When I had thus unceremoniously run into the lion’s mouth, I surrendered and was marched with my comrades a short distance to Gen. Humphrey’s headquarters and placed under guard.

I then began to look around among the prisoners for those with whom I was acquainted.

Among others, I found Lieut. A. E. Patchin and Geo. Hand of my company, both wounded. Having had considerable experience in dressing wounds, at Lieut. Patchin’s request, I went to Gen. Humphrey and obtained written permission to stay with him (Patchin) and care for him. Patchin, Hand and myself were then marched off about half a mile to a field hospital, on a small branch or creek, as we would say.

Seating Patchin and Hand by a fire, I procured water and having satisfied our thirst, I proceeded to dress their wounds. We sat up all night, not having any blankets, and all night long the shrieks and groans of wounded and dying men pierced our ears.

In the morning I went to a rebel surgeon and procured a basin, a sponge, some lint and bandages, and after dressing the wounds of my patients, I took such of the wounded rebels in my hands as my skill, or lack of skill, would permit me to handle.

I worked all the forenoon relieving my late enemies and received the thanks and “God bless you, Yank,” from men who had, perhaps the day before, used their best skill to kill me. Who knows but that a bullet from my own gun had laid one of those men low?

In the afternoon those of the wounded Union prisoners who could not walk were placed in wagons and those who could, under guard and we were taken to McLaw’s Division hospital, on Chickamauga Creek.

On the way to the hospital we passed over a portion of the battlefield. While marching along I heard the groans of a man off to the right of the road, I called the guard’s attention to it and together we went to the place from whence the sound proceeded; there, lying behind a log, we found a wounded Union soldier. He begged for water saying he had not tasted a drop since he was wounded on the 19th, two days before. He was shot in the abdomen and a portion of the caul, about four inches in length, protruded from the wound. I gave him water, and the guard helped me to carry him to the wagon. His name was Serg. James Morgan, of some Indiana Regiment, the 46th, I think. He lived five days. I cared for him while he lived. One morning I went to see him and found him dead. I searched his pockets and found his Sergeant’s Warrant and a photograph of his sister, with her name and post-office address written upon it. These I preserved during my fifteen months imprisonment and sent to her address after I arrived in our lines. I received a letter from her thanking me for preserving those mementoes of her brother; also for the particulars of his death. I also received a letter from Capt. Studebaker, Morgan’s brother-in-law, and to whose company Morgan belonged, dated at Jonesboro, N. C., May 1865, in which he said that my letter gave the family the first news of the fate of Morgan.

We arrived at the hospital just before night and I proceeded to make my patients as comfortable as possible. There were at this place 120 wounded Union soldiers besides several hundred wounded Confederates. Our quarters were the open air. These wounded men lay scattered all around, in the garden, the orchard, by the roadside, any and every where.

The first night here I sat up all night building fires, carrying water for the wounded and dressing their wounds. Besides myself, there was a surgeon of an Illinois Battery and James Fadden, of the 10th Wis., who had a scalp wound, to care for these poor men, and a busy time we had. I assisted the surgeon in performing amputations, besides my other duties.

The rebels seemed to think we could live without food as they issued but three days rations to us in eleven days.

How did we live? I will tell you. On both sides of us was a corn field but the rebels had picked all the corn but we skirmished around and found an occasional nubbin which we boiled, then shaved off with a knife, making the product into mush. Besides this, we found a few small pumpkins and some elder berries, these we stewed and divided among the men.

About a week after we arrived here, I applied to the rebel surgeon in charge for permission to kill some of the cattle, which were running at large, telling him that our men were starving. He replied that he could do nothing for us, that he had not enough rations for his own men, that he could not give me permission to kill cattle, as Gen. Bragg had issued orders just before the battle authorizing citizens to shoot any soldier, Reb or Yank, whom they found foraging. But he added that he would not “give me away” if I killed one. I took the hint, and hunting up an Enfield rifle the Union surgeon and I started out for beef. We went into the corn field to the east of us where there were quite a number of cattle, and selecting a nice fat three-year-old heifer, I told the doctor that I was going to shoot it. He urged me not to shoot so large an animal as the citizens would shoot us for it, and wanted me to kill a yearling near by. I told him “we might just as well die for an old sheep as a lamb,” and fired, killing the three-year-old. You ought to have seen us run after I fired. Great Scott! How we skedaddled. Pell mell we went, out of the corn field, over the fence, and into the brush. There we lay and watched in the direction of two houses, but seeing no person after a while we went back to our game. It did not take long to dress that animal and taking a quarter we carried it back to the hospital. We secured the whole carcass without molestation and then proceeded to give our boys a feast. We ate the last of it for breakfast the next morning. After this feast came another famine. I tried once more to find a beef, but found instead two reb citizens armed with shot guns. I struck out for tall timber. Citizens gave me chase but I eluded them by dodging into the canebrakes which bordered the creek, thence into the creek down which I waded, finally getting back to the hospital minus my gun.

