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SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



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SEVEN MONTHS 
A PRISONER 



J. V. HADLEY 




NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRlBNER'S^QfJ^QPY 

1898, 



7301 

Copyright, i8g8, bjy 
Charles Scrihner's Sons 

r ■ 



TROW DIRECTORY 
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



To 

the memory of 
My Widowed Mother 
WHO bore the chief burden of sorrow 

WHILE THE EVENTS CHRONICLED 
HEREIN WERE PASSING 
THIS VOLUME IS 
AFFECTION A TELY INSCRIBED 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



I 

A LITTLE before midnight on May 3, 
1864, about one mile south of Culpeper, 
Va., we broke perhaps the most comfortable 
winter-quarters ever occupied by the Army 
of the Potomac. Man and officer felt, as he 
drew off the piece of shelter-tent which had 
formed the roof of his log hut, Well, weVe 
had a good time in these quarters, anyhow/' 
And we had, too. We had had excellent 
rations, good clothing, and furloughs — three 
things as necessary to the good feeling of an 
army as discipline and victory are to its 
efficiency. Everyone, too, seemed to ap- 
preciate the magnitude of the work before 
him. 

Grant was to lead us. Coming from the 
West flushed with victory, and flattered in 
his bold, stubborn methods, with his new 
and exalted rank he would hardly be less 



2 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



aggressive in the East than he had been in 
the West, and the troops were determined to 
give. him a support equal to anything he had 
had. For several days evidence had been 
multiplying that a new power was at work. 
Army-wagons in great numbers had been 
passing to and from the railroad station ; 
muskets had been closely inspected and 
some exchanged ; cartridge-boxes had been 
filled, and> to the great gratification of the 
men, a long column of heavy artillerymen 
from the fortifications about Washington and 
Baltimore, eight thousand of them, came 
marching to the front with muskets in their 
hands. The influence of Grant was seen 
upon every side. 

These extraordinary preparations, togeth- 
er with a very suggestive order from Gen- 
eral Meade, beginning : Soldiers, you are 
again called upon to meet the enemy," 
was conclusive enough to the dullest mind 
that the coming campaign would be a hard 
and perilous one. 

The army had perfect confidence in Grant, 
and in themselves. Although not so many 
victories were inscribed upon their banners, 
they never doubted but that they could fight 
as long and as well as the Western armies, if 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 3 



led by the same genius, and not once did 
they believe that, when the much -hated 
Rapidan was again crossed, they would have 
to return, as they had done twice before. 

The order to march was not unexpected, 
but it took an hour of busy bluster to make 
ready for the start. Certain transfers of 
property were to be made, extra rations 
drawn, the sick hunted up and sent back, 
surplus effects packed and sent to storage, 
tents taken down, and wagons loaded, but 
when midnight came Warren's Fifth Corps 
was ready to move. 

The writer was serving upon the staff of 
General J. C. Rice, Second Brigade, Wads- 
worth's Division, Fifth Corps. 

Lee's army at the time lay in winter quar- 
ters, its left (Longstreet) at Gordonsville, its 
centre (A. P. Hill) at Orange Court-house, 
and its right (Ewell) on the south bank of 
the Rapidan, immediately west of the Wil- 
derness. 

It was Grant's scheme to cross the Rapi- 
dan to the east of the Confederate army, 
pass through the Wilderness, turning Lee's 
right, and thus to draw him from his strong- 
ly entrenched position for battle, or force 
him to fall back to Richmond. 



4 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 

A little after midnight. May 4th, the 
Army of the Potomac moved in two col- 
umns — one, composed of Warren's and 
Sedgwick's Sixth Corps, in the order named, 
led by Wilson's Division of Cavalry, headed 
for Germania Ford, the other Hancock's 
Second Corps, led by Sheridan's Cavalry, 
for Ely's Ford, six miles farther down the 
river. 

The night-march was made without inci- 
dent or interruption. The freshness of the 
troops -and animals and bracing night-air 
carried the column briskly on. We had 
reached the hills of Stevensburg when the 
great red sun came up over the eastern tree- 
tops and saluted the opening of one of the 
boldest campaigns of modern times. As far 
to the eastward or westward as the eye could 
reach was the moving column, winding up 
and over the hills, looking the very thing of 
life it was. There were sections of infantry 
in dark-blue, stepping in measured tread, 
with their battle-torn banners waving in the 
morning breeze. Interspersed were long 
teams of horses, vrith riders, dragging along 
the batteries, bouncing and rattling over the 
stones. There were also here and there 
groups of army-wagons, with covers white as 



* 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 5 



the driven snow, moving in unison with the 
monster upon its mission of death. At in- 
tervals streamed the pennants of general offi- 
cers, accompanied by their personal staffs, 
each young man in lazy posture, dreaming 
of glory to come. 

A cloudless sky let the morning sun fall 
upon the scene, bright as the '^sun of 
Austerlitz." Its golden beams, reflected 
from the bright brass cannon and swaying 
muskets, from the unfolding leaflets of the 
trees and dew-kissed verdure of the fields, 
presented a scene of shimmering beauty, to 
inspire, to exhilarate, and to soften the 
heart of a mighty army in its march to the 
front. 

As Grant rode along the column, the 
wave of lusty cheers that kept pace with his 
galloping steed gave unmistakable proof of 
the confidence and superb spirit of the 
men. 

It was a grand start. 

The head of the column reached Germania 
Ford at 7 a.m. Wilson already had two 
pontoon bridges laid, and had crossed to 
the Wilderness on the other side. 

The Wilderness was a wild, sterile plateau 
along the south bank of the Rapidan, in 



6 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



length from east to west about fifteen miles, 
and in breadth about ten miles. Its forests 
had long since been cut away for lumber and 
to furnish fuel for the iron furnaces in the 
neighborhood, and a new growth of dwarf- 
trees and brushwood had sprung up over the 
district, in many places for large areas, so 
dense and interlaced as to make penetration 
very slow and difficult. The Orange Turn- 
pike to the north and the Orange Plank 
Road to the south crossed it from east to 
west about two miles apart. 

A number of less important roads crossed 
it from north to south. Among the latter the 
Germania ran from the Ford of that name 
east of south for five miles and crossed the 
Orange Turnpike, and then continuing south 
about two miles in a more easterly direction 
crossed the Orange Plank Road. 

Warren at once crossed on the pontoons 
and marched southward upon the Germania 
Road to its intersection with the Orange 
Turnpike, and there bivouacked for the night 
in the very heart of the Wilderness, having 
moved his entire corps more than twenty 
miles in fifteen hours. 

As Lee was reported to be advancing upon 
both the Orange Turnpike and Orange 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER ^ 



Plank Road, the camp was aroused at dawn 
next morning for coffee, and an hour later 
was under arms. 

The morning of the fifth of May opened 
fair and balmy as its predecessor, but only 
straggling rays fell upon the army, concealed 
in its bivouac in the Wilderness. In our 
last five-mile march the evening before we 
saw not a clearing, nor citizen, nor human 
habitation, and at the intersection of the 
important highways, where we rested, not a 
sign of human settlement, past or present, 
could be seen except the old Wilderness 
tavern, situated on the turnpike a few hundred 
yards east of the crossing, that had been 
abandoned many years and was fast falling 
to decay. The place was apparently the 
last on earth that great modern armies would 
seek for battle. A few guns were heard early, 
three or four miles to the west and south, 
where the cavalry had found the van of the 
enemy. 

Warren was directed to deploy and move 
out in force along the Orange Turnpike to 
meet Lee. 

In the execution of this order. Wads- 
worth's Division, led by Rice's Brigade, took 
a country road in a southwesterly direction, 



8 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



so narrow that the spreading branches of the 
bushes came near meeting overhead. 

Having proceeded about a half-mile, the 
column was halted, faced to the west, and 
muskets loaded. General Rice then directed 
me to cover the brigade with skirmishers. 
This order was obeyed by detaching two 
companies of the Seventy -sixth and three 
companies of the Ninety-fifth New York, 
and advancing them deployed five hundred 
yards to the front. The division formed for 
battle with Rice on the left, Roy Stone in 
the centre, and Cutler on the right. At the 
time of the advance Rice had no support on 
the left, and his left flank was entirely un- 
protected, but later Getty's Division of the 
Sixth Corps came in, and took position on 
Rice's left, and Hancock's Second Corps, 
on the Orange Plank Road, connected with 
Getty's left. 

Some time after I had reported to Rice that 
the skirmishers were in position and properly 
connected with those of Stone, perhaps lo 
A.M., Warren rode up to Rice, who was 
lounging with his staff in the shade of a wide- 
spreading tree, and said: '^General Rice, 
there is some uncertainty about the position 
of the enemy, and the character of the coun- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 9 



try prevents its accurate ascertainment, and 
you will therefore advance your skirmish 
line in connection with Stone's on your 
right, for a mile and a half, unless the ene- 
my is found at shorter distance, and your 
skirmishers will hold all the ground covered 
till the line of battle gets up — you moving 
forward as soon as the firing begins. ' ' 

Whereupon Rice turned at once to me 
and said, Lieutenant, you will see that the 
orders of General Warren are carried out 
with regard to the skirmish line/' 

I replied by calling for my horse, and at 
the same time casting a significant glance at 
my friend and blanket-companion. Lieuten- 
ant Homer Chisman, who was lying at ease 
on the ground. He well knew that I had 
been in the saddle my full share that morn- 
ing, and, divining my wishes, sprang to his 
feet with General, with your permission, I 
will assist the Lieutenant in advancing the 
skirmishers." 

I shall be very glad if you will, sir,' ' was 
the answer, and Chisman joined me before I 
reached the line. 

The difficulties of the advance were very 
great on account of the interlacing trees and 
tangled underbrush. In many places it was 



lo SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



wholly out of the question to see twenty feet 

in advance, and many times Chisman and I 
were compelled to dismount and lead our 
horses. Our perplexity was increased by 
the impossibility of ascertaining how our 
progress and alignment harmonized ^\ith 
those upon our right. We crept slowly and 
cautiously along for a mile, making or hear- 
ing no sound louder than the cracking of a 
stick, when suddenly an owl in our front, not 
far away, went hoot, hoot, hoot." Hoot, 
hoot, hoot," went another off to the right, 
and we hurried along the line and told the 
boys to keep a sharp lookout. Two or three 
hundred yards farther on and the next sig- 
nal was — a volley from Confederate muskets. 

The skirmish was on. Whether we fired 
the first guns of that great campaign is no 
matter, but right here began the bloody Bat- 
tle of the Wilderness. 

A brisk firing at once opened along our 
entire front, and soon extended to Stone on 
our right. Charging and being charged, ad- 
vancing and retiring, the immediate results 
were uncertain ; but the net results were in 
our favor, for we pushed the enemy back 
a considerable distance and across a small 
clearing that lay in a narrow valley. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER ii 



West of this valley the country, while not 
cleared, was open and free from underbrush. 
We halted upon the ridge on the east side 
of the valley, and exchanged shots with the 
Confederates, posted behind trees on the west 
side of the clearing. As we had no protec- 
tion upon our left while the skirmishing was 
in progress, we sent fifty men of our line 
backward at an angle of about one hundred 
degrees with the front, to prevent a move- 
ment of the enemy to our rear. 

It had been quite an hour since we started 
upon the advance, and about half that time 
since the firing began ; but as yet we had no 
tidings from the line of battle that was to 
follow. 

A desultory skirmish-firing continued far 
to the right, but no artillery or heavy mus- 
ketry. 

Chisman and I, unable to discover any 
Confederate force but their skirmish line, 
decided that we would charge across the 
clearing and try to gain the ridge on the 
other side of the Httle valley for further ob- 
servation. 

The charge was a determined one, but 
failed, being most stubbornly met by the 
enemy from his cover of trees and logs. 



12 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



While in the clearing a bullet caught my 
horse in the fleshy part of the right rump and 
for a time made him unmanageable. He 
reared, plunged, and bolted down the valley 
at a dangerous speed, which I was able to 
check only after we had passed beyond the 
firing. When we got to the ridge on the east 
side of the valley I dismounted and carried 
my cap full of water from the brook in our 
near front and washed his wound, and this in 
a great measure subdued him. 

Still the line of battle had not come, nor 
did any evidence appear that it ever would 
come. Soon after, however. Lieutenant 
Harry Mitchell, of our staff, arrived with in- 
formation that the line was advancing as fsta 
as it could find its way through the bushes, 
but was bearing very much to the right, and 
with directions from Rice to hold our ground. 
Mitchell tarried but a moment and left us to 
return. 

He had hardly passed out of sight when 
heavy musketry firing broke forth upon our 
right and considerably to our rear. As it 
continued its volume increased, and it was 
soon augmented with artillery farther north on 
the turnpike, until the whole woods resounded 
with the roar. And still there was no appear- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 13 



ance of the brigade that was to follow, and no 
appearance of a large force of the enemy in 
our front. Confused by the situation, I told 
Chisman that if he would remain with the 
skirmishers I would go in quest of the 
brigade. 

Under a strong suspicion that our brigade 
was among the troops engaged, I headed my 
horse for the rear of the battle, and trotted 
off as fast as I could, dodging under the 
limbs and by the trees. After having gone 
perhaps five hundred yards, and when about 
to cross a rude wagon-way running east and 
west, I chanced to glance to my left ; and 
there stood a man in the path, within thirty 
feet of me, with a musket hanging in his 
right hand. Not noticing him closely it oc- 
curred to me that here was a skulker from 
our skirmish line, and I addressed him sharp- 
ly : What are you doing back here, sir ? 
Whereupon he replied : Are you a Yan- 
kee?'^ 

A Confederate ! Quick as thought I jerked 
my horse to the left, plunged both spurs into 
his sides, snatched my revolver from its hol- 
ster, and in a twinkling was upon him. He 
threw his musket to his shoulder, but in his 
hurry failed to raise the hammer, and before 



14 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



he could recover I dropped my revolver on 
his breast with a demand for his surrender. 
He dropped his gun, and I commanded him 
to double-quick to the rear. It was an in- 
tense moment. All manner of doubts and 
fears crowded upon me. I could not see 
fifty feet in any direction, except along the 
path. My distinct words with the stranger, 
my horse, my uniform were all tell-tales, 
and I thought I could hear as many rebels 
in the bushes as there were leaves upon the 
trees. 

For the first hundred paces, as I hurried 
my man along, I wondered where the bul- 
lets might hit me in the back, and as they 
did not, or even come at all, I felt a sense 
of surprise. 

My prisoner manifested great nervousness, 
as if he thought I would shoot him, and 
every few steps would look back at me with 
an appealing eye, until I assured him I would 
do him no harm if he would go as I directed. 

At last he said : My company captured 
one of your officers a few minutes ago.'' 

What sort of a looking man was he ? 
I inquired. 

He had on fine clothes, had a mustache, 
a red badge on his breast, and was riding a 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 15 



roan horse/' It was clear poor Mitchell 
had reported to the wong man. 

As we continued our course we met an- 
other line of skirmishers composed of Penn- 
sylvania Buck Tails, leading Getty^s Division 
to its position on Rice's left. We were within 
fifteen feet before we saw them, or they dis- 
covered us. 

In a short interview with the officer in 
charge I turned over my prisoner and in- 
formed him that I had left a line of skirmish- 
ers fully a fourth of a mile farther out. 

I now hurried along and rode in the rear 
of the nearest regiment engaged, which I 
found to be the One Hundred and Forty- 
seventh New York of our brigade. The battle 
was raging furiously. I met the wounded 
going back, some alone, others accompanied 
by more assistance than they needed. Four 
men carried a captain, and a fifth followed 
holding up his head. Colonel Miller had 
fallen, the Major had been carried back, and 
from the excited talk of the men it would 
seem that the entire regiment had been de- 
stroyed. Bullets were hissing and hitting 
everywhere. While I inquired for the Gen- 
eral a bullet struck one of the party in the 
back, and he went down upon his face, dead. 



1 6 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



The roll of musketry was incessant. Smoke 
was hovering in clouds among the trees, and 
it was only after a dozen efforts that I learned 
from a lieutenant that General Rice had lately 
gone up the line. Amid the din my horse 
was as wild as a ranger. I headed him into 
a slightly opened avenue and gave him rein, 
and he dashed frantically along through the 
timber, squatting and dodging at the sound 
of the bullets. While at full speed a ball struck 
him near my left leg. I saw him sink to his 
breast, saw his nose plough along the ground 
and double under his breast — and I saw or 
remembered no more. 

Boardman, of the One Hundred and Forty- 
seventh, told me how it was. My horse was 
killed while at full speed in the rear of their 
regiment, and in falling threw me against a 
tree and then pitched headlong upon me. 
Soon after my misfortune our line of battle 
fell back, and in the movement the men 
freed me from the horse ; but being uncon- 
scious and bleeding copiously from the mouth 
and nose, I was left upon the field as mortal- 
ly wounded. Later in the day some of the 
same regiment, in passing the spot as prison- 
ers, laid me upon a blanket and carried me 
to a Confederate field-hospital. 



II 



Standing by the Orange Plank Road, at a 
point about four miles west of its intersec- 
tion by the Germania Road, was an old 
wooden house called Parker's Store, built 
many years before in a clearing of three or 
four acres. It is known in history, not from 
its own importance but for the events that 
took place about it. All around it was the 
Wilderness. If Mr. Parker was a merchant 
and had customers, I can but wonder where 
they came from ; for judging from appear- 
ances there were not a dozen families within 
as many miles radius. One large room, a 
broken counter, and some fragmentary shelv- 
ing indicated the former character of the 
building. Business had been suspended and 
the place deserted many years, no doubt, 
for the floor was broken, much of the roof 
had fallen off, and here and there was a 
weather-board swinging by one end. Even 
the three or four acres that had once been 
subdued to the ploughshare had again yield- 
ed to the jack-oak and pine-bushes that were 
17 



1 8 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



making their encroachments to the very 
door-steps. 

A small sluggish stream of water came out 
of the woods to the northwest, creeping over 
the roots and through the driftwood, and 
passed by a hundred yards to the east. At 
Parker's Store, on May 6, 1864, lay fifty 
Federal and one thousand Confederate sol- 
diers, bleeding and dying. It was a Con- 
federate field-hospital. Twenty wounded, 
mostly Federals, lay upon the floor of the 
old house wherever space could be found. 
All the others lay imder the bushes and trees 
along the margins of the stream. All were 
too severely wounded to be transported 
farther South. 

I awoke as if from sleep about 7 o'clock 
in the morning of the 6th, in the old house 
and tried but failed to get up. My left eye 
was entirely closed and I felt pain in my 
left breast and shoulder. I was evidently hurt, 
but knew not how or how much. The first 
thing that attracted my attention was a col- 
umn of troops hurry i ng silently along the road . 
Their uniforms looked gray, but I thought 
the color might be due to my injured sight. I 
rubbed my eyes and tried it again, with the 
same result, and then turned upon my elbow 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 19 



and looked around. Those immediately near 
had on blue, as also did a soldier bending 
over a prostrate form with a canteen. 

^'Soldier, come here. Am I a prisoner ? ' * 
Yes," he replied. 

I asked no more questions but lay back, 
and felt a little more willing to '*give up 
the ghost " just then than I ever expect to 
be again. Mortally wounded as I felt, in the 
hands of the enemy, and denied the minis- 
tration of friends, with the thought that if 
I recovered I would be sent South in the 
hot season to some prison-pen, to starve or 
die of epidemic, I had absolutely no hope. 
What little life I seemed to have so pain- 
fully recoiled upon itself that I felt actual 
regret that the injuring force had not been 
a little stronger. 

But I was not as seriously hurt as I 
thought. I had two broken ribs and a badly 
bruised head and shoulder, but it was the 
excessive loss of blood that made me feel so 
near the end. Had I been in a Federal 
hospital I should have been up in twenty-four 
hours, but mush and gruel and other com- 
pounds of corn -meal, and a bit of bacon 
daily, were three days in getting me upon 
my feet. 



/ 



20 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



Though there were at least a dozen surgeons 
serving the wounded, it was late upon the 
second day before I received any attention 
whatever, and it was three days before my 
blood-stiffened garments could be taken off 
and washed. Even then I had no grounds 
for complaint, for the surgeons worked assid- 
uously. The probe, the knife, and the saw 
were going day and night. A table, made 
of boards from the counter of the old house, 
stood by the brook in the shade of the shel- 
tering trees, and had about it for several 
days the ghastly evidence of the work per- 
formed upon it. 

Colonel Miller, of the One Hundred and 
Forty-seventh, lay within a few feet of me, 
with a bad breast-wound ; and half a dozen 
other officers from our brigade variously 
wounded. 

No guards were maintained at the hospi- 
tal, only a picket and slight patrol. It was 
therefore apparent that strength and will 
were the only things necessary in order to 
escape. 

Strength and a resolution to get away came 
hand in hand, and on the isth I arranged 
with Lieutenant W. H. Shelton, of Battery 
D, First New York Artillery, for our flight. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 21 



Shelton was wounded in the knee. He was 
young and ambitious; had been but recently 
promoted, and the love of honor and for his 
battery were stronger than the fear of rebels, 
or of losing his leg by an eighty-mile tramp 
to Alexandria. He was the ablest Federal 
in the hospital, but I seriously doubted his 
physical ability to make the trip. He was 
determined to try, however, and we arranged 
to go at dark. During the day Shelton 
traded a jack-knife for a pone of corn-bread; 
Colonel Miller gave us a compass, and Lieu- 
tenant Hamilton a map of Virginia. I had 
nothing to give or trade. My sword, revol- 
ver, cap, knife, pocket-book, handkerchief, 
diary, even my tooth-brush, had all gone as 
booty to my captors. 

When night came we received messages 
from our friends, said our adieus, and went 
off north into the woods. 

There were no guards to give us trouble, 
and we bore to the east in the woods far 
enough to avoid the picket on the Plank 
Road. Assured that we had succeeded in 
this by the sight of a little fire the picket had 
burning by the roadside, we emerged from 
the timber to the Plank Road and set out in 
earnest. Shelton's wound was painful in 



2 2 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



walking, and as a support he got a dry limb, 
which he used in poling himself along. Near 
the intersection of the Brock Road, where 
Hancock distinguished himself on May 6th, 
we found another field-hospital which we 
were enabled to avoid by the signal-fires. 
We continued eastward to the crossing of 
the Germania Road, and took the latter for 
Germania Ford, a distance of eleven miles 
from the starting-point. 

At points the road was strewn with dead 
horses, and the noisome smell of decaying 
animals was constantly in our nostrils until 
we drew near the ford. 

Our strength, stimulated by excitement 
and hope, lasted us wonderfully well. The 
farther and faster we went the smarter Shel- 
ton seemed to get. We captured a fire-fly 
and put it between the glass and face of our 
compass, to aid us in verifying the road. At 
about three o'clock in the morning we reached 
the river and sat down upon the bluff, one 
hundred yards from the ford, to wait for 
daylight to enable us to determine whether 
it was guarded. 

Oh, that horrible May morning ! Sick 
and sore, within the enemy's lines and prob- 
ably within a hundred yards of his muskets. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 23 



the stillness of the night by this ill-omened 
river, the serious impressiveness of our situ- 
ation made us cling together like two lost 
children, starting at every sound. To add 
to our horror, whippoorwills in countless 
numbers — whose song is said to be melo- 
dious, but which seemed to us on that night 
like the cries of so many devils — swept up 
and down that dismal river, screaming with- 
out ceasing their Whippoorwill, whip- 
poorwill, whippoorw411. ' ' Their discord- 
ant cries seemed very harbingers of evil. 

As soon as it was light enough to distin- 
guish an object on the other side, we pulled off 
our boots and crawled down to the ford. We 
listened for several minutes, but not a sign 
or sound of human being coming from the 
other side, we stepped into the water. At 
this moment we heard shouts behind us and 
saw a man beckoning and running after us. 

Believing him to be an enemy we dashed 
through the shallow w^ater to the other side, 
and, with boots in hand, ran for dear life 
over the hills and into the woods, entirely 
forgetting our disability. 

Afterward w^e met this same man at Ma- 
con, Ga., himself a prisoner. He was Cap- 
tain Bryant, of the Fifth New York Cavalry, 



24 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



who was scouting the country with his com- 
pany, and was on his way to the ford to post 
a picket while his company breakfasted and 
fed. If we had halted he would have safely 
conducted us to our lines. 

Heretofore I had supported Shelton ; now 
I shouted to him to wait. We continued to 
run for quite a mile, fearing pursuit, and 
took refuge in a bushy marsh between two 
hills. It was a favorable place to hide, being 
covered with a dense thicket, yet the spot 
where we rested was elevated and dry. It 
proved, however, to be in luipleasant prox- 
imity to a house, for we soon heard the mur- 
muring of voices and laughing of children 
upon the hill. 

We had not seen the house in the early 
morning and felt assured that its occupants 
had not seen us ; but such nearness of human 
voices was very alarming. 

It was too late, however, to look for a 
safer retreat, so we decided to make the best 
of what we had. 

My exertions had reopened the wound 
in my breast, and I had a distressing 
hemorrhage. Shelton 's knee also began to 
swell and pain him. 

What seemed as hideous to us during the 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 25 



day as the cry of the whippoor wills by 
night was the never-ending, never-varying 
croaking and chattering of the frogs. 

They hopped about us and over us, and 
one ugly creature had the impudence to 
perch himself on my friend^s back. 

Two or three times snakes glided by us, 
shaking their tongues in our very faces, yet 
we felt that we dare not stir to destroy them. 
A dog, chasing a rabbit, ran upon us, 
stopped, stood, gazed — but, to his credit, 
turned away without barking. 

All day long we heard the noises upon 
the hill and all day long we lay quiet. A 
cloud came up in the afternoon and poured 
torrents of rain down upon us for two hours. 
It saturated us from head to foot and the 
water even rose over our little island, but we 
took seats upon a log and held out until 
nightfall. Shelton's knee had swollen to 
twice its natural size and was feverish and 
painful ; but after the rain he kept it con- 
stantly wet, which afforded some relief. 

When evening came we left our hiding- 
place, and after a little rambling found and 
took the road for Kelly's Ford of the Rap- 
pahannock. The night was dark and the 
roads slippery and rough, but the increasing 



26 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



hope of escape gave us strength to get along 
briskly. 

Twice we met horsemen in the road, but 
by stepping to one side we eluded them. 
Once we met som.e citizens in a wagon, 
who had evidently been ••picking up'' in 
the Federal winter-quajters camps, and they 
were talking loud about Lee's successes as 
they drove within thirty feet of us. 

Our aim for the night was to cross the 
Rappahannock at Kelly's Ford and reach 
Mrs. ^Fs., a thirteen-mile journey, where 
I had previo^osly placed a safe guard, and 
where I beheved we should find some favor. 

Several times I asked Shelton how he 
was getting along. --Oh, first rate," he 
always replied. But about midnight he 
began to hang heavier on my arm. I said 
nothing about it, thought nothing about it, 
for he had so often assured me that he was 
doing well that I had no doubt about it. 

The hope of soon being over the Rap- 
pahannock, among trusty friends and in a 
country little infested with armed rebels, so 
completely occupied my mind that I could 
not think of the possibility of a calamity 
near at hand. Yet it came before morning 
and from a source little dreamed of. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 27 



'*My knee is killing me. I can't go any 
farther," said Shelton about two o'clock in 
the morning. 

We had travelled distance enough to have 
reached Kelly's Ford, but had taken the 
wrong road at the forks and w-ere now three 
miles away. 

After resting a half-hour on the wet 
ground we tried it again, but Shelton found 
it more difficult and painful to walk now 
than before. It seemed quite impossible to 
go at all, and in persisting in it he could 
see inevitable loss of limb. He gave up in 
despair. It v/as quite cold, and our clothing 
being yet wet, w^e decided to build a fire and 
remain by it till morning. 

When daylight came w^e discovered a 
farm-house a short distance to the southw^est 
wdth a column of smoke already ascending 
from the chimney. The surrounding coun- 
try clearly showed the devastating touch 
of war. Though mostly farm lands not a 
fence was to be seen anywhere, not even 
about the houses and other farm-buildings. 

We saw a woman chopping wood near 
the house, which encouraged us to believe 
that no man would be there, so w^e decided 
to go and throw ourselves upon the mercy 



28 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



of the family. Having made our way by 
slow stages to the house, we found Mrs. 
Brandon, a widow, and her three daughters. 
Her only son was one of Jeb Stuart's troopers, 
and she was in sympathy with the South. 
We freely told her our whole story, who we 
were, how we were wounded, how captured, 
how we were trying to escape, and how much 
we needed her help. 

Our Second Army Corps had left its win- 
ter-quarters in the neighborhood, partly on 
her farm, less than a month before, and her 
premises had been laid waste by it. Not a 
rail or valuable tree was left. The fields 
had all been cut by moving wagon-trains 
and drilling battalions ; her domestic animals 
and fowls had been taken by marauding sol- 
diers. Only her house and girls were left 
her. 

Now we stood at her door asking help. 
While we talked, the memory of Yankee 
depredations and a woman's tender compas- 
sion struggled for the mastery within her. 
She recited her many wrongs in bitter terms, 
avowed they had nothing to eat but hard 
bread and salt meat abandoned by our sol- 
diers when they left camp, and said she 
could not possibly keep us; but in the say- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 29 

ing it was manifest that that quality in a 
woman that cannot stand against human suf- 
fering was asserting itself. Ere long, without 
further word she opened the door and as- 
sisted us into the house. 

Once there, the good woman set about 
ministering to our wants. Shelton's wound 
was tenderly dressed ; then, after performing 
our morning toilet with a basin of clear 
water and a snowy-white towel, we sat down 
with the family to breakfast, to be regaled 
with a cup of genuine army-coffee. 

After breakfast we were conducted to an 
upper half-story, consisting of one large un- 
finished room. In one corner a comfortable 
bed had been prepared for us, and in an- 
other was a pile of yellovv^ corn, that after- 
ward got us into trouble. Hanging to the 
rafters were bundles of medicinal roots, a 
large quantity of army-clothing picked up 
from our abandoned camps, and a variety of 
other domestic bric-a-brac. 

Mrs. Brandon insisted upon sending for a 
neighboring physician, but we prevailed up- 
on her not to do so by saying that all we 
needed was rest. 

For four days we remained in that upper- 
room, a profound secret to everybody but the 



30 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 

family, though we had made no request that 
our presence be concealed. We were en- 
joined from coming below under any pre- 
text. Our injuries received their attention 
several times each day. Their small variety 
of food, prepared in the daintiest forms, was 
regularly brought to us, and the girls would 
bring up story-books and read aloud for our 
entertainment during the long days. 

Under these favorable conditions Shelton 
improved so rapidly that he thought he 
would be able to resume the journey. 

But it was not to be so. About noon of 
the fifth day we were startled by the tramp 
of heavy boots up the stair, and a moment 
later a Confederate cavalryman stood upon 
the floor before us, quite as much astonished 
as we were. It was ' ^ Coot ' ' Brandon, whose 
company had come within reach of home, 
and he had come upstairs for a feed of corn 
for his horse. Twice before since our ar- 
rival he had been at home, but his mother 
each time came up for his corn and kept him 
entirely ignorant of our presence. 

His mother soon joined him upstairs, and 
after an introduction explained how she had 
undertaken to help us, how he might some 
day be in a like situation, how we were un- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 31 



able to perform any army service, and 
begged him not to report us to his officers. 
He promised her he would not, and after 
dinner came back upstairs with his mother 
and sisters, and we had several minutes of 
pleasant conversation. 

The young man was very gracious in his 
manner, assured us of his friendship, com- 
miserated our injuries, wished us success in 
our effort to escape, and in every way 

He was the mildest manner'd man 
That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat. 

The very next morning he turned up 
again, this time w^ith an officer, who exacted 
from us a parole not to leave the house for 
twenty-four hours, at the end of which time 
two men came with a led-horse to take us 
south. 

The mother was much distressed at the 
bad faith of her son. She was so affected by 
it that at first she refused them admittance to 
the house, but when her protests proved of 
no avail, she proceeded to supply each of us, 
from her abundant pick-ups" from our 
camps, with an overcoat, blanket, socks, 
extra shirt, and me a cap. 

Shelton was assisted to mount the led- 



32 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



horse, and with our supplies we bade adieu 
to our benefactress and started once more 
for the Rapidan. 

I have never heard of Mrs. Brandon since 
that time, and probably never shall again, 
but I wish it to be remembered that, though 
a woman in sympathy with her State, de- 
spoiled of her property, and subjected to 
wrong and insult by Federal soldiers, yet her 
Christian charity was strong enough to rise 
above it all, and enable her, fervently, to 
do unto others as she would have others do 
unto her. 



