418 GENERAL BUTLER'S EXAMPLE OF RETALIATION. [1864. to protect them-not by indiscriminate cruelty, but by well-considered, systematic retaliation in kind, until the Richmond authorities should treat prisoners with ordinary humanity. It was very easy to select a number of Rebel officers, corresponding to the Union prisoners in the Salisbury garrison, and give them precisely the same kind and amount of food, clothing, and shelter. When the Confederate Government placed certain of our negro prisoners under fire, at work upon the fortifications of Richmond, General Butler, in a brief letter, informed them that he had stationed an equal number of Rebel officers, equally exposed and spade in hand, upon his fortifications. When his letter reached Richmond, before that day's sun went down, the negroes were returned to Libby Prison and ever afterward treated as prisoners of war. But, by the mawkish sensibilities of a few northern statesmen and editors, our Government was encouraged to neglect the matter, and thus permitted the needless murder of its own soldiers-a stain upon the nation's honor, and an inexcusable cruelty to thousands of aching hearts. ON the 26th of November, while we were sitting at dinner, John Lovell came up from the yard and whispered me: "There is to be an insurrection. The prisoners are preparing to break out." We had heard similar reports so frequently as to lose all faith in them; but this was true. Without deliberation or concert of action, upon the impulse of the moment, a portion of the prisoners acted. Suffering greatly from hunger, many having received no food for fortyeight hours, they said: "Let us break out of this horrible place. We may just as well die upon the guns of the guards as by slow starvation." A number, armed with clubs, sprang upon a Rebel relief of sixteen men, just entering the yard. Though weak and emaciated, these prisoners performed their part promptly and gallantly. Man for man, they wrenched the guns from the soldiers. One Rebel resisted and was bayoneted where he stood. Instantly, the building against which he leaned was reddened by a great stain of blood. Another raised his musket, but, before he could fire, fell to the ground, shot through the head. 420 COLD-BLOODED MURDERS FREQUENT. [1864. Every gun was taken from the terrified relief, who immediately ran back to their camp, outside. Had parties of four or five hundred then rushed at the fence in half a dozen different places, they might have confused the guards, and somewhere made an opening. But some thousands ran to it at one point only. Having neither crow-bars nor axes they could not readily effect a breach. At once every musket in the garrison was turned upon them. Two field-pieces opened with grape and canister. The insurrection-which had not occupied more than three minutes-was a failure, and the uninjured at once returned to their quarters. The yard was now perfectly quiet. The portion of it which we occupied was several hundred yards from the scene of the mêlée. In our vicinity there had been no disturbance whatever; yet the guards stood upon the fence for twenty minutes, with deliberate aim firing into the tents, upon helpless and innocent men. Several prisoners were killed within a dozen yards of our building. One was wounded while leaning against it. The bullets rattled against the logs, but none chanced to pass through the wide apertures between them, and enter our apartment. Sixteen prisoners were killed and sixty wounded, of whom not one in ten had participated in the outbreak; while most were ignorant of it until they heard the guns. After this massacre, cold-blooded murders were very frequent. Any guard, standing upon the fence, at any hour of the day or night, could deliberately raise his musket and shoot into any group of prisoners, black or white, without the slightest rebuke from the authorities. He would not even be taken off his post for it. One Union officer was thus killed when there could be no pretext that he was violating any prison rule. |