On our way to the prison at Columbia Major Marshall of my regiment and two captains escaped from the train and reached the North by tramping at night through the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. They had horrible experiences for many weeks.
CHAPTER XIII
Living in a grave—An adventure in the woods of South Carolina—Life in the asylum yard at the capital of South Carolina—The song of "Sherman's March to the Sea"—How it came to be written—Final escape—The burning up of South Carolina's capital.
Now we were near the capital of South Carolina. It is our third prison. We were placed in a cleared field among the pine woods, a few miles from the town. Here we spent a part of a terrible winter exposed to the storm and rain. We had no shelter save such as we made at last of sticks and logs that we were allowed to carry in from the neighboring wood. Our food was wretched, we had almost no clothing, and the weather was very bad nearly all the time. We were surrounded by a line of guards. A battery constantly in readiness to fire on us should an alarm be given stood near by. Our food was still the half-cooked corn and cobs together, with quantities of a poor and sickly sorghum molasses. We heard that the Rebel army was living little better than we were. In ridicule of the rations the prisoners dubbed this prison pen "Camp Sorghum." Every man among us was sick with diarrhœa. The little grave-yard for the prisoners near by grew rapidly. The details of our life in this miserable camp I shall not relate. They were simply too horrible. As for myself,—my only shelter was a hole in the ground, four feet deep, four feet wide and eight feet long. It was covered with boughs and earth. Lieutenant Morris and myself occupied this living grave for months. We had a tiny fire-place of clay built in the end of it, where we burned roots, and the long rainy nights we two sat there alone, reading an old newspaper by our root-light or talking of our far-away homes. One very stormy night our water-soaked roof fell in on us, and then we were compelled to walk about in the rain. I wonder now that any soul survived the miseries of that camp. Valley Forge was paradise compared to it. But all this misery was a part of war.
Naturally, numbers ran the guard lines at this woeful prison pen and escaped into the woods. Firing by the sentinels on these escaping prisoners was a common occurrence on dark nights. Here and there an officer was killed, and sometimes under circumstances that marked the sentinel a common murderer. A battery of loaded cannons stood outside the guard line, with orders to open on the prisoners should five musket shots be heard. With the constant escaping of prisoners at night these five fatal shots could occur at any hour.
For my own part, I resolved to again attempt escape, but my efforts failed again, and twice in succession. I recall with a shudder how one night late in November my friend, Lieutenant Ecking of New York, was foully murdered. He had bribed a guard to let two or three of us run across the line that night at midnight. The bribe was to consist of a silver watch. Some of these men were easily bribed. They were not regular Confederate soldiers, but usually cowardly home guards, who regarded the murdering of a helpless prisoner a heroic act.
When midnight came three of us were secreted close to the dead line. As soon as the bribed sentinel came to his post and commenced walking up and down his beat Lieutenant Ecking rose and approached him. The night was clear moonlight. The moment Ecking had crossed the dead line, and was holding the watch up to the guard, the coward shot him dead. For this outrage the home guard received a furlough.
About this time, too, Lieutenant Turbayne was murdered by a guard for mistaking the ringing of a bell. Some of us had been permitted to go out on parole and carry in wood at stated times. Without notice, this privilege was suspended, but the bellman, by mistake, rang as usual. Turbayne started for the dead line. "Go back, halt!" shouted a sentinel. Turbayne turned to obey, but was instantly shot in the back and dropped dead. There was a furious commotion among the prisoners. The guards, too, collected about the spot. The Rebel officer in charge left his lunch and walked over also. He held in his hand a great piece of pumpkin pie, and continued eating from it as he stood there by the corpse of the man they had murdered. There was almost a mutiny in the prison camp, and one proper leader at that moment would have put an end to the whole Rebel outfit. In the end it would have been death to the whole of us.