by John McElroy
By and by we were astonished at the number of the trains that we could hear passing north on the Charleston & Cheraw Railroad. Day and night for two weeks there did not seem to be more than half an hour's interval at any time between the rumble and whistles of the trains as they passed Florence Junction, and sped away towards Cheraw, thirty-five miles north of us. We at length discovered that Sherman had reached Branchville, and was singing around toward Columbia, and other important points to the north; that Charleston was being evacuated, and its garrison, munitions and stores were being removed to Cheraw, which the Rebel Generals intended to make their new base. As this news was so well confirmed as to leave no doubt of it, it began to wake up and encourage all the more hopeful of us. We thought we could see some premonitions of the glorious end, and that we were getting vicarious satisfaction at the hands of our friends under the command of Uncle Billy.
One morning orders came for one thousand men to get ready to move. Andrews and I held a council of war on the situation, the question before the house being whether we would go with that crowd, or stay behind. The conclusion we came to was thus stated by Andrews:
"Now, Mc., we've flanked ahead every time, and see how we've come out. We flanked into the first squad that left Richmond, and we were consequently in the first that got into Andersonville. May be if we'd staid back we'd got into that squad that was exchanged. We were in the first squad that left Andersonville. We were the first to leave Savannah and enter Millen. May be if we'd staid back, we'd got exchanged with the ten thousand sick. We were the first to leave Millen and the first to reach Blackshear. We were again the first to leave Blackshear. Perhaps those fellows we left behind then are exchanged. Now, as we've played ahead every time, with such infernal luck, let's play backward this time, and try what that brings us."
"But, Lale," (Andrews's nickname—his proper name being Bezaleel), said I, "we made something by going ahead every time—that is, if we were not going to be exchanged. By getting into those places first we picked out the best spots to stay, and got tent-building stuff that those who came after us could not. And certainly we can never again get into as bad a place as this is. The chances are that if this does not mean exchange, it means transfer to a better prison."
But we concluded, as I said above, to reverse our usual order of procedure and flank back, in hopes that something would favor our escape to Sherman. Accordingly, we let the first squad go off without us, and the next, and the next, and so on, till there were only eleven hundred —mostly those sick in the Hospital—remaining behind. Those who went away—we afterwards learned, were run down on the cars to Wilmington, and afterwards up to Goldsboro, N. C.
For a week or more we eleven hundred tenanted the Stockade, and by burning up the tents of those who had gone had the only decent, comfortable fires we had while in Florence. In hunting around through the tents for fuel we found many bodies of those who had died as their comrades were leaving. As the larger portion of us could barely walk, the Rebels paroled us to remain inside of the Stockade or within a few hundred yards of the front of it, and took the guards off. While these were marching down, a dozen or more of us, exulting in even so much freedom as we had obtained, climbed on the Hospital shed to see what the outlook was, and perched ourselves on the ridgepole. Lieutenant Barrett came along, at a distance of two hundred yards, with a squad of guards. Observing us, he halted his men, faced them toward us, and they leveled their guns as if to fire. He expected to see us tumble down in ludicrous alarm, to avoid the bullets. But we hated him and them so bad, that we could not give them the poor satisfaction of scaring us. Only one of our party attempted to slide down, but the moment we swore at him he came back and took his seat with folded arms alongside of us. Barrett gave the order to fire, and the bullets shrieked aver our heads, fortunately not hitting anybody. We responded with yells of derision, and the worst abuse we could think of.
Coming down after awhile, I walked to the now open gate, and looped through it over the barren fields to the dense woods a mile away, and a wild desire to run off took possession of me. It seemed as if I could not resist it. The woods appeared full of enticing shapes, beckoning me to come to them, and the winds whispered in my ears:
"Run! Run! Run!"
But the words of my parole were still fresh in my mind, and I stilled my frenzy to escape by turning back into the Stockade and looking away from the tempting view.
