Michael Hileman Memoirs, part 8

	transcribed by Harold D. Hileman, hhileman@ix.netcom.com
	November, 1999

	Copyright (c)1999 by Harold D. Hileman

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7 - PRISON

We were first taken to Rossville Springs where a strong guard was put around us. 
This was a very beautiful place. We arrived here in time to see Longstreet 
attacking Moccasin Point. This was protected by Rosecrans with artillery. The 
Rebels put fifty thousand men before the deadly fire of our men, in the rifle 
pits, and from the heavy artillery. But they were compelled to soon give way in 
the face of the awful fire of our men, leaving about three thousand dead and 
wounded on the field. They retired to Lookout Mountain at which they at once 
proceeded to fortify. 

We stayed at Rossville Springs until about four o'clock the following day when 
we were taken to Ringgold by about fifty infantry. From there we were taken to 
Buzzard's Roost by about the same number of Wheeler's cavalry. They took clothes 
and everything that was worth taking from us. They took my boots and gave me an 
old pair of canvas shoes which were a mile too big for me. At that time it was a 
disgrace to wear canvas shoes. We traveled all day, and into the night, without 
anything to eat. Upon arriving at Buzzard's Roost, our fast was broken by a 
chunk of corn bread and cup of cold water. We were turned into a bull pen or a 
stockade. There were about as many in our crowd in the pen when we were dumped 
in. 

Here we stayed until the middle of the next day when we were started to Richmond 
by railroad. We stopped every night and were put in bull pens for safe keeping. 
We were in route for Richmond from October 22nd to November 1st. We were put 
into Libby Prison for one night, but that was so much overcrowded we were moved 
to the  Royster Building which had been a tobacco warehouse. In this building 
there were about five hundred of us prisoners combined, one hundred on each 
floor, as close as we could lie together. We had drawn only three days rations 
during the journey, so were quite ready for a decent meal. We had some 
Confederate money, which we hadn't been relieved of, and with this we managed to 
buy some food while in route.

In our new quarters we had one ration a day, this was at nine o'clock, and we 
had the luxury of white bread and meat occasionally. I was appointed to draw 
rations for the five hundred, and in other ways be responsible for the behavior 
of the household. 

Soon after our incarceration in this miserable place and incident occurred which 
caused considerable of a stir. A fine fat dog, belonging to one of the 
Confederate officers, followed some of the officers in one day. Some of the boys 
immediately hit upon the idea of making a feast out of  it. So while their 
attention were directed elsewhere, the dog was quickly captured and put into a 
kind of a closet. 

After the departure of the officers, the boys confided to me what they had done. 
They were happy in the anticipation of the feast to be had of the valuable dog. 
The poor dog was soon cut up into a good many pieces and we soon had it cooking 
in tin cans, or anything else that would serve the purpose of a boiling pot. In 
this operation we made splendid use of the gas lights by cooking the meat over 
them. We were all just starving when the meat was ready to eat, and it surely 
tasted better to us than any meat we ever had. There was one thing we were sadly 
lacking in and that was bread.

The owners of the dog came back in search of the valuable animal. They were so 
sure that we had made away with it that they declared that there would be no 
rations given to us the next day unless the dog was produced the next morning at 
roll call. Of course it would be impossible to produce the dog. There was only 
one thing for us to do, and that was to quietly submit to the depravation of our 
day's rations. But, we were not going to be without food entirely on that 
account. 

One of the guards was a good fellow, which facts we had happily discovered. So I 
proposed to him that we would give him one dollar bill for every one hundred 
loaves of bread that he would furnish us. He readily agreed to this, as one 
dollar greenback was worth ten dollars in Confederate money. Luckily I had 
secreted five one dollar bills in such a place the Rebels wouldn't think of 
looking for em. One of the 40th Ohio boys lost five hundred dollars in gold to 
the Rebels when we were taken. If he had only let us know that he had so much 
money, we could have hidden it in such a way that they wouldn't have gotten it. 

We were lucky in having an expert penman engraver. He was so very expert that 
our supply of greenbacks didn't give out very soon. For three greenbacks we got 
three hundred loaves of bread, so we didn't suffer so much in being deprived of 
our day's rations. There was a little of the dog soup remaining, so that made 
the bread go down real well. 

