Raiding With Morgan (22 page)

“G
eneral Morgan escaped! General Morgan escaped!

General Morgan escaped!”

The screeching Billy Burke, recovered from his session riding the “Mule,” burst though the barrack door during noon dinner, waving the latest copy of the
Chicago Tribune
high over his head.

The Camp Douglas raiders had gleaned from the local papers that General Morgan and a number of high-ranking Rebel officers had been sent to the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, a steep-walled, heavily guarded institution. The verbal picture painted by the news sheets of their commanding officer's rude treatment and his cell, eight feet by ten feet, containing a metal bed with no mattress and slop bucket for bodily functions, seemed unnecessarily harsh to the Confederate troopers, who had enjoyed serving a leader wise enough to seek indoor accommodations and avoid the hard ground they were forced to endure.

“How'd the general escape?” an impatient Cally Smith demanded.

The onrushing Billy Burke halted, caught his breath, and, speaking in short squeaks, said, “He and six of his officers discovered an air chamber below their cells. They chipped through the concrete floor of their cells to get into the air chamber and tunneled through the foundation of their cell block out into the prison yard. They used ropes to climb over the outside wall.”

“How'd they scale the wall without being seen?” Sam Bryant wondered.

“
Tribune
claims it was a dark, rainy night,” Billy said. “The prison dogs were asleep in their kennels and the patrolling wall guards were huddled in their towers to keep dry.”

Ebb White roused a cheer for General Morgan by chuckling and observing, “Same old ‘Thunderbolt of the Confederacy.' Caught the Yankees with their pants down round their knees and their dirty drawers showing. The man has a genuine knack for making downright fools out of wrongheaded blue bellies, don't he now?”

“Have any of them been captured yet?” E.J. asked.

“Nary a one, so far,” a gloating Billy pronounced, raising a second boisterous cheer for Morgan and his fellow escapees.

The dinner conversation centered on the general's daring feat. Shawn Shannon listened a short while, turned to Ty beside him, and said softly, “They're caught up in the idea that, if the general did it, they can tunnel under the wall here and escape. They forget that all but very few who've already managed that are recaptured in a few days and sentenced to the dungeon. They're also forgetting what can happen to them, besides the dungeon, for just planning an escape if the Yankees find out. Remember the day Commandant DeLand made the lot of us stand in formation and watch three prisoners tied up by the thumbs for threatening to hang a prisoner they thought was planning to rat them out with the guards. You remember that day, don't you?”

Ty most certainly did. The groaning and pitiful hollering of the three suffering prisoners had turned his stomach. After they pleaded repeatedly that they were innocent, a frustrated Commandant DeLand finally had them taken down. One untied Rebel fainted and the freed raider trooper next to him threw up on his own chest. The commandant then gave a lecture that no prisoner reporting escape plans to the guards was to be touched or threatened. He dismissed everyone with a promise that unless the guilty Rebels turned themselves in at his headquarters, he would bring them back with orders to stand in the cold until daylight. Fortunately, the guilty Rebels went to Yankee headquarters later that evening and confessed. They were punished, as the innocent had been.

Shawn Shannon chewed a piece of beef gristle and swallowed with a hard gulp. “These boys don't realize they face an even bigger challenge, once they're outside the stockade. You can bet that money was smuggled into General Morgan. After he escaped, someone provided him civilian clothing, fed him, bought train tickets for him in advance so he could move fast, and probably provided him fresh horses after he crossed the Ohio. A clean escape that sees you back to the Confederate ranks is harder than our boys believe. You need help from friends and supporters in the right places, with waiting arms and deep pockets, willing to risk imprisonment for your freedom. General Morgan has them. We don't.”

“If they understood that, do you think our boys would quit trying to bribe the stockade guards and stop digging tunnels?”

“Not hardly, they can only stand so much haranguing and needling from the guards, lousy quarters, short rations, and constant rumors that we might be exchanged, which never amount to anything. An idle prisoner becomes dangerous if his patience wears thin. And believe me, lad, their patience is thin as a knife blade. Sooner or later, some incident of consequence is bound to ring Commandant DeLand's bell and the repercussions won't be pretty.”

