USA > Illinois > Ninety-Second Illinois Volunteers > Part 31
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38
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down many of the boys who gave out in double-quicking. My brother William was shot, after his capture, because he hesitated to pull off his boots! Lieutenant Pointer, of Wheeler's staff, was the wretch who murdered my brother. When Lieutenant Pointer had shot away, at his defenseless prisoners, all the shots in his revolver, he beat the disarmed boys, his prisoners, over the head with his heavy navy revolver; he knocked Lieutenant Sco- ville over the head with his revolver, with no warning to Scoville, from pure maliciousness, and nearly knocked the Lieutenant senseless. Lieutenant Pointer was a contemptible wretch. I never had a "confidence game" played on me until then. A Rebel rode up to me, and, with tears in his eyes, said that if I had any valuables about me I had better give them to him until we reached Tunnel Hill, when he would return them to me. I thought it very kind in him, and gave him all my little keepsakes, love letters from "the girl I left behind me," etc., but it was the last I ever saw of that kind-hearted Johnny. When we were safely inside of the Rebel lines, I was dismounted, to await the coming of the balance of the Yankee prisoners. While waiting, I was frequently invited to " shell out " all the valuables I had, but all I could do was to inform them that I had already "shelled." One Reb proposed to trade boots with me; and trade it was, with- out ceremony or delay ; but I think I got the best of the bargain, for I got a pair of number nines old enough to vote, for a pair of number fives. Another Johnny unceremoniously traded hats with me. I soon found myself with nothing left that a Rebel thought it worth while to trade for. Everything valuable, or sup- posed to be valuable, was taken from every Yankee prisoner; but that was nothing compared to the cool manner in which the infa- mous Lieutenant Pointer coolly murdered our poor boys. At last, all that were captured were gathered together, and marched to Tunnel Hill, and placed in the railroad station house. One by one they were taken out, and questioned and cross-questioned by the Rebel officers, in order to learn the strength and situation of our army ; but I think they obtained but little information useful to them from the Ninety-Second boys. When we came to have roll-call, we found twenty-one of the Ninety-Second boys answer- ing to their names, as follows: Lieutenant Horace C. Scoville, Company K; Wallace Revelle, Company K; James M. Merritt, Company K; Benjamin F. Heistand, Company D; E. D. Har- rington, Company K; William Snyder, Company D; David Shoemaker, Company D; William P. McWorthy, Company I:
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Charles W. Reynolds, Company I; Alexander Baysinger, Com- pany G; Abraham Houser, Company G; Corporal James W. Starkey, Company H; Benjamin Noe, Company H; Mahler D. Kooker, Company H; Henry Miller, Company F; William Guyer, Company E; Coston Z. Best, Company E; Francis M. Chase, Company C; Edwin W. Elliott, Company B; Morris R. Miller, Company A; and Nathan C. Tyler, Company A.
We were captured, and were bound to see something of prison life in the Rebel prison pens; but, had we known at that time what per cent. of our little band would never see the Union lines again, sad and sorrowful as our future was, it would have been worse. But, at that time, we did not fear them-we were soldiers under the "Stars and Stripes," and let come what fortune might bring to us, we would accept it uncomplainingly, as was becoming to soldiers. We had abiding confidence that the Ninety-Second would pay the Rebels, with fearful interest, for what they had done that day. At three P. M., we were put on board of the cars and sent to Dalton, where we were placed in a jail with a hundred or more prisoners, including negroes, Rebei deserters, and Union spies. Some of the spies were to be tried in a few days, and they said they expected to be shot. Among the prisoners were a num- ber of Union men, arrested for their loyalty to the United States; they were true men, and preferred imprisonment and death rather than service in the Rebel army. Soon after we reached Dalton, we were taken to General Hill's head-quarters, where the General and his ladies appeared quite delighted to see us. We were again searched, but little of value was found. At five P. M., we were placed on the cars again and started for Atlanta, where we arrived at eleven P. M., and were immediately marched to the military prison and locked up. At four P. M., of the twenty-fourth, we were furnished with some rations, consisting of corn-meal and salt, the first food since our capture. We went to work to cook our corn-meal-but our boys longed for some of Uncle Sam's hard-tack, even if it was branded " B. C." On the twenty-fifth, we were again placed on the cars, guarded by the Thirty-Fourth Tennessee Confederates, a regiment that had laid at Harrison's Landing while the Ninety-Second did picket duty there. They wished to know how " Mother" was getting along, referring to a member of Company H, of the Ninety-Second, who had crossed the Tennessee by swimming it, at Harrison's Landing, and had a chat with some of the Thirty-Fourth Tennessee soldiers. We arrived at Macon the same day, and were placed in the city prison,