Ill 



We were taken back across the Rapidan 
and toward Lee's army, which had by this 
time crawled near the North Anna. At Ger- 
mania Ford a guard from the other side met 
us midway in the stream and demanded our 
boots. One fellow threatened to drown us 
if we did not pull them off before passing 
the river, and a second grasped Shelton by 
the foot and cried to his comrade : 

*'Dave, hold my hoss while I pull the 
boots off this d — d Yankee V* 

But Dave wanted the boots too badly him- 
self to co-operate, so the river was passed 
without the much-coveted treasure being 
secured by anyone. I do not blame them 
much for wanting Shelton 's boots, for 
they were new, and an excellent pair, fine, 
high, and beautifully stitched, such as even 
Yankee soldiers would delight in pulling 
from the feet of Confederates, and just the 
kind every newly fledged lieutenant buys. 
Poor boy, he had scarcely worn his boots 
and straps a fortnight before his capture, and 
33 



34 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



to lose his first official clothes before they 
had lost their lustre was deplorable. He did 
not lose his boots here, however, but he lost 
what was worse — his straps and jacket. The 
lieutenant in command, a North Carolinian 
(and I am sorry I have forgotten his name), 
did not need the boots himself, and pro- 
tected them, but the lustrous jacket suited 
him well for the summer's campaign, and 
with all complacency he stepped up with : 

Yank, pull off that 'ar coat. I want to 
try it on." Remonstrances were useless, 
so off it came, and in its stead went on a 
long-tailed, coarse, brown jean coat, which 
Shelton had on his back when he ran the 
gauntlet of the Confederate guard-line, in the 
October following. 

I fared much better for the old, weather- 
beaten garments I had on were unenviable. 
This was the outpost of the enemy's videttes, 
and they were in communication with Lee's 
army, forty miles off — the posts standing 
about five miles apart. Here Shelton lost 
also his horse, and had to take it afoot to the 
next post. I managed to get along pretty 
well, but Shelton suffered great pain. His 
wound had been most painful for four or five 
days, and was still swollen; but I do not 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 35 



remember his murmuring once, or asking any 
favor from the mounted guards. 

We were reported to the next post, a 
receipt asked and given for two Yankees, and 
in fifteen minutes or less we were on the 
next five-mile stretch. By this time I was 
very much fatigued, my injuries were hurting 
me some ; and had I not felt that it was ' ' go 
and live, or stay and die," I certainly should 
have demanded some rest. But on we went 
without a halt, and I was as much spurred on 
by Shelton's pluck as by Confederate sabres. 

He dragged along until endurance reached 
its limit, then without a complaint sat down 
in the road and said he could not walk any 
farther. The thoughtless guard tried to drive 
him with his sabre, and threatened to kill 
him if he did not move on. 

As great as the impending danger seemed 
to be, as much as he suffered in body and 
mind, Shelton asked no respite, uttered no 
murmur nor requested any assistance or 
favor at the hands of his enemies. His 
fortitude was of a rare quality. After some 
parley the guard dismounted, put Shelton on 
the horse, and soon we were again under 
way. 

On the way to the third post we were 



36 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



taken across a part of the field of the Wilder- 
ness that had been fought twenty days before. 
It was dense forest on either side of the road, 
and we were informed that out of the vast 
number killed there, not a man or beast had 
been buried by either army-. It was not 
enough that death should strike them low in 
battle. A devouring and relentless fire had 
swept over the field, burning the hair and 
garments from the dead and the hope of 
life from the wounded ; and now, three weeks 
after, a thousand skeletons, in black, charred 
shrouds, with empty eye-sockets and glaring 
teeth, seemed to mock us and cry out, We 
died in the flames ! ^' 

War has no conscience ! The exigencies 
of battle are relentless. They hear no appeal 
from the suffering. On May 6th, while the 
Battle of the Wilderness raged, a fire was 
started in Hancock's front in the dry leaves 
that thickly covered the ground. The wind 
was against the Union side, and the flames, 
fanned by the winds, leaped and crackled 
through the jungle, sweeping the entire field 
between the Hues, that had been fought over 
time and time again, and was strewn with the 
dead and wounded of both armies. 

Rather than suspend hostilities to rescue 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 37 



their own wounded from the fire, the Con- 
federates, seeing their advantage, charged 
through the flames, at a moment when the 
Union troops were bhnded and choked with 
the smoke, and thus temporarily carried from 
Hancock a position they had vainly striven 
for before. 

Post No. 3 was a Confederate field-hos- 
pital a few miles south of the Wilderness 
battle-field. Here we were lodged for the 
night and shown the place where the old 
hero and patriot, General Wadsworth, had 
paid the price of his patriotism. 

The hospital was near a little murky brook, 
with no shelter but the branches of the trees 
and no bedding but leaves. There were 
about four hundred wounded men grouped 
together there, among them twenty Federals, 
all badly wounded. Shelton's leg by this 
time was painful in the extreme, and I was 
suffering from pain and exhaustion, but was 
able to go to the brook for a canteen of w^ater, 
and to dress my friend *s wound. In the 
meantime, a negro in attendance had pre- 
pared us some mush, and after having eaten 
a liberal quantity — it was the first of any- 
thing we had eaten since leaving Mrs. Bran- 
don's — we stretched ourselves together near 



38 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



an old log, feeling the cords of friendship 
binding us even closer together, for we ex- 
pected to be parted upon the following 
day. 

That memorable night was full of unrest, 
for I expected to be driven farther south in 
the morning, a prisoner weak and suffering, 
and without even the presence of a Federal 
soldier to encourage me. This seemed enough, 
but, to add tenfold to my misery, my sleep 
was often broken by the moans or cries of 
the wounded, and the curses of the guards, or 
disturbed by alternate dreams of home and 
cruel jailors and horrid prison-pens. As much 
as I hated to see the dawn appear in the east 
that was to separate me from my friend, I 
could not wish to have it delayed. 

Wakeful as we were, some rogue got Shel- 
ton's cap, and before he left they also got 
his boots. When we met again six weeks 
afterward at jSIacon, Ga., his embroidered 
cap was supplanted by an old greasy wool 
hat, his new jacket by one of brown jean, 
and his boots by a pair of sun-burned, sun- 
cracked, rusty brogans of the Southern Army 
pattern. 

As Shelton was unable to move in the 
morning, when I had taken my allowance 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 39 



of mush I said good-by, and resumed my 
march to Dixie. Feeble as I was, they 
marched me over eighteen miles before sun- 
down, to Post No. 7, where I was receipted 
for by a Virginia captain, a rather clever 
fellow, who, at my request, kept me over 
night. I was weak when I sat down upon the 
grass ; but after having drunk a cup of genuine 
coffee and eaten a piece of soft bread and 
cold ham, and taken a few drops" of Vir- 
ginia hospitality, I felt invigorated and talked 
an hour about the war. At eight o'clock I 
wrapped my blanket around me and slept 
soundly the entire night. 

The next day I expected to reach Lee's 
head-quarters, and began to wonder how I 
should feel, or what I should see in that in- 
vincible Army of Northern Virginia that had 
been talked of so much since my capture. I 
was off again at 7 a.m., feeling better than 
on the day previous, and got along with 
more ease, for my guard was kind and let 
me rest frequently. About noon we reached 
Post No. 8, just after the relief had returned 
from picket. I do not know why I was 
moved along in such a hurry ; but the officer 
in charge seemed determined that I should 
cover at once the remaining four miles to 



40 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



the head-quarters of the army. The men had 
just fed their horses and were seating them- 
selves for dinner when the officer, probably 
out of fear for his own haversack, called to 
one of his men to saddle his horse and report 
me to Colonel Richardson. This the man 
did not seem inclined to do until after din- 
ner, and he was not at all polite in express- 
ing himself. He swore he would not, and 
his officer swore he should. 

To assist me in gaining the good graces 
of the soldier, I remarked to the officer that 
I was very tired, and should like mighty well 
to rest half an hour, while the guard cooked 
his dinner. But this did no good. His 
dignity rested upon his authority ; he had 
commanded us to go, and go we should. 

Sluggishly and sullenly the guard crawled 
into his saddle, persisting that he would not 
take me far, while he muttered to a compan- 
ion near by : 

I 'low this d — d Yankee will try to es- 
cape when we come to them woods. ' ' 

^^Rack out here!" were his words — and 
I racked. Faster" — and I quickened a 
little, all the time trying to appear as if I 
regarded his threats as mere jests, while in 
reality I was in the most abject terror. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 41 



This incident makes me smile now, but 
when it occurred there was anything but 
humor in it. Few know how I felt. The 
prisoner led to the place of execution and 
pardoned on the spot knows, and perhaps no 
other, for when I thought how angry he was, 
and how he might shoot me in the woods 
under pretence of my trpng to escape, I had 
not whereon to hang a hope. My mind was 
as active as it was distressed. I thought of 
nearly everything, and decided that, if I 
were to escape his vengeance, I must flatter 
him into favor. 

That officer of yours must be a heart- 
less dog to treat you as he did back there," 
I said. If an officer in our army were to 
abuse and curse one of his men as he did 
you, he would be at work on the Dry Tor- 
tugas in less than a month. ' ' 

''Yes," said he, ''he is a d — d rascal 
who drove a few niggers around before the 
war, and now thinks he must drive soldiers 
around the same way. The first time we get 
into a fight I bet I'll stop his fun." 

" From what I have heard of you rebs, I 
supposed you were all such men as he, cruel 
and cowardly to a prisoner, but, verily, he 
is the only one I have met since my capt- 



42 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



ure who has not treated me like a gentle- 
man. What regiment do you belong to ? 

First Virginia Cavalry. ' ' 

Ah, I have heard of your regiment be- 
fore. You fought our cavalry at Kelly's 
Ford. I have heard our men say that yours 
was the only regiment of Southern cavalry 
they feared, and moreover, when one of our 
wounded soldiers was captured at Kelly's 
Ford, and some North Carolinians had 
robbed him, a party of the First Virginia 
came up and made them restore everything 
they had taken, and since then your regi- 
ment has been held in high esteem in our 
brigade." 

Thus the conversation went on and I could 
soon see that I was getting a hold on him. 
Nearly three years in the army had taught 
me that the way to gain a soldier's esteem and 
awaken his pride was to speak of the gal- 
lantry of his command : or if you wish to 
awaken his wrath, speak of its cowardice. 

I made a perfect conquest, as the reader 
will perceive when I add, that before we had 
gone two miles of our journey, or before we 
had passed those much dreaded woods, I 
was mounted upon the horse, with the guard 
walking at my side. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 43 



Tim Harden was by all odds the roughest- 
mannered Confederate I encountered, but he 
was a faithful exempHfication of the old 
maxim : *^The harder the hull, the sweeter 
the kernel." When I reached his heart I 
found it full of kindness. 

We found Colonel Richardson about three 
o'clock in the afternoon, snugly at rest in a 
marquee, with half a dozen well-dressed Con- 
federate officers about him. I was led among 
them, receipted for as one Yankee, and the 
guard dismissed. 

Colonel Richardson, raising his spectacles 
and pen, asked : 

What is your name and rank, sir ? " 
. My rank is first lieutenant." 

* ' To what command do you belong, 
sir?" 

To the staff of General Rice." 

Indeed ! It occurs to me that we have 
already here a rehc of General Rice's head- 
quarters. Bob, go and bring Yank here." 

Now I was in a quandary. A relic of 
General Rice's head-quarters, and an order 
to go bring Yank here 1" Was it possible 
that I was so soon to meet some one of my 
old companions? It was to me a moment 
of hope and doubt. My heart would bound 



44 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



and then fall back again, and the suspense 
would have been intense had it not been 
for the many questions hurled at me by the 
curious crowd. While I was in the midst 
of an explanation, up dashed the negro Bob 
on a horse I knew as well as I did my brother. 
He was a most beautiful animal when I last 
saw him, a dark bay, a round, up-headed, 
spirited fellow, and the sound of a drum or 
band made him as proud and perfect a pict- 
ure as ever was Bucephalus or Selim. He 
was quite a pet about head-quarters for his 
gentleness and tricks, and was ridden and 
lost by my friend Lieutenant Chisman. He 
was much jaded, and looked thin now, and 
when I spoke to him and called him by 
name, Frank," the poor animal looked at 
me so piteously, that I could hardly restrain 
a tear. He was caparisoned exactly as when 
I last saw him on the field of the Wilderness, 
with the same bridle, breast-straps, saddle- 
bags, and even the identical holster on the 
horn of the saddle. 

I said, '^Did you get anybody with that 
horse?" 

We did, sir; his rider," and turning to 
his books showed me the record. There it 
was, in a heavy hand: Homer Chisman, 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 45 



First Lieutenant, I. G. General Rice, 
May 6th;' 

It came to pass in this way : Soon after I 
left him on the skirmish line, to see the 
General, and perhaps before I was placed 
hors de co7?ibat, a Confederate line of battle 
charged him from the rear. They had passed, 
unperceived, around the left flank. With a 
thousand rebel bayonets in his rear, he made 
a more desperate assault upon the skirmishers 
in his front, and not only drove them back 
but went through them. Chisman, sticking 
to his horse, cried to the subordinate officers 
to rally to the centre," but only about 
fifty out of the four hundred rallied, includ- 
ing seven officers. The rest were all capt- 
ured on the spot by the enemy in the front 
or in the rear. 

This party of fifty in the rear of the Con- 
federate army began wandering through the 
forest seeking our lines. They had little idea 
of the direction, and less of the position of 
the armies. Two or three times, Chisman 
relates, they were within sight of the enemy's 
line of battle. Confederates seemed to be 
everywhere. They would go this way, that 
way, and the other way, and every time find 
in their front a force of the enemy. Night 



46 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



came upon them still in their lost condition; 
but they made another effort to escape. A 
line of the enemy challenged them, and be- 
cause they would not, or could not, answer 
satisfactorily, fired, kilHng two or three. 
After this they selected what they then 
thought a safe place and waited till day- 
light. 

With the morning came the enemy on all 
sides. They had at last realized that a band 
of lost Yankees were wandering among them 
and had prepared for their capture. By this 
time, however, the number had been re- 
duced to forty, and most of them had thrown 
away their guns. They stood close togeth- 
er, waiting for the command to surrender. 
There was a roar and a crash from two sides, 
and many of the little band fell. Chisman, 
with his own hand, gave Frank to the man 
who gave the horse to Colonel Richardson. 

It may seem selfish to state that, much as 
1 regretted the misfortune of my friend, I 
could not possibly feel sorry that it had hap- 
pened. Misery loves company ; so the first 
question I asked was, would I be sent to 
the same prison with Chisman, and being 
answered in the affirmative, J felt substan- 
tially better from that moment. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 47 



Here I found plenty of blue-coats. Hard 
by was a squad of about five hundred, and 
among them twelve officers. It v/as the gen- 
eral rendezvous of the army, and additions 
were being made almost every hour. I spent 
a couple of hours in conversation with Col- 
onel Richardson upon politics and the war. 
From -him I first heard, what I afterward 
found to be quite a popular opinion in the 
South, that a republican form of government 
is a failure, and cannot endure ; and if they 
succeeded in the war, which they surely 
would, they would not continue six months a 
republic, but would make Lee dictator, until 
they could select a royal family by ballot. As 
preposterous as this thing seemed to a North- 
erner, this man, who evidently did some think- 
ing of his own, spoke of it with great earnest- 
ness and faith. In the evening I went down 
where the other prisoners were herded to- 
gether, and looked carefully among them for 
a familiar face. I looked long and thor- 
oughly, but failed to find anyone whom I had 
ever seen before. But a ^ ' fellow-feeling 
makes us wondrous kind," and I sai down 
with those strangers with pleasure, until Col- 
onel Richardson came down and invited me 
to his tent. Under the circumstances I went, 



48 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



not that I enjoyed his company, but to avoid 
the Colonel's displeasure. I never could 
appreciate the bravery or good sense of a 
prisoner who would stubbornly and offen- 
sively hold out against those who had his 
life in their hands. For my part, I accepted 
the situation and paid tribute to CcEsar. Nor 
did I lose anything by it that evening. 
Richardson sat me in the circle around his 
supper and offered me his canteen first. We 
freely discussed battles that had been fought, 
the merits of Grant as a commander, etc., 
but not a question was asked me concerning 
the strength of our army, or of Grant's plan 
of campaign. I should not have given him 
information upon these points, even if I had 
been able ; this he knew, and his omission 
to ask for it was magnanimous. 

It was here I saw the great chieftain, Rob- 
ert E. Lee, a number of times. While we 
were eating, an elderly man, in plain gray 
dress, with a single orderly, came riding by 
on a poor, iron-gray horse. 

There goes the modern Napoleon," said 
one of the company, and he proceeded to 
tell how, at Spottsylvania, a few days be- 
fore, he personally led a desperate but suc- 
cessful charge that had twice failed. And 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 49 



for an hour these young officers continued 
to recite to me the merits of their intrepid 
leader. They readily accorded to him ev- 
ery creditable performance of the Army of 
Northern Virginia. 

Incidents of his crafty manoeuvre, hero- 
ism in battle, and tender regard for his 
troops were reeled off by the dozen with an 
enthusiasm that was truly admirable. Their 
devotion was pathetic, and so it was with 
his entire army, as far as my observation 
went. 

Understanding this deep reverence for 
Lee by his army, and by it imparted to the 
South generally, the measure of his responsi- 
bility for a continuance of the war appears 
very great. 

Perhaps no other fifty men did so much in 
holding up the Confederacy until 1865. Cor- 
respondingly, on the other hand, more wid- 
ows and orphans should carry their tears and 
sighs to his door than to any fifty others ; 
for had Lee — who in 1861 was and had 
been for more than thirty years an officer in 
the Federal army — taken sides with the 
Union, the cause would have been lost in 
1862, and 200,000 loyal lives saved. 

We left Lee's head-quarters for Gordons- 



50 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



ville, five hundred of us, escorted by a 
squadron of Virginia cavalry. A day and 
a half's march brought us to the town, where 
we remained overnight and until nearly noon 
the next day. 

In the meantime we received the atten- 
tion of an interesting lame major, who bore 
the title of Provost Marshal. He was an ex- 
quisite gentleman. His long hair, generous- 
ly lubricated with bear's-oil, rolled under at 
the bottom, and on his Prince Albert coat 
he had more gold lace than Lee and all his 
corps commanders. His was the painful 
duty of examining our pockets. We were 
called one by one into a small room, and 
while two brave guards with fixed bayonets 
stood over us the lame Major with superb 
politeness requested us to disgorge upon the 
table. 

When this was not performed to the satis- 
faction of his grace it was suggested that one 
of the guards might assist us. 

With the help of the guard we removed 
our boots and outer garments to be further 
inspected by the elegant Major. He claimed 
to take nothing but what the government 
furnished. In practice, his rule was to take 
from the enlisted man every woollen blanket 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 51 



and whatever other property he wanted. 
From the officers he wanted money and 
maps ; the one would bribe guards, the other 
faciHtate an escape. The ivory-handled 
tooth-brush of Lieutenant Brown, a heavy 
artilleryman, was especially pleasing to the 
Major, and he threw it into his curiosity 
collection ; so also was the silver tobacco- 
box of Captain Mahon; it would make a 
nice souvenir and was therefore confiscated. 

At Gordonsville we took a lesson in starva- 
tion. We had had nothing to eat since leav- 
ing Lee's army, thirty-six hours before ; and 
many as were the promises of rations when 
we got to Gordonsville, we lay around all 
the afternoon and until nine o'clock at 
night before they came. They were as fol- 
lows : one pint of unsifted corn-meal measured 
by the sack, and two ounces of bacon to each 
man. Not a skillet or a pot to cook in, 
and not a splinter of wood to cook with. We 
were all hungry, very hungry ; but our appe- 
tites were not generally sharp enough to take 
the raw, unsifted meal. Some of the men 
humorously insisted that the meal itself was 
good enough, but that to eat it without cook- 
ing was unpatriotic. Most of it was put in our 
pockets, and with our ration of meat in our 



52 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



mouths to encourage our stomachs, we lay 
down to sleep. 

Next morning we got nothing more to eat. 
Wood was promised every ten minutes, but 
failed to come. The men were inclined to 
make the best of it, however. I only re- 
member one old Irishman, from a West Vir- 
ginia regiment, who murmured a little for 
his dear wife's sake — She would be so 
troubled if she knew how hungry he was.** 
Much of the forenoon was spent in joking 
and talking about rich diets ; but toward 
mid-day I noticed that a good many had 
been wrought up to the taking of a little of 
the uncooked meal. 

At 12 M. we were put upon some open 
cars and started off for Lynchburg. 

Nestling at the foot of the Blue Ridge, 
among spouting springs and countless shade- 
trees, Lynchburg looked alluring enough as 
v/e rode up. The many steeples, stretch- 
ing high their heads from among the trees, 
as if to look over the mountains ; the historic 
James, at this point scarcely more than a 
brook, the undulating streets, the antiquated 
architecture, and the few signs of war, cre- 
ated in us emotions quite hostile to the facts 
in our case. From the signs of freedom and 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 53 



comfort all about, it was hard to believe that 
we were prisoners. Here the officers, four- 
teen of us, and the men were separated — the 
men taken to the Fair Ground, we to the 
lock-up. The latter place was a miserable 
den in the upper story of a solid brick 
block, with its north end facing the street. 
It had been fitted and used since the war 
to confine not only criminals against the 
State, but deserters from the army, and at 
this time we found in it every manner of 
men. They lodged us in an apartment 20 
by 35 feet, with but two small single-sashed 
barred windows in the south end, that over- 
looked the sinks and back-yards of the street. 
To make the room as dark and dismal as pos- 
sible, they had made a temporary board par- 
tition across the north end, thus cutting off 
a little room and shutting out the light and 
air from that direction. There were in the 
same room (in addition to our number) six- 
teen others, of a mongrel tribe of criminals, 
some of whom probably had not had a bath 
or clean clothes or a lungful of fresh air for 
twelve months. As a matter of course, they 
were all covered with vermin — so was the 
room. These wretches were never taken out 
for any purpose. Everything they received 



54 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



was brought in to them, and a row of halves 
of whiskey-barrels was set along the blind end 
of the room, to breed death among them. 
The place reminded me of the horrors of 
the famous Black Hole of Calcutta, and the 
inmates were as dreadful as lepers. There 
was no light or ventilation save what little 
came through the narrow windows on the 
south, no stool or bench, and the floor was 
so covered with leakage from the barrels that 
we could neither he nor sit down without 
getting befouled. To lie in the filth was 
most revolting to us, and we kept astir until 
our legs became swollen. As we took the 
polluted, fetid atmosphere into our lungs, it 
seemed like breathing the very shafts of 
death. We would crowd around the little 
apertures in the south end for fresh air, but 
upon the approach of a rancid criminal, 
disperse as if he w^ere a scorpion. They kept 
us three days in this place. 

While there the nearest I came to a pleas- 
urable moment was when, reading the names 
upon the wall near one of the little windows, 
my eyes caught those of Ciiisman, Mitchell, 
Gill, Kellogg, and a half-dozen other friends 
from our brigade and division. I well-nigh 
shouted for joy when I saw them, and 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 55 



thought that I was upon the same road, and 
would probably meet them within a few 
days. 

Danville was our next point. This was a 
pleasant country-town of three thousand in- 
habitants, and had the signs of opulence. 
Three large cotton factories stood within a 
hundred yards of each other, and the mas- 
sive piles of brick, as residences, told of a 
better past than present for Danville. We 
kindled no curiosity by our entry into the 
place. The cotton-factories had been prison- 
pens ever since the war began. Disarmed 
Yankees were common, and as we marched 
up-town in the middle of the street, five 
hundred of us, not a man turned to look at 
us curiously. We were locked up in one of 
the factories and fed. 

At this point our guards were changed, 
for it was the dividing-line of departments, 
and we were transferred from the Department 
of Virginia to that of North Carolina. We 
gained nothing by the change, though ; they 
had both been too long engaged in the busi- 
ness of guarding prisoners to find any novel- 
ty in it, or any occasion for special kindness 
or the cultivation of placid tempers. 

Two days later we were again on the cars, 



56 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 

billed for Macon, Ga., the general rendez- 
vous for Federal onicers who were prisoners 
of v/ar, while the enlisted men were bound 
for Andersonville. 

Upon our arrival at Jamestown, X. C. 
(where our train stopped a few minutes on 
the switch until another train should pass), I 
was sitting in the back end of a box-car 
when someone came to the door and asked 
if there were any Indianians aboard. Some- 
one answered afnrmarively, and turning to 
me, said that a gentleman wanted to see me 
at the door. Guilford County and James- 
town are household v/ords in many families 
of my county, and to me they were as famil- 
iar as the name of my own native village. 
Their close relation -with many families in 
Indiana, and the many friends residing 
there, had given the place some reputation 
for Union men. This reflection awakened 
in me the thought that I might And a friend, 
so I went to the door. 

A man in gray, with some lace about the 
neck, and a sinister look, softly accosted me : 
^' Are you from Indiana? " 

I am, sir." 

What part ? " 

Hendricks County." 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



57 



Ah ! why, it is from there I had hoped 
to find a man. And what part of Hendricks 
County? 

Plainfield, sir.'* 

And your name? '* 
I gave it to him. 

Is it possible ! Why, I've eaten at your 
mother's house a dozen times." 

Surely, thought I, I am in luck. If the 
fellow has accepted my mother's hospitality 
he certainly will not deny the same to me, 
even under these circumstances. 

He hurriedly asked me questions about 
families in Hendricks County, but more 
particularly about one that had held con- 
siderable property in North CaroHna before 
the war. 

*'Are the boys in the Yankee army?'* 
he asked me a half-dozen times in as many 
minutes. 

Now, wasn't Taylor in the Six Months', 
or the Ninety Days' Service, or the Thirty 
Days' Service ? ' ' 

A little suspicious from the frequency of 
his questions, I asked him why he was so 
much concerned. 

''Oh," said he, I just wanted to 
know." 



58 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



<^Well/' said I, ''if Taylor was in the 
army, what would be the consequence? 

' ' Why, sir, I would confiscate his estate 
before night ; that is what the consequence 
would be. We've already thrown Z.'s into 
the public crip, and the moment Taylor 
enters the Yankee army, his goes, too." 

He not only had a mean object in view in 
questioning me, but tried to take the ques- 
tionable advantage of leading me into famil- 
iarity by speaking of my mother's hospitality, 
which, by the way, I am glad to state, was 
all a fabrication. 

On we went, via Salisbury, Charlotte, and 
Augusta. At the latter place we saw more 
signs of loyalty than we had before seen in 
the South. Here a family from New Jersey 
met us at the depot, where we stopped for an 
hour, and, with a few others, exerted them- 
selves to relieve our hunger. They handed 
into the car in which I rode white bread, 
ham sandwiches, boiled eggs, and most de- 
licious dewberry pies, without objection 
from our guards. 

We arrived at Macon about the loth of 
June. Upon entering the suburbs of the 
town the train stopped and put off the officers, 
then moved off to Andersonville with the 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 59 



enlisted men. To the left of the railroad, 
about three or four hundred yards, an omi- 
nous inclosure at once attracted our attention. 
The fence, or wall, raised sixteen feet high, 
constructed closely of heavy upright boards, 
and surmounted by a causeway, had armed 
men at every twenty paces, sluggishly walk- 
ing to and fro. Just before us was the gate^ 
spanned from post to post by a broad, tower- 
ing arch, showing on its curve, in huge 
black letters — black as the principle that 
wrote them there — ^^Camp Oglethorpe/' 
This gate, though of wood, was a ponder- 
ous affair, and had already creaked behind 
thirteen hundred Federal officers, prisoners 
of war. Without command we started for 
the pen, for we knew it was our present desti- 
nation, and that we would be driven if we 
did not go voluntarily ; besides, notwith- 
standing it was a lock-up, we were right 
anxious to get inside, as well to see our 
friends we expected would be there as to 
get rid of such immediate contact with our 
guards. We were conducted first to the 
office of the prison, which stood but a few 
feet from the gate, and there halted and de- 
tained until preparations could be made 
within for another examination. It seems 



6o SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



clear to me that during the last years of the 
war the Confederates were determined that 
no prisoner should retain any valuable thing ; 
not even his life, if they could devise some 
reasonable justification for taking it. 

As thoroughly as they stripped us at Gor- 
donsville, we were yet to be subjected to a 
more severe scrutiny at Macon. At Gor- 
donsville, after search, we were permitted to 
go back into our company, and by slipping 
them from one to the other, managed to save 
a few things ; but at Macon, as fast as 
robbed, we were sent into the prison. 

Everything being ready, we were called 
inside by turns. They even required us to 
strip off our vests and trousers, and so raven- 
ous were they for greenbacks, that every seam 
and double of our garments was examined 
with the greatest care. The few dollars that 
had been concealed up to this point were 
turned out here, for which the man in the 
sash executed and delivered a receipt with the 
utmost suavity. These receipts were too much 
of a mockery for Captain Todd, of the Eighth 
New Jersey, who at once tore his up in the 
face of the giver. 

As we were examined and recorded, we 
passed through the gate. Captain Eagan and 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 6i 



Lieutenant Brown were the first to enter. 
And now followed something that I could 
not then understand. I should have had less 
trouble in the world if I had. 

Immediately after the big gate slammed, 
some one inside shouted at the top of his 
voice, ' ' F-r-e-s-h fish ! F-r-e-s-h fish ! ' ' 
which was caught up all over the pen and re- 
echoed by many voices. F-r-e-s-h fish ! 
F-r-e-s-h fish ! ' ' resounded within until w^e 
could hear what seemed to be, and what 
really was, a thousand men rushing headlong 
to the gate, shouting those mysterious words. 
I, for one, did not like to hear it. It sound- 
ed like a very queer way to receive a friend 
in distress ; so I decided that I would no 
longer fret to get inside. 

What does all that confusion in there 
mean, guard ? ' ' said a young Lieutenant at 
my side. 

Why, those are the old Libbyites, who 
have become so demoralized and starved that 
they kill and eat every fresh man that is put 
among them,'' replied the guard, earnestly. 
No, they don't ! " exclaimed my friend, 
^a'll be d — d it they don't," emphat- 
ically retorted the guard. 

What w^e could hear from the inside was 



62 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



by no means calculated to contradict this 
assertion. Such ejaculations as Don't kill 
him ; " don't cut his throat with that case- 
knife ; " ^^oh, let him say his prayers;" 
'^oh, men, have some mercy — let his blan- 
ket alone ; " ^' don't take his coat ; " his 
boots are mine ; " his haversack is mine ; ' ' 
^Mouder; " put him on a stump," etc., 
etc., resounded in our ears. We had less 
faith in going into that den than Daniel had 
in going into the lions'. 

But our turn came, and with it we thought 
our end. Lieutenant Smith Culver and my- 
self were led to the gate together. We 
looked volumes at each other as the guard 
pounded the boards with the butt of his gun. 
The bolt glided back, the hinges creaked, 
the gate swung open, and then — there ap- 
peared before us a sea of ghostly, grizzly, 
dirty, haggard faces, staring and swaying 
this way and that. As we stepped in the 
noise of the crowd within hushed. We were 
frightened out of our wits. In we went, 
the writer in the rear. The dead-line was 
passed, and, sooner than I can tell it, my 
comrade was swallowed up in the chaotic 
mass. Something like a thunderbolt came 
down upon my shoulder, my blanket was 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 63 



snatched away, I was seized by the arm, 
jerked head-long to one side, and somebody 
in a low voice, that I recognized, said : 

For God's sake, follow me ! " I did the 
best I could. He ran like a scared deer, and 
I like his shadow, skirting the crowd, across 
the pen, through the barracks, over bunks 
we went until we reached the centre of the 
prison, when, half-crazy, I exclaimed : 
Chiz, what's the matter? " 
Nothing, if you will follow me.*' 

I followed into an old building on the 
east side of the prison, and sitting down with 
my boon companion, Chisman, upon the sill, 
he told me how it was. It all grew out of a 
mania for news. No newspapers were al- 
lowed inside the prison, and no letters con- 
taining army news. The starving of the 
mind is as maddening as the starving of the 
body. Those who have never been prison- 
ers will little appreciate it. Penned up in 
the middle of the enemy's country, active 
operations going on in the armies, victories 
being won or lost, the rebellion failing or 
gaining, friends being killed or promoted ; 
there was not a letter or newspaper, not a 
sentence or a syllable, to give the tidings. 
The anxiety for news was almost distracting 



64 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



at times, for the dearth was not of a day, nor 
a week, but of a month. The only r eh able 
information that came to the prison at all 
wa^ brought there by the recent captures, 
and it is for this reason alone that such com- 
motion arose among them when a new man 
arrived. The phrase ^ afresh fish'' was a 
distinctive term used to distinguish the new 
prisoners from the Libbyites who were 
called salt fish." The cry was always 
raised whenever there was a new arrival, 
and then everybody ran to see who it was, 
and hear the news. The crowding was 
beyond description. As many as could 
possibly hear a word, would edge them- 
selves about the speaker, and those who 
could not hear, being vexed and mischiev- 
ous, would sing out such remarks as the above 
to scare the fellow and make him remember 
his initiation into prison. I have often, too, 
seen men gather themselves, a dozen or two 
together, a few steps from one of these knots 
of Hsteners, and in concert go against them 
with a rush — suddenly shoving them, many 
times getting the object of interest under 
foot, and sometimes hurt. They would also 
lift him to a stump near the gate and de- 
mand a speech, and a hundred ply him with 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 65 



questions without giving him the slightest 
chance to answer any. 

