On the 20th of March some exchanged Confederates were sent into Richmond under flag of truce. The President, Jefferson Davis, and all the dignitaries welcomed them. The President also came into Libby Prison one day, possibly to see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears if all the terrible tales of hardship and cruelties occurring there were true. Whatever conclusion he may have reached, the hard lines of our life in the prison were not visibly altered. They have been told of a hundred of times.
All the nights now it was very cold. I had but one blanket. I, like all the others, slept on the floor, and in my clothes, with my boots under my head for a pillow. One night,—it was at the close of February, 1864,—we in the prison were greatly excited over a report that Union cavalry under Generals Kilpatrick and Dahlgren were making a raid on the city for the purpose of releasing us. It was raining outside, and very dark, but we were sure we heard the Union cannon close at hand. We thought the hour of our deliverance had come. Instantly, but secretly, we organized ourselves into bands to break out and help.
Soon Major Turner, the prison commander, came into the prison, making mysterious threats of something awful that would happen should we lift a single hand. Some negro help about the prison whispered to us all that, under Turner's direction, they had been compelled to carry thirty kegs of gunpowder into the cellar of the prison. Rumor said that it was Turner's intention, if our troops should get into Richmond, to blow up the prison and destroy us. A horrible plan, if true. Sadly for us, the great raid proved a failure. Dahlgren was killed, and his body was mutilated and exposed to an enraged public at one of the railroad depots in the city. These things were not done by honorable Confederate soldiers, but by irresponsible home guards and undisciplined rowdies.
Now we saw no hopes of ever getting away. We would at last all die here, we thought. The nights seemed colder than ever; perhaps our blood was getting thinner. Some of us played chess; numbers sat with cards in their hands from early morning till bedtime. A few, experts with the knife, made bone rings and the like to sell, and so increased their rations a little. Generally now the rations were getting poorer, if such a thing were possible. Many prisoners were breaking down and were carried out to die. My own health—and I was young and strong—was beginning to give way. Once I fell on the floor in an utter swoon from weakness and hunger. From Andersonville, where the private soldiers were, came the horrible reports that "all were dying."
One day a lot of Marylanders, most of whom had run through the Union lines from Baltimore, were organized into a battalion called "The Maryland Line." They were led by Marshall Wilder. They were marched past the prison, singing "Maryland, My Maryland." It was the first time I ever heard the song sung by Southerners. The music seemed to stir the whole city.[A]
Great battles were being fought in Virginia, and sometimes Grant's soldiers approached close to Richmond. Before daylight of May 7 our captors, fearing mutiny and escape, placed all the prisoners in cattle cars and hurried us across the Confederacy to Macon, Ga. For seven long, dreary, awful months I had been in one room in Libby Prison, with little to eat or wear. It all seems a horrible dream as I write of it now.
Now there were rumors that we were to be taken to a prison farther South.