Wednesday, 15th.—To-day, I followed Dr. Hay’s trail all day, bent on a personal interview, until I earthed him at last in his office; and the result is that we are off for Richmond to-morrow. [I had seen the Richmond paper with the official list of Yankees paroled from the Libby, among whom were several whom I knew to be Pope’s officers; and I determined not to rot another day, as food for Confederate vermin, without claiming my rights as prisoner of war. So when, after repeated rebuffs, my obstinacy prevailed and Hay gave orders to let me in, he wasn’t in a good humor. But I told him, I forget in what terms, that I had discovered that I was no longer a hostage liable to be hanged in retaliation for the execution of guerrillas, but a prisoner of war, with all that that implied, and that, in behalf of all who were able to travel, I demanded to be sent to the Libby. He said we were better off where we were. I agreed, but told him I would suffer anything to know that my name was on the list to be paroled when my turn came, and that it was my right to have it there. Finally he said, “Will you be ready to start before light to-morrow?” “Let me go back for my blanket,” said I, “and I’ll start now.” “Well,” said he, “go back, and tell all who the ward surgeon says are able, to be ready by half-past four.” I saluted, faced about, and was in the doorway when he stopped me and, seeming to recover his temper, asked me and any of my friends who could to come over to his office after supper and take a farewell drink.] In the evening [the journal resumes], we attended in Dr. Hay’s office, to take a social drink. Hay talked fire and fury, “secesh” running up as the whiskey ran down. A lawyer and colonel joined in, and the telegram of the Governor of North Carolina to the Governor of South Carolina was so often quoted that I was fain to back down from what was fast becoming a three-minute crowd. We had an amputation to diversify the spree,—soldier brought in, who I suspect had applied for a discharge by shooting off two fingers of his right hand. They were badly mangled, so Hay put him down on the floor and took them off again, short metre, not without cutting his own in the operation, he was so tight. I came away then, fearing that my crutches might not be as whiskey-proof as erst was wooden leg of Sawin, and the descent of the front steps requiring that eye, hand, and foot (literally, foot) should keep true time. There wasn’t much sleep in No. 7 that night, and early next morning we were off, leaving George and the skeleton sergeant, who is fast going down to the dead, though he doesn’t know it. We had an awful trip, being detained six hours by a smash-up of the night before, killing seven and wounding seventy-five,—a mere skirmish. Shortly before we arrived, at about 1 A.M., an officer came through the car, caught sight of my shoulder-straps, stopped: “You are a captain?” “Yes.” “Have you got any federal greenbacks?” “Yes, a few.” “Well, I want some to pay a debt I owe at the North, and I’ll give you Confederate money for them. You’ll want some, for you’ll probably lie for months in the Libby, and you’ll die if you don’t send out and buy good food.” Said I, “Thank you, I guess I’ll hold on to my greenbacks till I get there.”
The fact that nearly all the hospital officials had made the same request on various pretexts was significant enough to me. At 2 A.M., we arrived, where I now write, in the Libby prison, being received with the once familiar cry of “Corporal of the Guard, Post No. 1.” The corporal came and let us in. The officer, cross and sleepy (the infernal traitor, Peacock, by the way), sent us to the hospital department, up three flights,—immense room in large tobacco warehouse, lighted with a single dip, which only made darkness visible. A ragged young nurse, with his hair on end, welcomed us to the scene of despair. We were put on cots of sacking, with nothing under or over us, and shivered ourselves into oblivion. The next morning, the familiar notes of reveille on the fife, accompanied by the bass and snare-drum of the side-show, which Andrews used to detest so, brought us again to consciousness. I was about to put my head out of the window, but was forcibly informed that I’d better not, unless I wanted it shot off. This day, a party went off which we had hoped to join, but were disappointed; and a squad of sixty odd came in from Macon, Georgia. I thought that I had seen filth, squalor, and wretchedness before, but I never even conceived the meaning of the words; and what these men had been through would have been incredible, except to those who saw them. They said the Libby was heaven, in comparison to what they had come from. Saw a dress-parade of the regiment on duty here, which would have shamed the cadets for measliness of turnout.
Saturday.—In hell, alias the Libby prison.
Sunday.—This morning before breakfast, little spitfire clerk came up to take our paroles. I could have embraced the little devil, but I didn’t, only waited till my name was called, when I toed the mark instanter, and quite won his heart with the promptitude with which I recited my descriptive list, insomuch that he asked me to take a letter to his sweetheart. After this, the wretched crew were packed into coaches and wagons, under command of the black-hearted traitor Captain Peacock, and we left Libby, the sergeant and I being in with two half-dead wretches of the Macon crowd, swarming with vermin.
