Testimony, by letter, of Lieut.-Col. Farnsworth, 1st Conn. Cavalry.
Norwich, June 29th, 1864.
GENTLEMEN :-—In reply to a letter from one of your Committee, I have the honor to make the following statement of what I saw, heard and felt of the treatment of prisoners of war by the Confederate authorities, at Richmond, Virginia:
I entered service October, 1861; was captured on the 14th of July, 1863, in a cavalry skirmish near Halltown, Va.; was conveyed td Richmond, and confined in Libby prison; was paroled and sent North on the 14th of March, 1864.
My treatment by my immediate captors was gentlemanly in the extreme; even going so far as to assist me in concealing money, so as to prevent the Richmond authorities from robbing me.
Upon reaching the Libby, we were rigidly searched, and all moneys and attractive jack- knives, nice overcoats and meerschaum pipes were kindly appropriated by the prison authorities; rubber blankets, canteens, spurs and haversacks were taken from us. Lieut. Moran, for complaining of this treatment, was knocked down by Richard Turner, inspector of the prison clothing.
There was never an issue of clothing or blankets made by the Confederate authorities during the time I was there confined. We did receive one hundred (100) each of tin plates, cups, knives, forks, (mostly damaged by bayonet-thrusts, they having been picked up from battle-fields), for the use of one thousand (1000) officers.
ACCOMMODATIONS—In six (6) rooms, one hundred by forty, there were confined as many as twelve hundred (1200) officers of all ranks, from Brigadier-General to Second Lieutenant. This space was all that was allowed us in which to cook, eat, wash, sleep and exercise. You can see that soldierly muscle must fast deteriorate when confined to twenty (20) superficial feet of plank; we were not allowed benches, chairs or stools, nor even to fold our blankets and sit upon them; but were forced to sit like so many slaves upon the middle passage.
This continued until the appointment of General Butler, Commissioner of Exchange, after which time we were allowed chairs and stools, which we made from the boxes and barrels sent us from the North. There was plenty of water allowed us, and a tank for bathing in four (4) of the rooms.
There were seventy-six (76) windows in the six (6) rooms, from which in winter there was no protection.
SUBSISTENCE.—Our rations consisted of one-quarter (¼) of a pound of beef, nine (9) ounces of bread of variable quality, generally of wheat flour, though sometimes of weat flour and corn meal, a gill of rice, and a modicum of salt and vinegar per day. This continued until the 11th of November, which was the first day that meat was not issued, and bread made entirely of corn meal was substituted for wheat bread; this meal was composed of cob and grain ground together, and when mixed with cold water, without salt or any raising, made the bread. Meat was next issued on the 14th, and the issue suspended on the 21st. On the 26th we received salt pork, sent to the prisoners by the United States Government; from this time out, meat was like angels’ visits; sometimes it was issued at intervals of ten days, and sometimes not in thirty (30); the longest interval was thirty-four (34) days.
The amount of rations first issued will undoubtedly sustain life; but their long continuance without exercise will produce disease of a scorbutic nature.
The rations issued after the 11th of November will not sustain life, and without the aid sent to us from the North the mortality would have been great. Nine ounces of such corn bread and a cup of water per day, are poorer rations than those issued to the vilest criminal in the meanest States prison in the Union; yet this was considered fit treatment by the hospitable chivalry of the South to be extended to men taken in honorable warfare, any one of them the peer of the arch traitor, Jeff. Davis.
BOXES.—We began to receive boxes in October. These came in good order, were inspected in our presence, and delivered to us entire; they came regularly, and were delivered in good order up to about the first of January; after this time boxes were sent regularly from the North, and were received by Col. Ould, Commissioner of Exchange, but they were not issued to us; they were stored in a building within sight of the prison, and at the time of my leaving, three thousand (3000) had been received there and not delivered to us; what was the cause of this non-delivery of boxes we were never informed. They keep up a semblance of delivery, however, by the issue of five (5) or six (6) a week, they receiving from the North about three hundred (300) a week.
The contents of these boxes were, undoubtedly, appropriated to the private use of the officials in and about Richmond. Here is simply one instance: Lieut. Maginnis, of the 18th Reg., Conn., since killed in battle, recognized a suit of citizen’s clothes which had been sent to him from the North, on the person of one of the prison officials, and accused him of the theft, and showed his name on the watch pocket of the pants. Such cases were numerous.
BELLE ISLE.—Upon the 26th day of January, 1864, I visited Belle Island, as an assistant in the distribution of clothing sent by the Government, and by the Sanitary Commissions of the North; this was my first time outside of the prison walls in six months. The island is situated just opposite the Tredegar Iron Works in the James river. The space occupied by prisoners is about six acres, enclosed by an earthwork three (3) feet in height; within this space were confined as many as ten thousand (10,000) prisoners. The part occupied by the prisoners is a low, sandy, barren waste, exposed in summer to a burning sun, without the shadow of a single tree; and in winter, to the damp and cold winds up the river, with a few miserable tents, in which, perhaps, one-half (½) the number were protected from the night fogs of a malarious region; the others lay upon the ground in the open air. One of them said to me: “We lay in rows, like hogs in winter, and take turns who has the outside of the row.”
