With Lee in Virginia: A Story of the American Civil War by G. A. Henty (feel good fiction books TXT) 📖

class='pagenum'>[Pg 145]hing from the moment when I heard the word halt, just as we reached the side of the stream, to that when I found myself being carried here."

"You belong to the cavalry?"

"Yes, sir."

"Was Lee's force all engaged yesterday?"

"I do not know," Vincent said. "I only came up with Jackson's division from Harper's Ferry the evening before."

"I need not have questioned you," McClellan said. "I know that Lee's whole army, 100,000 strong, opposed me yesterday."

Vincent was silent. He was glad to see that the Federal general, as usual, enormously overrated the strength of the force opposed to him.

"I hear that the whole of the garrison of Harper's Ferry were released on parole not to serve again during the war. If you are ready to give me your promise to the same effect I will allow you to return to your friends; if not you must remain a prisoner until you are regularly exchanged."

"I must do so, then, general," Vincent said quietly. "I could not remain home and remain inactive while every man in the South is fighting for the defense of his country, so I will take my chance of being exchanged."

"I am sorry you choose that alternative," McClellan said. "I hate to see brave men imprisoned if only for a day; and braver men than those across yonder stream are not to be found. My officers and men are astonished. They seem so thin and worn as to be scarce able to lift a musket, their clothes are fit only for a scarecrow, they are indeed pitiful objects to look at; but the way in which they fight is wonderful. I could not have believed, had I not seen it, that men could have charged as they did again and again across ground swept by a tremendous artillery and musketry fire; it was wonderful! I can tell you, young man, that even though you beat us we are proud of you as our countrymen; and I [Pg 146]believe that if your General Jackson were to ride through our camp, he would be cheered as lustily and heartily by our men as he is by his own."

Some fifty or sixty other prisoners had been taken; they had been captured in the hand-to-hand struggle that had taken place on some parts of the field, having got separated from their corps and mixed up with the enemy, and carried off the field with them as they retired. These, for the most part, accepted the offered parole; but some fifteen, like Vincent, preferred a Northern prison to promising to abstain from fighting in defense of their country, and in the middle of the day they were placed together in a tent under a guard at the rear of the camp.

The next morning came the news that Lee had fallen back. There was exultation among the Federals, not unmingled with a strong sense of relief; for the heavy losses inflicted in the previous fighting had taken all the ardor of attack out of McClellan's army, and they were glad indeed that they were not to be called upon to make another attempt to drive the Confederates from their position. Vincent was no less pleased at the news. He knew how thin were the ranks of the Confederate fighting men, and how greatly they were worn and exhausted by fatigue and want of food, and that, although they had the day before repulsed the attacks of the masses of well-fed Northerners, such tremendous exertions could not often be repeated, and a defeat, with the river in their rear, approachable only by one rough and narrow road, would have meant a total destruction of the army.

The next morning Vincent and his companions were put into the train and sent to Alexandria. They had no reason to complain of their treatment upon the way. They were well fed, and after their starvation diet for the last six weeks their rations seemed to them actually luxurious. The Federal troops in Alexandria, who were for the most part young recruits who had just arrived from the North and West, looked with astonishment upon these thin and ragged men, several of whom we[Pg 147]re barefooted. Was it possible that such scarecrows as these could in every battle have driven back the well-fed and cared-for Northern soldiers!

"Are they all like this?" one burly young soldier from a Western State asked their guard.

"That's them, sir," the sergeant in charge of the party replied. "Not much to look at, are they? But, by gosh, you should see them fight! You wouldn't think of their looks then."

"If that's soldiering," the young farmer said solemnly, "the sooner I am back home again the better. But it don't seem to me altogether strange as they should fight so hard, because I should say they must look upon it as a comfort to be killed rather than to live like that."

A shout of laughter from the prisoners showed the young rustic that the objects of his pity did not consider life to be altogether intolerable even under such circumstances, and he moved away meditating on the discomforts of war, and upon the remarks that would be made were he to return home in so sorrowful a plight as that of these Confederate prisoners.

"I bargained to fight," he said, "and though I don't expect I shall like it, I shan't draw back when the time comes; but as to being starved till you are nigh a skeleton, and going about barefooted and in such rags as a tramp wouldn't look at, it aint reasonable." And yet, had he known it, among those fifteen prisoners more than half were possessors of wide estates, and had been brought up from their childhood in the midst of luxuries such as the young farmer never dreamed of.

Among many of the soldiers sympathy took a more active form, and men pressed forward and gave packets of tobacco, cigars, and other little presents to them, while two or three pressed rolls of dollar notes into their hands, with words of rough kindness.

