From Bull Run to Appomattox: A Boy's View

by Luther W. Hopkins

However, there was a separate hospital for contagious diseases, and the patient was removed as soon as the disease developed.

Most of those who went into the hospital died. The dead were all carried at once to the dead-house on stretchers, and once a day a two-horse wagon came in, and their bodies were laid in it like so much cord wood, uncoffined, taken out and buried in long trenches. The trenches were seven feet wide and three feet deep, and the bodies were laid across the trench side by side and covered with earth.

I had been in prison about four months when news came that the two Governments had agreed upon an exchange of prisoners; it only included the sick in the hospitals. Of course, every patient in the hospital was on the anxious bench and wondering whether he would be included among the fortunate ones. Some days afterward a corps of physicians came to the hospital tents examining the different patients that lay in the cots, taking the name of one and leaving another. I happened to be among those who were selected for exchange. The object seemed to be to take only those who were not liable to be fit for service soon.

We were not at this time exchanged, but each side had agreed to parole the sick from the hospitals, that is, those who were not too ill to be moved. At one time the two Governments freely exchanged prisoners, but this worked so much to the advantage of the South that the North refused to continue the agreement. All Southern soldiers were enlisted for the war, and when the prisoners came back from the North they went at once into the armies of the Confederacy, while Northern prisoners, returning from the South, mostly went to their homes, as they enlisted for one year, and their terms of service in most cases had about expired. Then again, the South was taxed severely to feed its own soldiers and citizens, and were only too glad to get rid of the burden of caring for Northern prisoners, and hence the North did all they could to restrict the exchange of prisoners, but there was such a pressure brought to bear upon the U.S. Government by those who had sick and wounded friends confined in Southern prisons, that now and then each side would parole a number of prisoners from the hospitals who might later be exchanged. My recollection is that about 1500 Confederate prisoners in the hospital at Point Lookout were paroled at this time, and I among them.

We were put on a steamer and carried to a point below Richmond, on the James river, where we met a like number of Federal prisoners that came down from Richmond, and there the exchange was made. The vessel that carried us up the river was a small one, and the sick were packed on the deck and in the hold of the vessel as thick as they could lay. They were all sick, but had to lie on the hard decks with no attention, except that a doctor now and then went through the vessel handing out pills to any who wanted them. He carried them loose in his pocket, and as he stepped between and over the men as they lay on the hard beds, he would say, "Who wants a pill?" And all around him the bony, emaciated arms would be stretched up to receive the medicine. What the pills contained no one knew, but the suffering men swallowed them and asked no questions. They were sick, and needed medicine, and this was medicine. What more did a sick soldier need? The disease, however, was almost entirely a bowel affection, and, perhaps, the same medicine served for all cases. Many died on the way. A large number of the dead were put off at Fortress Monroe as the vessel passed.

Just before reaching the point where the vessels were to meet in the river, our vessel was drawn up alongside of a fine large steamer, and we were transferred to it.

All the very sick were placed upon new mattresses. This was the condition in which we were received by our Confederate friends.

The vessel that landed us on the bank of the James took back the Federal prisoners that had been brought down from Richmond, but I hardly think they were transferred to the smaller vessel that brought us from Point Lookout. The Federal authorities were ashamed to let the officers of the Confederate Government see the miserable condition in which we were transported; hence the transfer to the larger vessel just before delivering us to the Confederates. As soon as we landed we were all given a tincup of hot, nutritious soup, the like of which we had not tasted since leaving our homes for the field, unless it was the soup the Yanks had given us four months before when we embarked on the James river for Fortress Monroe prison.

We were conveyed from this point to Richmond by rail, and distributed among the various army hospitals in the city. I was sent to the Chimborazo Hospital, on the outskirts of the city, located on a bluff looking down the river, within hearing distance of the siege guns on Dury's Bluff, on the James. These were constantly throwing missiles of some sort at the Yankee gunboats below. I remained in the hospital about ten days, and then was considered well enough to go into camp with other convalescents. There were several hundred of us. The camp was near the city.

Some were paroled prisoners and some were from the hospitals of the city, but not strong enough to return to their commands.