Following the American Civil War Sesquicentennial with day by day writings of the time, currently 1863.

Three Years in the Confederate Horse Artillery — George Michael Neese.

February 4 — Some more prisoners went out to-day for exchange; this time they were called in regular order and taken in turn as they were captured. But when the provost marshal stepped up on the wall this morning to commence the calling, he looked over the assembled crowd inside and remarked: “There are lots of good Rebels in there, and I hate to give you up.”

January 17 — There were some prisoners taken out of the pen to-day for exchange. In order to find legitimate material for barter the whole camp was paraded this forenoon, and the Yanks passed along the lines picking out the weakest and puniest men in camp as the best paying commodity on the market, for exchange, utterly disregarding when and where they were captured.

January 13 — This far in the new year the weather has been very disagreeable, windy, and cold. Last night about nine o’clock a man died, frozen to death or starved in bed, in the next tent to mine. The orderly sergeant of our company called for four volunteers to bear the corpse to the dead house; I volunteered for one. The night was bitter cold, with a full moon in a clear, wintry sky which rendered the night almost as bright as day. As we bore the body of our comrade through the silent street the pale silvery moonbeams with kindly light played softly over the cold thin white face of the dead. The moonlit wavelets of the Bay, as they kissed the pebbly strand, whispered a soft vesper hymn, a fitting requiem, as we moved away with our silent burden toward the house of the dead. When we arrived at the dead house, which is a large Sibley tent, the Great Reaper had already harvested seven sheaves garnered in silent waiting for the morrow’s interment. The burial hour here is daily at four o’clock in the afternoon, and the man that we carried to the dead house made the eighth one that died from four o’clock until nine. Death with its fatal shears clips a brittle thread of life here, and with insatiable greed calls for “next” every hour of the day and night and gathers on an average twenty-five passengers for the daily train to the Silent City. The man that we carried to the dead house was a Virginian from Floyd County. He attended roll-call yesterday evening; I saw him standing in ranks, but he looked wan and frail.

January 1, 1865 — This is Happy New Year. A cold northwest wind is sweeping through camp in a regular hurricane style, with all the fierceness and chilliness of a midwinter tempest.

To commence the new year with an inauspicious outlook we drew but half rations to-day. All of us in our tent went to bed at noon to keep from freezing; at sunset we got up and stood out in ranks and shiveringly answered evening roll-call, then went back to bed to spend the remainder of this Happy New Year in trying to have pleasant dreams of some warm, steaming, delicious New Year dinner somewhere far, far away. On Christmas Day a hungry Alabamian ate five pounds of raw bacon and six pounds of bread in one sitting, at the commissary department of this prison. The poor fellow was a large man and no doubt had been hungry a long time, but the enormous bulk that he stowed away was too much for his unused digestive apparatus, and it partially failed to respond to the abrupt overfeeding process, which sent the man to the hospital, where he eventually died from the effects of his little Christmas dinner.

Point Lookout is the southern extremity of St. Mary’s County, Md., and at the mouth of the Potomac; it is a low narrow tongue of sandy land, washed on one side by the waves of Chesapeake Bay and on the other by the waters of the Potomac. It is about ninety miles from Baltimore, and almost the same distance from Norfolk, Va., and by the Potomac River route it is about ninety miles from Washington. The prison proper covers about twenty acres of ground, and is only some four or five feet above high tide. The prison wall is a tight board fence about fourteen feet high, with a sentry walk on the outside three feet from the top. Eight feet from the wall on the inside is a furrow ditch eight inches wide and six inches deep, which constitutes the dead line, and any prisoner who at any time steps across that line is liable to be shot by the sentinels on the wall without any further notice. There are twelve sentinels — all negroes — on the wall, walking their post all the time day and night, with loaded guns, ready and anxious to shoot the first Rebel that violates the rigid regulations of the prison camp. Large lanterns near the wall on the inside throw a brilliant light along the wall, and on both sides of the dead line all night.

