756 | NortH CaroLina Troops, 1861-65.

commit actual murder to get money, provisions, clothes or oth-
er property. Although a number were sent, as before stated,
tu Georgia, the prison still continued to be infested with them
te the last. It will never be known how many of their fellow
prisoners they murdered. I think it was not uncommon for
marks of violence to be discovered on the bodies of the dead.
I saw one laid in the grave who appeared to have been killed
by choking. Another, who was very emaciated, had a nar-
row wound like the incision of a small dagger near the jugu-
lar vein. Without this he could not have lived long, and I
could divine no reason for his murder but impatience to get
possession of clothes or something else which could not be ob-
tained while he was alive.

During the month of October, 1864, the number of prison-
ers amounted to 10,321. The regular prisoners of war and
the rebel convicts were in perpetual feud, owing to the latter
having in September found and seized a Federal flag which
one of the prisoners had brought in concealed upon his per-
son. So bitter was the feud that the convicts did not dare
te leave their quarters in the large building and venture out
in the grounds at night.

There was no great degree of kindness between the Federal
deserters and the convicts. They would gamble together in
the upper story of the main building, insult one another, and
get into terrible altercations. One of the guards told me
that at night walking the parapet, he had heard them fighting,
heard the ery of “murder,” growing fainter and fainter, and
finally heard the gurgling struggles as of men weltering in
blood. One night a deserter was thrown from the upper win-
dow and taken up dead. 3:

By order of the War Department General Martin received
about fifteen hundred guards, of whom over a thousand
were Senior Reserves,* men between 45 and 50, and several

*The Senior Reserves were the 78rd, 74th and 76th Regiments, and
the Juniors, Millard’s (20th) Battalion. Mention of their services at
Salisbury is made in their respective histories. As above stated, the 42nd
regiment was prison guard earlier in the war, then the 57th, and in 1864
the 68th regiment for a while served in that capacity, and in 1865 the

8ist regiment for a short while, for which see their respective histories
in these volumes.—En.

 

SALISBURY PRISON. 757

hundred Junior Reserves, who were boys between 17 and 18
years of age. Add to these “Freeman’s Battalion,” and you
have all the troops that Major Gee was furnished to control
ten thousand regular soldiers. The stockade was simply a
plank fence about ten or twelve feet high so frail in many
place that it could be shaken for a long distance by the hand.

It was the opinion of competent judges that a rush by a
body of men against it would have broken it down. - In some
parts the planks at the bottom did not reach the ground, and it
required but little effort, as experiment proved, to open a way
for egress under them. The Senior Reserves who comprised
the large majority of the guard, were ignorant of discipline,
and so old and awkward and unteachable—many of them—
that they appeared more like Quixotic burlesques than ver-
itable soldiers. The Junior Reserves were much more vigi-
lant and efficient, but many of them were exceedingly small
and presented quite a grotesque picture as they lugged a huge
musket around their beat. But for their diminutive size
they would have made excellent sentinels. Freeman’s men
were all who had enough of the soldier about them to be de-
pended on to discharge all the duties of a guard. Under
such circumstances it may well be conceived how anxiously
those who were entrusted with the keeping of the prisoners
felt their responsibility. From October to the time they left
there was no time (except perhaps, while Colonel Hinton
with the Sixty-eighth Regiment, was there), when, acting in
concert and with determination, the prisoners could not have
overpowered the guard and sacked the town. A knowledge
of this fact doubtless caused many a wakeful hour to Major
Gee while others were sleeping, and may account for seeming
severity in the regulations which were enforced.

When the prisoners came they could not be supplied with
a sufficient number of tents, and in consequence they suffered
greatly from exposure. In apology for this it must be ob-
served that there was a much larger proportion furnished
them than were employed by our own soldiers in the field;
and there were really no more that could be procured. As
goon as they could be obtained two hundred tents were fur-
nished them—of different kinds—fly, wall and others. Thus