer boards us, who probably brings news that the train is now waiting, for our "tub" is now turned towards the dock. We are soon alongside, an officer stands at the hatchway to count us as we come up, lest some may conceal themselves in the ship. The count seems satisfactory (yet it was not, for two born idiots remained aboard), we are marched into the depot, a few paces off, and put aboard a train of box and passenger cars, standing ready for us.

Our advent is unexpected, or the Jerseyans are not as curious as their compatriots elsewhere, for there is but a small crowd of spectators, and these gaze on us with a stolid air, which may mean sympathy; probably, however, indifference. By half-past one all was in readiness, the locomotive gave that preliminary shriek, which, according to Sydney Smith, is most like the scream an attorney may be expected to give when the devil gets hold of him, and off we started for Elmira.

The Erie Railroad, as I presume every one used to know, runs through the northern counties of New Jersey, and the southern counties of Central and Western New York. It passes through some handsome towns and cities; but the country is considered far inferior to that which lines the Central road. At almost every station we made a lengthy halt, to give way to some regular train passing up or down, and, wherever we stopped, we were the subjects of very great, and, generally, respectful interest. The guards rigidly excluded the people from all intercourse with us, and forbade, under various sanguinary threats, any assistance being tendered us; still they found it impossible to guard every avenue of approach, and many a piece of tobacco, package of crackers, and the like, was handed us by the good people on the route. The gentler sex was conspicuous in these charities, and more than once surprised us by furtive exhibitions of little Confederate flags which they had concealed about their persons. At Port Jervis, there seemed to be a fair prospect of a difficulty between our guards and the citizens, many of whom persisted, despite all orders, in making such contributions to our wants as accidentally lay in their power. Of course, these agreeable incidents were occasionally diversified by the insults of some sleek non-combatant, whose valiant soul found congenial occupation in fearful threats of our indiscriminate massacre, if he could only lay hands on us. These gentry were, in the main, of that physical and sartorial type which we always associate with the idea of extreme orthodoxy—your sanctimonious, high-seat-in-the-synagogue worthies, who

"Compound for sins they are inclined to,
By damning those they have no mind to;"

and from the serene heights of their sublime self-conceit, hurl worse anathemas than that prolix profanity of Bishop Ernulphus, at the forlorn publicans below. You know the canting breed, good reader mine, wherever you see them; and at home or abroad, in pulpit or tribune, in Church or State, they everywhere exhibit the same harmonious blending of Heap’s hypocrisy with the villany of Carker. Of these lovely lambs, Butler is the god and Kalloch the prophet. He would be a most unreasonable "reb" who would look for any thing but a snarl from these curs.

And thus, amid friends and foes, through gorges and around bluffs, now skimming gayly along a level meadow, and anon "wiring in and wiring out," apparently in the absurd effort to avoid crossing the Susquehannah—a stream so crooked that the engineers who built the road seem to have fancied that, by following up one bank, they would, sooner or later, find themselves on the other—on we steamed till about eight o’clock, Tuesday morning, when we pulled up in the pretty little city of Elmira, which, albeit only about twenty years old, as I hear, contains twelve thousand inhabitants, and is situated on the left bank of the Chemung, a tributary of the Susquehannah. Although at the door of prison, we realized a comparative comfort by contrasting our condition with what it was aboard the "El Cid." This being the last time I shall have occasion to mention this miraculous sample of naval architecture, I here deliberately devote it to the infernal gods, with as honest an unction as ever filled the bosom of the most patriotic Moor, in the times of its great namesake—a gentleman who must have served Moorish mothers with impracticable cherubs a good turn, he frightened the grown ones so prodigiously, according to the authentic histories of Bob Southey, and that unfortunate victim of a liver complaint and an uncongenial spouse, Mrs. Hemans.*****

CHAPTER XIII.

Statistics of Elmira Pen.—The officers.—Samples of Federal cruelty.—Number of prisoners.—Barrack accommodations.

