PAROLE CAMP
Arriving at Petersburg, we were marched through the city to Parole Camp at Model Farm Barracks. Here we went to headquarters and registered our names. Bennett took me to his quarters and gave me some supper—bacon and crackers. On the boat we had nothing but bread and coffee toward the last, and the meat was quite a luxury. It was of good quality, too.
Tuesday, March 31.—When I awoke this morning I had to turn over two or three times to supple my joints. The bunk I slept in was hard boards, and our covering for the two was a small shawl and one overcoat. It was a cold, rainy night and my bed was cold. Still, I am satisfied to put up with this lack of comfort to be out of prison and among friends once more. I saw James F. Kerfoot, a room-mate from the Old Capitol. Crowds of negroes flock around the camp with pies, bread and fried chicken, etc. If you ask the price of anything they will answer—“A dollar.” Four pies, $1, and everything in dollar parcels, as though that was the lowest current value known in ordinary traffic.
Parole Camp is located at what was formerly an Agricultural Fair Ground. Here twelve of us are quartered in one end of an old stable. We drew our rations—rice, sugar, salt, bacon and three biscuits each. We put one of these big round biscuits or crackers in a little tin plate, heat some water in a skillet and pour over the biscuit, then turn another tin plate over it and leave for a few minutes. On removing the upper tin plate the biscuit will be found to have swelled out so that it fills the plate. A piece of fat pork or bacon is now put in the skillet, and when the fat is well fried out the biscuit is put in the hot fat and placed over the fire, and to a hungry man living in the open air it is a first-class luxury on a bill of fare, where the great fault is that, like Sam Weller’s love letter, it is too short, and makes you wish there was more of it. The supply of wood is light—rations only five or six sticks.
Albert Wrenn
Jack Barnes, Albert Wrenn and Frank Fox went to Petersburg on an old pass and came back at night, bringing with them a canteen of whiskey, for which they paid $6.50 per quart.
We have only two bunks in our quarters. While we take turns with these the rest of the party have to sleep on the floor or sit up around the fire. The building is open to the wind, and so cold that it is impossible to sleep comfortably.
At Parole Camp I see a great many prisoners who have been incarcerated in Northern prisons, principally Camp Chase, Camp Douglas, and Johnson’s Island. They all corroborate the statements made to me by the Western prisoners with whom I conversed while in the Old Capitol regarding the treatment of prisoners.
I was speaking to one of my companions who was complaining of the short rations and cold comforts at Camp Parole, when one of the released prisoners who had but recently arrived, said:
“You should not complain of the fare and treatment here. It is nothing compared to what we had to go through on Johnson’s Island. Of course it is hard living here, but we know it can’t be helped; there was no excuse for it there. What we suffered there was from pure cussedness. The Yankees have plenty of everything and could certainly give prisoners enough to eat if they chose—plain, cheap food—enough to sustain life in a healthy condition, but they didn’t. Some prisoners would eat their day’s rations at one meal; others would make two meals of it. Salt beef, salt pork, salt fish and bread was doled out to us for months; no coffee, tea or sugar; no vegetables, except very rarely an onion or potato. Consequently, men suffered with scurvy so that their gums were bleeding and sometimes their teeth fell out. Old bones were broken up and boiled, and scraps of food were culled out from the hospital slop-barrels. Rats and cats were eaten by the hungry men when they could catch them. For a time prisoners were allowed to receive food from friends outside, but an order was published denying them this privilege.
“For trifling offences Confederate officers were compelled to stand on the head of a barrel between the dead-line and the prison wall, and one officer while standing in the door of Block 12 was killed by a sentinel. It was not unusual for our quarters to be fired into at night.
“The place being exposed to the cold wintry winds from Lake Erie we suffered from the intense cold, and in summer the only shade was that afforded by the buildings where the prisoners were housed.”[I]
Thursday, April 2.—The soldiers here have to endure greater hardships than we do. Last night they were coughing continually in the barracks adjoining the quarters I am in. One poor fellow, suffering with neuralgia, was walking up and down the floor, groaning and acting like a crazy man. At last, losing his patience completely, he commenced to swear. A comrade, shocked at his utterances, said:
“Bill, why don’t you pray to God to help you, instead of cursing and going on as you are?”
“Oh,” replied Bill, “I have done that, but d——n it, He won’t do it.”
Captain Cannon told Bowles yesterday that he had written to Colonel French the day before, to know what he should do with the citizens brought here. This should have been provided for in advance of their arrival. There seems to be very poor management on the part of the officials in charge.
Yesterday we got a ration of flour and half a ration of bacon—quarter of a pound to each man.
This afternoon nine hundred men arrived from Camp Chase. There is now a general exchange going on, and it is said about six thousand prisoners are to be brought on. A number were sent off to-day. They go to the Western army. The wind is blowing very hard. Frank Fox, Phil. Lee, and the two Mills sick. Militia relieved from guard duty.
Barnes yesterday appointed sergeant of our company. This morning some of our mess bought a bottle of brandy and half a gallon of beans. I had a good drink of the brandy, and it put a little warmth in me. Beans for dinner—the first good hearty meal since we left the Old Capitol.
We borrowed a big iron kettle from one of the messes, and having gathered a lot of wood and chips, started a fire and put our beans on to cook. One of the men picked up a piece of an old cracker box and we made a number of rude paddles to use as spoons in eating the beans. Tom Lee was walking around seemingly unconscious of what was going on. “Don’t say anything to Tom about what we are doing,” said one. Tom wandered off, and when he returned the beans were ready for eating.