The first day in such a prison is the hard- 
est of one's life. 

Chisman, hearing from those of my party, 
who went in first, that I was expected, took 
position at the gate and saved me much of 
the ordeal required of the others. 

As a substitute for news all sorts of wild 
rumors were going about the prison : gen- 
erally started by the guards for their own 
amusement. To illustrate : The prison au- 
thorities, to keep the guard upon the wall 
awake and watchful, required that the hours 
of the night should be cried by each one in 
consecutive order. Thus, at ten o'clock the 
cry would begin — Post number one — ten 
o'clock, and a-l-l's well." ^'Post number 
two — ten o'clock, and a-l-l's well." Post 
number three — ten o'clock, and a-l-l's well " 
and so on around the entire line. The 
guards upon the wall were without shelter. 

Upon a certain night in July, when Sher- 
man was known to be operating about At- 
lanta, and during a heavy rain that had been 
pouring down for an hour, eleven o'clock 
was announced by post number one crying 
out — Post number one — eleven o'clock, and 



66 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



a-l-Vs well. ' ' When the cry reached number 
five he sang out — Post number five — eleven 
o'clock — Sherman's got Atlanta, and I'm 
w-e-t as hell ! ' ' 

So groundless an announcement was taken 
up, and in five minutes the hum of voices 
was heard all over the camp discussing the 
trustworthiness of the news. 

Among the thirteen hundred prisoners I 
found many friends — three of whom were 
from my own county. These last were all 

salt fish," having been prisoners about two 
years, most of the time in Libby. 

If Captain Milton Russell's wife had seen 
her husband's long hair and beard, which, 
probably, had been untouched for two years, 
standing or hanging poetically about his 
head and face, the ends, from the direct rays 
of a southern sun, colored like the surface of 
a black sheep's wool in June ; his skin, from 
cooking in the sun and over pine-knots, the 
complexion of a smoked ham ; his trousers 
and jacket composed of three qualities of 
cloth, viz., army blanket, Yankee blue, and 
Confederate gray ; his hat wholly of Yan- 
kee overcoating ; his shoes, ditto ; strolling 
among the prisoners, begging for a chew or 
a pipeful of tobacco — she would, in my opin- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 67 

ion, have had scruples about her matrimonial 
judgment. She would, however, have felt 
better toward him had she known of but half 
the times he spoke of her and Sella. 

There, too, was Lieutenant Thomas Doo- 
ley. He had been a prisoner long enough to 
grow a little demure, and was big enough 
to get the lion's share of food ; for his phy- 
sical state contradicted the old starvation 
story of Libby. He was dressed, however, 
more like a clown than a Federal officer. 

Lieutenant Adair looked by odds the most 
forlorn of the three. His health had been 
bad, his patience worse, and had it not been 
for the encouragement of friends, he doubt- 
less would have ^'gone to his rest'* in the 
South. 

I also found, besides Chisman and Mitch- 
ell, the ''man on the roan horse," many 
other acquaintances from the Army of the 
Potomac. They all seemed glad to see me. 

The prison at Macon was as comfortable 
as any I was in. It was situated south of the 
city, on a sandy inclined plain which had 
formerly been used as a county-fair ground 
and a small stream of water ran through the 
west end. There were probably three acres 
inclosed, and in the centre stood a large one- 



68- SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



story frame building, formerly the floral hall 
of the fair, but now the bedroom of two 
hundred men. We had shelter for the most 
part here, and some boards were given us 
for bunks. The water we never complained 
of, nor the wood, for they were reasonably 
plenty and reasonably good. 

Our rations were claimed by the Confed- 
erates to be the same as those issued to their 
soldiers in the field, but if they were it is 
hard to understand how their army was sus- 
tained by them. They consisted, per man, 
of one pint of unsifted corn-meal a day, 
four ounces of bacon twice a week, and 
enough peas for two soup-dinners per week. 
This was all, and no means were furnished 
us to save or cook even this. From five to 
seven days' rations were issued at a time, 
and the prisoners must do the best they 
could to store them. This was imperfectly 
accomplished by tearing out linings and 
cutting off sleeves and legs of pantaloons. 

But by careful management we contrived 
not to starve, nor even to suffer greatly from 
hunger. A few skillets and kettles, procured 
by various methods, were kept hot from morn- 
ing till night. In my mess of four, we had but 
two meals per day. We carefully measured 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 69 

out just two pints of meal, mixed it with 
water, without salt, baked it in a skillet, and 
then carefully cut it as nearly as possible 
into four equal parts, the cook getting for 
his work in baking first choice. We alter- 
nated in cooking, and by this plan never 
had any trouble in determining whose turn 
it was to bake the bread. Our soup-dinners 
were feast-days, and we were always careful 
to make soup enough to fill us on those 
occasions. 

The suffering in our prison, and there was 
a good deal of it, resulted from thoughtless- 
ness. A few men, being very hungry when 
rations were issued, would proceed to cook 
and eat inordinately, and even to wasteful- 
ness, apparently without the least thought of 
the future, and thus in two or three days 
consume the rations intended for five. I 
have seen this class of men wandering about 
the prison in tears begging crumbs, but 
getting nothing but curses for their impru- 
dence. And what is said here in this re- 
spect is applicable to all the other prisons I 
was in. 

To preserve order the prisoners were or- 
ganized into squads of one hundred, with a 
nominal captain and orderly-sergeant, and 



70 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



this one hundred was subdivided into squads 
of twenty with a commissary-sergeant, and 
then, again, subdivided into messes of four. 
By this means the rations and wood came 
first to the one hundred, then to the twenty, 
and then to the four. 

The authorities at Macon called the roll 
of the prisoners in this wise : The officer of 
the day would come in each morning with 
twenty guards and deploy them across the 
north end of the pen, when all would begin 
• whooping and hallooing and swearing to 
drive us to the south end. This being ac- 
complished, an interval between the guards 
was designated as the place for the count, 
which was effected by our returning, one by 
one, through that interval, into the body of 
the inclosure. 

TunnelHng was a big business at Macon. 
There were three tunnels under way at one 
time, and all came near being successful. 
One was ready to be opened up the last of 
June, but to accommodate the managers of 
the other two it was delayed until the night 
of the 3d of July, when the others would be 
ready. The three had capacity to let every 
prisoner out by midnight, and thus afford an 
interesting time in Georgia on the Fourth of 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 71 



July. But the treachery of an Illinois Cap- 
tain revealed the whole scheme, and our 
guards came in on the morning of the 3d 
without a guide and deliberately took pos- 
session of the holes. It is said that the Cap- 
tain was promised a special exchange, and 
he probably got it, for, after the fact was 
learned by us through a negro, the traitor 
was taken outside and never appeared among 
us any more. 

The manner of making the subterranean 
avenues was simple, but slow. The begin- 
ning of each, at Macon, was under a bunk 
built a few inches from the ground. As 
soon as dark came, the boards composing 
the bunk were laid aside, and the work be- 
gan. First, a hole three feet in diameter 
was sunk four feet perpendicularly into the 
ground ; then from the bottom of this hole 
the tunnel proper would begki, at right 
angles, twenty inches in diameter, and pass 
horizontally along to the place of exit. The 
digging was mostly done with knives, but a 
spade or two figured in the business at Ma- 
con. The dirt was taken out in sacks, tied 
to the middle of a rope which was twice as 
long as the hole, and fastened by one end to 
the digger's leg. When he had dug up a 



72 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



sackful of dirt, he would draw the sack in, 
fill it up, jerk his rope, and the man at the 
mouth would draw it out and empty it into 
another sack, or hat, or blanket, or what- 
ever was available. The one who was to 
carry it off would then start, throwing a 
handful occasionally like wheat ; carrying a 
little to the spring, where there had been 
recent digging, a little to the well, where 
fresh dirt was lying about ; but the general 
depository was under the old floral hall. 
At the approach of daylight business would 
be suspended, the hole covered up, the bunk 
replaced, and two men probably asleep on it 
when the guards came in for their count. 

As a sporadic instance of unexplained cru- 
elty, I mention the following: The spring 
was within twenty feet of the dead-line, and 
it was no violation of orders to go to it at any 
time of the day or night. A German Cap- 
tain, of the Forty-fifth New York, went to the 
spring for water at dusk on the seventeenth 
day of June, and was just beginning his re- 
turn, when the guard nearest the point, with- 
out saying a word, or having a word said to 
him, deliberately shot him through the body, 
and he died an hour afterward. 

A written appeal to the authorities to in- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 73 



vestigate the matter was answered, so it was 
reported, by promoting the homicide to be 
a sergeant, and giving him a thirty days' fur- 
lough. News of the reward was freely cir- 
culated among us — under pretence of the of- 
ficer's having crossed the dead-line — as an 
example of reward to vigilant sentinels, and 
a caution to indiscreet prisoners. 

Notwithstanding the failure of our tunnels, 
the Fourth of July was by no means forgot- 
ten by the prisoners. Captain Todd, of the 
Eighth New Jersey, had managed somehow 
to smuggle into prison a little six-by-ten 
Union flag. 

Immediately after roll-call, the magic 
little rag ' ' was unfurled to the breeze and 
hoisted on a staff. In an instant the prison 
was in an uproar ; shouts for the Union and 
cheers for the Red, White, and Blue broke 
forth from every quarter. The excitement 
was wonderful. Two or three hundred men 
formed in columns of fours and followed the 
little flag about the prison, making the walls 
reverberate the echoes of the inspiring song 
of Rally Round the Flag, Boys." Then 
they marched into the floral hall for speak- 
ing. A rough structure by one of the pillars 
of the building, called a table, was used as a 



74 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



rostrum, from which short speeches were 
made till late in the afternoon. They were 
of the most patriotic and radical order, in- 
terspersed always with some national air, 
sung by the entire audience. 

The Confederates were a little troubled 
over this, and twice sent in a corporal's 
guard and demanded the flag ; but these were 
only laughed at, and sent away empty. A 
third time the officer of the day came in with 
a squad of men and bore orders from the 
commandant of the prison that the flag must 
be surrendered, peaceably or forcibly. Col- 
onel Thorp, First New York Cavalry, was 
speaking at the time, and, turning to the 
officer, said : 

Lieutenant, be pleased to say to Captain 
Gibbs that the flag we are rejoicing under is 
the property of the prisoners, and that it will 
not be surrendered peaceably, and that if he 
attempts force, twenty minutes afterward we 
will be burning and sacking the city of 
Macon. (Cries of That's it ! We'll 
do it ! " " Now^s the time ! ") 

The guards stood amazed only a moment, 
for when they heard such ejaculations from 
the crowd as Kill the d — d rebels ! " 

Take their guns from them ! " Rally to 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 75 



the gate ! they left the prison in a hurry, 
and it was the last time they ever demanded 
our flag, though its display was an e very-day 
occurrence afterward. 

About the 20th of June, while I was 
kneading dough in a camp-kettle, I heard the 
cry of Fresh fish " at the gate. At this 
date I was ^^one of 'em," and without a 
moment's delay I was off to the gate, but 
not soon enough to get a place near the en- 
trance through the dead-line. But from the 
spot I obtained I could see the two strangers 
as they came through the gate, and see that 
the youngest of them was my old comrade, 
Shelton, whom I left in the field-hospital, 
near the Wilderness. He limped a little yet, 
but his wound was nearly healed. 

Right here let me stop and hunt up Chis- 
man. He is to be closely identified with me 
in the rest of this narrative, and it may be of 
interest to the reader to know who and what 
he was. He was to me more than to most men, 
because we had slept together for nearly two 
years, doing duty the while as Western 
men " on a Down East " staff. Our rela- 
tions had been the most intimate, and, as a 
matter of course, when we met at Macon 
we paired, and perhaps a little selfishly, too. 



76 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



Chisman was a rare man — one of ten thou- 
sand — a companion for everybody; thirty 
years old, blue eyes, light hair, sandy beard, 
fair complexion, five feet ten inches high, 
and built like a prince. He was a great 
wag, conversed well, was quick in repartee, 
sang a good song, and told a most excellent 
story. He w^as famous in all his corps for 
these qualities. He was also lucky. As a 
mason of considerable degrees, he had fort- 
unately found a brother, both at Gordons- 
ville and Macon, and was admitted into 
prison with a good rain-coat and a valuable 
gold watch. This coat he sold to a guard at 
Macon for $100 ; the watch at Savannah, for 
$1,200, Confederate money. Another one 
of Chisman' s rare qualities was his lack of 
selfishness — indeed, he had not enough even 
for self-protection ; so in prison, among so 
many needy friends, it was found necessary, 
in order to preserve any of his funds, that I 
be made his banker, which office I accepted, 
and with a good degree of success in the 
preservation of his deposit. 

Immediately upon our meeting at Macon, 
and the sale of the overcoat, we set ourselves 
about making the way for something to 
turn up." With a $5 Confederate note we 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 77 



bought a pint of salt, and sewed it up in a 
little sack, at both ends, so that we should 
not use it ; with a similar note we bought 
matches, just five bunches, inch-square 
blocks, and likewise sewed them up ; then, 
with still another, a quantity of needles and 
thread was procured^ and for the most part 
sewed ditto ; these three necessaries we then 
sewed up all together in an oil-cloth sack, and 
laid carefully away. With these in hand, if 
an opportunity ever offered for escape, we 
should not be prevented for want of prepara- 
tion. 



During the latter part of July General 
Stoneman began his raiding around Macon, 
and, getting uncomfortably near, the author- 
ities decided to send us farther south. On 
the 27 th of July five squads, of one hundred 
each, filed out of prison, and were put upon 
the cars for Charleston. Two days after- 
ward another five hundred were called for, 
and this time I was in the count. We were 
sent to Savannah, where we arrived in the 
afternoon of the 30th. As we were the first 
Yankees, armed or disarmed, ever in the city, 
the citizens manifested a great curiosity to 
see us. The afternoon was very fair, and 
the sea-breezes had begun to shake the 
boughs of the live oaks and moss-grown 
pines, as we rode in and disembarked on 
Liberty Street. Everybody was out to see 
the Yankees. The street through which we 
had to pass to the United States Marine 
Barracks was literally walled on either side 
with old men, women, and children, of all 
colors. We were not dressed for a recep- 
78 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 79 



tion, or a county-fair; but as we had no 
will in the matter, we felt no responsibility 
for our appearance. The weather was very 
warm, and besides, there were many men in 
the party who had been prisoners two years, 
and had no better clothes. Some had on 
nothing but trousers, some nothing but 
shirts, others but a little of both. Un- 
shaven, hair untrimmed, bare-headed, bare- 
footed, dirty, and with kettles, skillets, 
meal-sacks, rice-bags, bundles of old 
clothes, and various other bric-a-brac of 
prison-life in our hands, our style was novel 
if not fascinating. Formed in four ranks, we 
were received by a fancy guard, and started 
for the prison. But the crowd was so eager 
it was found necessary to halt us until the 
guard and police could clear the street to 
the sidewalks. This being accomplished, 
they led us through the gauntlet of curiosity, 
and as we progressed a hundred little bo}^ 
ran shouting after us. Confederate bunting 
and mottoes were everywhere — on poles and 
ropes, in the windows, and in the hands 
of women and children. Among the many 
who lined the street was one young wom- 
an who, perhaps, had lost a lover by the 
Yankees, and wanted to show her hatred; 



8o SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



or perhaps it was simply the love of osten- 
tation that brought the blush to her cheek 
before the Yankees passed. She was a 
luscious creature, painted and fixed up, and 
she stood at the street - crossing, in the 
front rank, leaning forward, with a sneer, 
flaunting her ^^bonnie blue flag^' in our 
very faces. The indomitable Chisman 
came along, swinging an old blanket in one 
hand and a bag of meal in the other, and 
seeing the enthusiasm of the miss could but 
remember the seedy condition of his trou- 
sers. Turning himself rather unfashiona- 
bly about, he remarked, with much gravity : 

*^Miss, if you've got time, I wish you 
would tack that rag on here," at the same 
pointing to a place that evidently needed 
something of the sort. 

We were locked up in the United States 
Marine Barracks, where the First Georgia 
Volunteers had charge of us. This was the 
oldest regiment belonging to the State, hav- 
ing been organized and armed in January, 
1 86 1. They had been at the front since 
the beginning, and, becoming decimated, 
were sent home to rest and recruit. 

Major, afterward Colonel, Hill took com- 
mand of the prison ; and I am pleased to 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 8i 



say that he and his officers and men, gener- 
ally, treated us humanely and in marked 
contrast with the authorities at Macon. 
These were old soldiers and knew a sol- 
dier's lot, and how to sympathize with him 
as a prisoner. Hill enforced strict dis- 
cipline in the prison, but it was as much 
to our comfort and convenience as to his. 
He gave us tents and boards for bunks, and 
plenty of rations of meat, meal, and rice, 
the two latter in a surplus, which he bought 
back from us at Government rates, paying 
in onions and potatoes. Besides, he fur- 
nished us with facilities for cooking, kettles 
and pans, and brick for Dutch ovens. 

Our treatment at Savannah was as reason- 
able as could be expected, and during our 
six weeks' stay not a prisoner escaped. 

The spirit of retaliation was rife at this 
time between the two contending forces. 
Five hundred Federal officers were already 
under fire of our own guns at Charleston, 
and it was thither we were sent on the 
thirteenth day of September. There is no 
date in all the calendar of time that had 
been by me so much thought of, and so 
much hoped for as the thirteenth day of 
September, 1864. No other date has ever 



82 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



been, nor perhaps ever will be, the subject 
of so many doubts and so many happy 
anticipations; for it was the date that ter- 
minated my three years' enlistme/it as a sol- 
dier — it was the date on which my regiment 
was to leave the army for the embraces of 
their friends at home. With these reflec- 
tions to discourage us, Chisman and I, mem- 
bers of the same regiment, stepped sadly 
into an old cattle-car bound for Charleston — 
the very fountain-head of the flood of treason 
that had engulfed the entire South. 

The night of the 13th we slept in the 
Charleston jail-yard, and watched with de- 
light the red streaks that followed our two- 
hundred-pound shells as they were shot forth 
from Batteries Gregg and Wagner every 
fifteen minutes, and came screaming over our 
heads to a full fourth of a mile beyond. 

This was a part of the famous siege of 
Charleston ; and in the late war here was, at 
least, one feature of uncivilized warfare — that 
of placing prisoners under fire of their own 
guns. Just across the bay, on Morris Island, 
between the two batteries above mentioned, 
was an uncovered stockade, in which were 
confined a thousand Confederate officers, to 
be mangled by their own brothers and 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 83 



fathers if their shells varied a little from their 
aim. The thousand Federal officers now in 
the town were scattered about through the 
city, *'as the exigences of the service re- 
quired.'' I must say, to the credit of Gen- 
eral Foster, the Federal commander on Mor- 
ris Island, that he seemed excellently well 
informed of the various changes of our local- 
ities. The Charleston papers complained 
bitterly of the police and city guards, be- 
cause they could make no explanation of the 
mysterious rockets that could be seen almost 
nightly in different parts of the city, and 
more especially immediately after the removal 
of a party of Yankees. 

General Foster perhaps could have given 
a better explanation than any policeman or 
guard in the city, for if a party of prisoners 
were removed into a locality directly under 
the scourge, perchance not another shell 
would come near ; while a few hours after- 
ward they would open up with terrible effect 
on the very place they had left. One exam- 
ple : Eighty-six of us were taken from the 
jail-yard to the private residence of Colonel 
O'Connor, on Broad Street, and while there, 
nearly two weeks, not a shell struck nearer 
than an eighth of a mile. A party of Con- 



S4 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



federate officers, for convenience and safety, 
took quarters within a hundred yards of us. 
We were removed about noon, the Confed- 
erates remaining, and that night a two-hun- 
dred-pound shell from Foster's guns canie 
crashing through the house, killing the pro- 
vost marshal and a captain instantly, and 
badly wounding a lieutenant. During our 
confinement of about a month, the only 
casualty among us was one man slightly 
wounded in the hand. 

The yellow fever broke out among us at 
Charleston. This is the king of terroi3 to 
the Southern people, and as he took hold on 
us with determined fatality, our guards be- 
came much alarmed. It vras among us live 
days in the city, and it was reported that 
out of thirty cases among the prisoners, not 
one recovered. In this calamity we were 
visited by the Sisters of Charity. Every day 
after the fever broke out, and occasionally 
before, these pale-faced, devout, veiled creat- 
ures made their rounds of the prison, with 
their baskets of medicine and food for distri- 
bution among the sick. It was touching to 
see them moving about the prison in pairs, 
heeding none but the suffering, and minis- 
tering to them with that pious dignity and 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 85 



tenderness characteristic of their order. The 
personal sacrifices of these women was sur- 
prising. Whether it was fanaticism, or ra- 
tional devotion to Christian duty, is not for 
me to say, but theirs was the only faith strong 
enough to reach us ; and in the day of final 
account it is not apt to go unrequited by 
the dispenser of just judgments. 

Commandant Jones, on October 4th, suc- 
ceeded in getting some cars, and away we 
went to Columbia, S. C, without letter or 
despatch, and fell upon that high place of 
treason like a thunderbolt ; and had we 
been all armed, and commanded by Sher- 
idan, we could hardly have surprised them 
more. The provost marshal, who seemed 
to be a pretty clever kind of an enemy, 
fretted and complained a good deal, in- 
sisting that it was an imposition so sudden- 
ly to send fifteen hundred prisoners to him, 
without even a chicken-coop, or a dozen 
men at his command. He at first refused 
a receipt to Cooper, the Charlestonian, for 
the prisoners, but after some altercation and 
compromise the matter was fixed up in such 
a way that Cooper could stay with his men 
and take charge of us until other arrange- 
ments could be made. 



86 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



We were kept on the cars all night and 
suffered intensely from thirst. At Charles- 
ton, on the scorching hot day before, at 
noon, we were crowded, or, more properly, 
jammed, seventy men into each dirty cattle- 
car, with camp-kettles, coffee-pots, greasy 
skillets, meal-sacks, rice-bags, old clothes, 
and such other appendages as are found with 
prisoners of war, and not twenty men of the 
six hundred tasted water until six o'clock 
the following morning. At this hour we 
were taken from the cars and herded near 
the railroad like a drove of cattle, and our 
disembarkation was attended with about as 
much noise and confusion. Men were fran- 
tic with thirst. Some supplicating, some 
cursing, some threatening, made a din scarce- 
ly surpassed since Moses smote the rock in 
the wilderness, and the guards took no steps 
to relieve us. Our suffering was not long 
to endure, for heaven, in its mercy, soon 
opened up a copious fountain, which drenched 
us without as well as within. 

Here, as well as everywhere in the South, 
we could see the effects of the rebellion. 
One side of our corral was marked by a half- 
dozen or more broken box-cars, which, be- 
coming useless to the railroad, had been set 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 87 



aside upon a spur. Each one of these old 
cars was tenanted by a family of refugees, 
most if not all of whom had seen better 
days no longer than two years before. 

Upon our arrival at Columbia a telegram 
was sent to Hillsborough for a company of 
cadets, in school there, and in the afternoon 
of the same day about forty arrived and re- 
lieved the old Charlestonian guard that was 
over us. These boys, having been chosen 
from all parts of the Confederacy to be 
trained for heroes, now in their freshman 
year, thought well of themselves — too well, 
as the common soldiers thought — and they 
were hated by the Confederate regulars 
even worse than by the Yankees. They 
came down in their suits of fine gray cloth, 
paper collars, blacked boots, and white 
gloves, not only to guard the Yankee pris- 
oners but to teach the common soldiers a 
touch of science in the profession. As they 
mounted guard each looked and felt the born 
prince, and every movement was by rule, 
till the rain came on again in the evening 
and melted their collars as well as their 
spirits; then they got mad at everything 
and everybody. One httle fiend got so 
voracious for Yankee blood, so eager for a 



88 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



loyal life upon which to climb into fame, 
that he took two full steps from his post to 
drive his bayonet through the leg of Lieu- 
tenant Clark, who was negotiating with a 
negro woman for a corn-pone. Not even a 
reprimand for this wanton assault ever came 
to the knowledge of the prisoners. 

No suitable inclosure could be found for 
us in Columbia, and we were marched across 
the Congaree River, two miles west of the 
city, to an old barren field that had been 
abandoned many years, and was now sparsely 
overgrown with bushes from ten to fifteen feet 
high. These bushes were our only wood-sup- 
ply, and, with a few exceptions, the second 
day saw their ashes scattered to the winds. 
This camp was large enough— probably six 
acres in all. There was no stockade, no fence, 
no water but from a brook, no shelter, not 
even for the sick, the first ten days. The 
well men never had any shelter except what 
they contrived with their blankets, etc. An 
avenue thirty feet wide was cut around the 
prison-camp through the bushes. Upon the 
outer edge of this avenue was maintained a 
line of sentinels, ten steps apart, and upon the 
inner edge was placed a line of pins standing 
about fifteen inches above the ground and 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 89 



thirty feet apart. This latter was the famous 
dead-line that a prisoner crossed upon peril 
of his life. 

This prison was known as Camp Sorghum ; 
and I should not wrong the Confederates much 
were I to say that they did not give us enough 
of anything here but air, water, and room ; 
but I will do them full justice, and add that 
they gave us also a pint of unsifted corn- 
meal and an abundance of sorghum-molasses 
for a day's rations, issuing from five to seven 
days' rations at a time. 

I am faithful to fact when I say that during 
the month I stayed with them at Columbia 
they did not give us a single board or tent for 
shelter, nor an ounce of meat or bread. Ex- 
cepting a half-pound of flour they gave each 
of us two or three times, and a couple of 
spoonfuls of salt as often with the meal and 
molasses, I have told it all. We had not even 
a pan, a skillet, a bucket, or a kettle in which 
to cook or save our rations ; and had it not 
been that a few of these articles were clan- 
destinely carried away from other prisons, 
or procured with private means, it is hard 
to imagine how we could have got along. As 
it was, if we put into the count flat rocks 
picked up on the ground, pieces of tin, scraps 



go SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



of old iron, etc., we had a cooking-utensil 
to about every twenty men. The most valu- 
able of any I saw in use was a disk of cast- 
iron, formerly the end of a steam-boiler — 
that would turn off at a single baking cakes 
enough for six men. This thing was kept 
on the fire half the time and accommodated 
a hundred men. The last baking I did in 
prison was upon it. 

We had more trouble at Columbia in keep- 
ing our meal dry than at any other prison. 
It often rained, and there being no shelter 
w^hatever in the camp, the meal of many had 
to take the rain as it came. It often soaked 
and soured, but, rubbed out and dried, whether 
sweet or sour, it was reHshed ; and about as 
well in one condition as the other when lim- 
ited to one pint a day. 

Some miners among the prisoners began 
digging and pan-washing along the margin of 
the branch, claiming they had found a gold- 
mine; but the discovery cost their friends 
more than it profited them, for the guards 
promptly contracted their line and placed the 
gold-mine outside. 

Notwithstanding our exposure and want of 
the commonest necessaries at Columbia, there 
was a general disposition among the prisoners 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 91 



to disregard the many grounds of complaint 
and make the best of things from a very small 
stock of material. 

The sorghum-molasses^ given us in such 
abundance, was the source of much amuse- 
ment. Men would reduce great kettles full 
of it to wax, and from the wax make figures 
of every conceivable shape. They made it 
into balls and threw it at the guards after 
dark ; made and hung effigies of Confederate 
celebrities ; concealed it in their friends' 
blankets. When we got painfully hungry we 
tried hard to stand off the wolf with sorghum. 
We would mix our meal with sorghum, eat 
sorghum on our cakes, and consume any 
quantity of taffy. In short, we came well- 
nigh preserving ourselves in sorghum-mo- 
lasses. 

Games of all kinds were resorted to ; some 
of science and skill, others of the most fool- 
ish sort. One in particular was as silly as 
it was full of fun. We called it ^^buzz.'* 
It went thus : 

As many as a hundred men would gather 
themselves into a circle, set a ^ ' dunce-block ' ' 
in the centre, a referee at one side, and then 
commence counting rapidly around to the 
right. Instead of calling numbers divisible 



92 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



by seven, or multiples of seven, you should 
say ^^buzz ; as i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, buzz; 8, 9, 
10, II, 12, 13, buzz, etc., each man calling 
but one number. When a man called a 
number when he should say buzz " he was 
caught, and as a penalty had to go to the 
dunce-block in the centre and sing a song or 
tell a story. Anyone who did not at once 
respond to the judgment of the referee was 
ejected from the circle, and his place supplied 
by some eager bystander. 

This game, foolish as it may seem, pro- 
duced many roars of laughter at Camp Sor- 
ghum ; for the efforts of many men, with no 
attainments in either song or story, under 
the embarrassments of the occasion, were 
ludicrous indeed. 

It was a dark night about October 20th, 
when a lot of us stood wet and shivering 
around a fire near the dead-line, that Shelton, 
suddenly buttoning up his brown jean coat, 
with emphasis said : 

will die here now, or get out of 

this.^' 

Before anyone in the company compre- 
hended the remark, he shot like an arrow 
across the dead and guard lines, and was 
lost in the darkness. A half-dozen shots 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 93 



were fired at him, but fortunately none took 
effect. He was captured ten days later, near 
the South Carolina coast, and returned ; but 
upon a second effort in November he went 
through to our lines. 

The Confederates were guilty of but few 
things less excusable than the hunting 
down of prisoners with dogs. In all civil- 
ized warfare there are certain rules of honor 
observed, among them this one : that if a 
prisoner escapes he shall have all the advan- 
tage of his own sagacity, by having nothing 
employed against him but the sagacity of his 
guards. In the war of the Rebellion the 
Confederates entirely ignored this rule by 
engaging every means against their prison- 
ers, even to the perversion of brute-faculties 
that had been created for a good and noble 
purpose. They had a pack or two of these 
trained dogs at Columbia, which they tried 
to make as fierce and terrible as possible. 
They would keep them tied up through the 
day, and at evening bring them out upon the 
lawn before us, jumping and howling around 
their keeper for their food. It was these dogs 
that kept more prisoners within the guard- 
line than the six pieces of artillery trained 
on the camp ; for if one should go out and 



94 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



the dogs find his trail, he was sure to be 
caught, and apt to be torn to pieces. 

One night in October, a lieutenant es- 
caped. He was out five days when a two- 
horse wagon came rattling over the stones 
toward the camp and drove over the dead- 
line. Two guards got in, and two stood by 
and lifted out the body of the lieutenant. 
Life was still in it, but the gash in the side, 
and the horrible mangling of the throat and 
face, showed that it would soon depart. His 
captain brother, bending over him, piteously 
asked : 

Harry, what's the matter ? 

Only a whisper answered: **Dogs. 
Don't tell mother how it was." 

Next morning, soon after daylight, they 
carried the young man a hundred yards to 
the north of the camp and buried him. This 
is all we ever knew about it. 



V 

By this time our number had swelled to 
fifteen hundred. We had no wood to sup- 
ply our wants except what we provided our- 
selves, with the aid of seven miserable iron 
axes and carried a quarter of a mile upon 
our shoulders. A party of fifty or more men 
were each morning taken out of the camp to 
the head-quarters office, and there each one 
was required to deposit with the officer of 
the guard a written parole of honor not to 
escape that day while out getting w^ood. 
They then were turned loose with liberty to 
go half a mile from the camp without guard. 
It was something like freedom to get wood, 
and there was always a general rush to get 
on the detail. It was in one of these wood- 
parties that we made our second escape. 

We had escape on the brain — had had it 
there since our capture, for that matter, but 
more intensely since the suspension of the 
exchange of prisoners, which had happened 
several weeks before and for which Secretary 
Stanton and even General Grant were se- 
95 




96 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



verely censured by many of the prisoners. 
Human nature is too weak to settle into con- 
tentment in such an environment as we were 
placed in at Columbia. 

The nights were all cold (it was the rainy 
season) ; we were without any shelter and 
had only a limited supply of wood of the 
worst possible sort, consisting of green oak 
and pine. 

The paroled wood-party were directed to 
a grove of timber a quarter of a mile dis- 
tant, where they went with their axes and 
handspikes. Some would cut down and 
trim off the limbs from the small trees, others 
would carry the logs to the prison camp, and 
four, six, and even eight men were often well- 
loaded with a single log. These carrying 
parties were unattended by guards and were 
allowed perfect freedom in passing through 
the guard-line and to the inside of the dead- 
line, where they would throw their logs 
down and return to the woods for another 
load. The guards on duty were instructed 
to give particular attention to each wood- 
squad going in, and see to it that no prisoner 
from the inside went out with them. 