But after a miserable jolt of fifteen miles, our nigger driver pointed out the boat lying in a distant bend. “And dar de flag,” said he with a grin, “ober de starn,” indicating a small red streak, which was “the star-spangled banner, Oh, long may it wa-a-ve,” etc. I confess to embracing the staff when I got aboard, and realized that Jeff. Davis himself couldn’t take me away without a fight. But before they let us go aboard there was a long and to us incomprehensible delay of nearly two hours, during which we lay on the grass just above the landing and watched the boat, the flag, and the blue uniforms, with longing eyes. [We learned afterward that Captain Peacock, while strutting up and down the wharf in full Confederate uniform, had been recognized by one of the deck hands who had belonged to his former New York regiment. The said deck hand pointed him out to a friend, with the remark, “Look at his forehead, and you’ll see traitor written there.” This being overheard by Mr. Peacock, he demanded an apology for the insult, swearing that, if refused, he would march us all back to the Libby. How they pacified him I don’t know, but at the end of two hours he had cooled off enough to let us go aboard. I was the first who received permission to go, whereat I bounced on to my one foot and two crutches, picked up my blanket, and charged down the hill. The rebel sentry, who hadn’t yet got his orders to pass us, charged bayonets on me for an instant, but, on a sign from Peacock, shouldered arms again; and the next moment I was embracing the flag-staff, as afore mentioned. The Sanitary Commission received us with open arms and some delicious milk-punch, and in a few minutes we were under full steam out of rebeldom, Sergeant Holloway and I leaning on the guards, watching the foam fly past, and singing, sotto voce,—“We’re going home, we’re going home, we’re going home to die no more!”
We were two days on board the flag-of-truce boat. The next cot to mine was occupied by a man of a Massachusetts regiment, taken at the first Bull Run. He was almost a skeleton, and the worst case of chills and fever I ever saw. The second day being a shake day, he couldn’t eat his rations, and offered them to me. He said he thought he was dying. “But,” said he, “I don’t complain now I’ve got out of hell, and I shall live long enough to get back into God’s country and die there, which is all I’ve been praying for for months.”]
Monday.—Aboard the “Commodore,” off Fortress Monroe, waiting for orders, which have just come, for Washington. And here we are at Washington, waiting orders again. When I find myself once more a free man in Willard’s Hotel, I shall turn down the leaf of my experiences as prisoner of war to the rebels.
Now for philosophy. Captain gone ashore, and fearful rumors pervade the boat about Annapolis, New York, etc. Well, it can be but a day or two, and we are out of rebeldom. I’ve kept well so— [“Far” would have been the next word, but marching orders intervened, and the next entry, in big letters at the bottom of the page, reads] A free man at Willard’s!
And the first act of the free man aforesaid was to purchase some underclothes at the furnishing store, which luckily had not closed for the night, and to proceed therewith to the bath-room, where hot water and soap speedily restored that self-respect which is so difficult to retain after one is conscious of not being the only inhabitant of one’s garments. The next day, I drew my pay and replaced my ragged blouse, bullet-pierced trowsers, and torn Confederate cap (given me on the field to replace my broad-brimmed felt, which a Georgia gentleman fancied), by the jauntiest uniform clothes I could find, after which I sallied out on the avenue; and the first man I met was the captain of the “Commodore,” who at first insisted that I was mistaken, as he had never seen me before in his life; and only my crutches and wounded foot at last convinced him that I was the same man who had talked to him about Harry Russell, the day before. The next day, it was just the other way. Smart young officer rushes up: “Hallo, Captain Quincy! thought it must be you. How are you?” “Well,” said I, “I’m glad you thought it was I; but whether it’s you or not I’m sure I don’t know, for I should say I had never set eyes on you before.” “What, you don’t know the man you identified yesterday?” And it turned out to be a lieutenant of a Western regiment, and fellow-prisoner, all of whose clothing in the Libby consisted of shirt, trowsers, and army blanket pinned over his shoulders. Arriving in Washington, without a cent, I had identified him at the pay department, while still in his blanket, from which chrysalis the all-potent greenback had evoked as shiny a blue-and-brass butterfly as any on the avenue.
This concludes my prison history. I was never again taken, though coming pretty near it once or twice in Louisiana, where, as an officer of colored troops, my experiences might have been much more severe than those above recounted. If the story has interested former comrades or assisted in drawing closer the link which binds together the survivors of the old regiment, I can only rejoice that the committee asked me to relate it to you.