I have been asked by the Society under whose
auspices we are gathered to-night to tell you something
of my personal experiences in the Battle of the
Mine, or of the Crater, as it is sometimes called, and
to supplement those experiences with some account of
my life in a Southern prison.
At the time of the battle I was captain of Company
A, Fourth Rhode Island Volunteers Infantry. The
regiment to which I belonged was a portion of the
Ninth Army Corps, under the command of General
Burnside. The battle was fought on the 30th of
July, 1864. But some months previous, as far back
as January, 1863, the regiment, as also the corps, had
been detached from the Army of the Potomac. Burnside,
as you know, succeeded McClellan after the battle
of Antietam in command of the Army of the
Potomac; but he himself was removed from that command
in January, 1863, and taken away from the
Army of the Potomac. But the regiment to which I
belonged ultimately became separated from the corps,
and was on detached duty in the city of Norfolk, Virginia,
and afterwards at Point Lookout, Maryland,
where we were when the order came for us to rejoin
the Ninth Corps, which had been brought back to the
Army of the Potomac.
We arrived in front of Petersburg, at a point on
the line where the Ninth Army Corps was stationed,
on the Fourth of July, 1864. The two lines, our line
and the enemy's, were at this point very near each
other, from one hundred and fifty to three hundred
yards apart, the distance varying according to the
line of the works. We were ordered to encamp in
some woods in the rear of our line of rifle-pits, and
not far from them.
Shots from the enemy were continually coming
into our camp, being fired at the men in the breastworks
in front. We had to erect a barricade in the
camp to protect ourselves, behind which we lived.
Men of course strayed more or less away from the
barricade, and every now and then some one would be
wounded. Every three or four days it became our
turn to take our places in the rifle-pits, where we had
to stay forty-eight hours, and sometimes longer. We
never went into the rifle-pits without some one being
killed or wounded.
While we were encamped in this way, we heard of
the plan of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pleasants, of
the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania Infantry, who was a
practical miner, and his men were largely men who
had worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. He
conceived the idea of building a mine under a certain
portion of the enemy's works, with the purpose of
blowing them up. At a certain point in the enemy's
line, opposite the point where we were located, was a
very strong earthwork, mounting several guns of large
calibre, which did very much damage to our fortifications
and troops. It was but one hundred and fifty
yards from our line to that point. Back of it, on
higher ground, was a hill called Cemetery Hill, regarded
as a strategic point. If we could capture that
hill, it was believed that much would be done to force
General Lee out of Richmond. This fort stood in the
way. Colonel Pleasants believed that he could remove
it by his plan of blowing it up. The idea was that, if
the fort could be removed by the explosion, the enemy
being taken by surprise, opportunity would be
afforded for our troops, already in position, to charge
in through the open space thus made, and, taking advantage
of the surprise on the part of the enemy, to
push on to the crest of Cemetery Hill.
Colonel Pleasants met with no encouragement on
the part of General Meade, in command of the Army
of the Potomac; nevertheless, as General Burnside,
his corps commander, approved of it, he was allowed
to undertake it. No assistance whatever was afforded
him by the Engineer Corps of the Army. He had to
devise such methods as he could to accomplish his
purpose, working at a great disadvantage all the time,
but he finally accomplished the task. He began the
work inside of our lines, under cover of a hill, at a
point where the enemy could not perceive what was
being done, and carried his tunnel through the earth
the whole distance of one hundred and fifty yards,
until he reached the fort. It was twenty feet beneath
the surface of the ground at the point he reached.
From thence he made a branch at right angles on
either side, making it in the form of a letter T, as it
were, at that point. In these branches he placed
large wooden tanks in which powder was to be put.
Four tons of powder were placed in these wooden
boxes, and connected by a fuse at the entrance of the
mine.
The 30th of July, 1864, was fixed upon as the time
for the explosion to take place. It was intended to
have it take place somewhere about three o'clock in the
morning. Troops were gotten into position the night
before under cover of the darkness, ready to charge
as soon as the mine should be exploded.
I had been engaged for some days previous at the
headquarters of the Third Division of the Ninth
Army Corps, General Potter commanding, as judge
advocate in connection with a court-martial. On the
evening before the battle, the evening of the 29th, an
order came to me to report to my regiment. I did so,
and found that it was about to take its place in line of
battle, ready to join in the charge on the morning of
the next day. I had my supper in camp as usual, and
we started to take up our position, carrying with us
no food, nor anything in the way of clothing, except
the clothes we had on.