You may be sure that I did not try hunting after this little episode.

Rosecrans and Bragg had just before this made arrangements for the exchange of wounded prisoners. Our hospitals were at the Cloud Farm, five miles north-west from us, and Crawfish Springs, five miles south of Cloud Farm.

The next morning I secured an old rattle-bones of a horse and went over to the Cloud Farm for rations. I reported to the Provost Marshal on Gen. Bragg’s staff, and not being able to procure any rations here, he sent a cavalryman with me as a safe guard. We went down to Crawfish Springs, where I procured a sack full of hard tack and returned to the hospital.

I traveled fifteen miles that day over the battlefield. Such a sight as I there saw I hope never to see again. This was eleven days after the battle and none of our dead had been buried then; in fact, the most of our brave men who fell at Chickamauga were not buried until after the battle of Missionary Ridge and the country had come in possession of the Union forces. The sight was horrible. There they lay, those dead heroes, just as they fell when stricken with whistling bullet, or screaming canister, or crashing shell.

Some of them had been stripped of their clothing, all were badly decomposed. The stench was beyond my power to tell, or yours to imagine. Taken all together it was the most horrible scene the eye of man ever rested upon.

Let me try to give the reader a description of what I saw that day. When I first reached the battlefield my attention was attracted to a number of horsemen dressed in Federal uniforms. These were evidently rebel cavalrymen who had dressed themselves in the uniforms of our dead soldiers. In every part of the field was evidence of the terrible havoc of war. Bursted cannons, broken gun carriages, muskets, bayonets, accoutrements, sabres, swords, canteens, knapsacks, haversacks, sponges, rammers, buckets, broken wagons, dead horses and dead men were mixed and intermingled in a heterogeneous mass.

Fatigue parties of rebel soldiers and negroes were gleaning the fruits of the battlefield.

In one place I saw cords of muskets and rifles piled up in great ricks like cord-wood. The harvest was a rich one for the Confederacy.

In one place I saw more than twenty artillery horses, lying as they had fallen, to the rear of the position of a Rebel battery, showing the fierce and determined resistance of the Union soldiers.

At another place, near where my regiment breakfasted on the morning of the 19th, a Union battery had taken position, it was on the Chattanooga road and to the rear was heavy timber. Here the trees were literally cut down by cannon shots from a Rebel battery. Some of the trees were eighteen or twenty inches in diameter. Havoc, destruction, ruin and death reigned supreme. In some places, where some fierce charge had been made, the ground was covered with the dead. Federal and Confederate lay side by side just as they had fallen in their last struggle. But why dwell on these scenes? They were but a companion piece to just such scenes on a hundred other battlefields of the civil war.

We remained at the Chickamauga hospital for three weeks. Then all who could ride in wagons were carried to Ringgold, where we took the cars for Atlanta. Many of the wounded had died and we had buried them there on the banks of the “River of Death.” I presume they have found sepulture at last in the National Cemetery, at Chattanooga, along with the heroes of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. Peace to their ashes. They gave all that men can give, their lives, for their country, and we gave them the best gifts of comrades, honor and a soldier’s grave.

At Ringgold some ladies came into the cars and distributed food to our party. It was a kindly but unexpected act, and we appreciated it the more as we were nearly starved. We traveled all night and arrived at Atlanta about 11 o’clock A. M. the next day. We were removed to the “Pen” and here I was introduced to the “Bull Pens” of the South.

The Prison Pen here was small, being used only as a stopping place for prisoners en route for Richmond. The enclosure was made of boards and was twelve feet in height. On two sides were barracks which would shelter probably five hundred men. In the center was a well of good water. The guards were on the platforms inside and nearly as high as the fence.

The next day after our arrival the Commandant of the Prison put me in charge of twenty-one wounded officers. These officers elected me nurse, commissary general, cook and chambermaid of the company.

