ne EASE ERED

620 Nortu Carorina Troops, 1861-65.

time. The main amusement was gambling in a mild form.
Faro banks, chuckaluck tables, vingt et un (familiarly called
vantoon) and other games were liberally patronized, Con-
federate money and:sutlers tickets being the stakes. I re-
member a Captain Morgan, of Kentucky, who ran a faro
table and who had acquired three old carpetbags full of Con-
federate money in the business.

During the Summer smallpox broke out among the prison-
ers. Thereupon the prison authorities insisted upon a
wholesale vaccination. That would have been all right if
pure vaccine virus had been used, but the virus used was not
pure, and the result was that much suffering ensued. Many
prisoners got in a fearful condition by reason of being vacci-
nated with the poisonous virus that was used and were com-
pelled to go to the hospital on account of their condition.
Many did not recover for months. I escaped by showing a
sear from vaccination when a child.

During the Summer, the Federal batteries on Morris
Island, near Charleston, were shelling the City of Charles-
ton, imperiling the lives of non-combatants, consisting of

women, ‘children and old men. The Confederate Govern-
ment as a protection to these helpless people, placed six hun-

dred Federal prisoners of war (mostly officers) within that
part of the city which was more especially under the fire of
the Federal batteries, and notified the Federal authorities
that this had been done and the purpose for which it was
done. As an act of retaliation the Federal authorities took
six hundred Confederate prisoners who were at the time in-
earcerated in Fort Deleware (who were understood to have
been drawn by lot) and sent them to Morris Island, placing
them within a stockade located between the famous batteries
Gregg and Wagner, and within the direct line of fire from
the Confederate batteries on Sullivan’s Island and Fort Sum-
ter. These prisoners were carried from Fort Deleware to
Morris Island in the steamship Crescent, which was guarded
on its way down South by two gun-boats. There were many
disagreeable incidents connected with the trip, some of which
were perhaps necessary, but some could have been avoided.
One incident I well remember because it occasioned con-

 

Prisoners UnpEer Fire at Morris Isuanp. 621

siderable suffering. The officers of the ship allowed the
drinking water to give out. The weather was hot, it being
in August, and while off Hilton Head it was announced that
the drinking water was out. We went without water from
the morning of one day to the afternoon of the next, about
thirty hours. I, with mariy others, tried the experiment
of letting down a bottle through a little porthole into the sea
and endeavoring to slake our thirst with water from the
ocean, but we found it impossible to do so.

When we reached Morris Island we were put on shore in
the stockade which was erected on the beach about forty or
fifty feet from the water. Our quarters consisted of simple
“A” tents arranged in parallel rows and forming streets be-
tween each two rows. In each street were two or three holes
dug into the sand into which brackish water oozed and which
were called by extreme courtesy “springs.” From them we
got our drinking water. The stockade had a platform around
it, near the top, upon which were posted guards with orders
to fire upon any one who might break any rule of the prison,

whether inadvertently or not. The stockade was square. I
do not remember its exact size. We were guarded by the no-

torious Twenty-fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Infantry,
which was the first regiment of negroes who were enlisted by
the Federal Government. Its first commander was Colonel
Shaw, of Boston, who was killed in the assault on Battery
Wagner. At the time when it was doing guard duty over us,
its commander was one Colonel Hallowell, of Philadelphia,
a man whose character will be fittingly described by an inci-
dent which I will mention further on.

Our life within this stockade was not particularly pleasant.
We had to perform all police duties connected with the camp,
being guarded by these negro soldiers and ordered about by
negro Sergeants and Corporals. Our rations consisted of
one small piece of Chicago meat about an inch and a half or
two inches square and a cup of corn meal mush twice a day.
The desire to retaliate in kind was emphatically evidenced by
this last article of food. The prisoners in Charleston were
being fed upon excellent cornbread and so the Federal author-
ities brought down for us from the North in a schooner, corn