It must be remembered that the army contained many experts in all the arts and 
professions, and fortunately we had some of them among our number. One was a 
jeweler and he made his art highly useful to us in the time of need. Another was 
an expert carver, he was a Norwegian. We managed to get a laurel root from the 
guards at Libby, through one of their own guards, who had been a Union man, and 
was a friend to us. He had been pressed into the Confederate service. A Libby 
guard secured the Laurel roots for him to sell. 

Out of these roots we made pipes and decorated them with gold, made from gold 
pins, which our captors evidently didn't know the value of, or else they would 
have taken them from us. Gold was a mighty precious thing in the Confederacy. 
Our carver and jeweler made pipes which were highly prized by the Rebels. We 
received one hundred dollars for each one of them in Confederate money. 

I was held accountable for the behavior of the whole house. We had some fellows 
from New York City who were disreputable and they gave me considerable trouble. 
Finally they took the property of some of the other boys and refused to give it 
up. So I was compelled to report them to the officer in charge. He threatened 
them with a "taste of hell" at Bell Island, if they failed to mend their ways - 
that was sufficient. We could see the prisoners at Bell Island from our 
position, and their condition was all the warning our mean ones needed to make 
them greatly improve their ways. The misery of the other fellows we could 
plainly see. They were almost naked and their tents were almost totally 
destroyed. 

Those of our boys who had been addicted to the liquor habit were incessant in 
their ploy for that drink. The guards could get all the apple jack they wanted 
for ten cents a quart and they sold it to the prisoners, when they felt safe in 
doing so, at exorbitant prices. Had they been detected in this, they would have 
been very severely dealt with. For minor disobedience they could be sent to the 
front. I pleaded with the guards not to sell any of our boys liquor because it 
would make us very dire trouble. And in this, we really had very little trouble 
as the guards realized that it was a very serious matter for all concerned. 

In our correspondence with the folks at home we were under close censorship, and 
oh, what a joy it was to get word from the loved ones at home. None but those 
who actually had such experience could realize what our longings for home was 
like. 

An incident occurred the second day of our incarceration, in this place of 
misery, which helped us a great deal in our privations, in the way of getting 
news to the outside world, which gave us hope for better times ahead. I happened 
to look up, and across the street, when my attention was attracted by a lady 
waiving her hand to me, and soon saw she was trying to communicate with me in 
the deaf and dumb language. I made her understand that I would bring someone who 
could communicate with her. So I hurried upstairs to find someone there if 
possible, and in this I was successful. Immediately after calling for such a 
want, a young fellow from New York came forward and said, "Yes, I had a deaf and 
dumb sister and I learned to talk with her all right."   "Well come, come along 
quick", I said, "there is a lady upstairs, across the street, who wants to talk 
to us."  She was waiting for us, and looking up and down the street to make sure 
no one was watching her. 

Our boy proved that he was quite proficient in the language. The first question 
was, "how many are there of you in the building and how are you being treated?",  
she asked, especially concerning our food. We told her that the most substantial 
part of our rations was cornbread which was served in bricks, or rather in 
pieces, cut to about the size and shape of the ordinary brick. Each brick to 
feed two men for two days. She then asked us if we would like to have some 
reading matter. This certainly delighted us for we had been forbidden to have 
reading matter of any description. She said she was a teacher of the dumb 
language, and she surely was an expert. 

The next day she smuggled some newspapers and magazines to us by a guard whom 
she no doubt had to bribe. We eagerly devoured the news. We found to our 
surprise that there were about thirty thousand Union prisoners in Richmond. 
Libby was the largest prison,  it was about three or four blocks distance from 
our prison, or the "Royster House" as it was known. From our lady friend we got 
Union newspapers which let us know what was going on throughout the South. We 
came to the conclusion that she was a Union spy, but of course it was out of the 
question for her to reveal her mission there, for our prison walls were full of 
ears. 

Our first morning work was to do a skirmish duty. This was to make a very close 
examination of our trousers and shirts for greybacks. They became so thick that 
our situation was desperate in that alone. We had nothing to wash ourselves in. 
To wash our hands and face we just rinsed off at the faucet, there was one on 
each floor. 