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with a checker-board iron grating to look through, all in a room IOX12; it was a dismal cell, and we were glad when ordered aboard of the cars again. The guards told us we were bound for Ander- sonville! They told us it was a fine, healthy place; that the pris- oners were well cared for, and had good shelter and plenty of food. We found that it was a healthy country, full of pure water, fuel and food; but Rebel diabolism denied to us poor Yanks the boon of fresh air, cold water, or any shelter, and, in a country full of fuel within sight of our prison pen, they denied us wood enough to cook our scanty rations with. We reached Andersonville about two o'clock P. M., on the twenty-sixth. We got off from the cars in a timbered country, with a dry, sandy soil. About three-quarters of a mile away we could see a large enclosure, com- posed of timbers set in the ground on end, close together, about fifteen feet high, with sentry boxes along the top-and that was the Andersonville prison pen. The " old Dutchman," as he was called, Captain Wirz, riding a white horse, came along, and es- corted us to the prison gate. Here he left us with the guards, and himself went inside to learn what part of the prison to assign us to. While we were waiting outside of the prison gate, a squad of Yankee prisoners came from the woods with armsful of fagots that they had been gathering for fuel. At first we thought it was a squad of negroes; but, as they came nearer, we saw that they were Yankee prisoners! They were black as negroes, and such downcast, hopeless, haggard, woe-begone looking human beings I never saw before. They said they were glad to see us, but would to God that it was under better circumstances. After awhile the prison gate was opened for us to pass through. As we entered, a sight of horror met our eyes that almost froze our blood, and made our hearts stop-beating. Before us were skele- ton forms that once had been stalwart men-covered with rags, and filth, and vermin-with hollow cheeks and glaring eyes! Some of the Ninety-Second boys, in the heat and intensity of their emotions, exclaimed: " Is this hell? Great God, protect us." Well might Wirz, the incarnate fiend who presided over that Rebel inferno, have written over its gate: " Let him who enters here leave hope behind." The prisoners were divided into squads of nineties-and we fresh-comers were distributed around to fill up some of the nineties where others had died ; seven of us were placed in the same part of the prison, and we formed a little family of ourselves, for each other's comfort and mutual encour- agement. I will never forget my first night in that horrible place.
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There was a heavy, cold dew falling. We lay down in the sand, without a thing under or over us, and already nearly stripped of clothing by our captors; and there we lay, seven of us, spoon- fashion. For many days we remained so exposed to the cold dews at night, and the scorching sun by day, until we managed to save some of our scanty rations and trade them with our starving com- panions for an old blanket and the half of another one. Then two of the boys and myself went to the prison gate, cut the buttons off our coats, and bought our way out to the woods, and each brought back an armful of poles and wood-the poles to make us a shel- ter by stretching our old blanket and a half over them, and the wood to cook our coarse corn-meal, which, without the wood to cook it, we would have had to eat raw. When we had fixed up with these scanty materials as best we could, we thought ourselves quite comfortable, in comparison with the thousands around us who had no shelter of any kind. And this in a country filled with timber out of which we could have constructed shelters, if our inhuman and fiendish captors had only have permitted it! I shall never forget the unfortunate predicament we were in when we drew our raw corn meal, cob and kernel ground up together, and we without a dish to cook in, or a splinter of fuel to cook with. Had it not been for the generosity of one of the old pris- oners, we would have had to eat it raw-he loaned us a scanty bit of fuel to cook it by, and his chip to cook it on. As soon as we saw what constituted cooking utensils in Andersonville, and were able to do so, we procured a chip of our own, and were as happy -aye, as we could be! At this time there were about seven thousand Yankee prisoners crowded and huddled into the stock- ade at Andersonville. Nearly all of them had wintered at Belle Isle or Danville. They were almost destitute of clothing, and were living skeletons. All were eager to find out the prospects of an exchange, and the least encouragement they could get they would catch at as drowning men do at straws. Every day we all had to fall in by nineties, and if one man was missing that could not be accounted for, the whole ninety starving skeletons were kept absolutely without food that day. The poor fellows tried hard to keep up good spirits, and outlive the Confederacy. About the middle of May, as the Union armies began to advance, Yan- kee prisoners would be brought in every day, and from them we obtained our only news from the United States. The Rebels would never let us know what was going on at the front-only
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when they gained some slight victory, we would hear them boast of it.