I PLAINLY foresee that this chapter is going to run into statistics, and as I have had a reasonable horror of mathematics from the blessed days when every application of my mind to figures was followed by the application to my shoulders of something else, I will be excused for invoking the patience of the reader, assuring him—a favorite lie with flagellatory parents while "horsing" their heirs—that the pain I inflict causes me more suffering than it can possibly occasion him.

For more than a year before our arrival, Elmira was the site of the rendezvous for the drafted men of Western New York. Here the gushing patriots were received and housed, trained to turn out their toes and survive "hard-tack," and otherwise qualified to patch the rents in a certain lacerated Anaconda, which has been prowling around the cotton and tobacco country with varying fortunes these four years back. These gay volunteers required three camps, which were severally denominated "barracks, one, two, and three," and here they were kept till they graduated in the manual of arms, and squandered their bounty-money, when they were incontinently bundled off to the front, a performance which, according to most authentic averments, resulted in the absconding of about twenty-five percent. of the patriots before they ever came in sight of a camp sample of "the old flag."

Now it came to pass, that Mr. Stanton began to feel some apprehension that the "secesh" were getting too numerous at Point Lookout, and offered too tempting a prize to the profane general then menacing the sourkrout and smear-case(?) of the honest Deutschers in rural Pennsylvania, so he ordained and established by imperial ukase a prison in the hyperborean regions of New York, where for at least four months of every year, any thing short of a polar-bear would find locomotion impracticable, and where, therefore, no apprehension need be felt of trouble within, or assault without, for the same interval. Early in July, therefore, the "Yanks" were ousted from barracks No. 3, and preparations made for receiving the first instalment of prisoners, who arrived on the 6th of July, numbering three hundred and ninety-nine, the four hundredth man having escaped on the way. (The four hundredth man always will escape.) On the 11th, two hundred and forty-nine arrived, and the next day we were added to the list.

We were escorted to the "pen," by a large concourse of admiring citizens, a number of whom were of the gentler sex, in every stage of development, curiosity being, in Elmira, a failing of the sex. A march of about a mile brought us to our prison. We filed in, were counted, divided into companies of a hundred, the roll called, and we were led off to our quarters. These consisted of wooden buildings, about one hundred feet long, by sixteen in width, and high enough for two rows of bunks. There were about thirty-five of these buildings in the inclosure, standing side by side, in a line parallel to the front of the pen, and about midway the ground. I soon asserted a pre-emption claim to a top bunk in No. 21, the quarter of most of my Petersburg friends, and having deposited my very modest "pack," started out to view my premises.

I found a level plain of about thirty acres of land, situated, as I have said, a mile or so west of Elmira, and immediately on the bank of the Chemung. The ground is unequally divided by a long narrow lake or lagoon, which runs parallel to the river, into two sections, the one furthest from the entrance gate being denominated the Trans-Mississippi Department, in the vernacular of camp. This lake starts within twenty feet of the fence on one side of the pen, and flows under the opposite fence, and the ground beyond the lake is a sandy bottom, indicating what I found, on inquiry, to be the case, that the unruly Chemung occasionally gets uproarious, overflows its banks, and floods the adjacent grounds.

The whole site is a basin surrounded by hills which rise several hundred feet, and are covered richly and thickly with the luxurious foliage of the hemlock, ash, poplar, and pine. This was the most grateful relief from our Point Lookout experience, where nothing met the eye, in any direction, except the sky, water, and prison fence. But a more available and practical improvement was in the water, which was here pure, cool, and abundant, and the new-comers luxuriated in the delicious beverage with the gusto of a lost traveller in Sahara, or a repentant legislator after a nocturnal spree.

In the general arrangement of the guard detail there was little difference from Point Lookout, except in the absence of the colored guards, and in the presence of the officers, all of whom spent a portion of each day within the "pen." A row of tents running parallel with the front fence of the "pen" was assigned to these gentlemen, and until the approach of winter drove them into certain barracks outside, where ventilating arrangements were not so extensive, they continued to occupy them.