The prison is laid off into ten streets, and the prisoners are divided into ten divisions, and the divisions into ten companies. The divisions are numbered from one to ten, and the companies are designated by letter, as in a regiment in an army. Each division occupies one street and bears the street number; I was assigned to Company A, Ninth Division. Every company has an orderly sergeant and a sick sergeant, both Rebels. The sergeant’s duty is to form the company and call the roll twice a day, evening and morning, superintended by a Yankee sergeant in each division, who looks over the roll and sees that the men answer to their names promptly. A while after morning roll-call our company sergeant forms us in double ranks and marches us to the cook-house, where we draw our day’s ration of meat, already cooked. A day’s ration of meat is four ounces, and as the meat is cooked the day before, we always get it cold.

When the company arrives at the cook-house the sergeant of the company and the landlord of the cookhouse, one on each side of the door, count us every time we go in. That is done to keep stray sheep from flanking in and nibbling each other’s pasture. In the cook-house dining-room is a table about fifteen inches wide, in shape a long hollow rectangle, with a few cooks scattered in the hollow to watch and see that we do the clean thing and act courteously toward each other, and especially to keep us from snatching our neighbor’s meat.

The sole furnishing of the breakfast table is about one hundred tin plates, placed about two feet apart, and when the table is ready to be acted on each plate contains a day’s ration of meat.

After we get in the cook-house we march up along the table, and that is the time the cooks in the hollow square watch us like hawks to keep us from stealing, for they know that we are always hungry and apt to snatch somebody else’s meat, especially those of us that do not belong to the church. By strict regulations we are not allowed to touch a ration of meat until the cooks or table managers have assigned each man to a plate; after the assigning is completed and a momentary silence reigns every guest, without any sign word or command, grabs up a ration of meat and leaves the hotel. Occasionally a man tries to flank in with a company not his own, but he is generally caught at it, and thrust aside, then put out, with little wailing and no picking of teeth.

About nine o’clock in the forenoon a detail from each company goes to the cook-house and draws the bread for the company. The bread is first-class, regular baker’s bread, nicely baked in twenty-eight ounce loaves, one loaf being a day’s allowance for two men; after the bread arrives at the company every two men draw one loaf, and the man that divides the loaf always gives his comrade first choice of pieces, which makes the divider very careful to cut the loaf as near the middle as possible. There are no messes here like there are in the army; every man has his own rations and keeps them separate, and eats what little he has when he pleases without calling in his neighbor, his bed-fellow, or his brother. Selfishness rules the hour and sways the whole camp, as everyone receives the same rations in quantity and quality. At twelve o’clock noon we are again formed in company and marched to the cook-house and ushered in by being counted; this time the table is furnished with tin cups full of what is here denominated bean soup, but it hardly deserves the name of soup, for by actual count on an average there are only six beans in a pint of thin bean water. A day’s rations all told is four ounces of meat, fourteen ounces of bread, and one pint of bean water. The rations we get are all good in quality, but much too diminutive in quantity; I have been hungry ever since I was captured. The meat we get is mostly pickled pork; twice a week we get fresh beef, and sometimes we get pickled beef, and that is salty enough to make a hound yell by biting in it. About once a week we get vegetable soup made of. a mixture of dried cabbage, pumpkin, carrot, and some other ingredients too tedious to mention. Once every two weeks we get a gill of vinegar to the man. This is done to keep our appetites whetted to a keen edge, so that if we get back to Dixie before the war ends we will be well prepared and able to clean up Jeff Davis’ whole commissary department in a few days; and the way I feel right now and the way everybody else around me feels, we could engulf all the edible resources of the Southern Confederacy in a few short weeks. The only remuneration the sergeant gets for his duty is double rations, and the soup he gets has more beans in it than we poor privates get; that alone is worth a considerable consideration in this lowly pen of starvation in a land of plenty.

The sick sergeant’s duties are very light. All he has to do is to report the sick in the company every morning after roll-call and draw their rations if they are too sick to walk to the cook-house.

The cooks in the cook-house are all Rebel prisoners. I have not seen a Yank in any of the cook-houses since I have been here, although there may be somewhere behind the scenes a Yank overseer who is directing the machinery of the cooking establishment and keeping his eye on these wily Rebel cooks.

To be a cook here is a position of considerable distinction. I would rather be a cook than a company sergeant, from the simple fact that a cook has good warm quarters to sleep and stay in, and they take good care of number one and help themselves to all the rations that they can devour.

I can tell a cook in camp anywhere I see him. They are all fat and greasy, and some of them are even a little saucy, and seem to be satisfied with prison life.

