We remained here long enough to learn that a captain and three Tennesseeans had been hung for their Union sentiments, and to learn also that captives fared very badly. Then we pushed on to Madison, where we were incarcerated in an old factory building, four stories high, and situated in the southeastern portion of the town. It was two o’clock, A. M., when we arrived, and we were immediately locked up in a room entirely destitute of a bed. But still there was such a contrast between it and the old jail in which we had been immured, that we thought it very fine indeed.
We lay down till morning, and when we arose, we found ourselves in company with General Prentiss and General Crittenden, together with two hundred and sixteen other officers of various grades. Here also I met with my old prison companions, Lieutenants Todd, Stokes, Hollingsworth, and Winslow—all clergymen like myself—Lieutenant-Colonel Adams, Majors Crockett, Chandler, McCormick and Studman. I soon formed an agreeable acquaintance with General Prentiss, who was taken prisoner on Sunday, April 6th, 1862, at Shiloh. It had generally been reported that the General had surrendered early in the morning; but this was false, for I now learned that he did not give up until five o’clock in the afternoon, thus holding at least five or six times his own number in check the whole of that dreadful day. Without doubt, history will do the gallant hero justice; for on that bloody field he displayed coolness and heroism seldom equalled and never excelled.
I found General Prentiss not one of your half-hearted war men, who fight conditionally, but a whole-souled patriot, who would destroy the institution that is the root of the war. He would not see the glorious banner trailed in the dust to uphold a few Southern aristocrats in perpetuating their horrid system of human bondage. His feelings were consonant with those of John Quincy Adams, when that wise man addressed Congress, February 4th, 1843, in the following words:
“Three days since, Mr. Clayton, of Georgia, called that species of population (slaves) the machinery of the South. Now, that machinery has twenty odd representatives in this hall, not elected by the machinery, but by those who own it. And if I should go back to the history of the Government from its foundations, it would be easy to prove that its decisions have been effected in general by less majorities than that. Nay, I might go further, and insist that that very representation has ever been, in fact, the ruling power of this Government.
“The history of the Union has afforded a continual proof that the representation of property, which they enjoy, as well in the election of President and Vice-President of the United States, as upon the floor of the House of Representatives, has secured to the slaveholding States the entire control of the national policy, and almost without exception, the possession of the highest executive office of the Union. Always united in the purpose of regulating the affairs of the whole Union by the standard of the slaveholding interest, their disproportionate numbers in the electoral colleges have enabled them, in ten out of twelve quadrennial elections, to confer the Chief Magistracy upon one of their own citizens. Their suffrages at every election, without exception, have been exclusively confined to a candidate of their own caste.”
General Prentiss was kind and affable to all around him, and among fifteen hundred men of his command with whom I freely conversed, there was not one who did not love and respect him.
Every day found me growing more and more hostile to the slave system; and the actions of the various States against slavery often recurred to my mind, and always produced a pleasurable feeling. Pennsylvania took the lead in this noble race. The Act is to be found in Smith’s Laws, Vol. I., p. 493, 1780. It was for the gradual abolishment of slavery, and every word of it should have been printed in letters of gold. This just Act was, for a long course of years, adhered to and perfected until slavery ceased in the State.
In the year 1827, the following open avowal of the State doctrine was made preface to the Act:
“To prevent certain abuses of the laws relative to fugitives from labor.
“They ought not to be tolerated in the State of Pennsylvania.