USA > Tennessee > History of the Twentieth Tennessee regiment volunteer infantry, C.S.A > Part 40
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Here men were frozen to death by being forced to sleep on the frozen ground without blankets or fire, and the rations were barely enough to keep body and soul together.
It was at Point Lookout that the fiendish brutality was practiced on the defenceless unfortunates by the Fifth Massachusetts Cav- alry, and it will never be forgotten or forgiven; their conduct to the unarmed and helpless stamps them as barbarians and cowards unworthy to carry a flag that represents the "homes of the free and the land of the brave," all too in defense of the negro that Massachusetts did more to enslave than all the rest of the country combined. This was in keeping with Puritan history.
At Fort Delaware, the daily practice of hanging Southern pris- oners up by the thumbs for two or three hours for the least infraction of the rules, was simply viciousness.
At eight o'clock each morning the prisoners received their allowance for breakfast, which consisted of a small piece of mixed corn and wheat bread, and one ounce of salt beef or pork, issued to each prisoner ; and at 2 P. M., for dinner, the same amount of bread, and one pint of filthy soup was issued, and this to sustain life during the long, cold nights, where one stove was allowed for ten thousand ( 10,000) men.
Now why was so much salt meat issued to these unfortunate men? It was for no other purpose, as we believe, than to give these helpless men scurvy and other scrobutic diseases.
On one occasion in this prison, a poor boy from Charlottes- ville, Va., was shot dead for throwing a cup of water out of the window of his barracks ; and on another occasion General Schoepf, who was in charge, ordered a lieutenant to have his hands tied behind him and be hung up by the elbows until the poor fellow should faint from pain or his shoulder should become dislocated, and a surgeon was detailed to watch the proceedings and go to
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the relief of the prisoner should either occur ; this was repeated several times, after which this helpless victim was put in solitary confinement for ten days.
It was also here that the bodies of the dead were sold to surgeons and medical colleges. The Washington Union of July 19, 1866, says, "In reply to a resolution from the House of Rep- resentatives to Mr. Edward Stanton, Secretary of War, enquiring as to the number of prisoners that either side held and that died during the war, he made the following report :-
" Number of Union prisoners in the South, two hundred and sixty-one thousand (261,000) ; number of Confederate prisoners in the North, two hundred thousand (200,000) ; number of Union prisoners died, twenty-two thousand, five hundred and seventy- six (22,576) ; number of Confederate prisoners died, twenty-six thousand, five hundred and thirty-five (26,535)."
Acording to this report of their own Secretary of War, the number of Federal prisoners confined in Southern prisons ex- ceeded the Southern prisoners confined in Northern prisons sixty- one thousand (61,000) ; yet four thousand (4,000) more South- erners died in Northern prisons than did Northern prisoners in Southern prisons.
This, too, when in the North there was no lack of anything, and their ports were all open to the world; while in the South everything was wanting, her ports were all blockaded by the Federal fleets, and medicines were declared contraband of war by the Federal government. The South had been stripped of its provisions because it had contributed largely to the support of both armies.
These figures, according to their own testimony, ought forever to set at rest the false accusations brought against the prison keepers of Salisbury, N. C., and Andersonville, Ga. It must be remembered by the Southern youth that these glaring falsehoods, that were so highly colored in the Northern papers, about in- human treatment of Northern prisoners in Southern pens, was done only to cover up and hide from the eyes of a humane world their own heartless brutalities.
The following is a lecture given by John A. Miller, who was confined in prison at Fort Delaware, and is certified to by John
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P. Hickman and W. H. Smith, of Nashville, Tenn., who were also confined there :-
" Every two weeks we were formed in squads and searched. We were allowed to have nothing. One blanket or one overcoat we were allowed to keep, but if a man had both, one or the other was taken from him. It was terribly cold in the winter months, and it is a wonder many of us did not freeze to death.
"On Thanksgiving Day, in 1864, we were given a whole potato each, a fourth of a loaf of bread, a cup of beans and worms, and a cup of coffee. On Christmas we got a half loaf of bread each, and some meat, and we never enjoyed a Christmas dinner as we did that one. When we were searched every two weeks, we were served with a notice that a drawing would take place to see which of the Tennessee prisoners should be shot in retaliation for what they characterized as the massacre at Fort Pillow. This drawing continued until General Forrest had them to understand that he would kill one hundred Yankees for every prisoner thus murdered.