The prison is plentifully supplied with clear but bad water, obtained by digging holes in the sandy ground some ten or fifteen feet deep anywhere in the enclosure, the water seeping in from the river and bay. Nearly all the water is deleterious, rendered so by percolating through drifts of impure vegetable matter in the alluvial sand. The water is not fit to drink, as it produces a diarrhoea which sticks closer than a brother, and has already killed hundreds of our prisoners. The second day after I arrived here the water made me sick, with a violent diarrhoea that clung to me like a leech for several days, but I learned to do without drinking a drop of water, and by that means alone I survived the evil effects of its unwholesomeness.

The prisoners are domiciled in tents of all sorts and sizes, good, bad, and indifferent, old and new, Sibley, wall, and A tents, a regular assortment of all kinds.

The regulations for keeping the prison clean are of the first order, and are strictly enforced. Every weekday morning a detail of forty men is made in every division, for street-cleaning duty. The men are supplied with brooms, shovels, and wheelbarrows, and are required to sweep and clean the streets from side to side and end to end every day, and remove every speck of dirt of every kind and wheel it outside of the prison camp along the shore of the Bay, where the waves wash it away. On the Bay side of the prison are two large gates in the wall, which are thrown open every morning at sunrise and stand open until sunset. There is a strip of sandy beach about forty feet wide between the prison wall and the Bay, where we are allowed to roam at will from sunrise to sunset.

Every Sunday morning all the prisoners in camp are formed in single line on both sides of the streets for general inspection by the provost marshal general of the camp. Every prisoner is then required to appear in ranks, with a washed face, newly cleaned hands, and looking in general as sweet as circumstances will permit.

When all is ready for inspection the provost general and his staff make their appearance, mounted on horseback, and ride through every street in a sweeping gallop. They do very little actual inspecting, but let the virtue of the formality do the rest. At other times, however, when the weather is favorable the inspector is a little more circumspect, and occasionally finds a Rebel in ranks who greatly needs a powerful dose of soap and water, and the cleansing application is ordered to be applied immediately. Since I have been in prison I have already lived and survived whole weeks without washing my hands or face, yet I always wash for Sunday morning inspection. Washing hands and face is no small matter here, especially when the weather is cold and a man has to use Chesapeake Bay for a washbowl and utilize his house roof for a towel. The inconvenience is no trivial affair, even if we are spending our days in pure idleness and reveling in the luxuriant comforts and ingredients of a Yankee hotel, well supplied with an abundance of scarcity, the products of a rich country filled with hospitable and generous people.

We have preaching in prison every Sunday, the preachers being all domestic, made of local material, and raw at that. According to my poor judgment some of the sermons are as devoid of interest as old straw, and as dry as a fresh lime-kiln. However, I am too young to know much about sermons, and perhaps they are better than they seem under difficulties. Some of the men that try to preach are very young and are putting in their first shots in gospel gunnery. Their range is good and their aim first-class, but the ammunition is a little defective from the fact that the explosives used are too old and were damaged in their manufacture. However, if these gunners keep on shooting until they learn that the gun and ammunition both need a little improvement they will strike something after a while.

The house the preaching is held in is a long plank building and looks almost like a copy of our cookhouses. At one end is a little raised dais-like pulpit, which constitutes all the furnishing; there are no seats in it, and we have to take in the heavenly food just as we do our bean soup — take it standing.

The negro sentinels on the wall as a general thing are not meddlesome nor conspicuously insolent, yet some few of them occasionally manifest a spirit of low-grade tyranny which they ignorantly think naturally belongs to the dignity of the position they occupy — that of lording it over and governing the white folks. Several times I have seen sentinels strutting on their post, with a large yellow-backed pamphlet, perhaps a blood-and-thunder novel, conspicuously sticking under the cartridge box belt; but that did not hurt us. A yellow-backed novel backgrounded by a blue uniform crammed full with the raw material of a United States soldier draped in the midnight hue of Ham produces a wonderful color combination, and puts an innovation of recent evolution on the American sentry-beat to watch de white folks which was never dreamed of in the philosophy of our Revolutionary forefathers.

