Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons Part 4

At Salisbury--Great Plot to Escape--How Frustrated.

When we arrived at Salisbury early in October, we found there a brave and sagacious officer, Lieut. Wm. C. Manning of the 2d Ma.s.sachusetts Cavalry. He told us he had been held as a hostage in solitary confinement, and would have starved but for the rats he caught and ate.

He had been notified that his own life depended upon the fate of a person held in federal hands as a spy. He determined to attempt an escape. He was a.s.signed to my house. Taking up a part of the floor, he commenced digging a tunnel. He wrote a solemn pledge which all the officers in the house signed, binding them not to divulge the scheme.

The tunnel would have had to be about eight rods long, and its outlet would necessarily have been near a group of rebel tents. Of course it would have been discovered on the morning after its completion, and not all could hope to find egress that way. But he believed that his life was still in special danger, and he at once began excavating. The house had no cellar, but there was plenty of room under it for stowing away the loose earth. The ground was not hard, yet it was quite firm, and on the whole favorable for such operations. The work was progressing finely, till the officers were suddenly removed from Salisbury in consequence of the discovery of a great plot.

I had become a good deal interested in Manning and his tunnel plan, and on the morning of Wednesday, October 12th, I introduced him to General Hayes, our senior officer. He told us he had for several days been considering the possibility of organizing the three or four hundred officers, and the five to ten thousand soldiers. He believed that by a simultaneous a.s.sault at many points we could seize the artillery, break the fence, capture the three rebel camps, then arm and ration this extemporized army, and march away. He showed us a good map of North Carolina. He invited all of the field officers to meet that evening in the garret of house number two. All of them accordingly, about thirty in number, were present. Posting sentinels to keep out intruders, and stopping the open windows so that the faint light of a tallow candle might not betray us or create suspicion, we sat down in the gloom.

The general had modestly absented himself, in order that we might be uninfluenced by him in reaching a decision; but our first step was to send for him, and then insist on his taking the chair--_the_ chair, for we had but one! As he had made a careful study of the subject, we pressed him to give his views. He proceeded to state the grounds of his belief that it was practicable to strike an effective blow for our liberation. He told us that he had communicated with a Union man outside, and had learned the number and location of the Confederate troops we should be likely to encounter on our march to East Tennessee.

He explained at some length the details of his plan, the obstacles we should encounter, and how to overcome them. I shall never forget the conclusion of his speech. These were almost exactly his words:

We must organize; organize victory. The sooner we act the better, provided we have a well-arranged plan. We can capture this town, ration our men, provide them with shoes, clothing, and muskets, and have a formidable army right here at once. It need not take more than half a day. Certainly we can march off within twenty-four hours after the first blow is struck, if we begin right. The enemy have a few guns on the hill, but they are not "in battery". We can take these and take the artillery here right along with us. The princ.i.p.al obstacle is here; make the beginning right; master these prisons and these camps, and we are safe. Organize is the word; _organize_. If any one shall betray us, or aid the rebels, or be guilty of robbery or other outrage, I am in favor of a drumhead court martial and a summary execution. Now, gentlemen, I am ready to serve in any capacity, whether to lead or to follow.

Colonel Ralston of the 24th N. Y. "dismounted cavalry," as they were called, spoke next. He was an energetic and das.h.i.+ng officer who fell near me in an attempt to break out of Danville prison on the tenth of the following December. He entered into the particulars of a plan of action, showing how easy it would be, with the probable loss of but few lives, to capture the three camps with the Salisbury a.r.s.enal and the artillery. As his particular share in the work, he said he would undertake with a small company to disarm the twenty or thirty sentinels inside the enclosure, and instantly thereupon to capture the headquarters of Major Gee.

Other officers gave valuable suggestions. Being called upon for my opinion, I spoke of the duty we owed our enlisted men to extricate them from their shocking condition, for they were beginning to die every night on the bare ground, and would soon be peris.h.i.+ng by scores. I urged the effect the escape of some eight thousand prisoners would have upon the nation, being equivalent to a great victory; and, better than victory, it would add so many thousands of trained soldiers at once to our armies in the field. I insisted that this success would be cheaply bought, even if it cost, as it probably would, a hundred lives.

Of all our thirty field officers, only one opposed the scheme (Lieut.-Col. G----). He was acknowledged to be brave,[5] but seemingly lacking in enterprise. He said in substance, "I have carefully examined the situation, and have come to the conclusion that it is utterly useless to attempt to escape by force. It can't be done at present. We should be slaughtered by the hundred. If you all vote to try it, I will join you; but in my opinion it is perfect madness."