" The offal of the kitchen was carried out in slatted boxes, and emptied in the bay at the privy at low tide; and during a high tide fragments of meat washed upon the levee, and prisoners would fish those fragments out from that filth of the privy, and eat the same.
"The poor unfortunate men who would stand around the stove to keep from freezing, were carried out, made to pull off their well-worn coats, cross their hands, tied, and then stoop down and run their hands over their knees; then Hackout, Fox, or O'Neal would run a stick through at the knee-joints, and roll them upon the stone walk, and let them remain in this pitiable condition for hours at a time, when the thermometer would be at or sometimes many degrees below zero.
" There was a Kentucky boy whom Fox tried to make carry a stick of wood, but he knocked him [Fox] into the moat, and he came near drowning, and his clothes froze on him before he got out of the Sally-port. Hal. Wolf, Randolph O'Neal, and Hackout came in with a squad of Yankees looking for the boy, but he had disguised himself, and they could not find him; and when Fox rallied from the blow and his thorough wetting in the
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water on that cold morning, we were all hacked out and sent to the barracks. On going into the barracks, General Schoept, the commander, and all of his staff and squad of would-be soldiers, examined every Confederate as he came in, but Fox failed to identify his man. This little episode had a very salutary effect upon Fox ever after.
"In April, 1864, there was brought to the prison a bright-eyed boy from Tennessee. Before many weeks the horrible treatment began to tell on him, and he began to droop, and finally became very sick. Two of the boys got some whiskey and sugar with a little money they had managed to keep, and gave him a toddy two of three times each day. He finally became better. On Feb. 26, 1865, one thousand and eight hundred (1,800) of us were exchanged, but for some reason this young boy was not included in the list. A man by the name of George Edmundson, was included, but he died the night before, and the young boy tried to impersonate the dead Confederate. He was discovered, and thrown into a dungeon, where he remained for three days and nights. This dungeon was a horrible hole under the ground, and was infested with rats, bugs, and vermin of all kinds. With the regular fare what it was, it can be imagined what he received in the dungeon.
After these three days and nights, he was confined in the bar- racks, from whence he was released on May 28, 1865. He could have secured release from the dungeon and obtained the fare of the regular United States soldier by taking th oath, but he re- mained true. [This boy was John P. Hickman.]
" No one has a true conception of the horrors of war unless he was at Fort Delaware in 1864 and 1865. Our mortality dur- ing the eleven months of the war after we were set apart in retaliation for Andersonville, Ga., was about twenty-seven per cent., most of them dying with the scurvy or small-pox."
The treatment of President Jefferson Davis by the Federal authorities, after he was captured near Washington, Ga., in the spring of 1865, and carried as a prisoner to Fortress Monroe, was a stain on civilization. Here he was put into an old gun- room with heavy double shutters that were fastened with cross bars and locks. The side opening had been closed with fresh
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masonry, which showed that this damp, unhealthy hole had been prepared for the especial benefit of this feeble old man.
Two sentinels with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets paced to and fro across this small prison. Two other guards and a commissioned officer occupied the gun-room with the prisoner, and all the openings were securely fastened. The officer of the day had a key to the outer door, and sentinels were posted on the pavement in front of this outer door; and in addition, there were other sentinels posted on the parapet overhead. They must have thought that Mr .Davis was an African lion.
Did they stop here? No, on the 23rd of May, 1865, the officer of the day, Capt. J. Titlow, of the Third Pennsylvania Artillery, came to the prison door with two blacksmiths, bearing a pair of heavy leg-irons that were coupled together with an enormous chain, and said to the prisoner, " I have been ordered by General Miles to put these irons upon you." Mr. Davis asked if General Miles had given that order. He was answered in the affirmative. Then Mr. Davis asked if he could see General Miles, and Captain Titlow replied that he had just left General Miles, who was leaving the fort. Mr. Davis then asked Captain Titlow if the execution of the order could not be postponed until General Miles returned ; to this Captain Titlow gave the prisoner to understand that these were his orders, and he as an officer and soldier must carry them out. To these words Mr. Davis remarked that this was " not such an order as a soldier could give or a soldier should receive."