When I entered the prison gate I partially dropped dates of occurring events, as a life like this ought to be, in a man’s career, a hiatus that may fittingly be termed the “dark ages.” When the pangs of gnawing hunger are incessantly raging within and the scurvy and itch, accompanied with a numerous colony of low-grade parasites, creeping and crawling over the outside, with freedom’s sweet light blotted into blackness, and a man’s every movement watched and noted under the strict surveillance of a dark sentinel, what more appropriate term could be applied to these weary days and slowly dragging months than dark ages?

The first day after I arrived here the whole prison camp experienced the hability of a shrewd Yankee trick, in all its freshness of duplicity and dissimulation of the first water. About nine o’clock in the morning a Yankee sergeant passed through the streets, making the announcement for all the prisoners to report at the gate with all their baggage. In about four minutes I was at the gate and ready to step on the boat and sail away for fair Dixieland, with all my personal effects packed in a little haversack, my blanket on my shoulder, and my hopes away up at blood heat and still heating. When the prisoners were all assembled at the gate a squad of Yankee soldiers filed in through the gate and went all through the camp gathering up all the sick, the lame, and the playing off poorly that remained in the tents; in fact, they swept the camp clean of Company Q in general, marched them out right before our eyes, and sent them to Dixie on exchange. After they were out we were told to go back to our tents; then my hopes tumbled down and crept way below zero and remained there pondering for days on the depths of human trickery.

A few days after I arrived in prison I heard a negro soldier read from a Northern newspaper the following sentence: “General Sheridan has converted the Shenandoah Valley into a waste and howling wilderness.” That may be glorious news to a Northern editor or newspaper man, but if his wife and children lived in the Shenandoah Valley he would dip his pen in blacker ink and turn on quite a different light to promulgate the barbarous deed. Just when the severe weather set in, some time about the last of November, all the prisoners were formed in line for the especial purpose of holding a blanket show. We were told to be sure and have all our blankets on exhibition, good, bad, and indifferent. When the parade was ready for the judges a Yankee squad passed along the line and, without much ceremony, took every blanket from us, save one to each man throughout the whole camp. I have often read and heard about the inhumanity of man to man and the cold charity of this world, but on shell-out blanket day was the first time that I ever saw the priceless virtue frozen up in solid chunks.

I never heard of any plausible reason assigned for the cruel performance, but I suppose that it was done in the true spirit of might makes right; or perhaps such inhuman treatment is what some of the pure and pious psalm-singing Puritans call freezing out the fires of rebellion. But for aught I know, Jeff Davis’ benighted heathens may be practicing the same kind of meanness on Union prisoners this very day, but then our good people of the North ought to remember that they pronounce us Southerners “barbarians.” Therefore exalted civilization and pious enlightenment ought to blush with shame to hang its priceless diadem so low that its kindly light still leads its sanctified devotees to the shrine of the great transgression of returning evil for evil. Whenever and wherever enlightened civilization willingly retaliates and gives like for like with barbarism, the transaction never fails to put Christianity, with all its cherished virtues, on the sick list.

The true aspects, experiences, and characteristics of prison life in general can never be described, even by the most impressive writer, so that he who has never experienced its realities can form the faintest conception of the melancholy gloom that settles down like eternal night on the spirit of man and crushes hope to the dark recesses of its lowest stage, so that life itself becomes a burden that may be dragged, but too wearisome to bear. No painter’s palette ever held a color black enough to truthfully delineate the shadows that constantly hang around and overarch the pathway that a prisoner of war in these United States is forced to tread. Many of the prisoners are thinly clad and all of them are scantily fed. I slept on the damp sand for two months without any sign of blanket or bedding under me, and nothing but my shoe for a pillow. Old Boreas fiercely sweeps and howls across the prison walls, with his front, center and rear whetted to a keen edge by gliding across the icy waves of Chesapeake Bay, and the searching blast with frosty needles creeps through every crack and crevice in the habiliments of a shivering prisoner and chills to the very marrow in the bone. Every cold morning I see hundreds of prisoners walking briskly back and forth through the streets and along the edge of the Bay trying to warm themselves by active exercise in the rays of the rising sun.

Every cold night some few men freeze to death in bed, one of the direful effects of robbing us of our blankets when the cold weather set in. Even wood seems to be a scarce commodity in Uncle Sam’s vast realm, as we get a very scanty supply, and that is mostly green pine, which never fails to make more smoke than fire., The wood allowed each tent is not enough to keep a little fire more than a day in a week, and actually I have not seen nor felt a good fire this whole winter, and I have become so inured to the cold that I can endure it like a horse or dog.

