Chapter XXXVIII

I have supped full with horrors.--MACBETH.

The weariest and most loathed worldly life That ache, age,
penury and imprisonment Can lay on nature.--MEASURE FOR
MEASURE.

[Sidenote: ATTEMPTED OUTBREAK AND MASSACRE.]

On the 26th of November, while we were sitting at dinner, John Lovell came up from the yard and whispered me:

"There is to be an insurrection. The prisoners are preparing to break out."

We had heard similar reports so frequently as to lose all faith in them; but this was true. Without deliberation or concert of action, upon the impulse of the moment, a portion of the prisoners acted. Suffering greatly from hunger, many having received no food for forty-eight hours, they said:

"Let us break out of this horrible place. We may just as well die upon the guns of the guards as by slow starvation."

A number, armed with clubs, sprang upon a Rebel relief of sixteen men, just entering the yard. Though weak and emaciated, these prisoners performed their part promptly and gallantly. Man for man, they wrenched the guns from the soldiers. One Rebel resisted and was bayoneted where he stood. Instantly, the building against which he leaned was reddened by a great stain of blood. Another raised his musket, but, before he could fire, fell to the ground, shot through the head. Every gun was taken from the terrified relief, who immediately ran back to their camp, outside.

Had parties of four or five hundred then rushed at the fence in half a dozen different places, they might have confused the guards, and somewhere made an opening. But some thousands ran to it at one point only. Having neither crow-bars nor axes they could not readily effect a breach. At once every musket in the garrison was turned upon them. Two field-pieces opened with grape and canister. The insurrection--which had not occupied more than three minutes--was a failure, and the uninjured at once returned to their quarters.

The yard was now perfectly quiet. The portion of it which we occupied was several hundred yards from the scene of the _mêlée_. In our vicinity there had been no disturbance whatever; yet the guards stood upon the fence for twenty minutes, with deliberate aim firing into the tents, upon helpless and innocent men. Several prisoners were killed within a dozen yards of our building. One was wounded while leaning against it. The bullets rattled against the logs, but none chanced to pass through the wide apertures between them, and enter our apartment. Sixteen prisoners were killed and sixty wounded, of whom not one in ten had participated in the outbreak; while most were ignorant of it until they heard the guns.

[Sidenote: COLD-BLOODED MURDERS FREQUENT.]

After this massacre, cold-blooded murders were very frequent. Any guard, standing upon the fence, at any hour of the day or night, could deliberately raise his musket and shoot into any group of prisoners, black or white, without the slightest rebuke from the authorities. He would not even be taken off his post for it.

One Union officer was thus killed when there could be no pretext that he was violating any prison rule.

Moses Smith, a negro soldier of the Seventh Maryland Infantry, was shot through the head while standing inoffensively beside my own quarters, conversing with John Lovell. One of many instances was that of two white Connecticut soldiers who were shot within their tents. We induced one of the surgeons to inquire at head-quarters the cause of the homicide. The answer received was, that the guard saw three negroes in range, and, knowing he would never have so good an opportunity again, fired at them, but missed aim and killed the wrong men! It seemed to be regarded as a harmless jest.

[Sidenote: HOSTILITY TO "TRIBUNE" CORRESPONDENTS.]

Though my comrades and myself, either by _finesse_ or bribery, often succeeded in obtaining special privileges from the prison officers, the hostility of the Confederate authorities was unrelenting. Our attorney, Mr. Blackmer, after visiting Richmond on our behalf, returned and assured us that he saw no hope of our release before the end of the war, unless we could effect our escape. Robert Ould, who usually denied that he regarded us with special hostility, on one occasion, in his cups, remarked to the United States Commissioner:

"_The Tribune_ did more than any other agency to bring on the war. It is useless for you to ask the exchange of its correspondents. They are just the men we want, and just the men we are going to hold."

Our Government, through blundering rather than design, released a large number of Rebel journalists without requiring our exchange. Finally, while among the horrors of Salisbury, we learned that Edward A. Pollard, a malignant Rebel, and an editor of _The Richmond Examiner_, most virulent of all the southern papers, was paroled to the city of Brooklyn, after confinement for a few weeks in the North. This news cut us like a knife. We, after nearly two years of captivity, in that foul, vermin-infested prison, among all its atrocities--he, at large, among the comforts and luxuries of one of the pleasantest cities in the world! The thought was so bitter, that, for weeks after hearing the intelligence, we did not speak of it to each other. Mr. Welles, Secretary of the Navy, was the person who set Pollard at liberty. I record the fact, not that any special importance attaches to our individual experience, but because hundreds of Union prisoners were subjected to kindred injustice.

[Sidenote: A CRUEL INJUSTICE.]

At the Salisbury penitentiary was a respectable woman from North Carolina, who was confined for two months, in the same quarters with the male inmates. Her crime was, giving a meal to a Rebel deserter! In Richmond, a Virginian of seventy was shut up with us for a long time, on the charge of feeding his own son, who had deserted from the army!

In September, a number of Rebel convicts, armed with clubs and knives, forcibly took from John Lovell a Union flag, which he had thus far concealed. After the prisoners of war arrived they vented their indignation upon the convicts, wherever they could catch them. For several days, Rebels venturing into the yard were certain to return to their quarters with bruised faces and blackened eyes.

[Sidenote: REBEL EXPECTATIONS OF PEACE.]

During the peace mania, which seemed to possess the North, at the time of McClellan's nomination, the Rebels were very hopeful. Lieutenant Stockton, the post-Adjutant, one day observed:

"You will go home very soon; we shall have peace within a month."

"On what do you base your opinion?" I asked.

"The tone of your newspapers and politicians. McClellan is certain to be elected President, and peace will immediately follow."

