We must organize; organize victory. The sooner we act the better, provided we have a well-arranged plan. We can capture this town, ration our men, provide them with shoes, clothing, and muskets, and have a formidable army right here at once. It need not take more than half a day. Certainly we can march off within twenty-four hours after the first blow is struck, if we begin right. The enemy have a few guns on the hill, but they are not "in battery". We can take these and take the artillery here right along with us. The principal obstacle is here; make the beginning right; master these prisons and these camps, and we are safe. Organize is the word; organize. If any one shall betray us, or aid the rebels, or be guilty of robbery or other outrage, I am in favor of a drumhead court martial and a summary execution. Now, gentlemen, I am ready to serve in any capacity, whether to lead or to follow.
Colonel Ralston of the 24th N. Y. "dismounted cavalry," as they were called, spoke next. He was an energetic and dashing officer who fell near me in an attempt to break out of Danville prison on the tenth of the following December. He entered into the particulars of a plan of action, showing how easy it would be, with the probable loss of but few lives, to capture the three camps with the Salisbury arsenal and the artillery. As his particular share in the work, he said he would undertake with a small company to disarm the twenty or thirty sentinels inside the enclosure, and instantly thereupon to capture the headquarters of Major Gee.
Other officers gave valuable suggestions. Being called upon for my opinion, I spoke of the duty we owed our enlisted men to extricate them from their shocking condition, for they were beginning to die every night on the bare ground, and would soon be perishing by scores. I urged the effect the escape of some eight thousand prisoners would have upon the nation, being equivalent to a great victory; and, better than victory, it would add so many thousands of trained soldiers at once to our armies in the field. I insisted that this success would be cheaply bought, even if it cost, as it probably would, a hundred lives.
Of all our thirty field officers, only one opposed the scheme (Lieut.-Col. G——). He was acknowledged to be brave,[5] but seemingly lacking in enterprise. He said in substance, "I have carefully examined the situation, and have come to the conclusion that it is utterly useless to attempt to escape by force. It can't be done at present. We should be slaughtered by the hundred. If you all vote to try it, I will join you; but in my opinion it is perfect madness."
With but one dissenting voice it was resolved to go ahead. A committee of five was immediately appointed to prepare and present a plan of action. This committee were Colonel Ralston; Col. W. Ross Hartshorne, 190th Pa. (the famous "Bucktail Regiment," whose first colonel, O'Neil, my Yale classmate, was killed at Antietam); Col. James Carle, 191st Pa.; Major John Byrne, 155th N. Y.; and myself, Lieutenant-Colonel of the 13th Conn. We were supposed to be fighting men, and had all been wounded in battle.
A similar meeting of field officers was held the following evening. For two days the committee was almost continually in consultation with General Hayes. Great pains was taken to have the plans fully understood by all the officers and to secure their hearty coöperation. By ingenious methods frequent communication was had with the enlisted men across the "dead line"; sometimes by hurling written communications ballasted with stone; several times by Lieutenant Manning and others running swiftly past the sentinels in the dark; best of all, because least liable to discovery, by the use of the deaf-and-dumb alphabet. We were suffering for want of water, and several officers got permission to go outside the enclosure ostensibly to procure it, but really to reconnoitre.
The committee reported the following plan, which was unanimously adopted:
The first object in the movement being to get into a hand-to-hand fight as soon as possible; seven columns, each several hundred strong, were to make simultaneous assaults upon six or seven different points. The fence being the first impediment, every man's haversack and pockets were to be filled with stones to keep down the sentinels who would fire on us from the top. Some got levers to wrench off boards, others logs to serve as rude battering rams, others sharpened stakes which Ralston called "Irish pikes," others clubs, or any possible weapon. I had a rusty old bayonet.
Major David Sadler, 2d Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery, with his battalion was to rush and seize the cannon and muskets at the angle on the right; Major John Byrne and his column at the same instant were to pounce upon the big gun and muskets at the angle on our left; simultaneously Colonel Ralston and his men are to dash upon the nine sentinels on the "dead line" in front of the officers' houses, in a moment disarming them and the nine of the relief just arriving; then spring to the assistance of Major August Haurand of the 4th N. Y. Cavalry and his battalion who are capturing Major Gee's headquarters and guards and camp on our right. Col. James Carle, 191st Pa., with his hundreds is breaking through the fence and capturing the rebel camp in rear of the officers' quarters. Colonel, afterwards General, W. Ross Hartshorne and his 330 men of the 190th Pa. are to break the fence just above the main rebel camp which is on our left. My own column of about three hundred men of the Nineteenth Corps are to break the fence just below the rebel camp; then Hartshorne and I are to leap from opposite sides upon this, the main camp. These seven battalions were to some extent organized with field, staff, and company officers. Every officer and soldier was to be on the qui vive a little before five o'clock in the morning, watching intently for the signal. This was to be the waving of a fire-brand by General Hayes in front of house number two.
Quite a number of officers had no faith in the plot, and they regarded it with indifference. A few expressed hostility to it. One captain, who had been a prisoner before and seemed glad to have been captured again, a bloated, overgrown, swaggering, filthy bully, of course a coward, formerly a keeper of a low groggery and said to have been commissioned for political reasons, was repeatedly heard to say in sneering tones in the hearing of rebel sentries, "Some of our officers have got escape on the brain," with other words to the like effect. Colonel Hartshorne finally stopped such traitorous language by saying with tremendous emphasis: "Captain D——, I've heard a good deal of your attempts to discourage officers from escaping, and your loud talk about officers having 'escape on the brain.' Now, sir, I give you notice that if you're again guilty of anything of the sort, I'LL—BREAK—YOUR—HEAD—WITH—A—CLUB!"