Continual Hope of Exchange of Prisoners"Flag-of-Truce Fever!"Attempted Escape by TunnelingRepeated Escapes by Members of Water Parties, and how we Made the Roll-Call Sergeant's Count Come Out all Right every TimePlot to Break Out by Violence, and its Tragic End.

Our principal hope for relief from the increasing privations of prison life and from probable exhaustion, sickness, and death, lay in a possible exchange of prisoners. A belief was prevalent that the patients in hospital would be the first so favored. Hence strenuous efforts were sometimes made to convince the apothecary whom we called doctor, and who often visited us, that a prisoner was ill enough to require removal. Once in the institution, the patients got better food, something like a bed, medical attendance daily, and a more comfortable room. Some of them were shamming, lying in two senses and groaning when the physicians were present, but able to sit up and play euchre the rest of the day and half the night. This peculiar disease, this eagerness to get into hospital or remain there till exchanged by flag of truce, was known as the “flag-of-truce fever” or “flag-of-truce-on-the-brain!”

I recall one striking instance. Lieutenant Gardner, already mentioned, had received six or eight hundred dollars in Confederate currency as the price of a gold watch. But like the prodigal in Scripture he was now in a far country, and had wasted his substance in what he called “righteous” living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that corner of the lower room, and he began to be in want. And he would fain have filled his belly with corn-cob-meal bread, or spoiled black beans, or the little potatoes which the swine didn’t eat. And no man gave him enough. And he determined to go to hospital. He gave out that he was desperately sick. I at this time had “quarters” on the floor above. Word was brought to me that my friend was mortally ill, and would thank me to come down and take his last message to his relatives. Alarmed, I instantly went down. I found him with two or three splitting a small log of wood!

“Gardner, I hear you are a little ‘under the weather.’”

“Dying, Colonel, dying!”

“What appears to be your disease?”

“Flag-o’-truce-on-the-brain!”

“Ah, you’ve got the exchange fever?”

“Yes; bad.”

“Pulse run high?”

“Three hundred a minute.”

“Anything I can do for you?”

“Yes, Colonel, beseech that fool doctor to send me to hospital. Tell him I’m on my last legs. Tell him I only want to die there. Appeal to him in behalf of my poor wife and babies.” (Gardner, as I well knew, was a bachelor, and had no children to speak of.)

“Well, Lieutenant, I’ll do anything I properly can for you. Is there anything else?”

“Yes, Colonel; lend me your overcoat to wear to hospital; I’ll send it back at once.”

“But, Lieutenant, you can’t get into the hospital. Your cheeks are too rosy; you’re the picture of health.”

“I’m glad you mentioned that, Colonel. I’ll fix that. You’ll see.”

Next morning he watched at the window, and when he saw the doctor coming, he swallowed a large pill of plug tobacco. The effect was more serious than he expected. In a few minutes he became sick in earnest, and was frightened. A deathlike pallor supervened. When the doctor reached him, there was a genuine fit of vomiting. The story runs that Captain Tiemann made a pathetic appeal in behalf of the imaginary twin babies, that the doctor diagnosed it as a clear case of puerperal (which he pronounced “puerperial”) fever complicated with symptoms of cholera infantum, and ordered him to hospital at once! I loaned the patient my overcoat, which he sent back directly. His recovery seemed miraculous. In a week or two he returned from his delightful outing. This was in the latter part of November.

Previously, for some weeks, Captain Howe and three or four other strong and determined officers managed to get into the cellar of a one-story building contiguous to ours and thence to excavate a tunnel out beyond the line on which the sentinels were perpetually pacing to and fro. I was too feeble to join in the enterprise, but hoped to improve the opportunity to escape when the work was done. Unfortunately the arching top of the tunnel was too near the surface of the ground, and the thin crust gave way under the weight of a sentry. He yelled “Murder!” Two or three of our diggers came scurrying back. The guard next to him shouted, “You Yanks! you G d d d Yanks!” and fired into the deep hole. No more tunneling at Danville.

More successful and more amusing were several attempts by individual officers one at a time. The water parties of four to eight went under a strong guard two or three times a day down a long hill to the river Dan. On the slope alongside the path were a number of large brick ovens, in which, we were told, the Confederates used to bake those big squares of corn bread. The iron doors when we passed were usually open. On the way back from the river, one officer on some pretense or other would lag behind the rearmost soldier of the guard, who would turn to hurry him up. The next officer, as soon as the soldier’s back was turned, would dodge into an open oven, and the careless guards now engaged in a loud and passionate controversy about slavery or secession would not miss him! Then, as night came on, the negroes in the vicinity, who, like all the rest of the colored people, were friendly to us, would supply the escaped officer with food and clothing, and pilot him on his way rejoicing toward the Union lines. One by one, six officers escaped in that way, and many of us began to look forward to the time when our turn would come to try the baking virtues of those ovens!

