His features shone with satisfaction as he replied,—
“That ought to be enough, if we don’t get no mo’e. We’re men now, but when our masters had us we was only change in their pockets.”
Unlike what I saw in Chambersburg, the new blocks springing up in the burnt district did not promise to be an improvement on the old ones. Everywhere were visible the results of want of capital and of the hurry of rebuilding. The thinness of the walls was alarming; and I was not surprised to learn that some of them had recently been blown down on a windy night. Heaven save our country, thought I, from such hasty and imperfect reconstruction!
CHAPTER XX.
LIBBY, CASTLE THUNDER, AND BELLE ISLE.
Strolling along a street near the river, below the burnt district, I looked up from the dirty pavements, and from the little ink-colored stream creeping along the gutter, (for Richmond abounds in these villanous rills,) and saw before me a sign nailed to the corner of a large, gloomy brick building, and bearing in great black letters the inscription,—
LIBBY PRISON.
Passing the sentinel at the door, I entered. The ground-floor was partitioned off into offices and store-rooms, and presented few objects of interest. A large cellar room below, paved with cobble-stones, was used as a cookhouse by our soldiers then occupying the building. Adjoining this, but separated from it by a wall, was the cellar which is said to have been mined for the purpose of blowing up Libby with its inmates, in case the city had at one time been taken.
Ascending a flight of stairs from the ground-floor, I found myself in a single, large, oblong, whitewashed, barren room. Two rows of stout wooden posts supported the ceiling. The windows were iron-grated, those of the front looking out upon the street, and those of the rear commanding a view of the canal close by, the river just beyond it, and the opposite shore.
There was an immense garret above, likewise embracing the entire area of the floor. These were the prison-rooms of the infamous Libby. I found them occupied by a regiment of colored troops, some sitting in Turkish fashion on the floor, (for there was not a stool or bench,) some resting their backs against the posts or whitewashed walls, and others lying at length on the hard planks, with their heads pillowed on their knapsacks.
But the comfortable colored regiment faded from sight as I ascended and descended the stairs, and walked from end to end of the dreary chambers. A far different picture rose before me,—the diseased and haggard men crowded together there, dragging out their weary days, deeming themselves oftentimes forgotten by their country and their friends,—men who mounted those dungeon-stairs, not as I mounted them, but to enter a den of misery, starvation, and death.