USA > Indiana > History of the Third Indiana cavalry > Part 16
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
"That night about dusk we reached Columbus, and I was so tired I could hardly drag one foot after the other. The corporal took us with him to hunt up the provost marshal and, after calling on several of his relatives, found him. We were sent to jail for safe keeping, but did not receive the same kind treatment we did at Lumpkin. We were here about two weeks and were then sent to Macon, Ga. There we were put in the old stockade fair ground, southeast of Macon, for about six weeks. We had not been there long until my old friend Pat O'Conner, of the Eleventh Regulars, came walking in. I said: 'Conner, I thought you liked the rebels too well to leave them.' 'Oh,' he said, 'I did not like them as well as you might suppose.' 'Well,' I said, 'you have come to a good place to get paid for some of your - meanness.' He passed right on and would not talk to me.
"In a short time after this the rebels wanted to build some bar- racks and they had no carpenters. So they came inside to see if there were any Yankee carpenters. There were six of us, viz., Frank Twist, Henry C. Knowles, Freeman Sands, John Lovell, H. C. Hartwell and myself. They took out the two first one day, but they would not work without terms. They told the post car- penter they had four other comrades in the stockade, that we had stuck together through thick and thin and they would not go out and work unless they took the other four and let us stay outside and not go back in the stockade of nights while we were there. Their wishes were granted and we all got out.
"In a few days after this the rebels issued an order that any Yankee taking the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy would be protected by the law of the State and not subject to military duty, and all foreigners who should take the oath should have the same privilege of citizenship; and, further, if they would take the chances of running the blockade, they would send them to their own country. So one morning all but two left to run the blockade ; my friend O'Conner and a big burly Englishman remained.
197
HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
Our quarters were inside the foundation of a commissary build- ing the rebels had started to build. The sills were mortised to- gether and about two feet high. Our quarters were in the south end and O'Conner and the Englishman were in the north end. We had no correspondence with them. I took the intermittent fever and was awful sick for several days. Finally I got better and I got out of the hospital and in two or three days after I had a hard shake of the ague.
"My esteemed friend Pat O'Conner was up in Macon with some of his Irish friends and got drunk enough to want to fight. I had an awful shake of the ague that forenoon and our only quarters were a shed open to the south. The sun shone in on me, and Frank Twist, who had come in at noon, told me to take a blanket and go over and lie in the quarters of O'Conner and the Englishman, as he thought they had all gone to run the blockade that morning. I followed his advice, took my blanket and went over and laid down in the first bunk I came to and laid there until late in the evening, when the boys came from work. About this time my friend O'Conner came in and, walking up, says: 'What the hell are you doing in my bunk ?' I told him about my shake and he said: 'A bunk that is worth having is worth asking for.' Just then that sack of flour came into my mind and I jumped to my feet and said: 'Pat Conner, you were not here to ask, but don't think for a minute there is anybody here afraid of you.' He began to pull his coat, for I had raised his ire, and he made for me. I grabbed up a two-by-four piece of scantling about three feet long and gave him one; he landed about ten feet away on the west side of the foundation and, raising his feet over his head, trembled like a dying calf. I gave him another with the flat side of the scantling on the seat, and you could have heard it three hundred yards away. I was making the third blow across his forehead when three of the comrades jumped on me and stopped it. That blow would have mashed his head to a jelly.
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
"He finally got up and went to Captain Hurtell, of Alabama, and reported me. Captain Hurtell and the post surgeon were Masons. Frank Twist and Knowles went to them and told them all about O'Conner and how he had played traitor with his own comrades ; Captain Hurtell told O'Conner he had better attend to his own business and keep sober and he would not have any trouble with the boys, 'as they are without exception the best boys in the stockade.' O'Conner was sent to the hospital and I was there off and on and saw him. After the surrender I never saw him again. The next morning Captain Hurtell came over to me and talked to me more like a brother than a rebel offieer.
"Our carpenter work at Macon did not last long. Kilpatrick came through there on a raid and burned the mill we got our lumber from and part of us were sent with the post carpenter to Columbus, Ga., to build a platform between two railroads, so the freight could be moved from one railroad to the other on trucks. We had a good time down there. I saw the gunboat the rebels had built and could not launch. We completed our job at Colum- bus and went back to Macon. We learned through our headquar- ter's friends that Mr. Gruber wanted five hundred cords of wood cut, and that he would furnish us rations and give so much a cord for cutting. A Dr. Johnson also came in and wanted to know if there were any blacksmiths there and we told him there were two of us. He wanted a buggy repaired and asked us to come over to his house the next morning and go to work. We went and had a good time. We repaired his buggy, did lots of work and got all the confederate money we wanted to buy sweet potatoes with.