Shawn Shannon's predicted incident occurred on the second of December 1863. Right before midnight, the beating of drums followed by rifle fire awakened Ty and his bunkmates. In the distance, a booming cannon of a voice said, “Prisoners outside the wall! Prisoners outside the wall! All companies report for duty!”

Billy Burke leaped from his bunk and scampered for the door. He grabbed for the latch and froze when Shawn Shannon said, “Don't open that door. That's an order, Private Burke.”

A puzzled Billy Burke spun about and peered though the feeble light of the darkened barrack. “Who gave that order?”

Shawn Shannon dropped to the floor and approached Billy. “I did. Listen to them calling back and forth. Those guards are jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Open the door and they'll likely think you're meaning to join in the escape, and bad things happen in the dark. We'll stay put and listen. We'll know soon enough what's happened.”

On that count, Lieutenant Shannon was wrong. Punctuated by beating drums, blowing bugles, shouting guards, and an occasional rifle shot, the commotion beyond their barrack continued well into the middle of the night.

At dawn, the door swung open without a knock, as usual, and two guards, strangers to the barrack, swept inside. The taller Yankee was burly and walked with a swagger. His stringy brown beard was spotted with gray streaks, despite his relative youth, and his black jagged teeth hinted at breath that would gag a maggot. Eyes the color of sun-brightened sand canvassed the room and the burly guard's lip-curling smile was that of a dog preparing to devour a meaty bone. “There's a hundred less of you filthy scoundrels to deal with. That's good for us, and bad for you. You'll pay dearly, me buckoes, for the sins of others.”

The two guards framed the door. They carried bayoneted rifles, the first Ty had seen at Camp Douglas. The blue bellies were truly upset.

Sneering, the black-toothed Yankee said, “Fall out, you Rebel scum. You're about to receive part of the bill for last night's shenanigans. Leave your coats. We want you to enjoy the chilly weather.”

The muttering, coatless prisoners marched out of the barrack and gathered together. At a nod from one of the guards, a civilian carpentry crew armed with claw hammers, crowbars, and spud bars marched into the barrack. The sound of wood planks being ripped up incensed the watching prisoners.

E.J. Pursley's dander was on the rise, like a freshly fired steam boiler. “The bastards are tearing out the floors.”

The burly guard, whom the Rebels took to calling “Snag,” since his teeth reminded them of rotting stumps sticking from swamp water, snorted triumphantly. “You gray lice won't be hiding any more tunnels from us.”

“That dirt floor will be a mud sty in a week!” E.J. fumed. “Won't be nothing dry in there, and a doctor will tell you that makes for a lot of sick soldiers.”

Snag glanced at Shawn Shannon. “Shut the old goat's face or he'll be eating a rifle butt for breakfast.”

Having dealt with an irate E.J. in the past, Shawn grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him amongst the gathered prisoners. “Ebb, keep a grip on him. He opens his trap again, gag him.”

The carpentry crew emerged and walked to Barrack Nine next door. Snag announced roll call and daily fatigues were canceled. He dismissed the shivering Kentuckians with a warning. “Wait until tomorrow morning. It'll be the nastiest roll call in Camp Douglas history and I've seen some hell bangers, me buckoes.”

What awaited the Rebels inside was a spirit sinker. All the separating partitions had been torn down, turning the barrack into one long, narrow room. Except for the planks beneath the tiered bunks, the floor was bare dirt. E.J. saw one bright spot. “Leastways, the blue bastards didn't haul off my stove and pans.”

“Just wait,” Ebb White cautioned. “They figure how much it will devil you to lose them, Snag will be here with a dozen volunteers. That feller has a ton of spite in him.”

Anticipating the worst at morning roll call, the Kentuckians spent a restless night. They suspected something unusual was in the wind when they were marched from White Oak Square to Garrison Square in front of Colonel DeLand's headquarters and found the non-Kentucky Rebels from Prisoner's Square were already lined out for a joint roll call. The two groups had always been held apart from one another, a tribute to the feistiness of Morgan's raiders.

