Chapter XXXVII

----- Not a soul But felt a fever of the mad, and played Some
tricks of desperation.--TEMPEST.

All trouble, torment, wonder, and amazement Inhabit
here.--IBID.

[Sidenote: GREAT INFLUX OF PRISONERS.]

Early in October, the condition of the Salisbury garrison suddenly changed. Nearly ten thousand prisoners of war, half naked and without shelter, were crowded into its narrow limits, which could not reasonably accommodate more than six hundred. It was converted into a scene of suffering and death which no pen can adequately describe. For every hour, day and night, we were surrounded by horrors which burned into our memories like a hot iron.

We had never before been in a prison containing our private soldiers. In spite of many assurances to the contrary, we had been skeptical as to the barbarities which they were said to suffer at Belle Isle and Andersonville. We could not believe that men bearing the American name would be guilty of such atrocities. Now, looking calmly upon our last two months in Salisbury, it seems hardly possible to exaggerate the incredible cruelty of the Rebel authorities.

When captured, the prisoners were robbed of the greater part of their clothing. When they reached Salisbury, all were thinly clad, thousands were barefooted, not one in twenty had an overcoat or blanket, and many hundreds were without coats or blouses.

[Sidenote: STARVING IN THE MIDST OF FOOD.]

For several weeks, they were furnished with no shelter whatever. Afterward, one Sibley tent and one A tent was issued to each hundred men. With the closest crowding, these contained about one-half of them. The rest burrowed in the earth, crept under buildings, or dragged out the nights in the open air upon the muddy, snowy, or frozen ground. In October, November, and December, snow fell several times. It was piteous beyond description to see the poor fellows, coatless, hatless, and shoeless, shivering about the yard.

They were organized into divisions of one thousand each, and subdivided into squads of one hundred. Almost daily one or more divisions was without food for twenty-four hours. Several times some of them received no rations for forty-eight hours. The few who had money, paid from five to twenty dollars, in Rebel currency, for a little loaf of bread. Some sold the coats from their backs and the shoes from their feet to purchase food.

When a subordinate asked the post-Commandant, Major John H. Gee, "Shall I give the prisoners full rations?" he replied: "No, G-d d--n them, give them quarter-rations!"

Yet, at this very time, one of our Salisbury friends, a trustworthy and Christian gentleman, assured us, in a stolen interview:

"It is within my personal knowledge that the great commissary warehouse, in this town, is filled to the roof with corn and pork. I know that the prison commissary finds it difficult to obtain storage for his supplies."

After our escape, we learned from personal observation that the region abounded in corn and pork. Salisbury was a general dépôt for army supplies.

[Sidenote: FREEZING IN THE MIDST OF FUEL.]

That section of country is densely wooded. The cars brought fuel to the door of our prison. If the Rebels were short of tents, they might easily have paroled two or three hundred prisoners, to go out and cut logs, with which, in a single week, barracks could have been constructed for every captive; but the Commandant would not consent. He did not even furnish half the needed fuel.

Cold and hunger began to tell fearfully upon the robust young men, fresh from the field, who crowded the prison. Sickness was very prevalent and very fatal. It invariably appeared in the form of pneumonia, catarrh, diarrh[oe]a, or dysentery; but was directly traceable to freezing and starvation. Therefore the medicines were of little avail. The weakened men were powerless to resist disease, and they were carried to the dead-house in appalling numbers.

By appointment of the prison authorities, my two comrades and myself were placed in charge of all the hospitals, nine in number, inside the garrison. The scenes which constantly surrounded us were enough to shake the firmest nerves; but there was work to be done for the relief of our suffering companions. We could accomplish very little--hardly more than to give a cup of cold water, and see that the patients were treated with sympathy and kindness.

Mr. Davis was general superintendent, and brought to his arduous duties good judgment, untiring industry, and uniform kindness.

"Junius" was charged with supplying medicines to the "out-door patients." The hospitals, when crowded, would hold about six hundred; but there were always many more invalids unable to obtain admission. These wretched men waited wearily for death in their tents, in subterranean holes, under hospitals, or in the open air. My comrade's tender sympathy softened the last hours of many a poor fellow who had long been a stranger to

"The falling music of a gracious word,
Or the stray sunshine of a smile."

[Sidenote: REBEL SURGEONS GENERALLY HUMANE.]

I was appointed to supervise all the hospital books, keeping a record of each patient's name, disease, admission, and discharge or death. At my own solicitation, the Rebel surgeon-in-chief also authorized me to receive the clothing left by the dead, and re-issue it among the living. I endeavored to do this systematically, keeping lists of the needy, who indeed were nine-tenths of all the prisoners. The deaths ranged from twenty to forty-eight daily, leaving many garments to be distributed. Day after day, in bitterly cold weather, pale, fragile boys, who should have been at home with their mothers and sisters, came to me with no clothing whatever, except a pair of worn cotton pantaloons and a thin cotton shirt.

Dr. Richard O. Currey, a refugee from Knoxville, was the surgeon in charge. Though a genuine Rebel, he was just and kind-hearted, doing his utmost to change the horrible condition of affairs. Again and again he sent written protests to Richmond, which brought several successive inspectors to examine the prison and hospitals, but no change of treatment.

We were reluctantly driven to the belief that the Richmond authorities deliberately adopted this plan to reduce the strength of our armies. The Medusa head of Slavery had turned their hearts to stone. At this time, they held nearly forty thousand prisoners. In our garrison the inmates were dying at the rate of thirteen per cent. a month upon the aggregate. About as many more were enlisting in the Rebel army. Thus our soldiers were destroyed at the rate of more than twenty-five per cent. a month, with no corresponding loss to the enemy.

