LIBBY
PRISON.
Lee’s Army Advances into Pennsylvania.
MILROY’S COMPLIMENTS.
Introduction to the Celebrated “Hotel de Libby.”
PRISON AMUSEMENTS.
Grapevine Rumors Regarding Exchange of Prisoners.
BY
J. W. CHAMBERLAIN, LATE CAPTAIN, CO. A, 123D OHIO, AND BREVET MAJOR.
I.
[Author describes, at
length, the history of the regiment, and his capture, prior to the battle of
Gettysburg. This was not transcribed.]
From Staunton we were taken by railroad to Richmond,
reaching there Tuesday, June 23, and were immediately introduced to our quarters
in “Hotel de Libby,” first being pretty thoroughly searched, ostensibly for
money, but really for anything they could use or thought they wanted. Nearly all
succeeded, however, in secreting the bulk of the money they had. I remember a
rebel officer taking from me several sheets of paper, which, being white, was a
great rarity with them, they only having brown paper, and placing it in the rear
pocket of a frock coat he was wearing, continued his search. One of our officers
noticed it, and adroitly removing it returned it to me.
DESCRIPTION
OF LIBBY PRISON.
A brief description of the building may be necessary to a
full understanding of some incidents that afterwards occurred there. Before the
war it was occupied by Libby & Son, ship chandlers and grocers, from which
fact it took the name of Libby Prison. It was of brick, 150 feet front by 105
feet deep, fronting on Cary street and extending back to Canal street, the canal
being just beyond, and then the James River. The building was three stories
high, with floors but no ceilings, resembling a grain warehouse inside. It had
window frames, but no glass, instead of which, at first, there were wooden bars,
leaving apertures about the size of common glass, consequently we had plenty of
ventilation – especially in the Winter. There were no bunks of any
description, and no seats, excepting one or two benches. A small kitchen was
partitioned off, in which were three old brokendown cooking stoves, and a few
broken kettles. Each story was divided into three rooms. The lower room of the
first tier was occupied by the various officers employed about the prison. The
lower middle room was only occasionally occupied. The lower third tier was the
hospital, and the balance of the building was for the prisoners. The basement
was used by a few darkies, who did the rough work of the prison. There were also
two or three cells, dungeon-like in the basement. Castle Thunder was about a
square distant, and Belle Isle about two miles.
WHEN I ENTERED
LIBBY
we found about 500 prisoners there, composed of the
officers of Col. A. D. Streight’s command. Before I left the number was
increased to more than 1,100. The rebel officials directly in charge of the
prison were Capt. Thomas P. Turner, commandant of the prison, subsequently
promoted to Major; Adj’t Latouche; R. R. Turner, familiarly called “Dick”
Turner, Inspector of Prisons; and A. B. Ross, Clerk. For the first month we were
compelled to subsist on the rations doled out to us, as “Milroy’s
thieves,” as we were styled, were not permitted to make any purchases outside.
We were given about half enough soft bread, small red beans, poor, flabby beef,
with an occasional taste of very poor sweet potatoes. Each man’s rations were
doled out to him very exactly, and the crumbs that fell to the floor were
closely looked after and when found promptly appropriated. As soon as we were
put on the same footing as prisoners from other commands, and permitted to
purchase articles, we fared better.
The kitchen, in one corner, was about eight by twenty feet
in size, and contained three wornout cook-stoves and a few broken utensils. The
prisoners were divided into messes of from four to twenty in size, and the
cooking for several hundred men was done in this little room. The kitchen,
crowded full of occupants about mealtime, was a lively place, I assure you.
Green pine wood was used for fuel, and any of you who have ever used it know
what a nice fire it makes. Every available spot on he stoves was covered with
cooking utensils of every imaginable shape and kind. Each cook was watching his
own particular pot or pan, and wo betide the man who stepped out of the room for
a moment; on his return he would be sure to find his own pan removed and someone
else’s in its place. Then came the fun. Like little children, their angry
passions would rise; and although they did not exactly scratch out each
other’s eyes, on more than one occasion these disputes came very near having a
serious ending, demonstrating thoroughly that starvation would bring to the
surface
ALL
THE ANIMAL THERE IS IN MAN.