The 4th of November, 1864, was a very 
bad day. It had been raining almost inces- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 97 



santly for thirty-six hours, with a brisk, cold, 
east wind blowing, and in the afternoon 
there was some snow driving through the 
rain. Probably not a dry thread could be 
found on all the 1,500 prisoners. Grouped to- 
gether here and there around a little, smoky, 
green pine-wood fire, they sat wrapped 
in whatever clothing they might have — wet, 
cold, hungry, and disconsolate. It was one 
of the gloomiest times we saw in prison. 
With nothing to eat but meal and molasses, 
the meal wet and sour, winter approaching 
and no shelter, nor hope of exchange, every- 
body was blue and cross, and quarrels and 
blows were so frequent that they ceased to 
attract attention. 

It was about three o'clock in the after- 
noon of this day that, tired of yawning in 
one of the groups and to give my eyes a 
little freedom from the smoke, I went saun- 
tering about the camp. While passing along 
the west side, I saw a wood-party of eight 
men come in with a log and go out again 
without being noticed by a single guard, so 
far as I could observe. 

An idea and a ray of hope broke upon me 
and I hurried off to find Chisman. I found 
him where I expected to, sitting by a fire in 



98 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



a perfect jam, smoking his brierwood pipe of 
huge dimensions. He looked unusually for- 
lorn. Not a smile nor a word, and the 
only solace he seemed to feel was in the 
puffs of smoke that rapidly broke from his 
mouth. 

Chisman, come here.*' 

What do you want? " 

I think I see a chance.*' 

For what?'' 

To get out of here." 

Oh, I have heard enough of your 
chances." 

But come and see for yourself." 
And we walked off toward the side where 
the men were coming in with the wood. The 
wind still drove the rain and snow from the 
east, and the poor guards, old men and boys 
mostly, who were about as poorly clad as 
the prisoners, were standing with their backs 
to the east, shivering, while the wood-car- 
riers were passing and repassing the guard- 
line. 

Now," said I, what do you think of 
that?" 

''Well, I am ready for anything," said 
Chisman. '* They can only kill us and send 
us to , which will improve our condi- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 99 



tion, and I am ready to try it if you are.'* 
And so we started for our belongings. 

I have said before that as soon as Chisman 
and I met at Macon we prepared * ^ for some- 
thing to turn up/' In addition to our 
Macon stock of salt, matches, needles, and 
thread, we succeeded at Savannah in getting 
a sheet of tin from the roof of the hospital 
dead-house, which we gave to Lieutenant 
Holman, a regular wooden-nutmeg Yankee, 
from Vermont, who, with a couple of stones 
and an old knife, made two perfect pans out 
of it. They were five by eight inches by 
one inch and a quarter deep, and the corner 
joints were fitted so closely that they were 
proof against even hot grease. One of these 
pans was an accession to our outfit. At 
Charleston we had added a tin cup ; at 
Columbia we captured a meal-sack from the 
rear of the Commissary while the guard 
whistled Bonnie Blue Flag'* in front, 
which not only made each of us a haver- 
sack, but a towel also. 

On the iron disk we hurriedly baked what 
meal we had and tried to beg more, but 
failed. 

We broke our design first to I^ieutenant 
Fowler, who was on guard that day (for we 



100 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



had to keep constant watch over our things 
to keep our fellow-prisoners from stealing 
them), and to a few other trusted friends, 
and then with salt, matches, needles and 
thread, tin pan, cup, towel, and bread 
enough for two days in our haversacks, we 
spread our blankets over all and started for 
the scene of action. A few friends followed 
behind and, as we went along, Chisman 
picked up a chip and said Let the fates 
decide who shall try it first." Up went the 
chip — down it came — and it was my first 
trial. 

We had not long to wait. A party of eight 
or nine men were approaching. I set out 
alone, aiming to reach the dead-line from 
the inside about the same time and place 
they would reach it from the outside. As 
we met I communicated my design in a low 
tone. They favored me, threw down their 
wood and gathered together while I glanced 
to the right and left to see that no guard was 
looking in my direction. In a moment I 
was in the party ; and seizing a handspike 
from the hands of one of them, laid it across 
my shoulder, and we all started for the 
woods. My blanket was spread over my 
haversack and shoulders, but this created no 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER loi 



suspicion, for the day was so bad that every 
man who had a blanket had it on. There 
were two other blankets in the party I joined, 
and I walked out through the guard-line 
within ten feet of two Confederate muskets, 
and within easy range of fifty, without any 
guard being the wiser. 

What a curious world this is. It will 
doubtless be thought that I felt happy when 
I got out of range of the Confederate mus- 
kets ; but ^ ' my last state was worse than my 
first. ' ' I was more troubled now than when 
in the prison. My liberty was actually pain- 
ful to me. I had doubt of Chisman's success, 
and there I was without restraint to go when 
and where I pleased if I could avoid the 
enemy. But to undertake the pilgrimage of 
two or three hundred miles through the 
enemy's country, without guide or com- 
panion, to be probably lost in some great 
swamp, or recaptured and murdered, or 
locked up in some county jail in the interior 
of the Confederacy, to suffer and to die 
alone, without the fact ever reaching my 
friends, was a task so stupendous in its out- 
line that it was hard for me to find courage 
even to think about it j and I could not think 
of returning. 



102 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



As we went out we met another party go- 
ing in. I explained to them how I came 
out, and that Chisman would be found about 
the same place ready to enter upon a similar 
enterprise. 

Chisman was a favorite with all who knew 
him, and I had a promise that he would be 
assisted. When we got to the woods I sat 
down on a log, with my back toward the 
prison, afraid to look around lest I should 
see the party coming back without my 
friend. 

Someone said, There comes a man over 
the hill that looks like Chisman,'* and as I 
turned suddenly about, to my great delight 
I saw the inimitable joker, with head erect 
and handspike on his shoulder, striding like 
a Weston, fully fifty yards ahead of his party. 

There were two of the paroled detail. First 
Lieutenant Baker, Sixth Missouri Infantry, 
and First Lieutenant Goode, First Maryland 
Cavalry, who, seeing how easy it was for us 
to get out, decided that they would feign 
sickness, get their written paroles cancelled, 
go back into the prison, and then escape as we 
had done. They called upon the Confeder- 
ate officer of the day, whom they found com- 
fortably quartered in his tent, and, having 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 103 



made out their disability to carry any more 
wood, asked for their paroles. The paroles 
were cancelled, but the weather was so in- 
clement that, instead of going with them and 
seeing that they returned to prison, the offi- 
cer simply directed them to go back inside, 
while he remained in his tent. Goode and 
Baker did not go back inside, but as they 
approached the camp sheered off, recovered 
from their ailments, came back to the woods, 
and were at liberty. 

They had neither blanket nor rations — 
nothing whatever to assist escape but grit. 
Goode had been a prisoner twenty-two 
months, Baker eighteen. A corporal's guard 
passed among us occasionally to see that 
everything was going right, and when they 
were around, to escape suspicion, we indus- 
triously engaged in the wood-business. At 
five o'clock in the evening, when the drum 
beat at camp, Chisman and I went under one 
brush-pile, Goode and Baker under another, 
and those on parole went back to prison. I 
will never forget with what feeling Major 
Young, of our brigade, said: *'Good-by, 
boys; be cautious, and if you get through, 
tell the people and the President how we are 
suffering.** 



104 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



How still we lay ! Not a hand or a foot 
stirred, lest some passing enemy should hear 
the noise and find us ; and we must stay there 
till dark, and until the soldiers were sum- 
moned to quarters. The cold, wet brush, 
and colder and wetter ground, chilled us 
to the very centre ; but we clung the closer 
together, and shook the time away. 

It seemed an age until tattoo. Some of 
that age we were at home telling of advent- 
ures to our friends ; some of it we were 
being chased by hounds ; some of it we 
were being recaptured and dragged back to 
prison ; some of it we were drowning in vain 
attempts to swim unknown rivers in the dark. 

A few minutes after tattoo had called the 
soldiers to quarters, Chisman and I, as 
noiselessly as possible, crawled from under 
the brush. Our aim was to slip away from 
Goode and Baker. 

We had decided for many reasons that 
they could not join us ; they were not well 
known ; they were destitute, and we had 
nothing to divide. Two in the party were 
enough, would be company for each other, 
would leave fewer signs, and attract less at- 
tention if seen, and, above all, could sub- 
sist and hide easier. But Goode and Baker 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 105 



heard us move, and when we stood upon our 
feet they were at our side. We had strong 
words, hot words, disgraceful words, under 
any other conditions ; but nothing seemed so 
dear to us then as success. They felt their 
weakness in their want of preparation ; we 
felt our security in being unattended. We 
would start and they w^ould follow ; then 
another battle of words and threats of vio- 
lence. We compromised, and decided to go 
together that night, and the next day ar- 
range for a separation. 

The night was very dark ; yes, dismally 
dark j there was not a star or spot of clear 
sky anywhere. Overhead was drawn a black 
mantle of heavy clouds ; around were w^oods 
and a heavy atmosphere that, combined, most 
perfectly sustained the proverbial darkness 
of a South Carolina forest. We decided 
that the object for the first night should 
be to get as far away from Columbia as 
possible, in whatever direction seemed most 
practicable. 

Off we started through the woods, nobody 
knew where or in what direction, slipping 
along like spirits on tiptoe ; in mortal terror, 
stopping every minute to listen ; starting at 
every rustling of the leaves ; squatting down 



io6 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



to hide from imaginary men ; pushing each 
other forward to lead; and thus we went 
along through woods and fields for per- 
haps two miles until w^e struck a swamp. In 
one man splashed before we knew it was 
near. Now what must be done? We 
knew nothing of its length or breadth or 
situation. It was so dark we could not see a 
rod in advance. We had heard much of the 
alligators and horrid snakes infesting the 
Southern swamps, besides seeing something 
of them in our passage through the country 
from Savannah to Charleston. 

The thought of setting foot on an alligator, 
or having a slimy snake play about our legs 
as we waded through, was not encouraging. 
The undergrowth of tangled bushes and 
cypress knees seemed to be next to impene- 
trable. We could not think of trying to 
wade it. The only thing to be done was to 
go around it, and to the right we started. 

Tearing through bushes and briers, limbs 
striking in our faces and brushing off our 
caps ; splashing in the water ; slipping and 
falling over logs, was the unvarying business 
for the next hour. Now another body of 
water was found, not by the light nor by the 
noise it made, but by the failing of a stick in 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 107 



Baker^s hand to find support. It was evi- 
dently more than a swamp. From the nature 
of its edge it must be a river, yet a singular 
one to us ; apparently on a perfect level with 
the plain; deep, dismal, without bank or 
bottom, creeping along as noiselessly as we 
wished to do. We got a pole in the dark- 
ness and sounded it, but the end leaped 
up from the depths without finding bottom. 
Next we struck a match in a hat, and the 
light fell upon the trees a hundred and fifty 
feet away. Sure enough, it was a river, and 
it looked as if it might be the Styx. There 
was no heart in our party stout enough to 
swim it, and that was the only way to get 
across. Then, of course, the swamp was 
wider and deeper at its junction with the 
river than where we first struck it. To go 
back the river-way would be to go toward 
Columbia, we supposed ; so we must either 
cross the swamp at that place or go round 
it in the other direction. Disappointed, 
tired, and already disheartened at the pros- 
pects, we began to retrace our steps. 

On we pushed as fast as we could ; on, on, 
on ; I cannot say how far we went or how 
long we went, but we went as far and as long 
as we could. The night was about spent. 



io8 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



The chickens in the neighborhood began to 
herald the approach of morning, and we 
were not yet three miles from Columbia, 
nor more than two from prison. Still the 
swamp confronted us with all its portents. 
Something must be done, and done quickly. 
We must either get farther away or re- 
turn and surrender; not to be beyond that 
swamp by daylight was equivalent to re- 
capture. I favor a trial," says one. ^'I 
agree," echoed the others, and into the 
water w^e stepped. It was not so dark at 
this time. The clouds had broken up 
and were flying in fleecy clusters across the 
sky, and the woods roared with the gale that 
drove the autumn leaves by in armies. It 
was much colder, too. My blood chills yet 
when I think of the first hundred steps in 
that swamp. 

The water was from six inches to three 
feet deep, and full of old logs and tangled 
bushes, and the bottom slimy for the most 
part, with here and there strips of vegetable 
growth. Pulling through the bushes, picking 
up our caps, climbing over logs and splash- 
ing down again into the water was a lively 
exercise, accelerated by the constant but 
not cheerful thought that the next step 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 109 



might land us on the back of an alligator 
or send a dozen snakes around our bodies. 
Goode was an Irishman of short stature, and 
in an unlucky moment, as he stepped from a 
log back into the water, a slimy limb slipped 
up his leg. He thought it was a snake, 
and tried to commit suicide, but Chisman, 
who happened to be near, saved him. But 
we got along and through the swamp with- 
out misfortune greater than the irresistible 
temptation to use unevangelical language. 

This much -dreaded obstacle overcome, 
we felt encouraged and made better speed. 
The forest was now not so thick, and, as 
it was light enough to select our way, we 
pushed on rapidly. A road was found 
coursing northwesterly that had the appear- 
ance of being little used, and we took it al- 
most on a run. Our ardor exceeded our 
prudence, for, without believing it possible, 
we let a wagon, rolling over the soft sand, 
almost run over us. We leaped into the 
bushes to the right, and fell down upon our 
faces. The wagon stopped immediately op- 
posite where we lay ; men muttered a few 
words ; then got out and, going to the rear 
of the wagon, struck a light. Raising to our 
hands and knees, we saw a negro approach- 



no SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



ing us with a blazing pine-knot in his hand, 
stooping and gazing as he came, followed 
closely by a white man. Before they got 
close enough, however, to see us we ran away. 

We feared all the following day that they 
would put dogs on our track. 

Morning was now upon us and the next 
thing to be done was to hide for the day. 
In this our inexperience begat difficulties. 
We parleyed and disputed and actually quar- 
relled about what we should do and where 
we should go. One wanted this and anoth- 
er that, the third something else, and the 
fourth averred that all were wrong but him. 
It was not settled until broad daylight drove 
us to the side of a log in a cluster of alder 
bushes in an old field, and here we came 
near freezing. Our blood, hot from the ex- 
ertions of the night, our clothing full of 
water from the swamp, the leaves on the 
ground by the log wet and frozen, to this 
inhospitable bed we went with nothing over 
us but a single blanket. As Chisman tucked 
his wet, freezing feet into the single fold 
of the blanket, he made some remark about 
the luxury of freedom and the beauties of de- 
fending the flag. 

Not a suggestion of sleep came to us that 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER ill 

day, nor was a mention made of separation 
from Goode and Baker. The truth is, we 
felt about convinced that it would have been 
better for us all to have been drowned in the 
swamp the night before ; and we longed for 
more rather than fewer friends. 

Our experience, up to this time, had 
taught us that some sort of an organization 
was necessary to our successful escape, for so 
many self-reliant officers, all of the same 
rank, and all on duty at the same time, had 
not produced satisfactory results, and all 
day long we lay with our heads together by 
the old log, discussing and adopting in 
whispers a plan of organization, which we 
never had occasion to change, except in a 
few unimportant particulars. 

We should take turns in acting as com- 
mander, the term of office of each to cover 
twenty-four hours, beginning and ending at 
9 P.M. each evening. We should march 
upon the road, beginning not earlier than 9 
P.M. and ending not later than 5 a.m. 
The commander should direct the time to 
begin our march, when to rest, and when and 
where to put in. His authority was to be 
supreme in all things, unless an appeal from 
it was sustained by a unanimous vote of the 



112 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



other three. We were to march in single 
file, three paces apart, so as to keep the 
front of but one man exposed to the road, 
the commander in front, whose duty it was, 
among other things, to keep his eyes and 
ears constantly open, to catch the first sound 
or glimmer of an object that might approach 
from the front; number two, three paces be- 
hind, was to observe the same vigilance on 
the right ; number three, to the left, and 
number four to give his entire attention to 
the rear. If we were passing the road where 
there were woods or weeds on either side, 
and the commander saw, or thought he saw, 
or heard, a human being approaching from 
the front, he was to turn his head to the rear 
and hiss gently, but sufficiently loud for 
the others to hear him, then move hurriedly 
to one side, the others following and pre- 
serving their intervals as nearly as possible, 
each to find a bush or a log, lie *down 
upon his face, and observe the most perfect 
silence. Thus we should remain until some- 
thing passed or until the commander con- 
cluded that he was mistaken, when he would 
hiss again, and we would all take our places, 
move back again to the road, and be off 
as before. If we were passing through an 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 113 



open country where we could not hide, 
and the leader should see footmen coming, 
he was to turn back and hiss twice, when 
all should about-face and take the road back 
as fast as we could possibly walk. This we 
should continue until we came to a place 
where the commander thought we could 
hide, when he would hiss again and leave 
the road as before. Nearly all the persons 
that approached were negroes, and our back- 
ward business worked admirably. 

If horsemen were seen coming, we were to 
leave the road in any kind of country, and 
if number two, three, or four should see an 
object approach in his direction, he must 
communicate the fact to the commander, 
who should take charge of the movement. 

We depended mostly upon the negroes for 
direction and food, and applied for their 
assistance nearly every night. About ten 
o'clock, when everything was quiet, we 
would approach their quarters, all going up 
within two hundred yards, when two would 
stop, a third go within one hundred yards, 
and the commander go alone to the huts. 
The negroes were remarkably familiar with 
each other and the country for a radius of 
ten or fifteen miles. They seemed to be 
S 



114 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



acquainted with every peculiar tree, or stone, 
or cow-path, within that distance. If we 
were among a lot of negroes at night, be- 
fore leaving we would ask them to give us the 
names of one or two of the oldest and most 
reliable negro acquaintances, ten, twelve, 
or fifteen miles ahead, or as far as we aimed 
to go that night. They were always able 
to give us the name, Joe, Jim, or Jerry, 
and to tell us precisely where to find them. 
Their descriptions were very minute, and 
would generally give the number of the cabin 
in the row, the position in relation to the 
cotton-gin, pig-pen, or massa's house, just 
the safest way to approach, whether there 
were any dogs, and, if so, how many and 
how fierce. 

There was not an instance on the whole 
journey where we were misled by a negroes 
description. 

Our leader would go to the cabin indi- 
cated, knock on the door till someone an- 
swered from within, then call out, gently, 
''Bob,'' ''Bill," or whatever name had 
been given. 

The negro always came to the door with- 
out further words, when the commander 
would ask him out to the side of the cabin. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 115 



and invariably, after the first few nights, the 
first thing he told him was that he was a 
Yankee, trying to escape from a rebel prison ; 
that he had three companions near by, all 
nearly starved ; and that our only hope of 
escape was through his aid, and if this was 
denied we should have to return to prison ; 
that we could not rely upon finding friends 
among the whites ; that we did not ask much 
from him, but that he should see his friends, 
such as could be trusted, and ask of each 
something, just what could be spared, and 
nothing more. A few words as to where we 
should hide and await the preparation of 
food, and the fellow would be off in perfect 
ecstasies to communicate his secret to his 
fellows. 

Generally every adult negro on the plan- 
tation (house-servants always excepted) would 
be notified that some starving Yankee prison- 
ers were outside, and this was enough to bring 
everyone out of his bed, to prepare his pota- 
toes, ash or hoe cake, or bottle of sorghum. 
No lights were ever seen, and seldom any 
noise made while they were preparing their 
mites. It would take from thirty minutes to 
an hour to roast their potatoes and hoe-cakes; 
then they would begin sHpping out to us, 



Ii6 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



four or five in a party. Sometimes twenty 
negroes, male and female, would come to us 
from one plantation, each one bringing some- 
thing to give and lay at our feet — in the ag- 
gregate, corn-bread and potatoes enough to 
feed us a w^eek. 

The third man went up within a hundred 
yards, in order to receive and communicate 
a signal from the leader if he should be capt- 
ured while at the huts. In case of a capture 
by four or a less number, he was to com- 
municate certain signals by exclamations, 
when it was the bounden duty of the other 
three to go to the house and give themselves 
up, in the hope of finding an unguarded mo- 
ment in which not only to relieve themselves 
but their comrade ; but if he should be capt- 
ured by any number greater than four, he 
must communicate other signals, w^arning his 
friends to leave him to his fate. 

We agreed upon a story to tell in case of 
surprise, and each committed every part, that 
there might be no contradiction, but the 
leader was to do all the talking when it was 
possible. We were not to talk above a 
whisper, cough or sneeze w^hen it could be 
avoided, nor group together in the road ; 
but all conferences must be held in covert 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 1 1? 



places. This was about our organization 
and ''plan of campaign/* and we solemnly 
pledged to each other that we would faith- 
fully perform and heartily co-operate in it. 

It was night when these deliberations were 
concluded, and, although but six miles from 
Columbia and only four from prison, we saw 
not a living creature during the day to dis- 
turb us. The sky had cleared off and the 
night came to us bright and beautiful. It 
was Saturday, and soon after dark we began 
to hear in every direction the incompara- 
ble " Ya-hoo ! Ya-hoo ! " and songs of the 
darkies going to see their wives and sweet- 
hearts. We had no idea where we were, 
and but little in what direction from Colum- 
bia. Besides, we had not decided what point 
of our lines we would attempt to reach. 
Three were for any point on the railroad be- 
tween Atlanta and Chattanooga, as most 
likely to be easily reached, owing to the ab- 
sence of any large Confederate force. Chis- 
man was for Knoxville, because he had more 
confidence in the reports of Union men in 
western North Carohna. However, it was 
agreed that we travel west the second night, 
and the following day reach a decision; so 
toward sunset we started. 



Ii8 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



Our course led through the fields, most of 
them in cultivation, but we were not long 
in finding a big broad highway leading 
down, almost in the direction we wished 
to go. Not far off, coming down this road, 
was a negro, singing, at the top of his voice : 

Massa don't know nothin', don't know nothin' — 
Don't know ! don't know !" 

We made up our minds before he reached 
us that he should know something. A con- 
ference with him could do us no harm if his 
race was as faithful as reported, and if they 
were treacherous and would betray us, the 
sooner we found it out the better, as it was 
impossible to get through without their aid. 

Baker stopped in a fence-corner in the 
field, and the rest of us retired a short dis- 
tance. That wonderful song came from a 
wonderful negro, who pitched it to a key 
that probably gave his wife, who lived up 
the river, notice of his coming. 

His melodies were abruptly terminated 
when Baker accosted him. 

Good-evening, uncle. Where does this 
road go to ? * ' 

Down to de ribber, sah.'* 

''Ain't you afraid to be out so late at 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 119 



night, lest those Yankees down at Columbia 
get out and capture you ? ' * 

No, sah. I'se not afraid of dem folks." 

If you should meet one in the road 
here, don't you think you would run ? 

No, sah/' 

Well, sir, I am a real Yankee myself, 
and want your help. ' ' 
Does you?" 

I have three companions over there in 
the field." 

Oh, I mus* be gwine." 

Hold on a minute. We won't hurt 
you. We're your friends." 

^'Oh, I'se not afraid; but I mus* be 
gwine." 

The word ''Yankee" had sent a thrill 
to the fellow's heart, notwithstanding his 
courage, and he kept retiring, first to the 
fence on one side, then to the fence on the 
other side, we following and assuring him of 
our friendship ; he in turn assuring us, with 
resolute zeal, that he wasn't a bit afraid. 

But the fellow was like all others of his 
race we afterward met, easily flattered and 
credulous, and when we once turned the 
key to his heart he was as completely in our 
service as if he had been a brother. 



120 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



Ten minutes afterward he was planning 
what we should do, and where we should go 
to receive the colored folks from Beck's 
plantation, down on the river. 

We went a half mile along the road with 
him, then he led us across the fields, round 
a hill, and into a grove in the rear of a long 
row of cabins. Hither he soon brought not 
less than twenty negroes. 

This may seem to many a reckless adven- 
ture, so soon after our escape; and possibly 
it was, but it seemed then to us unavoidable. 
Trusting our secret to negroes, we felt was 
an experiment that had to be tried, or we 
would not have taken any chances ; for, 
much as we had heard about the fidelity of 
the blacks, none of us felt especially willing 
to risk his liberty, if not his life, in their 
hands. We knew nothing of the topography 
of the country, nothing of the rivers and 
roads, and had hundreds of miles to travel 
in the night-time, without compass, guide, 
or map. We could get no information from 
the whites ; we must therefore have it from 
the blacks. 

Nearly every one of them brought us 
something to eat — a piece of corn-bread, a 
yam, or a bottle of sorghum. They were a 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 121 

little shy at first, but our hand-shaking and 
familiar address soon gained their confi- 
dence. 

This first conference was, in the main, 
like all subsequent ones. As one old wom- 
an came up, we arose and shook her hand, 
she at the same time asking : 
Now, is you Yankees ? 

^^Yes." 

Do Massa Linkum want to free us cullud 
fokes?" 
''Yes.'* 

*'Well, de Lawd bress him; I alius 
thought so." 

This, at the time, greatly impressed and 
surprised me. I had not believed that the 
light of liberty had reached the ignorant 
blacks in the interior of the South. But we 
found it the only subject that interested them. 
They recited many stories and artifices em- 
ployed by their masters to impress them to 
the contrary, but their desire for personal 
betterment was so strong that they had re- 
jected the statements of the whites, and be- 
lieved that their freedom was a necessary 
result of the war. 

As a sample of the means resorted to by 
the Confederates to keep the slaves in igno- 



122 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



ranee and fear of the Federal army, I recall 
the following stories told us by this first 
party. 

Their master had said that the Yankees 
were fighting to take the negroes from their 
masters in the South, to enslave them again 
in the North, where they would freeze to 
death, or were trying to catch them to sell 
them to Cuba for sugar. They also wanted 
them for breastworks in the army, and would 
tie them together, men and women, and 
drive them in front of their white regiments 
in battle. The Yankees often shot negroes 
out of their big cannon for disobedience, 
and would punch out the eyes of those who 
would lie down or try to get away in time 
of battle. 

Such stories were not inclined to promote 
a good opinion of the North among the slaves, 
and, while they were generally disbelieved, 
there can be little doubt but that they had 
much influence in keeping down insurrec- 
tion among them during the war. 

A rod to the left of where I sat with my 
auditors was another group, evidently more 
pleased and interested than mine. I think 
the larger number were blooming maidens, 
who grouped themselves around Chisman, 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 123 



and his discourse was evidently ruinous to 
mine. The gigghng of his crowd, and fre- 
quent outbursts of laughter, suppressed with 
both hands over the mouth, were eminently- 
embarrassing to my sedate remarks, and my 
congregation fell away, one by one, until I 
had not a listener. Goode and Baker had 
had a similar experience to mine. 

Leaning against a tree I listened to Chis- 
man on the Emancipation Proclamation : 

* * Why, there is not one of you boys or girls 
a slave now, if you only knew it. You are 
all as free as the birds. Mr. Lincoln has 
made a law that nobody in this country, 
white or black, shall be a slave any longer ; 
and he has called Yankee soldiers enough 
into the field to make a wall around South 
Carolina, and to make your masters let you 
go. We were captured in Virginia while 
going through the country taking the negroes 
away from their masters, and you help us get 
back to our army, and we will be down here 
pretty soon to tell Mr. Beck that hereafter he 
must hoe his own cotton. 

'^As soon as the Yankees reach the ne- 
groes they set them free, and tell them to go 
where they please, and they go up North to 
our cities and farms, and they hire out to 



124 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



work for the man who will give them the most 
money. Some of the boys work on farms, 
some in stores, some in shops, some run cars, 
some go to school and get to be doctors, and 
preachers, and lawyers ; and the girls, they 
don't work in the fields at all up North, but 
go into families, and get five dollars a week, 
and get the money themselves, and all they 
do is to cook, and sew, and play on the piano. 
And, by gorry, you ought to see how the ne- 
gro boys and girls dress up in the North when 
they go to church or picnics. The boys wear 
long black coats, high hats, high white col- 
lars, and gold watches ; and the girls wear 
fine red dresses, and great big feathers and 
red ribbons on their hats, and they ride in 
buggies and carry the sweetest parasols. 

And the colored men save up their money 
and buy fine houses and big farms, and have 
horses and carriages, and servants of their 
own, just like the white people. Then, too, 
when Mr. Lincoln finds an old negro man 
or woman who cannot work any longer, he 
gives him a house and all he wants to eat and 
wear. Why, there is a place close to Wash- 
ington where Mr. Lincoln has built houses 
for fifteen hundred old and crippled negroes, 
and is feeding and clothing them. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 125 

I And it's all a lie about you having to go 
into the Yankee army. The white people 
tell you that to scare you. You do as you 
please about it. The Yankees won't let the 
girls go into the army at all. They want 
them to stay at home and make the clothes 
for the soldiers. 

Mr. Lincoln hires all the boys that want 
to go into the army to fight their old masters, 
and gives them the nicest clothes, all just 
alike ; blue coats with brass buttons all up 
before, black hats with a brass eagle on each 
side, a yellow cord around them, and tassels 
hanging down behind, and the prettiest new 
guns, bright as a new dollar, that have great 
spears on the end to stick the Rebels with. It 
would do you good to see a negro regiment 
in their new clothes, marching under their 
flags, all stepping to the music of a brass 
band. And in battle they fight like devils. 
When they see the Rebel soldiers they give a 
yell and go for them like a cyclone. 

' ' They say they have got a colored general 
over in Tennessee, who rides a horse, and 
commands ten acres of men. [I think this 
last remark was suggested by a story told of 
General Logan.] 

*'Why, you ought not to work another 



126 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



day for your master, unless he pa)^ you for 
it. 

Every one of you boys ought to run away 
before sun-up ; go North and make a lot of 
money, and after the war come down here 
and marry these girls, and take them North 
to live/* 

Afterward, when I suggested to Chisman 
the doubtful propriety of such inflammatory 
stories, he replied : We must have the dar- 
kies for us, and I intend they shall be ' ' ; and 
they were. 

We not only advised, but sought advice of 
them. 

We broke to them our purpose of trying 
to reach our lines in Georgia, which they 
unanimously opposed. 

They urged that we should by all means 
abandon the Georgia route ; maintained that 
the country was full of swamps in the re- 
gion of the Savannah River, that the river it- 
self was impassable without a boat, and that 
no boat could be found. Then there was 
Hood's big army " over there, and, worse 
> than all, the Georgia negroes would not be 

our friends. 

Dey is all Secesh ober dar.*' 

Yes,*' said an old man called Abraham, 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 127 



''you' ens had all better goto Knoxville ; 
dey is no big armies up dat way, and de 
cullud folks am all for de Yankees ; an' I 
was up to Newbury de tuder day, an' I heard 
de white folks talkin' 'bout de tories in Noff 
Carlina, an' dey meant by dat dat dey was 
for de Yankees." 

This conference took place a quarter of a 
mile south of the Saluda River, which proved 
to be the mysterious stream we had met the 
night before, four miles nearer Columbia, and 
we gladly accepted the proposal of these 
people to cross the river here in their canoes, 
as it would be necessary to cross whichever 
route we took, Georgia or Knoxviile. 

We were an hour in getting to the river. 
It was starting and stopping, talking and 
listening, all the way, and even when we did 
get there, and the oarsmen were impatiently 
holding the boat to the bank, some of them 
still hung to us in the hope of hearing some- 
thing more. Every brass button that could 
be spared from our clothes was cut off and 
given them as souvenirs. 
~ Two big burly fellows were in the canoe to 
row us over, and many more would have 
gone if we had permitted. A few united 
strokes shot us to the other side ; the boat 



128 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



was tied up to a log, and the two negroes 
went with us a mile and a half to show us a 
road in the right direction. 

We made good use of our legs until morn- 
ing and were encouraged beyond all expecta- 
tion. Our first adventure with the negroes 
had been a success ; we had plenty of ra- 
tions for two days and some idea of the 
country and distances. 

It was after midnight when we left the 
river, and we must have gone not less than 
fifteen miles before four o'clock, along the 
road leading to Laurens, in a northwesterly 
course. We kept the road, but passed near 
no houses if we could conveniently go round 
them. Two or three packs of hounds, an 
appendage found at nearly every important 
plantation in South Carolina, were stirred up 
during the night, but they made no savage 
demonstrations. 

