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728 Norta Carotina Troops, 1861-65.

even to the robbing us of an occasional Yankee jacket or pair
of pants, no matter how obtained, by specious promises of
Confederate grey uniforms in exchange.

Once he caused about five hundred of us to strip, saying
he would furnish us with new clothes, but as soon as we had
been “hiked out” of all clothing except our shirts, right face,
forward, double-quick, march! and back through the cold mud
and water to our cheerless barracks we went (where one stove
and one barrow-load of coal per day were all that was allowed
to us) to get more clothes as best we could. This was one of
“Old Hike’s” villainous tricks on us, and in keeping with his
many acts of cruelty and torture. Every Christian should
pray that “Hike” has long since been “hiked” by the devil to a
clime where he don’t suffer from cold—where there is plenty
of fire, and no need of clothing.

Many of us worked cheerfully for a long time in toting
lumber half a mile and building a church and hospital for

the use of prisoners. I say cheerfully, because we were
promised pay for it, and thought that we or some other poor

rebs might be benefitted by the buildings. But we never got
a cent of pay; no prisoner ever entered the church, and few,
if any, the hospital.

Such as had money could buy anything they wanted at the
sutler’s, but very frequently, as soon as bought, say a knife,
piece of soap, vial of whiskey (labelled painkiller) search
would be made and all taken away, to be sold again.

One day when the tide was unusually high and the wind
and waves boisterous, an alarm was raised that the levee was
breaking: “Hike out! hike out, you, you d—d rebel sons
of b—s, or you will all be drowned. Run, run!” And
when we had run, or waded through ice, snow and mud, many
of us shoeless and nearly naked, we found that there was no
danger only to a pile of wood and some sutler’s stores which

were likely to get wet; and we were forced to work several
hours, freezing and starving, to remove them.

One favorite species of tormenting us was to tell us that
the great and glorious leaders of the South, Davis, Lee, Jack-
son and many others were killed, or captured or had deserted
our cause or that women and children were starving through-

 

Two Years at Fort DELAWARE. 729

out the South, or where not actually starving were only kept
from death by selling themselves, body and soul, to Yankees
and Southern “loyalists ;” and the most active in this and
other works of cowardice, inhumanity and malignity was, I
regret to say, a renegade Mississippian who called himself
Campbell. .Taken prisoner, he soon became a Yankee Lieu-
tenant, and like all rascally renegades-was noted for his mer-
ciless cruelty to all who had called him friend. “Hike”
found in him a willing and pliant tool; and we found in him
a vile scamp, whom some of us would like to see again, that we
might give him tokens of our recollections of him and his
ceeds! Doubtless he is a “bright light” somewhere. As an
evidence of his character, two prisoners, a Tennesseean and
a Marylander, bribed him to allow them to escape, a fine gold
watch and a hundred dollars being the price paid, and after
they were smuggled aboard a steamer he was the man to “go
for” them, hunt them up, and bring them back handcuffed
and his cocked pistol leveled at them! But notwithstand-
ing the vigilant watch kept over us, guards all the time being
stationed along the levee with orders to shoot any one attempt-
ing to escape, a good many did get away, though many per-
ished in the attempt.

Expert swimmers, by taking advantage of the tide at cer-
tain hours, could reach the mainland; but unless the tide was
just right those who undertook it, if escaping the sentinels,
would be borne out to sea and drowned, as many were.

Once I was selected to saw through a wall composed of 4
by 6 timbers, which I succeeded in doing by means of a jew-
eler’s saw, in twenty-two feet of a sentry’s post. One hundred
and thirty of us had provided ourselves with two canteens
each, air tight by means of cork and wax, and all escaped
(one only being drowned), except myself. Being the last to
leave, I found that some one had appropriated my canteen
life preservers. So I sorrowfully crept back to my bunk, but
listening at a crack I could hear shouts of recognition and en-
couragement away out on the bay, and to my surprise I
learned that while we were working for our escape a number
of officers confined in a separate part of the prison, and with
whom we had held no communication, had been doing the