It would be remarkable if, among so many men in horrible confinement, there should not be methods of escape devised and attempted. The work of tunneling out was silently going on, and we hoped that it would be successful; but, in some way, the Rebels discovered it, and the fiendish Wirz swore that not another morsel of food should be issued to any one of his thousands of starving prisoners until the partly-constructed tunnel was again filled up. Wirz was the commander of the interior of the prison, and was a wretch of the lowest type, insolent, overbearing, heartless, and, of course, a coward, for no one with a spark of manly courage about him would come among helpless prisoners, famishing for the want of food, and draw a revolver, as he did. I formed the acquaintance, in Andersonville, of a man by the name of Henshaw, from Lee county, Illinois. He had made his escape several times, but was always caught by the bloodhounds (nigger-dogs), which the Rebels kept for the purpose of pursuing prisoners, and which rendered it almost hopeless for any one to attempt to escape. In the latter part of May, the prisoners arranged to make an attempt at an escape on a grand scale. It was to be done by undermining the stockade, and, at a given signal, in broad daylight, a rush was to be made by the prisoners against the stockade, and topple it over, and seize the Rebel artillery and all the arms and ammuni- tion and provisions possible, and make a grand attempt to reach the lines of the Union armies. But just before the time for action had arrived, we found the whole plot had been disclosed to the Rebels-some traitor or spy had given the minutest details of the plan to Wirz. Soon after the following was posted near the prison gate :
" NOTICE.F-Not wishing to shed the blood of hundreds not connected with those who concocted a mad plan to force the stockade, and make, in this way, their escape, I hereby warn the leaders, and those who formed themselves into a band to carry out this, that I am in possession of all the facts, and have made my dispositions accordingly, so as to frustrate them. No choice would be left me but to open with grape and canister on the stockade, and what effect that would have in this densely crowded place need not be told. May 25, IS64. H. WIRZ."
The only consolation left us was that we had badly frightened our Rebel guards. About this time Henry Miller, of Company
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F, of the Ninety-Second, died, the first among the Ninety-Second prisoners captured at Nickojack to fall a victim to Rebel cruelty. The prisoners in Andersonville were dying off at a fearful rate; especially those who had been longest in Rebel hands. The Rebel authorities had deliberately planned the murder of the prisoners in their hands by the slow process of starvation and disease-it was, at first, slow but sure, and then it was sure and rapid. I have counted one hundred and thirty lifeless skeletons of our boys that had died in one day. You might walk around the prison any hour in the day and see men closing their eyes in death. Diar- rhea and scurvy appeared to be the most fatal diseases. None can know the horrors of scurvy except those who have beheld them. Sometimes the cords of the victim would be contracted, and the limbs drawn up so that the patient could neither walk, stand, nor lie still; sometimes it would be confined to the bones, and not make any appearance on the outside; sometimes it would be con- fined to the mouth, and the gums would separate from the teeth, and the teeth drop out. There were hundreds of cases of this disease in Andersonville. I have seen many of our prisoners suffering with scurvy actually starve to death because they could not eat the coarse corn meal furnished by the Rebels to the Yan- kee prisoners. In the month of June it rained continuously for twenty-one days, and it was not strange that disease multiplied in our crowded prison pen, and assumed every possible form. There were fifteen thousand prisoners in the stockade during all that rainy time, without shelters, lying out in the storm day and night. I cannot describe the hopeless misery and suffering. Imagination cannot conceive of it. Night after night, in a sort of delirium, I have dreamed of sitting down to some bountifully supplied table, away up home in Northern Illinois, and, waking, would find myself in the wet sand, cold, and nearly famishing for food. One principal topic of conversation, forced upon us by our sufferings, and the cravings of hunger, was something good to eat. If any one knew of a rare dish, something especially good, he would entertain, and momentarily satisty, the rest of his mess, by describing it minutely, the manner of cooking it, etc. We not only lacked food, but clean water. We were forced to use the swamp water that ran through the prison pen, that had been filled with filth by flowing first through the Rebel camps. One day a clear spring of water burst out near the swamp inside of our prison during the rainy weather, and day and night there was a continual stream of men there trying to get a drink of clean