As soon as the chickens began to crow and 
lights appear in the windows, we turned to 
hide in the thickest woods we could find. 
The leaves were just falling from the trees, 
and we effected our concealment in this way. 
As soon as it was light enough for us to see, 
we would select a secluded spot in the woods, 
gather a few leaves into an old fallen tree- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 129 

top, or among some logs, spread one blanket 
over the leaves, put all our belongings under 
our heads for pillows^ and then lie down 
together on the blanket, and spread blanket 
number two over us, covering our heads 
and all with leaves, except a small hole to 
breathe through. In this manner we slept 
when we could, and listened when we could 
not sleep. I will venture the remark that 
for the first four days and nights out of 
Columbia I never slept one moment; and 
the rest of the party slept but little if any 
more. So intense was the excitement, so 
painful the suspense, so distracted was the 
mind upon subjects of escape, of recapture, 
and of home, that sleep could not find lodge- 
ment. We had not full} made up our minds 
what route we would take. The negroes had 
greatly discouraged us in our Georgia route, 
and between us and Knoxville lay two great 
ranges of mountains, which we could not 
cross upon the roads, though if snow fell 
we could not cross any other way, and it was 
already well into November. For further 
advice for the third night, we again called 
upon some negroes. We found them just as 
ready to help, just as credulous, and, to our 
surprise, of the same opinion about the safest 
9 



I30 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



and most practicable route to take. They 
•reaffirmed the stories of the loyal whites in 
North Carolina and of the disloyal blacks 
in Georgia. This conference cleared up all 
doubts, and when we left there our faces 
were toward Knoxville. 

Twenty- three miles were now between us 
and Columbia, and we had less fear and 
more hope. 

For the next three days and nights nothing 
worthy of special notice happened. 

On the seventh day a little incident oc- 
curred that might possibly be to our credit 
to omit, but, trusting to the liberality of my 
readers and to the weight of extenuating cir- 
cumstances, I shall proceed to give it. 

It was at a point between Newberry and 
Laurens, and, as was our custom, we had 
gone into concealment in the forest before 
daylight. 

When the first one awoke it was after sun- 
up, and there, to the great bewilderment of 
all, within six feet of our heads ran a beaten 
path that showed signs of considerable travel. 
/ What must be done ? What could be done 

in safety ? We felt certain that to be seen 
in South Carolina by a white man was to be 
caught. Here hounds trained to the business 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 131 



of hunting down men were to be found at 
every mile. To get up and move through 
the woods in broad daylight was an expos- 
ure not to be thought of, and to lie there 
by that path seemed one but little less haz- 
ardous. We were in a painful dilemma. 
While we lay there debating in a whisper 
what we should do, Goode whispered, with 
an expression full of meaning : 
Oh, my God ! look." 

In a second every eye glanced to the 
south, and there, within fifty yards of us, 
came a white man along the path, with a gun 
on his shoulder. No time to consult, no time 
to cover faces, no time to resolve; he was 
upon us in an instant. 

Few can realize our feelings. There, th- 
in six feet of us, we saw the end of our lib- 
erty; but a single glance, and it would slip 
away. Heaven never read more thankful 
hearts than ours when he passed by without 
seeing us. He was an old man, and his eyes 
were perhaps a httle dim, or his mind may 
have been more upon squirrels than on 
Yankees, for he carried one in his hand, and 
chased another before getting out of our 
sight. He gave us such a fright that we could 
not think of leaving our tree-top to hunt an- 



132 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



other place; neither could we think of sleep 
any more that day, for, much as we tried, the 
thought of our narrow escape and the possibil- 
ity of another such peril entirely overcame 
our efforts. We lay in great suspense, wish- 
ing for night and watching for men. About 
the fourth hour in the afternoon, which 
seemed to us about the fourth day. Baker 
turned his head from the north, and ner- 
vously whispered : 

'^Boys ! boys ! what shall we do? I see 
that same man coming right back this path.'* 

This time he was a considerable distance 
off when first discovered, and we had time 
to think and determine. After he had passed 
in the morning we discussed his case fully, 
in the light of his having seen us, and unan- 
imously agreed that it would have been a 
desperate case, and required a desperate 
remedy. We might swear him and let him 
go, we might beseech him, we might threat- 
en him, we might force him to stay with us 
till night ; but in either case he might and 
probably would put a pack of hounds on our 
track in an hour after his release. 

I shall never believe it emanated from a 
bad heart when Goode observed: 
Dead men tell no tales." 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 133 



Shall we do that if he sees us? " came 
hesitatingly from Baker. 
'<Do what? " 

'^That which Goode spoke of this morn- 
ing.'^ 

Is it the safest thing?" 
''Yes.'^ 

Then, let us do the safest/' 

What with?'' 

His gun." 

Shoot him?" 
^'No; strike him." 

An innocent man's blood is a heavy load 
to carry through life, but the horror of Rebel 
prisons, and the hope of liberty and home, 
surmounted all other considerations, and we 
were wrought up to a grave resolve, if he were 
so unfortunate as to discover us. Thrice 
happy for us and for him, he again passed us 
by unheeded. 

The boldest thing we did during the trip 
was to pass through the streets of Laurens. 
We were on the road leading to that place, 
and struck a stream of water running through 
its suburbs. In the darkness it appeared like 
a considerable river, and we wandered up and 
down the bank to find a canoe or some avail- 
able stuff for a raft, without success. We 



134 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



were all cowards when it came to the black 
portentous waters of an unknown river. 
Down below the ford, some distance, we 
found a railroad bridge on high trestlework 
stretching over the stream. It appeared to 
us that the only way to get over was to cross 
on the bridge or swim, and as Vv^e did not 
like to try the latter we started to do the 
former, after listening fifteen minutes for a 
guard. It was two o'clock in the morning, 
and everything in silence and slumber, when 
we crawled on hands and knees over the 
bridge and into the edge of the town. Now, 
thought we, it will be just as perilous to go 
round the town as to go directly through it ; 
besides, if we go directly through we can 
keep our road, which we may have much 
trouble to find if we leave it. Off we started, 
one after the other, reaching out for dear life, 
in the middle of a street covered with loose 
sand, making no more noise than four cats. 
A lamp was burning at each street-corner 
and in many of the business-houses. These 
lights were vexatious, but the most embarrass- 
ing feature was the short legs of Lieutenant 
Goode, which were ill adapted to pedestrian 
matches, and unfortunately held the position 
of number two in the march. He was as will- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



135 



ing as could be desired, and his steps as fre- 
quent, but his measures were vastly inade- 
quate to the occasion. Number one rapidly 
extended his interval, and numbers three and 
four closed theirs, and were then unkind if 
not cruel enough to take advantage of their 
longer legs and transpose the vigorous Irish- 
man to the rear. 

But we got through the town of four thou- 
sand inhabitants without any serious diffi- 
culty. Almost in the suburbs, and just after 
resuming our proper places, we came upon 
a half dozen persimmon trees loaded to the 
ground with ripe fruit. Our attention was 
called to them by their delicious fragrance, 
and I, being in the rear, could not forego 
the pleasure of stopping to gather a few in 
my hat. Chisman, being in the lead, was 
vexed at my conduct, and halted the march 
long enough to fire a volley of tender ob- 
servations about the mistakes of nature in 
animal creation. But a handful of persim- 
mons appeased the commander and closed 
the incident. 

Two or three nights after leaving Laurens 
we got into trouble again. Goode turned 
out a negro from his sleep at ten o'clock at 
night and brought him out into a corn-field 



136 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



for a conference. We told the fellow our 
whole story with the usual embellishments, 
but somehow it failed to arouse the customary- 
enthusiasm in him. He heard us without 
any emotion, said his master was very hard 
on them, did not give them enough to eat, 
and that ^ ^ Massa would cut his head off, 
sho*,** if he ever found out that he had given 
Yankees aid. 

This was the first time that we had met 
with discouragement from the blacks, the 
first time they had not manifested pleasure 
in helping us ; it was a time, too, when we 
needed help more than usual, for I believe 
we were entirely out of provisions. 

After much flattery for his prudence and 
caution, we prevailed upon him to promise 
to get us something to eat ; but we must 
leave that field and let him hide us where 
he chose. This we did not hesitate to do, 
for the negroes had been so uniformly faith- 
ful that we had no doubts, and directed him 
to lead the way. Off we started, sHpping 
through the corn and over fences, till we 
reached the barn-yard. We had never been 
hidden about buildings before, and such a 
retreat was not altogether in accord with our 
ideas of safety, yet it must be all right in a 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 137 



friendly negro, and when he unlocked and 
opened the door to a log barn we followed 
him in without question. 

The floor of our apartment was stuffed full 
of unbaled cotton, excepting a little space 
near the door, and the man requested us to 
lie down and be perfectly quiet until he 
came again. He then went out, shut the 
door, and went away. The cotton was so 
soft, so bed-Hke, that we all went to sleep 
and took quite a nap. When we woke up 
the negro had not yet returned. Suspicion 
began to creep upon us. What could delay 
him so long ? We listened, pulled our way 
through the cotton to the cracks in the barn 
and looked out; but saw nothing, heard 
nothing. We were not more than three or 
four hundred yards from the planter's house, 
and there was a light in the window, though 
every negro hut was as dark as night. Could 
it be possible that the rascal had either aban- 
doned or betrayed us ? We could imagine 
no excuse for the long delay. If they had 
nothing to give, why did he not return to 
report ? If they did have something to give, 
they had had plenty of time to prepare it. 

The more we thought of it, the more fright- 
ened we were, and we all decided to leave 



138 SEVEN iMONTHS A PRISONER 



the barn and negro at once. We put on our 
accoutrements, picked up our sticks, and 
were ready for the march. When we tried 
to open the door — ^^Ye gods!*' it was 
locked on the outside. 

* ' No, no, ' * said two or three voices at 
the same time, '^it is not locked — he only 
closed it.'* 

In an instant we were all pushing at that 
door as if it were coming in to crush us. Why 
we were so frenzied, why we crowded each 
other so, or why we did not combine our 
strength against it, I can give no reason now; 
but there was such distraction, such individ- 
ual resolution to get out of that prison, that 
all reason was blind. We crowded around the 
door, pushing and blaming each other ; dived 
into the loose cotton to the wall, hunting 
some hole for escape ; then on top against the 
loft, with back and shoulder, we lifted with 
all force at the boards loaded heavily with 
hay ; then back again to the door, where we 
accused each other of being guilty of know- 
ing that the fellow locked the door, or of 
thinking the negro treacherous, without hav- 
ing the courage to say so. Each one felt 
that the other was responsible, or ought to 
be, for getting us into the trap, while the 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 139 

truth was we had all gone in without a suspic- 
ion. We were taken in/' beyond all doubt. 
The door was locked, and for what purpose ? 
Certainly to keep us there until he returned; 
and if he intended to return as a friend, why 
deem our confinement necessary ? The case 
seemed clear; he had locked us there in that 
stronghold until he could gather force enough 
to capture us. If we ever got out of that 
barn safely, we would never trust another 
negro ! — — \ 

It seemed fully an hour after our suspicions 
were aroused before we heard footsteps ap- 
proaching the barn. Tramp, tramp, tramp, 
they came, a half-dozen of them, wdth dogs 
growling around. Our hearts leaped to our 
mouths as the leader faintly whispered. 
Shall we fight them ? ' ' Nobody answered, 
but we trembled from head to foot as the rusty 
lock creaked outside. We stood ready to be 
delivered when the door swnang back. When 
it was opened, in stalked Joe, wdth four other 
black men, armed to the teeth — with corn- 
bread and roasted sweet-potatoes. Joe was 
acting in good faith all the time, and tried 
to explain his absence by saying that there 
had been a light in his master's window, and 
that they could not safely proceed with their 



I40 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



cooking until the white folks were all in bed. 
I think, however, from Joe's manner of con- 
versation, that it took him about all the time 
he was gone to stir among the negroes and 
get back. We felt so good when we learned 
that the fellow had not been false that we 
did not even scold him for the fright he had 
given us ; besides he had made considerable 
amends bv the good quantity of excellent 
potatoes. AVe left there that night, however, 
firmly resolved never to get into such another 
snare, even if negroes did propose it. 



VI 

Our principal want the first few days out 
was meat. We could get from the negroes 
almost everything else we needed in suffi- 
cient quantities, but of meat we got none of 
any kind, from the fact that they had none 
themselves, nor had they, as a general rule, 
had any for two years, in consequence of the 
demands of the army. Our appetites cruelly 
teased us night and day for something to sup- 
ply muscle. To meet this demand, two or 
three times, we visited hen-roosts with ^ ^ felo- 
nious intent," but were each time disturbed 
by dogs, and out of distinguished considera- 
tion for the rest and quietude of these quad- 
rupeds, we forebore any further enterprises 
of that sort. But a capital idea struck Goode 
one night, as we came upon a flock of geese 
sitting in the road. 

^^Say, boys ! let's have a goose for to- 
morrow." 

We could almost taste the savory senti- 
nel of Rome " in the very mention of him. 
Certainly, everybody was agreed, and the 
141 



142 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



leader led us back the road to prepare for a 
capture. The geese were sitting so close to 
a house that it was thought safer for us to 
drive them up the road out of hearing of 
the people. So at it we went, whispering 
^^shoow, shoow, shoow," but the offended 
family, instead of walking quietly off at com- 
mand, set up an uproarious *^hut, tut, tut, 
tut,*' which succeeded in repulsing us com- 
pletely. We fell back a few rods for another 
council, and this time it was decided that we 
should walk up abreast and simultaneously 
fire a volley of clubs into their ranks. Our 
walking-sticks were the very things, heavy 
enough to be deadly, and they were used. 
Whiz went the canes, bang against the fence 
one or two of them, and off went the geese, 
noisier than before, not one of them harmed. 
It was too bad, but enough to frighten us all 
away but Goode. The temptation was too 
great for the Irishman ; he could not give 
up his goose for to-morrow," and instead 
of running off up the road with the rest of 
us, he gathered his stick, and, singling out 
his gander, went for him. Up by the barn- 
yard gate they went, now across the road, 
now down the lane by the house, Goode's 
diminutive pot-legs plying vigorously, and 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 143 



the old gander flapping and flopping, and 
making the night-silence shake with his 
quack, quack, quack." Just as the enthu- 
siastic young man was about to capture his 
prey, near the yard-gate, suddenly, like a 
peal of thunder, a pack of hounds broke 
from a kennel upon him. We heard the 
attack several hundred yards up the road, 
and anxiously awaited the result. The won- 
der is that the dogs did not tear him to 
pieces, for he took the right course to that 
end. Hardly had we turned about when we 
saw the frightened Irishman come flying up 
the road, a half dozen hounds at his heels, 
snapping and barking, and heard him pite- 
ously calling, in a subdued voice, ^'boys, 
boys," while, with a blanket in one hand and 
his cane in the other, he kept striking furi- 
ously to the right and to the left. As serious 
as was the occasion, gravity had more than 
it could bear. We were all convulsed with 
laughter. 

Drive off the d d dogs! " he cried, 

as he ran into the midst of us, almost out of 
breath; youM laugh to see a man torn to 
pieces, wouldn't you ? " 

The dogs were as much frightened as 
Goode, for as soon as we showed fight with 



144 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



our sticks they retreated rapidly. We called 
Goode Goosey" afterward. 

Meat was plenty enough after we learned 
how it was to be had. South Carolina, 
poor as it is for agricultural purposes, sup- 
plies a good many pigs, and they were fat 
and fine in the fall of 1864. A family of 
darling little porkers, weighing fifteen or 
twenty pounds each, might have been found 
almost any night, asleep with their mother, 
in a fence-corner or pen. It was a trifling 
matter to slip up and seize one of the little 
sleepers by the hind-legs and dash his brains 
out against the ground before he had time to 
squeal, or to take a heavy stick and knock him 
to his eternal sleep without waking him from 
his temporal. Then it was easy to bleed 
him with a jack-knife, and just as easy to 
carry him to the woods, skin, and cut out of 
his tender flesh whatever was desirable, and 
leave the carcass to the crows. Before going 
under the leaves for the day, and as soon as 
it was light enough to see we would provide 
a couple of stones, three inches in diameter, 
a tin cup of water, and quite a bundle of 
dry fagots from the bushes round about. 
With these at our heads we would go to 
sleep. During the day, when anyone waked 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 14S 



up an(J wanted something to eat, something 
warm and good, he would turn over on his 
face, set the Savannah tin pan upon two 
stones, place some dry fagots underneath, 
fire them with a match, put in his meat, well 
salted and washed, and in half the time he 
could get it at home he was eating his meat 
and potatoes, his corn-bread and gravy, with 
epicurean pleasure. This tin pan was a real 
treasure. We could fry meat, warm pota- 
toes, and make scorched-bread coifee in it, 
all in the same half-hour, without washing. 

One afternoon, a few miles northwest of 
Greenville, S. C, from our hiding in a large 
secluded wood, we saw a negro riding along 
a path and accosted him. He was delighted 
to meet us, and became so interested that 
before he left he requested the privilege of 
entertaining us at dinner that evening in the 
woods, near our place of concealment. We 
accepted. 

The dinner was to be served at 9 p.m. 
He was a yaller man" named Martin. 
Later in the afternoon Martin returned to 
us with the information that his boy Moses 
was ^'one of de smahtest boys in de Souf," 
and he had come to request us to allow 
Moses to join our party ; he wanted him to 



146 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



go Noff to git larnin'." Not wishing to 
offend him, with a dinner in promise, we 
consented. 

After graciously thanking us, Martin left, 
a very happy man, to prepare his son for the 
journey, saying that he had no shoes, and there 
were none in the family that he could wear. 
We seized upon this to impress upon the fond 
parent that Moses could not possibly go with- 
out shoes, as our route lay across the rugged 
mountains for more than a hundred miles. 

The truth was, we never for a moment 
intended that the boy should go with us, 
as we believed a negro would be a serious 
impediment to us among the loyal whites of 
North CaroHna, if there were any such to be 
found. 

When dinner-time arrived Martin came 
for us, bringing with him his son, and pro- 
ceeded at once to tell, in distressful tones, 
that he had been unable to get the boy 
shoes, and that he could not, therefore, be- 
come our companion. We complacently 
expressed our regrets, then followed him to 
dinner. 

Under the hill, in a quiet little nook, we 
joined the dinner-party, composed of four 
middle-aged women and two other men. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER I47 



After the usual salutations we surrounded 
the table, or rather the table-cloth spread 
upon the ground. There were four white 
plates, four cups and saucers, knives, forks, 
etc. ; and to eat there was in the centre a^ 
nicely dressed hen, at one end a cord of 
ginger- bread, at the other a pot of steaming 
rye coffee, with pumpkin pies and other 
things intervening. Everything was well 
prepared and good, and if the merriment of 
our entertainers was to be received as evi- 
dence, we left them with a good opinion of 
Yankee capacity for food. 

Our eyes were as heavy as our haversacks 
that night when we went upon the road. 
Goode was in front, and perhaps suffered 
his mind to recur too much to the little epi- 
sodes of the evening, for he let two horsemen 
ride up within a hundred yards of our front 
before he hissed. To the left was a field, 
to the right an open forest, without any 
bushes or weeds ; but the latter appearing to 
offer the best chances for our escape, Goode 
took it in a twinkling, and we after him. 
Twenty yards from the roadside we fell 
upon our faces, with heads to heels, to form 
the appearance of a log, and lay as still. I 
think the moon was shining, for it was light 



148 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



enough to count the buttons upon the stran- 
gers' coats. 

Chisman's heel struck me in the forehead 
when we heard the ratthng of sabres. These 
belonged to two cavalrymen, and they had 
seen us, too. Just opposite where we lay, 
nearly breathless, they reined up their horses 
and stood gazing in our direction. 

Sam, I'll be if I didn't see a man." 

^' Are you sure ? " 
Yes, Tm sure." 

'^Oh, I guess it might have been a 
cow. ' ' 

''No, sir; I'll be if it wasn't a 

man." 

Well, if it was a man, where do you 
think he is by this time ? " 

'' I don't know, but it was a man, sure." 

*' Well, it was somebody's nigger, if you 
did see one; le's go on." 

We always thought they were afraid, or 
they would have ridden a little way into the 
woods ; but when they rode on they had our 
full approbation. Goode lay for nearly a 
half hour after they left, before he could find 
heart enough to hiss us back upon the road. 
This incident was another stimulus to cau- 
tion. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 149 



We longed much for the loyal whites of 
North Carolina, of whom we had heard so 
much all along the way, and we were now 
very near their border. AVe felt that as soon 
as we placed South Carolina at our backs 
our work would be almost done — that we 
would be nearly home. The night that we 
expected to pass the border we walked with 
perhaps more spirit than on any other occa- 
sion. We pushed right on, through branches, 
over the foot-hills, up the side of the Saluda 
Mountains, until about midnight, when we 
came upon a pillar of hewn hmestone, stand- 
ing four feet out of the ground, upon the 
summit, on the south face of which was in- 
scribed ''S. C, 1849," and on the north 
face, ^^N. C, 1849." 

The nearer we approached North Carolina 
the more we had been assured of the loyalty 
of the people of the mountains, and that we 
would be safe when we got out of South 
Carolina. We merrily shook hands all 
around at the boundary stone, rested a few 
minutes, then skipped off down the mountain- 
side into North CaroHna with hearts as light 
as homeward-bound school-boys. 

It was well for us that we could not then 
Uft the curtain that hid from us the events of 



ISO SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



the next twenty days, or we should have felt 
like turning back to prison. 

The first night after entering the State we 
had serious trouble among ourselves. We 
happened upon a negro who was going to 
start next morning for Asheville, sixty miles 
away. He was going to drive four mules, 
and fill up his wagon with stripped corn- 
blades with which to feed them. His mas- 
ter had a brother living four miles north of 
Asheville. This fellow entreated us to join 
him, and said he would cover us up in his 
wagon with the fodder, haul us to Asheville in 
two days, take us through town to his mas- 
ter's brother on the other side, getting there 
in the night, unhitch his mules and give 
them to us, steal another one from his mas- 
ter's brother, and we could all ride to the 
Yankees at Bull's Gap, twenty miles beyond, 
the same night. Two wanted to join the 
negro and two did not. Chisman and I 
thought that since we had come so far success- 
fully we had better not assume any unneces- 
sary hazards to save a little labor and time. 
Baker and Goode thought it a rare chance. 
We all had confidence enough in the negro, 
but there were these difficulties apprehended 
by Chisman and myself: There were two 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



thousand Confederate troops at Ashe vi lie, and 
foraging parties were daily putting out on all 
the roads for many miles around. One of 
these parties might seize the fodder of the 
negro and find us underneath it, or might 
search the wagon for contraband goods ; or 
someone might get into the v/agon along the 
road to ride and come down on top of us. 
These were our principal reasons for objec- 
tion ; but, besides, we much doubted that 
the Yankees were only twenty miles from 
Asheville. Then, we also feared that if we 
were captured in company with a negro, it 
would be an excuse for the enem.y to hand 
us over to the civil authorities, to be dealt 
with as kidnappers instead of prisoners of 
war. This last reason led to a spirited dis- 
pute, which, I am ashamed to say, culminated 
in blows, which came very near causing a 
division of the party. The matter was dis- 
missed, or suspended, however, and we jour- 
neyed along as before, leaving the negro 
behind. 

The next night began a chapter of troubles. 
We came to a respectable-looking farmhouse 
sitting very near the roadside. Houses of 
this class we had generally gone around, but 
since we were now in North Carolina, in 



152 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



the land of the loyal, after listening a few 
minutes, the leader decided to move on past 
the house. It was about four o'clock in the 
morning and nothing seemed to be astir or 
awake as we moved up silently in the bright 
moonlight ; but, when just opposite the 
front door, and when least expected, a pack 
of hounds broke from under the porch and 
were upon us in an instant. They were upon 
us too soon and too fierce and numerous for 
us to think of flying, so we hastily rallied 
by fours," to use a mihtary term, placed 
our backs together, thus facing in all direc- 
tions, and began a vigorous battle with our 
clubs. While thus engaged, a man in his 
night-clothes opened the front door within 
thirty feet of us and stood there, afraid to 
speak or retire. We could less stand his 
eyes than the dogs, and immediately broke 
up our position of defence and ran off up 
the road, striking as we went. 

Having reached the woods on the other 
side of the house and driven off the dogs, 
we stopped a moment for consultation. That 
we had been seen this time by a white man 
was certain, and that he had a pack of fierce 
hounds had also been amply shown. It was 
also nearly morning, and at daylight our 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 153 



tracks could be easily recognized and scented. 
Again, what must we do ? Everybody will 
say as we did: Why, leave the road and 
get just as far away from there before day as 
possible, and in as puzzling a manner as 
possible. ' ' 

At a short distance we came to a brook 
flowing across the road. We went up the 
stream perhaps a half mile ; then, to elude 
the dogs, stepped into the water and waded 
down to the starting-point and to about 
half a mile beyond, where we left the water 
for the fields bordering and in sight of the 
road, which we kept as our guide till morn- 
ing. 

We labored hard for an hour and a half, 
and I think we must have walked or run at 
least five miles in that time ; and we might 
have gone on even farther had we not come 
to a cross-roads, where there were a few un- 
important houses about, including a black- 
smith's shop and country store and, a short 
distance to the southwest, a rich-looking 
mansion, with two negro huts in the back- 
ground. It was these negro huts that induced 
us to stop, for they had become distressingly 
scarce along the road ; so much so that for 
the last two nights we had been bothered 



154 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



about getting enough to eat ; and, as we ex- 
pected soon to enter the heart of the Blue 
Ridge, this was perhaps the last opportunity 
we should have to get aid from the negroes. 
Somehow or other the good Union people 
we had heard so much about were always a 
little ahead. 

We went into concealment as near to the 
huts as we dared and spent another day of 
extraordinary suspense and anxiety. Every 
dog that barked to the south of us was a 
hound following our trail ; every squirrel 
that leaped upon the leaves was a man's foot- 
fall. Nobody had anything to eat but 
shelled corn, yet nobody got hungry that 
day ; none of us had slept a moment the 
night before, yet nobody's eyes were closed 
or ears stopped for the twelve long hours we 
lay in a fallen chestnut tree-top. If one 
turned over or stretched out his legs, or drew 
them up so as to rustle the leaves, his three 
companions would rail at him. Although 
concealed in the midst of a forest, in an 
excellent place, and, perhaps, not a human 
being within a quarter of a mile all day, we 
could not get rid of our fright ; for those 
two eyes that had looked at us from the door 
the morning before, followed, haunted, and 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 155 



Stared at us all the time. They were in our 
eyelids, they were under the blanket, they 
v/ere in the azure sky, everywhere, like devil- 
ish sentinels to ensnare us. But when night 
came we still lay under our leaves, unmo- 
lested by either dogs or men. 

About ten o'clock our leader, with number 
two, started for the huts, dodging through the 
corn as but few times before. The expedi- 
tion came near being abandoned after all, 
on account of our fright the morning before ; 
but, fearing we could find nothing to eat in 
the mountains, we entered upon it as our 
last chance. A negro was found without 
much effort, and led out into the field for a 
consultation. For ten minutes after the par- 
ty joined him he was frightened out of his 
wits, if he ever had any. 

He was really a very stupid fellow with 
an impediment in his speech, which made 
it difficult to understand what he said. V/e 
made out, however, that the community was 
in a state of excitement over the appearance 
of four supposed Yankee fugitives, in the 
early morning before, at Massa Ross's,'' 
and that Captain Pace, of the Home Guards, 
had his company out upon the roads that 
very moment watching for them ; and more- 



156 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



over the boy had a brother, Reuben, who 
' ' knowed a heep moah ' ^ and could tell us 
all about it. 

" And where is Reuben ? " 

Lawd bless you, he's on gua'd wid a gun 
watchin' at de cross-road foah de Yankees.'* 

Who put him there? " 

Massa Cap'n Pace. And I got to take 
his place in a half ouah.'* 

The fellow said he would go and tell Reu- 
ben about our being down in the field, and 
he knew that Reuben would come to us, 
* * for he do want to see de Yankees de 
wust.'* 

We dismissed him after exacting from him 
a promise to break the secret to none but 
Reuben, and told him to send Reuben to us 
at the water-gap. A little doubtful of Reu- 
ben's admiration for Yankees, from the fact 
that he was standing guard to capture them, 
we withdrew fifty yards from the gap and 
lay down under some bushes to await de- 
velopment. 

The night brought us the confirmation of 
our fears that the country was all astir over 
the appearance of men supposed to be Fed- 
eral soldiers. Would it be prudent for us 
to he within gunshot of the enemy and wait 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 157 



for a negro to stack his gun and visit us, the 
very objects of his alarm, as a friend? If 
ever so desirous of helping us, how could 
he, with any safety to himself or us, in the 
very presence of the enemy, who were likely 
to call him at any moment for duty ? But 
before us frowned the inhospitable moun- 
tains, more than a hundred miles across, and 
we could not think of entering them the 
last of November with scarce a pint of shelled 
corn to the man. Then, if we attempted to 
march that night without more reliable in- 
formation than we had received, what mo- 
ment might we not expect to be fired on or 
halted by some lurking lookout ! 

Under these discouraging circumstances 
we smoked and waited for the coming of 
Reuben, while the sharp, shrill notes of 
countless katydids poured forth unceasingly, 
reminding us of the whippoorwills of the 
Rapidan, and adding much to our loneli- 
ness. 

^'Listen," said Baker. ^^I hear some- 
body tramping through the stubble. It may 
be Reuben." 

'^Yes; I hear it plainly," responded all 
three; and soon the form of a monstrous- 
looking individual was seen slipping across 



158 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



the field. Straight to the water-gap he went 
and whistled a few times gently. 

Satisfied that it must be Reuben, we went 
to him. He was a very different man from 
the one who had been there before. Reu- 
ben was forty years old, he said — a laugh- 
and-grow-fat sort of a darky, round, and 
full of vanity ; a regular Count Fosco, all 
the time in a silly laugh. In a perfect con- 
vulsion of laughter he seized our hands, two 
at a time, and gave them each a regular 
lover's squeeze, holding on and crushing 
away for a minute or two. 

*^What is the matter with you?" in- 
quired Chisman, a little piqued. 

^'Why, you see, ole massa — ha, ha, ha, 
ha — old massa — ha, ha, ha, ha — has me 
tryin' to kotch you gemmen, for two hours 
— ha, ha, ha, ha . " 

^'Well hush up, you fool. Quit your 
laughing and tell us about it," rephed Chis- 
man, rather vigorously. 

What ! Kotch you gemmen ! Why, 
sah, I'd radder kotch my grandmudder run- 
nin' from de debbil — ha, ha, ha." 

But, sir, we beg of you to quit laughing 
so, for someone may hear you and it may 
lead to our capture." 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 159 



What ! Yoa capture ! Why one of you 
gemmen might take a big rock and run ebry 
man home Massa Cap'n Pace's got, and me 
too, if I was on gua'd like I was. Ha, ha, 
ha, ha." 

We were all out of patience with Reuben 
before we got enough laughter out of him to 
enable him to talk intelligibly. Then he pro- 
ceeded in his way to tell us, as his brother 
had in part, how Massa Ross had seen four 
men, whom he took for Yankees, pass his 
house a Httle before daylight that morning. 
Captain Pace had been notified of this fact 
and had called out his company of men to 
watch for us that night, and had been assured 
by Ross that the strangers could hardly have 
passed the cross-roads, up by my massa' s," 
before hght ; and it was along the road from 
the cross-roads to Ross's that fifteen men were 
posted with guns to watch for somebody — 
evidently us. 

The war having called every able-bodied 
male between sixteen and sixty into the 
army, the remaining old men and boys over 
the country were organized into emergency 
companies, and armed to repel raids, sup- 
press insurrections, and for such other emer- 
gencies as might arise. 



i6o SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



Pace was the captain of one of these com- 
panies, and his actions on this occasion, per- 
haps his first official duty, were ludicrously 
described by Reuben. He said the cap- 
tain was mounted on an old white horse, 
and galloped from post to post, armed with 
a sabre, two revolvers, and a shot-gun, and 
once had a piece of artillery mounted behind 
him, but he took that back. 

To be sure of a force adequate for the 
capture of four disarmed Yankees, the gal- 
lant Pace had called three or four trusty ne- 
groes to supply the places of absentees. Two 
or three times the brave captain rode up to 
Reuben with : 

Now, Reuben, remember to ^halt' them 
three times, and if they don't then stop, fire 
at 'em and aim low. Look carefully and be 
still, and if we don't catch the rascals to- 
night, why, call me a coward." 

Reuben was just the man for us to see, for 
he had intelligence enough to advise and 
humor enough to cheer us. His first advice 
was not to think of trying to travel that 
night. He did not know how far the report 
had spread about there being Yankees in the 
country, and the Rebels might be on the 
lookout for us at some other point ; people 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER i6i 



were likely to be unusually watchful that 
night, anyhow, and he wanted to talk with 
us a long time," and knew a place to hide 
us, for the next day, ^Hhat would puzzle our 
shadows to find us." We decided to remain 
as he advised, and the next thing was some- 
thing to eat. For thirty-six hours we had 
had little but shelled corn, and now that 
we had agreed to lie over a day, and to be 
so securely hidden, we began to feel some 
promptings concerning a change of diet. 
Upon this point we sobered Reuben effect- 
ually, for we treated of a subject that vitally 
interested him. 

