Chapter VI: Part 6

In an hour or two, they came, close packed on the bottom of a wagon. We waited with some anxiety the reception they would meet with at head-quarters. Colonel Allen came out, shook hands with one or two, laughed, and manifestly treated the affair as a joke. The wagon started for the gate. Its way lay through the quarters of the guard, who had, of course, turned out to look at the runaway Yanks. We waited in the painful expectation of hearing a Texan yell over the misfortune of our friends. To their honor be it known, the Texan’s showed no ill-mannered exultation. But the instant it was settled that no shout of triumph was to be raised by the victorious rebs, there was a revulsion of feeling in the prison community. As the gate opened, a slight, restless stir ran through the crowd. As the wagon drove in, a loud shout arose (couched in expressive Texan slang) of, “Here’s your mule! Here’s your mule!” The runaways smiled feebly, as men do who are the victims of a joke. The crowd laughed boisterously, and gave excellent imitations of the baying of hounds. About the same time, a little three-year-old, the child of a commissary-sergeant, came out on the bank opposite to us, and in shrill tones piped out, “Yankee ran away! Yankee ran away!” And all the afternoon, the little wretch would come, at short intervals, and re-sing his refrain, “Yankee ran away! Yankee ran away! Yankee ran away!”

When we came to collate the stories of the three parties, and of their captors, we gathered the following account: each party had kept secret its intended movements; yet all had selected substantially the same route. Unluckily for them, their trails crossed, and, still more unluckily, there rode with the Confederates an old western trapper, whom the men called Chillicothe. When the first party was captured, the pursuers merely returned to the crossing of the second trail, and followed it up. In like manner, when they had captured the second party, they only came back to the third trail. At these crossings, the prisoners could see nothing; but to the eyes of Chillicothe and the instinct of the dogs, the two trails were as plain as the crossings of two streets. The trapper told the prisoners where they had been, and nearly everything they had done. He showed them where (unknowingly) they entered a swamp by the same opening, and crossed a stream on the same tree. He pointed out to them the spot where they sat down to rest, and the hill up which one climbed to reconnoitre. He described to them a log where one pulled off his boots, and another lit his pipe. A secret history of their movements seemed to be written upon the ground.

The story of the last party captured was this: they marched rapidly all of the first night, and hid themselves through the first day. At dark, they resumed their march, and continued to travel rapidly through the woods. On the second morning, they selected, as a hiding-place, a narrow gully, roofed over and completely hidden by a fallen tree. The barking of dogs and crowing of cocks told that a plantation was near. In the afternoon, two restless members of the party insisted on going there to buy eggs. Hardly had they gone, when, in the opposite direction, was heard the baying of hounds. Yet there were no fears of being tracked, for forty-four hours had passed since the party left camp. The baying came nearer. Still it was thought that a party of hunters were accidentally coming that way. A number of horsemen rode down to the little brook at the foot of the hill, and paused there to water their steeds. The dogs, at the same time, started, and came directly up the hill. A beautiful dark hound led the pack, and when he reached the tree, he mounted it with his fore-feet, and looked intelligently down on the prisoners. They remained quiet, fearing that some growl or bark might betray them, yet hoping the hounds would pass on. The leader turned, and quietly trotted down the hill. He went, not to his owner, but to the lieutenant who commanded the party; he looked a moment at him, and then turning looked toward the fallen tree. The lieutenant instantly shouted, “Here they are!” All of his men drew their pistols, and spurred their horses up the hill. The tree was surrounded, and the fugitives recaptured.

What became of the two remaining officers was a question with us for many weeks. The unerring hounds had started on their trail, but the lieutenant who commanded, had ordered that they should be called off. He did not know how many prisoners had escaped, and moreover, he had already caught two parties of four each. Therefore, when he found five prisoners in the gully, he naturally concluded that they were all. Several weeks after this, a quotation from a New Orleans paper assured us of their safe arrival within our lines.

The first fact impressed upon us by these adventures was the wonderful power and sagacity of the bloodhounds. During the next three months, a long list of experiences re-taught this lesson. The Confederates possessed in them “pursuing angels,” whose powers exceeded those of men. If you buried yourself in the earth, they dug you out. If you climbed a tree, they came and stood at the foot. If you plunged into trackless wilds, they followed you. If you threw yourself into a stream, and threaded its windings for miles, they passed tirelessly up and down its bank, until they came to the spot where you had left it. As every means that ingenuity could devise failed, and as prisoner after prisoner who tried them was recaptured, there gradually grew up, in our minds, a feeling that to be hunted by these brutes was like being pursued by dreadful phantoms, such as we read of in old stories, which no mortal power could outstrip or elude, if their insatiate chase once began.

