Chapter 21

PLACED IN AN IRON CAGE--BREAKING OUT AND ATTEMPTING TO DIG THROUGH A BRICK WALL--AN UNEXPECTED SURPRISE.

The next morning, we were all marched into a room on the opposite side of the hall, and to the south side of the jail, and were placed in an iron cage, made of flat bars two inches wide, and half an inch thick, firmly riveted together, and as I told the Sergeant, although we could not wear diamonds, we could look through them. We were packed into this cage like sardines in a box, scarcely having room to move. There were iron benches along the sides for us to sit upon, but lying down was quite out of the question.

When all was quiet that night, we thought as we could not sleep we would try and get out.

The door was fastened with a round iron prop that fitted into a socket in the floor, and was fastened to the door by a padlock. This prop we wrenched from its fastenings by reaching out through the diamond in the door, and then with it broke the lock, and the iron door swung back, giving us free egress to the room. The cage was about twenty feet long and eight feet wide, with a partition in the centre. This cage set in the middle of the room, and was about six feet from the walls of the room on all sides. With the bar thus wrenched off, we at once attacked the brick wall, and while some detached the brick, others held a blanket underneath to prevent the falling brick and mortar from falling to the floor, as they would make a noise that would attract the attention of those beneath us. We had made an opening nearly halfway through the outer wall, which was large enough for a good sized man to pass out, when most unexpectedly two more prisoners were brought in, and our operations were discovered, and the attempt to escape was again frustrated.

A guard was then placed in the room, and as we could not sleep, we spent the night in singing "Rally 'Round the Flag," and other Union songs, and chaffing with the guard, who were nearly all, more or less, tinctured with Union sentiments, and only kept us from escaping, for fear of the consequence to themselves. Morning came and with it an order to get ready to go to Danville, Va.

I told the officer that I could not march on account of my inflamed legs, but he said that if I had got out of jail my legs would not have bothered me much, and he reckoned that it would do me good to take a walk anyway. And he would put us d--d Yanks where we wouldn't bother him any more. So, after furnishing us with two days rations to last to Morgantown, they started four of us, Captain Alban, myself, and the two Union prisoners brought in the night before, whose names I do not now remember, under a guard consisting of a Lieutenant and four men, for a tramp over the mountains.

Our march over the mountains was a tedious one, interspersed now and then, however, with some amusing incident. We were in good humor with the guard, and laughed and joked along the road in a free and easy sort of way, and succeeded in making ourselves agreeable to them, gaining their confidence as much as we could, and after we had been marching half a day, a casual observer would have hardly distinguished the prisoners from the guard. We straggled along much the same as a dozen rebs would have done on a march by themselves.

On the afternoon of the first day's march, we came along to a hickory grove, where about a dozen black and gray squirrels were sporting about on the top branches, gathering nuts, and I asked one of the guard to let me take his gun a minute and I would get a couple of them for our supper. He was about handing the gun to me, when the Lieutenant stopped him by saying: "You d--d fool, do you know what you are carrying that gun for? That Yankee might miss the squirrel and shoot you."

I laughed, and said he must think I wasn't much of a shot. But he said he was afraid I was too good a shot to be handling one of their guns; anyway the squirrels were probably tame ones belonging to the house near by, and his orders were not to disturb anything along the line of march. That night we stopped at an old farmer's and I thought that if we had a room with a window looking outside there might be a chance for escape, and asked to be given a room to sleep in that was well ventilated, as I always liked lots of fresh air in my room; but we were placed in a middle room up stairs, and a guard placed in the room with us all night.

The next morning, after a good hearty breakfast with the family, for which the Lieutenant gave the farmer a receipt, we started on again, and at noon we descended a mountain that was so steep that the road was made zig-zag to allow wagons to gain the summit; and as we came to the foot of the mountain we found a rude, log hut in which lived a hunter. We stopped there to get dinner, and were all at a loss to guess what kind of fresh meat we were eating, and in answer to my inquiry the host said: "That, Mister, is bar meat; I was up on the mounting one day last week, and came upon this varmint eatin' blackberries, and I fetched him home for winter. Don't be afeared; bar meat won't hurt ye more'n liftin' on a stick o' basswood."

That afternoon one of the most amusing incidents of the march occurred.