Our rations were of fair quality but of very limited quantity. A fund was raised and entrusted to me with instructions to purchase everything in the line of eatables that I could get.

Here we found Gen. Neal Dow, sometimes called the father of the “Maine Law.” He had been taken prisoner down near the Gulf and was on his way to Richmond for exchange.

Here we also found Lieut. Mason, of the 2nd Ohio Infantry, and he, too, had a history. In the latter part of April 1862, Gen. Mitchell sent a detail of twenty-one men, members of the 2nd, 21st and 33rd Ohio and a Kentuckian, named Andrews, I believe, on a raid into Central Georgia, with instructions to capture a locomotive, then proceed north to Chattanooga, and to destroy railroads and burn bridges on the way. They left us at Shelbyville, Tennessee, and went on their perilous errand, while we marched to the capture of Huntsville, as narrated in the introduction.

These men were the celebrated “Engine Thieves” and their story is told by one of their number, in a book entitled, “Capturing a Locomotive.” They left our brigade in pairs, traveling as citizens to Chattanooga, thence by rail to Marietta, where they assembled, taking a return train. The train halted at a small station called Big Shanty, and while the conductor, engineer and train men were at breakfast, they uncoupled the train, taking the engine, tender and two freight cars and pulled out for Chattanooga. All went lovely for a time but after running a few hours they began to meet wild trains which had been frightened off from the M. & C. R. R. by the capture of Huntsville. This caused them much delay but Andrews, the leader, was plucky and claiming that he had a train load of ammunition for Chattanooga he contrived at last to get past these trains and again sped onward.

In the meantime the conductor at Big Shanty discovered his loss. Taking with him the engineer, and two officials of the road, they started out on foot in pursuit of the fugitive train. They soon found a hand-car which they took, and forward they went in the race, a hand-car in pursuit of a locomotive. Luck favored the pursuers, they soon found an engine, the Yonah, on a Spur road, and with steam up, this they pressed into the service and away they go. This time locomotive after locomotive. They pass the blockade of wild trains and on they go. As they round a curve they see, away ahead, the smoke of the fugitive train. The engineer pulls the throttle wide open and on they go as never went engine before. But the fugitives discover the pursuers, and at the next curve they stop, pull up a rail and put it on board their train, and then away with the speed of a hurricane. But they have pulled up the rail on the wrong side of the track and the pursuing engine bumps across the ties and on they come. Then the fugitives stop and pull up another rail and take it with them. The pursuers stop at the break in the road, take up a rail in the rear of their engine, lay it in front and then away in pursuit they go. The fugitives throw out ties upon the track, but the Yonah pushes them off as though they were splinters. Then the fugitives set fire to a bridge but the Yonah dashes through fire and on, ever on, like a sleuth hound it follows the fugitives. Rocks, trees and houses seem to be running backward, so swift is the flight. But the wood is gone, the oil is exhausted, the journals heat, the boxes melt and the fugitive engine dies on the track.

But our heroes jump from the train and take to the woods. They are pursued with men and blood-hounds, are captured and thrown into prison and treated as brigands. Some die, some are hanged, some are exchanged and some make their escape. Lieut. Mason was of the last named class. He was promoted to a 1st Lieutenancy, fought at Chickamauga in my brigade and was taken prisoner and identified as one of the engine thieves, and held for trial. He told me this story seated upon a sixty pound ball, which was attached to his ankle by a ten foot chain.

Besides the Federal prisoners, there were in this prison a number of Union men from the mountains of East Tennessee and Northern Georgia. They were conscripted into the Confederate army, but refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy.

We arrived at Atlanta on the 12th of October 1863, and on the 18th we were put on board of the cars and started for Richmond.

ONWARD TO RICHMOND.

Leaving Atlanta on the 18th, we reached Augusta early on the morning of the 19th. There had been heavy rains and as the railroad track was washed out ahead, we were compelled to wait here until the track was repaired. We were put into a cotton shed and a guard stationed around us.

No rations had been issued to us since leaving Atlanta. It seemed to be part of the duty of the officer in charge to FORGET to feed us, and I never saw a man more attentive to duty than he was, in that respect. However, I procured a pass from him, and with a guard, went down town to buy food for my squad of wounded officers. I found bread in one place at a dollar a loaf and at another place I bought a gallon of sorghum syrup. As my guard and I were looking around for something else to eat, we met a pompous old fellow who halted us and asked who we were. I told him that I was a prisoner of war with a Confederate guard looking for a chance to buy something to eat for wounded soldiers. “I will see to this,” said he. “I will know if these Northern robbers and vandals are to be allowed to desecrate the streets of Augusta.”

