The Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1837-1867, 1865-02-24
PrisO,s-Pictures at Salisburu. NC.
REBEL BARBARITIES PRACTICEp Upon IN
ION SOLDIERS.

ION SOLDIERS
Few will believe as possible to thei1
kind what their own observation contra
diets, and their own hearts reject. Anc
hence wonder not that the stories told
by returned prisoners of the treatment o.
Union prisoners in the South are thought
to be complete fictions or gross exaggera
tions.
Once l might hane thought them so.-
Once l fancied knew what human pair
and wretchedness were; for I had witness
ed the horrors of war in various forms
1 was mistaken. Nearly two years ago
passed by one of those martial vicissi.
tudes now so common, from the condition
of an army correspondent to that of q
Union prisoner; and twenty months Of
confinement in the South taught me what
human nature can infict and endure.
The dark curtain was lifted, and the
long and fearful tragedy of mortal strug.
gle and mortal suffering began. l was
shifted from prison to prison, and l saw
Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia and North
Carolina, through iron bars and in iron
fate. Every prison had its peculiar hard
ships, It's tales of sorrow, its walls of ago
ny; but it was reserved to the last-the
Salisbury On. c. penitentiary-to make
as nothing all that | had witnessed else
where, and compress into a day and place
the sutferings of century and continent.
Imagine nine or ten thousand scantily-
clad, emaciated, woe-begone soldiers-un-
named heroes, who had battled for our
sacred cause on twenty blood-drenchefl
tields-in an enclosure of five or six acres,
halt OF them without other shelter than
holes they had dug in the earth, or under
the small buildings employed as hospitals.
The weather is cold; perhaps chilly
ram Is falling, OR the ground is covered
with snow. There are the soIdiers-hun-
dredS OF them with naked feet, and only
light blouses Or shirts, hungry, feeble, des-
pairing OF the present and hopeless of the
future-huddling over a small and smoky
fire OF green wood, in crowded tent,
whose very atmosphere is poisonous or
standing shlvering against the outside Of
the chlmneys Of the squalid hospitals,
hoping to warm their blood a little from
the partially heated bricks; or drawn up
IN their narrow caves, inhaling the curling
emanatlons of the burning pine, and
striving to shelter themselves from the bit
ter wind; or begging, with pallid and
trembling lips, for shelter at the door OF
those hzar-houseS, where their compan-
lons-ln-arms are lying in dirt, distress, and
despair, breathing out their lives at the
rate of thirty or forty day.
Look into those hospitals-strange per
version of the name (which are small
brick and log buildings. twenty-five by
SIXTY feet, and see how people who
poast OF their generosity and chivalry can
treat the prisoners they have taken in
honorable warfare. There lie the prison
erS' In the scant and tattcred clothes they
were graclously permitted by the rebels Il
Keep, illthy from the impossibility of OBJ
tanning water to wash themselves, with nc
beds Or bedding, no covering even, per
ehance without straw; tossing and groan-
ing their miserable lives away.
Fires blaze at one end. it NAV be at
both ends, of the tenements but the heat
extends not far, and the cold wind rushes
IN from the broken windows and through
the crevices in the walls; while the air
Is mephltlc and noisome to such degree
that, when you breathe it first, it is al
most suttocating.
What ghastly line of faces and of fig
ures. To have seen them once is to re-
member them always. They are more
like skeletons In rags than human beings.
Ever and anon some of them strive to rise
and obey such calls as nature makes; and
companion, less weak and wasted than
they, bears them, as if they were children,
over the dirt-incrusted floor, and lays them
down again to suffer to the end
Here lies a boy of sixteen or seventeen,
whose mother, in some tar-otf Northern
home, is prayiug for him every night and
morning to whom sisters are writing
words of cheer and sympathy he will new
er see; mutterlng in fever, and beckoning
with shrunken hands to forms that nc
mortal eye can discover, but which may
be waiting to bear his brave young spirit
home.
There is a gray-hairsd man, who left
his farm and iireslde when the traitorou:
gun at Sumter woke world to arms
He has passed unscathed through forty
battles, to die an unrecorded hero here
His eyes are fixed and his minutes are
numbered. Children and grandchildren
will look with anxious faces at all dis.
patches and letters from the army of tn,
Potomac, but will not learn for month.
the fate of one who was only private.
''1s this man here?" carefully inquire
a soldier, looking in at the door, and read
ing the address of letter. The answer
is in the affirmative, and the ward-maste
calls out, Mr.. --, here's :: Northern
letter for you" There is no eagernes
to hear. The person addressed does no
even turn his head. Strange, for he ha
waited many weary weeks to see the char
acters of that well-known hand: ha
dreamed night after night, amid the pause
of his pain, of reading the sweet assur
ances of his dear wife's love. These ar
: the words: "Dearest husband: I hay
not heard from you for months. l can
not believe any harm has befallen you
for have faith that heaven will restor