Captain Titlow with several guards and the two blacksmiths proceeded to carry out their orders. When Mr. Davis made a feeble resistance, several of the guards cocked their guns and leveled them on the feeble old man. Captain Titlow ordered them at once not to fire, and four stalwart soldiers were brought in unarmed, and were ordered to seize Mr. Davis and overpower him, and the blacksmiths put the heavy irons on his ankles. When this brutal act was being done, no doubt this educated soldier and patriot, Jefferson Davis, said :-
" Stop, soldier, stop: this cruel act Will ring through all the land,
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Shame on the hearts that planned the deed, Shame on the coward hand That drops the sword of justice bright To grasp these iron rings ; On them, not me, dishonor falls, To them this dark shame clings.
" O Mexico, on thy red fields I battled midst the fray ; My riflemen, with steady aim, Won Beuna Vista's day. And standing proud in conscious worth, I represent my land, And that Lost Cause for which she bled, Lofty, heroic, grand."
Now as to the vicious feeling entertained by some Northern men in authority and the false and unmanly way in which they tried to connect President Davis with the treatment of Federal prisoners at Andersonville, Ga., I will show you the desperate straits to which they were driven to make an opportunity to slack their thirst in Southern gore.
The commandant of the Andersonville prison was one Captain Wirz, a wounded Confederate soldier who was not able for service in the field. At the surrender of General Johnston's army, Captain Wirz was included as a prisoner of war.
The authorities at Washington had him arrested and confined in jail in that city, and brought before a court martial presided over by Gen. Lew Wallace. The judge advocate was Colonel Chapman, who had him condemned by false witness, and executed on the 10th day of November, 1865. Captain Wirz was defended by a lawyer by the name of Louis Schade, who was also a North- ern man. I will introduce a letter written by Mr. Schade six- teen months after the execution of Captain Wirz ; it was published to the world, and replies invited, but none ever came. The fol- lowing is the letter in full :-
" Intending to leave the United States for some time, I feel it my duty, before I start, to fulfill in part a promise which a few
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hours before his death I gave to my unfortunate client, Captain Wirz, who was executed at Washington on the 10th day of November, 1865. Protesting up to the last moment his innocence of those monstrous crimes with which he was charged, he received my word, that, having failed to save him from a felon's doom, I would, as long as I lived, do everything in my power to clear his memory.
" I did that the more readily, as I was then perfectly con- vinced that he suffered wrongfully. Since that time, his unfortu- nate children, both here and in Europe, have constantly implored me to wipe out the terrible stains which now cover the name of their father. Though the times do not seem propitious for ob- taining full justice, yet, considering that man is mortal, I will, before entering upon a perilous voyage, perform my duty to those innocent orphans, and also to myself.
"I will now give a brief statement of the causes which led to the arrest and execution of Captain Wirz :-
" In April, 1865, President Johnson issued a proclamation stat- ing that from evidence in the possession of the Bureau of Military Justice, it appeared that Jefferson Davis was implicated in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and for that reason the Presi- dent offered a reward of $100,000 on the capture of the then fugitive ex-president of the Southern Confederacy. That testi- mony has since been found to be entirely false and a mere fab- rication, and the suborner, Conover, is now under sentence in the jail of this city, the two perjurers whom he suborned having turned State's evidence against him, whilst the individual by whom Conover was suborned has not yet been brought to justice.
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"Certain high and influential enemies of Jefferson Davis, either then already aware of the character of the testimony of those witnesses, or not thinking their testimony quite sufficient to hang Jefferson Davis, expected to find the wanting material in the terrible mortality of the Union prisoners at Andersonville. Orders were issued accordingly to arrest a subaltern officer, Captain Wirz, a poor, friendless, and wounded prisoner of war (he being included in the surender of General Johnston), and besides a foreigner by birth.
"On the 7th of May he was placed in the old Capital prison
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at Washington, and from that time the greater part of the North- ern press was busily engaged in forming the unfortunate man in the eyes of the Northern people into such a monster that it became almost impossible for him to obtain counsel. Even his countryman, the Swiss Consul General, publicly refused to accept money to defray the expenses of the trial. He was doomed before he was heard, and even the permission to be heard accord- ing to law was denied him. To increase the excitement and give eclat to the proceedings, and to inflame still more the public mind, the trial took place under the very dome of the Capitol of the nation.
