Robert Emory Park

“ Knowles will send only those who have lost an arm or leg, fearing the others, if allowed to breathe once more their free Southern air, may recover too speedily, and soon return with fresh ardor to their places in the Confederate army. Instead of being treated with the generous kindness due brave men, wounded and captured in honorable battle, we are talked to and treated as if we were criminals, and our minds, instead of having their asperities softened by magnanimity, are actually daily hardened and steeled against our uncharitable, harsh and cruel captors. ”

“ He is our uncomplaining, dignified, heroic, vicarious sufferer. How dull and leaden must be the heavy hours in his weary, weary prison cell. May a Gracious God sustain and comfort him in his wretchedness and misery.
On the 26th my last, fond hope was completely crushed. General Kirby Smith surrendered his forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department to General Canby at Baton Rouge. My very last hope has gone. What shall I do? If the alternative of banishment from the country was offered, I would unhesitatingly accept it. But it is the hated oath of allegiance or perpetual imprisonment. ”

“ With the roar of the cannon and rattling of musketry falling upon his ear, or with a fair vision of his dear childhood's home before his mind, and a prayer he lisped in days gone by at his mother's knee, his eyes close, his breath ceases, and the brave prisoner's life is ended. Horrid war has given another noble heart to death, and taken the sunshine from another happy home. ”

“ We freely offered up our lives and property in defence of principle and right and honor. A stern, conscientious sense of duty has influenced us to fight, bleed and suffer all these terrible years. The Yankees of New England first practiced and taught us the doctrine of secession, and then by force forbade us to apply it peaceably. The heroic men who fought, bled and died, are in prison or in exile for this principle, this inherent right, ought not and will not be known in history as traitors. ”

“ Superior power has incarcerated these men in a loathsome prison, indignities and insults are daily heaped upon them, and they have no ability to resent them. Starvation sometimes almost drives them to reluctant submission, but the whole Yankee Government, with its immense army of more than a million men, cannot shake their confidence in the truth and justice of their cause, nor crush their resolute, undaunted spirits. ”

“ None but a base and cowardly despotism would force a man to swear against his own conscience, to do something he can only do through perjury. To swear under such circumstances is to suppress the noblest impulses of the heart. Is it not cruel and contemptible to take advantage of our misfortunes, of our dire extremity, and offer us the oath so repeatedly and insultingly, especially when it is well known we would never take it except under compulsion? ”

“ It is very hard, bitter, indeed, to endure this cruel, crushing confinement, while our comrades need our aid so greatly. Still I realize the fact that while painful and harrowing to one's feelings to be pent up within despised prison walls during such trying times, it is no disgrace to be a prisoner of war, if not captured under dishonorable circumstances. ”

“ At Chancellorsville, in command of D. H. Hill's old division, he led the advance, and swept everything before him. His clarion voice shouting, "Forward, men, over friend or foe," electrified his troops, and they were irresistible. They pushed on, under his gallant leadership, and completely routed the panic-stricken soldiers of "Fighting Joe Hooker." After Generals Jackson and A. P. Hill were wounded, General Rodes was in supreme command, but he modestly and patriotically yielded to General J. E. B. Stuart, who had been sent for by General Pendleton of the artillery. ”

“ We move about, or sit on our beds, silent, almost motionless, in the speechless agony of woe, in the mute eloquence, of unutterable despair. After four long weary years of battle and marches, of prayers and tears, of pain and sacrifice, of wounds and woe, of blood and death, such an ending of our hopes, such a shocking disappointment, is bitter, cruel, crushing. Few tears are shed; there is no time for weakness or sentiment. The grief is too deep, the agony too terrible to find vent through the ordinary channels of distress. Hope seems forever buried, and naturally too. ”

“ April 2d and 3d—The appalling news of the evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg has reached us, and the Yankee papers are frantic in their exultant rejoicings. We have feared and rather expected this dreaded event, for General Lee's excessive losses from battle, by death and wounds, prisoners, disease and desertion, with no reinforcements whatever, taught us that the evacuation of the gallant Confederate capital was inevitable. ”

“ The picture of his loved home flits across the dying soldier's mind; dear faces seem to look down upon him, but no gentle hands ease his pain, no loving lips whisper words of peace and comfort,—the suffering forms of his sick and wounded comrades are all the friends he sees, their groans all the prayers he hears. As he fights his last fight with the grim monster, no doubt he sees floating aloft the flag he has so often followed—he hears his commander's cheering words urging his men on to the fray ”

“ Major Brady was interviewed; but showed himself anything but a high-toned gentleman, falsified promises made, and did not repudiate the charge of harsh and unsoldierly conduct towards prisoners of war, nor remove the cause of complaint. His whole course is a reproach and scandal to himself and his Government. He brands us "Rebels," and treats us as if we were criminals of the lowest type. We should be proud of the noble name "Rebel." ”

“ The gentleman and scientific soldier is removed from power and disgraced, while the ruffian, robber, house and mill-burner and cattle thief is given higher office, lauded to the skies and made a hero of. It is matter of sincere congratulation that our chivalrous Southern leaders, Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Hampton, Rodes, and others, are made of far different material from that which makes up the bloody butcher Grant, the bummer Sherman, the barn-burner Sheridan, the mulatto-women-lover Custer, and the degraded Beast Butler. ”

“ Almost every name held in honor is that of a Rebel: Rebels give names to our universities and colleges, to our charitible institutions, to our counties, cities and streets. The greatest and noblest of our dead, the purest and most honored of our living, bear the grand old names of Rebels. No efforts of Lincoln, Seward, Stanton, Beast Butler, Provost Marshal Brady and others of that ilk, brought into dishonorable notoriety by the accidents of war can make the noble title "Rebel" odious. ”

