USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. II > Part 46
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
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 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69
The moment Steele heard of the affair at Mark's Mills, he bestirred himself to put the Washita between him and the main force of the enemy. Dawn of the twenty-seventh saw him pushing up stoutly toward the North. Perhaps General Steele never loved the North as well. Pressed harder and harder, through every hour of the twenty-ninth, he reached the Saline river at Jenkins Ferry just as night fell, and bent all his energies toward effecting an immediate crossing. He was held inextricably by rain, mud and dark- ness, and in a miry and thickly wooded river-bottom, where it was not possible to manœuvre, or even to make use of ar- tillery, he was compelled to wait and receive the importunate enemy.
Fighting was entirely between infantry. It was desper- ate, as the desperate circumstances required. At the first onset the Rebels drove in the Thirty-Third Iowa and the Fiftieth Indiana, which covered the rear. But in three suc- cessive assaults, they suffered repulse, and at noon, after seven hours fighting, they were driven back from the river, and out of sight in the tangled wilderness. It was a com- plete and brilliant victory.
The Union loss in killed and wounded was seven hundred. 'The Rebel loss was more than two thousand.
A single pontoon bridge, which had been laid in the night, and on which the trains had already crossed, now afforded a passage to the army. With but one wagon to a brigade, having burned the others, with little or nothing to eat, and bridging swamps as well as streams, it anxiously avoided a renewed encounter with the reinforced and rapidly returning
538
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
enemy. On the first day of May, the fainting troops met a provision train and eagerly snatched from the mud the crackers which were thrown to them. On the second the advanee entered Little Rock. On the fifth, the rear closed the retreat.
The Fiftieth Indiana, in this expedition, suffered the loss of one hundred and nineteen. Major Atkisson was among the missing. The Forty-Third lost two hundred or more.
The Rebels made no attack on Little Rock; but neither did they return to their south-western wilderness. They held themselves in readiness for opportunities, and during many following months neglected none that offered.
In July they were repulsed from Fort Smith, after a three days' struggle, in which the Second Indiana battery per- formed an active part. But they were not deterred by one repulse from continuing their general line of operations. They roamed and ravaged almost at will, constantly inter- rupting communication and lurking even in the neighbor- hood of Little Rock.
539
FIRST NIGHT OF IMPRISONMENT.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
PRISON LIFE IN TEXAS.
Condensed from a narrative written by Colonel Bringhurst and Lieuten- ant Colonel Flory, of the Forty-Sixth Indiana.
After their capture in the battle of Sabine Cross Roads, the prisoners were rapidly pushed to the rear. The road from the battle field to Mansfield, four miles, was strewn with dead Rebels and the debris of battle, and the country was covered with temporary hospitals, to which the Rebels were carrying their crowds of wounded.
At Mansfield about two hundred of our prisoners were crowded into the Court House, and for the night were con- fined in a room scarcely large enough for half that number. This room had been used by Rebel troops for quarters, and was filled with filth. The other prisoners were corraled on a freshly plowed field, near the town, and compelled to get what rest they might after twenty miles' march, and two hours' hard fighting, on the ground, saturated, as it was, with recent rains. Nothing of any consequence had been eaten since five o'clock that morning. Most of the men had lost their knapsacks in the fight, and with nothing but their cloth- ing, hungry and tired, they began a long and torturing im- prisonment. The cold north wind chilled their blood, and benumbed their bodies, and they esteemed their sufferings great, but the time was to come when they could look back on this night as pleasant, compared with many of their ex- perience.
On the morning of the ninth, the day after the battle, no rations whatever were issued. Chilled, hungry and weary, the prisoners, numbering fifty commissioned officers and twelve hundred men, were goaded forward between two lines of brutal Rebel cavalry, flushed with a blundering success.
540
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
The most insulting cpithets were heaped upon them, and those who, from sickness and exhaustion, reeled in the ranks, were treated as a slave-driving chivalry alone can treat de- fenceless humanity.
At six o'clock at night, after a march of twenty-four miles, the staggering column was turned into an open field, having had an unbroken fast of two days. About ten o'clock a small allowance of wood was given the prisoners, and a pint of musty, unsifted corn meal, with a small allowance of salt beef, no salt, and one baking pan to cach hundred men. There was no water within a quarter of a mile. Eight or ten men were taken out at a time to fill canteens, of which a very small number had escaped the notice of the rapacious captors on the battle field. The entire night was spent in preparing food from the scanty materials at hand.