At the time of the escape of the fifteen, a number of officers were secretly engaged in “tunnelling out.” There were two plans connected with this tunnel. The first was that all who wished to escape should pass out on the same night and then scatter in small parties. We knew that some of these parties would be caught—we also thought that some would escape, and every man hoped that he would be in a lucky party. The second plan rested in the breasts of but three or four officers, and they hardly ventured to speak of it to each other. It was that on some dark night we would pass all able-bodied men out, form them in the neighboring woods, march boldly down the road, and surprise the guard in their quarters; then after burning the Confederate arsenal and workshops at Tyler, we would seize upon horses sufficient to mount the party, and push without ceasing for the Sabine and our lines beyond.

About one hundred feet beyond the north side of our enclosed camp stood two large trees. The spot was known as the “Quartermaster’s Grave,” for there slept Lieutenant John F. Kimball, Quartermaster of the 176th New York. The grave, carefully enclosed by a wicker fence, was between the two trees. The sentries’ walk was close to the stockade and parallel to the grave. Within our enclosure the “shebangs,” though not built upon any plan, had nevertheless sprung up with somewhat of the regularity of streets. One, however, called from its Indiana owners, the Hawk-eye, stood detached, and only about sixteen feet from the stockade. This cabin was taken for our starting point. In one corner a shaft was sunk eight feet in depth and length by four in width. From the bottom of this shaft the tunnel started. It was just high enough for a man to sit erect and work, and just wide enough for two men to meet and pass by each other. Two men worked in it at the same time, the one excavating and the other removing the earth. Their tools consisted of an old sword-bayonet, a broken shovel and a small box.

The first difficulty met was in establishing the grade and direction of the tunnel. The top of it at the shaft was less than five feet below the surface, while the posts of the stockade stood four and a half feet deep. It was necessary to go well below them, and therefore necessary to start with a descending grade. Beside the Quartermaster’s grave were three others. They projected over a line drawn from the shaft to the largest tree, and we designed that the tunnel should come out through the roots of this tree like a fox-earth. The wicker fence with the trunk and shadow of the tree, formed so perfect a screen from the sentries that a hundred men could have passed out on a stormy night with only remote chances of detection. Yet as the graves projected over the line I have mentioned, it was necessary for us to deflect from our true course until we should pass them, and then turn and work toward the tree. To bore under ground in the dark, and hit such a mark as the tree could not be done by chance or guess-work. We also must know the exact distance of the point where we should turn from our deflecting course; for if we turned too soon we should run into the graves, and if we turned too late we should shoot beyond the tree.

The difficulty of grade and direction was speedily disposed of. A pocket-compass and a small vial were soon procured, and Mr. Johnson, engineer of the gun-boat “Diana,” with admirable skill combined them into a good surveyor’s compass and level. The direction of the tree was taken, the amount of our deflection estimated, and the compass-level handed to the workmen with orders to keep on a certain grade and course.

To ascertain the exact distance of the tree was a harder task. For this three methods were suggested. It was first proposed that an officer should go out for wood, and as he passed this part of the stockade, some one should request him to copy the inscription on a head-board. He would then come up to the stockade for a pencil, and thence walk directly to the tree, counting his steps as he went. The objection to this was that it might excite suspicion, and draw attention to the tree.

The second method was to form an interior triangle, which should be equal to an imaginary exterior triangle. To do this it was indispensable that we should have “a given angle” and a “given side” of each. Our pocket-compass was too small to take angles, and moreover this had to be done literally within a few inches of the sentries and before their eyes. It was advisable, therefore, to measure and establish our given angle without instruments, and in the most artless manner.

Now every body possessed of a smattering of geometry knows that in a right-angled triangle the square of the hypothenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other sides. Yet very few people can turn that knowledge to any practical account. This theorem, however, enabled us readily and accurately to establish a right-angle, and to use it as our “given angle.” It was done in this way: we took a cord and measured off and marked with pins, ten feet, eight feet, and six feet. By squaring these numbers it will be seen that 10^2 = 8^2 + 6^2. Hence by bringing our line into the shape of a triangle (the pins designating the angles), we formed of it a right-angled triangle.