"There aint no ill feeling in us, Rebs. You have done your work like men, and no doubt you thinks your cause is right, just as we does; but it's all over now, and maybe our turn will come next to see the inside of one of your prisons down south. So we are just soldiers together, and can feel for each other."[Pg 148]

Discipline in small matters was never strictly enforced in the American armies, and the sergeant in charge offered no opposition to the soldiers mingling with the prisoners as they walked along.

Two days later they were sent by railway to the great prison at Elmira, in the State of New York. When they reached the jail the prisoners were separated; Vincent, who was the only officer, being assigned quarters with some twenty others of the same rank. The prisoners crowded round him as he entered, eager to hear the last news from the front, for they had heard from their guards only news of constant victories won by the Northerners; for every defeat was transformed by the Northern papers into a brilliant victory, and it was only when the shattered remains of the various armies returned to Alexandria to be re-formed that the truth gradually leaked out. Thus Antietam had been claimed as a great Northern victory, for, although McClellan's troops had in the battle been hurled back, shattered and broken, across the river, two days afterward Lee had retired.

One of the prisoners, who was also dressed in cavalry uniform, hung back from the rest, and going to the window looked out while Vincent was chatting with the others. Presently he turned round, and Vincent recognized with surprise his old opponent Jackson. After a moment's hesitation he walked across the room to him.

"Jackson," he said, "we have not been friends lately, but I don't see why we should keep up our quarrel any longer; we got on all right at school together; and now we are prisoners together here it would be foolish to continue our quarrel. Perhaps we were both somewhat to blame in that affair. I am quite willing to allow I was, for one, but I think we might well put it aside now."

Jackson hesitated, and then took the hand Vincent held out to him.

"That's right, young fellows," one of the other officers said. "Now that every Southern gentleman is fighting and giving his life, if need be, for his[Pg 149] country, no one has a right to have private quarrels of his own. Life is short enough as it is, certainly too short to indulge in private animosities. A few weeks ago we were fighting side by side, and facing death together; to-day we are prisoners; a week hence we may be exchanged, and soon take our places in the ranks again. It's the duty of all Southerners to stand shoulder to shoulder, and there ought to be no such thing as ill-feeling among ourselves."

Vincent was not previously aware that Jackson had obtained a commission. He now learned that he had been chosen by his comrades to fill a vacancy caused by the death of an officer in a skirmish just before Pope fell back from the Rappahannock, and that he had been made prisoner a few days afterward in a charge against a greatly superior body of Federal cavalry.

The great majority of the officers on both sides were at the commencement of the war chosen by their comrades, the elections at first taking place once a year. This, however, was found to act very badly. In some cases the best men in the regiment were chosen; but too often the men who had the command of money, and could afford to stand treat and get in supplies of food and spirits, were elected. The evils of the system were found so great, indeed, that it was gradually abandoned; but in cases of vacancies occurring in the field, and there being a necessity for at once filling them up, the colonels of the regiments had power to make appointments, and if the choice of the men was considered to be satisfactory, their nominee would be generally chosen.

In the case of Jackson, the colonel had hesitated in confirming the choice of the men. He did not for a moment suspect him to be wanting in courage; but he regarded him as one who shirked his work, and who won the votes of the men rather by a fluent tongue and by the violence of his expressions of hatred against the North than by any soldierly qualities.

Some of the officers had been months in prison, and they were highly indignant at the delays that had occurred in effecting t[Pg 150]heir exchange. The South, indeed, would have been only too glad to get rid of some of their numerous prisoners, who were simply an expense and trouble to them, and to get their own men back into their ranks. They could ill spare the soldiers required to guard so large a number of prisoners, and a supply of food was in itself a serious matter.

Thus it was at Harper's Ferry, and upon a good many other occasions, they released vast numbers of prisoners on their simple paroles not to serve again. The North, however, were in no hurry to make exchange; and moreover, their hands were so full with their enormous preparations that they put aside all matters which had not the claim of urgency.

CHAPTER X. THE ESCAPE.

The discipline in the prison at Elmira was not rigorous. The prisoners had to clean up the cells, halls, and yard, but the rest of their time they could spend as they liked. Some of those whose friends had money were able to live in comparative luxury and to assist those who had no such resources; for throughout the War there was never any great difficulty in passing letters to and from the South. The line of frontier was enormous and it was only at certain points that hostilities were actively carried on, consequently letters and newspapers were freely passed, and money could be sent in the same way from one part of the country to another.

At certain hours of the day hawkers and venders of such articles as were in most demand by the prisoners were allowed to enter the yard and to sell their wares to the Confederates. Spirits were not allowed to be carried in, but tobacco and all kinds of food were permitted to pass. Vincent had at Alexandria written a letter to his mother, and had given it to a man who represented that he made it his business to for[Pg 151]ward letters to an agent at Richmond, being paid for each letter the