USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. II > Part 19
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" They got on their horses, bade good evening, and off they went. As soon as they were gone Colonels Baird, Watkins and all present expressed great suspicion that they were not all right. Colonel Baird told Watkins to ride to his camp, and send a few men after them immediately-they could tell them they were an escort, so off he went.
"They had been so engaged that I could get no answer about my pickets at all. I was holding my horse waiting for an answer, when Baird said, 'Get on your horse and ride to Watkins, and tell him to arrest those men, and bring them back immediately.' His suspicions were increasing, and he was becoming quite excited .. I was not many minutes going to Colonel Watkins' quarters, I tell you, for I had strongly formed my opinion that the strangers were Rebel spies. I told Colonel Watkins the order, and started back. At the gate, (for he was quartered in a yard,) his orderly stood, holding four horses. He said two of them belonged
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
to those men; that the Colonel had overtaken them, and brought them to his quarters. I immediately rode back to Colonel Baird to report. Soon up rode a troop of horsemen, with the two knights in front. About a dozen carbines on each side, and in rear, were ready for action. Colonel Baird was at the telegraph office at the moment. So the Major in charge of the squad told them to alight. They said they had not time, they must be getting on to Nashville, and asked for Colonel Baird. The Major told them he guessed they wouldn't start for awhile. So after sitting silent a moment they got off, took seats, and never said a word until Baird and Watkins came up, when they went into the tent. Their papers were again examined. There, standing near them, I got a better view of them. They were both refined, intelli- gent looking men. The young man said never a word. The Colonel got very indignant at being suspected and arrested; said he had great cause for complaint. Watkins told him he knew every man on Rosecrans' staff, and the name of every Inspector in this army, and he had never heard either of theirs. The Colonel said, 'Don't understand me to say that I am on General Rosecrans' staff, for I am not. I am sent here by the War Department as Inspector over all of Rosecrans' Inspectors-over the whole army of the Cumber- land.' But he contradicted himself so much that suspicion was becoming greater. So they proceeded to examine them. They pulled out the sword of the young Major. On it was C. S. A. Then the Colonel's sword. On it was his name and regiment, and P. C. S. A. Colonel Baird said, 'Gentle- men, you came very near playing your game and escaping.' ' Yes,' they said, ' We came very near accomplishing our ob- ject,' and owned up, making a confession of all. Their papers. were all forged, of course. The Colonel had on dark pants, with the staff stripe, (gold cord.) The Major had on our blue army pants, nice boots and spurs. They said they could not get blue caps without going to Charleston or Savannah. So they wore havelocks over the grey Secesh cap as a dis- guise. I came to camp before their examination was over. "Next morning I saw all the cavalry formed in square be- fore the long commissary. Some of the boys were reporting
.
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EXECUTION OF SPIES.
that two spies were to be hung, and I thought there must be something of it from the movements below. So I jumped on my horse and rode down. All stood silent, gazing at one spot. Many were standing on their horses to get a better view. I rode up, and there I saw that awful sight, two men dangling in the air, suspended by the neck, from the same scaffold. The Colonel was just making his last struggle. The other was motionless, except that he was slowly swing- ing round and round as any heavy body will when suspended in air.
" Rosecrans, on being telegraphed to, ordered them to be hung at daylight. They begged to be shot. Baird wanted to transfer them to some other point to be hung, but all the answer he could get from Rosey was, 'Hang them at day- light.'
"The Colonel's name was Lawrence Otley Williams. He commanded a brigade which attacked us on the fourth. The other was First Lieutenant, and Aid to General Wheeler. I can't remember his name. They walked to the scaffold and stepped up into the cart apparently with as much coolness as if they were going to make a speech. They requested that their hands might not be tied, embraced each other, and the cart was pulled from under them. The Lieutenant jumped, broke his neck, and died instantly. The rope did not slip down over the Colonel's neck tight. He tried to hold his hands down awhile, then threw them up, grasped the rope, pulled himself up, and called for some one to pull the rope down tighter on his neck. They did so, and pulled his hands loose, so he choked to death. There is a civilized way of hanging a man, but that was the most barbarous affair I ever ·heard of. Good-bye.
Your affectionate brother,
S. K. FLETCHER."
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CHAPTER X.