It was not to be supposed that a Texan sentry, seeing us measuring with a cord on the inside of the stockade, would ever dream that we were measuring distances on the outside. Yet it was desirable that our measurements should be few and quickly done. After thus marking the line, and also measuring upon it twenty feet, Captain Torrey, of the 20th Iowa and myself, carried it up to the Hawk-eye cabin, dropped it on the ground, and quickly drew it into the form of the little triangle—A J K. As soon as the side A J came on a line with the tree, one of us glanced along the other side A K and noted the point B where its projection struck the stockade. He then quickly measured twenty feet in this direction, and stuck a peg in the ground at C. He measured twenty feet more and placed another peg at D. Here we re-set the triangle, which gave us the new direction D E. One of us then walked down this course till he found himself on a line with the peg C and the tree. Here we placed another peg, F. We then picked up the cord and came away. When the guard was relieved, and a new set of sentries stood around the stockade, we went back and measured the distance from F to D. It was equal to the distance from the cabin to the tree.

The third method was suggested by Captain Torrey. It was to take the altitude of a triangle by trigonometry. A table of logarithms remaining in the possession of a naval officer, enabled us to do this. Captain Torrey laid off the base of his triangle well down in the camp, out of sight of the sentries. To measure the angle at A he described a circle on the back of a large chess-board, and divided it as accurately as he could into degrees. When the altitude B T was thus obtained, all that remained necessary to be done was to measure the distance from the base to the corner of the “shebang” (B C), and subtract it from the altitude B T. The results obtained by these two methods were substantially the same.

A great deal of earth comes out of such a hole. It was estimated that we brought out two cart loads a day. For the first day or two our plan was simply to carry it from the cabin after dark. Now this might escape notice, but if it once attracted observation, and that observation should continue from night to night, detection was certain. The boldest course is always the safest, and therefore it was determined that all the earth should be carried out in broad daylight. Accordingly a number of officers were detailed for this work. They never went for a bucket of water without filling the bucket with earth; none carried out a bag or basket empty. Little by little, the contents of the tunnel were distributed around the camp. Some was thrown in the paths and trampled down—some in the ravine, and covered with ashes, and some was used to bank up “shebangs.” It was scattered so perfectly that many of our own number were at a loss to know what had become of it.

A sentinel constantly watched the gate. When any Confederate visitor entered, a signal was given, the work stopped within the tunnel, and a blanket was spread over the shaft. Yet all these precautions did not satisfy our anxiety. The ingenious engineer of the “Diana” was again called in. He skilfully arched over the shaft, leaving a hole at one end, over which he placed the meal-box of the Hawk-eye. The bottom of this box was movable. When work was suspended in the tunnel the bag of meal and cooking utensils were thrown into the box, and it became as honest a looking box as a man could have. When work was to begin again the box was emptied, the bottom was lifted out, and there appeared a dark hole, through which a man could drop down into the shaft below.

Yet still our anxiety grew with the work. We knew that if suspicion ever fell on any “shebang” it would fall on this one. We, therefore, determined to push a sap to an inner cabin, and pass all the earth through to the less suspicious building. A wet morning gave us a pretext for digging a trench. The trench was speedily roofed and covered with earth. When fully completed, one end of it entered the shaft, and the other opened in the second “shebang.” The operation then was this: a workman in the tunnel filled a small box with earth; a second one in the shaft drew out the box, and lifted it into the “baby-jumper” (as the sap was called); a third drew it through, and emptied it in the second “shebang.”

Yet all this precaution was deemed insufficient. The “baby-jumper” was enlarged so that a man could crawl through; the box was removed, and the shaft was covered over entirely. On the very day that this was completed, the gate suddenly opened, and Colonel Allen came in. He walked rapidly to the Hawk-eye (whither he had never gone before), and contrary to his invariable custom, entered it unasked and unannounced. He saw only a bare earth floor.