Can you give us something to eat, Reu- 
ben ? We're mighty hungry. ' ' 

Oh, yes, sah ; git you something to eat, 
sho ; but, gemmen, massa mighty hard on 
us ; doesn't gib us hardly nuffin to eat; but, 
gemmen, you shill have plenty to eat, if I 
has to steal fo' you — and, golly, I'se good 
at dat." 

Then, remembering that he had been with 
us an hour, and that they might miss him up 
at the cross-roads, and involve him in sus- 
picious circumstances, he hurried us off to a 
large shelving rock, covered with a chestrrut- 
tree top, a place familiar to other darkies of 



l62 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



the plantation, and leaving us there, said 
that if he could not come again soon with 
something to eat, he would send another 
colored man. 

Chuckling over the good joke of standing 
guard for us and hiding us, all in the same 
hour, Reuben started in a bear's gallop down 
the declivity to his post of duty, and we 
heard nothing more from him until after 
midnight, when he returned with a small 
piece of bread and three cold potatoes. 

He explained that under the condition of 
things about the house it was unsafe for him 
to cook, but promised that next morning, in 
preparing his own breakfast, he would ar- 
range bountifully for us. He remained but 
a few minutes, and we did not see him again 
until two o'clock the next afternoon, when 
he came slipping to us with six roasted sweet 
potatoes in the bosom of his shirt, and a 
multitude of apologies. 

Neither the dinner nor the apologies were 
satisfactory. The promised breakfast had 
not come at all, and the late dinner was 
vastly inadequate to appease our hunger. 
We heaped complaints upon him, said that 
he had induced us to remain under promise 
that we should be provided for, and that we 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 163 



were now hungrier than when he met us. 
He renewed his promise that at night w^e 
should be well supplied, and soon took his 
leave without a single laugh during his 
visit. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent in 
discussing, in whispers, the comparative 
excellence of various foods. All the luxuries 
of the land were summoned before our 
imaginations. 

We had a good time flirting with our 
fancies, but the outcome was not of a 
character to bring relief to our appetites. 

About eight o'clock Reuben returned, with 
his brother and two women, bearing a small 
quantity of bread and potatoes and a pot of 
cabbage boiled vrith bacon, but by some 
misfortune the bacon had been lost in their 
journey through the w^oods — so they said. 

Golly, gemmen," said Reuben, we's 
got you's a pot of mighty good cabbage — 
we wus gwine to hab it for dinner to-morrow, 
but my wife said she'd cook it for youens." 

There was the cabbage, submerged in the 
liquor and still warm and delicious. Too 
hungry to empty it into our tin pan or to 
make wooden forks to lift it out, too hungry 
to wait a moment for polite preparation, into 



1 64 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



the liquor we went with thumbs and fingers, 
and they continued to go in and out with 
astonishing rapidity. 

Big three-hundred-pound Reuben stood 
near by, dumb as a sheep before her 
shearers, * ' to see such a rapacious onslaught 
upon his pot of cabbage. He felt so sure 
that it would be enough for our suppers that 
when he saw it so hastily disappear, to be 
closely followed by the last of his bread and 
potatoes, he seemed to regard us as super- 
natural beings and surely as unwelcome 
guests. The poor fellow and his friends 
seemed much embarrassed, but said it was 
all they could spare ; and perhaps it was. 

It was but six miles to the gap where 
Green River debouches from the peaks of 
the Blue Ridge, and where the road upon 
which we were travelling crowds between 
the river and the cliff in its course to Ashe- 
ville, and where Reuben had informed us 
that the Confederates maintained a guard for 
the arrest of deserters and refugees. Eight 
miles farther on, at the village of Flat Rock, 
according to Reuben, was a military post, 
where a considerable force was kept for 
police duty throughout that mountain 
district. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 165 



He gave us directions how we might avoid 
both of these places. 

Disappointed, and discouraged in not 
being able to recruit our provisions, we 
decided to resume our journey with nothing 
in our haversacks but some corn we had 
parched through the day, trusting in Him 
who feedeth the ravens to show us some- 
thing that would sustain hfe. 

Captain Pace lived on the road yet before 
us, half a mile, and Reuben thought it 
judicious not to pass along by his house. 
We were disposed to act on his suggestion 
and bade our friends farewell, with no 
intention of disturbing the gallant warrior 
resting from his labors of the night before, 
if possible. So we pulled off over the hill 
until blockaded by ledges and laurels, and 
then went down in the valley near the road 
and tried it, but the briers and bushes 
confronting us there induced us to take 
the road by the gentleman's house at all 
hazards. 

It was close at hand when we stepped 
into the highway, after ten o'clock. 

We stopped several minutes to listen, but, 
seeing no light and hearing no noise, started 
quietly to pass. It was with a feeling of re- 



1 66 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



lief that we cleared the house and stable 
without disturbing even the dog, and the 
leader was beginning to set his feet down 
with assurance, when suddenly he recoiled 
even back to number two, at the appearance 
of a man in his front, not twenty feet 
away. 

So suddenly did this undesirable meeting 
come upon the leader, that he had neither 
time nor power to signal or take to flight. 
Meeting a man face to face upon a public 
highway, within two hundred yards of an 
officer's residence, was an event not pre- 
pared for, because not expected. The halt- 
ing in front without signal caused the inter- 
vals to be closed up in an instant, and there 
we stood, breast to back, stiff and straight as 
four statues. The man was evidently as much 
frightened as we were, for, after halting a 
moment, he began to shy round us as far as 
the fence would let him, and when directly 
opposite our flank and still stepping side- 
ways, he stammered out spasmodically : 
W-h-o a-r-e y-o-u ? " 

The leader, slowly stretching forth his 
hand and stick like a spectre, replied, in 
ghostly, guttural tone : 
M-o-v-e o-n.'* 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 167 



The man picked himself up like a steel- 
trap and made an admirable flight up the 
road, where he precipitately entered Pace's 
gate and front door, and we never heard 
anything more of him. 

Reuben had prepared us for considerable 
adventure that night, but for only a small 
portion of what was in store. 

Six miles ahead was the Green River Gap, 
which if we found guarded, as we expected, 
we must pass by, closely hugging the river. 
Flat Rock and the pickets had to be passed 
by taking to the woods. 

After our thirty-six hours' rest we hurried 
on with good speed, and two hours brought 
us beneath the frowning heights of the Blue 
Ridge. 

We found Green River a small stream 
with rocky bottom and swift, noisy current. 
A wooden bridge across the stream was 
reached a short distance from the Gap, which 
Reuben had informed us was not guarded, 
and, having confidence in his statement, we 
ventured over it after a slight reconnoissance. 
Across the bridge, our road put off a short 
distance to meet another highway that came 
there to get through the mountains, then 
curved round to the pass and narrow defile 



1 68 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



described to us as the guards' station. As 
we approached the spot, we saw a flickering 
light by the roadside. 

From our point of view the river and the 
road at the fire seemed almost one, and our 
hearts grew faint. 

Mountains are dismal things in the night. 
There they were before us, apparently reach- 
ing half-w^ay to heaven, and forming what 
seemed to us at that moment an unsur- 
mountable wall between hope and home. 
To scale their rugged heights in the night 
was out of the question. 

To pass that bayonet in the road was 
very full of peril, and would not have been 
attempted if there had been any other course 
open to us. But there was none ; and cling- 
ing to the river, to the very water's edge, 
we glided like a mist up the stream, squat- 
ting at every roll of a pebble or crack of a 
weed. 

We approached within a hundred feet of 
the guard, rested upon our knees, watched, 
listened, and whispered. 

The soldier had a little fire built against 
the side of the cliff, and was sitting with 
his back to the river, his head resting upon 
his hands and knees and his gun lying across 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 169 



his lap, as if asleep. In this position we 
watched him five minutes, then decided to 
try to slip by him. 

At it we went, sliding and dragging our- 
selves along, feeling every inch of the way 
for loose stones or dry weeds, breathing as 
noiselessly as the rocks, with eyes all the 
time fixed upon the man, who might at one 
time have stretched himself up and driven us 
through with his bayonet. 

We thus successfully passed him, regained 
the road, and headed for Flat Rock. 

The moon came up after midnight, and 
when we got into the neighborhood of Flat 
Rock it was well up into the heavens, break- 
ing out ever and anon through the hurrying 
clouds. We left the road for a mile-and-a- 
half pull through the woods in passing the 
village. The tangled underbrush and rough 
surface we encountered made our progress 
so slow and difficult that we became much 
discouraged, and two or three times con- 
sulted whether we should not brave the road. 
But after crossing one that led to the right, 
Chisman and Goode, who were in the rear, 
came rushing breathlessly forward with the 
information that we had come near running 
over a man sitting by the road, Chisman 



170 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



averring that he could have struck him over 
with his cane if he had had a mind. This 
incident served to make us continue our 
course through the woods. 

Thus we kept on until we felt assured 
that we had cleared the village, but our anx- 
iety to reach the neighborhood of Hender- 
sonville that night, where Reuben had told 
us we should find some negroes and food, 
might have misled our judgment. At all 
events v/e entered the road too soon. 

Ahead of us a short distance we at once 
perceived in the moonlight an old dilapi- 
dated building of some sort, sitting by the 
roadside. We stopped and listened several 
minutes, as was our custom, but upon hear- 
ing and seeing nothing, went along unsus- 
piciously in our regular order. But there 
were eyes upon us much nearer than we 
thought. The old building sat with its end 
to the road, and very near it, like a toll- 
house, and just as the leader came up with 
it — I tremble now as I write it — out stepped 
four men at our very side. The moment 
our eyes fell upon them we saw that one 
had a sword at his side, and the other three 
had cartridge-boxes on. Of course we all 
stopped mechanically, for the surprise had 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 171 

paralyzed us. The man with the sword 
spoke : 

'^Good-morning, gentlemen.*' 
The leader responded, Good-morning, 
sir." 

' ' Are you travelling ? ' ' 
''Yes, sir." 

" Where are you going ? '* 
" Going home, sir." 
^' Where do you live ? " 
"Up in the north part of Henderson 
County." 

" You are soldiers, I suppose? " 
"Yes, sir." 

" What regiment do you belong to ? 
" Eighteenth North Carolina." 
" Where is your regiment now ? " 
"It's at Charleston." 
" Who's your colonel now ? I believe I 
don't know." 

" James Dawson." 

"Were you all in the fight at John's Isl- 
and the other day ? ' ' 
" Yes, sir." 

"Oh, yes, I believe your colonel was 
wmnded there — wasn't he? " 

" Well, I don't know whether you would 
consider him wounded or not ; his horse was 



172 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



killed and fell on him and bruised him bad- 
ly, so that he has not been on duty since." 

And so the questions and answers pro- 
ceeded in a friendly spirit for some time, 
until I began to recover, and feel some hope 
that he might let us pass. Every question 
was promptly answered, and not the shght- 
est disposition shown by our inquisitor to 
challenge the truthfulness of the answers. 
Our scheme was working well, as we thought, 
but as we began to indicate a start the offi- 
cer drew his sword and said, ^^Well, we'll 
keep you till morning, anyhow." 

I was resigned ; so was Chisman and 
Baker ; and everybody else would have been 
under the circumstances but Goode. He 
alone saw the opportunity. Little did we 
think, as his short legs vexed us in the streets 
of Laurens, or as we often laughed at him 
about the gander, that he was yet to be our 
deliverer. He stood behind, dumb as the 
rocks, until he saw that he was going to be 
surrendered ; then he bolted back the road 
like a wild horse, the rest of our party fol- 
lowing at the same pace. We heard the 
officer crying out, Halt ! halt I " and com- 
manding his men to get their guns, but un- 
heeding we went like the wind till we reached 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 173 



the bushes and plunged into them ; nor did 
we stop then, but onward we hurried, over 
logs and ledges, through bushes and briers, 
stopping not to listen for our pursuers. We 
had heard the negroes say that when the Rebels 
got after the Union men the latter always ran 
to the mountains. Not knowing what better 
to do, we broke for one also. 

It was a spur of the Blue Ridge, known 
locally as Glassy, apparently isolated from the 
general range, and standing off and towering 
a thousand feet above the wooded hills that 
surround it, like a colossal sentinel. To this 
mountain, a mile away, we ran without a 
-single stop. At its base we sat down upon 
a log for consultation. 

It was now about three o'clock in the morn- 
ing. The wind had risen to quite a gale, and 
the clouds were thickening up fast. We 
deemed it certain that our adventure with 
the guard would cause the entire post to be 
aroused and put upon the lookout. 

What direction our road continued among 
the hills or peaks we had not the slightest in- 
formation of. Even where the village lay, or 
whether we had passed it, was impossible to 
determine from the apparently unbroken 
forest. 



174 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



We decided to make no further effort to 
pass the place that morning, but to scale the 
mountain for observation the following day. 
If dogs were to be put upon our trail they 
could follow us in one direction as well as 
the other. 

We were much fatigued by our exertions 
and the excitement of the night, though not 
a single reference was made to our condition 
or the dilemma that involved us. We dis- 
cussed the solution with reference only to 
safety and subsistence. 

Having reached a conclusion, we began 
to drag ourselves leisurely up the side of 
Glassy. The wind was from the northeast, 
and at four o'clock it was raining. At five 
o'clock it was pouring in torrents. At seven 
o'clock snowing. 

We had reached the summit and had been 
standing around the trunks of the trees seek- 
ing shelter for two hours when the snow came. 
Chisman and I were wrapped in our blankets, 
but Goode and Baker stood shivering in 
hardly enough clothing to cover their bodies. 

Everyone was wet as wet can be, and the 
rapidly falling temperature had chilled us 
through and through. It was a blue time. 
For many minutes at a time not a word was 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 175 



spoken as the merciless wind howled and 
swayed the stunted trees over our heads and 
lodged the driven snow in crusts on our sides 
and in our hair. Then Goode and Baker 
said they must have a fire or perish. Chis- 
man and I said they could not have a fire, 
for the smoke would betray us. They gathered 
sticks and logs to the side of a cliff, and would 
have fired them had we not prevented it by 
force. They piteously begged for fire, but 
we sternly refused them. 

In the extremity of human endurance there 
is neither conscience nor compassion j so we 
felt and so we acted. 

Dayhght disclosed to us the condition of 
the country for miles around. To the west 
and north were innumerable wooded hills or 
peaks, with here and there a small clearing, 
and two or three pretentious-looking man- 
sions. But neither the village nor our road, 
which had been our chief purpose in coming 
onto the mountain could be discovered. 

Our failure to discover the line of our road, 
or our position with respect to the village of 
Flat Rock, added much to our discomfiture, 
and it was discussed whether we had not 
better leave the mountain and make our way 
over the wooded hills until we at least found 



176 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



our road, as it was probable we should be 
unable to find it after night. The situation 
was so confounding that we did not decide 
upon anything that day. Our condition was 
truly deplorable. Having had insufficient 
food for three days, and nothing at all to eat 
since the evening before but parched corn, 
exhausted by the heavy night's march, sleepy, 
wet, freezing, driven from our course to an 
unknown mountain by our enemies, lost 
without a guide, compass, or map, and the 
snow coming down as a certain snare to our 
feet, we were in great distress. All the fore- 
noon we lingered about the bleak summit, 
now sitting, now leaning against a tree, now 
walking to another. 

There comes a time in the affairs of all 
men when life loses its value. To us, it 
then seemed near at hand. It was a time 
when the stoutest heart must surrender. 

We must have food, we must have warmth, 
we must have information j and yet it 
seemed that we could have nothing but 
capture or death. 

To have gone from our hiding in South 
Carolina and given ourselves up would 
have been a great trial, but our passionate 
desire to escape, fed as we approached the 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 177 



North by the hope of success, put such a 
consideration in western North CaroHna en- 
tirely beyond even question ; and unsurmount- 
able as the difficulties appeared, such an alter- 
native was not mentioned. 

It ceased snowing about ten o'clock, and 
by noon the clouds had sufficiently broken up 
to let the warm rays of the sun drop down 
upon us for a few seconds at a time, though 
the wind had abated nothing of its fury. 

At one o'clock we all sat down by the 
south face of a sheltering rock, Chisman 
and I wrapped in one blanket, and Goode 
and Baker in the other, and, leaning against 
the rock, actually slept two hours. In the 
meantime the clouds had cleared away, and 
the snow had been rapidly melting ; an hour 
later it was all gone. 

We had neither seen nor heard a human 
being during the day. After all it was a 
question whether the storm had not shielded 
us from dogs and men. 

Refreshed by sleep, our spirits revived, but 
with them came the keen tooth of hunger. 

We wandered about near the summit look- 
ing for chestnuts or wild grapes, but found 
none. 

In the evening we discovered, near the 



178 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



base of the mountain, upon its southwest 
face, a small cove that had in it a clearing 
in which we could see was some sort of 
growing vegetation, that we decided was 
turnips. 

Then we discussed the merits of turnips — 
tender, sweet, juicy, purple- topped turnips 
— there was nothing better under the sun ! 

Observing no house near, the temptation 
grew so strong that about five o'clock we 
determined to slip down through the bushes 
and get some. 

Having arrived within a short distance of 
the patch, we discovered that the crop was 
cabbages instead of turnips; so disappoint- 
ment brooded over us again. 

However, cabbages were good enough, and 
we wanted them as much as we did the tur- 
nips. Goode was detailed to get a supply, 
and he sallied forth, leaving the rest of us 
concealed in the laurel-bushes at the head of 
the cove. He cautiously crawled through 
the pole-and-brush fence, and while engaged 
in cutting off the first head of cabbage a 
white woman hallooed at him from the op- 
posite side of the patch. Her presence be- 
ing entirely unsuspected made the shock so 
great as to cause the Irishman to leave broken 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 179 



in the cabbage the only knife-blade in the 
party, and come rushing headlong back to 
the bushes without the slightest effort at a 
reply to the woman, and with the unique 
exclamation, as he dashed in, ^^And it is 
thim winches that would capture us now.'* 

Meanwhile we had observed from our 
hiding three white women, instead of one, 
who continued to shout after Goode all 
manner of accusations, in a merry, friendly 
spirit. 

The girls stood a few minutes in conver- 
sation, then, laughing and talking loudly 
among themselves as they came, headed 
round the fence in our direction. It was 
quite evident from their manner that they 
were coming directly to the bushes where we 
were. We were not long in deciding what 
to do. If we ran off up the mountain they 
would see us all and give out the fact. The 
three women could not capture us, and, after 
we had talked with them, they could only 
give out the fact. Now was the opportunity 
to investigate the Union sentiment in the 
mountains. To my lot fell the task of lead- 
ing in the conversation. On they came in 
their giggling glee to within twenty feet of 
us, when they stepped into an avenue that 



i8o SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



opened full upon all of us sitting on a log. 
Expecting to see a neighbor's boy, when 
they saw four careworn, repulsive-looking 
strangers, they shrank back and began a 
hasty retreat. Hurriedly leaving the log, I 
addressed them : 

Halloo, girls! Don't be frightened — 
we won't hurt you." 

Who are you? " they inquired. 
^' We are soldiers." 

What kind of soldiers? " 

Confederate soldiers, of course." 
^' Well, you ought to be engaged in better 
business." 

^' What better business can we be at? " 
Picking huckleberries." 
Why, I believe you're a Yankee." 
' ^ No, I ain' t, " said my interlocutor ; 
<^but I'm no Secesh." 

How's that; not a Yankee and not a 
Secesh. What are you ? ' ' 

I believe in tendin' to my own business 
and lettin' other people's alone." 

^^But would you have the Yankees over- 
run the South, steal our negroes, and rob us 
of our property?" 

''Yes, if you don't quit this fightin' and 
killin' . You all fetched on this war. For a 



^ SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER i8i 

few niggers you've driven this country to 
war, and force men into the army to fight 
for you who don't want to go, and you've 
got the whole country in such a plight that 
there's nothin' goin' on but huntin' and 
killin', huntin' and killin', all the time." 

And so she continued to earnestly de- 
nounce the war, and the South as the respon- 
sible agent, until we felt assured that it was 
safe to disclose our identity. 

Then I continued: Girls, I have told 
you falsely. We are not Confederate sol- 
diers, but Yankee soldiers, who have escaped 
from a Rebel prison at Columbia, and are 
trying to reach our lines at Knoxville ; we 
are also very cold and very hungry, have 
lost our way, and, most of all, want to find 
some Union man who will guide us through 
the mountains. Can you help us ? " We 
also referred to running into the guard at 
Flat Rock the night before, which incident 
they had heard discussed during the day, 
and which cleared their minds of all suspi- 
cion that we were impostors. 

By this time our party had all left the log 
and had joined the girls, who stood close to- 
gether in the open. 

We came together as old friends meet, 
with exuberant hope, and a feeling of utter 



1 82 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



dependence on the one side and an earnest 
sympathy on the other. They did not de- 
clare their sympathy nor avow their friend- 
ship, but there was in their simple manner, 
in the silent language of their eyes — that 
could not be false — that which assured us 
from the outset that they were absolutely 
true. 

They at once expressed themselves confi- 
dent of being able to find us a guide to 
Knoxville, and said they would do all for us 
they could. Martha, who generally spoke 
for the sisters, then addressing the youngest, 
a bright-eyed girl of sixteen, said : ^^AHce, 
run down to the house and see if you can 
get something for these gentlemen to eat." 

The shy young girl, who had not spoken 
a word, received the request with a merry 
sparkle of the eye, that bespoke her pleasure 
in the doing, and, turning quickly about, 
sprang away down the mountain. She went 
as only the cheerful go, skipping with nim- 
ble feet over logs and ledges, swaying her 
lithe body through the bushes, intent upon 
her cherished purpose of speedily bringing 
relief. 

While Alice was gone, Martha proceeded 
to tell us how thickly we were beset with dan- 
gers, and that she thought she could extricate 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 183 



us, stating that there were about sixty Con- 
federate soldiers at Flat Rock, who were 
scouring the country for the arrest of desert- 
ers. Half the community were zealous Reb- 
els, and they were under suspicion of being 
in sympathy with Yankees, and were closely 
watched. Their brother Alex had deserted 
from the Confederate army, and had been 
concealed by them for eighteen months, and 
they would undertake to conceal us until 
they could procure a guide — if we would 
promise to be careful and do as they direct- 
ed in all things. We felt like falling at her 
feet. 

In the meantime Alice returned, bearing 
in her dainty checked apron two thick corn- 
cakes, baked three in a skillet, with the 
prints of the baker's fingers in the upper 
crust, even yet a little warm from the din- 
ner, and having been sandwiched with a 
liberal supply of butter. 

The bread was good enough for a prince, 
but the dear girl made us laugh for joy as 
she handed us each two large red apples, 
large as tin cups, the richest, the juiciest, the 
sweetest queen of the orchard. 

The ardor with which we despatched our 
food impressed them and quickened their 



1 84 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



sympathies in our behalf. ^^Yes," said 
Martha, we will go to-night and see if we 
can't find you a guide, and the weather is 
so cold we will arrange to take you into our 
house after dark. ' * Going into their house to 
spend the night was not in accord with our 
ideas of safety, but we had promised to obey 
directions, and held our tongues. 

It was near sundown when the girls left 
us to prepare for our hiding, and before go- 
ing they pointed out a place where we should 
meet them at dark. 

When they had gone we returned to our 
log in the bushes and summed up the situa- 
tion. It seemed full of hope. Not one of 
the party suggested a doubt of the faithful- 
ness of the girls ; none was felt, nor could 
be felt, from the unmistakable evidence we 
had seen. We entirely forgot our chilled 
condition in our transports of joy in being 
under the care and guidance of friends. 



VII 



The surname of our new friends was Hol- 
lingsworth. There were five sisters, all at 
home. Their only brother, Alex, had been 
forced into the Confederate army, had de- 
serted after six months, and been concealed 
by the sisters for eighteen months, but had 
become so tired of hiding that he had sur- 
rendered himself, returned to the army, and 
was at that time in the trenches at Peters- 
burg, Va. The two older sisters, Mary Ann 
and Elisha, were married, and as their 
husbands were both in the Confederate 
army, they had returned home during their 
husbands' absence. Martha was twenty- 
four, Elizabeth was twenty-two, and Alice 
sixteen years of age. 

Their father and mother were old and 
feeble, and were tenants of Colonel Charles 
G. Memminger, who, from February, 1861, 
to June, 1864, was Secretary of the Con- 
federate Treasury. His palatial residence 
stood but a mile from the Hollingsworth 
home. 

185 



1 86 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



Elizabeth was in the service of the Mem- 
mingers. 

A little after dark, Martha and Mary came 
for us. They had arranged to take us to the 
garret of their dwelling, and told this sort of 
story about their father : They said he was 
an old man and loved the Union, but he 
lived in a Rebel neighborhood, was tenant of 
a Rebel landlord, and had already been ar- 
rested a time or two upon suspicion of har- 
boring deserters and refugees, and if any- 
thing should come of our concealment in 
their house, they wanted their father to be 
able to swear that he knew nothing at all 
about it. They therefore enjoined upon us 
that we should be quiet and circumspect 
about the house unless we had notice that 
their father was away. 

We started for the house, following thirty 
paces behind, with instructions that if we 
heard them shout 'MVho are you?" we 
should quickly hide. Thus they led us up 
in the rear of an old log building that stood 
in the same enclosure with the house, and 
not more than a hundred feet away to the 
south. Here we crouched while the girls 
called up Tige, their fierce dog, and hastened 
into the house with him. In another moment 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 187 



Martha was back with the unwelcome intel- 
ligence that a company of neighbors, all 
Southern sympathizers, were in the house, 
and that we could not enter until they had 
gone. Then she conducted us to the north 
side of the old building, and, gently opening 
the door that faced the dwelling, told us to 
enter, and be as quiet as possible. 

We found the place nearly filled with 
stripped corn-blades, which were quickly 
made into a soft, warm bed. Here we lay 
huddled together for an hour, listening to the 
merry peals of laughter up at the house, w^hen 
a gentle tapping took us to the door, to find 
Elisha (whom the sisters called Lisha) with 
a pot of steaming-hot rye-coffee. Handing 
it, with a tin cup, through the door, she 
hurried back to the house. Our bodies had 
been so long chilled that after drinking this 
hot coffee — quite a pint to the man — our 
nerves went into such a riotous state that 
to prevent a noisy rustling of the fodder 
we had to leave our bed and stand upon our 
feet. We really felt colder than when upon 
the mountains. It seemed as though our 
joints would shake asunder, and our jaws 
pounded away with such persistent energy 
that, despite our situation, it provoked some 



1 88 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



mirth. Chisman afterward affirmed to the 
girls that he had to place his head between 
the logs of the barn to keep his jaws from 
shaking out his teeth. 

The girls were much more exercised for 
our comfort than we were. In fact, our 
condition had so vastly improved that the 
cold but little concerned us, and we should 
have been quite willing to quit our shelter 
for the sharp, crisp night-air, if it had been 
necessary to the forwarding of our journey. 

About eleven o'clock Martha slipped to our 
door to inform us that they had perfected 
arrangements to take us into the house at 
once. This was a story-and-a-half cottage, 
with its front side facing the old building 
where we lay. There was a single door in 
the middle, that opened into a hall, directly 
in front of which rose the stairway. 

She instructed us to draw off our boots, 
and when they began singing at the door, 
with belongings in hand we were to run, one 
at a time, to the door, into the hall, up the 
stairs, and into the left-hand room, making 
the least possible noise ; but if they suddenly 
stopped singing before all had entered, the 
one 671 route should hastily retreat to the 
fodder. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 189 



We put ourselves in order and patiently 
awaited the signal. We had not long to 
wait. Soon there broke from the door indi- 
cated such a stream of melodies as is seldom 
heard away from the mountains ; loud, clear, 
vigorous, ringing and swelling out upon the 
night-air like the chiming of bells, the words 
chosen being those of Dr. Hart's old famihar 
hymn, Come Ye Humble Sinners, Poor 
and Needy. ' * 

One by one we shot up to the house, and, 
as I bounded along, I could but smile at 
the words of the old song, never before so 
well appreciated, and which seemed fully 
as pertinent to the occasion as to the 
person. 

Up the stairs we hurried and into the 
room as directed, and there, " God bless the 
women, every one," in the absence of a stove, 
in the middle of the room sat a large iron 
kettle full of live coals. Falling to our 
knees and bending our half-frozen bodies 
over the genial heat, we felt toward our 
benefactresses all the gratitude our poor 
hearts could hold. 

The singers were Martha, Mary, and Eliza 
beth, while Lisha entertained the visitors, 
and Alice stood guard in the hall to see 



190 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



that none of them came to witness the per- 
formance. 

As soon as we were housed above, one of 
the girls shouted, Oh, let's quit this, it's 
too cold," and through the hall and into the 
room below they ran, scolding the company 
for their vrant of appreciation of the sere- 
nade. 

Fun went on downstairs until midnight 
before the visitors took their leave. Soon 
afterward the girls came upstairs, went into 
their own chamber, rustled about awhile, 
then came on tiptoe into ours. 

Their old mother soon followed, to bid us 
welcome to her house, bearing in her hand 
two letters from her son Alex, who was in 
the Confederate army. 

Sitting upon the floor around the kettle 
of coals, we resumed our discussion of 
the guides. Martha had already told us 
upon the mountain that they were bad men, 
though not by nature — and having been 
forced into the Confederate army, and soon 
deserting, they had been chased about the 
mountains for tvro years, sleeping in caves, 
barns, or wherever they could, getting their 
food from the woods, and by theft for the 
most part ; they had become demoralized, 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 191 



daring, and desperate, and had many crimes 
charged to them. Furthermore, the Con- 
federate Government had a standing offer 
of a reward of ^1,000 for the arrest of the 
leader of the gang, who was the one depended 
on to become our guide. She had also 
informed us that they were well-armed, and 
that their long experience in hiding had 
made them very adroit in eluding their 
pursuers. 

The description given of the men con- 
vinced us that they would make safe guides, 
if not agreeable companions, and we urged 
the girls to make an effort to bring us to- 
gether with that object in view. 

Among the scant furniture of the room I 
had observed that the bed was rather pecul- 
iarly constructed. A temporary staff had 
been nailed to each post, ascending to within 
three inches of the ceihng, and stretched 
over the tops of these staffs was a white mus- 
lin canopy. 

When it was finally decided that we should 
retire for the night, the girls rose and car- 
ried the bed to the other corner of the 
room, thus uncovering a scuttle-hole to the 
garret. Placing a chair upon a table, one 
of them mounted it and drew a ladder from 



192 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



the garret, by which we were requested to 
ascend to our beds. 

We went up, drew the ladder after us, the 
bed below was slipped back to its place, and 
the girls put off to bed — so w^e thought. 
But Martha and Lisha, at that time of night, 
left their home and walked six miles through 
the mountains and back again, in search of 
the guide they had promised. They had 
not intimated to us that they contemplated 
the journey that night, nor had we expected 
it before the following day. 

Without request or promise of reward, 
they made this journey in the night, through 
wild woods infested with prowling guards 
and bandits, and for strangers bound to 
them by no stronger ties than those which 
link the great human family. These girls 
of the mountains, under the stimulating 
spirit of the war, did this, and cheerfully 
did it. 

Next morning, as soon as their father left 
for his work, the girls came up, lifted the 
bed aside, and invited us do^\Tl to breakfast. 

While we ate, Martha informed us of their 
trip the night before, and that the man they 
had gone to see was off with his gang on 
a marauding expedition into Georgia, and 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 193 



would probably not return for a week. But 
it was arranged with his sister that as soon 
as he returned she should bring us word 
whether the brother would see us. 

For four days and nights we remained in 
that upper room and garret awaiting in- 
formation from our guide, amusing our- 
selves in the meantime with old papers and 
books, and entertaining such company as 
was admitted to see us. Delicate as their 
secret was, the girls could not keep it. Every 
trusted friend in the vicinity had notice and 
was over to call on us. Girls curious to see the 
Yankees called every day, and a one-legged 
man with a bottle of white whiskey in his 
pocket also called to pay his respects. 

Upon the third morning I ventured down- 
stairs to get a bottle of ink that was in the 
room below, upon the bureau. Having pro- 
cured it, while carelessly returning and about 
half-way up the stairs I heard the outside 
door open at my back, and, turning around, 
looked the old gentleman straight in the 
eyes. I sprang upstairs to inform the boys 
of what had happened. 

He walked rapidly through the hall into 
the family-room and demanded of Martha 
to know who that man was he saw going 



194 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



upstairs.'' She answered him with a hearty 
laugh that *^it was Alice dressed up in 
Alex's clothes to haul wood. ' ' Whether the 
old man believed the answer or whether he 
thought best not to investigate remains in 
doubt, but that was the last of the inci- 
dent. 