I could never find out what the people of Augusta lived on during the war. I could not find enough food for twenty-two men, but I imagine that old fellow lived and grew fat on his dignity.

Shortly after my return to the cotton shed a company of Home guards, composed of the wealthy citizens of Augusta, marched up and posted a guard around us, relieving our train guard.

The company was composed of the wealthy men of the city, too rich to risk their precious carcasses at the front, but not too much of gentlemen to abuse and starve prisoners of war. They did not allow any more “Yanks” to desecrate their sacred streets that day.

Morning came and we bade a long, but not a sad, farewell to that Sacred City. We crossed the Savannah River into the sacred soil of South Carolina. Hamburg, the scene of the Rebel Gen. Butler’s Massacre of negroes during Ku-Klux times, lies opposite Augusta.

Onward we went, our old engine puffing and wheezing like a heavy horse, for by this time the engines on Southern railroads began to show the need of the mechanics who had been driven north by the war. Along in the afternoon of the 21st, while we were yet about 60 miles from Columbia, S. C., the old engine gave out entirely and we were compelled to wait for an engine from Columbia. We arrived at Columbia sometime in the night and as we were in passenger cars we did not suffer a great deal of fatigue from our long ride. On the morning of the 22d as our train was leaving the depot a car ran off the track which delayed us until noon. While the train men were getting the car back on the track, I went with a guard down into the city to buy rations, but not a loaf of bread nor an ounce of meat could I procure.

Columbia was a beautiful city. I never saw such flower gardens and ornamental shrubbery as I saw there, but you may be sure that I did not cry when I heard that it was burned down. I don’t know whether any of those brutes who refused to sell me bread for starving, wounded men, were burned or not, if they were, they got a foretaste of their manifest destiny.

We arrived at Raleigh, N. C., on the morning of the 23rd. Here we had rations issued to us, consisting of bacon and hard tack, and of all the HARD tack I ever saw, that was the hardest. We could not bite it, neither could we break it with our hands until soaked in cold water.

At Weldon, on the Roanoke River, we laid over until the morning of the 24th. Here we had a chance to wash and rest and we needed both very much.

We reached Petersburg, Va., during the night of the 24th and were marched from the Weldon depot through the city and across the Appomattox River to the Richmond depot, where we waited until morning.

Midday found us within sight of Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy.

As the train ran upon the long bridge which crosses the James River at the upper part of the Falls, we looked to our left, and there, lying peacefully in that historic river, was Belle Isle, a literal hell on earth. A truthful record of the sufferings, the starvation and the misery imposed by the Confederates upon our helpless comrades at that place, would cause a blush of shame to suffuse the cheek of a Comanche chief.

Arrived on the Richmond side, we dragged our weary bodies from the cars, and forming into line, were marched down a street parallel with the river. I suppose it was the main business street of the city. Trade was going on just as though there was no war in progress.

As we were marching past a tall brick building a shout of derision saluted our ears, looking up we saw a number of men, clad in Confederate gray, looking at our sorry company and hurling epithets at us, which were too vile to repeat in these pages. This was the famous, or perhaps infamous is the better word, Castle Thunder. It was a penal prison of the Confederacy and within its dirty, smoke begrimed walls were confined desperate characters from the Rebel army, such as deserters, thieves and murderers, together with Union men from the mountains of Virginia and East Tennessee, and Union soldiers who were deemed worthy of a worse punishment than was afforded in the ordinary military prisons.

Many stories are told of the dark deeds committed within the walls of that prison. It is said that there were dark cells underneath that structure, not unlike the cells under the Castle of Antonia, near the Temple in Jerusalem, as described in Ben Hur, into which men were cast, there to remain, never to see the light of day or breathe one breath of pure air until death or the fortunes of war released them.

The horrors of the Spanish Inquisition in the middle ages were repeated here. Men were tied up by their thumbs, with their toes barely touching the floor, they were bucked and gagged and tortured in every conceivable way, and more for the purpose of gratifying the devilish hatred of their jailors, then because they had committed crimes.

On we march past Castle Lightning, a similar prison of unsavory reputation, to Libby Prison, which opened its ponderous doors to receive us. But I will reserve a description of this prison for another chapter.