At daybreak on the morning of the tenth the haggard pro- cession was again put in motion. During this day's march of twenty-five miles many men were forced along by the bayonet, and by threats of shooting.
About the same rations were issued as the evening before, with the addition of an abundant supply of water from a creek. The guards encamped above the prisoners, and washed their horses and their own persons in the stream, and in other ways rendered the water filthy.
After marching and halting in this manner for sixteen days, the point of destination was reached. The women and children from the country, on either side of the road for miles, congregated in motley groups to witness the imposing spectacle. In passing any considerable group, or a town, our undaunted heroes in blue sang patriotic national songs. The " Rally round the flag, boys," seemed to have a new sig- nificance, and swelling out from a thousand brave souls, drowned the Rebel huzzas.
Reverend Hamilton Robb, Chaplain of the Forty-Sixth, a man near seventy years of age, made this march a prisoner. He was released, by order of Kirby Smith, at Camp Ford, late in June. This officer had also been captured at Cham- pion Hill, on the Vicksburg march, in 1863.
Previous to the arrival of the prisoners captured from Gen-
541
OCCUPANTS OF CAMP FORD.
eral Banks, Camp Ford was occupied by about eight hun- dred men and officers, including one hundred and fifty offi- cers and sailors, captured at various points on the coast of Texas.
The army was represented by Colonel Burrell and eight officers of the Forty-Second Massachusetts, who were eap- tured at Galveston about the twelfth of January, 1863; the officers who were captured at Brashear City, Louisiana, in June, 1863; the Nineteenth Iowa infantry, Lieutenant Colo- nel Leake; the Twenty-Sixth Indiana, Lieutenant Colonel Rose, captured at Morganza, in September, 1863, with other and smaller bodies of troops of General Herron's command.
In April, 1864, these men were almost destitute of clothing, many of them, at capture, having been robbed of all articles not absolutely necessary to cover their nakedness. They had passed one of the coldest winters known in the country for years in this destitute condition. More than three-fourths of them had no shoes to their feet for months. In December they had been marched to Shreveport, a distance of one hun- dred and forty miles, and back again in January, through rain, snow and sleet, and over icy roads, with no shelter at night, on rations of coarse meal and starved beef. Again, in March, they were marched over the same road, and again back to Camp Ford, their condition not in the least improved by the lapse of time.
These movements, it is said, were made for the purpose of exchange, but they were not finally released until July, when they left prison, many of them in about the condition of Adam and Eve.
On the twentieth of April the prisoners captured at Pleas- ant Hill arrived at Camp Ford-about eight hundred.
Early in May some fifteen hundred men and officers, cap- tured from General Steele's army at Mark's Mills, Arkansas, were added to the already overcrowded prison pen, and at various times the captures from transports and gunboats, un- til the number reached forty-eight hundred.
Steele's men had been most barbarously treated. As soon as they had been marched to the rear, they were stripped of everything, and left to go naked, or put on the filthy rags
-
542
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
thrown away by the scoundrels who had robbed them. Even the treasured miniatures of their wives and mothers were taken, and made the subjects of vulgar ribaldry, then thrown into heaps, when the chivalry rode over them with their horses. At Shreveport they were again subjected to inspection, and made to pass in single file before a guard, so that any arti- cles that had, by any strategem, been concealed, might be discovered.
Camp Ford is four miles from Tyler, Smith county, Texas. It covers an area of about six acres, enclosed by a stockade. A trench or ditch was first dug around the ground selected; in it were placed, on end, oak or pine timbers, fitted close to- gether, and forming a wall about eight feet high. On the outside the earth was banked up so that the guards, whilst on their beats, could see over the whole camp. The location was on an abrupt hill-side-a kind of pine and oak barren. Every shrub and tree was carefully cut down, leaving noth- ing to protect the prisoners from the drenching rains, the chilly dews of night, or the scorching rays of the semi-tropi- cal sun. Within this pen the prisoners were turned, and mockingly told to "make yourselves comfortable."