IN THE LIBBY.
" Within these walls, stifled by damp and stench, Does hope's fair torch expire."
After the exchange of Colonel Coburn and his return to the army, he wrote a detailed report of the battle of Spring Hill, appending to it an account of his imprisonment. The latter is here inserted:
"I append a statement of occurrences during the time the officers were prisoners, believing it a legitimate matter of report. After our capture we were marched to Columbia, Tennessee, and remained there during the night and the most of the next day, having very little to eat and that meat alone. The next night we bivouacked in the woods, and in the morning received a small ration of bad bread. This was the only bread furnished us till we arrived at Shelbyville, two days after. There we waited one day before receiving a ration of heavy foul bread. Thanks to the Union women there, they courageously fed the famishing men notwithstand- ing the continual insults and threats of Southern officers and gentlemen. We got regularly a small ration of meat. Two days march from Shelbyville brought us to Tullahoma. The march was a terrible one. The rain fell in torrents, the streams were swollen, and very deep wading, the water was. chilling, and the night air cold as carly March is in its most inclement moods. Arriving at Tullahoma at sunset, we passed through the Rebel army and by General Bragg's headquarters, and were marched to a muddy spot of ground, used as a mule pen formerly, upon which were scattered some green oak logs for fuel. There was no shelter, nothing to sit down upon, no place for rest but the cold mud. There were buildings and woods near by, but the men were denied their
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PRISONERS ON THE JOURNEY.
use. There was dry wood to be had, but it was also denied. The officers were put in an old building which shielded them from the pelting storm that had raged all day and continued through the night. A ration of raw meal and meat was is- sued, but vessels were not furnished to cook the meal, and it was thrown away. Early in the morning we were waked, and without food were started for the cars. All overcoats, leggins, knapsacks, blankets and extra clothing were taken from the officers and men. I demanded to know by whose order. 'By order of General Bragg, in retaliation for an order of General Rosecrans stripping Federal uniforms from our soldiers.' I replied, 'Strip off any Rebel uniform found on us and I will not complain; but that this was a cow ardly and barbarous course, and the men engaged in it de- served hanging.' I demanded an interview with General Bragg, whose headquarters were within two hundred yards, saying, 'that I believed it impossible that a man of his stand- ing would enforce such a brutal order.' This was refused, Colonel Mckinstry, his Provost Marshal, saying that the General would not listen to anything.
The men, shivering, half starved, without sleep or rest, were crowded into box cars without seats, and filthy with manure, and started for Chattanooga. They were denied even the privilege of getting sticks to sit upon. Thus we traveled that day to Chattanooga. On arriving there we were placed for the night, without rations, in a large frame building, just erected for a hospital, and were crammed in almost to suffocation. The next day about noon rations were dealt out to us in abundance. We all remember the hard bread of Chattanooga as our only feast in the Southern Confederacy. From this place we were conveyed by rail to Knoxville. For a few hours the Union people of Knoxville were allowed to bring provisions to us and converse with us, but the Rebel citizens became infuriated at this, and the soldiers drove the Union men away. We were then guarded in a muddy open space, where part of the prisoners lay or stood all night, although there was shelter in abundance near by, consisting of large sheds and depots. Here the exposure and cruelties of our march began to tell fearfully on the men.
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
Some could go no further, and were left. Others by their haggard looks and decrepit gait testified that the hand of death would soon remove them from us. Inexorable as the gallows that for two years has stood by the railroad in the city of Knoxville for the execution of Union men, were the hearts of the Rebel officers.
"From Knoxville we were carried by rail to Bristol, on the Virginia line. Here we were again turned off of the cars to lie again upon the damp ground, recently overflowed by a creek, although there was ample shelter in the town in the large sheds and houses near the railroad. Such was the bru- tality of the physicians that they totally refused to visit our siek men here. All intercourse with the citizens was for- bidden.
