<h3><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII">CHAPTER XXXVII.</SPAN></h3>
<div class="chapquot">
<div>
<p>——- Not a soul<br/>
But felt a fever of the mad, and played<br/>
Some tricks of desperation.</p>
<p class="citation">Tempest.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="chapquot">
<div>
<p>All trouble, torment, wonder, and amazement<br/>
Inhabit here.</p>
<p class="citation">Ibid.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sidenote">Great Influx of Prisoners.</div>
<p>Early in October, the condition of the Salisbury garrison suddenly
changed. Nearly ten thousand prisoners of war, half naked and without
shelter, were crowded into its narrow limits, which could not
reasonably accommodate more than six hundred. It was converted into
a scene of suffering and death which no pen can adequately describe.
For every hour, day and night, we were surrounded by horrors which
burned into our memories like a hot iron.</p>
<p>We had never before been in a prison containing our private
soldiers. In spite of many assurances to the contrary, we had been
skeptical as to the barbarities which they were said to suffer
at Belle Isle and Andersonville. We could not believe that men
bearing the American name would be guilty of such atrocities. Now,
looking calmly upon our last two months in Salisbury, it seems
hardly possible to exaggerate the incredible cruelty of the Rebel
authorities.</p>
<p>When captured, the prisoners were robbed of the greater part of
their clothing. When they reached Salisbury, all were thinly clad,
thousands were barefooted, not one in twenty had an overcoat or
blanket, and many hundreds were without coats or blouses. </p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote">Starving in the Midst of Food.</div>
<p>For several weeks, they were furnished with no shelter whatever.
Afterward, one Sibley tent and one A tent was issued to each hundred
men. With the closest crowding, these contained about one-half of
them. The rest burrowed in the earth, crept under buildings, or
dragged out the nights in the open air upon the muddy, snowy, or
frozen ground. In October, November, and December, snow fell several
times. It was piteous beyond description to see the poor fellows,
coatless, hatless, and shoeless, shivering about the yard.</p>
<p>They were organized into divisions of one thousand each, and
subdivided into squads of one hundred. Almost daily one or more
divisions was without food for twenty-four hours. Several times some
of them received no rations for forty-eight hours. The few who had
money, paid from five to twenty dollars, in Rebel currency, for a
little loaf of bread. Some sold the coats from their backs and the
shoes from their feet to purchase food.</p>
<p>When a subordinate asked the post-Commandant, Major John H. Gee,
"Shall I give the prisoners full rations?" he replied: "No, G-d d--n
them, give them quarter-rations!"</p>
<p>Yet, at this very time, one of our Salisbury friends, a trustworthy
and Christian gentleman, assured us, in a stolen interview:</p>
<p>"It is within my personal knowledge that the great commissary
warehouse, in this town, is filled to the roof with corn and pork. I
know that the prison commissary finds it difficult to obtain storage
for his supplies."</p>
<p>After our escape, we learned from personal observation that the
region abounded in corn and pork. Salisbury was a general dépôt for
army supplies.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Freezing in the Midst of Fuel.</div>
<p>That section of country is densely wooded. The cars
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</SPAN></span>
brought fuel to the door of our prison. If the Rebels were short of
tents, they might easily have paroled two or three hundred prisoners,
to go out and cut logs, with which, in a single week, barracks could
have been constructed for every captive; but the Commandant would not
consent. He did not even furnish half the needed fuel.</p>
<p>Cold and hunger began to tell fearfully upon the robust young
men, fresh from the field, who crowded the prison. Sickness was very
prevalent and very fatal. It invariably appeared in the form of
pneumonia, catarrh, diarrhœa, or dysentery; but was directly
traceable to freezing and starvation. Therefore the medicines were of
little avail. The weakened men were powerless to resist disease, and
they were carried to the dead-house in appalling numbers.</p>
<p>By appointment of the prison authorities, my two comrades and
myself were placed in charge of all the hospitals, nine in number,
inside the garrison. The scenes which constantly surrounded us were
enough to shake the firmest nerves; but there was work to be done
for the relief of our suffering companions. We could accomplish very
little—hardly more than to give a cup of cold water, and see
that the patients were treated with sympathy and kindness.</p>
<p>Mr. Davis was general superintendent, and brought to his arduous
duties good judgment, untiring industry, and uniform kindness.</p>
<p>"Junius" was charged with supplying medicines to the "out-door
patients." The hospitals, when crowded, would hold about six hundred;
but there were always many more invalids unable to obtain admission.
