Reminiscences of a Prisoner of War and His Escape

by Daniel Avery Langworthy

The Other Five Escaped Officers

We were received most kindly. The sheriff asked many questions and said: "I will be very glad to care for you as well as I can until I can find a way for you to go on," but added that it would not be safe for us to remain at the house; that we should eat then and he would take us to a place in the woods for the night; that we should come in before daylight in the morning, eat and return and the same at night. He said: "There is a terrible state of affairs here so near the border, so much worse than it is in the North. My neighbors, some of them, are Confederates and others good Union men. They do not mind going out and shooting each other. Some of the Union men who do not wish to abandon everything and go north, but will not enter the Southern army, stay in the woods in the mountains. Some of them have been there for two years. You see my boy there," pointing to a boy six or eight years old. "We have endeavored to bring him up to be a good religious, strictly honest and truthful boy, yet if anyone should come here tomorrow and ask him if there had been any strangers here, no matter what they did to him they could not get a word out of him. Isn't that a terrible way to bring up children?" We were taken to the woods. After two or three days one afternoon we saw some men coming toward us through the woods. We supposed they were after us, but as they came nearer we saw that one of them was the sheriff. He had five other prisoners who had escaped from Columbia. All officers, of course. Three of them were from the 101st and 103rd Pennsylvania regiments, which were in our brigade. So our force was doubled.

After three or four days the sheriff told us: "I have arranged for you to go ahead in the morning. A good guide, who has been several times to the Union lines, will go with you and a few who wish to go north. Which of you officers is in command?" he asked. "No one," we answered. "Is that the way you do? What is your military rule when you meet in this way? Who is in command?" "The ranking officer," we told him. "Who is your ranking officer?" he inquired. "Captain Langworthy," they replied. "Then Captain Langworthy is in command," he said, "and all of you, of course, will obey orders. I sincerely hope you will not have any trouble, but you all know there is no telling what you may run into and you cannot be too well prepared. You leave here in the morning, go to such a place in the mountains, which you will reach about night, where some other parties will join you."

We left in the morning. There was the guide and three or four other men and one colored man. The guide had a rifle, one of the others a revolver, which was all the arms we had. I went ahead with the guide. We got on nicely most of the day. Near night, while in the woods walking by the side of a small stream a volley of rifle shots from the other side of the stream startled us. We rushed up the mountainside. When a little way up we looked ourselves over and found we were all there except one of the refugees. We never knew whether he was shot or went in some other direction. I looked across the little valley and saw a small village on the other side and a company of Confederate soldiers marching down the street with their rifles on their shoulders. By and by the guide said to me: "You all get behind that large rock. I think there are but two men near us. Joe and I will get behind this and see if we cannot bluff them." They got behind the rock, showing their arms, and as the two men came in sight, halted them. "What do you want?" they asked. "Who are you?" was the reply. Our guide told them they could never find out, for if they came any nearer they would be shot dead; that being only two men it would be worse than foolish to follow us.

After a little more parleying we started on. It was getting dark and began to rain hard. We went over a ridge of the mountains, down the other side and across a small stream, when the guide said to me: "There is no use in our trying to go ahead now; we cannot see anything to tell in what direction we are going and are just as apt to go into trouble as away from it. They will not attempt to follow us tonight; dogs could not follow our trail through this rain. We had better stay here until we can see where we go. What do you want me to do?" "Get us out of this muss and to the Union lines," I replied. "We must have been given away." "Yes," he said, "we have been given away, but how shall we get out of this muss?" "By a way they would not expect us to," I said. "They doubtless know that we have started for the Union lines, hence will have every pass over the mountains guarded. We want to go where no one would be expected to go, over the highest, roughest and worst peak of the Allegheny Mountains." "That is easy," he replied. "That is Mount Pisga. We can see that when we can see anything." "All right for Pisga then," I said.

We remained where we were until it began to grow light, then started for Pisga, climbing up its side, much of the time over and around rocks, arriving at the peak a little before night. We went down the other side a short distance and stopped for the night. Down the mountain we could see a valley, with houses and clearings, etc. It was still raining as it had been doing all the day. We ten prisoners were bunched by ourselves and the others in another group, a little way from us. Before lying down I went over where the others were. They had gotten some dry pieces of wood and were whittling as if about to start a fire. "What are you going to do?" I asked. "We are very wet and cold," they said; "it would be so nice to have a little fire." "Yes," I said, "but what would it do to you? You can see those lights down there; they can see one here better than we can see those in the valley. They know no one lives here. A light here would bring them to investigate, perhaps before morning, and they would be sure to get us. Would it pay? Now, you must understand fully that there shall not be any light made here. The first one who even strikes a match is a dead man." The guide said: "That's all right, Captain. You may be sure we will not do anything of the kind. We should have known better."

In the morning we went on and got along fairly well up and down the ridges of the mountains until one afternoon the guide said: "Now we are all right; while we are not at the Union lines, we are near enough to be safe. The people here are all right. Down below here are some friends of mine, a man and his wife, who will help us." We all felt gay and skipped along much like school boys, arriving at the friend's house about nightfall. "You wait out here," said the guide, "and I will go in and tell them who we are." He soon returned and said there was something wrong, as there was no one in the house, that they had just left, as supper was on the table and partially eaten. Near the house was a slashing. We told him to go there and look for his friends, announcing who he was. He did so and returned with the wife. She said there was a bad company of guerrillas there who were making much trouble and had killed several people. We suggested that the guide and the wife try again to find the husband, which they did and brought him in. He said we were in a bad fix, but he would try to help us on the next morning. We were fed and decided to stay outside. We established a guard and lay down in the yard. In the morning we started out with this gentleman as a guide, going carefully through the woods. We had not gone very far before our guide was called by name by someone in the woods who said: "Where are you going?" "A piece with some friends," he replied. "You are taking a very great risk," he was told. At one place the guide said: "See that large plantation over there and those men digging a grave—the man who lived there was shot by the guerrillas yesterday."

We kept on till, late in the afternoon, we came to a road. The guide said: "I will leave you here. You go up this road a little ways and you will come to a cross road and a store. That is about forty-five miles from my home. Go straight past the store until you come to the river, then cross in a row boat. If there is not one there, swing your handkerchiefs or something and they will come."