We had plenty of tobacco, which we got in the presses, which had been left un-
emptied, but the Rebels thought they had them locked against us too strong for 
us to get at it. As necessity is the mother of invention, we soon found a way to 
get at the tobacco by opening up the presses. It happened in this way....one day 
as we were down at the cookhouse after the provisions, I spied an iron rod, and 
thought it to be just the thing to serve the purpose of a lever for opening up 
the tobacco presses. Of course the guards didn't suspect the use we were putting 
it to, or we would have been short in our tobacco for many a day. But as it was, 
we were plentifully supplied with it, as long as we were in the Royster House.

We found a way to get fresh meat beside the occasional chunk we got in our 
rations, which was mule flesh. There was a sewer that lead to the James River 
from our prison. Up this large sewer came the big, fat wharf rats which was the 
new fresh meat that we got. Pressed by a continuing gnawing hunger, we decided 
to try the rodents for meat. It is usually no small job to catch a rat, but 
fortunately I remembered how to make a figure four trap, which art we learned in 
the wilds of Pennsylvania. It was very successful. Those who wanted fresh meat 
stood at the block, got a big fat rat as he was caught in the fatal trap. It was 
rather hard for me to stomach the idea of eating such animals, but the truth is 
we found them really very palatable. But I must confess that I ate the meat as 
seldom as I could. 

The pork that was given to us in our rations was positively unfit for even a 
starving man to eat. There was almost a salt famine in the South and the Rebels 
tried to preserve the pork by packing it in wood ashes. In this they failed 
miserably as was evidenced by the great quantities of maggots in the pork. The 
little portion of it that seemed fit to eat was so full of alkali that it gave 
us diarrhea in a good many instances. One young fellow had it so bad that he 
died of it. 

We had another sad death about that time. A fine young fellow was scalded 
accidentally while cooking his rat. The boiling water, being spilled over his 
neck and shoulders, and burned him so badly that he died of it. His cries of 
agony, and pleading for to take him home, was heartrending. 

Those of us who kept busy suffered least from homesickness. One occupation we 
found was to make bone toothpicks from the bones of the meat in our rations. 
This was done by sawing the bones into the rough dimensions of the picks and 
then smoothing them down by rubbing with bricks. We quite readily disposed of 
them to the guards for sweet potatoes and peanuts. We soon found a way to roast 
the peanuts. The sweet potatoes were worth ten dollars per bushel in Confederate 
money. So it may be seen that with our rats, our yams, our peanuts, and the 
prison rations, we were in no danger of starving. 

There were many acts of kindness, and utter unselfishness, done to one another 
in this miserable place, which shall always remain in my memory, to soften my 
judgment of the selfish deeds of men to each other in other times. It is only 
too sad that the same generous spirit doesn't go in men in times of peace. We 
had one great big, strong, generous and kind-hearted fellow, Dan Dowd, who did 
so many acts of kindness as to the sick and helpless that it would surely seem 
that he was entitled to a better place than many in the next world. Many a night 
he cooked for and nursed his helpless fellows until the night was more than half 
gone. The memory of those splendid acts will never be forgotten by those of us 
who witnessed them. 

Now and then we were cheered by a communication from our lady friend across the 
street when she indicated that our boys had just won a battle. Then those of us 
who had the strength enough to cheer did our best to make a demonstration for 
"old glory", and we had to be very much debilitated when we would not do this. 

The next affair to take place while we were here, that always remained fresh in 
my memory, was when several officers came amongst us with rolls of writing paper 
in their hands. It was soon after the winning an important battle by General 
Grant. They tried every inducement to have us take the oath of allegiance to the 
Confederacy, but there was not a man who would exchange his misery for dishonor. 
We all vowed that we would stay in prison until the maggots ate the flesh from 
our bones, before we would desert our flag. 

One day soon after this there were some officers who came to us to take a 
descriptive roll before sending us home, which they said would take place within 
the next few days. At this news, some of the boys were jubilant, but some of we 
older ones were not so ready to believe their lie. That day, as I passed Libby 
Prison, one of our officers who was confined there with the rest of the 
officers, dropped to me a little piece of folded paper in which was written "We 
go to Danville, Virginia, some old tobacco houses. Hell is what it is". Also 
adding, "It's all a lie that we are going home."  While this was really no worse 
than I expected, I hadn't for a minute thought that there was a word of truth in 
their promise.