"A military commission, presided over by one of the most arbitrary and despotic generals in the country, was formed, and the paroled prisoner of war, his wounds still open, and so feeble that he had to recline during the trial on a sofa, carried before the same. How that trial was conducted, the whole world knows. The enemies of generosity and humanity believed it then a sure thing to get at Jefferson Davis.
" Therefore, the first charge was that of a conspiracy between Wirz, Jefferson Davis, Seddon, Howell Cobb, R. B. Winder, and a number of others, to kill the Union prisoners. The trial lasted for three months, but unfortunately for the blood-thirsty instigators, not a particle of evidence was produced showing the existence of such a conspiracy ; yet Captain Wirz was found guilty of that charge. Having thus failed, another effort was made.
" On the night before the execution of the prisoner, a telegram . was sent to the Northern press from this city, stating that Wirz had made important disclosures to Gen. L. C. Baker, the well- known detective, implicating Jefferson Davis, and that the con- fession would probably be given to the public. On the same evening some parties came to the confessor of Wirz, Rev. Father Boyle, and also to me, one of them informing me that a high Cabinet officer wished to assure Wirz that if he would implicate Jefferson Davis with the atrocities committed at Andersonville, his sentence would be commuted. He, the messenger, or whoever he was, requested me to inform Wirz of this. In presence of Father Boyle, I told Wirz next morning what had happened.
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The captain simply and quietly replied : " Mr. Schade, you know that I have always told you that I do not know anything about Jefferson Davis. He had no connections with me as to what was done at Andersonville. If I knew anything about him, I would not become a traitor against him or anybody else, even to save my life."
He likewise denied that he had made any statement whatever to General Baker. Thus ended the attempt to suborn Captain Wirz against Jefferson Davis. That alone shows what a man he was. How many of his defamers would have done the same? Two hours later, with his wounded arm in a sling, the poor paroled prisoner mounted the scaffold. His last words were that he died innocent - and so he did. The 10th day of No- vember, 1865, will indeed be a black stain upon the pages of American history.
"To weaken the effects of his declaration of innocence, and of the noble manner in which Wirz died, a telegram was manu- factured here and sent North, stating that on the 27th of October, Mrs. Wirz (who was actually 900 miles away from Washington on that day) had been prevented by that Stantonian deus ex machina, Gen. L. C. Baker, from poisoning her husband. Thus, on the same day when the unfortunate family lost their husband and father, a cowardly and atrocious attempt was made to blacken their character also. On the next day I branded the whole as an infamous lie, and since then I never have heard of it again, though it emanated from a brigadier-general of the United States Army.
" All those who were charged with having conspired with Captain Wirz have since been released, except Jefferson Davis, the prisoner of the American Castle of Chillon. Captain Winder was let off without trial, and if any of the others have been tried, which I do not know, certainly none of them have been hung. As Captain Wirz could not conspire alone, nobody will now, in view of that important fact, consider him guilty of that charge. So much, then, for charge No. I.
" As to charge No. 2, to wit, murder, in violation of the laws and customs of war, I do not hesitate to declare that about 145 out of 160 witnesses on both sides declared during the trial
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that Captain Wirz never murdered or killed any Union prison- ers, with his own hands or otherwise. All those witnesses (about twelve to fifteen) who testified that they saw Captain Wirz kill a prisoner, have sworn falsely, abundant proofs of that assertion being in existence. The hands of Captain Wirz are clear of the blood of prisoners of war. He would certainly have at least intimated to me a knowledge of the alleged murders with which he was charged.
" In most all cases no names of the alleged murdered men could be given, and where it was done, no such persons could be identified. The terrible scene in court, when he was con- fronted with one of the witnesses, the latter insisting that Wirz was the man who killed a certain Union prisoner, which irri- tated the prisoner so much that he almost fainted, will still be remembered.
" That man (Grey) swore falsely, and God alone knows what the poor innocent prisoner must have suffered at that moment. That scene was depicted and illustrated in the Northern news- papers as if Wirz had broken down on account of his guilt. Seldom has mortal suffered more than that friendless and for- saken man.
