Sailor Jack, the Trader

by Harry Castlemon

In only one particular did this guard-mount resemble those in which Marcy had often taken part at the Barrington Academy. The guard, which was composed of an equal number of Home Guards and conscripts, was divided into two platoons with an officer of the guard in command of each, and an officer of the day in command of the whole, and there all attempts to follow the tactics ceased except when the adjutant saluted the new officer of the day and reported, “Sir, the guard is formed.” There was no band to sound off and no marching in review. Instead of that the officer of the day said to one of his lieutenants, “Go ahead, Billy, and fill up the boxes,” and in obedience to the order, the same sergeant who had warned the conscripts for duty the night before placed himself at the head of the first platoon, to which Marcy belonged, and marched them to the commander’s headquarters, where they were supplied with old-fashioned muskets and cartridge-boxes.

“Give me that gun!” shouted the sergeant, who was out of all patience when he saw that some of the conscripts held their pieces at trail arms, and that others placed them on their shoulders as they might have done if they had been going to hunt squirrels in the woods. “Now watch me. This is shoulder arms. Put your guns that way, all of you, and keep them there.”

So saying he marched the platoon away to relieve the sentries on post. Marcy was No. 6, and this brought him to a station about the middle of the eastern side of the stockade. When his number was called he followed the sergeant up a ladder and into a box from which a grizzly Home Guard had been keeping watch during the morning hours. The latter, instead of bringing his musket to arms port, as he ought to have done when passing his orders, dropped the butt of it to the floor and rested his chin on his hands, which he clasped over the muzzle.

“There aint nothing much to do but jest loaf here and keep an eye on them abolitionists,” said he, jerking his head toward the stockade. “Do you see that dead-line down there? Well, if you see one of ’em trying to get over or under it shoot him down; and don’t stop to ask him no questions, neither. I’d like mighty well to get a chance to do it, kase I want thirty days home. I reckon that’s all, aint it, sard?”

The sergeant said he reckoned it was, and when the two went down the ladder Marcy stepped to the side of his box and took his first view of the inside of a Southern prison pen. He had seen a picture of Camp Douglas in an illustrated paper which Captain Burrows gave him one day when he was in Plymouth, and had taken note that the Confederate prisoners there confined were provided with comfortable quarters, into which they could retreat in stormy weather, and where they could find shade when the sun grew too hot for them; but there was nothing of the kind inside this stockade. There was no shelter from sun or rain except such as the prisoners had been able to provide for themselves. There were multitudes of little tents made of blankets, which were hardly high enough for a man to crawl into, and scattered among them were mounds of earth that looked so much like graves that Marcy was startled when he saw a ragged, emaciated apparition, which had once been an able-bodied Union soldier, slowly emerge from one of them and throw himself down upon the ground as if he didn’t care whether he ever got up again or not. The stockade was crowded with just such pitiful objects, who dragged their skeleton forms wearily over the sun-baked earth or lay as motionless as dead men under the shelter of their little tents. It was a spectacle to which no language could do justice, and Marcy turned from it sick at heart to make an examination of the stockade itself. It was built of pine logs set upright in the ground and scored on each side so that they would stand closely together, and they were held in place by heavy planks which were spiked across them on the outside near the top. Built upon little platforms, located at regular intervals around the top of the stockade, were sentry boxes like the one Marcy now occupied, to which access was gained by ladders leading from the ground outside. On the inside of the stockade, about fifteen feet from it and running parallel to it all the way around, was a railing three feet high made by nailing strips of boards to posts that had been firmly set in the ground. It was an innocent looking thing, but it had sent into eternity more than one brave man who had incautiously approached it. It was the dead-line.

“But it will never be the death of anybody while I am on post,” thought Marcy, wondering how any man could want a furlough bad enough to shoot a fellow being down in cold blood. “I never could look my mother or Jack in the face if I should do a deed like that, and I’d never have a good night’s rest. Heaven will never smile upon a cause upheld by men who are as cruel as these rebels are. They ought to be whipped.”

Long before the time arrived for him to be relieved Marcy became so affected by the sight of the misery and suffering he had no power to alleviate that he wanted to drop his musket and take to his heels; and he would have welcomed a cyclone or an earthquake, or any other convulsion of nature, that would have shut it out from his view forever. On several occasions some of the thirsty wretches approached within a few feet of the dead-line, with battered, smoke-begrimed cups or pieces of bent tin in their hands, to drink from the sluggish stream that flowed through the pen—for the water was clearer there than it was anywhere else—and then it was that the fiendish nature of the sentry in the next box on the right showed itself. As often as a prisoner drew near to the stream with a dish in his hand, this man would cock his musket, bring it to a ready, and crane his long neck eagerly forward, as if he hoped that the soldier might forget himself and approach close enough to the fatal line to give him an excuse for shooting. Once or twice Marcy was on the point of warning the boys in blue to keep farther away, but he remembered in time that he had been told to ask no questions, and that was the same as an order forbidding him to speak to the prisoners. To his great joy the sentry who was so anxious to have a furlough did not earn it that day. At length Marcy saw the relief approaching, and then he took the first long, easy breath he had drawn for four miserable hours. He passed his orders in as few words as possible and hurried down the ladder, feeling as if he had just been released from prison himself. He marched around the stockade with the relief, and was surprised to see how extensive it was. It was not crowded like Andersonville, nor were the sanitary conditions quite so bad; but they were bad enough, and the mortality was just as great in proportion to the number of prisoners confined in it. When they reached the barracks the platoon to which he belonged was drilled for half an hour at stacking arms, and it was not until the movement was accomplished to his satisfaction that the officer of the guard allowed them to break ranks and go to dinner.

“You look as though you had had a spell of sickness,” were the first words his friend Bowen said to him, when the two found opportunity to exchange a few words in private. “What’s the matter?”

“Wait until you have stood in one of those boxes for four hours, and see if you don’t feel as bad as I look,” answered Marcy. “It’s awful, and I don’t see how I can go there again. Why, Charley, the sentry who stood next to me fairly ached to shoot one of those poor fellows. I never saw a quail hunter more eager to get a shot than he was.”

“Did the prisoner come near the dead-line?”