We arrived at Danville on the morning of November 25th, and were directly marched into prison No. 2. There were six prison buildings here, all tobacco factories. Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 being on the public square. Nos. 2 and 3 being on the west side. No. 1 on the north side adjoining a canal, and No. 4 on the south side. The other prisons were in other parts of the city.

In each prison was confined 700 men. Each building was three stories high with a garret, making four floors in each prison. Thus we had 175 men on each floor. The prisons were, as near as I can guess, 30×60 feet so that we had an average of ten and one-third square feet to each man or a little more than a square yard apiece.

Our rations at first consisted of a half pound of bread, made from wheat shorts and about a quarter of a pound of pork or beef. The quality was fair.

I had for a “chum,” or “pard,” from the time I arrived at Atlanta until I came to Danville, an orderly Sergeant, of an Indiana Regiment, by the name of Billings. He was a graduate of an Eastern College and at the time he enlisted left the position of Principal of an Academy in Indiana. He was one of nature’s noblemen, intelligent, brave, true-hearted and generous to a fault. I was very much attached to him as he was a genial companion far above the common herd. But after I had been in Danville about a week, I learned that there were a number of the comrades of my company in Prison No. 1. So I applied for, and obtained, permission to move over to No. 1. I parted with Billings with regret. I have never seen him since and know nothing of his fate, but I imagine he fell a victim to the hardships and cruelties of those prisons.

I found, when I arrived in No. 1, not only members of my own company but a number of men from Company B of my regiment. We were quartered in the south-east corner on the second floor. Nearly opposite where I was located comrade Dexter Lane, then a member of an Ohio regiment, now a citizen of Merton, Steele county, Minnesota, had his quarters. We were strangers at that time but since then have talked over that prison life until we have located each other’s position, and feel that we are old acquaintances.

I think I did not feel so lonesome after I joined my comrades of the 10th Wis. There is something peculiar about the feelings of old soldiers towards each other. Two years before these men were nothing to me. I had never seen them until I joined the regiment at Milwaukee. But what a change those two years had wrought. We had camped together on the tented field and lain side by side in the bivouac. We had touched elbows on those long, weary marches through Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, had stood shoulder to shoulder in many hard fought battles, and now we are companions in Southern prisons. They were not as kind-hearted, nor as intelligent as Billings but there was the feeling of comradeship which no persons on earth understand as do old soldiers.

The “majah” in charge of Prison No. 1 was a man by the name of Charley Brady, a southern gentleman from Dublin or some other seaport of the “Green Isle,” and to his credit, I will say, he was a warm hearted Irish gentlemen. I do not call to mind any instance where he was unnecessarily harsh or cruel, but on the other hand, he was kind and pleasant in his manner and in his personal intercourse with us treated us as though we were human beings in marked contrast with the treatment of the prison officials who were genuine Southerners brought up under the influences of that barbarous institution, slavery.

Perhaps some of my readers who were confined in Prison No. 1 will not agree with me in my estimate of Charley Brady, but if they will stop a moment and consider, they will remember that our harsh treatment came from the guards who were a separate and distinct institution in prison economy, or was the result of infringement of prison rules.

About a week after my arrival in No. 1 some of the prisoners on the lower floor were detected in the attempt to tunnel out. They had gone into the basement and started a tunnel with the intention of making their escape. They were driven up and distributed on the other three floors. This gave us about two hundred and thirty men to a floor and left us about eight square feet to the person.

About this time the cook-house was completed and we had a radical change of diet. There were twelve large kettles, set in arches, in which our meat and soup were cooked. Before proceeding farther let me say, that the cooking was done here for 3,500 men.

Our soup was made by boiling the meat, then putting in cabbages, or “cow peas” or “nigger peas,” or stock peas, (just suit yourself as to the name, they were all one and the same) and filling up AD LIBITUM with water. The prisons first served were usually best served for if the supply was likely to fall short a few pails full of Dan River water supplied the deficiency.

Our allowance was a bucket of soup to sixteen men, enough of it, such as it was, for the devil himself never invented a more detestable compound than that same “bug soup.” The peas from which this soup was made were filled with small, hard shelled, black bugs, known to us as pea bugs. Their smell was not unlike that of chinch bugs but not nearly as strong. Boil them as long as we might, they were still hard shelled bugs. The first pails full from a kettle contained more bugs, the last ones contained more Dan River water, so that it was Hobson’s choice which end of the supply we got.

(I notice there is considerable inquiry in agricultural papers as to these same cow peas whether they are good feed for stock. My experience justifies me in expressing the opinion that you “don’t have” to feed them to stock, let them alone and the bugs will consume them.)

Our supply of shorts bread was discontinued and corn bread substituted. This was baked in large pans, the loaves being about two and a half inches in thickness. This bread was made by mixing meal with water, without shortening or lightening of any kind. It was baked in a very hot oven and the result was a very hard crust on top and bottom of loaf, and raw meal in the center.

The water-closets of the four prisons, which surrounded the square, were drained into the canal already mentioned, and as the drains discharged their filth into the canal up stream from us, we were compelled to drink this terrible compound of water and human excrement, for we procured our drinking and cooking water from this same canal.