The time arrived when the explosion was expected
to take place, but no explosion occurred. It was
learned that the fuse had gone out. An officer of the
Forty-eighth Pennsylvania volunteered to go in and
relight the fuse; and, as I remember, it went out a
second time, and was relighted. Shortly before five
o'clock, just as the sun was rising, a sound as of thunder
was distinctly heard, and in a moment the earth
at the point where the mine had been constructed was
thrown upward, slowly mounting into the air to a
height of some two hundred feet, and then, spreading
out like a fan, fell back again into the excavation made
by the explosion. The soil was of a clayey character,
and enormous boulders of clay were thrown up and
fell back around the opening, resembling in some
respects the crater of a volcano; hence the battle has
sometimes been called the Battle of the Crater. The
men who were in this fort, and the artillery, and
everything pertaining to the fortifications, huge timbers,
ammunition, tents, and everything that would
be naturally located there, were all thrown heavenward.
The men, of course, were either killed or
wounded, with hardly an exception. A large number
of men were in the fort. It has been estimated by
some that there were a thousand.
As soon as the explosion took place, the artillery
all along the line on our side, some one hundred and
twenty pieces or more, began firing at that point.
The firing lasted some moments, and then the troops
were directed to charge. It had been the plan of
General Burnside to have his division of colored troops
lead the advance. There was in the Ninth Corps at
that time a division of colored troops. They had been
drilled with the idea of taking the advance, but General
Meade overruled Burnside's plan, and thought it
best that the colored troops should not be put in that
position. So General Burnside called together his
division commanders, and told them of the change
of plan on the very night before the battle, and
allowed them to draw lots to see which one should
take the lead. The lot fell to General Ledlie, the
least efficient of the division commanders in the Ninth
Corps.
When the Third Division, to which my regiment
belonged, charged over our breastworks and across
the space between our line and the enemy's line, they
came upon the enemy's works to the right of the crater;
but by that time the enemy had recovered from
his surprise, and was concentrating a terrible fire upon
all that region. The men instinctively sought shelter
in the excavation made by the explosion, but when
we arrived at that point we found the crater filled
with troops of General Ledlie's division. There
seemed to be complete chaos reigning there. The
lieutenant-colonel of our regiment, who was in command,
Colonel Buffum, tried to rally the men, as did
officers of other regiments, and to push on to Cemetery
Hill; but General Ledlie, who should have been
with his command, remained behind in a bomb-proof.
I remember seeing him, as we passed the front, secure
in a bomb-proof. His troops had fallen into confusion
in the way I have explained, and he was not there to
remedy the situation. It seemed impossible for the
officers to accomplish anything in the midst of the
reigning confusion.
The Fourth Rhode Island, the few of us that were
together at that time, followed the colonel and the
color bearer out beyond the enemy's works towards
Cemetery Hill, but we encountered such a hurricane
of shot and shell that it was impossible to face it, and
we were driven back again into the shelter of the enemy's
works, where we remained. The attempt to capture
Cemetery Hill had proved a failure. Many of
the men and officers tried to get back to our own line,
but the enemy by that time had a raking fire over the
space between their line and our own, and it was
almost sure death for any person to undertake to
cross it. Very few of those who did, escaped being
killed or wounded. The space between was so covered
with the dead and the wounded that it was possible
for a person to go from one line to the other
without stepping on the earth. I have learned since
that an order was issued for the troops in the crater
to return to our own lines, but I myself did not hear
of such an order, neither did Lieutenant-Colonel Buffum.
We remained in the crater. It was on the 30th
of July, as I have said, and one of the hottest days of
the summer. The enemy had gotten range upon the
crater, and were dropping mortar shell into our midst,
but we held them at bay until our ammunition gave
out. Finally they made a charge, and succeeded in
reaching the crater, and were firing directly down
upon us. General Bartlett, the highest officer in rank
in the crater, a general from Massachusetts, gave the
order for us to surrender. An officer of my regiment,
a lieutenant of the Fourth Rhode Island, Lieutenant
Kibby, tied a white handkerchief on his sword, and
held it up in token of surrender. The enemy ceased
firing.
I may mention that General Bartlett in a previous
battle had lost a leg, and it had been replaced by a
wooden one. A shot struck him and his leg was
broken, but it proved to be the wooden leg.
