PRISON PEN, MACON, GEORGIA. Tunneling—The narrow path to freedom.
"The night being very dark," he writes, "and the soil where we were huddled together very sandy and light, many of the prisoners dug holes in the ground and there buried themselves, hoping thus to escape the observation of the guard when we should be marched from the field to the cars. Unfortunately, however, the scheme was exposed by one of the guard who accidentally stumbled into one of the holes, in the bottom of which he beheld a 'live Yankee.' Struck with amazement, he shouted out: 'Oh, my G—, Captain, here is a Yankee buried alive!' Great excitement was the natural consequence. A general search ensued, torch-lights were used, and the trees and ground thoroughly inspected. This investigation brought to light several holes of a similar character, each having deposited therein a Federal prisoner. The guards were very angry and went about shouting, 'Run them through! Pick up the d—d hounds!' but their captain, a good-natured sort of man, stopped all this. 'No,' said he, 'the d—d Yankees have a right to escape if they can. Let them alone. I'll risk their getting away from me!'"
Some of the burrowers did escape, however, and several others hid themselves in the foliage and were left behind.
After this nothing eventful occurred upon the way, and on the fifteenth of the same month, the whole party arrived at Augusta, Georgia, and found the home guards, to whose custody they were consigned, a bad lot. From that city they were soon after removed to Macon. Up to this period, amid all the mortifications of their condition, notwithstanding their tiresome rides and weary marches; despite the chagrin they naturally felt when well-laid plans of escape were frustrated by accidents beyond the power of men to foresee, they still had one source of consolation—there was at least one drop of balm in Gilead—for had they not gotten rid of—Turner!
Judge, then, of their mingled horror and despair when they reached the front gate of Camp Oglethorpe, their future prison, to find that monster before them, lounging gracefully against the gate entrance, and evidently delighted with the idea of being in a condition to shock his former victims with his presence.
The laugh, however, was not entirely his, for, upon mustering them, he discovered that forty-seven had escaped. Smothering his wrath for the moment, he welcomed the remainder to their prison-house, with the gratifying intelligence that it had its dead-line, and all who approached it had better be ready to meet the contingencies of a future state of rewards and punishments!
After horrifying them with his presence, he shortly took himself off, and not long afterward, to their great relief, was ordered back to Richmond.
Before the week had expired, Glazier had an opportunity of estimating how careless(?) some of his custodians were in handling their firearms, being an eye-witness of an attempt by a sentinel to shoot Lieutenant Barker, of the First Rhode Island Cavalry. The bullet, kinder than the boy who sped it on its errand (for this guard was not over fourteen years of age), passed over the old man's head. As the latter noted the direction of the lad's aim, and heard the whistle of the bullet above him, he very temperately asked the somewhat unnecessary question, "What are you shooting at?" "I am shooting at you, you d—d old cuss." "What are you shooting at me for?" mildly inquired the lieutenant. "Because you had your hands on the dead-line," answered the boy. At this moment the sergeant of the guard came up, and taking the precocious ruffian by the collar, shook him with considerable energy, and demanded of him very fiercely, "What the devil are you shooting at that prisoner for, you little scoundrel?" The boy replied that the prisoner had his hands on the dead-line. Whereupon the sergeant shook him again, told him he was a liar—that the lieutenant was not within twenty feet of the dead-line, and consigned him to the custody of the corporal of the guard, who marched the young monster away.