The result of this kind of diet and drink was, that almost every man was attacked with a very aggravated form of camp diarrhea, which in time became chronic. Many poor fellows were carried to their graves, and many more are lingering out a miserable existence to-day as a result of drinking that terrible hell-broth. And there was no excuse for this, for not more than ten rods north of the canal was a large spring just in the edge of Dan River, which would have furnished water for the whole city of Danville. The guards simply refused to go so far.

Some of the men attempted to make their escape while out to the water-closet at night. One poor fellow dropped down from the side of the cook-house, which formed part of the enclosure, and fell into a large kettle of hot water. This aroused the guard and all were captured on the spot. This occurred before the cook-house had been roofed over.

So many attempts were made to escape, that only two were allowed to go out at a time after dark. The effect of this rule can be partly imagined but decency forbids me to describe it. Suffice it to say that with nearly seven hundred sick men in the building it was awful beyond imagination.

We resorted to almost every expedient to pass away time. We organized debating clubs and the author displayed his wonderful oratorical powers to the no small amusement of the auditors. Well, I have this satisfaction, it did them no hurt and did me a great deal of good.

Two members of my regiment worked in the cook-house during the day, returning to prison at night. They furnished our mess with plenty of beef bones. Of these we manufactured rings, tooth picks and stilettos. We became quite expert at the business, making some very fine articles. Our tools were a common table knife which an engineer turned into a saw, with the aid of a file, a broken bladed pocket knife, a flat piece of iron and some brick-bats. The iron and brick were used to grind our bones down to a level surface.

We also procured laurel root, of which we manufactured pipe bowls. Carving them out in fine style, I made one which I sold for six dollars to a reb, but I paid the six dollars for six pounds of salt.

I hope my readers will remember the saw-knife described above, as it will be again introduced in a little scene which occurred in Andersonville.

Some one of our mess had the superannuated remains of a pack of cards, greasy they were and dog-eared, but they served to while away many a weary hour. One evening our old German who wanted “zult,” entertained us with a Punch and Judy show. The performance was good, but I failed to appreciate his talk.

But what we all enjoyed most was the singing. There was an excellent quartette in our room and they carried us back to our boyhood days by singing such songs as, “Home, Sweet Home,” “Down upon the Swanee River,” and “Annie Laurie.” When they sang patriotic songs all who could sing joined in the chorus. We made that old rebel prison ring with the strains of “The Star Spangled Banner,” “Columbia’s the Gem of the Ocean,” and the like. The guards never objected to these songs and I have caught the low murmur of a guard’s voice as he joined in “Home, Sweet Home.” But when we sang the new songs which had come out during the war, such as, “Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!” and the “Battle Cry of Freedom,” they were not so well pleased.

We use to tease them by singing,

And—

About that time a guard would call out. “Yo’, Yanks up dah, yo’ stop dat kyind of singing or I’ll shoot.” “Shoot and be dammed.”—

“For we’ll hurl the rebel crew from the land we love the best, &c.” would ring out loud and clear for an answer, and then BANG would go the guard’s gun, answered by a yell of derision from the prison.

We suffered very much from cold that winter at Danville for we had no fire. It is true we had a stove and some green, sour gum wood was furnished but it would not burn, and then we made some weak and futile attempts to burn stone coal but it was a failure. The proportions were not right, there was not coal enough to heat the stone, and so we went without fire.

For bedding, I had an oil-cloth blanket and my “pard” had a woolen blanket. But an oil-cloth blanket spread on a hard floor, does not “lie soft as downy pillows are.” It did seem as though my hips would bore a hole through the floor.

One day a rebel officer with two guards came in and ordered all the men down from the third and fourth floors, then stationing a guard at the stairs, he ordered them to come up, two at a time.

I was in no hurry this time to see what was going on, so I awaited further developements. Soon after the men had commenced going up, a note fluttered down from over head. I picked it up, on it was written, “They are searching us for money, knives, watches and jewelry.” Word was passed around and all who had valuables began to secrete them. I had noticed that this class of fellows were expert at finding anything secreted about the clothing, so I tried a plan of my own. Taking my money I rolled it up in a small wad and stuffed it in my pipe. I then filled my pipe with tobacco, lit it and let it burn long enough to make a few ashes on top, then let it go out. Then I went up stairs with my haversack. The robbers took my knife and fork, but did not find my money.

A Sergeant of a Kentucky Regiment saved a gold watch by secreting it in a loaf of bread. Lucky fellow, to be the owner of a whole loaf of bread.

Small-pox broke out among us shortly after our arrival at Danville. Every day some poor fellow was carried out, and sent off to the pest house up the river.

About the 17th of December, a Hospital Steward, one of our men, came in and told us he had come in to vaccinate all of us who desired it. I had been vaccinated when a small boy, but concluded I would try and see if it would work again. It did. Many of the men were vaccinated as the Steward assured them that the virus was pure. Pure! Yes, so is strychnine pure. It was pure small-pox virus, except where it was vitiated by the virus of a disease, the most loathsome and degrading of any known to man, leprosy alone excepted. We were inoculated and not vaccinated. On the 26th I was very sick, had a high fever and when the surgeon came around I was taken out to the Hospital.