With but one dissenting voice it was resolved to go ahead. A committee of five was immediately appointed to prepare and present a plan of action. This committee were Colonel Ralston; Col. W. Ross Hartshorne, 190th Pa. (the famous "Bucktail Regiment," whose first colonel, O'Neil, my Yale cla.s.smate, was killed at Antietam); Col. James Carle, 191st Pa.; Major John Byrne, 155th N. Y.; and myself, Lieutenant-Colonel of the 13th Conn. We were supposed to be fighting men, and had all been wounded in battle.

A similar meeting of field officers was held the following evening. For two days the committee was almost continually in consultation with General Hayes. Great pains was taken to have the plans fully understood by all the officers and to secure their hearty cooperation. By ingenious methods frequent communication was had with the enlisted men across the "dead line"; sometimes by hurling written communications ballasted with stone; several times by Lieutenant Manning and others running swiftly past the sentinels in the dark; best of all, because least liable to discovery, by the use of the deaf-and-dumb alphabet. We were suffering for want of water, and several officers got permission to go outside the enclosure ostensibly to procure it, but really to reconnoitre.

The committee reported the following plan, which was unanimously adopted:

The first object in the movement being to get into a hand-to-hand fight as soon as possible; seven columns, each several hundred strong, were to make simultaneous a.s.saults upon six or seven different points. The fence being the first impediment, every man's haversack and pockets were to be filled with stones to keep down the sentinels who would fire on us from the top. Some got levers to wrench off boards, others logs to serve as rude battering rams, others sharpened stakes which Ralston called "Irish pikes," others clubs, or any possible weapon. I had a rusty old bayonet.

Major David Sadler, 2d Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery, with his battalion was to rush and seize the cannon and muskets at the angle on the right; Major John Byrne and his column at the same instant were to pounce upon the big gun and muskets at the angle on our left; simultaneously Colonel Ralston and his men are to dash upon the nine sentinels on the "dead line" in front of the officers' houses, in a moment disarming them and the nine of the relief just arriving; then spring to the a.s.sistance of Major August Haurand of the 4th N. Y. Cavalry and his battalion who are capturing Major Gee's headquarters and guards and camp on our right.

Col. James Carle, 191st Pa., with his hundreds is breaking through the fence and capturing the rebel camp in rear of the officers' quarters.

Colonel, afterwards General, W. Ross Hartshorne and his 330 men of the 190th Pa. are to break the fence just above the main rebel camp which is on our left. My own column of about three hundred men of the Nineteenth Corps are to break the fence just below the rebel camp; then Hartshorne and I are to leap from opposite sides upon this, the main camp. These seven battalions were to some extent organized with field, staff, and company officers. Every officer and soldier was to be on the _qui vive_ a little before five o'clock in the morning, watching intently for the signal. This was to be the waving of a fire-brand by General Hayes in front of house number two.

Quite a number of officers had no faith in the plot, and they regarded it with indifference. A few expressed hostility to it. One captain, who had been a prisoner before and seemed glad to have been captured again, a bloated, overgrown, swaggering, filthy bully, of course a coward, formerly a keeper of a low groggery and said to have been commissioned for political reasons, was repeatedly heard to say in sneering tones in the hearing of rebel sentries, "_Some of our officers have got escape on the brain_," with other words to the like effect. Colonel Hartshorne finally stopped such traitorous language by saying with tremendous emphasis: "Captain D----, I've heard a good deal of your attempts to discourage officers from escaping, and your loud talk about officers having 'escape on the brain.' Now, sir, I give you notice that if you're again guilty of anything of the sort, I'LL--BREAK--YOUR--HEAD--WITH--A--CLUB!"

The time agreed upon for the seven simultaneous attacks was about an hour before sunrise the morning of October 15th.

As we had feared, the rebel authorities, whether through suspected treachery or otherwise, got wind of our purpose. Towards evening of October 14th extraordinary vigilance on their part became apparent.

Troops were paraded, posts strengthened, guards doubled, privileges restricted, and word was pa.s.sed around in our hearing that a battalion of Confederates had just arrived. Their watchfulness seemed unrelaxed through the night. The shooting of Lieutenant Davis next morning was doubtless in obedience to orders for a more rigorous enforcement of rules.

Our outbreak was countermanded and postponed, but preparations continued. The delay enabled us to perfect our plans, and make our organizations more complete. The early morning of October 20th, the 19th being the anniversary of my birth, was now fixed upon for the "insurrection." We essayed to disarm suspicion by an air of quiet acquiescence in the lazy routine of prison life, or absorption in the simplest and most innocent occupations whenever any Confederate might be looking on.