There are about ten thousand prisoners in our pen, and in that vast crowd I have not seen one man smile or heard a hearty laugh since I have been here. Everyone moves around in almost sullen silence, with a sad countenance, and the whole crew looks as if they had just returned from a big funeral. No more does rollicking song or laughing merriment cheerfully ring with gleeful mood among the tents of the camping host, like it does around the bright evening camp-fires that blaze and dance on the leas of Dixie’s fair land, but all is hushed in grievous silence, for the austere discipline and rigid rules that govern this dismal prison life has dried up the very fountain of song; hunger, cold, and privations, in connection with bullets in the bottom of negro sentinels’ guns, have thoroughly quenched the spirit of merriment and laughter. Oh, had I the wings of a seagull I would fly and speed away from this wretched existence, to new feeding grounds, and once more gather around a happy camp-fire where Rebels rule the ranch.

October 21 — Our little steamer left Baltimore yesterday evening just before dark, and was steadily plowing its way down Chesapeake Bay all night, until this morning about nine o’clock, when we arrived at Point Lookout, Md., the place of our destination, and one of Uncle Sam’s delightful resorts for the accommodation of captured Rebels. Last night the air was damp, cold, and chilly, and when night fell on the Bay I wrapped my blanket around me and sat on top of our steamer, leaning against the wheel-house and rail, without sleeping a wink all night, gazing into the thick darkness that hung like a black pall over the silent water, with my thoughts busily engaged in plodding from whence to whither. After we disembarked we were subjected to another thorough search. This time we were formed in a hollow square and told to unwrap, spread out, and disgorge everything we had, and I saw more soiled shirts laid about on the sand than I ever saw before in one patch. After everything was on exhibition and ready for examination, the great chief of the searching board made the following little speech, with well measured and distinctly spoken words: “Now, men, if you have anything valuable about your person or effects in the way of watches, jewelry, or money, we give you an opportunity to turn it over to us, and we will put your name on it and deposit it at the provost marshal’s office and give you a certificate of deposit; and when you leave this prison, either on exchange or release, and present your certificate, we will return the goods left in our charge. But if you fail or refuse to comply with these regulations submitted in good faith, we will search you thoroughly right now, and if we find anything of the kind mentioned it will be confiscated for all time to come.”

And now a single instance to illustrate how close these Yanks search when they are on the least scent of suspicion, or when they suspect anything not in strict conformity with their regulations. One of our men had a plain gold ring with which he did not want to part under any consideration or circumstances, consequently he hid the ring in a small piece of bacon that he had in his haversack. He had cut a small gash in the fat part of the meat and stuck the ring within it, then closed the cut nicely by pressing the meat together. I have no idea where he got the little piece of bacon — perhaps he saved it especially for a jewel case, and had had it ever since we were captured. I do not know when he did the hiding, possibly immediately after he was captured; it certainly was a neat job, but the Yank found the ring. In accordance with their inflexible regulations they were about to confiscate the ring after they found it, but our man pleaded so earnestly and affectingly that at last they put his name on the ring and deposited it at the provost marshal’s office. He told them that it was not the intrinsic value of the ring nor any intention of evil upon his part that induced him to conceal it, but that it was through sincere admiration for the tender association connected with it that made him so loath to part with it. It was a precious memorial of something nearer than friendship — a souvenir from his deceased wife.

After the search and before the men put up their exhibits one of the authorities made the following characteristic and interesting proclamation: “All you men that have no good shirt would better appropriate one now, as you may not have another opportunity soon to obtain one at our establishment.”

Some of our men had three or four good shirts spread out on the sand, and that seemed to be more than our good Northern brethren thought that a poor Rebel was entitled to or needed, and, moreover, if we supplied ourselves from the superabundance of a comrade’s knapsack it would be a shirt saved for Uncle Sam.

I left my knapsack in Dixie, and consequently I have but one shirt, and that is in a state of decay and ready to disintegrate at various places almost any day, but my finer sensibilities of genteel comeliness revolted at the idea of securing a shirt that had been worn and soiled even by a better and cleaner man than I consider myself to be; furthermore, I did not feel mean enough to deprive any of my comrades of their legitimate property.