In the morning the row of the previous night was plainly marked by the bodies of those who were sleeping on in their last sleep.
Fed upon corn bread and water, scantily clothed, with but few blankets, our patriotic soldiers here suffered the severest misfortunes of this war. Here, by hundreds, they offered up their lives in their country’s cause, victims of disease, starvation and exposure,— sufferings a thousand times more dreadful than the wounds of the battle-field. As many as fourteen (14) have been known to freeze to death in one night. This I have from men of my own regiment, and it is perfectly reliable.
The hospitals upon the island are Sibley tents, without floors, the ground covered with straw, and logs of wood placed around for pillows, to which, when about to die, he men were carried; and here, with logs for their pillows, the hard, cold ground for their bed, death came to their relief; and the grave closed over the victims of rebel barbarity.
The officer in charge of the island was well spoken of by the men. He deprecated the condition they were in, but said he could do no more, for the authorities gave him no more to do with; and yet it is a fact that the men were stimulated to work at their trades, as blacksmiths, etc., for the benefit of the Confederate Government, by the offer of double the quantity of rations they were then receiving; thus acting out, in their treatment of Northern soldiers, the great principle of Slavery and of the South, that the lives of the poor and helpless are in their eyes of no more value than the amount of interest they will produce on capital.
The facilities for washing were good, a sandy beach all around the island, and the whole number of prisoners could have washed in the course of the day; but, under the management of the authorities, only a 1imited number (say 75 men per day) were able to wash, being conducted under guard to the water, in squads of five (5) or six (6).
The sickness caused by the above treatment was of the respiratory organs, pneumonia, &c., and chronic diarrhœa.
Men were without medical treatment on the island until disease was so far advanced that when taken away in ambulances to the hospital, in squads of twenty (20), one-half (½) of them have died within five (5) hours —some of them while their names were being taken at the hospital.
Men were returned from the hospital to the island when so weak that they have been obliged to crawl upon their hands and knees a part of the way.
On the 20th of November, 1863, a squad were passing the prison (Libby) in this condition, going from the hospital to the island; among them was George Ward, a schoolmate of mine and of Col. Ely, of the 18th Conn. Vols. Col. Ely threw a ham to him from the window. As the poor fellow crawled to get it, the rebel guard charged bayonets on him, called him a damned Yankee, and appropriated the ham.
The bodies of the dead were placed in the cellar of the prison, to which there was free access for animals from the street. I have known of bodies being partially devoured by dogs, and hogs and rats, during the night. Every morning the bodies were placed in rude coffins and taken away for burial. Officers have marked the coffins thus taken away, and have seen them returned twenty (20) times for bodies. You may draw your own inference as to the rites of burial extended to a Yankee prisoner in the Capital of the Southern Confederacy.
Officers dying, their brother officers procured metallic coffins and a vault, in which they were placed until they could be removed North. An Officer, (Major Morris, of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry, I think,) who had in the hands of the Confederate authorities several hundred dollars, taken from him when he entered the prison, died in the hospital, and the authorities refused to use his money for a decent burial, and we raised it in the prison.
LIBBY MINED. — Upon the approach of Kilpatrick on his grand raid on Richmond, about the 1st March, the greatest consternation was produced among the inhabitants. The authorities felt sure of his ability to enter the city and free the prisoners.
We were informed one morning by the negroes who labor around the prison, that during the night they had been engaged in excavating a large hole under the centre of the building, and that a quantity of powder had been placed therein. Upon inquiring of certain of the guards, we found it the general impression among them that the prison was mined.
Richard Turner, inspector of the prison, told officers there confined, that “should Kilpatrick succeed in entering Richmond, it would not help us, as the prison authorities would blow up the prison and all its inmates.”
The adjutant of the prison, Lieutenant Latouche, was heard by an officer (Lieutenant Jones, 55th Ohio) to use the following words to a rebel officer with whom he had entered and examined the cellar where the powder was reported as placed: “There is enough there to send every damned Yankee to hell.”
Major Turner said in my presence the day we were paroled, in answer to the question, “Was the prison mined?” “Yes, and I would have blown you all to Hades before I would have suffered you to be rescued.”
Bishop Johns said in the prison, when asked if he thought it was a Christian mode of warfare to blow up defenceless prisoners: “He supposed the authorities were satisfied on that point, though he did not mean to justify it.”
I am very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
CHAS. FARNSWORTH,
Late Lieutenant-Colonel 1st Connecticut Cavalry.
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NORWICH, June 30th, 1864. |
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| STATE OF CONNECTICUT | } | |
| County of New London, | ||
Personally appeared CHARLES FARNSWORTH, signer of the foregoing instrument and statement, and made solemn oath that the facts slated therein are true, before me. |
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DAVID YOUNG,
Justice of the Peace.