During all this time we had no water to drink, and
we were parched with thirst. I had the feeling at
the time that if I had a thousand dollars I would give
it cheerfully for a drink of water. The sun beating
down upon us as it did, exposed as we were, and having
neither water to drink nor food to eat, I became
very much prostrated. I have always believed that I
came very near having sunstroke, from the after effects
upon me.
When we surrendered, I, in common with others,
began clambering out of the excavation, up over the
boulders of clay to firm ground, and as I reached the
surface, a Confederate soldier confronted me, saying,
"Give me that sword, you damn Yankee!" I of
course immediately surrendered my sword, giving him
sword and belt and pistol. I was walking with the
colonel to the rear, under the escort of Confederate
soldiers, when another soldier, without any ceremony,
took my colonel's hat off his head, and put a much
worse one in its place. The colonel wore a felt hat,
and they seemed to be desirous of hats of that description.
I had on an infantry cap, and my head was
not disturbed. We had gone but a few paces when
another Confederate soldier took off the hat that the
colonel now had, and put on a still worse one. It
seemed very strange to me to see my colonel treated
with such disrespect, but he endured it without
protest.
I felt very weak, and I suppose was not able to walk
with my usual steadiness, for I heard one Confederate
soldier say to another, pointing to me, "I wish I had
the whiskey in me that he has." If I only could have
had a little at that time, I think it would have been
good for me.
We were taken to the rear of the enemy's line to a
field just outside of Petersburg, where we were placed
under a Confederate guard, and remained there all
that afternoon and all night. It was about two
o'clock in the afternoon when we surrendered. A
mounted officer rode up during the afternoon to take
a view of us, who I was told was General Lee. If it
was, it was the only time I ever saw that famous
officer.
As I have said, I was completely prostrated, and lay
upon the ground, with no desire and scarcely the
strength to get up. A fellow-officer brought me some
water, which I drank, and bathed my head and forehead
and breast, in order to restore me, if possible,
from the fainting condition I was in. As the sun went
down and the night came on, it became cooler, and
I began to revive and feel renewed vigor. The
Confederates gave us nothing to eat. An apple
was given me by some one, and that was the
only food I had that day. The next day was
Sunday. In the morning the Confederates took the
officers and the negroes who had been captured in
battle and arranged us in an order like this: four
officers, four negroes, four officers, four negroes,
and so on, until all the officers and negroes were
formed into a line of that character. Then they
marched us all over the town of Petersburg, through
the streets, to show us up to the inhabitants. The
idea they had in view, I suppose, was to humiliate
the officers. We passed one house, in the doorway of
which stood a white woman, with a colored woman on
either side of her, and as we passed I heard her say,
"That is the way to treat the Yankees; mix them up
with the niggers, they are so fond of them, mix them
up." I thought to myself that she was very much in
the same position that we were. Another woman
whom we passed, called out, saying that if she had
her way she would put all those Yanks in front of a
battery and mow them all down.
A man said to me as we marched along, "They are
going to take you down to Andersonville. They are
dying down there three or four hundred a day; you
will never live to see home again." I thought to myself
that his welcome was not, to say the least, hospitable.
The guard who was marching along by my side
said to me that he did not believe in insulting a prisoner;
that he had made up his mind never to insult
a prisoner, because he had the feeling that he might
some time be in the same position.
We were taken to an island in the river Appomattox,
the officers at last being separated from the colored
men. About eight o'clock Sunday evening
eight hard crackers and a small piece of uncooked
bacon were given to each of us. I had had no food
except the apple that I spoke of, since the Friday
night previous in camp; I went from Friday night to
Sunday night without anything to eat. I ate part of
the crackers and the bacon, thinking that I would
make them go as far as possible, not knowing when I
might receive any more. It was dark when they gave
us the crackers and the bacon, and in the morning I
discovered that the bacon was alive with maggots and
that I had been eating it. I scraped off the maggots,
and ate the rest of it.
On Monday morning they put us aboard box
freight-cars. There were no seats in the cars, and we
were packed in like so many cattle, and started on our
journey to Danville, Virginia. Arriving there, we were
imprisoned in a tobacco warehouse, where we remained
two or three days. This warehouse the Confederate
government had improvised as a place in which to
incarcerate prisoners of war, and a very large number
of men were confined here. We saw some most revolting
sights, men reduced to skeletons and so weak
that they could scarcely crawl about. Here we were
given boiled bacon and hard crackers for our food.