While there I wrote a paper addressed 
*'To any Federal soldiers who may come 
this way," certifying therein what the family 
had done for us, which certificate we all ex- 
ecuted by signing our names, with rank and 
place of service, and left with them as a pos- 
sible protection against our troops. 

In the afternoon of the fourth day the sis- 
ter of our expected guide came over and told 
us that her brothers had returned and would 
see us that night in the mountains, and that 
she and her companion had come to conduct 
us to them. 

A very foolish notion now took possession 
of our girls, for they held that we could not 
leave their house without some sort of a 
social frolic, and they had decided upon a 
candy-pulling. We protested that it might 
lead to our discovery, but all to no purpose j 
nothing short of a candy-puUing would do. 
To add to our nervousness over the matter, 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 195 



it was well known that '^Grandmother*' 
Kerkendal had come to stay all night, and 
she was reputed among the girls to be a no- 
torious gossip ; a Union woman, but so con- 
stituted that she could not keep anything 
she knew, even if the telling would injure 
her friends. 

The girb said they would manage the old 
woman, even if they had to lock her up in 
the closet. So nothing would go but a 
candy-pulling. 

Accordingly, when night came they built 
two big fires below, one in the best room, 
''put on" a gallon of sorghum, and thus 
began preliminaries. 

Grandmother soon became impressed that 
some unusual event was about to happen. 
" What's all this goin's on mean ? " we heard 
her inquire, as she passed from the family- 
room into the best one. 

" Oh, Liza and Jane have come to visit 
us, and we're just goin' to have a little fun," 
answered one of the girls. 

" When I was a gal we pulled wax a heap 
about sugar-makin' time, but we ginerally 
had boys to help us." 

'' Well, how do you know but we'll have 
boys to help us ? " 



196 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



I guess if you git any boys in these parts 
to help you, they'll be mighty little ones." 

The old lady seated herself in the room 
with the girls and, to their great discomfiture, 
proceeded to tell funny stories about pull- 
in' wax " in her girlhood. When their taffy 
was done and poured out in the plates, they 
suggested that she might find it more agree- 
able in the other room, with their father and 
mother, but she thought not. She wanted 
to see if they pull wax now like they did 
when she was a gal." She had not ^^seed 
the like for so long." The mother went in 
and invited the old woman to go into the 
other room with her and let the girls have 
their foolishness to themselves, but the old 
woman declined. The girls, losing their 
temper at her obstinacy, finally requested her 
to go into the other part of the house, as 
they wished to be alone. 

Then they soon had us below, the door 
locked, the windows blinded, one of the 
girls in the yard on picket, and taffy sticking 
to every finger in the room. We had pulled 
so much sorghum at Columbia that we were 
adepts in the business, and astonished the 
girls by our skill in handling it; but when 
Chisman, in showing them a little Columbian 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 197 



science, got a half-pound of soft wax in his 
hair, I thought Alice would go into a spasm. 

We endeavored to keep our fun quiet, but 
sufficient noise reached the ears of the un- 
welcome visitor in the other room to arouse 
her suspicion, and she inquired if she did not 
hear men's voices. Our good mother as- 
sured her that she did not hear any voice but 
that of the girls, and slipped out into the yard 
to tell the picket to caution us to make less 
noise. 

The caution was communicated, but soon 
forgotten, and again the old lady declared 
she heard men's voices, and this time in- 
sisted upon coming into our room to see if 
there were not men in the party. Again the 
good mother interposed, and assured the old 
lady that it would make the girls mad if she 
interrupted them, then hurried out to inform 
the sentinel that we should surely be discov- 
ered if the noise continued. Immediately 
upon receiving this second warning we began 
hasty preparations to leave. 

I shall never forget our parting from the 
Hollings worths. It was not in tears, nor in 
multitudinous acknowledgments, but there 
was a gratitude felt and a sympathy recipro- 
cated that marks but few occasions. They 



198 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



had found us in the last moments of expiring 
hope. They had attended us for days with 
more than sisterly care, and had filled us 
with a new life and a new hope. All that 
we left in return, or could leave, was our sin- 
cere thanks and the written certificate of their 
treatment. Poor, indeed, but all that was 
expected or desired. 

Eliza Vance (for such we will call her) and 
her cousin, who had come to conduct us to 
the guide, led off for the mountains. The 
excitement created by our debut at Flat 
Rock having now subsided, it was not 
thought necessary by our guides to observe 
special caution, as our way led over an un- 
frequented trail through the woods. In fact, 
we had no time to look or to listen if we 
were to keep up with the girls, for they hur- 
ried along with a speed I could never un- 
derstand. They could jump a bigger brook 
and walk a smaller log than any of us, and 
could get up a cliff or over a log while we 
were planning how. 

We covered six miles in about an hour and 
a half As we were silently following the 
girls along a ragged wood crest, Ehza Vance 
suddenly turned back to us and requested 
that we stop till she waked the boys up. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 199 



Then as she proceeded we saw ahead of 
her two dark objects lying upon the ground, 
under the spreading branches of a chestnut- 
tree. Nearing them, she called, ^^Jack." 
Instantly two stout forms sprang to their 
feet, with guns in hand, and shouted, Halt ! 
Who are you ? ' ' 

Why, Jack, you know who I am," re- 
turned his sister. 

What are you doing here? " 

You know. We've brought the Yankees 
over from HoUingsworth's." 

How do you know they're Yankees? " 

Why, they say they are." 
**They are liars. They're nothing but 

d d spies, and w^e'll feed 'em to the 

bears on this very mountain." 

**Come here," he commanded, with a 
savagery unexcelled ; the two meeting us half- 
way, with their guns lying across their left 
forearms, and the locks clicking as they 
came. 

* ^ Who are you, and what are you doing 
here? " Jack demanded. 

He was informed that we were escaping 
Yankee officers in quest of a guide to Knox- 
ville. 

Every word you utter is a lie," he again 



200 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



broke forth. We've learned who you are; 

you're d d Rebels come here to arrest us, 

an-d you may proceed to business.'* 

We promptly chorused a denial. 

*^Drap them clubs, and up with your 
hands," he roared. 

Instantly eight hands were in the air. 
And as Lem stood with his gun at a ready. 
Jack examined our pockets and boot-legs for 
arms, and finding none, growled : 

* ' No arms ; yes, rigged up like d d 

sneaks." 

Then the two withdrew a short distance 
and held a whispered conversation. While 
they held it we had little to talk about. We 
felt we had made a mistake. 

Soon they returned and Jack resumed : 

Well, we feel our safest course would be to 
put you to sleep, but we have decided to try 
you a Httle further. 

^'Put your hands on this gun (holding 
out his musket) and swear that you are Yan- 
kees and not spies." 

We rushed for the gun-barrel, each anx- 
ious to be first, and then Jack proceeded to 
administer a sort of incoherent oath, in 
which he did the principal part of the swear- 
ing, and in which he made it perfectly clear 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 201 



that they would shoot us without benefit of 
clergy if we gave the slightest evidence of 
not being what we professed. 

As we withdrew our hands from the gun, 
Jack commanded Lem to hand us the can- 
teen. Lem complied, and each of us held 
the canteen to his mouth, though, as we 
afterward found out in talking it over, we 
were utterly unable to tell whether we drank 
anything, either whiskey or water. We were 
more concerned about the contents of the 
muskets than of the canteen. 

After the canteen was honored, Jack in- 
vited us to seats on the ground, and dis- 
missed the girls with orders to meet us next 
morning at sun-up, at the Devil's Boot, with 
breakfast for six. He then introduced the 
subject of our visit. He said he had led a 
number of parties through the mountains to 
Knoxville, and could lead us ; but added in 
the most vigorous English that he did not 
believe we had the sHghtest desire to go to 
Knoxville. Our insistence that we had, 
seemed only to invite a volley of oaths; and 
so we listened, and he continued to swear 
until he had worked off his surplus energy. 
Then he stated that if they could be assured 
we were not spies, but Yankees, they would 



202 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



conduct us to Knoxville for $400 in gold. 
AVe didn't haggle about the price, but 
promptly agreed to pay it. Where we were 
to get the gold we didn't exactly know, but 
we promised it all the same, and would have 
promised 34,000 just as readily, and paid it 
for that matter, if we had had the money. 

If any reader should be curious to know 
the general appearance of these men, I would 
say, first fix in your mind an untutored 
man, thirty-five years old, six feet high, 
weight one hundred and eighty pounds, in a 
suit of coarse, home-made clothes ; his skin 
dark, but not as dark as his long hair that 
grew down almost to his eyes, nor as dark as 
his beard that covered most of his face ; his 
black eyes set deep in his head, under a pair 
of heavy, closely knitted brows, and, though 
seldom fixed directly at you, his glare wither- 
ing when it did come. Imagine his wool 
hat all full of holes, his Springfield rifle, bright 
as steel can be, lying across his left arm, with 
his right hand on the hammer and trigger, 
and it will do for a picture of Jack Vance. 

Then think of a younger man, but twenty- 
one, with shorter hair, an almost beardless 
face, and in most ways more honest-looking 
than his brother ; more stoutly built, though 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 203 



not so tall, with a milder eye, a more intelli- 
gent look, and, but for his talk, not easily 
taken for as bad a man ; and this will be 
enough to suggest the outlines of Lem Vance. 

Having met with such uniform kindness 
from the Hollingsworths, our reception by 
the Vances was a surprise ; in fact, for the 
first few hours we devoutly wished we had 
never seen them, and came near blaming 
those who had placed us in their hands. 

We concluded our negotiations for the 
trip to Knoxville, but our guides refused to 
give us an answer as to when we should 
start. 

With no definite understanding as to de- 
tails, and the night being cold and frosty, 
we walked, under our guides' direction, two 
miles, to somebody's stable-loft, where we all 
slept until the chickens began crowing for 
day. 

We then left the mow, having first turned 
the hay over, to leave no sign, and wended 
our way two and a half miles through the 
mountains, to the Devil's Boot, where we 
were to have our breakfast. Hardly a dozen 
words had been spoken between us and our 
guides from the first interview until we sat 
down to wait for our breakfast. They ap- 



204 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



peared morose and disinclined to hold any 
conversation with us. 

Their mother, a short, stout woman of 
sixty, brought the breakfast. She had eight 
sons, four or five of whom were followers of 
Jack. 

Unlike her sons, she at once admitted us 
to her confidence, possibly for an opportunity 
to brag about her boys, which she proceeded 
to do in a good old-fashioned way. 

Seated on a log, patting the ground with 
her broad stubby foot, she entered upon a 
long narrative of Jack's daring exploits. Lem 
also came in for a share, so did Zeke and the 
others. She was apparently quite as proud 
of Jack, at the head of eight outlaws, as if 
he had been at the head of an army. She 
seemed sweetly unconscious that the acts 
she described might put her boys in the pen- 
itentiary, if not upon the scaffold, dwelling 
upon them as if actual sympathy with the 
South was a complete justification for any 
sort of lawlessness, and particularly of the 
right to plunder. 

While we listened to their mother's praises 
of them. Jack and Lem were a hundred yards 
away, stretched out upon a rock slab, sunning 
themselves like two contented bears. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 205 



Later in the morning their sister and two 
01 three other girls came to see us for a 
visit of several hours. During this visit, in 
a conversation held aside with Eliza, I asked 
if she knew why her brothers would not 
start with us at once if they were going at 
all. She answered by saying that Dr. H. 
was reputed to have $102 in silver, and the 
boys said they would not leave the vicinity 
until they got it — that Dr. H. was away, 
and it was uncertain when he would return. 

I communicated this fact to my compan- 
ions, and after a consultation it was decided, 
to avoid further delay, that I should propose 
to Jack and Lem to add $102 to their 
compensation. This decision was reached 
without my full approbation. I thought 
the proposition ought to be submitted, but 
was not satisfied of the propriety of submit- 
ting it myself. Our experience with the 
men the night before had not impressed 
me with a lofty opinion of their gentle 
manners, and how they would receive my 
invasion of their sister's confidence on a 
matter of questionable import had enough 
uncertainty about it to make me entirely 
willing to relinquish the office to one of the 
others. But I got together enough courage 



2o6 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



to approach them with the proposition. 
^'No, sir," answered Jack with sufficient 
emphasis to remove all inducement to 
argument. We're not goin' to leave these 

parts till we git that $102 from the d d 

Rebel, and if you' ens is in a hurry, and 
don't want to wait till we' ens is ready, why 
jist put out any time you please, and let this 
be the last on it." 

For nine wearisome hours we lay around 
upon that mountain. Jack and Lem were 
but seldom in our company, but the dear 
girls almost constantly shed their sunshine 
upon us. They supplied us bountifully with 
such food as the country afforded, and gen- 
erously divided their tobacco with us. It 
was interesting to see a maiden of twenty 
draw from her pocket a long twist of home- 
grown tobacco and ^'pass it around," per- 
haps everyone in the circle biting at the 
same end. It looked so sociable. 

The mother also remained several hours, 
and it was from her that we learned more 
about the boys than from anyone else. 

Since the Confederates had driven them 
from their home-pursuits, they would turn 
the war to their advantage, and make Rebels 
and Rebel sympathizers pay for their time. 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 207 



She and they expressed inveterate hate for 
all Rebels, and, right or wrong, scrupulously 
regarded everyone a Rebel who had any 
valuables or lived in a painted house. 

They now lived on spoils, or rather hoped 
to live on them, for it was the business of the 
gang to roam over the country for many 
miles, sacking ^^fine houses,'' and it was on 
an expedition of this sort that they were ab- 
sent when we met the Rollings worth girls. 

Something to eat was the least considera- 
tion, as they only occasionally took a ham, 
or some other such edible luxury. 

Money was their chief object, but they 
never left behind jewelry or silverware. Of 
the latter, it was said, they had an abun- 
dance, from teaspoons to water - pitchers, 
from which they hoped to realize largely 
after the war. It was also reported that they 
had a cave in the mountains where they 
stayed in bad weather and stored their plun- 
der, and where from sticks stuck in crevices 
they had suspended a large collection of 
costly silver, all tarnished and black, that 
had once been the dazzling splendor of hos- 
pitable boards. They also had an un- 
abridged dictionary, and a family Bible or 
two, but the strangest article mentioned to 



2o8 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



me was a life-size oil-painting of Washington, 
damp and covered with mould, that had prob- 
ably cost the owner ^200, but, no doubt, 
could have been had from the present pos- 
sessors for fifty cents. 

They had lived in the mountains for two 
years, and had not slept in a house or eaten 
at a table in that time. 

There were many such gangs as this in the 
mountain districts of the South during the 
war, or perhaps not exactly such gangs, but 
men who banded together for mutual protec- 
tion and lived in the mountains to keep out 
of the Rebel army. Generally they were 
composed of as loyal, honest men as the 
country afforded, men with a common cause 
inoffensively avoiding mihtary service. 

By the outrages of the Vance gang, the 
good men who were dodging from the army 
out of loyal and patriotic motives were much 
more harassed than they otherwise would 
have been, and we afterward learned that 
there was a bitter feud between the Vances 
and others in adjoining counties. 

About 3 P.M. information was received 
through the women that the subject of our 
delay had returned home. 

Jack sent Lem to the top of a certain 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 209 



peak to fire two shots, one from a musket, 
the other from a rifle, as a signal for the 
gang to assemble. 

The first to report was a red-headed man 
of thirty, wearing a cap made by himself 
from the skin of a red fox, with the full tail 
hanging down behind. Soon after came two 
younger men, one a bright-eyed youth, who 
evidently belonged to better society and 
more honest business, but his companion 
looked every inch the bandit. He had un- 
kempt hair, a low forehead, small black eyes, 
high cheek-bones, and a costume that no 
honest man would have the courage to wear. 

His coat was made from the skin of a bear, 
dressed with the hair on, and so arranged 
that the forelegs of the animal formed the 
sleeves, with the paws hanging down over 
the hands, showing the claws of the veritable 
beast. The head and face of the animal 
formed a sort of hood for the covering of the 
head and face of the wearer, when he so 
desired. 

Around his neck, bear-skin and all, 
gathered into a great bow-knot in front, was 
the unseemly spotted skin of a rattlesnake. 
Another member wore a rolled striped tur- 
ban, encircled with eagle feathers. 



2IO SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



The object of the summons was explained 
to be Dr. H/s ^102 in silver; which met 
with the hearty concurrence of them all. 

There was one thing we did not agree to^ 
and that was that our party take guns and go 
with them. Against this we protested most 
earnestly. We had in us no spirit for pil- 
lage and felt no desire for the romance of 
robbing, and probably murdering ; and our 
zeal in protesting was all the more animated 
w^hen they brought out, probably from their 
cave, four rusty guns and said we must go. 

Our Irishman, as he submissively received 
his rusty piece, looked very much as though 
he wished himself back in Columbia. It is 
also probable that we all wished the same 
thing. But the bright-eyed youngster be- 
came enlisted in our behalf, and urged upon 
his companions the injustice and impropriety 
of making us go against our will. He said 
we could very truly have no interest in the 
matter ; that we could not wish to punish 
and rob a man that had done us no harm ; 
that there were plenty of them for the work, 
and that it was as unnecessary as it was un- 
just to impose upon us the hazard of engag- 
ing in the expedition. His timely inter- 
cession succeeded in having us excused from 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 21 1 



going, but did not protect us from the most 
intolerant abuse, and unwarranted insinua- 
tions that we were Rebel spies. The friendly 
youngster was detailed to stay with us, and 
at dark the others were on their way to Dr. 

H.'s. jzA^yp^-/^^c^^-^-<-^ 

The result of the expedition we gathered 
from a random conversation among them- 
selves next morning. When they reached 
the house of the doctor he and his family 
were still sitting around the fire, unsuspect- 
ingly enough. The ruffians marched up near 
the window and, without the least notice, 
fired a full volley through the window ; then 
charged into the house with empty guns. 
Fortunately no one was hit, and, more fort- 
unately still, the doctor had escaped by run- 
ning out the back way into the woods. Upon 
entering, they found no one but the wife and 
two daughters, in mortal terror, and when 
they said that the doctor was not about the 
house, the bandits proceeded to ransack it 
from cellar to garret. Under the bed, up- 
stairs, they found two negro men concealed, 
as much frightened as the ladies. Satisfied 
that the doctor was not about the house, they 
then took a rope, which they had procured 
for the purpose, and tied it around the wife's 



212 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



neck, and threatened to hang her if some of 
them did not tell where the ^102 in silver 
was. In this they failed, but abandoned 
their inhuman treatment only after one or 
both of the girls had fainted with fright. 

Having failed to get the money, they were 
determined they would not fail in some bar- 
barous fun ; so they brought the negroes, 
whom they had taken from under the bed, 
into the sitting-room, in presence of the 
ladies, and made one pat and the other dance 
for their amusement. They goaded them on 
for a straight hour, without one moment's 
cessation, and when, from exhaustion, they 
would moderate their activity a little, the 
heartless bystanders would bring down their 
guns and command them to ''go into it, or 
we*ll shoot you on the spot/' Thus they 
kept them at it till they both sank to the 
floor. 

Tired of this, they plundered the bureaus 
and cupboard and retired. 

Early next morning (Saturday) Dr. H. 
went to Flat Rock and told the story of the 
outrage to the commander of the post, where- 
upon a heavy guard was transported in wag- 
ons, in great haste, to hunt the offenders. 
[The first we knew of this movement was 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 213 

about eleven o'clock in the morning. At this 
time we were impatiently lounging on the side 
of the mountain, waiting for a decision from 
our guides, when we saw the mother com- 
ing running toward us without bonnet and 
with dishevelled hair, crying, and calling 
^*Jack.'' The guards had made a t:^?^// de 
main into the vicinity and had really capt- 
ured their brother, living three miles off, 
and had tied him, hands and feet, and 
thrown him into a wagon, to be hauled to 
Flat Rock. 

The event was a lucky one for us, for it 
frightened our party, and from the entreaties 
of the mother they consented to start at 
once for Knoxville, or as soon as they could 
possibly get provisions enough for the trip, 
which would require ten days. The mother 
gave directions to be ready to start at 3 p.m. , 
and to go at once two miles farther into the 
mountains, to a certain " cove." She would 
get help of the neighbors, and meet us with 
all the provisions that we required. 

Jack and Lem left us for some time to 
hide their favorite guns in a hollow tree, to 
keep the rust from ruining them, and when 
they returned each had two revolvers buckled 
around his waist. 



214 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



It was hard to tell which of us was the 
most anxious for three o'clock and the meat 
and bread to come. Soon after three the 
mother was with us again, more frightened 
and distressed than before, for the guards had 
in the meantime searched her house and 
stable, and had taken all the meat and nearly 
all the bread she had prepared. The corn- 
bread two of the neighbors had furnished, 
and a little dried beef, were all she brought, 
though the former included one corn-pone 
which was said to contain exactly a peck of 
meal. 

We turned our backs that afternoon to 
these people with few regrets, for, though 
the women had been uniformly kind to us, 
there yet prevailed among them such a spirit 
of ruffianism and such wild customs that we 
had no desire to prolong our stay. 

Again under way for home, and this time 
behind two experienced guides, our hopes of 
success grew lively, too lively for the pleas- 
ure of our guides, for we would crowd upon 
their heels and be sent back every few min- 
utes with some terrible oath. At dark we 
went down off the mountains and took the 
road, to enable us to make seventeen miles 
that night, to Jack's brother-in-law's, where 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 215 



we expected to increase our supply of pro- 
visions. 

Nine miles ahead was the French Broad, 
and in crossing the river we anticipated 
some trouble. Our only hope was in find- 
ing one of two canoes reported to be hid- 
den along its banks ; for the river at the 
point was rough, which made it dangerous 
to swim or attempt to cross on a poorly 
constructed raft. We wandered for half an 
hour up and down the bank of the noisy 
stream, hunting the canoes, but without suc- 
cess. 

Then our guides decided that we should 
go four miles up-stream to cross on a bridge 
supposed to be there. But when we reached 
the point we found nothing of a bridge but 
two rows of piles stretching across the river, 
with ten -inch sleepers still adhering to the 
top of each row. The rest of the bridge 
had been swept away months before by high 
waters, and there had been no steps taken 
to rebuild it. To cross upon these sleepers 
seemed practicable, so onto them we climbed. 
Though a little nervous all the while, by 
crawling along on our hands and knees we 
got along admirably until within thirty feet 
of the opposite shore, when, to our great 



2i6 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



discomfiture, we found that some ruthless 
hand had rolled the last sleeper from each 
row into the river. This was too bad — with- 
in thirty feet of the other side, and yet too 
far to get there. For several minutes we 
sat in a quandary, not knowing whether to 
retreat or sit there wishing. In the mean- 
time we discovered that the sleeper which 
had been rolled off above still lay beneath, 
against the piles, with one end resting on some 
driftwood on the shore, the other buoyed by 
the water against the piling. Baker, who 
happened to be in front — and there was no 
changing about on that narrow log — con- 
cluded that he would swing under and slide 
down the pile to the water and examine the 
feasibility of getting over on the floating 
log. Under he swung, down the pile he 
glided, and planted his foot cautiously on 
the log ; into the water it went, Baker stick- 
ing bravely to it until he was buoyed ; then 
he let go the pile, made one step forward, 
then another, and by the time he reached 
the next pile he was raised almost entirely 
out of the water, and walked triumphantly 
out to the other side. Now that Baker was 
over, we all must be, and as he had crossed 
on the floating log, all could cross, so at it 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



217 



we went in turns. All were soon on the 
other side but the Irishman ; he was not so 
successful. I have neglected to mention 
that he was the custodian of the peck pone 
of bread; and that was more than his share 
of the freight, but because he was tough and 
willing we were disposed to place the honor- 
able duty upon him. He carried his charge 
in a haversack prepared by the donor of the 
bread. 

Goode was behind, and when the rest of 
us got to the other side, there he sat on top, 
holding tenaciously to the sleeper, and the 
big pone holding to him, insisting that it 
was no use trying, for he knew that he could 
not cross on that tottering log. Generally 
he was the bravest of the party, but some- 
how or other he had an aversion for water 
that was marked throughout the whole trip. 
We promised to help him with a pole ; still 
he could not be persuaded, and, becoming 
a little vexed, we threatened to stone him 
off the sleeper if he did not try, for we 
could not be delayed there all night by his 
cowardice. He would much rather have 
charged a battery than attempted the cross- 
ing, but when we alluded to his cowardice 
he decided upon drowning or reaching the 



2i8 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



bank. Quick as a sailor could have done 
it, he was under the sleeper, clinging like a 
flying-squirrel with his short legs and arms 
to the pile ; down he glided a little way and, 
to his utter dismay, there lay the pone still 
on top, and the strap of his haversack fast 
on a splinter. He asserted that he would 
strip it off his shoulder and let it go ; we 
declared we would drown him if he did. 
He was in great distress, but concealed it 
like a stoic. Again he pulled himself up the 
pile an inch at a time until he reached the 
sleeper ; then holding on with his legs and 
one hand he employed the other in getting 
down the pone. Cautiously he proceeded, 
but in an unguarded moment the horrid 
pone came tumbling off and jerked the un- 
happy boy down the pile into the water to 
his neck. If we had not felt concerned 
about his life sure enough now, we should 
have been unable to render any assistance 
for laughter, but, as it was, Chisman ran out 
on the floating log with a pole and soon had 
our unfortunate comrade wringing his clothes 
on the bank, and another item to laugh 
about at our leisure. 

We had yet twelve miles to go to reach 
the brother-in-law's, and it was our desire 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



219 



to make that distance before daylight, so we 
tarried no longer than was necessary to 
wring our clothes and pour the water out of 
our boots. Our guides, being fresh and 
skilled in night-walking, moved along rapid- 
ly and continued through the entire twelve 
miles without stopping a moment to rest. 

*^The honest watch-dog" bayed us at 
John Burton's before the chickens called out 
the morning, and the family were all asleep, 
but through Jack we soon got a welcome ad- 
mission into the house. The fruitful home 
of Mr. Burton, a cabin of but one room, w^e 
found sitting down between two mountains 
in the midst of a farm of just seven acres, 
and boasting the very ^^magnificent dis- 
tance ' ' of six mountain-miles to the nearest 
neighbors. Upon entering the house it had 
more the appearance of a juvenile asylum 
than anything else. There were two bed- 
steads, and pallets to the right of us, 
pallets to the left of us, pallets all around, 
and children in regular ratio from one to 
twenty-one asleep upon them. It was with 
difficulty that we crowded our way through 
and arranged ourselves on an old bench be- 
fore the fireplace, occupying nearly all one 
end of the house. Having first built us a 



2 20 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



good fire, our host went to the bedsteads, 
and, turning out his wife from one and his 
son-in-law and his wife from the other, in- 
sisted that we four strangers occupy them for 
the rest of the morning. This we did not 
wish to do. ^len of our habits, with wet 
and dirty clothes, would vastly have preferred 
sleeping on the floor before the fire, and we 
told the old gentleman so, but the more we 
excused oui^elves the more he insisted that 
he had plenty of girls that could wash easier 
than we could lie on the boards. So into 
the beds we went. 

Next morning the family were up early, 
big and little, crowding and whispering that 
four Yankees were ••' asleep in the beds." 

Does they look like pap?" said one little 
urchin to his mother. 

It will be remembered that it was the ar- 
rangement to increase our supply of provis- 
ions at this place fully one-half, and, strange 
to say, we found this large family without a 
pound of meat or breadstuffs in the house, 
and they talked of the circumstance as nothing 
uncommon. The nearest mill was twelve 
miles, and the nearest neighbor six, but by 
eight o'clock two boys got in with a half- 
bushel of borrowed meah In the meantime 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 221 



our two guides and the host had gone to the 
mountains for meat, and soon after the boys 
returned with the meal they came down the 
mountain dragging after them a hog they 
had shot. This hog they skinned like a beef, 
at the foot of the mountain, and carried the 
meat to the house on a pole. 

At eight o'clock breakfast was in process of 
preparation ; at ten it was ready, and we were 
called to eat. Breakfast consisted of coffee 
made from parched meal, corn-bread, and 
fresh pork. The hams of the hog were boiled 
outdoors in an iron kettle. 

The entire table-service consisted of six 
plates, two of them tin ; three knives worn 
to a point ; two forks with broken prongs, 
and one large antediluvian dish. No cloth, 
no chairs, but stools ; no cups and saucers, 
but as substitutes for the latter the coffee was 
served in small, round gourds neatly dressed. 
There were no apologies, no embarrassment, 
no complaint about hard times. The cheery 
host and hostess went merrily chatting about 
the table, cutting and helping plates with 
that air of natural, easy, generous welcom.e 
that made their simple breakfast refresh their 
guests in a degree not felt at the tables of the 
formal rich. 



222 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



The family prepared us a large quantity of 
meat and what bread they could spare, and 
had us ready to resume our journey by eleven 
o'clock. But for some reason our guides were 
disposed to be tardy, and it was quite noon 
before we left Burton's; then it was in a 
slow, careless manner, resting every mile 
longer than it took us to walk that distance. 
But what troubled us the most were the fre- 
quent private conferences of our guides. 

They would walk together in advance, 
muttering to each other, sometimes swearing 
audibly, seldom speaking to us, until their 
conduct became the source of much annoy- 
ance. Half the afternoon was spent without 
a dozen words being exchanged between us 
and those upon whom we so much depended. 
Then Jack feigned sickness, and Lem began 
to talk discouragingly of the prospects. He 
had heard of so many people perishing in the 
snow ; our way lay over the roughest of the 
mountains, upon the dividing ridge, as they 
called it, for a hundred and thirty miles ; the 
clouds already looked like snow, we had not 
half enough food for the trip, etc. 

Very much disheartened we trudged along, 
up and down, up and down the mountain- 
peaks, and succeeded before sunset in reach- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 223 



ing a crest of Mount Pisgah, reputed among 
the natives of western North Caroh'na to 
be the second highest mountain in the Al- 
leghany range, and from whose summit the 
eye can see five States, namely, North Caro- 
lina, South CaroHna, Georgia, Tennessee, 
and Virginia. On this mountain, directly 
in our course, apparently within a mile and 
a half, but in reality seven miles away, we 
saw a heavy smoke. The guides became 
more uneasy than ever at the appearance of 
this. They said that it was reported that 
the Confederate Government had enlisted a 
number of Cherokee Indians from a civilized 
remnant of the tribe still inhabiting the 
mountain district of western North Caro- 
lina and eastern Tennessee, and had them 
guarding the mountain trails and passes. 
They withdrew and consulted twenty min- 
utes ; then climbed a tree and averred that 
they could see men moving about the fires 
seven miles away, also that they knew no 
other route than over that particular moun- 
tain. They also spoke pathetically of the 
outlaw's penalty, of the terrible result if 
they should be captured, and were of the 
opinion that no rational man would try to 
pass that mountain with the indications of 



2 24 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



danger that could so clearly be seen. As 
for them, they would, for no inducement, 
attempt it now, but if we would return home 
with them and stay through the winter until 
the next spring, they would be sure to take 
us through. No anticipated danger could 
dissuade us from our purpose of going ahead, 
for dangers were all around us, behind us 
and on all sides, apparently equal to those in 
front. So we were all of one mind, not to 
go an inch backward while there was no act- 
ual restraint from taking one toward home. 
We combined our efforts to encourage our 
guides, dwelt upon their inevitable suffering 
if they returned home to spend the winter, 
assured them that we would pay them 
promptly and see that they got comfortable 
quarters for the winter in Knoxville if they 
did not wish to go home with us. If they 
abandoned us on that mountain what would 
become of us? Not one of us knew any- 
thing about the mountain courses, more 
than their general direction, not one of us 
could distinguish the dividing ridge from 
the spurs, not one of us could tell north 
from south in that wild region after the sun 
went down ; but with all this before us we 
could not think of going back forty or fifty 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 225 



miles to live three or four months with that 
gang of robbers. We not only offered to 
increase their compensation to any sum they 
might fix, but we begged, even besought 
them not to turn back; but hearts full of 
fear or minds full of distrust hear nothing 
and grant nothing, and as distressing as it 
was to us, we parted, they to go home, w^e 
— we knew not whither. 



VIII 



Off to the right, six or seven miles, we 
could see in a narrow valley a strip of culti- 
vated land following some stream, and here 
and there a column of smoke rising from a 
house. 

Feeling the necessity for a guide to be ab- 
solute, and hoping to find one in the settle- 
ment to the right, we started down the side 
of Pisgah in a hurry, for the shades of night 
had already begun to gather in the valley. 
It was nearly dark when we got down the 
mountain. In the very point of the valley, 
where it was not more than a hundred yards 
wide, crouching at the foot of the great 
Pisgah, and where South Hominy Creek is 
nothing more than a gurgling rivulet, sat a 
rude little cabin, quiet as a tomb, and but 
for the form of a man engaged near the door 
we should have pronounced it unoccupied. 
Crawling up to within fifty yards to make 
observations, we were soon satisfied that the 
stooped and stiffened form before us was that 
of an old man ; and Baker, having on a full 
226 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 227 



suit of Confederate uniform, was sent over 
to talk to him. 

