1907 Stage Production of UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
How We Spent Our Time in Prison.
Some time ago I asked Comrade E. R. Reed to write for me a story of every day life in a rebel prison. I have now received from him what seems to me very interesting reading, and I am putting it here where others besides myself may enjoy it.
This is his story:
* * I was a private in Company H of the 2d Wisconsin infantry, was wounded and made prisoner at the first battle of Bull Run, was in a general hospital two months, and then sent to the famous Libby prison. In Libby I fell under direct control of a man we called the "Dutch sergeant," afterward known to history as Captain Wirz, commandant of the prison, at Andersonville. I'd be glad to tell | all I know about this man Wirz as a gentleman and a villain, but my limited space will not permit. Not long g after being domiciled in Libby I found: a man one day rubbing something on the unplastered brick wall. He rubbed hard and vigorously, as if he were trying to do something.
With characteristic impudence and inquisitiveness I watched him a few minutes, and then asked what he was trying to do. He showed me a bone with a hole in it, and said he was trying to make a finger ring. It was a crude looking affair, but he thought it would be a sort of relic to take home. Soon I discovered others engaged in the same laudable enterprise-making souvenirs to take home. | "Practice makes perfect," and "Success is secure, unless energy fails." The fellows kept at this ring-making until they were able to produce some quite artistic specimens.
Having an abundance of self-conceit | of my own, I thought that if I would try I could do a little better than any of the others, so I got a bone and began to whittle. In course of time--it took time--I fashioned a bone into a five sixteenths of an inch cube, with a ball in the center, and a ring so attached as to hang it to a watch chain. My bit of jewelry won the bet, and then I rested, not intending to do any| more whittling. About this time the bone work began to attract the attention of the confederate officers who now and then visited the prisons, and from them we got consent to purchase small files| to use. They could not see that such files could help us in any way to escape.
Thereafter the enterprise. became more enterprising. On the 25 of November, 1861, Sergeant Wirz, with 500 of us prisoners, started south for Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Before leaving Richmond he had telegraphed to Petersburg, where we were to change cars, to have ready for us one cooked ration for each of the 500 men. It was done as he had directed, and issued to us as we marched from one train to the other.
As it was past midnight, we could not see in the darkness what we were getting. We soon found that we had cold boiled pork and a hunk of bread. The bread was all right, the pork! None of us could eat it. Nearly all of the men threw theirs away, but I kept mine--I might be glad to eat it yet. In the morning I held a postmortem over it, and found that the pork had been alive with fat, juicy maggots.
The boiling had cooked them. Some of men showed their meat to Wirz next day. That the good man's soul became vexed exceedingly, and he swore worse than "the army in Flanders." He said, "I ordered meat, and by G-d I meant meat, not maggots!" I verily believe that if he could then have got hold of that Petersburg commissary he would have had him chopped into small pieces and fed to his yankees. He always of his as "my yankees." He spoke assured us that we should have no more such food. At every station where we stopped crowd would gather.
They crowded a close up to the cars and demanded: "What did you-uns come down here to fight we-uns for?" A great variety of answers were |. | given to that common question, one of which was: "To give you a good licking." Because of some of the pretty plain questions and answers, in about one minute after every stop of the train the crowd inside and the crowd outside seemed quite disposed to settle the whole question of the war right then and there. Wirz, getting off into such a crowd, was wont to demand: "What do you want here? What are you crowding around this way for?" "We want to see the yankees," was the reply. "You wants to see dem yankees? You go fight the yankees, -den you see yankees plenty. Stand back!" The look of the man and the sound of his voice were such as to make the crowd stand back quick, and stand a good ways back. He sometimes stationed guards about fifteen feet from the train, with instructions not to let any one come nearer than that.
At Atlanta, Georgia, the crowd became especially turbulent, and we were told that the people meant to mob us when we changed cars. Wirz suspected their plan, and ordered both trains to make a quick run to the next station, which was done, and we changed there. At every place where we were to change cars we found the train ready and waiting for us. Rations were handed to us as we passed from one train to the other. Bread and meat were all we got, -no coffee nor any other kind of drink.