It was plainly desirable that information of the projected movement should be sent to our army, and accordingly a message to that effect was duly forwarded to our lines by the Confederate authorities in the following letter:

CAMP FORD, _March 19, 1864_,

DEAR N——

“Letters came yesterday for some of• us•, and it will please J—— to
know that hers did not _escape_ this time. About a dozen of us have
had letters containing news to 15th ult. There were two from mother,
and one dated April 7th from C—— for me. On the whole _we_ will not
complain of our luck. I am even willing to scatter them more equally
amongst the prisoners, and indeed to let others have a few of mine.

“We feel certain the blockaders at• Sabine• and Galveston keep ours.
Maj. Hyllested assures us, he sent a flag off with them at least
three times. Let F—— look out• for them. Some were sent in
September, others in October, November and December, I think, but
will not be sure as to all of these months. Those which go _by
Shreveport_ and Red River seem to get through and reach their
destination in _some_ cases.

“Stevenson (as I wrote to you) whom we left sick at Iberia, is here
nearly well. Let his family know this.”

The key to this letter had been previously sent out by an exchanged prisoner. It early became apparent that secret correspondence might be useful to us and of advantage to the government. But it was necessary that it should be both secret and unsuspected. An ordinary cipher would have been as worthless as any contraband letter. My first idea was to take a certain word of every line to convey the hidden message. But this I found lengthened the letter too much, and I therefore added to these every blotted and underscored word. If a person were sure that his correspondent knew the key, and if he were allowed to coin facts and write nonsense, this correspondence would be easy enough. But it became somewhat difficult when written under the following conditions; viz., 1. To write briefly; 2. To use such words and subjects as a prisoner in that camp would naturally use; 3. To state in the body of the letter the personal information I wished to communicate; for I was never sure my key had reached my correspondent. Yet a very little practice removed much of the difficulty, and for six months, every letter carried out its twofold intelligence. If now the reader will collate the fifth word of every line, the words marked thus• and those in _italics_, the inner meaning of the foregoing letter will become apparent.

News now arrived of the advance of our army up the Red River. The leaves were coming out, and the time was slowly approaching when we expected to use the tunnel. The officer who had been selected to direct the work, well know that when this time should arrive it would be absolutely impossible to prevent the whole camp from talking of it, and that one careless word might ruin everything. He therefore sought to conceal the real situation of the affair, by concealing the real distance to the tree, and under-rating the amount of work actually performed. Every precaution was taken to divert attention from the progress of the work; for the inspection of the shrewd Colonel betokened that some foolish word had been overheard by the sentries, or else that we had a secret spy in camp. There were then a few straggling privates within the stockade, and suspicion pointed at two of these. A constant watch was kept upon them; and orders were given that all conversation on the subject should cease.

The night of the fifteenth of April would be the first on which the moon would rise late enough for a sufficient number of men to pass out; and on the fifteenth of April it was designed that the tunnel should be finished and the sally made. On the ninth, news arrived that a great battle had begun at Mansfield. On the tenth, rumors came, saying that the Confederate General had possessed sufficient courage to move forward and strike our invading army. On the eleventh, we heard that he had struck it in detail, routing it and driving it back toward Alexandria. On the thirteenth, Colonel Allen received orders to prepare for four thousand new prisoners. On the fifteenth, the stockade was moved back six hundred feet, and our unfortunate tunnel left high and dry in the middle of this new enclosure.

XI.
EXCHANGE.

The work upon the tunnel was interrupted for a day by an event, which I think must be without a parallel in any other prison-camp. At the breaking out of the rebellion, Miss Mollie Moore was a school girl of sixteen. After Galveston was re-taken by the Confederates, the “Houston Telegraph” was adorned with several heroic ballads, written by the young lady, whom the editor sometimes called “our pet,” and sometimes the “unrivalled star of Texan literature.” The 42d Massachusetts had been quartered in a warehouse on the wharf of Galveston, and had passed the night previous to their capture in fighting, all of which the ballad described thus:

“Beneath the Texan groves the haughty foemen slept.”

The literary taste of a simple, half-educated people is never very high, and it is not surprising that this childish composition so nicely equalled the taste of its readers, as to be deemed a marvel of genius, and actually to be published with General Magruder’s official report. Miss Mollie became the literary genius of Texas, and her effusions were poured forth through the “Houston Telegraph” and the “Tyler Reporter” and the “Crocket Quid Nunc” in most lavish streams. This strong incentive to write, and these ready opportunities to publish were not altogether abused by the young authoress, who rapidly improved. Judging her by the other poems that adorned those papers, she indeed appeared to be the “unrivalled star of Texan literature.” I am fortunate in being able to introduce her to northern readers by an extract from:

AN INVITATION.