"We next got orders to return to Macon; that there was to be a general exchange of prisoners. We got the papers every day and we did not see a word about the exchange of prisoners in them. Before we left Columbus a widow lady told me if I was not satis- fied that we were to be exchanged, to come to her house and she would keep me and the rebels would not find me. We went to
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
Macon and reported. They were getting ready to send us to An- dersonville, so we started to run off and traveled part of one night, but it was very wet and we were wholly unprepared for such a trip, as we had no rations. Frank Twist and H. G. Knowles had been planning to escape and had made the necessary arrangements and left the same night. I went back and went to the woman who had volunteered her services. Hartwell A. Lovett also had a place to stay, so we all had places to stop. I finally wrote a pass and forged the general's and adjutant-general's names to it, and we went to work cutting wood. The militia never bothered us but once, and I showed them our pass and the militia said we were all right. The pass was a copy of the kind of passes the rebels had given us be- fore. We went out in the country to cut wood and there we found out that there really was an exchange of prisoners agreed upon and that the department commandants at Macon had been changed. Sands and I counseled together as to the best thing to do and con- cluded to go to General Pillow in Macon and report to him that we had been working as paroled prisoners of war, and he treated us with great respect and offered to do anything for us if we would stay in Macon, saying if we went home we would have to stay in the army and if we remained in Macon we would not have to go in the army. But he gave us three days' rations and transporta- tion to Andersonville, and we went there by train and reported to Captain Wirtz, handing him General Pillow's instructions not to place us in the stockade, but send us off with the first prisoners exchanged. So in about a week we were sent to Thomasville, Ga. When we got there General Grant, it seems, had informed them that there would be no further exchanging, as he expected to have all the rebels as prisoners in a short time. So, downcast, we started back to Andersonville, going by way of Albany, where we camped by the largest spring I ever saw.
"The day after we left Albany we reached Andersonville and at noon were standing in front of Captain Wirtz' headquarters to
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
be counted off in detachments of one hundred each and the one hundred men were divided into messes of twenty each. I was in the first one hundred and in the second mess, and was appointed to take charge of and distribute the rations to the twenty men that I belonged to. Here we got word that Lee had surrendered. They marched us down to the depot and halted us until about eight hun- dred men were counted off. I sat down on the platform at the depot. Captain Wirtz came up in front of us and the last words I ever heard him speak were: 'Attention, you d-d Yankee s-s of b-s.'
"I struck a beeline up the railroad and at 2 o'clock in the after- noon was at Flint River, ten miles away. If ever a poor fellow traveled, I did. I left Andersonville at noon on Thursday and on Friday night at 2 p. m. I had walked back to Macon and re- ported at the home of my intended mother-in-law, for you see while I was cutting wood near Macon, as I have told you, I was also courting the girl of the lady who boarded me, and we were engaged to be married. On that walk from Andersonville to Macon I met four or five of the Seventeenth Indiana Mounted Infantry. They yelled, 'How are you, Johnny,' and I said to them, 'You guessed my name when I am in God's country.' They told me they be- longed to the Seventeenth Indiana and I told them that was where I belonged when at home, and told them I was from Andersonville. They pulled off their hats, gave three cheers and said: 'You're all right now and the whole Confederacy has surrendered.'
"On Thursday after I returned to Macon, General Wilson took the city and on the Saturday following I reported to the general quartermaster. On the 7th day of May, 1865, I was married and in about ten days afterward we were sent to Washington, then to Annapolis, and then to Camp Chase, Ohio, where I was mustered out of service on the 28th day of June, 1865.
"I visited my home in Indiana for a few days and went back to Georgia after my wife and returned home and went to work.
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HISTORY OF THE THIRD INDIANA CAVALRY.
I lived in Columbia, Ind., until 1878 and then went to Lincoln county, Kansas, always working at my trade as blacksmith, but had to give it up on account of my health. I then went to Andrew county, Missouri, where I stayed two years, then coming to this part of the country, where I have been since, except for a time I was an inmate of the State Soldier's Home, at Dodge City.
"That is a pretty place and nice home, but out of the way, so I took a discharge from there and made application to the National Home at Fort Leavenworth, where I am still a member. I take a furlough and have it renewed when it runs out, so I can return there in case of emergency.
"My wife died on the 12th of November, 1893. Her name was Josephine Braddock. I was born at Everton, Fayette county, Indiana, on the 29th of December, 1839, and am now going on sixty-one years of age. Well, comrade, I have made you a state- ment of my life from the 5th of May, 1864, through my prison life down to the present time. Since I came here I have worked at everything there is to do. I have worked in a smelter, on a rail- road section, on the streets, at stone work, carpenter work, and in a stone quarry, and am pretty well worked down. I think I shall go to the Home and take a rest. If my small boys were old enough to make their way I would spend my time at the Home and visit through the summer season.
"I have gone through many adversities and have lived, now, fifteen years longer than I expected to live. I don't think it pos- sible to go on that much longer. I might just as well say I am waiting my appointed time, when it may be said of me: 'He fought the good fight, he has kept the faith, and henceforth there is laid up for him a crown that shall never fade.'
"Your comrade,
"J. H. STERRETT."
THE END.
CLASS
Bindir
by
MODER
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