These wretched men waited wearily for death in their tents, in
subterranean holes, under hospitals, or in the open
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</SPAN></span>
air. My comrade's tender sympathy softened the last hours of many a
poor fellow who had long been a stranger to</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"The falling music of a gracious word,</span>
<span class="i0">Or the stray sunshine of a smile."</span></div>
</div>
<div class="sidenote">Rebel Surgeons Generally Humane.</div>
<p>I was appointed to supervise all the hospital books, keeping a
record of each patient's name, disease, admission, and discharge
or death. At my own solicitation, the Rebel surgeon-in-chief also
authorized me to receive the clothing left by the dead, and re-issue
it among the living. I endeavored to do this systematically, keeping
lists of the needy, who indeed were nine-tenths of all the prisoners.
The deaths ranged from twenty to forty-eight daily, leaving many
garments to be distributed. Day after day, in bitterly cold weather,
pale, fragile boys, who should have been at home with their mothers
and sisters, came to me with no clothing whatever, except a pair of
worn cotton pantaloons and a thin cotton shirt.</p>
<p>Dr. Richard O. Currey, a refugee from Knoxville, was the surgeon
in charge. Though a genuine Rebel, he was just and kind-hearted,
doing his utmost to change the horrible condition of affairs. Again
and again he sent written protests to Richmond, which brought several
successive inspectors to examine the prison and hospitals, but no
change of treatment.</p>
<p>We were reluctantly driven to the belief that the Richmond
authorities deliberately adopted this plan to reduce the strength of
our armies. The Medusa head of Slavery had turned their hearts to
stone. At this time, they held nearly forty thousand prisoners. In
our garrison the inmates were dying at the rate of thirteen per cent.
a month upon the aggregate. About as many more were enlisting in the
Rebel army. Thus our soldiers
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</SPAN></span>
were destroyed at the rate of more than twenty-five per cent. a
month, with no corresponding loss to the enemy.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Terrible Scenes in the Hospitals.</div>
<p>Frequently, for two or three days, Dr. Currey would refrain from
entering the garrison, reluctant to look upon the revolting scenes
from which <em>we</em> could find no escape. I am glad to be able to throw
one ray of light into so dark a picture. Nearly all the surgeons
evinced that humanity which ought to characterize their profession.
They were much the best class of Rebels we encountered. They
denounced unsparingly the manner in which prisoners were treated, and
endeavored to mitigate their sufferings.</p>
<p>To call the foul pens, where the patients were confined,
"hospitals," was a perversion of the English tongue. We could not
obtain brooms to keep them clean; we could not get cold water to wash
the hands and faces of those sick and dying men. In that region,
where every farmer's barn-yard contained grain-stacks, we could
not procure clean straw enough to place under them. More than half
the time they were compelled to lie huddled upon the cold, naked,
filthy floors, without even that degree of warmth and cleanliness
usually afforded to brutes. The wasted forms and sad, pleading
eyes of those sufferers, waiting wearily for the tide of life to
ebb away—without the commonest comforts, without one word of
sympathy, or one tear of affection—will never cease to haunt
me.</p>
<p>At all hours of the day and night, on every side, we heard the
terrible hack! hack! hack! in whose pneumonic tones every prisoner
seemed to be coughing his life away. It was the most fearful sound in
that fearful place.</p>
<div class="sidenote">The Rattling Dead-Cart.</div>
<p>The last scene of all was the dead-cart, with its rigid forms
piled upon each other like logs—the arms
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</SPAN></span>
swaying, the white ghastly faces staring, with dropped jaws and stony
eyes—while it rattled along, bearing its precious freight just
outside the walls, to be thrown in a mass into trenches and covered
with a little earth.</p>
<p>When received, there were no sick or wounded men among the
prisoners. But before they had been in Salisbury six weeks, "Junius,"
with better facilities for knowing than any one else, insisted that
among eight thousand there were not five hundred well men. The Rebel
surgeons coincided in this belief.</p>
<p>The rations, issued very irregularly, were insufficient to support
life. Men grew feeble before living upon them a single week; but
could not buy food from the town; and were not permitted to receive
even a meal sent by friends from the outside. Our positions in the
hospitals enabled us to purchase supplies and fare better. Prisoners
eagerly devoured the potato-skins from our table. They ate rats,
dogs, and cats. Many searched the yard for bones and scraps among the
most revolting substances.</p>
<p>They constantly besieged us for admission to the hospitals, or
for shelter and food, which we were unable to give. It seemed almost
sinful for us to enjoy protection from the weather and food enough to
support life in the midst of all this distress.</p>
<p>On wet days the mud was very deep, and the shoeless wretches
wallowed pitifully through it, seeking vainly for cover and warmth.