The enlisted men remained here, but the commissioned
officers were taken on board freight cars again,
and carried in the same way as before to Columbia,
South Carolina. It was a very tedious and trying
journey. It was insufferably hot, and very little food
was supplied us. We arrived at Columbia after dark
in the evening, and marched directly to the county
jail, situated in the city of Columbia.
We were placed in rooms in the jail. The one in
which I was had nothing in the way of furniture in
it. We simply lay down upon the floor just as we had
come from the freight cars. The next day we were
distributed around in the rooms on the floor above
that on which we were first placed.
The jail stood on one of the principal streets of the
city, close to the sidewalk and adjacent to what I took
to be the city hall. In the rear of the jail was a yard,
surrounded by a high fence and containing out-houses.
It was a small yard. In it was a small brick building
containing a cook-stove. A pipe from a spring led
into the yard, with a faucet from which we drew
water, which was of very excellent quality.
The room in which I was placed I should think was
in the neighborhood of twenty feet square. There
were, as I remember, seventeen of us in that room.
There were seven similar rooms, four on one side and
three on the other side of a hall running the length of
the building. The side of the room towards the outer
wall consisted of an iron grating. Between that
grating and the outer wall was an alley-way perhaps
three feet in width. There were windows in this
outer wall, which were also covered with gratings.
The room contained nothing whatever in the way of
chairs or beds or anything for our comfort. It was
absolutely empty of everything, except lice and bedbugs,
until we entered it. All along on the angle
made by the walls and ceiling were rows of bedbugs,
and at night they came down upon us.
Having been divided in these rooms, we organized
ourselves into messes, there being a mess in each room.
Each mess detailed men from its number to do the
cooking. We appointed the highest officer of our
number in the prison, Colonel Marshall, as provost
marshal. He appointed a lieutenant as adjutant, who
kept a roster and detailed two men every day in each
of the rooms to do police duty. Their duty was to
sweep the floor, and to scrub it when necessity required.
No broom was supplied us. We therefore
had to purchase one. The men in the room in which
I was, clubbed together and bought a broom, of very
inferior quality, for which we paid five dollars in Confederate
money. There was a tub belonging to the
room, very roughly made, in which we brought up
water from the yard below whenever we found it
necessary to wash the floor. We would dash the
water over the floor, and then scrub it with the broom.
We were allowed out in the prison yard each day, at
daylight in the morning for an hour, and again in the
afternoon for an hour. During the morning hour we
all gathered around the one faucet in the yard, to perform
our morning ablutions. There were some one
hundred and twenty of us, as I remember, and of
course we could not all engage in this process at the
same time.
The cooks were allowed to go into the brick house
of which I have spoken, long before daylight, where
they built a fire with wood supplied by the Confederate
government, and proceeded to fill a wash-boiler
connected with the cook-stove, with water, which they
heated and stirred in the corn meal supplied us as the
chief article of our diet. This they afterwards baked
in two dripping pans, these being the only cooking
utensils which the building contained. After they
had finished baking this corn-bread, they divided it
into pieces about as large as one's hand and perhaps
an inch or two thick, and spread it out on boards,
which they brought up into the prison about eight or
nine o'clock in the morning. A piece of this bread
and a tin cup full of cold water constituted our
breakfast.
When I entered the prison I had nothing with me
but the clothes I had on, and a tooth brush and a
small pocket comb. At the time I was taken prisoner
I had some twenty or twenty-five dollars in greenbacks,
and this I exchanged for Confederate money,
through one of the guard placed over us, receiving, as
I remember, some fifteen or twenty dollars for each
dollar of the currency of the United States. With
this money I bought me a pint tin cup, paying five
dollars for it, Confederate money. A naval officer
who had been captured at Fort Sumter a year previous
to our imprisonment, and who was also in this
prison, gave me a small caseknife and a fork made of
the handle of a toothbrush. A fellow prisoner who
was ingenious with the jackknife, carved a tablespoon
out of a piece of wood, of which he made me a present.
These articles constituted my kit.
The ration supplied us consisted of cornmeal, rice,
and sorghum. The rations were issued to last ten
days. They amounted to about a pint of meal a day,
a tenth of a pint of rice, and a gill of sorghum. The
cornmeal was sometimes good, sometimes it was
wormy, sometimes it consisted of the corn and the
cob ground up together. The meal was cooked in
the way I have described, and twice a day we had a
piece of the size I have mentioned. Sometimes we
would save our rice and sorghum, and have what we
considered a feast. At other times we would sell the
sorghum, through the guard, to somebody outside the
prison, in exchange for cow-peas, and out of these
peas a soup would be made. Of course, it consisted
of nothing but the peas boiled in water. We had no
meat and no salt. When such an exchange was
made, we had the luxury of a pint of this soup.
