In and Out of Rebel Prisons

by A. Cooper

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.