The officers had the privilege of going to the woods under guard, to cut logs and board timber, which they carried on their backs, and with which they constructed huts for shelter. Parties of five and ten in due time built up cabins, a labor not light, when it is considered that to near forty-eight hun- dred men, that but twenty axes and four or five shovels were allowed. An auger and an old saw made up the comple- ment of available tools, although, in the camp of the guards, there seemed to be abundance.
The private soldiers, with the greatest difficulty, by an arm- ful of brush, brought in one day, some twigs the next, sought to erect shelter to protect them from the sun. Parties of from ten to twenty were successively passed out under guard with one or two old axes, and a short time allowed them to procure this class of material, but so great was the clamor and so eager the rush for the prison gate, that, in their ill- humor, the officers in charge, for days, would allow none to go out. Hundreds of the men dug holes in the hill-side,
543
LIFE IN CAMP FORD.
and from two to four lived in each like wild animals, and made no efforts to construct any kind of shelter. A very large proportion, owing to the scarcity of tools and the many impediments thrown in their way, were unable to get any- thing until late in the summer. The inmates of the caves soon became sick, and death was a frequent guest in these unnatural abodes.
The only reply to complaints was: "You might have staid at home!" " You had no business to come down here and interfere with us." "We didn't want to fight you 'uns." "If you 'uns had staid at home, we 'uns wouldn't have inter- rupted you!" or, "Good enough for you."
This was one of the wettest seasons Texas had known for twenty years. During May and June and far into July, rain fell in torrents,-floods overhead and cataracts under foot. With blankets only in the proportion of one to twenty men, robbed of clothing in many cases, the ragged, haggard, care- worn men, huddled together in groups like sheep, as if to kindle warmth by contact, and move the blood that seemed ceasing to flow. What though rain should cease, night would spread its impenetrable veil over the camp, and exag- gerate, if possible, the misery. So night after night passed with no hope of comfort in the coming morn but the warm- ing influence of day.
Many of the prisoners were recruits on their first campaign, and unaccustomed to the exposure of even ordinary camp life. Upon these the trial soon began to tell, and each night witnessed some unfortunate breathing out his life in dark- ness, lying in the mud with the rain falling on him, insensi- ble to the thunder and lightning; no mother near to gently smooth the aching brow; no sister to minister to his wants; no wife with her deep love watching the spirit's last struggle.
Hurried to the near grave, scarcely deep enough to hide the body from the prowling wolf, it is soon forever disposed of.
The commanding officer of Camp Ford, Lieutenant Col- onel Borders, was an Englishman, a resident of the South about nine years. From association with the most reckless and dissipated of this semi-barbarous society, he was thor- oughly imbued with the worst qualities of it. A monarchist,
-
544
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
hating everything Republican, and with unbounded malice toward the Union soldiery, he was a fit instrument to carry out the system provided by the leaders of the Rebellion, of the treatment of prisoners. His adjutant, Lieutenant M'Cann, possessed no principle of action but the slavish one of wish- ing to please his superiors. When some of the prisoners were coming home through New Orleans, in March last, this M'Cann was just being brought in a prisoner. General Canby was informed of the brutality practiced by him, by Major Norris, of the Forty-Third, when the gentleman was put in irons, and a ration of a pint of meal and a half pound of bacon was ordered for him.
If men approached too near the stockade, the limit being ten feet, they were either shot down or made to mark time at a vigorous "double quick." As many of the sentinels were boys not over fifteen years old, it was gratifying to them to have the Yankee dance at their bidding. The in- ducement, a cocked musket held at the breast of the pris- oner, and handled in a most reckless manner, was generally sufficient to get out of a man all the dance there was in him. As many as thirty at a time have been subjected to this treatment for two hours, or until they became exhausted and fell. Confederate officers often stood by enjoying the scene, and sometimes ordering a bayonet to compel men to use their feet.
Men who were overtaken in trying to escape, and returned to prison, were made to stand on blocks of wood, or stumps, bareheaded in the sun for "four hours." This would be continued for a week. Sometimes they were made to stand half their time on one foot, whilst a soldier sat by with his musket, in a shady place, to enforce obedience. Ladies oc- casionally passed around the camp to see the 'animals,' as they termed the prisoners; taunting them in the most insult- ing manner.
Groups of prisoners were often tied up by the thumbs for some trifling offence, and suspended so that their toes barely touched the ground, and for days were brought out and sub- jected to this torture, two hours at a time. Strong men, subjected to this punishment in a July sun, would faint and
515
HOSPITAL ARRANGEMENTS FOR CAMP FORD.
fall as far as the ligatures on their thumbs would permit, and would be cut down only when a lazy, vicious Rebel found it convenient to go to their assistance.