“How are you going to eat the beans—with your fingers?” asked Tom as he saw us seat ourselves around the pot.
All smiled at his innocence, and taking out their paddles commenced fishing for beans. Tom quietly took from his pocket a clam shell he had found in his wanderings and fitted it into a split stick. With this primitive but all-sufficient implement he proceeded to dip into the pot, and while the beans were slipping off our rudely fashioned paddles he could scoop up at one dip as much as we could take at a dozen.
“You boys are smart,” said Tom, “but you couldn’t fool your brother Tom.”
Saturday, April 4.—Got a pass to visit Petersburg in company with Jack Barnes, Gus Williams and Tom Lee.
Our rations are dealt out in such homeopathic doses that we are always glad when we can obtain a pass to visit Petersburg so as to gratify a little of that craving for food which it is impossible to satisfy here.
Went through the market. Meat selling at $1 a pound; turnips, 25 cents each, and other vegetables in proportion. Bought a hat, $20; had a drink of apple brandy, 50 cents. Walked up along the Appomattox River, and came back into camp through the old Fair Grounds. Rain and cold wind; nearly all the tents blown down.
Sunday, April 5.—Still raining. Captain Cannon said a dispatch had been received from the Secretary of War, that all civilians not attached to regular commands and liable to conscription, would have the privilege of joining any command they chose. I told Cannon I was a Marylander and that I would like to go to Richmond before making choice. He said I must first designate a command I wished to join. Told him then I would join Captain Mosby. He said I would be mustered in and leave as soon as possible.
Tuesday, April 7.—Went to Petersburg with Barnes, Wrenn and Biggins. Got plate of ham and eggs (two eggs and a piece of bacon), $1.25.
George Richardson, Gus Williams, Cooke, J. Mills and Benjamin F. Bowles left camp and went to Richmond. Williams, in bidding us good-bye, said he expected to be back in the Old Capitol within a week after leaving Richmond. He said this was the fourth time he had been a prisoner; that his two daughters and one son, about ten or twelve years of age, were arrested at the instigation of Union men and imprisoned three months.
Some of the Confederate officers from the Old Capitol Prison came down last night and reported at camp this morning: Captain Sherman, Major Breckenridge, Lieutenants Smith, Bixler and others. William M. Mills leaves camp to-morrow.
Thursday, April 9.—One of the prisoners from Camp Douglas told me that there was great mortality among the Confederate prisoners there. A large number were in the hospital, and the morning he left there were thirty corpses in the dead house. “It is no wonder they die off,” said he; “hundreds were frost-bitten and suffered terribly from the cold last winter. Fuel was given out so sparingly, that we had to treasure every little piece of wood and coal as if it was precious metal we were hoarding. Our rations were cut down so that we were never able to satisfy the craving of hunger. So long as we were allowed to receive food from benevolent persons outside of the prison some of the prisoners fared tolerably well, but when the order came prohibiting this we really suffered. Many poor fellows, broken down and emaciated by disease, passed away in the silence of the night and their companions in misery were in ignorance of the fact until the dawning of day exposed to their view the pale corpse in their midst.
“Our barracks were miserable, dilapidated buildings, and our prison guards were brutal in the extreme; they had never been to the front, nor within sight or sound of a battle. Kicks and curses were liberally dealt out, and prisoners were shot without any real provocation. Men were hung up by the thumbs until they fainted. One half-starved prisoner was shot while fishing bones out of a slop-barrel.”
Sunday, April 12.—Fine day. Yesterday I was passed out by Lieutenant Smith. Gathered some broom-sage and made a bed of it, so I slept more comfortably last night. Heavy cannonading heard yesterday.
About four o’clock this afternoon I was regularly mustered into the Confederate service, to serve under Mosby, now operating in the borderland of Virginia.
Lindsay, of Washington, went to Richmond, to be sent to Company K, Tenth Louisiana Regiment.
There have been so many prisoners brought here to Camp Parole lately that we are getting overcrowded. Coming from the prison pens of Camp Chase, Camp Douglas, Johnson’s Island, and other Northern prisons, where they have been confined for months, they are all more or less infested with vermin. It is a common sight to see an old soldier quietly seat himself in a line of unfortunates, on the sunny side of a fence or building sheltered from the cold wind, and deliberately drawing his shirt over his head, set to work industriously searching for vampires—picking them out from their hiding places in the folds and creases. Skirmishing, the boys term this occupation, though it might be called picketing. To kill the tiny creatures who seek to conceal themselves along the seams of the pants, and to destroy the eggs, two round stones are taken in the hands, and by clapping them together up and down the seams on the side of the legs of the pants the life is crushed out of a goodly number of the bloodthirsty crew.
COLONEL JOHN SINGLETON MOSBY, C. S. A.
Expecting now to leave the camp in a day or two, we—that is, our mess (and we certainly were a sorry mess)—went up the Appomattox to Elk Licking Creek and took a bath. We had gotten so stocked up with vermin, that the only way we could see to rid ourselves of the pest was to buy new outfits in Petersburg and go to the Creek, take a good scrubbing, throw away all our old clothes and put on the new ones.
Monday, April 13.—William McK. Perry, who was a room-mate in the Old Capitol Prison, sent there from Camp Chase, left Parole Camp to-day for his home in Missouri.