E.R. Reed
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..
Bone Jewelery. A busy man is always better off and happier than an idle one. Some of our poor fellows died in rebel prison who, perhaps, might have lived to come home if they could have been busily at work about something. Many of them, no doubt, owe their lives today to the fact that they found something about which to busy their minds and /hands, especially their minds. The fellow who was all the time trying to escape, and was therefore kept active and hopeful, was much better off for it.
One of the busy jailbirds in Dixie was our old comrade, E. R. Reed. guess it is this tendency to be active and doing something that has kept him in such good, mental, moral and physical condition as we see him these days. He made a pile of bone jewelry while in rebel prison, and now, nearly half a hundred years afterward, what he has left of the old prison relics are very interesting.
He has them in a neat little glasscovered box, and they are among his most cherished possessions. He has willed the little box to his granddaughter. She loves them for her grandpa's sake, yet she has consented that they may for a time be kept at Memorial hall at the Capitol where others may see them. Comrade Reed has written this concerning them: While in rebel prison, I made some bone jewelry which I placed on exhibition in Memorial hall in the Capitol a short time ago. The other day Mr.
Rood, the custodian of the rooms, asked me to write out a statement of the circumstances, manner of proceedure, etc., and how we obtained our bones. He says people see them and ask a good many questions some of which he is unable to answer. I will therefore state that. after lying in Libby Prison for several months, the restless, active mind of Young America soughtdiversion in a variety of ways. One day I found a man vigorously rubbing something on the unplastered brick wall.
With characteristic Yankee inquisitiveness I stopped and watched him a while, and then asked what he was trying to do. He said he was making a finger ring, and at the same time showed me: a piece of beet bone with an -irregular hole in it. The hole- had been cut with a jackknife and was far from a true round. I called on him often to see how he was getting along. It took him several days of steady, hard work to complete it, but at last he got something he could wear on his finger, and he said he was going to take that home as a "prison relic." It was very rude and crude, yet it had cost him a lot of hard work.
The inspiration seemed to strike others about the same time it did him, for several were at it. They kept it up, and kept improving in skill until they had made some quite respectable looking relics. By this time they were getting a little proud of their work, and would show them around with a great deal of pleasure. I finally concluded I could do something a little bit better than anything they had done yet, and would try it. I got a piece of bone and rubbed it on the wall till I got it square.
I then went to work and cut a ball in one end of it and a ring in the other.* All done with my knife. It was conceded to be a little ahead of anything the others had made. About this time, 500 of us, under the especial care of the immortal Wirz of brutal fame, were taken to Tuscaloosa, Ala. We were taken first to Montgomery, Ala., where we were put on board an old cotton transport called Waverly. We went down the Alabama river nearly to Mobile, then up the Tombigbee and Black Warrior to Tuscaloosa, reaching there at daylight, Dec.
5, 1861 my 26th birthday. It was a bitter cold day. We were placed in an old shed while Wirz went to reconnoiter. He hunted up Captain Griswold, in command of the place, and to whom he had sent word to provide quarters for 500 men. Captain Griswold took him down the river to an old papermill which he had secured for our own use.
Wirz did not like the place; it was open and cold. He says "I won't put my Yankees in any such place." The captain said, "It is the best you can get in this own." *I'll see if it is. If I can't find a better place I'll take 'em back to Richmond," said Wirz. I wish to explain here that Wirz had but a small force with him, and a a.he wanted to leave them all on guard over us while he was reconnoitering, so detailed a man from the 1st t Ohio regiment to go with him as orderly This Ohio man was, of course, one of the prisoners, and he afterwards told us what occurred. Wirz led the way up town and found the old United States Hotel empty and in a good state of preservation. He says. "I'll put my Yankees into that." The proprietor objected. Wirz assured him the confederate government would amply compensate him for the rent of it.
"That is not the point," said he, wont have the Yankees in my house." Wirz flew mad instantly. "By Gd! you will have Yankees in your house. I'll call my hundred and fifty guards and take it by force, and if they can't take it, I've got 500 Yankees, and they'll fight like hell." Exit owner indignant. We were marched up to the hotel immediately and halted, and broke ranks. Then there was a wild scramble, like a panic when a house is OD fire.
Everybody tried to get into the house first and secure the best location. My friends Wilcox and Jeffers and I took hold of each others hands so as not to get separated, and made a rush, but were borne forward more by the crowd than by our own feet, and finally came to a halt in a large room, about 50 by 60 feet square, with four pillars, centrally situated, supporting the rooms above. We pitched camp at one of these posts. threw down our bundles and staked out claims. One man sat down to hold the claim and watch our bundles, while the other two went on a reconnoitering expedition.
There is supposed to be honor among thievs, but there was none among us. It was absolutely necessary for us to keep either hand, foot or eye on our traps all the time or they would be (snatched away from us i in a twinkling, and we could neved find them again. If we asked any questions, the only information we would get would be to "take better care of your traps and not leave them around loose in a crowd like this." We got into position very much as a flock of pigeons would settle in a tree top with a good deal of fluttering, gabbling, shifting and changing of position, till old chums got together again, and separated friends were reunited; after which, the first order of exercises was to talk over the situation, and swap conjectures as to the probable future. The first point settled was- "We have .come to stay. How long? God only knows." We had never before been without a hope that we might soon be released.
But now "we were out of' humanity's "Hope for a season, bade the world- Farewell!" The first momentary sensation was of utter, abject, silent dispair! That dispair, however, was very brief. We soon remembered that we enlisted, - not only to fight, but to die if need be; and as this was very much better than to die, we, were soon nerved with suffice ent backbone to stay a thousand years or during the war. We had been in the house hardly an hour, before one of the boys pulled some unfinished bone-work out of his pocket and went to whitling. Very soon the bone- work became general all over the house. Nothing in the world to do, or to think of, every body put his whole heart and soul into the enterprise.
The rebel officers saw, admired and purchased some of our relics. Then they permitted us to buy files, by means of which we could do much better work, and some very fine specimens were made. "Where did you get your bones?" I am often asked. In Richmond and Tuscaloosa we had cold boiled beef for breakfast every morning. The beef was killed and dressed by the farmer, delivered to our cooks whole, and by him cut into- chunks and boiled.
We would negotiate with the cooks to save us all the leg bones without boiling. Some man obtained a small hacksaw, with which we sawed the bones into convenient sizes and shapes to work. I afterwards traded and got that saw and have it yet. It is in the box at the Capitol. I brought home a large quantity of this bone jewelry and had it on exhibition in and about, Evansville in 862 when I was home on parole.
I gave away a great many articles and many more get "straggled" and never came back. There must be several pieces in and about Evansville.
c kept getting away from me until I made a box with a glass top, where my friends now have to look at them through a glass darkly. They are now on exhibition temporarily in G. A. R. Headquarters in the Capitol.
*This curious bit of bone work is among the pieces left at the Capitol by Comrade Reed..
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