As I have said, I had no change of clothing, so
when I indulged in the luxury of washing day, I had
to go without underclothing until my clothes were
dry. Of course, each man had to wash his own
clothes.
Every now and then it came my turn to wash the
floor, and clean up the room as best I could. Retiring
at night, consisted in sweeping the floor. We went
to bed, of course, upon the floor, wearing the clothes
that we had worn during the day. I was fortunate
enough to procure a log of wood out in the jail-yard,
which I utilized as a pillow, folding up my coat and
placing it on top of the wood to make my pillow more
comfortable.
Of course time hung heavy on our hands. We
therefore tried to while it away by engaging in games
of various kinds. We clubbed together and bought
a pack of cards, paying fifteen dollars for them, and
they were very poor cards at that. Some one of our
number made a checker and chess-board out of a
square piece of plank, and whittled out rough checkers
and chessmen. We used to tell stories, and indulged
largely in telling what we would like to have
to eat, and what we would have if we ever got out
of that place. I often dreamed at night of having
magnificent banquets, and that seemed to be the case
with my fellow-prisoners, for we frequently told each
other in the morning of the splendid repasts we had
had in our dreams. The naval officers of whom I have
spoken, some fourteen in number, having been there
for a year, and having received their pay in gold regularly,
by an arrangement made with the Confederate
government on the part of Admiral Dahlgren, had
been able to purchase a good many things. They had
supplied themselves with a number of books. They
had Sir Walter Scott's novels, they had Don Quixote
and Gil Blas. The two latter I borrowed of them,
and read them in the prison with great interest. Some
of the men in the room in which I was having learned
that I knew something of Latin, asked me if I would
not undertake to teach them Latin, so I obtained from
these naval officers a Latin grammar and a Latin
Prose Composition, and established a class in Latin.
So in one way and another we managed to get through
each day.
A portion of each day was occupied by each one of
us in a critical examination of our underclothing, in
order to make sure that we destroyed the crop of
vermin which we found there each day. They were
not the kind that are found in the heads of school
children, but seemed to infest woolen clothing, and,
as we all wore woolen clothing, we were greatly annoyed
by them. This process we called "skirmishing,"
and it was one of our daily duties.
There were guards around the prison in the jail-yard
and on the street below at each side of the
prison. At the front of the prison there was a large
window, which we were ordered not to approach after
six o'clock at night. The guard had instructions to
fire at any prisoner who might show himself at the
window. We not infrequently tantalized the guard
by going near enough to be seen by him, and dodging
back just as he fired.
We were allowed out in the jail-yard, as I have
said, early in the morning. A Confederate corporal
would unlock the door, and shout out, "Yanks all
out!" Of course, we were counted as we went out,
and when we returned we were all drawn up in line
and counted again, to make sure that all that went out
had returned.
The captain in charge of the jail seemed to be a
very excellent man. He was an elderly man, too old
for active service in the field, and the men under him
were either old men or boys, some of them hardly
old enough to carry a musket. This showed to us, as
we thought, that nearly all their available men were
at the front. The guard was frequently changed;
that is to say, the men who served for a few days
would disappear and an entirely new set take their
places. They wore no uniform, and we therefore concluded
that they were rustics and others in the
neighborhood, temporarily serving as guards over the
prisoners.
One day while I was waiting for the officer to let us
return into the prison, we having been allowed out in
the yard, I was walking back and forth in the lower
hall. While doing so three young girls came up to
the sentinel on duty at the front of the building and
spoke to him. They were evidently of the class
known in the South as "poor white trash," who had
come from the country. I heard them say to the
guard that they would like to see a Yankee. He immediately
pointed to me and said, "There's one."
They replied, looking critically at me, "Why, I don't
see but what he looks just like other men." What
they expected to see I am sure I cannot tell, some
monstrous being or other, I presume, for there had
been most surprising stories told at the beginning
of the war, among the ignorant white and colored
people, of the horrible appearance of the Yankees. It
was declared that they had horns on their heads, and
altogether presented a very devilish aspect.