TO MISS LIZZIE IRVINE, OF TYLER.

The autumn sunset’s fairy dyes
Have faded from the bonding skies
Grey twilight (she with down-cast eyes
And trailing garments) passeth by;
And thro’ the cloud-rifts shine the stars,
As sunbeams burst thro’ prison bars;
And on the soft wind, faintly heard,
The warbling of some twilight bird
Comes floating sylph-like, clad with power,
To whisper, “This is love’s own hour!”

· · · · ·

’Tis autumn—and with summer fell
The climbing vines of Sylvan Dell;
Our flowers too withered when the pall
Crept over summer; and the fall
Of dry leaves, eddying thro’ the air,
Has left the tall trees brown and bare:
And more—at winter’s high behest,
The crisp fern waves a tattered crest
Above the stream, whose crystal pride
The river-screen was wont to hide.
But think not all are faithless! no,
Not all doth Summer yield her foe,
Tho’ Winter grasp each flower and vine—
He cannot claim the fadeless pine,
And high upon our rough hill-steeps,
His watch the crested holly keeps.
Ah would that Love could thus defy
The storms that sweep our wintry sky!

· · · · ·

Come wander with me where the hill
Slopes downward to the waters still,
Where bright among the curling vines
The sevres berry scarlet shines.
And on yon brown hill’s bosky side,
Where flames the sumach’s crimson pride,
The steeps and tangled thickets glow
With rude persimmons golden show;
And down the dell, where daylight’s beams
Make golden pathways by the streams,
Where whispering winds are never mute,
The hawthorn hangs her ebon fruit.

Come wander with me! near the spring
The partridge whirs on mottled wing,
And where the oozy marshes rest
The wild duck heaves her royal breast,
And when the winds are faintly stirred,
The “sound of dropping nuts” is heard.

· · · · ·

Come thou! a bright and golden bar
Comes quivering from yon yellow star,
And sweeps away as spirits flee,
To bear my vesper thought to thee.
Come thou! a zephyr sweet and mild
Comes whispering where the starlight smiled,
And floats as Love’s own spirits flee,
To bear my vesper wish to thee.
Come thou! a spirit wanders by,
With gentle brow and tender eye,
And flies as Love alone can flee,
To bear my vesper prayer to thee.
Come thou! and when the hour as now
Hangs heavy shades on day’s cold brow,
When stars are glowing in the skies,
The blessed stars, Love’s radiant eyes,
When faintly on the breeze is heard,
The hymning of some brooding bird—
Ah how the twilight hour will be
Love’s dearest hour to thee and me!

It seems impossible that a young lady able to write such correct and pleasing verse could be brought down by a bad subject to the following inflated nonsense, which is a stanza from a terrific piece called “The Black Flag,” “Dedicated to the Southern Army:”

· · · · ·

Let our flag kiss the breeze! let it float o’er the field,
Not a heart will grow faint, not a bay’net will yield;
Let the foe _drive_ his hosts o’er our land and the sea,
To the banquet of Death prepared by the free!
Unfurl our dark banner! be steady each breast,
Till the red light of Victory hath lit on its crest!
Let it hang as the vulture hangs, heavy with woe,
O’er the field where our blades drink the blood of the foe!

_Chorus_—It shall never be lowered, the black flag we bear,
It shall never, never, never, no never, etc., etc., etc.

There was a young lieutenant among the prisoners given to collecting all sorts of scraps and curiosities, and so he addressed a note to Miss Mollie, begging for her autograph and copies of any poems she might be able to spare. Within a reasonable time there came a copy of the “Invitation” and an autograph of the “Black Flag,” and a reproachful letter to Lieutenant Pearson. There was also a letter to Colonel Allen, not intended for Yankee reading. It expressed a little repentance for writing so cruelly to an unfortunate prisoner—avowed a wish to treat even invaders with politeness, and wound up with the Eve-like conclusion, “But I could not resist the temptation. Yours truly, MOLLIE E. MOORE.”