" We buried the dead, and urged the sick to drag along to a more humane community. At this place we received a small ration of heavy flour bread. We were then taken by rail to Lynchburg, Virginia. Here many went to the hos- pitals, and not a few died. Although the city contained a large number of empty houses, the men were marched to the fair-ground, and put into open sheds. After remaining at Lynchburg a few days we were started, in very inelement weather, in box-cars, to Richmond. The snow fell to the depth of eighteen inches. The trains were delayed. The men had not one day's rations, and were on the road in bro- ken and partially open cars, some two and some four days, without food or rest, and chilled through. From these cars they were marched to Libby prison, and huddled hundreds in a room, without fires or light, like hogs in a slaughter pen. Several died within half a day after their arrival at Richmond; many more followed them in the next few days. Neither food, medical attendance, air nor water was furnished, as the barest, sheerest humanity would dictate. The iron-hearted monsters who had charge of the prisons had no regard for suffering, nor for human life. More than fifty men fell victims in prison to the series of barbarities inflicted upon us from Tullahoma to Richmond; others survived but a few days their exchange; many others were disabled for life. Had our enemies given to those who fell by their cruelties the deadly
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'I WAS IN PRISON.'
and instant cup of poison, it would have been a mercy com- pared to the treatment inflicted. Their conduct toward men in Libby prison is such as only malignant and devilish pas- sions could suggest.
" The needless discomforts of cold, of crowded rooms, of filth, of vermin, of foul food, were added to the shameful and fatal brutalities of the march. The season was bitter cold; not a window in the room was closed with glass. Our food consisted of a scanty ration of bread, and of putrid, starvel- ing meat, totally unfit for use, filling the room with a foul stench on being brought in. In addition an occasional ration of rice or black beans was given us. No sugar, nor coffee, nor good meat, nor vegetables, ever appeared as rations.
"Two wretched blankets were given to each officer, and one to each man. They were lousy, filthy and fætid. The prison swarmed with vermin. No opportunity was furnished to wash blankets, not even soap and tubs in which to wash our wearing apparel. We became unhealthy by the use of the foul food, and the filthiness of our bedding. Scurvy, itch, erysipelas, inflammatory sore throats, rheumatism, fever, lock- jaw, delirium and death in its most horrid forms were the result. The uurecorded catalogue of barbarities must remain for the final account of the insatiate monsters who gloat upon the anguish of defenceless prisoners.
"Earnestly pleading for the privilege, I, with other officers, was denied a visit to the faithful and dying men who liad followed us during the war, though but the distance of ten feet separated from us. No intercourse was allowed. A list of the dead was refused, though asked for in the most respectful terms. The only account we have of them is from their fellow sufferers in the hospitals.
" I have hesitated to add this list of atrocities to the casual- ties of war, and to record them against their perpetrators, but a sense of duty compels me to expose the shameful and horrid malignity of the traitors who have added to the high- est crime against their country the cowardly and cruel tor- tures of savages upon their enemies.
"Exchanged at City Point May 5, 1863, we were ordered upon a steamboat, the State of Maine, by Colonel Ludlow,
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
(lousy from stem to stern) and fed, like dogs in a kennel, with bread and meat cut up and cast into two long boxes until our arrival at Annapolis. Here ended our imprisonment and oc- curred our restoration to duty on the eighth of May, 1863."
Eighty-five of Coburn's small command died of exposure and cruel treatment during captivity. Of these, nine belonged to the Thirty-Third, and thirty were members of the Eighity- Fifth Indiana.
To know them suffering and dying,-men whom he loved and who loved him,-to be almost within earshot, almost within touch, and yet unable to lift a finger to their rescue or for their consolation, or to express to them a word of sympathy, was the most cruel of tortures to their high-spir- ited leader. He who can read Coburn's report without taking part in his noble wrath and sorrow, is not to be envied.
So much has been published in regard to Colonel Streight's imprisonment that a detailed narrative is here unrequired. His men were treated as other prisoners of war, and, accord- ing to the terms of surrender, received an early exchange. He and his subordinate officers reached Richmond and en- tered Libby prison on the sixteenth of May. In the expec- tation of being sent North on the arrival of a boat from Fortress Monroe, they submitted with patience to the first days of imprisonment. Boat after boat arrived and departed, and they were at length informed that they were to be re- tained and treated as felons on the charge of inciting slaves to rebellion, the proof being that negroes in uniform, and bearing arms, had been found in the force at the time of the surrender. The accusation was denied, and at the same time it was asserted that the negroes in the force were offi- cer's servants, of whom one bore arms, he carrying the sword of his employer on account of its weight. No trial was afforded, and the officers remained in the prison, which re- ceived additions almost daily. Nearly eleven hundred United States officers at one time, cooked, and washed, and slept in six rooms, each of which was one hundred and five feet long by forty-five feet wide. These rooms were in the second and third stories. The ground floor was divided into a pris- oners' hospital, Rebel Commissary Department and offices
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CASTING LOTS FOR DEATH.