I well remember a Captain in our regiment – a large,
powerful man, very slow and deliberate in action – washing the ration of meat
for our mess of 20, a piece weighing probably three pounds, at the water-faucet,
when a young Lieutenant of the Regular Army suddenly thrust his cup under the
faucet, pushing away the meat, when the Captain slowly raised his eyes, and
seeing in the Lieutenant’s face a look of contempt, like a flash he raised the
meat, and the Lieutenant received a “sockdolager” back of the ear with it
that it struck him like a solid shot, and a lively scrimmage followed. In it
all, however, you may be sure the meat was carefully looked after and applied to
its intended use.
Our wheatbread rations continued for two months, when a
change was made to solid cornbread, made out of corn ground cob and all and
mixed with cold water, baked solid, which supplied us with a very substantial
article of diet.
The supply of meat soon became very uncertain; sometimes a
whole week would elapse without any, and on three occasions, to my personal
knowledge, mule meat was issued to us, and as a matter of course it was not a
very fat mule either, for they did not kill that kind, as they had better use
for them; and, in fact, we had serious doubts whether they had been killed or
had died a natural death. The officers in hospital at one time were 48 hours
without rations. On one occasion meat was issued to us only once in 16 days; at
another time once in two weeks. The rations furnished officers were always
uncooked, but those given to the enlisted men were cooked, and consisted of weak
soup – as it is called; better say
WEAK WATER IN OLD
DIRTY PAILS,
and about six ounces of poor bread to a man. When complaint
was made to the prison officials as to the quality ad quantity of the food
furnished, their reply would be that it was the best they could do, and I
presume there was possibly a grain of truth in that. The daily papers were
constantly complaining about their Government feeding so many Yankees, and one
paper advised the authorities to confiscate boxes of clothing and provisions
sent us by our friends in the North. As soon as we became satisfied that
immediate exchange was very uncertain, we began to order provisions and clothing
from our Northern friends. At first these supplies were delivered to us quite
promptly, but they soon suspected us of smuggling in letters and money in this
way, and they had good cause to. The many different ways used to conceal these
articles exhibited the ingenuity of our friends at home. As all letters sent us
in the regular way were read by the rebel officials before delivery to us, we
did not know where to look for the concealed articles, and sometimes they were
not found for weeks. The writer on one occasion received money which had been
placed in a small vial and concealed in a jar of canned fruit; on another
occasion in a package of ground coffee, and again in a loaf of bread, where it
had been placed before baking. Other parties found such articles in a roll of
butter, deftly inserted in a plug of tobacco, or laid between two leaves of a
book and the edges pasted together. The result of this suspicion on the part of
the officials was that great delay ensued in the delivery of packages, and they
were ruthlessly torn open; bread and cakes cut in small pieces, cans of fruit
opened, and we received the contents of our boxes
IN A TERRIBLY
MANGLED CONDITION.
This continued to grow worse, until it became almost
impossible to get the boxes sent you, and finally delivery was often refused in
any shape. As soon as we were permitted to do so, we began to send out orders
for provisions to be bought in the markets at Richmond. This had to be done
through a prison official, and you can rest assured that the commission he
retained was no small one. We could only purchase certain articles, and those
usually of very inferior quality. I recollect that I had been a prisoner five
months before I succeeded in purchasing any butter in this way.
In mentioning the attaches of the prison, I neglected to
mention two that we saw more frequently than the others – George ___, a
Sergeant, who was used to communicate orders to the prisoners, and “Gen.
Johnson,” a gentleman of color, who was a prisoner as well as ourselves. His
duty consisted of supplying us with smoke for fumigating purposes, which he did
every morning, carrying a large skillet filled with tar and coals through all
the rooms of the prison, crying out: “Here is your nice smoke, without money
and without price. Only one more smoke.” He also gathered up the dirty
clothes, once a week, which he was permitted to take out to be washed, returning
them Sunday mornings at the small charge of
THREE PIECES FOR
ONE DOLLAR.