Once five new prisoners, the first we had seen in a long time, were brought in from Sherman's army. They were plump, well-conditioned, well-dressed, healthy, devil-may-care young fellows, whose confidence in themselves and in Sherman was simply limitless, and their contempt for all Rebels and especially those who terrorized over us, enormous.
"Come up here to headquarters," said one of the Rebel officers to them as they stood talking to us; "and we'll parole you."
"O go to h—- with your parole," said the spokesman of the crowd, with nonchalant contempt; "we don't want none of your paroles. Old Billy'll parole us before Saturday."
To us they said:
"Now, you boys want to cheer right up; keep a stiff upper lip. This thing's workin' all right. Their old Confederacy's goin' to pieces like a house afire. Sherman's promenadin' through it just as it suits him, and he's liable to pay a visit at any hour. We're expectin' him all the time, because it was generally understood all through the Army that we were to take the prison pen here in on our way."
I mentioned my distrust of the concentration of Rebels at Cheraw, and their faces took on a look of supreme disdain.
"Now, don't let that worry you a minute," said the confident spokesman. "All the Rebels between here and Lee's Army can't prevent Sherman from going just where he pleases. Why, we've quit fightin' 'em except with the Bummers advance. We haven't had to go into regular line of battle against them for I don't know how long. Sherman would like anything better than to have 'em make a stand somewhere so that he could get a good fair whack at 'em."
No one can imagine the effect of all this upon us. It was better than a carload of medicines and a train load of provisions would have been. From the depths of despondency we sprang at once to tip-toe on the mountain-tops of expectation. We did little day and night but listen for the sound of Sherman's guns and discuss what we would do when he came. We planned schemes of terrible vengeance on Barrett and Iverson, but these worthies had mysteriously disappeared—whither no one knew. There was hardly an hour of any night passed without some one of us fancying that he heard the welcome sound of distant firing. As everybody knows, by listening intently at night, one can hear just exactly what he is intent upon hearing, and so was with us. In the middle of the night boys listening awake with strained ears, would say:
"Now, if ever I heard musketry firing in my life, that's a heavy skirmish line at work, and sharply too, and not more than three miles away, neither."
Then another would say:
"I don't want to ever get out of here if that don't sound just as the skirmishing at Chancellorsville did the first day to us. We were lying down about four miles off, when it began pattering just as that is doing now."
And so on.
One night about nine or ten, there came two short, sharp peals of thunder, that sounded precisely like the reports of rifled field pieces. We sprang up in a frenzy of excitement, and shouted as if our throats would split. But the next peal went off in the usual rumble, and our excitement had to subside.
CHAPTER LXXVII
FRUITLESS WAITING FOR SHERMAN—WE LEAVE FLORENCE—INTELLIGENCE OF THE FALL OF WILMINGTON COMMUNICATED TO US BY A SLAVE—THE TURPENTINE REGION OF NORTH CAROLINA—WE COME UPON A REBEL LINE OF BATTLE—YANKEES AT BOTH ENDS OF THE ROAD.
Things had gone on in the way described in the previous chapter until past the middle of February. For more than a week every waking hour was spent in anxious expectancy of Sherman—listening for the far-off rattle of his guns—straining our ears to catch the sullen boom of his artillery—scanning the distant woods to s
ee the Rebels falling back in hopeless confusion before the pursuit of his dashing advance. Though we became as impatient as those ancient sentinels who for ten long years stood upon the Grecian hills to catch the first glimpse of the flames of burning Troy, Sherman came not. We afterwards learned that two expeditions were sent down towards us from Cheraw, but they met with unexpected resistance, and were turned back.
It was now plain to us that the Confederacy was tottering to its fall, and we were only troubled by occasional misgivings that we might in some way be caught and crushed under the toppling ruins. It did not seem possible that with the cruel tenacity with which the Rebels had clung to us they would be willing to let us go free at last, but would be tempted in the rage of their final defeat to commit some unparalleled atrocity upon us.