The regular ration consisted of a pint of cornmeal in the bran, and about a pound of beef with a little salt, to the man, but scarcely any day brought anything near the allow- ance. The meat often was not fit for use. The supply of cooking utensils was not sufficient for a battalion of men. So meagre was the supply of wood that a portion of the eamp could have none. These, having no way to cook their beef, lost it. Provisions could be bought of outsiders, but at prices beyond the reach of most of the prisoners. The offi- cers of the camp permitted every advantage to be taken of starving inmates, and appeared to cooperate in creating a demand for what there was to sell.
The Hospital arrangements consisted of a new wooden building erected in the woods near by, about large enough to accommodate thirty patients, which was about a third of the average sick, needing the most judicious treatment and close attention. Sick men were usually carried out to the hospital only when it became apparent that death would ensue. No blankets or comforts of any kind were furnished. The only advantage in the hospital over the camp, was, that the men were raised off the ground,-a gain of dryness at the sacrifice of some comfort. The majority lay naked on rough boards. The medical department was in keeping with everything else. A surgeon was detailed, whose duty it was to visit the sick. He usually visited the camp about once a week, and pretended to have an inspection, but usu- ally he came at such times as but few knew of his presence. When he was seen, he issued curses liberally, and the com- monest drugs parsimoniously. The monthly allowance of medicine to the prisoners was not sufficient for one day'. treatment of the more simple cases, and was of very inferior quality. In short, the whole thing was a farce.
On the twelfth of August, five hundred and six of the prisoners were moved south to Camp Groce, a distance of two hundred miles. They were made up of the unruly 35
546
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
members of the prison community, officers and men who had made themselves obnoxious to the officials by resisting or protesting against their infamous treatment.
Not over ten minutes notice was given of the proposed march. The rations of the day had not been issued. The line was soon formed outside, but the march was delayed many hours, in the burning sun, without water.
The road for the entire distance, ran through a pine and oak barren-extremely broken-and interspersed with nar- row strips of timber, with an occasional stretch of from five to six miles without a shrub, or scarcely a blade of grass. The sand was scorching hot, and ankle deep. For fifteen miles frequently, no water could be obtained for the guards and their horses, which were always first considered. There were not over fifty canteens among all the prisoners, and there was no way of carrying water. The daily march was about twenty miles-arranged with a view to the water- places.
In justice to the guards on this duty, it must be said that they were the best class yet met. They belonged to the Twenty-First Texas, and numbered two hundred and fifty.
The intense heat, without water, caused many of the pris- oners to drop exhausted by the wayside, where they were guarded till night came on, and then forced to overtake the column. Six or eight wagons were assigned for the sick and exhausted, but they did not accommodate a fourth of the number. Many men were without shirts-their naked backs exposed to the sun. A large proportion were without shoes- their feet blistering in the hot sand. Many were without hats-their uncovered heads exposed to the alinost perpen- dicular rays of the sun.
It would be fruitless to attempt to portray the sufferings of that eleven days' march, the remembrance of which is enough to make the heart sick. Teams which followed the column, gathering rations, often did not get into camp till near midnight. There was then doled out a small cup of flour or cornmeal, and a third of a pound of bacon to a man.
Camp Groce was at last made, when the saddest days in the prisoner's experience commenced. There were confined
547
LIFE AND DEATH AT CAMP GROCE.
in this camp about fifty soldiers, and the officers and crews of two gunboats captured at Calcasieu Pass, on the sixth of May, 1864, in all about one hundred and fifty men. They were all sick with fever and ague. Eighty died before the following November. This prison is about sixty miles north-west of Houston, near Hempstead, on the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. It is situated in a sharp bend of a branch, and within a few miles of the Brazos river. It is almost entirely surrounded by a low strip of marshy. ground. About one and a half acres of ground are enelosed with a close stockade about twelve feet high. Two wells, which were found filled with rubbish, with great labor were fitted for use, and made to furnish a supply of slimy, un- healthy water. There were board barracks sufficient to ac- commodate six hundred and fifty men, but in a most dilap- idated condition.
