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."

"But, when we drew

"I know it," he answered. 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 Flynn were exchanged, months before their less fortunate comrades.

1863.]

THE GLOOMIEST NIGHT IN PRISON.

375

We did not fully believe the report, but it touched us very nearly. Those reverses to our army came home drearily to the hearts of men who were waiting hopelessly in Rebel prisons, and weighed them down like millstones.

Success kindled a corresponding joy. I have seen sick and dying prisoners on cold and filthy floors of the wretched hospitals filled with a new vitality—their sad, pleading eyes lighted with a new hope, their wan faces flushed, and their speech jubilant, when they learned that all was going well with the Cause, It made life more endurable and death less bitter.

Already suffering from anxiety for Flynn and Sawyer, and disheartened by the reports from Pennsylvania, we received intelligence that Grant had been utterly repulsed before the works of Vicksburg, the siege raised, and the campaign closed in defeat and disaster. It was

a very black night when this grief was added to the first. The prison was gloomy and silent many hours earlier than usual. Our hearts were too heavy for speech.

But suddenly there came a great revulsion. Among the negro prisoners was an old man of seventy, who had particularly attraced my attention from the fact that when I happened to speak to him about the National conflict, he replied, after the manner of Copperheads, that it was a speculators' war on both sides, in which he felt no sort of interest; that it would do nobody any good; that he cared not when or how it ended. I wondered whether the old African was shamming, lest his conversation should be reported, to the curtailing of his privileges, or whether he was really that anomaly, a black man who felt no interest in the war.

But about five o'clock, one afternoon, he came up into our room, and, when the door was closed behind

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GLORIOUS REVULSION OF FEELING.

[1863.

him, so that he could not be seen by the officers or guards, he made a rush for an open space upon the floor, and immediately began to dance in a manner very remarkable for a man of seventy, and rheumatic at that. We all gathered around him and asked—

"General" (that was his soubriquet in the prison), "what does this mean?""

"De Yankees has taken Vicksburg! De Yankees has taken Vicksburg!" and then he began to dance again.

As soon as we could calm him into a little coherence, he drew from his pocket a newspaper extra—the ink not yet dry-which he had stolen from one of the Rebel officers. There it was! The Yankees had taken Vicksburg, with more than thirty thousand prisoners.

Good tidings, like bad, seldom come alone. Shortly after, we learned that there was also a slight mistake about Gettysburg-that Lee, instead of Meade, was flying in confusion; and that, while our people had captured fifteen or twenty thousand Rebels, those forty thousand Yankee prisoners were "conspicuous for their absence."

How our hearts leaped up at this cheering news! How suddenly that foul prison air grew sweet and pure as the fragrant breath of the mountains! There was laughing, there was singing, there. was dancing, which the old negro did not altogether monopolize. Some one shouted, "Glory, hallelujah!” Mr. McCabe, an Ohio chaplain, whose clear, ringing tones, as he led the singing, cheered many of our heaviest hours, instantly took the hint, and started that beautiful hymn, by Mrs. Howe, of which "Glory, hallelujah" is the chorus:—

"For mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

Every voice in the room joined in it. I never saw men more stirred and thrilled than were those three or four