He also, for some time, monopolized the shaving and
hair-cutting, which operation he performed at the moderate price of 25 cents for
the former and 75 for the latter, but he was finally superseded by a German
Lieutenant, which compelled him to abandon his calling and turn bootblack. The
old man was a regular fixture in Libby, having been in the prison nearly two
years. He was also an old soldier, having accompanied a Pennsylvania regiment
through the Mexican war. Every morning at 9 o’clock “George” made his
appearance, and with a peculiar intonation of voice, called out: “Fall in,
sick, and go down!” At this command those who desired to be prescribed for
huddled together and went down to the first floor, where they were examined by
the rebel Surgeon, who was always spoken of as a kind and attentive physician,
who, after making a minute of their cases, sent them back to their rooms,
excepting those whom it was deemed necessary to send to the hospital. In the
course of two or three hours the medicine would be brought up and distributed to
the sick. While speaking of the sick, I wish to say that our enlisted men –
prisoners – who were so unfortunate as to become sick, were treated
outrageously. They were often allowed to lie on the wet ground on Belle Isle
until the last moment, when they would be brought to the hospitals in the city
TO BREATHE THEIR
LAST!
Out of 16 brought over in one day, I have known four to be
taken out dead the next morning.
The prison guards were usually quartered near by, and when
on duty walked their beats on the curbstone of the sidewalks around the
building, and during the night called out the hours: “Nine o’clock! Lights
out!” “One o’clock! and all’s well!”sometimes varied to suit the exigencies of he occasion. I remembered one
cold morning the cry was“Six
o’clock and cold as ___.” There were usually no guards in the building,
except one or two stationed at the foot of the stairways leading to the second
floor. The guards employed were city troops, whose treatment of us was in great
contrast with that received from Capt. Wingfield’s company, 58th
Va., who brought us to Richmond. When with the latter we fared in every respect
just as they did. They had been in active service, and knew something of the
horrors of war, while the city militia seemed to take delight in adding to our
suffering, if possible. On several occasions prisoners were fired at on the
slightest provocation, or even none at all. One prisoner, in his anxiety to see
what was going on in the street, stuck his head out of the window, and without
any warning a guard fired, and a ball whistled very close to the poor fellow’s
head. On another occasion, a prisoner, while in the closet, and infringing no
rules, had his ear shot off.
Everything in the line of reading matter was eagerly sought
after. A portion of the time an old darky was permitted to bring in the Richmond
daily papers for sale. They cost 25 cents apiece, and were printed on a very
small sheet of inferior quality of wrapping-paper. To get a Northern paper of a
late date was a prize indeed. A case of Harper’s Select Library of novels,
sent to a prisoner by his Northern friends, had a large circulation. Letter
writing was carried on to some extent, until the prison officials got tired of
reading so many before starting them North, that an order was issued by Maj.
Turner that no federal officer would be permitted to write letters of more than
six lines each to the
“SO-CALLED
UNITED STATES,”
and not more than one letter per week, and that to be
handed to the sergeant on Monday morning. The one universal thought that
predominated in a prisoner’s mind from the time he entered “Hotel de
Libby,” as the boys facetiously termed it, until his release, was, “How soon
will we be exchanged?”
When we first made our advent into that highly popular
institution, it was certainly thought that we would not possibly remain longer
than ten days or two weeks. At the end of that time we were still there, and
remained there for nearly nine months before any officers were exchanged,
excepting Chaplains and Surgeons. Who was to blame for this, to us,
unaccountable delay we could not tell, situated as we were. The rebels
continually said it was the fault of the Federal authorities. Exchange rumors
were very abundant. The slightest foundation sufficed for the most extravagant
reports. One day our hopes would be raised to the highest point, the next they
would be away below zero. The rebel authorities published a statement that they
had made a certain proposition to our Government, which was so plausible on its
face that we thought it would be immediately accepted as a matter of course; but
something intervened to prevent the exchange. And so it continued. First would
come the report that the Surgeons and Chaplains were going off on the next boat,
and the officers were to follow immediately. That would be at once succeeded by
the report that the Commissioners had disagreed, and there would be no more
exchanges during the war. The next report would come from the hospital to the
effect that a clerk in the War Department had just been in to see a friend there
and told him that there was a boat up, and that the Chaplains and some of the
officers would go off on it. This was reliable, because it came through Maj.
White or Douglas. Next day it was reported that Maj. Norris, who was connected
with the Exchange Bureau, had been up and told his friend, Dr. Worthington, that
there was no boat up, and that it was probable there would be no exchanges for
some time, as our Government would have to back down
ON DR. RUCKER’S
CASE FIRST.