One or two other causes at the same time combined to induce Miss Mollie to visit Camp Ford, and one lucky morning Mrs. Allen escorted her in. She was one of those girls that men are a little afraid of, and that other girls do not like; she had a slender figure, a thin face, light hair, light blue, dreamy eyes, and she was accompanied by the object of the “Invitation.” There was not much of the poetess in her bearing, for she was very neatly dressed, a ready talker, and quite sharp at repartee. Yet when Colonel Burrill was presented to her as one of the “haughty foemen,” she colored, and showed a little pretty embarrassment. The friend was her exact opposite, with dark hair, dark eyes, very shy and silent and reserved, and much the prettiest Texan it was ever my luck to see.

About the same time a second notable incident occurred, being no less than a literary contest between prisoners and the outside world. One of our number had received some attention from the Houston editor, in return for which he sent him a few verses, entitled, “Pax Vobiscum.” These lines so exactly accorded with the yearning for peace, that they awakened great interest, and after a while were re-published, with the editorial avowal that they were written by a Yankee prisoner. Another literary lady, middle-aged, married, and rather stout (so I was informed), but who called herself by the infantile name of “Maggie of Marshall,” thereupon came out with a poem, addressed to “the noble prisoner,” in which she styled him, “The northern by birth but the southern in soul,” and urged him to come straight over and fight on their side. The “noble prisoner” had no earthly intention of deserting, so he wrote a second poem for the “Tyler Reporter,” in which he defined his position. “When Mistress Maggie of Marshall found that her blandishments were all thrown away, she became deeply indignant, and immediately wrote her second poem for the “Reporter,” wherein the “noble prisoner” was turned into a puritan and a murderer and a son of Cain, and finally turned adrift with the contemptuous pity:

“Behold this Ephraim to his idols joined—
Let him alone.”

I cannot speak very explicitly of our last three months. In telling this story, I have tried to picture only the better side of everything, and to make it imprisonment with the unpleasant parts left out. The story is “the truth,” but not “the whole truth,” and does not deny or conflict with the narratives of others. A sense of honor forbids that the better actions of our late enemies should be hidden, or that the good and the bad should be condemned together. Yet I may as well add here, for the benefit of certain persons, that the respect yielded to a southern soldier standing by his State, and heroically fighting for that false belief (in which he was bred), does not extend to those cowards who, “_sympathizing_ with the South,” have skulked through the war behind the generous protection of the United States.

The Red River prisoners arrived, and were followed by numbers from Arkansas. Our soldiers and sailors of Camp Groce, who, four months before, left us hopefully sure of their release, came back—I need not say how sad and disappointed. Our number swelled from a hundred officers, to forty-seven hundred and twenty-five, officers, soldiers and sailors. Then followed a quarter of a year of loathsome wretchedness, beside which, the squallor and vice of a great city’s worst haunts appeared—and still appear, too bright and pure to yield a comparison.

The healthy character of our camp changed in a single week. Disease and death followed each other quickly in. The friendless sick lay shelterless on the ground around us, the sun scorching and blighting them by day, and the cold Texan night-wind smiting them by night. We walked over the dying and the dead, whenever we moved, and saw and heard their miseries through every hour. Beside the gate stood a pile of coffins, reminding all who went out and came in, of their probable impending fate. The vice and lawlessness that live in the vile haunts of cities sprang up and flourished here. The Confederate troops (idle after their victories on the Red River) came back to scour the country for deserters; and our unhappy conscript friends whispered that escape was hopeless now, and sought to comfort us by lamenting that no dim prospect of exchange cheered them. Our kind friends, the Allens, had gone, and the English Lieutenant-Colonel, who commanded, treated a few with surly civility, but the great mass with brutal cruelty. The horrors of these great prison camps are not yet told—will never be.

It is darkest before the dawn. We sat at dinner, one day, and a sailor, whose nick-name was Wax, came to the door, and said to his Captain, “The paroling officer, sir, who was here three months ago, has come back, and the guards say, there are some of us to be exchanged.” The Captain thanked the man, and we went on with our dinner. “I suppose,” some one remarked, “that if exchange ever does come, the news will come through Wax;” and then we dropped the subject; for a hundred times just such stories had been told, and a hundred times they had proved false. Captain Dillingham finished his dinner, and said he would go out and see that officer; perhaps the fellow had brought us some letters. The Captain came back in a few minutes, and said, as cheerily as though he were telling good news for himself, “You are to go, and I am to stay—none of us navy fellows to be exchanged.” Our rose had its thorn.

