Civil War Bookmarks

In his memoir, "I Rode with Stonewall", Henry Kyd Douglas describes his experiences in a Union prison camp on Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie. He moves from describing the barracks to some of the move difficult struggles during his stay.

"To a newcomer the outlook was not hopeful. The prison was an oblong, bare piece of ground enclosed by a high fence, and perched up on this fence, or barricade, at intervals, in sentry boxes, were armed sentinels. The barracks or prison houses were long buildings, hastily erected of wood and weatherboard, called wards. The weatherboarding was a single layer nailed to upright beams, and there was no plastering of any kind. The weatherboarding would sometimes warp, and in all rooms there were many knotholes, through which one lying in bed could look out upon the moon or the water; but when the weather got below zero, the scenery was scarcely compensation for the suffering…Of course out on that lake, the weather became excessively cold, below zero, and not infrequently drove the sentinels from their posts, knowing well enough that no prisoner could escape and live.

On the 9th and 21st of January, 1864 - I am not so sure of one of the dates - the thermometer fell to 28^o below zero.The former of the two nights I spent in the hospital, which was in the enclosure, nursing a very young fellow from Mobile, who, babbling in his delirium of flowers and fields and playing with his mother and sister in his sunny land, died died before morning. During the night Captain Stagg of a Louisiana regiment was frozen so badly that, when he was discovered in the morning he was speechless, and it required vigorous measures under a physician’s directions to restore him. That same night, as often before or after, two men would squeeze into one bunk so as to double blankets, would wrap themselves up head and feet, and in the morning break through crackling ice, formed by the congealing of the breath that escaped, as one has seen on the blankets of horses in sleighing time."

Respectfully,

Randy

This excerpt may not quite flow as naturally from the previous offering as one might like, but the image is so unexpected that I will risk the somewhat rough transition. In his memoir, “I Rode With Stonewall”, Henry Kyd Douglas wrote of an incident early in General Thomas J. Jackson’s career in the Valley. This small window into a life cut short reveals a much different side of the man than that of the oft described stoic, secretive, disciplinarian.

“After riding along some distance, the General spied a tree hanging heavy with persimmons, a peculiar fruit of which he was very fond. Dismounting, he was in a short time seated aloft among the branches, in the midst of abundance. He ate in silence and when satisfied started to descend, but found that it was not so easy as the ascent had been. Attempting to swing himself from a limb to the main fork of the tree, he got so completely entangled that he could move neither up nor down and was compelled to call for help. He remained suspended in that attitude until his staff, convulsed with laughter, brought some rails from a fence nearby and made a pair of skids to slide him to the earth.”

Mr. Douglas said nothing more of the incident.

Respectfully.

Randy