American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1867-10-05
PRISON LIFE AT ocK IsLAND
ley E P. j., lst EN7oKY cAvALRY.l

> esting article fom the Louisville
Courier:
Well do ] remmber the niserabl,
pittance of "blu beef" doled out t.
us every day, at l o'clock, weighing
J, when cooked h3fly four ounces, ant
many times was innocent Of sal
az when first Killed.. This, with {
small loaf of bred, was to make oul
dinner, supper .;ud breakfast, unit
the same time iext day, when W.
drew again. FG economy's sake
we ate the whala If il for dinpe -lnd
I 3srcnance an unIucky dog or rat fel
into our hands, on which occasion we
served up feast worthy of a hungry
king. Though the over fastidious
may curl their lips at this, l Cap assure
them, from actual experience, that a
roast dog or rat, we'll prepared, with
hunger for sauce, is not only edible
but is good. I speak by the card
Woe be it in that day to the unlucky
dog that strayed within our prison
gates. for that dogs day had come
and his friends could appoint an early
hour for his funeral with impunity
for we never failed to have his corpse
ready, and soon the unlucky dogs
hide would be seen stuck up OH
some barracks suspicious to the Yam
KEGS, showing them that they could
not starve us into submission to the
Union 80 long as We could pick dog
or rat.
Rat traps were among the necessities
of life, and every barrack had them
| regularly at "taps." / baited my
traps, and went to bed to dream OF
the dear ones at home and baked
rat for breakfast. Rats sold for TWEEN
ty-fve cents. a ration of dog, the
size of our daily ration of beef, sold
for ten cents.
1have seen poor famishing wretches
searching on the ground for the en-
trails of the slain dogs, from viii :
they carefully pulled off the small
pieces of frozen fat, and greedily de
voured it. This may not seem credi-
BILE to many, but refer you to any
one of the prisoners of 1864 at Rock
Island, whe vii substantiate my
statements.
The suffering for food was general,
but more particularly among the
younger inmates Of the prison was
its ravages noticed, the fact of youth
fulness being against them III this
struggle for exiorenoo, aud many q
br! ght eyed boy went out to the hos
pital never to return, whose only
malady was starvation l make this
statement not on my own Judgment
alone, but on that Of Federal sur
geons who made the statement to me,
and who urged the brutal post CON-
mander, Col. A. j. johnson, of the
Veteran Reserve Corps, to increase
our rations from principles Of human.
ity if nothing else, and he refused
fatty to do anything to alleviate our
sutferings. Afterwards, in letter
to a Rock Island paper, copy OF
which we received by our under
ground mail route, he made this re-
mark: "Had 1 my way with them
would crowd them into pen with
no covering but the canopy of heav-
en- and their own rags, and let them
starye."
That is a specimen of genuine Yam
kee humanity toward defenseless fel-
low men. The dungeons of hell
should be deepened and heated sew
en-fold hotter than fire, for the recep-
tion of the souls of such brutes, if ma,
ture endowed them with souls. Their
names should be handed down to
poSterity with those of Nero, Bloody
Mary, Danton, Beast Butler and Ed
win NJ. Stanton, and our children
should be taught to eXecrate them
forever.
Perhaps my language may be
thought too strong for an unpardon-
ed rebel, but to those who dislike it
can only say that they would speak
as | do had they but endured the
half of what l and thousands of 9th
ers suffered while incarcerated in
those prison hells of the North.
Reader, have you ever felt the RIDE
and freezing north wind strike to
your very vitals, and the blood con-
geal around your heart, while your
brain suffered those shooting sensa-
tions of pain brought on by starva.
ton, and your very eyes starting
from their sockets, while sleep was
banished your pillow When you
experience these sensations then you
may have an idea of how a freezing,
starving man feels.
My heart grows sick, as l look
back over those days, when l saw
strong men sink uLder the burdens
imposed by brutal captors, who
gloated over their sufferings and
who pointed at them in derision as
they pounded up old beef bones for
soup and devoured it with an insatia-
bic appetite.
Ihave often seen men in the streets
of that prison picking up the bones
thrown out for the Scavenger cart,
and greedily devouring them, or at
least the soft or gristly end of them,
while the harder part was kept for
soup, and they were men. too, who
at home could have bought the des-
picable garrison, officers and all. We
kentuckians could have lived well