"You southerners are the most credulous people in the whole world. You have been so long strangers to freedom of speech and the press, that you cannot comprehend it at all. There are half a dozen public men and as many newspapers in the North, who really belong to your side, and express their Rebel sympathies with little or no disguise. Can you not see that they never receive any accessions? Point out a single important convert made by them since the beginning of the war. Before Sumter, these same men told you that, if we attempted coërcion, it would produce war in the North; and you believed them. Again and again they have told you, as now, that the loyal States would soon give up the conflict, and you still believe them. Wait until the people vote, in November, and then tell me what you think."

In due time came news of Mr. Lincoln's re-election. The prisoners received it with intense satisfaction. I conveyed it to the Union officers, from whom we were separated by bayonets--tossing to them a biscuit containing a concealed note. A few minutes after, their cheering and shouting excited the surprise and indignation of the prison authorities. The next morning I asked Stockton how he now regarded the peace prospect. Shaking his head, he sadly replied:

"It is too deep for me; I cannot see the end."

A private belonging to the Fifty-ninth Massachusetts Infantry, had left Boston, a new recruit, just six weeks before we met him. In the interval he participated in two great battles and five skirmishes, was wounded in the leg, captured, escaped from his guards, while _en route_ for Georgia, traveled three days on foot, was then re-captured and brought to Salisbury. His six weeks' experience had been fruitful and varied.

That hope deferred which maketh the heart sick, began to tell seriously upon our mental health. We grew morbid and bitter, and were often upon the verge of quarreling among ourselves. I remember even feeling a pang of jealousy and indignation at an account of some enjoyment and hilarity among my friends at home.

[Sidenote: THE PRISON LIKE THE TOMB.]

Our prison was like the tomb. No voice from the North entered its gloomy portal. Knowing that we had been unjustly neglected by our own Government, wondering if we were indeed forsaken by God and man, we seemed to lose all human interest, and to care little whether we lived or died. But I suppose lurking, unconscious hope, still buoyed us up. Could we have known positively that we must endure eight months more of that imprisonment, I think we should have received with joy and gratitude our sentence to be taken out and shot.

Frequently prisoners asked us, sometimes with tears in their eyes:

"What shall we do? We grow weaker day by day. Staying here we shall be certain to follow our comrades to the hospital and the dead-house. The Rebels assure us that if we will enlist, we shall have abundant food and clothing; and we may find a chance of escaping to our own lines."

I always answered that they owed no obligation to God or man to remain and starve to death. Of the two thousand who did enlist, nearly all designed to desert at the first opportunity. Their remaining comrades had no toleration for them. If one who had joined the Rebels came back into the yard for a moment, his life was in imminent peril. Two or three times such persons were shockingly beaten, and only saved from death by the interference of the Rebel guards. This ferocity was but the expression of the deep, unselfish patriotism of our private soldiers. These men, who carried muskets and received but a mere pittance, were so earnest that they were almost ready to kill their comrades for joining the enemy even to escape a slow, torturing death.

[Sidenote: SOMETHING ABOUT TUNNELING.]

We grew very familiar with the occult science of tunneling. Its _modus operandi_ is this: the workman, having sunk a hole in the ground three, six, or eight feet, as the case may require, strikes off horizontally, lying flat on his face, and digging with whatever tool he can find--usually a case-knife. The excavation is made just large enough for one man to creep through it. The great difficulty is, to conceal the dirt. In Salisbury, however, this obstacle did not exist, for many of the prisoners lived in holes in the ground, which they were constantly changing or enlarging. Hence the yard abounded in hillocks of fresh earth, upon which that taken from the tunnels could be spread nightly without exciting notice.

After the great influx of prisoners of war in October, a large tunneling business was done. I knew of fifteen in course of construction at one time, and doubtless there were many more. The Commandant adopted an ingenious and effectual method of rendering them abortive.

In digging laterally in the ground, at the distance of thirty or forty feet the air becomes so foul that lights will not burn, and men breathe with difficulty. In the great tunnel sixty-five feet long, by which Colonel Streight and many other officers escaped from Libby prison, this embarrassment was obviated by a bit of Yankee ingenuity. The officers, with tacks, blankets, and boards, constructed a pair of huge bellows, like those used by blacksmiths. Then, while one of them worked with his case-knife, progressing four or five feet in twelve hours, and a second filled his haversack with dirt and removed it (of course backing out, and crawling in on his return, as the tunnel was a single track, and had no turn-table), a third sat at the mouth pumping vigorously, and thus supplied the workers with fresh air.

[Sidenote: THE TUNNELERS INGENIOUSLY BAFFLED.]

At Salisbury this was impracticable. I suppose a paper of tacks could not have been purchased there for a thousand dollars. There were none to be had. Of course we could not pierce holes up to the surface of the ground for ventilation, as that would expose every thing.

Originally there was but one line of guards--posted some twenty-five feet apart, upon the fence which surrounded the garrison, and constantly walking to and fro, meeting each other and turning back at the limits of each post. Under this arrangement it was necessary to tunnel about forty feet to go under the fence, and come up far enough beyond it to emerge from the earth on a dark night without being seen or heard by the sentinels.

When the Commandant learned (through prisoners actually suffering for food, and ready to do almost any thing for bread) that tunneling was going on, he tried to ascertain where the excavations were located; but in vain, because none of the shaky Unionists had been informed. Therefore he established a second line of guards, one hundred feet outside of those on the fence, who also paced back and forth in the same manner until they met, forming a second line impervious to Yankees. This necessitated tunneling at least one hundred and forty feet, which, without ventilation, was just as much out of the question as to tunnel a hundred and forty miles.

IV.

THE ESCAPE.