In fact, we never got any coffee while we were being entertained by the confederacy. At Montgomery, Alabama, we were shipped aboard an old cotton transport down the Alabama river and up| the Tombigbee and Black Warrior to Tuscaloosa, where we arrived in the early morning of the 5th of December. It was a terribly cold day for that latitude, and were quartered in an old tobacco shed while Wirz| went to reconnoiter. As he wished| to leave all his men on guard over| us, he took with him one of the prisoners, a man of 1st Ohio, to act as his orderly. This Ohio man afterward reported to us what occurred.
Wirz's first move was to hunt up a Captain Griswold and find out about quarters. Captain Griswold took him down to the river to an old dilapidated cotton factory. Wirz said it was no good, and that he would not put his yankees in there. Griswold told him it was the best he could get in Tuscaloosa. "Well, I'll see," was the reply; "if I can't do any better take 'em back to Richmond." Afterward he found a big hotel building, He hunted up the owner who empty.
wouldn't rent Wirz told him he would get good pay for the use of it. Then this talk followed: "That is not the point; I'll not have the yankees in my house." will have yankees in "By you house, for I'll call out my hunyour dred and fifty guards and take it. Ir can't do it, I've got five hundred and they'll fight like h-11." yankees This was a knock-down argument, and the owner walked off on his ear, while Wirz marched his yankees up possession of hotel, We and took and made for the broke desirable places. My riend Wilmost Company D 2d Wisconsin infancox, and I joined hands so as not to try, get separated. We soon found ourlarge 50x60-foot room, the selves in a supported by four heavy colceiling umns centrally situated, and by one of these posts we pitched our camp.
Every one threw down his bundle and it. We began to think: "Well, | sat what on next? How long must we stay here? Evidently until the war is over. We are out humanity's reach, anyAn exchange or a parole cannot how. reach us." The situation did seem discouraging. all felt down in the mouth To say we too tame.
Our feelis an expression akin to despair. But we did ing was that we had enlisted to do, not forget and, if necessary, to DIE, to suffer,.and, as this was far better than death, we soon nerved ourselves up to stay there a thousand years--or during the war. We came this sensible conclusion in less time than it takes me to write about it. Soon 1 some of the men who had been engaged in bone-filing brought forth their bones, and files and went to work. Under the wholesome inspiration of their example others who had never gone into the business went at it too. We remained there three| months with nothing in the world to do but file bones, and nearly the whole of us were at it.
For aught we knew, we had the rest of our natural lives to devote to this artistic occupation, we were at liberty to take all the pains we pleased. We did not have to hurry off a job because some impatient customer was after us. In that way we did some very fine work. I brought home a large number of the articles I had made. I gave away a great many and others were taken without leave or license, so in course of time my curios •became less and less, until I was forced to put them into a box with a glass cover.
This do box is now in the possession of my son, Frank D., of Madison. He will show it to anyone who would like to see them. A wiser man than I has said, "Dull thinking will make a man crazy." No man in -our crowd seemed inclined to dull thinking. If he had been ne would have found no opportunity. In a houseful of live yankees, who could do much of any thinking? When not filing bones, those yankees were up to something else.
In room 7 the boys organized a secret society called The Star Brotherhood, or the Holy Swinehood. It grew rapidly, for every ingenious man that came into it would add some new feature, until it assumed quite immense proportions. Victims for initiation would be kidnaped from other rooms and put through nolens volens. We had quite a number of theater men, and they got up. some very fine theatricals.
We had also some minstrel shows. We had two boss endmen. H. W. Eagan of the 1st Michi-| gan played the tamborine, and Browne of a New York regiment, played the bones.
I have never seen their equal either before the war or since. Also, we had good singing and dancing. The rebel officers used to come into our entertainments. Sometimes they threw silver dollars on the floor, not as pay for admission, they said, but to help us procure material for further programs. We were fed twice a day,: at nine in the morning and four in the afternoon.
