370

PRISONERS MURDERED BY THE GAURDS. [1863.

sergeant inflicted a blow upon another Union captain who chanced to be jostled against him by the crowd.

For slight offenses, officers were placed in an underground cell so dark and foul, that I saw a Pennsylvania lieutenant come out, after five weeks' confinement there, his beard so covered with mold that one could pluck a double handful from it!

Prisoners putting their heads for a moment between the bars of the windows, and often for only approaching the apertures, were liable to be shot. One officer, standing near a window, was ordered by the sentinel to move back. The rattling carriages made the command inaudible. The guard instantly shot him through the head, and he never spoke again.

Colonel Streight was the most prominent prisoner. He talked to the Rebel authorities with imprudent, but delightful frankness. More than once I heard him say to them :

"You dare not carry out that threat! You know our Government will never permit it, but will promptly retaliate upon your own officers, whom it holds."

When our rations of heavy corn-bread and tainted meat grew very short, he addressed a letter to James A. Seddon, Confederate Secretary of War, protesting in behalf of his brigade, and inquiring whether he designed starving prisoners to death! The Rebels hated him with peculiar bitterness.

The five Richmond dailies helped us greatly in filling up the long hours. At daylight an old slave, named Ben, would arouse us from our slumbers, shouting :

"Great news in de papers! Great news from de Army of Virginny! Great tallygraphic news from the Soufwest!"

1863.]

FOURTH-OF-JULY CELEBRATION INTERRUPTED.

371

He disbursed his sheets at twenty-five cents per copy, but they afterward went up to fifty.

A lieutenant in Grant's army, while charging one of the batteries in the rear of Vicksburg, received a shot in the face which entered one eye, destroying it altogether. Ten days after, he arrived in Libby. He walked about our room with a handkerchief tied around his head, smoking complacently, apparently considering a bullet in the brain a very slight annoyance.

We attempted to celebrate the Fourth of July. Captain Driscoll, of Cincinnati, with other ingenious officers, had manufactured from shirts a National flag, which was hung above the head of Colonel Streight, who occupied the chair, or rather the bed, which neces sity substituted. Two or three speeches had been made, and several hours of oratory were expected, when a sergeant came up and said :

"Captain Turner orders that you stop this furse!"

Observing the flag, he called upon several officers to assist him in taking it down. Of course, none did so. He finally reached it himself, tore it down, and bore it to the prison office. A long discussion ensued about obeying Turner's order. After nearly as much time had been consumed in debate as it would have required to carry out the programme, and speak to all the toasts -dry toasts-it was voted to comply. So the meeting, first adopting a number of intensely patriotic resolutions, incontinently adjourned.

The Rebel authorities confiscated large sums of money sent from home to the prisoners, and sometimes stopped the purchase of supplies, asserting that it was done in retaliation for similar treatment of their own soldiers confined in the North. Still our officers fared incomparably better than the Union privates who were half

372

THE HORRORS OF BELLE ISLE.

[1863.

starved upon Belle Isle, in sight of our prison. We did not fully accredit the reports which reached us touching the sufferings of these prisoners, though the engravings of their emaciation and tortures in the New York illustrated papers, which sometimes drifted to us, so enraged the Rebels, that we often called their attention to them. But our own paroled officers, who were permitted to distribute among the privates clothing sent by our Government, assured us that they were substantially true.

At

On the 6th of July, an order came to our apartments for all the captains to go down into a lower room. this time, as usual, there was constant talk about resuming the exchange. They went below with light hearts, supposing they were about to be paroled and sent North. Half an hour after, when the first one returned, his white, haggard face showed that he had been through a trying scene.

After being drawn up in line, they were required to draw lots, to select two of their number for execution, in retaliation for two Rebel officers, tried and shot in Kentucky by Burnside, for recruiting within our lines.

The unhappy designation fell upon Captain Sawyer, of the First New Jersey Cavalry, and Captain Flynn, of the Fifty-first Indiana Infantry. They were taken to the office of General Winder, who assured them that the sentence would be carried out; and without pity or decency, selected that hour to revile them as Yankee scoundrels who had "come down here to kill our sons, burn our houses, and devastate our country." In reply to these taunts, they bore themselves with dignity and calmness.

"When I went into the war," responded Flynn, “I

374

Two SELECTED FOR EXECUTION.

[1863.

knew I might be killed. I don't know but I would just as soon die in this way as any other."

"I have a wife and child," said Sawyer, "who are very dear to me, but if I had a hundred lives I would gladly give them all for my country."

In two hours they came back to their quarters. Sawyer was externally nervous; Flynn calm. Both expected that the order would be carried out. We were confident that it would not. I predicted to Sawyer

"They will never dare to shoot you!"

"I will bet you a hundred dollars they do!" was his impulsive reply. I said to Flynn—

"There is not one chance in ten of their executing you."

"I know it," he answered. "But, when we drew lots, I took one chance in thirty-five, and then lost!"*

On the same evening came intelligence that, at an obscure town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg, Meade had received a Waterloo defeat, was flying in confusion to the mountains of Pennsylvania after losing forty thousand prisoners, who were actually on their way to Richmond. It was entertaining to read the speculations of the Rebel papers as to what they could do with these forty thousand Yankees-where they could find men to guard them, and room for them-how in the world they could feed them without starving the people of Richmond.

* Our Government, upon learning of this, ordered the commandant at Fortress Monroe, the moment he should learn, officially or otherwise, that Sawyer and Flynn had been executed, to shoot in retaliation two Rebel officerssons of Generals Lee and Winder. On the reception of this news in the Richmond papers at daylight one morning, the prisoners cheered and shouted with delight. As they supposed, that settled the question. Nothing more was heard about executing our officers; and soon after, Sawyer and Flyun were exchanged, months before their less fortunate comrades.