Yankee lieutenants and sergeants set to work searching the prisoners. Personal possessions from knives to money, even family photographs, were confiscated. Cally Smith noticed that some searchers were compiling a list of what they took and others weren't. Cally and Sam Bryant were lucky. Their sutler checks and cash monies were inventoried, though that was no guarantee they would be returned at a future date.

Commandant DeLand's officers saved their most blatant confiscation for last. His officers undertook a second pass through the lines and removed every good coat, replacing them with thin cotton pepper-and-salt jackets and an equal bunch of thin black spade-tailed gentlemen coats. The indignant well-to-do Kentuckians accepted the replacement garments with clamped lips and murder in their hearts. Ty shared their angst, but he was left hoping for any kind of winter coat.

Perched upon the top step beneath the roofed veranda that stretched across the front of his headquarters, Commandant DeLand raised his arms for silence. When he was certain he had the attention of the entire assemblage, the colonel said in a forceful, clear baritone that everyone, whether clad in blue or gray, could hear, “You secesh are prisoners of war and will be treated accordingly. Henceforth, you will be provided minimal clothing, survival rations, and a roof over your heads. No more, no less. You will suffer. You will not enjoy luxuries while our brave Yankee soldiers perish with less, from famine and disease at your Andersonville Prison Camp. Expect little from your captors, knowing it will be less. Understand that we will do as we please with you. You are dismissed.”

Those fateful words struck home when the Kentucky Rebels returned to their barracks. During their absence, a squad of Yankees and civilian workers had searched their quarters and had removed all the good clothing they had found, with the work hands stealing what stored foodstuffs they could carry off. Plus they had torn up the flooring under the bunks. All axes, wood saws, and spades were confiscated, depriving the Rebels of their means for cutting wood and cleaning their quarters. A few yard rakes went untouched, inspiring a remark from the belligerent Snag a few days later that they were left for the Rebels to “comb their hair with.”

As the weeks of December 1863 unfolded, Colonel DeLand's retaliation for the Rebel's tunnel digging and Confederate abuse and neglect of Yankee prisoners of war elsewhere intensified. He shut down the general stores of the civilian sutlers, the Southern prisoners' prime source for cider, eggs, milk, canned fruits, boots, underclothing, postage stamps, envelopes, and paper. The closing of the sutler stores forced the Kentuckians to purchase these items from the camp's Yankee commissary where any excess supplies were scarce and prices much steeper. Ty was ecstatic when he learned of the alternate source for postage stamps. He couldn't imagine a worse situation than the inability to answer a letter from Portland, Ohio.

The attitude of the guards hardened with that of their superior. Freshly armed with six-shot revolvers, they stood for little back talk and were prone to punish the slightest offenses by demeaning the Kentuckians in front of their fellows. The guards' favorites were to order the guilty prisoner to swing from ceiling rafter to ceiling rafter aping a chattering monkey until they dropped from exhaustion or to crawl the length of the barrack floor, barking and howling like a dog, until his knees were bloody and his voice too hoarse to utter a sound.

Not all December days turned sour for the Kentuckians. Given Campbell returned from his stay in the dungeon, leaner of body, but with his wit intact, instantly boosting morale with his impersonation of the guards, especially an undersized, stuttering Yankee who had gray hair, gray skin, gray eyes, sharply pointed nose, small yellow teeth, and weak chin. To everybody's amusement, Campbell nicknamed the short blue-belly “Mouse.” Snag and Mouse were such exact opposites that the sight of them together provoked laugher throughout the barrack. Everyone was pleased to have Given Campbell back amongst them.

The highlight of the month was E.J. Pursley's corker of an 1863 Christmas dinner. For over two months, E.J., not trusting sutler checks, given the worsening atmosphere of the camp, had purchased commissary checks instead with funds contributed by his affluent messmates and other well-to-do Kentucky residents of Barrack Ten. He had kept them hidden in a flour barrel.

The white-goateed, toothless, aging ladle wielder—once the youthful, renowned chef in parlors of joy throughout New Orleans—had shared recipes with the Union commissary cooks to the delight of their officers and called in his chips for the big feast. E.J., Ty, and Ebb White spent the entire day before Christmas in the cookhouse baking pies and plain and sweet doughnuts, while holding those craving sweets at bay with sharpened knives.