for the Confederate officials connected with the prison, ex- cept during the summer, when one of the lower rooms was used as a prison for privates. The amount of food furnished the officers was insufficient, and the quality of the food was poor. The food provided for the men was disgusting. Lieu- tenant A. C. Roach, of the Fifty-First, says: "The rations of the privates consisted of a small slice of bread and about a pint of broth, in which spoiled bacon had been boiled, and which was sometimes thickened with a small quantity of rice or beans, twice each day. The soup was brought to the prisoners in wooden buckets, and I have frequently noticed it when the top was covered with white maggots, which the process of cooking had forced out of the meat and beans. They were not allowed to purchase anything whatever, but we were allowed to send out and make a few purchases of bread, meat and vegetables, so that we were sometimes able to drop a few crusts to them through a crack. They would stand on tip toe, their long, bony, skeleton-like arms out- stretched to grasp any morsel that we could spare them."
July 6, all the Federal officers of the rank of Captain, sev- enty-eight in number, were summoned to a room on the lower floor. They obeyed the order with delight, fancying it the precursor of some change, perhaps of release and return home. Major Turner, the commandant of the prison, stood in the centre of the room, at one end of a little table on which was nothing but a small box. The officers formed a wide circle and awaited further developments with curiosity. Dis- may and horror paled their faces when they were told that two of their number were to be chosen by lot for immediate execution, in retaliation for the hanging of two spies by Gen- eral Rosecrans. The chaplain of the Ninth Maryland in- fantry, an old, white-haired man, drew a slip of paper from the box and read the name of Captain Sawyer, of the First New Jersey cavalry. Again he drew, and again a name dropped through the deathly stillness, Captain John Flinn, of the Fifty-First Indiana infantry. The two chosen by lot were immured in the cellar, after being informed that their death would take place in ten days.
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
On receiving an account of this unwarranted proceeding, our Government lost no time in notifying the Rebel author- ities that the death of Flinn and Sawyer would immediately bring two prominent Rebel officers to a like fate. Not dar- ing, in consequence, to infliet death, the Rebels indulged their malice by prolonging the dungeon life of the Captains.
In the winter the officers received safely blankets and clothing from home. Their cast off clothes they manufac- tured into curtains and hung before the bars of the grated and narrow windows, regretfully exeluding light with the cold wind.
Provisions also were received from the North, and from General to Lieutenant the officers studied, and under great disadvantages practiced, the art of cooking.
After eight months in Libby, Captain Anderson, of the Fifty-First Indiana, with Lieutenant Skelton, of the Seven- teenth Iowa, escaped on the eleventh of December from the hospital by the use of bribery, and the exertion of activity and boldness. Several days of hiding and nights of strug- gling through swamps and wildernesses, in which they were assisted and fed by negroes, brought them to the Union lines.
A few days after Anderson's departure, Colonel Streight received an anonymous letter encouraging him to escape. He made the attempt, was seized, ironed and put in a wretched and disgusting cellar, where he was detained twenty-one days with no food but half baked corn bread, no water for washing, and no change of clothing.
The next preparations for escape were made by a party of officers, who dug a tunnel from the cellar, to which they gained access at night through the hearth and the flue of the lower room of the prison. The tunnel was sixty feet long, and consumed the nights of three weeks. February 9, at nine in the evening, the candidates for liberty began to squeeze themselves through. One hundred and nine saw daylight at the further extremity. Six or seven hundred, who liad impa- tiently awaited a chance, remained within the prison walls discomfited, but hoping that another night would afford re- lease. The tunnel was discovered and they were again dis- appointed.
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CHANGE OF PRISONS.