Back of the thirty-four or thirty-five barracks, already referred to, is a row of wooden buildings, containing the adjutant’s office, dispensary, various rooms of Yankee sergeants, store-rooms, and the like, and back again of these, the mess-rooms and cook-houses, which extend to the lagoon. These, with one or two other buildings, constituted all the appliances of the prison at that time, nor was any change made until the miasma from the lagoon sowed the seeds of febrile disease so widely, that eight or ten hospitals had to be built; and the advent of prisoners by the thousand exhausted the sleeping capacity of the barracks.

The government of this prison was in the hands of Major Henry V. Colt, One Hundred and Fourth New York Volunteers, a gentleman, fair and fat, of not quite forty, five and a half feet high, with a florid complexion, a comfortable embonpoint, a very prepossessing appearance and manner, a jaunty way of cocking his hat on the side of his head, and a chronic attack of smoking cigars, which he invariably holds in his mouth at about the angle at which mortars are ordinarily fired.

I perform a very grateful duty, in here bearing testimony to the various admirable qualities of this gentleman, as an officer and a man. Uniformly urbane and courteous in his demeanor, he discharged the varied, and oftentimes annoying, offices of his post with a degree of justice to his position and to the men under his charge, a patience, fidelity, and humanity, that could not be surpassed, and, I fancy, were seldom equalled, either side of the line, in similar positions. There was none of the slipshod indifference of Point Lookout régime. Major Colt either discharged in person or superintended the execution of every duty respecting the prison, which appropriately claimed his attention, doing all with the thoroughness of a trained man of business; and although charged with duties whose performance demanded almost every moment of his time, he was always ready to hear and redress any just complaints that were made to him, if they were of a character that justified him in interfering, or that he had the power to remedy, and to afford any information or assistance, consistently with his position, to the humblest prisoner. It is a pleasant office to do this justice to an enemy, and to record this offset to the many cruelties which are charged, no doubt justly, to other officers in charge of our unfortunate prisoners.

The major’s adjutant was Captain C. C. Barton, an active, smart, and rather consequential young gentleman, as adjutants are wont to be—and here I call attention to the fact that these officers constitute a class, sui generis, in every army;—but, upon the whole, Barton was a good fellow, notwithstanding he considered Abe Lincoln a Chesterfield, and accounted Grant a compound, in about equal proportions, of King Solomon and Alexander the Great. Captain B. was assisted by a young sergeant, H., who was promoted to an adjutant’s place shortly after our arrival, but did not exchange his comfortable quarters for "the front" till the summer was over; and a youth, Frank E., who, in a fit of spasmodic patriotism, joined a heavy artillery company, before he was out of his teens, and straightway perilled his invaluable life for his beloved country, as an adjutant’s clerk, in the dangerous "Department of the Chemung."

In the executive duties of his office, Major Colt was assisted by fifteen or twenty officers, and as many noncommissioned officers, chiefly of the militia or the veteran reserves. Among them were some characters which are worth a paragraph.

There was a long-nosed, long-faced, long-jawed, long-bearded, long-bodied, long-legged, endless-footed, and long-skirted curiosity, yclept Captain Peck, ostensibly engaged in taking charge of certain companies of "rebs," but really employed in turning a penny by huckstering the various products of prisoners’ skill—an occupation very profitable to Peck, but generally unsatisfactory, in a pecuniary way, to the "rebs." Many of them have told me of the impossibility of getting their just dues from the prying, round-shouldered captain, who had a snarl and an oath for every one out of whom he was not, at that instant, making money.