We recognized united and instantaneous action at the signal on the part of three hundred officers and several thousand men as the most vitally important element of success. It was necessary that this should be thoroughly understood and emphasized, so that every soldier should be in perfect readiness at the critical moment.

Several of us had formed a cla.s.s for oral instruction in French. Our teacher was Captain Cook of the 9th U. S. colored troops, a graduate of Yale. About ten o'clock in the morning of October 18th, as we were seated on the ground near house number four, loudly imitating Professor Cook's _parlez-vous_, Lieut. Wm. C. Gardner, adjutant of one of those extemporized battalions of prisoners, brought me a letter he was intending to throw across the "dead line" to Sergt. Wallace W. Smith, requesting him to notify all enlisted men of the battalion when and where to a.s.semble silently next morning in the dark, how to arm themselves, from whom to take orders, what signal to watch for, and other important matters. I glanced through it, and immediately said: "You'd better not entrust the communication to so hazardous a channel; wait an hour till I've done with my French lesson, and I'll cause it to be transmitted by the deaf-and-dumb alphabet." If I recollect rightly, either Lieutenant Tobey or Lieutenant Morton, both of the 58th Ma.s.sachusetts, was in the cla.s.s, and promised to convey the contents of the letter safely across to the soldiers by adroit finger manipulation.

We were just finis.h.i.+ng the French exercise, when Adjutant Gardner came greatly excited, and this conversation followed:

"Good G.o.d, Colonel, the rebs have got that letter! I tied it to a stone and flung it a long ways over the 'dead line' to Wallace Smith. He appeared afraid to pick it up. A reb sentinel stepped away from his beat and got it."

"I requested you to wait till I'd done reciting French, and I told you I'd then communicate it by the deaf-and-dumb alphabet."

"Well, Colonel, I ought to have done so; but I was anxious to have the work done promptly, and I thought it was perfectly safe. I've tossed letters over to Smith several times. I'm worried to death about it.

What's best to do?"

"Was your name signed to it?"

"No; but my name was on the envelope--an old letter envelope that I had when we came here."

"Well, Gardner, this is a pretty piece of business! That letter of course will go very soon to Major Gee's headquarters, and then--there'll be the devil to pay!"

"The sentinel handed the letter to the officer of the guard. What had I better say, if they send for me?"

"Say you intended the letter to fall into their hands; that you meant it as a practical joke, wanted to get up another scare, and see the Johnnies p.r.i.c.k up their ears again."

"But, Colonel, like a fust-cla.s.s fool I put a ten-dollar Confederate bill in the envelope. I wanted to give it to Sergeant Smith. That don't look as if I meant it to fall into their hands--does it?"

"Gardner, this thing has an ugly look. You've knocked our plans of escape in the head--at least for the present. You've got yourself into a fix. They'll haul you up to headquarters. They'll prove by the letter that you've been deep in a plot that would have cost a good many lives.

They're feeling ugly. They may hang or shoot you before sundown, as a warning to the rest of us to stop these plots to escape. They may send for you at any minute."

"What had I better say or do?"

"You'd better make yourself scarce for a while, till you've got a plausible story made up. Better disguise yourself and pa.s.s yourself off as somebody else; so gain time."

"I have it, Colonel; I'll pa.s.s myself off as Estabrooks."

Estabrooks was an officer of the 26th Ma.s.s., who had escaped at the crossing of the river Yadkin two weeks previously when we came from Richmond. Gardner was a handsome man and perhaps the best-dressed officer in prison; but he now disguised himself.[6] The transformation was complete. In half an hour a man came to me wearing a slouched hat and a very ragged suit of Confederate gray. He had been a play-actor before the war and knew how to conceal his ident.i.ty. By his voice I recognized him as Gardner! "Well, Gardner," said I, "this surpa.s.ses His Satanic Majesty; or, as you would say, beats the devil!"--"Colonel," he replied, "I'm not Gardner. Gardner escaped; escaped at the crossing of the Yadkin River. I'm Estabrooks, H. L. Estabrooks, 2d Lieutenant, 26th Ma.s.s. Call me Estabrooks if you please."--"All right, Estabrooks it is."

Hardly had we had time to whisper around this change of name, when the Confederate officer of the guard made his appearance with two or three soldiers, inquiring for the commissary of house number four. I was pointed out to him. In substance and almost in the exact words this dialogue ensued:

"Colonel Sprague, are you commissary of this house?"

"I have that honor."

"I want to find Lieutenant Gardner."

"Who?"

"Lieutenant Gardner."

"Who's Lieutenant Gardner?"

"I am told he's an officer in house number four; and as you are commissary, you can probably tell me where he is _at_."

"Where he's what?"

"Where he's _at_."