January 8.—To-day I visited a friend, Mr. Henry Griffin, one of the Ship Island prisoners, and a member of the Twenty-first Alabama Regiment. I never saw such an emaciated frame as his. He is completely prostrated from disease and starvation.
Many of our men who were captured when the Mobile forts were taken were sent to New Orleans, and from thence to Ship Island. They were placed under negro guards, and every possible indignity heaped upon them. They had to walk many miles for every stick of wood they used, and if they showed the least disposition to lay down their load, they had a bayonet stuck into them by the guard.
When sick, they were put on straw right on the ground, and Mr. Griffin says, on putting your hand down with a slight pressure, the water would gush up.
When I listened to this recital, and thought of the humane treatment I had seen their men receive, my blood boiled with indignation. Our surgeons would not allow a nurse or any one to say an unbecoming word to them; and many a time while in Chattanooga I have received the strictest orders concerning what I must prepare for them.
Surely these wrongs will benefit our people, and stimulate them to more exertion than ever before. I think that is why they are allowed. I have been told by more than Mr. (!., that a lad named Dunklin, from Alabama, was shot dead by a negro guard, while putting a potato on the stove to cook.[1] Well, there is a time for all things.
“Long trains of ill may pass unheeded, dumb,
But vengeance is behind, and justice is to come.”
I feel as confident that in time our wrongs will be redressed, as I am that I am living. In listening to all these tales of wrong and insult, I can not but think that our sins must have been great to have deserved them.
[1] Joseph Dunklin, a private of Company K, Lockhart’s battalion, aged sixteen years, was shot dead by a negro soldier, at half-past 3 o’clock, P.M., December 15, 1864, on Ship Island, under the following circumstances:
Dunklin had been sick, and was recovering. A lot of sweet potatoes (which wore a rarity to us) had been sent by the citizens of Mobile to the prisoners; the little fellow, thinking he would like one roasted, asked permission of the sentinel then on duty to cook it on the stove, which permission was granted, (this always being done after regular meals had been served up.) The sentinels in the mean time were changed, and he went near the stove, and asked the cook to please give him the potato. As the cook was in the act of handing it to him, he saw the sentinel cocking his gun, and aiming it at the little boy; the cook said to him, “Look out, he is going to shoot!” and immediately the sentinel fired, shooting him through the heart, and killing him instantly. He then loaded his gun again, remarking, “I have killed one of the damned rebels, and I’ll kill another if I can get a chance!” Not a word of precaution was given Dunklin before the sentinel fired, except by the cook, and all he could do then was to draw his shoulders up, and was immediately killed. Dr. Robinson was immediately sent for, and said, “This boy has been brutally murdered, and he intended to report it immediately.” He entered the death on his hospital record, “Shot dead by a sentinel!” The sentinel said that orders were given him by Lieutenant W. C. Abby, 74th U. S. C. I., then officer of the guard, to allow no one to go to the stove but the cook. Colonel C. D. Anderson, Twenty-first Alabama Regiment, demanded an investigation, but was told by Colonel Holmstedt, commanding the post, that this was a right that “prisoners of war could not demand!”
Eye-witness.