Another rarity of the pen was Lieutenant John McC., a braw chiel frae the land o’ cakes, who was a queer compound of good-nature and brutality. To some of us he was uniformly polite, but he had his pistol out on any occasion when dealing with the majority of the "Johnnies," and would fly into a passion over the merest nothing, that would have been exceedingly amusing, but for a wicked habit he had of laying about him with a stick, a tent pole—any thing that fell into his hands. He was opening a trench one day, through the camp, when, for the crime of stepping across it, he forced a poor, sick boy, who was on his way to the dispensary for medicine, to leap backwards and forwards over it till he fell from exhaustion amid the voluble oaths of the valiant lieutenant. One Lieutenant R. kept McC. in countenance by following closely his example. He is a little compound of fice and weasel, and having charge of the cleaning up of the camp, has abundant opportunities to bully and insult, but being, fortunately, very far short of grenadier size, he does not use his boot or fist as freely as his great exemplar. No one, however, was safe from either of them, who, however accidentally and innocently, fell in their way, physically or metaphorically.

Of the same block Captain Bowden was a chip: a fair-haired, light-moustached, Saxon-faced "Yank"—far the worst type of man, let me tell you, yet discovered—whose whole intercourse with the prisoners was the essence of brutality. An illustration will paint him more thoroughly than a philippic. A prisoner named Hale, belonging to the old Stonewall brigade, was discovered one day rather less sober than was allowable to any but the loyal, and Bowden being officer of the guard, arrested him and demanded where he got his liquor. This he refused to tell, as it would compromise others, and any one but a Yankee would have put him in the guard-house, compelled him to wear a barrel shirt, or inflicted some punishment proportionate to his offence. All this would have been very natural, but not Bowdenish, so this valorous Parolles determined to apply the torture to force a confession! Hale was accordingly tied up by the thumbs—that is, his thumbs were fastened securely together behind his back, and a rope being attached to the cord uniting them, it was passed over a cross bar over his head and hauled down, until it raised the sufferer so nearly off the ground that the entire weight of his body was sustained by his thumbs, strained in an unnatural position, his toes merely touching the ground. The torture of this at the wrists and shoulder joints is exquisite, but Hale persisted in refusing to peach, and called on his fellow-prisoners, many of whom were witnesses of this refined villany, to remember this when they get home. Bowden grew exasperated at his victim’s fortitude, and determined to gag him. This he essayed to accomplish by fastening a heavy oak tent-pin in his mouth; and when he would not open his mouth sufficiently—not an easy operation—he struck him in the face with the oaken billet, a blow which broke several of his teeth and covered his mouth with blood!

On the other hand, some of the officers were as humane and merciful as these wretches were brutal and cowardly, and all who were my fellow-prisoners will recall, with grateful remembrance, Captain Benjamin Munger, Lieutenant Dalgleish, Sergeant-Major Rudd, Lieutenant McKee, Lieutenant Haverty, commissary of one of the regiments guarding us, a whole-souled Fenian, formerly in the book-business in New York, and still there probably, and one or two others.

These officers were assigned in the proportion of one to every company at first, but to every three hundred or four hundred men afterwards, and were charged with the duty of superintending roll-calls, inspecting quarters, and seeing that the men under their charge got their rations; and the system was excellent.

During the month of July, four thousand three hundred and twenty-three prisoners were entered on the records of Elmira prison, and by the 29th of August, the date of the last arrivals, nine thousand six hundred and seven.

The barrack accommodations did not suffice for quite half of them, and the remainder were provided with "A" tents, in which they continued to be housed when I left the prison in the middle of the following October, although the weather was piercingly cold. Thinly clad as they came from a summer’s campaign, many of them without blankets, and without even a handful of straw between them and the frozen earth, it will surprise no one that the suffering, even at that early day, was considerable.

As I left, however, the contributions of the Confederate Government, which, despairing of procuring an exchange, was taxing its exhausted energies to aid the prisoners, began to come in.

An agent was in New York selling cotton for the purpose, and many boxes of blankets and coarse clothing were furnished from the proceeds of the sale.

This tender regard was a happy contrast to the barbarity of Washington management, which seemed to feel the utmost indifference to the sufferings of its soldiers, and embarrassed their exchange by every device of delay and every suggestion of stubbornness.