About middle of the day all the preliminaries for incarceration were concluded, and being thoroughly divested of everything except pure cheek wherewith a sentinel could be bribed or cajoled, we were marched up to the prison wall, the gate swung open, and we soon after bobbed up serenely inside of prison.

October 20 — The railroad ride that our Yankee friends so kindly furnished us last night was wearisome in the extreme, as we were shipped in box cars and had to strew ourselves on the floor like hogs. The night was cold and chilly, and although I tried to sleep some on the train, and knocked faithfully and perseveringly at the gates of dreamland, they failed to yield even for a respectable doze. At the Relay House, sometime about midnight, our train was side-tracked for about two hours, and in that time nine heavy freight trains passed us going west; our Yankee guard told us that the trains were all laden with supplies for General Sheridan’s army.

Little before day we arrived in the suburbs of Baltimore, left our box car cage and were marched to Fort McHenry, where we were turned into the fort yard like a herd of cattle. Then and there I unrolled my bed, and sunk down on Mother Earth to snatch a little sleep and have a few pleasant dreams about the thick gloriousness that floats around Uncle Sam’s prisoners of war. I slept until sunrise, and the first thing that my waking eyes beheld was a large three-masted ship, the City of New York, under full sail speeding like something alive across the harbor of Baltimore. That was the first ship I ever saw, and it was a beautiful and interesting sight; the thing moved as gracefully as a swan.

Fort McHenry is located on Whetstone Point near the City of Baltimore, and its guns command Baltimore Harbor. It is constructed of brick, and the present fort was built in 1799 and named in honor of James McHenry of Baltimore, who was President Washington’s first Secretary of War.

We remained in the fort grounds all day until this evening at sunset, when we boarded a little sidewheel steamer, name The Star.

October 19 — To-day we were marched from our quarters into a little hillside cross street in Harper’s Ferry, to the Provost Marshal’s office, where we went through the ordeal of a thorough search from cellar to garret, including knapsacks, haversacks, pockets, boots and shoes, hats and caps. Just to show how scrutinizingly the search was conducted, one man had a ten-cent United States greenback hidden in the toe of his sock and Mr. Yank found it.

The searching bee was held in a small room, and when I went through the shuffling process I saw about forty pocket-knives lying in a small tub, all of which had been extracted from the pockets of my countrymen that preceded me; and such an assortment of bygone cutlery I never saw before in one tub. The knives were in all stages of destruction and decay, and looked like a lot of ancient specimens from some old hunter’s relic case. If the cutlery that was found in these fellows’ pockets to-day bespeaks the condition of the Southern Confederacy, then Jeff Davis might as well take down his shingle now and go out of business before the cold weather sets in. However, I saw a few Yankee aides or clerks step up to the tub and select some of the best knives and put them in their pockets, without money and without price. While we were packed in the little side street waiting for the searching operation, a lady stood on an upper porch near by and threw some apples down into the densely packed crowd. I never saw such pushing and scrambling before, and I came very near being squeezed into a speck, and then got no apple. What are a few apples in a bunch of a hundred famished men, anyhow; but blessed are they who feed the hungry. After we were all searched we were marched to Sandy Hook, the first station below Harper’s Ferry on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, on the Maryland side of the Potomac. This evening at dark we were put on a train for shipment to Baltimore.

October 18 — I slept very little last night, as we camped near the railroad and almost under a trestle, and train after train passed over the trestle and kept up a fussy rumbling all night. This morning our friends of the One Hundred and Third New York Infantry put us in a train and shipped us to Harper’s Ferry. We were shipped in box cars, with sentinels with fixed bayonets on each side of the doors, to keep us from jumping off and breaking our necks. We are now quartered in an old factory building that stands right on the bank of the Shenandoah, in the suburb of Harper’s Ferry.

October 17 — We renewed our march this morning and moved to Martinsburg. I am weary and tired this evening, as the march to-day was very fatiguing, tasteless, and dull; the Yankee guards did not allow us to get as much water as we needed to drink, and I was thirsty all day. Camped in Martinsburg, near the Baltimore and Ohio depot. This evening our guard turned us over to the care of the One Hundred and Third New York Infantry.