Three days of anxious waiting passed, and we bade our naval friends farewell. Some of them had been tried then six months longer than we had been. The trial of all went on for seven months more. They suffered, again and again, the sorest pain that can be inflicted on prisoners of war—the sight of those marching out who were captured long subsequent to themselves, and the fear that the injustice comes from the neglect of their own government. There was thrown upon them also a strong temptation; for there were desertions, I am sorry to say, from the army. The deserters were chiefly foreign born, but not all. The first, indeed, was a young man in the 2d Rhode Island Cavalry, a native of another New England State. Yet these sailors never faltered. If men who have fought bravely in battle, and who have been faithful through suffering, ever deserved to be welcomed home with honors and ovations, then did these sailors of the “Morning Light,” “Clifton,” and “Sachem.”

One thousand of us marched out of the crowded camp, We inhaled long breaths of the pure untainted air, yet dared not believe that this would end in exchange. It was the sixth time that some had marched over the same road, and we might well be incredulous. There was weary marching over burning sand, and the long-confined men grew weak and foot-sore, before they had marched an hour. The Confederate officers acted kindly, but the prisoners had seen chances of exchange lost by a single day’s delay, and they dragged themselves forward with a rigor that would have been cruelty had it been enforced on them. The white sand glaring under their feet, and the burning sun beating down through the breathless air, made a fiery ordeal. Shoeless men, with feet seared and blistered so that the hot sand felt like coals of fire, tottered along, not faster than a mile an hour, yet moving steadily. A few wagons, pressed from the harvest-fields, were covered with the sick and dying, and thus appearing, on the fifth day, we marched through the streets of Shreveport.

Here three days of insupportable longness awaited us; for Shreveport had been the dam that had always stopped prisoners and turned them back. On the fourth morning we marched on board of the steamboats that were to carry us down the Red River; and then, when Shreveport was fairly behind us, we breathed freer, and for the first time allowed ourselves to hope. At Alexandria we were stopped and landed, and made to endure two other days of suspense, but at last we re-embarked for the point of exchange.

The mouth of Red River was the place where our flag-of-truce boat was to meet us. We reached it before sunrise, and saw again the muddy current of the Mississippi. No flag-of-truce boat was in sight. But we saw two gun-boats that sentinelled the river, and our eyes rested on the flag that streamed over their decks, and silently proclaimed to us the still sovereign power of the United States. A shot from the gun-boats bade us stop. A small boat was lowered; we saw its crew enter it, and an officer come over the side; and then it pulled toward us. The officer inquired the object of the Confederate flag-of-truce, and told us the disheartening fact that he had heard nothing of this exchange. Then followed nine hours; that seemed as though they would never move away. A crowd of prisoners stood on the upper deck, their eyes strained on the river. The morning passed, the afternoon began, and still nothing could be seen. At two o’clock, a little puff of black smoke appeared far down the Mississippi, and a murmur ran through the crowd. An hour crawled away, and a large, white steamer pushed around a headland of the river, and came rapidly up against the muddy current. The strained eyes thought they saw a white flag, but it was hard to distinguish it on the white back-ground of the boat. Suddenly the steamer turned and ran in to the bank below us—the white flag streamed out plainly in view, and the decks were covered with Confederate prisoners.

* * * * *

It was on the last day of thirteen months of captivity that I re-entered our lines. All that I had seen and learnt was contained in about thirty days. Could these thirty days have been brought together, they would have formed an interesting and instructive month. But beside this one were twelve other months, that were a dreary, idle waste. They formed a year that had brought no pleasure, profit or instruction. Some who entered it young, came out with broken health and shortened lives; some who had entered it in middle age, came out with grey hair, impaired memory, and the decrepitude of premature old age. It was a year that had taken much from us and given to us little in return. A year of ever-disappointed hopes, of barren promises, of a blank and dreary retrospect. Contemplating it, we might almost reverse the meaning of our gently-chiding poet:

“Rich gift of God! A year of time!
What pomp of rise and shut of day—
What hues wherewith our northern clime
Makes autumn’s drooping woodlands gay—
What airs outblown from ferny dells,
And clover bloom, and sweet-brier smells—
What songs of brooks and birds—what fruits and flowers,
Green woods and moon-lit snows have in its round been ours.”

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

End of Project Gutenberg's Sketches in Prison Camps, by Charles C. Nott