[Sidenote: TERRIBLE SCENES IN THE HOSPITALS.]

Frequently, for two or three days, Dr. Currey would refrain from entering the garrison, reluctant to look upon the revolting scenes from which _we_ could find no escape. I am glad to be able to throw one ray of light into so dark a picture. Nearly all the surgeons evinced that humanity which ought to characterize their profession. They were much the best class of Rebels we encountered. They denounced unsparingly the manner in which prisoners were treated, and endeavored to mitigate their sufferings.

To call the foul pens, where the patients were confined, "hospitals," was a perversion of the English tongue. We could not obtain brooms to keep them clean; we could not get cold water to wash the hands and faces of those sick and dying men. In that region, where every farmer's barn-yard contained grain-stacks, we could not procure clean straw enough to place under them. More than half the time they were compelled to lie huddled upon the cold, naked, filthy floors, without even that degree of warmth and cleanliness usually afforded to brutes. The wasted forms and sad, pleading eyes of those sufferers, waiting wearily for the tide of life to ebb away--without the commonest comforts, without one word of sympathy, or one tear of affection--will never cease to haunt me.

At all hours of the day and night, on every side, we heard the terrible hack! hack! hack! in whose pneumonic tones every prisoner seemed to be coughing his life away. It was the most fearful sound in that fearful place.

[Sidenote: THE RATTLING DEAD-CART.]

The last scene of all was the dead-cart, with its rigid forms piled upon each other like logs--the arms swaying, the white ghastly faces staring, with dropped jaws and stony eyes--while it rattled along, bearing its precious freight just outside the walls, to be thrown in a mass into trenches and covered with a little earth.

When received, there were no sick or wounded men among the prisoners. But before they had been in Salisbury six weeks, "Junius," with better facilities for knowing than any one else, insisted that among eight thousand there were not five hundred well men. The Rebel surgeons coincided in this belief.

The rations, issued very irregularly, were insufficient to support life. Men grew feeble before living upon them a single week; but could not buy food from the town; and were not permitted to receive even a meal sent by friends from the outside. Our positions in the hospitals enabled us to purchase supplies and fare better. Prisoners eagerly devoured the potato-skins from our table. They ate rats, dogs, and cats. Many searched the yard for bones and scraps among the most revolting substances.

They constantly besieged us for admission to the hospitals, or for shelter and food, which we were unable to give. It seemed almost sinful for us to enjoy protection from the weather and food enough to support life in the midst of all this distress.

On wet days the mud was very deep, and the shoeless wretches wallowed pitifully through it, seeking vainly for cover and warmth. Two hundred negro prisoners were almost naked, and could find no shelter whatever except by burrowing in the earth. The authorities treated them with unusual rigor, and guards murdered them with impunity.

No song, no athletic game, few sounds of laughter broke the silence of the garrison. It was a Hall of Eblis--devoid of its gold-besprinkled pavements, crystal vases, and dazzling saloons; but with all its oppressive silence, livid lips, sunken eyes, and ghastly figures, at whose hearts the consuming fire was never quenched.

Constant association with suffering deadened our sensibilities. We were soon able to pass through the hospitals little moved by their terrible spectacles, except when patients addressed us, exciting a personal interest.

[Sidenote: CREDULITY OF OUR GOVERNMENT.]

The credulity and trustfulness of our Government toward the enemy passed belief. Month after month it sent by the truce-boats many tons of private boxes for Union prisoners, while the Rebels, not satisfied with their usual practice of stealing a portion under the rose, upon one trivial pretext or other, openly confiscated every pound of them. At the same time, returning truce-boats were loaded with boxes sent to Rebel prisoners from their friends in the South, and express-lines crowded with supplies from their sympathizers in the North.

The Government held a large excess of prisoners, and the Rebels were anxious to exchange man for man; but our authorities acted upon the cold-blooded theory of Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, that we could not afford to give well-fed, rugged men, for invalids and skeletons--that returned prisoners were infinitely more valuable to the Rebels than to us, because their soldiers were inexorably kept in the army, while many of ours, whose terms of service had expired, would not re-enlist.

The private soldier who neglects his duty is taken out and shot. Officials seemed to forget that the soldier's obligation of obedience devolves upon the Government the obligation of protection. It was clearly the duty of our authorities either to exchange our own soldiers, or to protect them--not by indiscriminate cruelty, but by well-considered, systematic retaliation in kind, until the Richmond authorities should treat prisoners with ordinary humanity. It was very easy to select a number of Rebel officers, corresponding to the Union prisoners in the Salisbury garrison, and give them precisely the same kind and amount of food, clothing, and shelter.

[Sidenote: GENERAL BUTLER'S EXAMPLE OF RETALIATION.]

When the Confederate Government placed certain of our negro prisoners under fire, at work upon the fortifications of Richmond, General Butler, in a brief letter, informed them that he had stationed an equal number of Rebel officers, equally exposed and spade in hand, upon _his_ fortifications. When his letter reached Richmond, before that day's sun went down, the negroes were returned to Libby Prison and ever afterward treated as prisoners of war. But, by the mawkish sensibilities of a few northern statesmen and editors, our Government was encouraged to neglect the matter, and thus permitted the needless murder of its own soldiers--a stain upon the nation's honor, and an inexcusable cruelty to thousands of aching hearts.