Fifteen Months in Dixie; Or, My Personal Experience in Rebel Prisons

by William W. Day

Day after day brought train load after train load of prisoners from Andersonville until there were about seven thousand prisoners in camp at this place. There was no stockade, no fence, nothing but a living wall of guards around us, and that living wall of infantrymen aided and abetted by a healthy, full grown battery of artillery, that was all.

Our rations here were of fair quality but small in quantity, consisting of a pint of corn meal, a little sorghum syrup and a teaspoonful of salt once in two days. Meat of any kind was not issued, from this time on it was relegated to the historic past. The weather was pleasant, the days not too hot and the nights not too cool. About nine o’clock a sea breeze would spring up which felt to us, after having lived in the furnace-like atmosphere of Andersonville, like a breeze from the garden of the Gods. About nine o’clock in the evening a land breeze would set in and would blow until sunrise then die away to give place to the sea breeze. I used to sit up till midnight drinking in the delightful air and watching the track of the great shells thrown by the “Swamp Angel” battery. Gilmore gave Charleston no rest day nor night. The “Hot bed of Secession” got a most unmerciful pounding. The whole of the lower part of the city was a mass of ruins, the upper part was then receiving the attention of our batteries on James Island. It was a grand sight at night to watch the little streak of fire from the fuse of those three hundred pound shells as it rose higher and higher toward the zenith and having reached the highest point of the arc, to watch it as it sped onward and downward until suddenly a loud explosion told that its time was expired and the sharp fragments were hurled with an increased velocity down into the devoted city. Sometimes a shell would not explode until it had made its full journey and landed among the buildings or in the streets and then havoc and destruction ensued. The most of the people lived in bomb proofs, which protected them from the fragments of the shells which exploded in the air, but were not proof against those which exploded after striking.

A little episode occurred one day that created quite a panic among both prisoners and guards. Suddenly and without warning, a large solid shot came rolling and tumbling through camp, from the north; this was followed by another, and then another. This was getting serious. What the Dickens was the matter? Where did these shots come from? were questions that any and all of us, could and did ask, but none could answer. But in this case, the rebel guard and officers, were in danger as well as Yanks, and a courier was dispatched in hot haste to inquire into the why and wherefore. It turned out that a rebel gunboat, on the Cooper River, was practicing at a target and we were getting the benefit of it.

Here at Charleston we were on historic ground. Just a few miles to the east of us Colonel Moultrie defended a palmetto fort manned by five hundred brave and loyal South Carolinans, against the combined land and naval forces of Sir Henry Clinton, and Sir Peter Parker, on the 28th of June 1776, and with his twenty-six cannons compelled the fleet to retire. There upon the palmetto bastion of old Fort Moultrie, the brave young Sergeant Jasper supported the Stars and Stripes under a terrible fire, and earned for himself an undying fame. Here and in this vicinity, Moultrie, Pickens, Pinckney, Lee, Green, Lincoln and Marion earned a reputation which will last as long as American history shall endure. But, alas, here too, is material for a history which does not reflect much credit on the descendants of those brave and loyal men. South Carolina was the first State to adopt an ordinance of Secession, Nov 20th, 1860.

Here in Charleston Harbor, on the 9th of January 1861, the descendants of those revolutionary heroes, from the embrazures of fort Moultrie, and Castle Pinckney, fired upon the Star of the West, a United States vessel sent with supplies for the brave Anderson, who was cooped up within the walls of Fort Sumter. From these same forts, on the 12th of April, was fired the guns which compelled the surrender of Fort Sumter, and was the beginning of hostilities in the War of the Rebellion. And all this trouble had grown out of a political doctrine promulgated by an eminent South Carolinan, John C. Calhoun.

But with all their bad reputation as Secessionists, the South Carolinans treated us with more kindness than did the citizens of any other States. I never heard a tantalizing or insulting word given by a South Carolina citizen or soldier to a prisoner. In the matter of low meanness, the Georgia Crackers and Clay Eaters earned the blue ribbon.

On the 1st of October the detachment to which I belonged, was marched to the cars, and we were sent to Florence, one hundred miles north of Charleston on the road to Columbia. On our route, we had passed over ground made sacred by Revolutionary struggles. At Monk’s Corners, the 14th of April 1780, a British force defeated an American force. In the swamps of the Santee and Pedee Rivers General Francis Marion hid his men, and from them he made his fierce raids upon tories and British. Marion is called a “partisan leader,” in the old histories, but I suspect that in this year of grace, he would be called a “Bushwacker,” or “Guerrilla” leader. It makes a good deal of difference which side men are fighting on, about the name they are called. We arrived at the Florence Stockade in the afternoon and were marched in and assigned our position in the northeast corner, the entrance being on the west side.

The Florence Stockade was about two or three miles below Florence, and half or three-quarters of a mile east of the railroad. It was built upon two sides of a small stream which ran through it from north to south, was nearly square in shape, and contained ten or twelve acres of land. It was built of rough logs set in the ground and was sixteen or eighteen feet high. There was no such dead line as at Andersonville, a shallow ditch marking the limits. The greatest number of prisoners confined here during the time of my imprisonment, was eleven thousand. In some respects our situation was better than at Andersonville. We had new ground upon which to live. We were rid of the terrible filth and stench, we were not so badly crowded, and we had more wood with which to cook our food.

The Post Commandant, Lieutenant Colonel Iverson, of the 5th Georgia, was an easy going, but not altogether bad man, except that he was possessed of an ungovernable temper, and when irritated, would commit acts of which he was, no doubt, ashamed when his pulse assumed a normal condition. Lieutenant Barrett, Adjutant of the 5th Georgia, was to Florence what Wirz was to Andersonville. He was a red headed fiery tempered, cruel, and vindictive specimen of the better educated class of Southerners. It seemed to be his delight to to torture and maltreat the prisoners. If there was a single redeeming trait in his character, the unfortunate men who were under his care, never by any chance stumbled onto it. His favorite punishment was to tie the offender up by the thumbs so tightly that his toes barely touched the ground, and have him in this condition for an hour or two at a time. The tortures of such a punishment were indescribable. The victim would suffer the tortures of the damned, and when let down would have to be carried to his quarters by his comrades.

The prisoners were organized into squads of twenty, these into companies of a hundred, and these into detachments of a thousand. As stated before my detachment was assigned a position in the northeast corner of the Stockade. When we arrived there was plenty of wood, small poles, and brush in the Stockade, and our first work after selecting our ground, was to secure an abundant supply.