The rations of this camp, when the new delegation ar- rived, were better than in the one just left, but they soon grew small.
The commander of the camp was an Irish Captain, who had been a corporal in the regular United States Army, and was in Texas at the breaking out of the Rebellion, when the infamous General Twiggs delivered up his command of trained and disciplined soldiers to a cowardly mob, which a volley would have put to flight.
Of the companies of the prison guards, one was Irish, one German, and two were Texans. The two first were, almost to a man, as loyal as the prisoners whom they guarded. Numerous instances occurred in which these guards, after dark, passed out prisoners, and even by means of ropes let them down on the outside of the stockade, and furnished them provisions for their journey. As many as thirty in rapid succession have gone over the stockade on a moonlight night, by the help of the guard.
The men from Camp Ford had not been long here before they began to be taken down with camp fever and diarrhea, and by the middle of September, there were not a hundred well men in the prison. Night and day the cries of the sick
548
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
and dying filled the air. Men woke in the morning to find their bunk mates dead by their side.
No medicine was to be had until disease had become gen- eral in the camp, and many were beyond the reach of rem- edy. The surgeon, whose duty it was to visit the sick, sel- dom came, and when he did, was drunk, and administered curses instead of medicine. This hideous drama was most appropriately closed by the death of the fiendish surgeon by delirium tremens.
After this, those who were thought to be too sick to be treated in camp, were carried to the hospital at Hempstead, about two miles distant. From ten to fifteen sick men would be jammed into a wagon and carried to the hospital, over rough roads and through the scorching sun. Four or five men died during these murderous transits, and their al- most unconscious comrades lay upon them for want of room.
The hospital at Hempstead was the low garret of a church. There were no side windows, no place for ventila- tion but through the small gable windows, and only enough light to make the room visible. The noisome effluvia that pervaded the place drove away all who were not forced to remain. The fresh air, so greatly needed by fevered suffer- ers, seemed to turn in disgust from the threshold.
The sick were crowded together as thick as was possible- one tier over another, on rough board bunks, and generally with no straw or mattrass. If a man did not have a blanket, which was generally the case, he lay in his rags. upon the hard boards. There were a few mattrasses belong- ing to the hospital, but these, from long use, had become so foul that they were refused by all. If the men were able to crawl down a flight of stairs, the inexorable laws of nature were complied with-otherwise comfort and cleanliness, gave way to necessity.
Helpless, and suffering with fever and chronic diarrhea, men died without thought or care. Their remains were hauled out in a cart and dumped into a hole without a coffin.
In September the yellow fever broke out in Galveston, and soon reached Houston and other places above. The Confed- erate guard at the prison, fearing the disease might reach
549
"A LOWER DEEP."
that point, openly threatened to leave, and let the prisoners take care of themselves. On this the authorities moved the camp west of Brazos river, twenty-five miles from the rail- road, to a low, wet, marshy creek bottom.
There were now five hundred of the six hundred and fifty left. Of these not more than seventy-five were well. On the journey the sick who were unable to walk were crowded together in rough wagons, fifteen or sixteen to a wagon. Those whom the bayonet could persuade were obliged to go on foot. Many dragging themselves along until they could do so no longer, fell exhausted, and were left to follow or die, or to be picked up when it suited the convenience of the guard to go back for them.
On this move six men died in the wagons, and were hast- ily tumbled into holes by the wayside. Sick and well alike, at this camp, had no beds but the damp ground, and no shelter but such as they might construct with brush. They were closely packed together on less than a half acre of ground, where the cooking and camp duties were performed. Sinks, dug inside the lines, made the atmosphere almost un- endurable. Water was obtained from pools along the bed of the creek-green, filthy and rank with disease and death. As usual, above the camp, the horses of the Rebels, number- ing five hundred, were kept, watered and cleaned. The dirt of a filthy Rebel camp was intentionally thrown into the water. On the banks of the stream were the sinks of the Rebel camp. Each rain brought down this disgusting ma- terial. There were no medicines, nor was there any medical attendance. Each morning at roll call, men were found pres- ent in body, but absent in spirit. Death had released them. The dead would be found lying upon the ground in the mud, having been denied the satisfaction of a bed, and with no covering but the scanty rags that composed their elothing. Around this few was a heavy chain of sentinels, standing guard, as it were, over a graveyard, to keep ghosts in sub- jection.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.