XLI
FORT DELAWARE—“OLD GLORY”—LINCOLN’S ASSASSINATION—THE RELEASED PRISONER OF WAR
In the last week of May, 1864, I had a letter from my brother Horace, now a Lieutenant in the Richmond Howitzers, C.S.A.
It bore the heading: “Under the walls of Fort Delaware,” and was scribbled upon the deck of a United States transport.
With the gay courage that was his characteristic, and without waste of words in preliminaries, directness in action and speech being another prominent trait with him, he informed me that “General Hancock, by making an ungenerously early start at Spottsylvania Court-House—before breakfast, in fact—on the morning of May 21st, captured part of our division.”
The letter wound up with: “We are now approaching Fort Delaware, which is, we are told, our destination. I am well. Don’t take this to heart. I don’t!”
I was so far from taking it to heart that I called upon my soul, and all that was within me, to return thanks to Him who had delivered my darling boy from the battle that was against him. He was now out of the reach of bullet and bayonet.
If I did not summon neighbors and friends to rejoice with me over my brother’s capture, the news spread fast, and congratulatory calls were the order of the next few days. Not satisfied with words of good-will, every bit of political machinery at the command of our friends was put in motion to secure for me the great joy of visiting him.
One of these plans so nearly succeeded that I went, under the escort of the plotter, as far as Delaware City, within sight of the gloomy fortress, to be turned back by a new order—incited by a rumored attempt at escape of the prisoners—prohibiting any visitors from entering the fort.
In the tranquil assurance of the captive s security from the chances of war, I bore up under the failure better than could have been expected, solacing myself by writing, regularly, long letters, and the preparation of boxes of books and provisions, which I was allowed to forward weekly. It was “almost as good,” I wrote to him, gleefully, “as having a son at school, for whom I could get up boxes of goodies.”