“ Our martyred Savior was called seditious, and I may be pardoned if I rejoice that I am a Rebel, a Rebel against tyranny and oppression. I have as my Rebel comrades the best, brightest and bravest of my native South, men whose names are garnered up in her heart, whose valor sheds unfailing lustre upon her arms, and whose fame is among the jewels of her crown, and over the hero dust of many of whom her most precious tears have been shed. ”

“ They are without comforts, deprived of the bare necessities of life even, and have no acquaintances or friends in the North upon whom they might call for needed relief. Would that I could supply their pressing wants. These resolute, suffering private soldiers and their comrades in the field are the true heroes of the war: they, and not the men of rank, deserve the most honor and gratitude. ”

“ The armies of Dick Taylor and Kirby Smith are still left, and no one should give up the cause so long as there is an armed man in the field, and I feel that I would be disgraced if I should consent to such a course while we have an army ready to do battle, and our President is still firm and resolute, and even now perhaps with the army of his brother-in-law, General Taylor. A bold young North Carolinian, Lieutenant Hugh Randolph Crichton, in my division, openly denounces the precipitation of those who have agreed to swallow the detested oath. ”

“ Language is too poor to adequately describe the mean, petty rascality of a man so low and depraved as to rob a poor, destitute, powerless prisoner, and of so small an amount, great and important however to so very needy a person. Major Hanvey and Lieutenant Arrington had money stolen in the same way. We have no redress, and must submit to the unpunished and unrebuked robbery. Some of the officers entertain us by singing; Lieutenant Morgan, of the First North Carolina troops, is leader, and his favorite songs are "The Vacant Chair" and "All Quiet Along the Potomac To-Night." ”

“ The native Virginians of Winchester and the Valley are as true as steel, and the ladies—God bless and protect them!—are as heroic and self-denying as were the noble Spartan mothers. Indeed, they are the equals of the highest, truest heroines of the grandest days of the greatest countries. ”

“ Many who were quite sick—some of the scurvy afflicted among them—hobbled slowly and painfully out of their wards, and the long, cold hall was soon crowded with the sick, the lame and the halt. Such a rigid course is senseless and cruel. It shows weakness, cowardice and malice. ”

“ The only newspaper we are permitted to buy or receive is the "Philadelphia Inquirer," a very bitter, boastful and malignant sheet, full of falsehoods about the Southern people and Confederate armies. Its price to our Yankee guards is five cents, to the sick and penniless prisoners is ten cents. A young "galvanized" man—i.e., one ready to take the oath when allowed—named C., who claims to be from both Alabama and Kentucky, is one of the nurses in our ward. ”

“ December 21st, 22d, 23d and 24th—Our prison circle has been thrown into a state of feverish excitement by the perpetration of one of the most brutal and cowardly outrages ever inflicted upon unarmed, helpless, wounded prisoners of war and brave, honorable gentlemen and soldiers. Lieutenant Morgan, of North Carolina, and Lieutenant Hudgins, of Virginia, were apprehended in a very daring and reckless attempt to escape from the Point, by seizing a small boat fastened to the river bank and rowing to the Virginia shore. ”

“ The surgeons promised me, in event our army was forced to evacuate Winchester, to send me off in an ambulance, but, a few minutes after, shot and shell were fired into the hospital building, crashing resistlessly through roof, walls, chimneys, etc., and knocking down bricks, plastering, planks and splinters over the helpless wounded and dying, and the demoralized surgeons, hastily detailing two or three of their number to remain with the wounded, fled incontinently, forgetting, in their anxiety to escape capture, all thought of their promise to carry me along with them. ”

“ As I lay on my hard and narrow bunk, my mind wanders to home and mother, and the recollections of the good things she has prepared for me in the past comes welling up before me, and drives away sleep. ”

“ After four years of gallant resistance, heroic endurance and incredible suffering, we find ourselves broken in fortunes, crushed, ruined; yet, amid our misery and wretchedness, though sad and sick at heart, we have no blush of shame. We feel deep, unutterable regret at our failure, but no humiliation. ”

“ The poor fellows suffering from scurvy are a sad sight, as they walk in their hospital garb of shirt and drawers (which are oftentimes either too large and long, or too tight and short for the wearers) , from their beds to the stove. Their legs and feet are so drawn as to compel them to walk on tiptoe, their heels being unable to reach the floor. How necessary a few vegetables are to these helpless sufferers. ”

“ The joy and gladness they evince when we enter their city serves to encourage and inspire us, and the sorrow and pain we see in their fair countenances, and often hear them express, with trembling lips and streaming eyes, as we leave them to endure the cruel and cowardly insults and petty persecutions of Sheridan's hirelings, fill our hearts with indescribable regret. ”

“ Courage and humanity accompany each other; cowardice and cruelty are comrades. After alternately standing and sitting on the floor for hours, the gate of the dreaded barracks was opened, and we were again ushered into the prison proper. ”

“ Born on Southern soil, reared under its institutions, nurtured upon its traditions, I cannot consent to take the hated oath. The very thought is repulsive in the extreme.
April 26th to 29th—The distressing news of the surrender of General Johnston to Sherman in North Carolina is announced in words of exultation by the Northern papers. The cup of bitterness and sorrow seems full. Those officers who had declined the oath were again ordered out, the roll called a second time, and the oath again offered. ”

“ General Rodes was a precise and somewhat stern military man, of resolute expression and soldierly bearing, and enjoyed the implicit confidence of his superior officers, as well as his troops. A fragment of shell struck him behind the ear, and in a few hours this brave, skillful and trusted officer yielded up his heroic life as a holocaust to his country's cause. [1] He married the popular and accomplished Miss V. H. Woodruff, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and left also an infant son, his namesake. ”