One day all of us who were able to walk were made to fall in and march over to the railroad, where we were loaded into boxcars. The sick —except those who were manifestly dying—were loaded into wagons and hauled over. The dying were left to their fate, without any companions or nurses.
The train started off in a northeasterly direction, and as we went through Florence the skies were crimson with great fires, burning in all directions. We were told these were cotton and military stores being destroyed in anticipation of a visit from, a part of Sherman's forces.
When morning came we were still running in the same direction that we started. In the confusion of loading us upon the cars the previous evening, I had been allowed to approach too near a Rebel officer's stock of rations, and the result was his being the loser and myself the gainer of a canteen filled with fairly good molasses. Andrews and I had some corn bread, and we, breakfasted sumptuously upon it and the molasses, which was certainly none-the-less sweet from having been stolen.
Our meal over, we began reconnoitering, as much for employment as anything else. We were in the front end of a box car. With a saw made on the back of a case-knife we cut a hole through the boards big enough to permit us to pass out, and perhaps escape. We found that we were on the foremost box car of the train—the next vehicle to us being a passenger coach, in which were the Rebel officers. On the rear platform of this car was seated one of their servants—a trusty old slave, well dressed, for a negro, and as respectful as his class usually was. Said I to him:
"Well, uncle, where are they taking us?"
He replied:
"Well, sah, I couldn't rightly say."
"But you could guess, if you tried, couldn't you?"
"Yes sah."
He gave a quick look around to see if the door behind him was so securely shut that he could not be overheard by the Rebels inside the car, his dull, stolid face lighted up as a negro's always does in the excitement of doing something cunning, and he said in a loud whisper:
"Dey's a-gwine to take you to Wilmington—ef dey kin get you dar!"
"Can get us there!" said I in astonishment. "Is there anything to prevent them taking us there?"
The dark face filled with inexpressible meaning. I asked:
"It isn't possible that there are any Yankees down there to interfere, is it?"
The great eyes flamed up with intelligence to tell me that I guessed aright; again he glanced nervously around to assure himself that no one was eavesdropping, and then he said in a whisper, just loud enough to be heard above the noise of the moving train:
"De Yankees took Wilmington yesterday mawning."
The news startled me, but it was true, our troops having driven out the Rebel troops, and entered Wilmington, on the preceding day—the 22d of February, 1865, as I learned afterwards. How this negro came to know more of what was going on than his masters puzzled me much. That he did know more was beyond question, since if the Rebels in whose charge we were had known of Wilmington's fall, they would not have gone to the trouble of loading us upon the cars and hauling us one, hundred miles in the direction of a City which had come into the hands of our men.
It has been asserted by many writers that the negros had some occult means of diffusing important news among the mass of their people, probably by relays of swift runners who traveled at night, going twenty-five or thirty miles and back before morning. Very astonishing stories are told of things communicated in this way across the length or breadth of the Confederacy. It is said that our officers in the blockading fleet in the Gulf heard from the negros in advance of the publication in the Rebel papers of the issuance of the Proclamation of Emancipation, and of several of our most important Victories. The incident given above prepares me to believe all that has been told of the perfection to which the negros had brought their "grapevine telegraph," as it was jocularly termed.
The Rebels believed something of it, too. In spite of their rigorous patrol, an institution dating long before the war, and the severe punishments visited upon negros found off their master's premises without a pass, none of them entertained a doubt that the young negro men were in the habit of making long, mysterious journeys at night, which had other motives than love-making or chicken-stealing. Occasionally a young man would get caught fifty or seventy-five miles from his "quarters," while on some errand of his own, the nature of which no punishment could make him divulge. His master would be satisfied that he did not intend running away, because he was likely going in the wrong direction, but beyond this nothing could be ascertained. It was a common belief among overseers, when they saw an active, healthy young "buck" sleepy and languid about his work, that he had spent the night on one of these excursions.