But it was important that the escaped officer should not be missed. How should we deceive the nondescript that we called “the roll-call sergeant”? Morning and evening he carefully counted every one. How make the census tally with the former enumerations? Yankee ingenuity was here put to a severe test; but Lieutenant Titus, before mentioned, solved the problem. With his table-knife saw he cut a hole about two feet square in the floor near the northeast corner of the upper room. A nicely fitting trapdoor completed the arrangement. Through this hole, helped by a rude rope ladder of strips of rags, and hoisted to the shoulders of a tall man by strong arms from below, a nimble officer could quickly ascend. Now those in the lower room were counted first. When they broke ranks, and the human automaton faced to the west and moved slowly towards the stairs with three or four “Yanks” clustering at his side in earnest conversation, the requisite number of spry young prisoners would “shin up” the ladder, emerge, “deploy,” and be counted over again in the upper room! The thing worked to a charm. Not one of the six was missed.

Unfortunately, however, two or three of them were recaptured and again incarcerated in Libby. The Richmond authorities thereupon telegraphed to Colonel Smith, asking how those officers escaped from Danville. Smith, surprised, ordered a recount. The trapdoor did its duty. “All present!” Finally he answered, “No prisoner has escaped from Danville.” The rebel commissary of prisons at Richmond, Gen. J. H. Winder, then telegraphed the names of the recaptured officers. Smith looks on his books: there are those names, sure enough! The mystery must be solved. He now sends his adjutant to count us about noon. We asked him what it meant. He told us it was reported that several officers had escaped. We replied, “That’s too good to be true.” He counted very slowly and with extraordinary precision. He kept his eye on the staircase as he approached it. Six officers flew up the ladder as we huddled around him. It was almost impossible to suppress laughter at the close, when he declared, “I’ll take my oath no prisoner has escaped from this prison.” But there were those names of the missing, and there was our ill-disguised mirth. Smith resorted to heroic measures. He came in with two or three of his staff and a man who was said to be a professor of mathematics. This was on the 8th of November, 1864. He made all officers of the lower room move for a half-hour into the upper room, and there fall in line with the rest. His adjutant called the roll in reality. Each as his name was read aloud was made to step forward and cross to the other side. Of course no one could answer for the absent six. I doubt if he ever learned the secret of that trapdoor. The professor of mathematics promised to bring me a Geometry. About two weeks later, November 24th, he brought me a copy of Davies’s Legendre.

On the 9th of December, while our senior officer, General Hayes, was sick in hospital, the next in rank, Gen. A. N. Duffie, of the First Cavalry Division of Sheridan’s army, fresh from the French service, with which he had campaigned in Algeria, where he was wounded nine times, suddenly conceived a plot to break out and escape. Two companies of infantry had arrived in the forenoon and stacked their arms in plain sight on the level ground about twenty rods distant. Duffie’s plan was to rush through the large open door when a water party returning with filled buckets should be entering, seize those muskets, overpower the guard, immediately liberate the thousand or fifteen hundred Union prisoners in the three other Danville prisons, and push off to our lines in East Tennessee. He had Sheridan’s elan, not Grant’s cool-headed strategy. With proper preparation and organization, such as Hayes would have insisted upon, it might have been a success. He called us, field officers about twenty, together and laid the matter before us. No vote was taken, but I think a majority were opposed to the whole scheme. He was disposed to consider himself, though a prisoner, as still vested with authority to command all of lower rank, and he expected them to obey him without question. In this view many acquiesced, but others dissented. By his request, though doubtful of his right to command and in feeble health, I drew up a pledge for those to sign who were willing to engage in the projected rising and would promise to obey. It was found that at least one hundred and fifty could be counted on. Colonel Ralston, previously mentioned, was the chief opponent of the outbreak, but he recognized Duffie’s authority and insisted upon our submission to it. Similar appeared to be the attitude of the following colonels:

Gilbert H. Prey, 104th N. Y.

James Carle, 191st Pa.

T. B. Kaufman, 209th Pa.

W. Ross Hartshorne, 190th Pa.

Of the lieutenant-colonels, most of the following doubted the success, but would do their best to promote it, if commanded:

Charles H. Tay, 10th N. J.

Theodore Gregg, 45th Pa.

G. A. Moffett, 94th N. Y.

J. S. Warner, 121st Pa.

George Hamett, 147th N. Y.