Two hundred negro prisoners were almost naked, and could find no
shelter whatever except by burrowing in the earth. The authorities
treated them with unusual rigor, and guards murdered them with
impunity.</p>
<p>No song, no athletic game, few sounds of laughter broke the
silence of the garrison. It was a Hall of Eblis—devoid of its
gold-besprinkled pavements, crystal vases, and dazzling saloons; but
with all its oppressive silence, livid lips, sunken eyes, and ghastly
figures, at whose hearts the consuming fire was never quenched. </p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i005.jpg" width-obs="1000" height-obs="597" class="epub_only" alt="Interior View of A Hospital in the Salisbury Prison." title="Interior View of A Hospital in the Salisbury Prison." /> <SPAN href="images/i005.jpg" target="_blank"> <ANTIMG src="images/i005thumb.jpg" width-obs="400" height-obs="239" class="noepub" alt="Interior View of A Hospital in the Salisbury Prison." title="Interior View of A Hospital in the Salisbury Prison." /></SPAN> <p class="caption">Interior View of A Hospital in the Salisbury Prison.</p>
<p class="click"><SPAN href="images/i005.jpg" target="_blank">Click for larger image</SPAN></p>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Constant association with suffering deadened our sensibilities. We
were soon able to pass through the hospitals little moved by their
terrible spectacles, except when patients addressed us, exciting a
personal interest.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Credulity of our Government.</div>
<p>The credulity and trustfulness of our Government toward the enemy
passed belief. Month after month it sent by the truce-boats many tons
of private boxes for Union prisoners, while the Rebels, not satisfied
with their usual practice of stealing a portion under the rose, upon
one trivial pretext or other, openly confiscated every pound of them.
At the same time, returning truce-boats were loaded with boxes sent
to Rebel prisoners from their friends in the South, and express-lines
crowded with supplies from their sympathizers in the North.</p>
<p>The Government held a large excess of prisoners, and the Rebels
were anxious to exchange man for man; but our authorities acted upon
the cold-blooded theory of Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, that
we could not afford to give well-fed, rugged men, for invalids and
skeletons—that returned prisoners were infinitely more valuable
to the Rebels than to us, because their soldiers were inexorably kept
in the army, while many of ours, whose terms of service had expired,
would not re-enlist.</p>
<p>The private soldier who neglects his duty is taken out and shot.
Officials seemed to forget that the soldier's obligation of obedience
devolves upon the Government the obligation of protection. It was
clearly the duty of our authorities either to exchange our own
soldiers, or
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</SPAN></span>
to protect them—not by indiscriminate cruelty, but by
well-considered, systematic retaliation in kind, until the Richmond
authorities should treat prisoners with ordinary humanity. It was
very easy to select a number of Rebel officers, corresponding to the
Union prisoners in the Salisbury garrison, and give them precisely
the same kind and amount of food, clothing, and shelter.</p>
<div class="sidenote">General Butler's Example of Retaliation.</div>
<p>When the Confederate Government placed certain of our negro
prisoners under fire, at work upon the fortifications of Richmond,
General Butler, in a brief letter, informed them that he had
stationed an equal number of Rebel officers, equally exposed and
spade in hand, upon <em>his</em> fortifications. When his letter reached
Richmond, before that day's sun went down, the negroes were returned
to Libby Prison and ever afterward treated as prisoners of war. But,
by the mawkish sensibilities of a few northern statesmen and editors,
our Government was encouraged to neglect the matter, and thus
permitted the needless murder of its own soldiers—a stain upon
the nation's honor, and an inexcusable cruelty to thousands of aching
hearts. </p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</SPAN></span></p>
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