All that burning day, when “the sky was brass,” they marched. Late in the afternoon they halted again in an orchard, and supped off green apples, and immediately resumed the march.
It was near nightfall when they reached Richmond.
There was a short halt, during which their arrival was formally reported to the proper authorities, and orders for their disposition taken.
And then they were marched directly to the Libby and packed into a prison that was already crowded.
For what follows I am indebted partly to personal observation, and partly to the report of an officer who was an inmate of that pest-house for several months.
The Libby, as I saw it in May, 1865, is a great, strong, oblong building of the simplest structure. It stands quite alone, a whole block in itself, reaching each way from street to street. It fronts the water and the wharfs, and backs upon a city street—though front and back are so exactly alike that it is difficult to say which is which. It has no wall or yard around it. It stands barely and grimly out between the streets. It is of two stories, or, counting the ground floor, of three. Each story is divided, simply and equally, into three great halls, each big enough for an ordinary church, and running from front to back through the whole building. Each hall has its sides formed of solid masonry, and its ends of three immense doors, formed only of perpendicular iron bars, and reaching from the ceiling to the floor. Through these bars at the front may be seen the sidewalk, the river, the wharves, and the busy scenes of traffic; through the bars of the back a crowded city street. Through these opposite, open bars the ventilation is very good. There is neither bed, bench, water-jug or furniture of any sort in either hall. But in the right hand corner of the front there is, in each, a water spout and sink.
So, amid all the miserable squalor and destitution of the Libby, there seemed to be three or four necessaries of life in plenty—light, air, water and an open view of earth and sky.
At least these were my impressions in inspecting it in May, 1865, nearly a year after the events I am now relating.
It was quite dark when our prisoners were halted before the Libby; but the gas lamps of the street showed the iron barred front of the building, lined with ghastly faces looking out upon the night. Our men were suffering extremely, all from fatigue, and many from acute illness brought on by eating green corn and green apples, and marching under the burning sun. And many sat down and many dropped upon the sidewalk before the prison, while waiting for the doors to be thrown open. A report went round among them that they were only to be packed up in the Libby for that night; and that next morning they were to be divided between Belle Isle and Castle Thunder.
At last the massive doors were thrown open and the prisoners were forced in—really forced, for though they made no sort of resistance, the crowd already there was so great that it formed an almost impassable obstacle to the entrance of any more. But our boys were pushed in and pressed upon this crowd, until it fell heavily back upon itself, to the risk of great injury and even death to individual prisoners. And when nearly all were in, and the crowd still bulged through the open doors, as the contents of an over-full trunk bulges through its open top, these doors were closed by main force upon it, just as you would close down the lid of the trunk.