As soon as one of these reports was announced it would be
followed by bets freely offered on either side as to its correctness, and
vociferous cries of “Get ready! Pack up! Pack up!” came from all parts of
the prison, and the inmates would gather in crowds to discuss it. One man would
give it as his opinion that it was certainly correct, for it came from a
reliable gentleman. The next man was a little doubtful, while the third one
declared he would hardly believe we were exchanged, even if Maj. Turner was to
come up himself and announce the fact. This constant excitement, followed by
depression, affected the health of the many, and in at least one or two very
plain cases caused the death of officers confined in Libby. To keep the mind off
this subject all imaginable plans were devised to employ the time either
beneficially or for amusement. Classes were organized in a variety of branches,
and capable teachers were readily found.
Those who were skilful with the knife and file employed
their time in carving trinkets out of bones taken from the meat furnished us,
and some very handsome specimens were the result of their labors. Card-playing
was an almost universal pastime, and many became very proficient at it. While
the Chaplains remained with us prayer meetings were regularly held. The writer
has seen a prayer meeting and two or three faro tables in operation at the same
time in one of the large rooms. There were also some very fine chess-players
among the prisoners. One Lieutenant I remember became so proficient that he
could play two and even three games at the same time, blindfolded. Amateur
theatricals were indulged in to some extent. Performers blacked as minstrels
went under the name of the
“LIBBY BURLESQUE
TROUPE,”
and their entertainments became so interesting on some
occasions that even the rebel officials and their friends came in as spectators.
Saturday morning, Oct. 17, they announced in their program
that they would appear for the last time that evening, owing to their having an
engagement in Washington to fill, for which purpose they expected to leave on
next flag-of-truce boat. They exhibited to a crowded house of Yankees, with a
few rebels included. The performances were very good, considering the impromptu
manner in which they were gotten up. They consisted of songs, dances, imitations
of roll-calls and other acts of the prison officials and guards, closing with
the reading of the “Libby Ironical,” intended as a burlesque of the “Libby
Chronicle,” the weekly issue of which had been read the forenoon previous.
Some things that would be thought ridiculous elsewhere
caused a great deal of fun in prison. One evening, attracted by loud laughter in
one of the rooms, I rushed to see what was the matter, and found an officer in
the center of the crowd, standing bent over, while another held a hat closely
under his eyes. Suddenly, someone in the crowd hit him a sounding slap on his
posterior with the open palm of his hand, when the other, promptly springing
erect, would glance over the spectators, and if he could point out the man who
struck him that one would have to take his place, and the same formula would be
again gone through with. One of the officers who was most active in this
performance I saw next morning with his hand so swollen he could not close it.
DURING THE HOT
WEATHER
of July and August, the variety displayed in the costumes
of the inmates was decidedly amusing. Here you would see a man with nothing but
shirt and drawers on, there one with drawers minus the shirt, while close by was
a another one with the shirt minus the drawers, and still another with nothing
on but a long linen duster; his clothes were out being washed, no doubt. This
kind of dress was no doubt very comfortable during that kind of weather, but
when the cold weather of Winter came, it was rather unpleasant to be compelled
to go around without socks or drawers and only one shirt, which valuable
articles you were obliged to dispose with occasionally for the purpose of having
them washed. The supply of blankets was quite sufficient during the warm
weather, but when the cold nights set in, it was soon discovered that while some
had an abundant supply of them others had only one, and a great many had none at
all. Repeated complaints having been made to the rebel officials, Inspector
Turner made his appearance one Sunday morning, and proceeded to call for a
division of the house, prisoners in one room and blankets in another, and gave
to each man as he passed into the room two old U. S. blankets; but the supply
not being sufficient for the purpose, the remainder of the men had to do
without, and on application afterwards to the authorities, were informed that
that they had no more blankets, consequently could give us none. Commissioner
Ould, however, stated that he was expecting a supply by the next flag-of-truce
boat from our Government. The bedding and clothing furnished for our sick in the
hospital was supplied by the United States Sanitary Commission. On the 4th
of July an attempt was made to get up a little impromptu celebration. A flag was
constructed by tearing up some shirts of the proper colors, and when completed
we fastened it up in the ceiling of the third story room, and commenced our
speeches. The rebels soon detected what was going on, and sent up an officer
with orders to us to take the flag down; but not a prisoner touched it, and he
was compelled to take it down himself.