We used to talk more or less of the possibility of
escape. We could easily have gotten away from the
prison, because of the inferior quality of the guard.
Whenever we were allowed outside, we could have
made a rush, and thus gotten away from them. Some
of us, of course, would probably have been killed or
wounded, but a majority could have escaped from the
prison itself. The difficulty was to get to our own
lines, the nearest place being the seacoast at Charleston,
S. C. This long distance had to be traversed,
travelling by night and hiding by day. The Confederates
were accustomed to hunt prisoners with bloodhounds,
so the chances of ultimate escape were very
small.
Two of our number, however, determined to take
those chances at the first opportunity. So one night,
when a severe storm was raging, the wind blowing,
and the rain pouring down, they tied some blankets
together as a rope by which they could be let down
to the street. Here I may say that some of the prisoners
happened to have blankets with them when they
were captured, though I myself was not one of the
fortunate ones. We had discovered that the sentry
on duty when the nights were stormy, was in the
habit of retiring within the porch over the front door
of the prison; therefore these two men thought if they
could reach the ground while the sentry was within
the porch, they might possibly make their escape under
cover of the darkness.
The plan proved successful. We let them down
from the window, and saw and heard no more of
them. Whether they were recaptured or not I did
not know for years afterwards. They were not
brought back to the prison, and I have since learned
that they succeeded in getting away. In order to deceive
the officer who called us out in the morning, we
placed two dummies on the floor in place of the men
who had escaped during the previous night. This
ruse deceived the prison officials, so the men had a
longer opportunity of making their escape; but it was
discovered at night when the roll-call was made that
there were two men lacking, and, of course, I suppose
the two escaped prisoners were at once pursued.
The windows in the prison were sadly lacking in
glass, many panes having been broken out. Glass
was almost an unknown quantity in the Southern
Confederacy at that time, as they manufactured none
themselves, and the blockade was so stringent that
they could import but little. The consequence was,
when winter weather came on, that the prisoners suffered
from cold. The captain of the jail fitted up the
vacant spaces with boards, and so many panes had to
be supplied in this way that it seriously darkened the
prison. He also placed a stove in the centre of the
hall which I have spoken of as running the whole
length of the prison. It was very insufficient in its
capacity to heat the prison, nevertheless it was better
than nothing. Of course the fuel supplied us was
wood.
An old colored woman was allowed to come into
the prison whenever she chose, to sell what the southern
people call "snacks," to such as were fortunate
enough to have money to buy them. The lunches
consisted mainly of baked sweet potatoes and flour-bread
or biscuit. A New Hampshire officer had quite
a little sum of money when he was taken prisoner, and
this he had husbanded to the best of his ability, and
had some of it left when the cold became quite severe.
Through the old colored woman, by paying her liberally
for it, he obtained an old carpet that had seen
its best days. It was quite ragged and torn. This,
those who slept on my side of the room placed over
them, and thus had some little protection from the
cold weather. We used to sleep spoon-fashion under
this carpet, and of course we all had to turn over at
the same time to keep the carpet over us. We appointed
one of our number to give the word of command
whenever he was disposed to have us turn.
Thus we lived week in and week out, until nearly
six months had gone by. One day, when I was engaged
in teaching my class in Latin, I heard shouts
from some of my fellow-prisoners, calling, "Shearman!
Shearman! You are wanted!" Making my
way toward the direction of the shouts, I found that
a Confederate corporal was at the prison door, who informed
me that he had good news for me. He took
me down stairs, and there I found a Confederate
major, who told me the joyful news that I was to be
exchanged next morning. I could scarcely believe
what he said to be true, for I, in common with the
other prisoners, thought we should be compelled to
remain there until the end of the war, and when that
might be we did not know.
I might say here that we were allowed to write letters
home, but they were limited to one side of a half
sheet of note paper. The paper and envelopes were
of the poorest quality imaginable, and cost an exorbitant
price, reckoned in Confederate money. These
letters had to be read by the captain in charge of the
prison, and forwarded by him to their destination. In
my letters I almost always asked my father to do what
he could to get me exchanged, but I had no hope that
he would be successful. It seems, however, that the
two governments had made an arrangement to exchange
ten thousand sick men. The exchange was to
have taken place at Savannah, and five thousand were
exchanged at that point, when General Sherman arrived
at Savannah, which compelled a transfer in the
place of exchange. The remainder were exchanged
at Charleston, South Carolina. Through the influence
of General Burnside, a friend of my father's, my
name was included in the list of those to be exchanged,
although I was not sick. All this I learned
after reaching home.