Charles H. Hooper, 24th Mass.

Homer B. Sprague, 13th Conn.

So the following majors: A. W. Wakefield, 49th Pa.; G. S. Horton, 58th
Mass.; E. F. Cooke, 2d N. Y. Cav.; John G. Wright, 51st N. Y.; J. V.
Peale, 4th Pa. Cav.; John W. Byron, 88th N. Y.; David Sadler, 2d Pa.
Heavy Art.; John Byrne, 155th N. Y.; E. O. Shepard, 32d Mass.; J. A.
Sonders, 8th Ohio Cav.; Charles P. Mattocks, 17th Maine; E. S. Moore,
Paymaster; Wm. H. Fry, 16th Pa. Cav.; Milton Wendler, 191st Pa.; James
E. Deakins, 8th Tenn. Cav.; Geo. Haven Putnam, Adjt. and later
Bvt.-Major, 176th N. Y.

All of the foregoing then present and not on the sick list should have been most thoroughly instructed as to their duties, and should have been enabled to communicate all needed information to the forty-six captains and one hundred and thirty-three lieutenants, who, though many were sadly reduced in vitality, were accounted fit for active service. I had repeatedly noticed in battle the perplexity of company, regimental, or even brigade commanders, from lack of information as to the necessary movements in unforeseen emergencies. It is not enough to say, as one corps commander (Hancock?) is said to have done during the Battle of the Wilderness in May, 1864, to a newly arrived colonel with his regiment, who inquired, “Where shall I go in?” “Oh, anywhere; there’s lovely fighting all along the line!”

Here the step most vital to success, the sine qua non, was to keep that outside door open for the outrush of two hundred men. To this end, eight of our strongest and most determined, under a dashing leader like Colonel Hartshorne or Lieutenant-Colonel Gregg, should have been sent out as a water party. Instead, Captain Cook, who was brave enough, but then physically weak, hardly able to carry a pail of water, was the leader of an average small squad, “the spirit indeed willing, but the flesh weak.”

Hardly less important was it to select a dozen or twenty of the most fierce and energetic, to be at the head of the stairs in perfect readiness to dash instantly through the opening door and assist the water party in disarming their guards, and, without a moment’s pause, followed by the whole two hundred, pounce upon the guard house. Ralston or Duffie himself should have headed this band. Simultaneously, without a second’s interval, three or four desperate, fiery, powerful officers, detailed for the purpose, should have grappled with the sentinel on duty in the middle of the lower room and disarmed and gagged him.

Besides the field officers, we had with us many subordinates of great intelligence like Capt. Henry S. Burrage of the 36th Mass., Lieut. W. C. B. Goff of the 1st D. C. Cav., Lieut. W. C. Howe, 2d Mass. Cav., Adjt. James A. Clark, 17th Pa. Cav., and the artist, Lieut. Henry Vander Weyde; and nothing would have been easier than for Duffie to communicate through them to every officer the most complete and precise information and instructions.

Scarcely any of these precautions were taken. The general was impatient. The next day, December 10th, he issued his command in these words: “I order the attempt to be made, and I call upon all of you, who have not forgotten how to obey orders, to follow.” The water party was immediately sent out, and its return was watched for. He and Ralston, without the help of a third, made the mistake of personally grappling with the floor sentry, a brave, strong, red-headed fellow, and they tackled him a moment too soon. He stoutly resisted. They wrested his musket from him. He yelled. They tried to stop his mouth. Instantly the door began to swing open a little. The water party, too few and too weak, paralyzed, failed to act. The foremost of us sprang from the stairs to the door. Before we could reach it, it was slammed to, bolted and barred against us! With several others I rushed to the windows and tried to tear off the heavy bars. In vain. The soldiers outside began firing through the broken panes. Ralston was shot through the body. We assisted him up the stairs while the bullets were flying. In less than five minutes from the moment when he and Duffie seized the sentinel, it was all over. In about a quarter of an hour, Colonel Smith came in with his adjutant and two or three guards, and ordered Ralston removed to hospital. As he was carried out, one of us expressed the hope that the wound was not serious. He answered in the language of Mercutio, “No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.” He knew it was mortal, and expressed a willingness to die for his country in the line of duty. He passed away next morning. Colonel Smith expressed sorrow for him, and surprise at the ingratitude of us who had been guilty of insurrection against his gentle sway!

A strict search for possible weapons followed during which we were told we must give up our United States money. I saved a ten-dollar greenback by concealing it in my mouth “as an ape doth nuts in the corner of his jaw,” all the while munching corn bread, gnawing two holes in the bill!