The country we were running through—if such straining, toilsome progress as our engine was making could be called running—was a rich turpentine district. We passed by forests where all the trees were marked with long scores through the bark, and extended up to a hight of twenty feet or more. Into these, the turpentine and rosin, running down, were caught, and conveyed by negros to stills near by, where it was prepared for market. The stills were as rude as the mills we had seen in Eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, and were as liable to fiery destruction as a powder-house. Every few miles a wide space of ground, burned clean of trees and underbrush, and yet marked by a portion of the stones which had formed the furnace, showed where a turpentine still, managed by careless and ignorant blacks, had been licked up by the breath of flame. They never seemed to re-build on these spots—whether from superstition or other reasons, I know not.
Occasionally we came to great piles of barrels of turpentine, rosin and tar, some of which had laid there since the blockade had cut off communication with the outer world. Many of the barrels of rosin had burst, and their contents melted in the heat of the sun, had run over the ground like streams of lava, covering it to a depth of many inches. At the enormous price rosin, tar and turpentine were commanding in the markets of the world, each of these piles represented a superb fortune. Any one of them, if lying upon the docks of New York, would have yielded enough to make every one of us upon the train comfortable for life. But a few months after the blockade was raised, and they sank to one-thirtieth of their present value.
These terebinthine stores were the property of the plantation lords of the lowlands of North Carolina, who correspond to the pinchbeck barons of the rice districts of South Carolina. As there, the whites and negros we saw were of the lowest, most squalid type of humanity. The people of the middle and upland districts of North Carolina are a much superior race to the same class in South Carolina. They are mostly of Scotch-Irish descent, with a strong infusion of English-Quaker blood, and resemble much the best of the Virginians. They make an effort to diffuse education, and have many of the virtues of a simple, non-progressive, tolerably industrious middle class. It was here that the strong Union sentiment of North Carolina numbered most of its adherents. The people of the lowlands were as different as if belonging to another race. The enormous mass of ignorance—the three hundred and fifty thousand men and women who could not read or write—were mostly black and white serfs of the great landholders, whose plantations lie within one hundred miles of the Atlanti
c coast.
As we approached the coast the country became swampier, and our old acquaintances, the cypress, with their malformed "knees," became more and more numerous.
About the middle of the afternoon our train suddenly stopped. Looking out to ascertain the cause, we were electrified to see a Rebel line of battle stretched across the track, about a half mile ahead of the engine, and with its rear toward us. It was as real a line as was ever seen on any field. The double ranks of "Butternuts," with arms gleaming in the afternoon sun, stretched away out through the open pine woods, farther than we could see. Close behind the motionless line stood the company officers, leaning on their drawn swords. Behind these still, were the regimental officers on their horses. On a slight rise of the ground, a group of horsemen, to whom other horsemen momentarily dashed up to or sped away from, showed the station of the General in command. On another knoll, at a little distance, were several-field pieces, standing "in battery," the cannoneers at the guns, the postillions dismounted and holding their horses by the bits, the caisson men standing in readiness to serve out ammunition. Our men were evidently close at hand in strong force, and the engagement was likely to open at any instant.
For a minute we were speechless with astonishment. Then came a surge of excitement. What should we do? What could we do? Obviously nothing. Eleven hundred, sick, enfeebled prisoners could not even overpower their guards, let alone make such a diversion in the rear of a line-of-battle as would assist our folks to gain a victory. But while we debated the engine whistled sharply—a frightened shriek it sounded to us—and began pushing our train rapidly backward over the rough and wretched track. Back, back we went, as fast as rosin and pine knots could force the engine to move us. The cars swayed continually back and forth, momentarily threatening to fly the crazy roadway, and roll over the embankment or into one of the adjacent swamps. We would have hailed such a catastrophe, as it would have probably killed more of the guards than of us, and the confusion would have given many of the survivors opportunity to escape. But no such accident happened, and towards midnight we reached the bridge across the Great Pedee River, where our train was stopped by a squad of Rebel cavalrymen, who brought the intelligence that as Kilpatrick was expected into Florence every hour, it would not do to take us there.