After my interview with the Confederate major, I
was taken up stairs again into my portion of the
prison, and told my fellow-prisoners of my good luck.
There were six others to whom the same glorious
news was imparted. Of course it was the topic of
conversation from that time on during the rest of the
day and evening. Many of the prisoners took advantage
of the opportunity to send letters home by us,
and wrote much longer communications than were
allowed, we agreeing to secrete them about our persons,
and carry them away surreptitiously. They
could thus write many things about themselves and
their condition that would not pass muster, going
through the captain's hands.
I did not sleep a wink that night. The excitement
of the news which I had received would not permit
me to close my eyes. I might say here, speaking of
sitting up nearly all night, that we had no lights in
the prison, and when night came on, we had to sit in
the darkness until we were ready to lie down upon
the floor. Occasionally we would indulge in the luxury
of a tallow candle of the poorest quality, for which
we paid a dollar in Confederate money. Sometimes
a pine knot would be found among the wood which
the cooks used. This we would take up into the jail
and light in the evening. Of course it afforded light,
but it also filled the room with clouds of smoke which
escaped through the broken windows. Next morning
our faces would be covered with soot.
To come back to the matter of my exchange, on
the afternoon of the next day I was duly liberated,
with my six companions, and marched to a freight
train. I remember that it was a cold day for that region,
and that snow was falling. It was the only
snow, as I recollect, that we had during the time I
was a prisoner. The train of cars soon started on its
way to Charleston, S. C. A large number of prisoners
were gathered at various points, coming from Andersonville
and Florence. We reached Charleston early
the next morning, and were marched across the city
to the wharves.
Charleston was completely abandoned by its inhabitants
because of the siege on the part of our forces,
and it was the most desolate looking place I have ever
seen in all my life. The damages inflicted by shot
and shell were to be seen on every hand. The grass
had actually grown in the streets of Charleston,
although at the time we were passing through, a light
snow was on the ground, adding to the desolation of
the scene. General Toombs of Georgia had threatened
before the war began that the South would
make grass grow in the streets of Boston, and that he
would call the roll of his slaves on Bunker Hill.
Grass actually did grow in the streets of Charleston
as a result of the war.
Arriving at the wharves, we were placed on board
of a steam vessel, which proved to be a blockade runner,
and were carried out to a fleet of vessels under
the walls of Fort Sumter, which our government had
provided for the transport of prisoners. I was placed
on board a ship called the United States, with a number
of my fellow-prisoners. Those of us who were
officers were assigned by the captain of the ship to
staterooms. We found that there were nine hundred
prisoners on board from Andersonville and Florence,
some of them in the last stages of emaciation. Two
or three of them died on the voyage from Charleston
to Annapolis, and their bodies were buried in the sea.
The Sanitary Commission had an agent on board,
with an ample supply of underclothing. I at once
got rid of the clothing which I had worn so long in the
prison, throwing it overboard, and accepted with
alacrity the new and clean clothing given me by the
agent of the Sanitary Commission.
We lay at anchor one night in Charleston harbor,
and the next day sailed for Annapolis, Md. Arriving
at that point, we found each prisoner had been granted
a thirty days' leave of absence. I telegraphed my
father of my arrival at Annapolis, and found, on
reaching home, that he could hardly bring himself to
believe it.
We went from Annapolis to Washington to obtain
our pay, which had been accumulating during the
period of our imprisonment. I purchased new clothing,
and then joyfully started for home. I had served
nearly three years, and my regiment had been mustered
out of service during the period of my imprisonment,
its time having expired. Some of its members
had re-enlisted, and were consolidated with the Seventh
Rhode Island; but I felt that I had done my
duty, and that I was entitled to withdraw from the
service, so I sent in my resignation direct to the Secretary
of War at Washington, accompanying it with
a surgeon's certificate of my health, and setting forth
the facts of my service and my imprisonment. I obtained
the endorsement of the Governor of the State
to my application, and it came back in a few days accepted,
and I was out of the service. I have often
felt that I would have been tempted to return had I
known that the war would end as soon as it subsequently
did, so as to have had the satisfaction of
being in at the close, if possible.
I have never regretted my being in the army during
that most trying and critical period of our country. I
feel as did the Westerner who said that he would not
part with his experiences for a hundred thousand dollars,
and he would not go through with it again for a
hundred million.