" Fearing lest this communication will be too long, I will merely speak of the principal and most intelligent of these false witnesses, who testified to individual murder on the part of Captain Wirz. Upon his testimony the Judge Advocate in his final argument laid particular stress on account of his intelligence.
" This witness prepared also pictures of the alleged cruelties of Wirz, which were handed to the Commission, and are now on record, copies of which appeared at the time in Northern illustrated papers. He swore that his name was Felix de la Baume, and represented himself as a Frenchman, and grand- nephew of Marquis Lafayette. After having so well testified and shown so much zeal, he received a recommendation signed by the members of the Commission.
"On the 11th day of October, before the taking of the testi- mony was concluded, he was appointed to a clerkship in the Department of the Interior. This occurred whilst one of the
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witnesses for the defense (Duncan) was arrested in open court and placed in prison before he had testified.
"After the execution of Captain Wirz, some of the Germans of Washington recognized in De la Baume a deserter from the Seventh New York (Steuben) Regiment, whose name was not De la Baume, but Felix Oeser, a native of Saxony. They went to Secretary Harlan, and he dismissed the impostor and the important witness in the Wirz trial on the 21st of November, eleven days after the execution. Nobody who is acquainted with the Conover testimony, in consequence of which the President of the United States was falsely induced to place a reward of $100,000 upon the head of an innocent man, will be astonished at the above disclosures of the character of testimony before the Military Commission. So much for charge No. 2.
" If from twelve to fifteen witnesses could be found who were willing to testify to so many acts of murder on the part of Wirz, there must certainly have been no lack of such who were willing to swear to minor offenses. 'Such was the unnatural state of the public mind against the prisoner at that time, that such men regarded themselves, and were regarded, as heroes, after having testified in the manner above described ; whilst on the other hand, the witnesses for the defense were intimidated, particularly after one of them had been arrested.
" But who is responsible for the many lives that were lost at Andersonville, and in the Southern prisons? That question has not been fully settled, but history will tell on whose heads the guilt for those sacrificed hecatombs of human beings is to be placed. It was certainly not the fault of poor Captain Wirz, when, in consequence of medicines. having been declared con- traband of war by the North. the Union prisoners died for want of the same.
" How often have we read during the war that ladies going South have been arrested and placed in the old Capitol prison by the Union authorities, because some quinine or other medi- cines had been found concealed in their petticoats. Our navy prevented the ingress of medical stores from the seaside, and our troops repeatedly destroyed drug-stores, and even the sup- plies of private physicians in the South. Thus the scarcity of
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medicines became general all over the South. Surgeon J. C. Pilot, a Federal prisoner, writes, Sept. 6, 1864, from Anderson- ville (this letter was produced by the Judge Advocate in the Wirz trial) :-
' We have little more than the indigenous barks and roots with which to treat the numerous forms of disease to which our attention is daily called. For the treatment of wounds, ulcers, etc., we have literally nothing, except water. Our wards, some of them, are wild with gangrene, and we are compelled to fold our arms and look quietly upon its ravages, not even having stimulants to support the system under its depressing influence, the article being so limited in supply that it can be issued only for cases under the knife.'
"That provisions in the South were scarce will astonish no- body when it is remembered how the war was carried on. Gen- eral Sheridan boasted, in his official report, that in the Shenandoah valley alone he burned two thousand barns filled with wheat and corn, and all the mills in the whole tract of country ; that he destroyed all factories of cloth, and killed or drove off every animal, even to the poultry, that could contribute to human sus- tenance. And these desolations were repeated in different parts of the South, and that so thoroughly that two years after the end of war Congress had to appropriate a million dollars to save the people of those regions from actual starvation. The destruc- tion of railroads and other means of transportation, by which food could be supplied by abundant districts to those without it, increased their difficulties in giving sufficient food to our prisoners. The Confederate authorities, aware of their inability to maintain their prisoners, informed the Northern agents of the great mortality, and urgently requested that the prisoners be exchanged, even without regard to the surplus which the Con- federates had on the exchange roll from former exchanges, that is, man for man, but the Federal War Department did not consent to an exchange. They did not want to 'exchange skeletons for healthy men.'
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