We came to a farm house, and the farmer being at home, we all sat down on a log he had hauled up to the front of the house, for cutting up into fire wood, for a chat with him and to rest a little. The farmer sat on one end of the log, the Lieutenant next, and the rest of us were strung along.

The fellow who sat next to me had an ear of corn, and there were quite a number of chickens picking around the wood pile. While the Lieutenant and farmer were talking, this fellow took out his iron ramrod and laid it against the log beside him, and then commenced shelling the corn and feeding the chickens. Watching the farmer, he would tap a chicken across the back of the neck with his ramrod, stuff him in the breast of his overcoat, and innocently go on shelling the corn for the other chickens.

In this way I saw him gobble three good fat chickens, when he told the Lieutenant he was going to walk on a piece. When we overtook him about eighty rods further on, he was sitting in the woods beside the road, picking the chickens he had stolen from the farmer. The Lieutenant called to him and said, sternly: "I thought I told you not to plunder while on the march." "Well," said he, with a comical drawl, "I don't allow no doggone chicken to come out and bite at me." That settled it; we had chicken for supper that night, and the Lieutenant seemed to relish the supper as much as any of us.

The next day we marched to Morgantown, and there took the cars for Danville, Va. We saw no opportunity to escape, for we were guarded very strictly, though at the same time we were treated with all the courtesy that could possibly be shown us, and I believe our guard would have defended us with force, against any one who had attempted to molest us.

When we arrived at Salisbury, which was one of the most notorious rebel slaughter houses of the South, a place that vied with Andersonville in atrocities, cruelties, starvation and death. A place where thirteen thousand Union soldiers, became victims to the vindictiveness of their captors--no not their captors but their jailors--for the soldier, whether federal or confederate, who had the courage to risk his life in the field where prisoners were captured, possessed too great a sense of honor to treat with such heartless cruelty, those who so gallantly opposed them.

I say that when we arrived at Salisbury, we learned that there had been a desperate attempt made by the enlisted men confined there, to overpower the guard and make their escape that afternoon, and the artillery had opened on the prison pen with grape and cannister, killing, and wounding, many of the Union prisoners confined there. Great excitement still prevailed when we arrived, and threats of shooting the d--d Yanks were freely indulged in by the "new issue," as the home guard were called.

But we were not molested; probably owing to the fact that we had a guard over us, of soldiers who were ready and willing to protect their prisoners from interference from outside parties.

We staid in Salisbury until about eleven o'clock p. m., during which time the reb guard, and their lady friends, were parading around the depot where we were waiting for the train, singing, flirting, and talking about the Yankee prisoners.

While we were sitting on the depot platform waiting, we were smoking, and as the platform was filled with bales of cotton, we were, while apparently uninterested spectators of what was going on, emptying our pipes into the cotton bales.

We thus managed to set fire to a number of these bales of cotton, well knowing that after we were gone and the guard had retired, there would be apt to be a blaze; and the next day we heard that the depot at Salisbury was burned the night before, destroying a large amount of cotton stored there. On my arrival at Danville, I met Colonel W. C. Raulston, of the 24th New York Cavalry, with whom I was acquainted, and who introduced me to the members of his mess, Brigadier-General A. N. Duffie, Brigadier-General Hays, and Lieutenants Leydon and VanDerweed, who were all anxious to talk with me about the chances of escape. Knowing that I had had considerable experience in that line, they naturally concluded that I could give them some valuable points on how to escape, and how best to reach our lines after we had got out.

Well, we held a long and animated conference, in which I gave some of my own experience, in and out of rebel prisons, telling them of the hardships and exciting scenes through which I and my comrades had passed in trying to reach our lines, of the difficulties we had encountered, and the privations we had been obliged to endure. To get out of prison was not a difficult task for one or two, but a successful prison delivery was quite another thing to accomplish.

Two hundred officers, each having ideas of their own, were harder to control than five times that number of enlisted men, who had been disciplined to obey; and as no one had any authority to command, or control the actions, of his fellow officers, we lacked the greatest essential to success--organization. Various plans were suggested and discussed, but none which seemed to promise success, appeared to be practical just at that time. Almost daily conferences were held, but the prevailing opinion seemed to be, that an attempted general outbreak, without thorough organization, would prove disasterous, and only end in an unnecessary sacrifice of life, and almost certain failure.