We hoped thus to obtain the gentleman's 
political principles, in disguise. Baker, being 
in gray uniform, could approach him direct- 
ly on the point. If he proved a Rebel, 
Baker would excuse himself and retire ; if 
a Union man, he would call the rest of us 
to aid in convincing him that we were also. 
Baker summarily accosted Uncle Jimmy 
Smith, for such was his name, a diminutive, 
bent old man, with — 

Grandpa, are you a Rebel or a Union 
man ? ' ' 

*^What, sir?" replied Uncle Jimmy, 
straightening himself up. 

^' I want to know whether you are a Rebel 
or a Union man." 

What do you want to know that for? " 
Oh, I have heard you called both, and, 
as I was passing, I just thought I would ask 
you." 

Well, sir, if it will do you any good to 
know, I will tell you that I was born under 
the old Government, I have lived eighty- 
two years under it, and I am an old man 
now, and I want no better to die under. If 
this is not enough, I will add further, if you 



2 28 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



are a Rebel soldier you will relieve me by 
passing on/* 

When we went rather hastily up, upon 
Baker's whistle and motion, Uncle Jimmy 
was much agitated, for he thought he had 
brought down some punishment upon him- 
self by his acknowledgment. And now we 
had a tough time of it. We believed that 
he was a Union man and knew ourselves to 
be, but the trouble was in persuading him 
to the same opinion. It did not seem 
strange to us that he should appear incred- 
ulous after hearing the facts he detailed. 
There had been that very day a company 
of Confederates in the settlement, after 
the boys," as he called them ; by whom he 
meant the Union boys who were ''lying 
out*' to avoid service in the Confederate 
army. 

They had been betrayed by just such 
strangers as we were. Ten days before, two 
men, representing themselves as brothers, 
named Muse, came to '' the boys " on South 
Hominy Creek and implored protection. 
They said they lived over in Transylvania 
County, and, having deserted from the Rebel 
army to keep from fighting against the 
Union, it was impossible for them to remain 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 229 



about home and escape arrest ; that, knowing 
the facihties for hiding among the rugged 
peaks in Buncombe, they had come to beg a 
home with them for a few months, hoping to 
be able to compensate the friends for their 
board after the war was over. The credu- 
lous and hospitable boys received the Muses 
into their confidence without a suspicion. 

It was Sunday evening that we went into 
the settlement, and on the evening before 
the Muse boys had disappeared, though no 
serious apprehensions were felt, on account 
of the probability of their being among 
some of the friends in the neighborhood. 
Thoughtless of the dangers that were gather- 
ing, the boys" drew their blankets around 
them in their mountain -beds, to be awakened 
at dawn next morning by the militia sweep- 
ing like an avalanche upon them, led by the 
perfidious Muses. 

Up and at it, for liberty and life, from 
rock to tree and tree to rock they fought 
through all that Sunday, wounding and being 
wounded. 

By this unexpected raid, the whole settle- 
ment was intensely excited, and, as a result. 
Uncle Jimmy Smith believed that we were 
but apart of that Rebel force and were feign- 



230 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



ing to be Yankees for some such purpose as 
the Muses had wrought. So he vehemently 
asserted, and the earnestness with which he 
expressed his determination not to be be- 
trayed, as the boys had been, was quite 
embarrassing to us. Uncle Jimmy urged us 
to go along and let him alone ; he was too 
old to be punished, as well as too smart to 
be deceived. Happily Baker remembered 
^that he had his commission in the Sixth 
Missouri Federal Infantry in his pocket. 

Can you read writing. Grandpa ? 

Yes." 

Well, here is my commission as First 
Lieutenant in the Yankee army ; examine it, 
if you please." 

The reading of that paper alone by the dim 
firelight in the house, convinced the old 
gentleman that we were really Federal sol- 
diers. He then became very gracious and 
lost not a moment in hurrying us off to 
hide, lest the Rebels should be still in the 
neighborhood and drop in upon us at any 
moment. 

Uncle Jimmy was poor, very poor, living 
with his daughter while her husband was 
away in the Confederate army; yet he was 
rich enough to have a good warm supper 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 231 



spread out before us in the bushes before 
eight o'clock. 

Uncle Jimmy informed us that he thought 
Henry K. Davis, one of the boys/' and 
rather the leader among them, so far as 
directing movements went, would undertake 
to guide us to Knox\dlle. He represented 
Davis to be a young man with a high sense 
of honor, and said, to our encouragement, 
that he had been twice through the moun- 
tains to Knoxville and was at that time very 
desirous of leaving the South altogether for 
the North, if he could get some company. 

To see Kim (that was the name Davis 
bore among his neighbors) was now our 
hearts' desire, and I believe we asked Uncle 
Jimmy to conduct us three miles that night 
to the neighborhood of George Peoples, 
where it was expected we might find him. 
But the old man could not do it, for his eyes 
failed him after night, and he had run about 
so much through the neighborhood during 
that day of excitement that he was nearly 
exhausted. He promised, however, to be off 
with us next morning by daylight, if we 
wmld stay where we were. 

We made no attempt to sleep that night ; 
did not even spread our blankets. The de- 



232 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



sertion of our guides, the effect of the day's 
raid upon our prospects, the meeting ex- 
pected to-morrow with Kim Davis and his 
men, were all subjects to be discussed. 

With the much-delayed dawn came Uncle 
Jimmy, tottering up the mountain with a 
basket on his arm and a gun on his 
shoulder. 

What^s the old man want with that 
gun ? ' ' anxiously inquired Goode. 

I can't imagine," said Baker. 

I think I know," said Chisman ; he 
looks to me like a Knowno thing executioner 
hunting for Irishmen. Take heart, my boy ; 
I'll plant a sprig of cashew at your head and 
write to your mother." 

Uncle Jimmy explained it in another 
way. You see," said he, the Rebels 
were all over the settlement yesterday, and 
some of them may be lurking about here yet. 
My old gun can do us no harm, and if we 
should happen to get captured, I thought by 
having my gun I might shield myself and 
make your case no worse by teUing the Rebels 
I had captured you and was taking you to 
them ; then, as I return through the moun- 
tains, I may get a chance at a turkey, or a 
squirrel or two." 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 233 



George Peoples was a Mason, and Chisman 
thought he might use the * ^ mystic chord ' ' 
to our advantage ; he was also a man of in- 
formation and eminently loyal. For these 
reasons it was thought prudent that we be 
conducted to his neighborhood and placed 
under his direction till a conference could 
be had with Davis. 

We ate a hearty breakfast from the basket 
and set out. Uncle Jimmy's activity sur- 
prised us ; indeed he came near surpassing all 
of us. Though he swayed like an old tree 
loose at the roots, he had a wonderful capac- 
ity for getting over space. I do not think 
he walked a step the whole distance ; it was 
a half run all the way. With his body bent 
forward at an angle of forty-five degrees, he 
went as rapidly through the mountains as a 
trained youth, stopping only now and then 
to look or listen, with upturned ear. 

George Peoples was not at home, but his 
estimable lady was, and she directed Uncle 
Jimmy to conduct us to a certain gorge, and 
said she would see that we lacked for nothing 
until Kim Davis could be found. The old 
gentleman led us up the rocky gorge, into a 
cluster of laurel-bushes, and, exhorting us to 
keep on the alert during the day, set out to 



234 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



hunt for Davis, with the promise to report 
that night if possible. 

About noon two Uttle girls came up with 
our dinner, and in the evening they came 
again to tell us that their mother would ex- 
pect us to take supper at the house a Httle 
after dark, and that their brother, Wash, one 
of Davis's gang, would be there to see us. 

At dark we went down, doubting nothing. 
Wash met us at the barnyard fence, and 
astonished us by saying that he had been 
hiding all day on the same mountain, but a 
few hundred yards above us, and that he had 
seen us several times moving about in the 
bushes, and two or three times had picked 
up his musket to shoot, thinking we were 
militia. 

Mrs. Peoples soon announced supper, and 
after the ordinary salutations requested us 
to make haste to eat it and get back to the 
mountains, for she was always in mortal 
fear when any of the boys were about the 
house. A little girl was posted on each side 
of the house to watch, when we went to our 
seats at the table. Mrs. Peoples had many 
questions to ask, so had Wash, and the con- 
versation was running glibly and merrily 
along, when suddenly one of the little girls 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 235 



came dashing into the house, stammering in 
a frenzied manner : The militia are coming 
through the garden.'* ^ : 

Up to that moment we claimed to be at 
least average men in agility, but ever after 
that we had a modified opinion of ourselves 
in this respect. 

Wash was sitting on a bench next to the 
wall; hemmed in at both ends, when the 
alarm was given. On top of the bench, over 
the table, and out of the house, the back way, 
he sprang, quicker than we could drop our 
pumpkin pie to follow him. We rushed out 
in panic, only to get a glimpse of him as 
he dashed across the barnyard toward the 
mountain. Not wishing to lose him if we 
were to be pursued by the Rebels, and hoping 
to gain something on a straight run, we 
threw down whatever encumbered us, and 
put into action our very best effort, but only 
to see ourselves more outdone than at the 
first. Before we got half-way across the 
barnyard, Wash was over the fence on the 
other side, flying up the mountain like the 
shadow of a hurrying cloud. 

We four had hardly entered the woods 
when we heard Mrs. Peoples from the house 
gently call, ^^Wash," and there being no 



236 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



answer, she called again, much louder than 
before. This time Wash answered, away up 
the mountain, three or four hundred yards 
ahead of us. 

Come back. Wash ; it's all right.*' 

Wash joined us again at the foot of the 
mountain, and the first thing he did was to 
excuse himself for his rather informal man- 
ner of leaving. He said he had been chased 
so much and had had such narrow escapes 
that when they got after him now he had 
but little command of his judgment. It 
was otherwise concerning his legs. 

We all went back to the house to learn the 
cause of our alarm, and as we approached 
the fence dividing the house from the barn- 
yard, discovered three men sitting there, with 
their guns lying on their laps in a careless 
way. When we stopped, one of them said, 

Come on ; " and Wash, being satisfied of 
their friendly intentions, led the way up to 
them. 

They were Kim Davis on the right, 
Wash Curtis in the middle, and Mitch 
Warren on the left, sent to us by the ever- 
faithful Uncle Jimmy. There were no in- 
troductions, not even a general mention of 
names. Kim was satisfied that we were the 



SEVEN 7V10NTHS A PRISONER 237 



men he had come to see, and we had a sus- 
picion that he was the man w^e needed. 

Jumping off the fence, Kim said : Let's 
go up into the mountain and have a talk. 
This place is too much exposed. ' ' 

He led the way to the identical gorge we 
had spent the day in, and, seating ourselves, 
he and his companions proceeded to cate- 
chise us as severely as the Vances, but in a 
manner vastly more civil. Their procedure 
was eminently cunning and sagacious, and 
it is hard to believe that men could have 
told them a falsehood and escaped discovery. 

The examination having elicited nothing 
against us, Kim became free to talk upon 
the desired subject. 

Yes, sir ; I have made up my mind that 
I would like to go North, if I had any assur- 
ance of getting through the Northern army 
into the country, where I could throw away 
my gun. I am tired of this war, this man- 
killing, out of the army as well as in the 
army. I have but little at stake in the con- 
test anyhow ; have no negroes to save, nor 
much property to protect, and Fm so tired 
of hunting men's lives and hiding to save 
my own that I don't want to go into either 
army at this date. Your offer is liberal, but 



238 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



if I go with you it will be as a companion, 
and not as a servant. This is the only con- 
dition to be considered : That you guarantee 
to me that when I have conducted you to 
Knoxville, you will conduct me north of the 
Ohio River, and protect me from the army." 

The bargain was soon struck, but it grieved 
us to hear Mr. Davis say that he could not 
be ready to start before the following Sun- 
day. We were not disposed to complain, 
however, for this time we felt confident that 
we were dealing with an honest and honor- 
able man, who would act by us as he agreed. 

It was soon arranged that we should be 
conducted back to the neighborhood of 
Uncle Jimmy and Evaline his daughter, 
where we were to remain during the week of 
preparation, as that was regarded as the best 
and most private place to hide in of any in 
the settlement. 

That night, however, we slept in the 
woods, near Kim's father's, and the next 
morning before daylight we went to his 
house for breakfast. Asbury and Margaret A. 
Davis, Kim's parents, were getting old, and 
both were very much concerned about the 
safety of their son. They would have been 
much pleased with our arrangements with 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 239 



Kim if they could have dismissed from their 
minds a suspicion that we might be spies 
seeking to lead him away for capture. But 
amid the many dangers that surrounded him 
at home, and with all their doubts and fears, 
I never heard that either of them opposed 
his embarking upon the trip. Next morning 
we went back to Uncle Jimmy's and were 
placed in his care for the week, the neces- 
sary provisions being furnished by Kim and 
his friends. Kim then took his leave, but 
first exhorted us to be of good cheer, for he 
would be ready promptly. 

As it was in Henderson County, so it was 
in Buncombe, with regard to the number of 
girls that visited us while at Uncle Jimmy's ; 
nor did they come with empty hands or 
empty pockets. There are Rachel and Polly, 
and Matilda and Minerva, and Lucy and 
Sarah, whose fair forms even yet flit before 
me with hands full of chestnuts, choice ap- 
ples, or other luxuries for us. Scarcely an 
hour passed in the day that some good thing 
was not laid at our feet from the hands of 
some loyal girl ; and when they washed and 
mended up our miserable old rags till they 
were comfortable, we could have called them 
the kindest women in the world, if it had not 



240 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



been for the sisters in Henderson County. 
As it was, they were as kind as kind can be. 

Notwithstanding that we were among 
friends, and had plenty to eat, it seemed a 
long time until the next Sunday morning. 
It was home that held our hearts, many hun- 
dred miles away, over the wild, rugged, 
trackless mountains. No flowers nor fair 
women could quell our yearnings to be with 
friends at home, where we could lie down 
in peace and speak of these times as by- 
gones. 

Kim was back from Haywood County, 
where he had gone ^ ' to fix some business ' ' 
(which, by the way, was only to afford an 
opportunity to his friends to watch our 
movements for a week), long before his time, 
and was punctually at Uncle Jimmy's Satur- 
day evening, ready to lead us to his father's. 
Sunday morning, December 4, 1864, we 
shook the frost from our blankets before three 
o'clock, and went to the house to arrange 
the preliminaries for starting. There was 
much trouble on this occasion in the Davis 
family. Asbury and Margaret" were both 
fond parents. They had spent many sleep- 
less nights, and shed many tears, when they 
knew their son was shivering in the moun- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 241 



tains or being chased by blood-thirsty 
Rebels; and the offer of g 1,000 reward for 
his arrest by the authorities at Asheville had 
made the fond parents dote on him all the 
more. They had watched him and hidden 
him for two years with dreadful solicitude, 
and now he was about to go from under their 
roof, perhaps forever, to a strange land, with 
strangers whom they nor he had ever seen or 
heard of a week before. These strangers may 
be spies decoying Kim out to murder him, 
or they may all be captured on the way, or 
maybe they will draft him into the Union 
army, and he will get killed in battle, or 
maybe they will cast him off without money 
or friends, soon as they get to the North. 
Such forebodings of evil crowded into the 
minds of these loving parents, particularly 
into the mother's, who went about the house 
with streaming eyes, fitting us out with every- 
thing necessary to the trip. 

At seven o'clock in the morning the last 
words were spoken, and we started across the 
field loaded like pack mules with sweet- 
cakes and boiled ham. 

Mitch Warren and Wash Curtis, loath to 
part with their companion, went with us a 
couple of miles into the mountains. The 



242 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



course we aimed to take, because of its greater 
safety, would make the distance to Knox- 
ville one hundred and sixty miles, over the 
roughest and wildest mountains in the range, 
hence we could hope to travel only by day- 
light. Kim had been raised among the 
mountains, and had chased deer and bears 
over them so often that he was not only ac- 
tive, but never made a mistake in direction. 
Our travelling now was very different from 
what it was with our former guides. We 
went right along without discord or jealousy, 
driving ahead all the time in daylight, and 
sleeping together as boon companions during 
the night. 

It would be hardly possible for men to 
vrork harder than we did during the seven 
days occupied by that trip. Our strength 
was employed to its utmost capacity every 
day.- It was up and down, up and down the 
mountain-peaks all the time ; lifting our- 
selves up one side and pounding our joints 
together down the other. It makes my bones 
ache yet to think of the mountain called 
Sandy Mush. Running back across a public 
highway that comes through the pass to the 
French Broad to indicate our travel in the 
opposite direction we then faced about and 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 243 



climbed up the almost vertical side of the 
mountain for half a mile, all the time as 
much exposed to the gaze of any passer-by 
as if we had been climbing a flag-pole on a 
public square. Every muscle was called into 
action, and for the first hundred jumps I was 
in the van. I gave out, not for want of res- 
olution, but strength. It was so steep that 
it really made my head swim to look back- 
ward, and I never would have gotten up if it 
had not been for the huckleberry bushes and 
the fear of Rebel eyes. Before the rest of 
us were half-way up, Kim was lying on the 
top shooting pebbles over our heads into the 
road below. He ran up like a squirrel. 

There, too, is Old Baldy, the only really 
dangerous mountain that we passed, and we 
had to pass it to keep our course. The peak 
of Baldy, though rising but a little higher 
than its neighbors, stood like a mighty wall 
one hundred and fifty feet from top to base, 
with sides nearly perpendicular, and the crest, 
for eight hundred yards, but from four to ten 
feet wide. A single step to the right or left, 
in a few places, would have dashed us to 
pieces on the rocks below. We passed the 
place, too, by moonlight, the first man get- 
ting on top from the shoulder of his comrade, 



244 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



then pulling the rest up, and sliding down at 
the other end on a pole. 

On the night of the 9th of December we 
slept in a house within seven miles of Knox- 
ville. It was the home of a Mr. Dunn, an 
officer in our army, and was a kind of gen- 
eral rendezvous for the Union men of that 
country. There were a half-dozen loyalists 
there that night, mostly traders to and from 
Knoxville. Next morning, when we turned 
our faces tow^ard the mountains that we had 
left but eighteen hours before, we could but 
feel grateful to Him who regardeth the lilies 
of the field, for they had cast about them a 
heavy mantle of snow, and their avenues 
w^ere closed for the winter. 

One gentleman w^ho spent the night at 
Mr. Dunn's was on his w^ay to Knoxville to 
market a couple of mules. Chisman, ahvays 
on the alert for number one, saw him 
during the night wdth reference to a ride 
to the city, and in his arrangements did 
not forget his companion of ninety-nine 
troubles. Immediately after breakfast we 
each boarded one of the divinely honored 
family, without saddle or bridle, but with 
excellent rope halters, and trotted briskly 
off. We looked back once to our compan- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 245 



ions trudging through the mud on foot, and 
wished they too had mounts, but wished 
more, it must be confessed, to be ourselves 
in Knoxville. The master of the mules, a 
good-humored man, let us have things pretty 
much our own way, and we spared neither 
rein nor switch till the towers of stanch old 
Knoxville loomed up in the distance ; then we 
gave up our mules and sat down by the road- 
side to wait for the rest of our party. They 
soon came up, a little vexed because we had 
ridden over five muddy miles without ex- 
changing with them. 

On the next range of hills, nearer the 
city, we came upon a party of men sitting 
around a fire. When they failed to chal- 
lenge us, Goode shouted, Who sits there ? 

Eighth Michigan Cavalry" was the re- 
ply. Then give me a chew of Yankee 
tobacco, if you please." They were the 
Federal pickets ! We only tarried long 
enough to answer a few general questions 
about our escape, and to ask a few concern- 
ing the military situation. It was sadly dis- 
appointing to hear that Hood was besieging 
Nashville, and that he had destroyed all 
railroad communication with the North. 
But our cup of happiness still seemed full 



246 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



enough, to find once more Yankee bayonets 
at our backs, and Yankee friends in our 
front. We talked glibly as we walked on^ 
splashing through the mud. In the midst 
of our glee, we reached the top of a hill a 
half mile from town, and there, spread out 
before us in a grand panorama, was the city 
of Knoxville with her fortifications. To the 
left was the loved old flag, floating gloriously 
from the parapet of Fort Johnson. There 
was the Tennessee, with her steamers smok- 
ing at the wharves. There was the long 
bridge stretching across her turbid waters. 
There was the park of army-wagons. There 
was the tented field. There were Federal 
soldiers on parade. We stood a moment in 
silence, and looked congratulations at each 
other. We did not fall down and give up 
the ghost ; we did not go into ecstasies. We 
did not hug each other, as some have done ; 
we did not cry ; we simply felt good and 
went on. 

As we approached the river a well-dressed 
man came dashing up to us upon a horse, 
with the air of a lord. He was a steamboat- 
captain and accosted us with — 
Boys, do you want work ?" 

'^Well, sir," answered Chisman, 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 247 



don't know; what kind can you give 
us?" 

I want to hire four or five good strong 
hands for a few days to load my boat/' 

^'Really," returned Chisman, we can 
hardly accept your kindness. We are Unit- 
ed States army officers, and the Government 
will probably have something for us to do." 

In a few minutes we had crossed the 
bridge and stood at the foot of Gay 
Street, parleying. We felt that our w^ard- 
robes were not in a suitable condition to 
appear in the streets of a fashionable city ; 
yet it was necessary to reach the head- 
quarters of General Carter, the command- 
ant of the Department. 

Chisman stood upon the uppers of a pair 
of Southern army brogans, bound to his feet 
with bark. His trousers were knicker- 
bockers composed in equal parts of Yankee 
blue, brown jean, and North Carolina 
linsey, artistically bound at the knees to 
give pleasing effect to his calves. His sack- 
coat was rather good, and his cap tolerable; 
but such hair and whiskers were never seen 
on an honest man with opportunities. 

Our eccentric Irishman was the poorest 
one of all. Poor fellow, he had left his last 



248 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



leather in the mountains, and on our way 
through Sevier County, Tennessee, had 
begged the legs of a pair of trousers, which 
he had swaddled around his feet. The 
tracks that he made in the mud were unique, 
but no fault of his. He had been a prisoner 
for twenty-two months, and had changed 
trousers but once in that time. 

The frame of those he had on was gray, 
but, like Chisman's, had been repaired 
^^fore and aft." One day as we lay in the 
woods in North Carohna (and for which 
I never did forgive him), he took my Co- 
lumbia towel, and, without my advice or 
consent, made an important addition to 
one of the legs. 

He had on a buttonless gray jacket, out 
at the elbows, and fully two inches too 
short. His hat I have no recollection of, 
but I do remember that when his long body 
and short legs struck a military attitude he 
appeared a most picturesque trooper. 

As for Baker, he was the best-dressed one 
of the party, having had a coat given him 
in North Carolina and been an adroit 
financier in prison. The writer was next 
best. He had the worst hat of any, it hav- 
ing no crown at all, and but the fossil re- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 249 



mains of a pair of boots, but, excepting 
his head and his feet, he was comfortably 
but not gaudily attired. Kim, so recently 
from the supervision of his mother, was well 
enough to do. 

Sunday seemed to be our transition day 
all along the journey. No important change 
in our affairs occurred on any other day. 
It was Sunday that we found the Union 
girls on the mountain in Henderson County; 
it was Sunday that the Vances deserted us 
on Pisgah, and that we found Uncle 
Jimmy Smith; it was Sunday that Kim 
Davis started with us from Buncombe 
County; and it was on Sunday that we stood 
in Gay Street, Knoxville, ready to report to 
General Carter. It was just church-going 
time, too, and the bells were ringing out 
from every steeple in the city when we got 
our courage to the sticking-point of making 
our way through the streets to the head- 
quarters of the General. 

Goode scraped the mud off his rags, the 
best he could, with a splinter; Chisman 
pulled down his trousers ; I pinned in the 
crown of my hat; and with Baker, the most 
genteel of any, in the lead, we took our ac- 
customed Indian file up the sidewalk. Not 



250 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



one of us expected to blush or lose his temper 
in passing through the streets, nor did he, but 
our debut was not made eminently agreeable 
by the loitering soldiers. They, as a rule, 
never are scrupulously severe in their prac- 
tice of politeness when in the field. 

On this occasion they ruthlessly roasted us 
from start to finish. One slouchy-looking 
corporal, who was eating a pie which he held 
in his hand, cried out, " God, Sam, see that 
menagerie.'' A youngster at the crossing 
exclaimed, *^The last of the Mohicans, by 
Joe." Another shouted at Chisman, Say, 
uncle, your calves are out;" another at 
Goode, '^Johnnie, your feet's wet." And 
so it went. 

There were no replies, for we all knew too 
well the end of a soldier's tongue to make 
retort. 

Before long we stood at the door of Gen- 
eral Carter's head-quarters. 

Sentinel, be kind enough to say to the 
General that there are four army officers who 
want to see him at the door." 

''Where are they?" mischievously in- 
quired the boy. 

We are they, sir," replied Baker. 
Rats! " quietly observed the youth, and, 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 251 



addressing another soldier who was blacking 
his shoes on a box, continued : 

^'Orderly, go tell the General there are 
some refugees waiting to see him down here. * * 
No, sir,'' exclaimed Chisman, ^' tell him 
that four United States officers, just escaped 
from prison at Columbia, are waiting to see 
him/' 

General Carter received us kindly. After 
hearing and noting down our report of the 
condition of the South, and the prisoners, 
he gave us an order on the Quartermaster for 
whatever articles of clothing we might want; 
then an order to be received into the Of- 
ficers' Hospital, for subsistence and lodging. 

At the Quartermaster's we each took a 
soldier's suit complete, from trooper's boots 
to high-topped hat, and, with the things 
under our arms, reported to the surgeon in 
charge of the Officers' Hospital. First we 
were shown to the bath-room, where we were 
soon joined by four stout negroes, with soap, 
towels, and flesh-brushes, and after an hour 
of alternate perspiration and refrigeration, 
we came out in our new, clean clothes, feel- 
ing very much improved by the exercise. 
Our next stopping-place was the barber-shop, 
where the tonsorial art was applied to our 



252 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



faces and heads, and then we went to the 
telegraph office. I lived longer and lived 
happier than I ever did before or since, in 
the same length of time, as the following 
went over the wires : 

Knoxville, Tenn., Dec. lo, 1864. 

E H 

Plainfield, Ind.: 
Escaped — Well — Will try and be home 
for Christmas. 

^ ^ ^ 

Sure enough, the only railroad connection 
with the North had been destroyed by 
Hood, whose great army, after the battle of 
Franklin, was still lying south of Nashville, 
menacing the city. It seemed, therefore, 
that the only way to reach the North that 
winter was by a further march of one hun- 
dred and seventy miles to Nicholasville, 
Ky., via Cumberland Gap. This was peril- 
ous on account of the guerrilla bands that 
infested the regions of the Gap, north and 
south. There w^ere in Knoxville, at the 
time, a number of people who wanted to get 
North, some citizens, some discharged sol- 
diers, and more than a dozen escaped pris- 
oners, chiefly from Salisbury, N. C. 

Among the number were two army pay- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 253 



masters who had been cut off by Hood, 
with a considerable amount of money in 
their possession, which they each kept in an 
iron safe of about 500 pounds. To induce us 
to assist them to the North with their money, 
they proposed to pay to each escaped pris- 
oner two months' pay, upon affidavit, if 
we would organize a company and guard 
them through the Gap to the railroad. We 
wanted the money, and we wanted to get 
North, so we set about the organization, 
assisted by Captain Grant, of a Wisconsin 
regiment, who had escaped from Salisbury, 
and by Friday evening, December 15th, 
we had a company of sixty people, citizens 
and soldiers, armed and provisioned for the 
march. Under orders from General Carter 
we went into a corral of convalescent horses 
and selected therefrom sixty of the best 
mounts, and early Saturday morning, De- 
cember 1 6th, we marched out of Knoxville, 
under command of Captain Grant, convoying 
our paymasters, each with his 5 00 -pound 
safe in an army-wagon drawn by six mules. 

Many army-trains had recent! 7 passed over 
the same route, and we encountered the worst 
possible roads from the very outset. For 
great stretches the axles of the wagons would 



254 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



drag in the mud, which so exhausted the 
frail animals that they required rest every 
few minutes. Frequently, too, the teams 
would stall, entirely unable to turn a wheel 
until the men dismounted and, standing in 
solid line upon each side of the wagon, in 
mud to their knees, lifted and pushed the 
load along. 

Some of the men, who felt under no ob- 
ligation to the paymasters, actually rebelled 
against lifting at the muddy wagons, and 
came near being expelled by Grant. The 
paymasters were abused by all for the work 
they had imposed upon the anxious com- 
pany. For the most part the road was 
the same over the entire distance of sixty 
miles from Knoxville to the Gap, and it re- 
quired six days to make the trip, arduously 
struggling along twelve hours each day. 

There was a military post at the Gap, 
which place we reached, after dark, De- 
cember 2ist, and, being a nominal officer in 
the company, while I was engaged in locat- 
ing the command for the night, Chisman 
employed himself in looking around the post. 
While thus engaged he unexpectedly met an 
old friend in Captain Schenck, who had 
formerly served for a season upon our divis- 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 255 



fon staff in the Army of the Potomac, and 
who was at the time quartermaster of the 
post. The meeting was a joyous one, and 
in a short time our entire party, including 
Kim Davis, our guide, was at Schenck*s 
head-quarters having a good time. 

We had orders to turn in our horses at 
Crab Orchard, Ky., ninety miles farther on, 
and to reach the railroad we must stage 
twenty miles farther to Nicholasville. It 
was now December 21st. 

Anxious as we were to reach home for 
Christmas, it seemed impossible to do so, on 
account of the exhausted condition of our 
animals and the pesky paymasters. 

While expressing our regrets to Captain 
Schenck, he suggested in a quiet way that he 
had that day received from the North a con- 
signment of fresh horses for the cavalry, and 
that he had receipted for them, but a horse 
was a horse, on paper. The suggestion being 
very agreeable to us, in less than ten minutes 
we had decided to swap horses with Schenck, 
desert our company, and make a dash for 
Crab Orchard. Schenck ordered our break- 
fast for three o'clock. In discharging my 
duties, with respect to our company, I had 
received the countersign of the post. After 



2S6 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



our three - o'clock breakfast, escorted by 
Schenck's colored boy, we led our wTetched 
mounts to the Captain's corral, and ex- 
changed them for fat, strong horses, and while 
Grant and his gallant fifty-five peacefully 
slept, one of his officers and five of his 
command reined up for a gallop to the stage. 
A few miles out we were halted by the 
pickets. I advanced with the countersign, 
and thence we had a merry, muddy, unevent- 
ful ride to Crab Orchard, which place we 
reached on the evening of the 23d. 

The next morning at four o'clock, with the 
mercury near zero, we took the stage for 
Nicholasville, where we arrived for the 
morning train, and shortly before midnight 
of the same day, December 24th, registered 
at the Gipson, in Cincinnati. 

Chisman was the only one to get home 
for Christmas. We reached Cincinnati too 
late for a train to Indianapolis, and, there 
being no Sunday trains, could not get one 
till the following iriidnight. 

I had a sumptuous Christmas dinner in 
Cincinnati with friends, whose kind atten- 
tions were excessive, but my eagerness to 
make glad that dear mother, who, with 
bleeding heart, was waiting and watching 



SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 257 



for my coming, so oppressed me that the day 
was long and wearisome, with all its kind- 
nesses. 

Years have now passed, and the war has 
collapsed and the armies have been dis- 
solved. ^ ^ " • " . 

Kim Davis lived with my brother until 
September, 1865. Then he went back to 
North Carolina to visit his parents. One 
day in November, as he rode with his father 
along the highway, he met one of the Muse 
boys, who had so wickedly betrayed him 
on the Sunday we arrived in his vicinity. 
Muse, recognizing Kim, shouted, Halloo, 
Davis! The war\s over; how are you?" 
extending his hand. 

Kim, failing to see the final adjustment, 
declined the proffered hand, drew his re- 
volver and commenced firing at the rascal, 
who sprang from his horse and escaped 
without injury. A week later Davis was 
arrested upon a charge of assault and battery 
with intent to kill, tried, and sentenced to 
three months in jail. The Governor par- 
doned him, however, before the sentence 
was fully served. Davis then returned to 
Indiana, married, and settled down. 



2S8 SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER 



Lem Vance, one of our first guides, is 
serving a life-sentence in the penitentiary for 
homicide. 

In June, 1897, we visited the Hollings- 
worth sisters, and found them all alive — all 
married and happy in their mountain homes, 
with large families about them. 



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