CHAPTER XIII
'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.
—Payne.
If one longs for home while roaming amidst pleasures and palaces, how much more intense, suppose you, must be the nostalgia of the soldier confined in a far distant prison?
March 14, 1865, was one of the happiest days of my life. After a captivity of twenty months, I was led out of the prison with the three hundred others, conducted to a steamboat, and homeward bound transported to Sandusky. The thick ice that for three months had covered the bay was floating in broken pieces on the surface, through which the boat struggled with so much difficulty that I feared it would be necessary to put back to the island; but the trip was made at the expense of some broken paddles. Why we were selected rather than our less fortunate compatriots I cannot guess, unless it was to save the annoyance and the expense of burial, for some of our party had been wounded, others as well as myself, had recently recovered from serious sickness, and all were adjudged to be unfit for military service; or perhaps there was the same number in Southern prisons that for special reasons the Federal War Office desired to have exchanged.
The train that was to convey us southward was made up of box-cars, upon the floors of which there was a thin covering of straw. We were so crowded that we all could not lie down at the same time. The sleepers lay with their heads at the sides of the cars, while their legs interlaced in the middle. We took the situation in good humor, and slept by turns, those who could not find room standing amidst entangled legs and feet. Thus we traveled several days and nights, our train being frequently switched for the passage of regular trains. Our route was by Bellaire to Baltimore, or rather to Locust Point, where we took passage on a steamboat for James river. Having landed the next day, we walked across a neck of land formed by a bend of the river to the wharf where a boat from Richmond was expected to meet us. A company of negroes made a show of conducting us across the neck, though a company of children armed with cornstalks would have been equally efficient.
We had not long to wait until the smokestack of the Confederate steamboat could be seen winding along as she tracked the serpentine course of the river. As she neared the wharf the band on board struck up that sweetest of tunes,—"Home, Sweet Home." Some of my companions laughed, some threw their caps into the air, others hurrahed, while my own emotions were expressed only by tears of joy that coursed down my cheeks. When, however, the music glided into the exhilarating notes of "Dixie" I joined in the cheering that mingled with the strain.