After the evening meal, of corn bread and cow-peas, the floor being quite clear of obstructions, the first to finish eating would arise and start upon a walk around the room. When others finished they too would fall in and march, until eighty or ninety hundred men were walking 'round and 'round that large room, the home of 135 men. This was the only exercise we ever had, and it was never omitted after supper. The custom was begun, I think, the first day we were put into the room, and was continued as long as we staid there. It was the only time during the twenty-four hours of any day when two congenial spirits could confidentially converse without fear of "cowans and eavesdroppers," or butterinskies.
Every of course, selected his best friend for a companI'll|ion during these walk-arounds. My good comrade Wilcox and I always walked together, and we never "changed partners." In these marches a friendship was cemented which has survived the wrecks of time. It still exists. He is the only army friend with whom I am now holding a regular correspondence. Poor boy! within a month after getting home he was paralyzed in both legs, and has not, since 1862 been able to move a joint in either of them.
He now lives in Beach, California, where he Long will be glad to welcome any old soldier from Wisconsin. Besides the amusements of which I have spoken, some played cards and other games. We made dice of bone, and played backgammon. All these activities kept us in good mental, moral and spiritual condition, so that only one of our five hundred died while we were there; and men when we left every one was able to walk. We were there from December '61, to March 1, '62.
Wirz was 5. there until about the holidays, when he disappeared, and I heard no more about him until he turned up at Andersonville. I have heard that he took about a year to visit his parental home in Switzerland, and then returned to duty; but did not get his name up until he reached Andersonville. There was no raffroad at Tuscaand when we left there on the loosa, of March, we went on another old cotton transport which was altolist day gether un-river-worthy. The water in the river was high.
We went down the Black Warrior to the Tombigbee, then across country through the woods and canebreaks and over planthe Alabama river. We tations to were told that it was nine miles by land and sixty around by water. Embarking again on the Alabama, we had to pull up stream against a strong current, and it put our old steamer to a severe test of strength,-too severe, in fact for we had not gone far when the machinery stopped. On inquiry we found that the "doctor" was broken. But we did not know what of a steamboat was called the part "doctor." We learned later that it something connected with the was pumping of water into the boiler.
None of the men connected with the boat knew how to make the thing go, but there geniuses among the Yanks who fixed it temporarily, and we went on. By-and-by the "doctor" was again out of order, and it was m that condition time and again before reached Montgomery. Had we we been obliged to work our way all the way from the mouth of the Tombigbee, I fear we never could have made it. Captain Griswold was then in charge of us, and had been ever since Wirz left us. He was a and we all liked him.
We man, be he no of old to he We a the in of of the of a to.reached Montgomery in the early morning. No provision had been made for transportation further. We were left in an old cotton shed while the captain went out to make arrangements for our continuing our journey. This took him all day, and the best he could do was to have his yankees. turn out to push the cars In the making up of his train.
At first we objected to do this, but, remembering that We were on parole and on our way home, we concluded to do all we could hurry matters along. (I neglected to state in the proper place that we were paroled before leaving Tuscaloosa.) We got a few cars together, enough for a short train, and about night the captain managed to get an engine to pull the same. But the old engine was not much good, and the only way we could get up a steep grade was to train in two and then let the wheezy old locomotive draw us up in sections. While doing all this we discussed the relative merits of Wirz and Captain Griswold. Wirz was a man of force and energy of character.
He was a good business man. When he ordered a train for use it was apt to be there on time. He had at his back the whole southern confederacy. He dared order anything, and would turn out his guards to see that he got what he wanted. Griswold, though kind, had little force of character, and was no business manager.
He would ask 10r a thing modestly, and accept any old thing he could get, in the case of the cotton mill at Tuscaloosa for our winter quarters. Wirz would have captured a train and shoved his Yanks into it and told the railroad folks that when he got through with it they could have it back. But Wirz was an old brute in Richmond. He promised to put me into irons there once; but he was a good friend to us after we left there. We arrived in Salisbury, North Carolina, on the 13th of March, where We "rested" three months longer.
Thirteen days on the trip with never a chance to skirmish with the festive pediculus vestimenti! They had Increased language is inadequate! figures fail! Their number ran somewhere up into the octodecillions, with 7,000,000,000 fresh laid eggs with which to start another generation..
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