Samuel M. Quincy

“ Smart young officer rushes up: “Hallo, Captain Quincy! thought it must be you. How are you?” “Well,” said I, “I’m glad you thought it was I; but whether it’s you or not I’m sure I don’t know, for I should say I had never set eyes on you before.” “What, you don’t know the man you identified yesterday?” And it turned out to be a lieutenant of a Western regiment, and fellow-prisoner, all of whose clothing in the Libby consisted of shirt, trowsers, and army blanket pinned over his shoulders. ”

“ Just had a visit from Joshua Munroe,—and a cheering visit, indeed,—a descendant of Israel Munroe of Lexington fight, and here an Israelite among the Philistines. Rebel soldier, just leaving for his regiment, shakes hands all round with our men, who enjoin him to take care of himself. And how soon these men may be putting daylight through each other! [Pg 17] Note: I have experienced from rebel privates almost uniform kindness, good-fellowship, camaraderie; they treat one as fellow-soldier. And as for our men, they fraternize as though the strawberry mark of brotherhood was on every arm. ”

“ The Sanitary Commission received us with open arms and some delicious milk-punch, and in a few minutes we were under full steam out of rebeldom, Sergeant Holloway and I leaning on the guards, watching the foam fly past, and singing, sotto voce,—“We’re going home, we’re going home, we’re going home to die no more!”
We were two days on board the flag-of-truce boat. The next cot to mine was occupied by a man of a Massachusetts regiment, taken at the first Bull Run. He was almost a skeleton, and the worst case of chills and fever I ever saw. ”

“ The train at once became a menagerie, wherein the Yankee wild beasts were stirred up and stared at by the town. One citizen, I remember, was turned out of the car by a rebel sergeant for insulting the prisoners. They took us out at last, one or two rebs who had died in the night being first served. Finally, about evening, they took the two Yankee captains, in almost an upside-down position, with heads in straw and feet in air, through the town to the hospital, women coming to the windows with various expressions of countenance, pity being the scarcest. ”

“ I had seen the Richmond paper with the official list of Yankees paroled from the Libby, among whom were several whom I knew to be Pope’s officers; and I determined not to rot another day, as food for Confederate vermin, without claiming my rights as prisoner of war. ”

“ At all events, it’s such a victory as they can’t stand a repetition of; and now, if the North will pour in reinforcements, there may be a glimmer of daylight for the cause, if not for me.
A man has come into this room, wounded at Port Republic, First Sergeant Seventh Ohio, the most awful specimen of emaciation that I ever saw or would have believed consistent with the vital spark. The articulation of each joint, covered only by the tense polished skin, is as distinct as in a skeleton. ”

“ And Stephen, my friend, man of culture, reading, and intellect, whose only complaint of camp life was the loss of time and opportunity for the growth of mind,—that such lights should be forever extinguished by the bullets of men so few degrees above the brute level, saddens the soul. ”

“ What is happening behind the impenetrable curtain between us and the North? Until the news that God has abdicated and Satan reigns is confirmed beyond a peradventure, so long will I believe that the right will triumph in the end. ”

“ To lie a crippled and helpless butt for the exulting Philistine and his women ten thousand times worse than himself, while such tremendous history is being made of which we can only guess at the reality, is a living death. ”

“ And the first act of the free man aforesaid was to purchase some underclothes at the furnishing store, which luckily had not closed for the night, and to proceed therewith to the bath-room, where hot water and soap speedily restored that self-respect which is so difficult to retain after one is conscious of not being the only inhabitant of one’s garments. ”

“ An interval of broken oblivion in the dark car, with occasional wakings to a semi-consciousness of rumbling wheels, brakes, and once familiar railroad sounds, mingled strangely with groans, cries, stench, squalor, and misery. ”

“ All the insult, all the bitterness and ill-treatment, have come from officers and citizens of high position in society, and from the women, whose envenomed tongues are let loose upon the wounded prisoner without mercy. ”

“ This, in my opinion, is for the country the very moment of convulsion and travail, out of which some new state of things,—the commencement of some new era,—for better or for worse, will surely come. “When the pain is sorest, the child is born; and the night is darkest before the dawn of the day of the Lord at hand.” ”

“ We plunged over the ditch and crashed through a wood, out of which came Crane of the Third Wisconsin, covered with blood, and reeling in his saddle, until after about a quarter of a mile we came to a fence with a wheat-field beyond. ”

“ Sergeant Henry Holloway, Fifth Connecticut: the only one with whom I can fraternize at all; a railroad man, engine driver, etc., infected with the insubordinate ideas natural to his regiment; otherwise, a good fellow.
Captain ——, —— ——, selfishness incarnate. It takes all sorts of men to make up a world, but let us hope that it takes few such as he.
Thursday, September 25.—Great news in yesterday’s paper. It seems Pope’s officers have been paroled. That is a glimmer of daylight, and looks as if the winter might not be passed in shop ward No. 7, or the Libby. ”

“ I confess to embracing the staff when I got aboard, and realized that Jeff. Davis himself couldn’t take me away without a fight. But before they let us go aboard there was a long and to us incomprehensible delay of nearly two hours, during which we lay on the grass just above the landing and watched the boat, the flag, and the blue uniforms, with longing eyes. ”

“ His wound was severe, and the surgeon had expressed doubts of saving the arm. We all remonstrated against the barbarity of handcuffing the only man whom it would really hurt. No use: he had got his orders, and on went the irons. Bush didn’t say a word, but, after the sergeant had gone, with a sharp stick which his neighbor whittled out for him, and a piece of string poked into the lock of the handcuff, succeeding in pulling back the catch, and slipped one wrist out. The other, he didn’t mind. Before the ward surgeon came round the next morning, he slipped it in again. ”

“ The men next me gave me water and a knapsack for my head, a man came along with a canteen of whiskey and I got a drink. The moon rose full over the trees, and the cannonade recommenced. I got a piece of the wounded rebel’s blanket next me over my shoulder, lay as near him as I could ”

“ Up and down stairs with ease, confidence, and grace, is somewhat of an attainment.
Thursday, 9th.—Struggled out to pond and washed; first decent wash for three months. Had to steal a piece of black soap, and push out a board over the mud,—hard work for a cripple. Stopped in at carpenter’s shop and saw Dr. Hay slice an arm off, secundum artem.
October 13.—Suffering with the first cold snap. The sergeant’s wound keeps every window open, and we might as well or better be sub Jove frigido. Rumors of small-pox pervade the air. ”

“ When, however,—I should think about 3 P.M.,—there were about five or six of us left, and I the only Yankee, a sudden rush of men through the woods and stampede of wagons down the road, with an accompaniment of “Yankees [Pg 9] are coming!” swept every sound man away from us. Every man that had legs used them at double quick. ”

“ An awful hole in foot and little one in leg, at the bottom of which the bullet was plainly visible. Seeing this, the Confederate gentleman to whom I then belonged was seized with a desire to perform a surgical operation with the knife referred to, but yielded to my remonstrance and request that he would be satisfied with having put it in, and allow some gentleman of the medical staff to undertake the bullet’s extraction. ”