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water. All around the inside of the Andersonville Prison, about fifteen feet from the stockade, was a slender pole, or slight ditch, which was called the "dead line." Any one who put his foot beyond that line was a dead man-the Rebel guards, without commanding a halt, would shoot him down. Many poor fellows, so starved that they had lost their reason, crossed that line uncon- sciously, and were coolly shot dead. During the month of June prisoners came in so fast that the Rebels had to build an addition to the stockade, after which there were about thirty acres in the entire enclosure. When the addition was completed, they made a small gap in the stockade, and ordered thirteen thousand pris- oners to pass into it, giving them two hours to move into the additional enclosure, with a threat to deprive them of the few ragged blankets they had left, and their rations, if they did not pass through in the time allotted. On July third many new prisoners arrived, and the entire day was spent in roll calls, and assigning the new prisoners to fill vacancies in the companies of nineties. They gave us one-half pound of corn meal that day. On the fourth of July we received no rations at all, nor until four o'clock of the fifth, when each man received one-half pint of corn mush, without salt, but with plenty of cob and husks in it. At this time there was organized among the prisoners a gang of robbers, or, as they styled themselves, raiders. They would steal the rations and clothing and fuel of the weaker prisoners, and when they met with resistance, they did not hesitate to commit murder, and more than one poor prisoner was murdered by these robbers among the Yankee prisoners. Wirz, the prison keeper, (and I tell this of him cheerfully, for it is the only good thing I can say of him,) told us to form a police of our own, and point out the guilty ones, and he would have them arrested. About forty of the leading spirits in that robber gang were captured, and tried by a jury selected by the prisoners themselves-six of them were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. On the twelfth of July a gallows was erected inside of the prison, and at four o'clock P. M. Wirz came in, with the six prisoners under Rebel guards, and, said Wirz: "These men have been tried and convicted by their own comrades, prisoners with themselves, and I now return them to you, in as good condition as I received them. You can now do with them as your reason, justice and mercy dictate, and may God protect both you and them." As they were mounting the scaffold, one broke loose and ran to the opposite side of the prison, but was soon brought back and placed with the other five.
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After giving them time to make a few remarks, meal sacks were drawn over their heads, and they were launched into eternity, to meet, perhaps, a more merciful fate from the Judge of all the world, than was accorded them by their starving and dying com- rades, whom they had banded together to rob of their little food and clothing. That men could be found in that horrible place ready to rob the dying and the dead, their own comrades, is a terrible commentary upon the sufferings there endured. It was near this time that Edwin W. Elliott, of Company B, died, and many more of our little company were slowly starving to death, and failing day by day. If a man once permitted the thought to find lodgment in his brain that he would not live to get out, he was certain to die; there was one thing remarkable about it- you would never hear a man regret that he was about to die-it seemed to be to them a glad feeling of relief and liberty that their sufferings and tortures were so soon to end-the gloom of Ander- sonville was darker than the gloom of the grave. I remained comparatively healthy until July twentieth, when I began to see and feel the unmistakable evidences that I was to suffer with scurvy. Within ten days I was suffering so badly that I could not walk, and my teeth were nearly dropping out of my mouth, and I am now confident that I would soon have been numbered with the fourteen thousand Yankee soldiers who lie buried at Andersonville, had not Nathaniel Davis, of Company K, of the Ninety-Second, who had been captured and just brought into the prison pen, have given me some money which he had secreted about his person, with which I bought of my Rebel guards some Irish potatoes, and ate them raw. In two weeks after that I could see I was recovering. To my comrade, Mr. Davis, I most truly owe my life, for, without his timely kindness, I surely would have died. About September first Sergeant John Spence, of Company F, was brought to Andersonville. By the new arrivals we kept posted about the Ninety-Second. Our Rebel guards were con- tinually setting a time for exchange, and our boys would cheer up, but when the time had passed the boys would get the blues, and die faster than ever. Our Rebel guards gloried in our disappoint- ments. On September first there were thirty-four thousand Yankee prisoners in Andersonville. Our guards were getting afraid that we would be rescued by our troops, and began moving the prisoners out for different points. On the eight of September the company of ninety, to which Mahler D. Kooker, of Company H, Morris R. Miller, of Company A, William P. Mc Worthy, of