The escaped prisoners, one of whom was Colonel Streight, were concealed eight days in Richmond, by the kindness of loyal people. They then ventured to start on their weary and perilous journey. By avoiding publie roads, the light of day, the abodes and the faces of white men, and by en- during hunger, cold, fatigue and watching, and with the faithful assistance of the blacks, they reached Blackstone's Island at two o'clock in the morning of February 28. They arrived in Washington on the first of March.
The prisoners remaining in Libby were removed to Macon in May, suffering much ill treatment and hardship on the journey, but more after their arrival. In August they were taken to Charleston, where the condition of some, who con- sented not to attempt an escape, was bettered, while that of others was harder than ever before.
In October the unfortunate prisoners were removed to Columbia, where desperation drove many to dare every danger in efforts to recover liberty.
In February, 1865, they were removed to Charlotte, North Carolina, where their imprisonment ended.
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THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
CHAPTER XI. IUKA, CORINTH AND THE HATCHIE.
Death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces. -Jeremiah.
After the march of Buell and Bragg from Corinth and its vicinity, in the summer of 1862, the United States forces which lay along the line of the Memphis and Charleston railroad, from Tuscumbia to Memphis, were compelled to observe the strict defensive. The command of the Army of the Mississippi, reduced by the demands of General Buell to the divisions of Stanley and Hamilton, had devolved on Gen- eral Rosecrans. Hamilton's divisions comprised but two brigades, of which one was under the command of General Jere. Sullivan, and the other under General Buford. The only Indiana regiments remaining in the division were the Forty-Eighth and Fifty-Ninth, both in Buford's brigade. Captain Roberts, of the Forty-Eighth, died on the fourth of July. Captain Mann died a few days afterward. These deaths, and the resignation of five officers, occasioned the promotion of seven lieutenants. In consequence the regi- ment, as regarded officers, was almost reorganized during the summer.
General Hackleman was assigned in June to the command of the First Brigade of Davies' Division of the Army of the Tennessee. He remained with his division near Corinth. General Veatch, in command of the Second Brigade of Hurlbut's Division of the same army, spent the summer on the march, pitching his tent during the course of it at Grand Junction, Holly Springs, Lavergne and Memphis. In his brigade were the Twenty-Fifth and Fifty-Third Indiana. The middle of September he went to Bolivar, marching from Memphis in eight days. Colonel Morgan's regiment was
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MOVING UPON IUKA.
ordered to Fort Hall, a mile and a half above Bolivar, on the Hatchie river, and commanding one of the principal entrances to the town.
The Twenty-Third Indiana had been in Bolivar since June, Colonel Sanderson having command of the post. The Ninth battery, at the same point, finishes the roll of Indiana troops who were brought into action in the department of West Tennessee in the months of September and October.
Van Dorn and Price, with Lovell and other small Gener- als, confronted General Grant with a nearly equal forec, and having no fear of his advance, annoyed him with desultory and capricious attentions. The last of August their demon- strations assumed a serious character. While a small body of Rebel cavalry busied itself near Bolivar, and Van Dorn lay in wait south of Corinth, Price advanced toward Iuka, apparently with the double purpose of crossing the Tennes- see to interfere with Buell's movements, and of stripping Corinth of its defenders. Grant, constantly on the watch, was instantly on the alert. He diminished the space over which his outposts were scattered, withdrawing troops from Tuscumbia and other distant points on the railroad and river, leaving the battle ground of Shiloh to rest, undisturbed by a sentinel's tread, for the first time in five months, and within a narrower circuit redoubling his force and his vigilance.
Ten days the Forty-Eighth and Fifty-Ninth Indiana kept a sleepless watch at Rienzi. The Forty-Eighth then marched to Jacinto, where, under General Rosecrans, nine thousand troops concentrated preparatory to moving against Iuka, of which, with a vast amount of basely abandoned government stores, the enemy had taken possession.
A joint attack on Iuka was to be made early on the nine- teenth, from the south by Rosecrans, advancing along two roads, the Jacinto and the Fulton; and from the north by General Ord with a force numbering eight thousand. Grant remained at Burnsville, seven miles west of Iuka, and kept · in readiness a train of ten empty cars to hurry troops back to Corinth on the first hint of danger from Van Dorn. Ord gained position four miles north of Iuka, and awaited the 15
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