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Company I, and myself belong, was ordered out; but Miller and Mc Worthy were so weak that they could not walk, and the guards took them to the hospital. Poor boys, they were heroes, but they could stand such treatment no longer, and it was not many days until we heard that they were both dead. We were crowded into old box cars, sixty of us into a car, and we were soon on our way, via Savannah, to Charleston, S. C., where we were placed in the city jail yard, under the fire of General Foster's gun-boats, where the Yankee shel! were bursting continually around us. When a shell would burst close by, the boys would set up a cheer; they said it sounded good, for it came from home. We were placed there to keep Foster from shelling the city, but it did not stop the Yankee shell from screaming through the streets of Charleston; and after they found it useless to keep us there, the Rebels moved us out to the Charleston fair grounds, where we were kept for five weeks; and we there received the best rations ever received in the Confederacy, and had the benefit of the fine sea breeze, and the poor Yankees began to recover health and spirits. On October fourth, we were again placed on board the cars, and taken to Florence, South Carolina, and again placed in a stockade, like that at Andersonville, but not so ex- tensive. Lieutenant Barrett was in command of the interior of the prison pen, and, if it be possible, was a meaner and more fiendish villain than Wirz. We had plenty of fuel for a time, for at first there was plenty of timber inside of the stockade; but our rations were scantier than at Andersonville. For three months we received nothing in the shape of meat. Tunneling by the prisoners was attempted to some extent, but without suc- cess. At one time Lieutenant Barrett had an idea that there was a tunnel about completed, and ordered that no rations be issued until the facts were disclosed. But only two or three men knew anything about the tunnel, and they would make no disclosure, and for three days the already half starved ten thousand Yankee prisoners went entirely without any kind of food, and hundreds literally died of sheer starvation! I believe that if the three men knowing about the tunnel had not at last pointed it out, every one of the ten thousand prisoners would have been starved to death! About this time George M. Frank, of Company C, Ninety- Second, came into the Rebel prison pen at Florence. I shall never forget the expression on his face when we met. He could hardly believe that I was the same boy whom he had known as a member of Company I, of the Ninety-Second. I did not weigh
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eighty pounds, and yet I was a fair specimen of the Yankee pris- oners who had been long in Rebel hands. On February fifteenth, 1865, we were again on board of the cars, and our Rebel guards said we were going to be exchanged. We had been so often deceived that we dared not believe them. We passed through Wilmington to Goldsboro, and then to Greensboro, N. C. Here the officer of the guard told us we were going to Richmond, Vir- ginia, to be exchanged, and we began to hope that it was true. At Greensboro seven of our boys actually froze to death, in a country covered with timber, and where there was no excuse for it, save alone Rebel cruelty and heartlessness. On the night of the twentieth of February, we arrived in Richmond, and marched immediately over the frozen pavements, many of us barefooted and nearly naked, to the Pemberton Prison. On the twenty-third, we signed parole papers, and on the morning of the twenty- fourth of February, 1865, we were marched on board of a Rebel steamer, and were soon on our way down the James River to Aiken's Landing, where we crossed the line between the two armies, and stepped again under the old "Stars and Stripes." Never will I forget my feeling of happiness as I stood and gazed at the dear old Flag, that for nearly a year I had not seen, looking brighter and more beautiful than ever before. Again the drum beats roll-call, and we gather around to see how many of the twenty-one captured at Nickojack, on the morning of April twenty-third, 1864, will answer. Nearly half will never answer roll-call again on earth. The following fell victims to Rebel cruelty : Henry Miller, Company F, died at Andersonville, July tenth, 1874; his grave was numbered 3139. Morris R. Miller, Company A, died at Andersonville, September twenty-sixth, 1864; number of grave, 9795. Edwin W. Elliott, Company B, died at Andersonville, September seventh, 1864; number of grave, SoS4. Sergeant Benjamin F. Heistand, Company D, died August second, 1864, at Andersonville; grave numbered 4583. William Snyder, Company D, died at Andersonville; number of grave not known. Coston Z. Best, Company E, died in the Rebel prison pen at Florence, S. C., February fourteenth, 1865; grave not known. Alexander Baysinger, Company G, died at Ander- sonville; date of death and number of grave unknown. Corporal James W. Starkey, Company H, died at Andersonville ; date of death and number of grave unknown. E. D. Harrington, Com- pany K, died in the Rebel prison pen at Florence, S C., October fourth, 1864; number of grave unknown. William Guyer, Com-
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