Guards—Alarm
Given—Scaling the Wall—Guards Fire—Terrible Chase—Six
Recaptured—Wood and Wilson Reach the Gulf—Dorsey's
Narrative—Porter's Account—Boasting of the
Guards—Barlow's Cruel Death.   208-223


CHAPTER XIV.

Despair and Hope—Bitten Finger—Removed to Barracks—Greater
Comfort—Jack Wells—Cruel Punishment of
Tennesseeans—Story of a Spy—Help Him to Escape—Virtue
of a Coat—A Practical Joke—Unionism—Sweet
Potatoes—Enlisting in Rebel Army—Description of a
Day—Happy News—Start for Richmond—Not Tied—Night
Journey—Varied Incidents—Lynchburg—Rebel
Audacity Punished—Suffering from the Cold—Arrival
in Richmond.   224-246


CHAPTER XV.

The City by Moonlight—Old Accusation Renewed—Libby
Prison—Discomfort—A Change—Citizens' Department—Richmond
Breakfast—Removed under Guard—Castle
Thunder—Miniature Bedlam—Conceal a Knife—Confined
in a Stall—Dreadful Gloom—Routine of a Day—Suffering
at Night—Friends Exchanged—Newspapers—Burnside—Pecuniary
Perplexities—Captain Webster—Escape
Prevented—Try Again on Christmas Night—Betrayed—Fearful
Danger Avoided.   247-266


CHAPTER XVI.
Letter sent Home—Alarming Pestilence—Our Quarters
Changed—Rowdyism—Fairy Stories—Judge Baxter—Satanic
Strategy—Miller's History—An Exchange with a
Dead Man—Effect of Democratic Victories—Attempt to
Make us Work—Digging out of a Cell—Worse than the
Inquisition—Unexpected Interference—List from "Yankee
Land"—Clothing Stolen—Paroled—A Night of Joy—Torch-light
March—On the Cars—The Boat—Reach
Washington—Receive Medals, Money, and Promotion—Home.   267-288

INTRODUCTION.

While our absent brothers are battling on the field, it is becoming that the friends at home should be eager for the minutest particulars of the camp-life, courage and endurance of the dear boys far away; for to the loyal lover of his country every soldier is a brother.

The narrative related on the following pages is one of extraordinary "daring and suffering," and will excite an interest in the public mind such as has rarely, if ever, arisen from any personal adventures recorded on the page of history.

William Pittenger, the oldest of a numerous family, was born in Jefferson county, Ohio, January 31st, 1840. His father, Thomas Pittenger, is a farmer, and trains his children in the solid experiences of manual labor. His mother is from a thinking familyhood of people, many of whom are well known in Eastern Ohio as pioneers in social and moral progress—the Mills's. William learned to love his country about as early as he learned to love his own mother; for his first lessons were loyalty and liberty, syllabled by a mother's lips. Even before the boy could read, he knew in outline the history of our nation's trials and triumphs, from the days of Bunker Hill, forward to the passing events of the latest newspaper chronicling,—all of which facts were nightly canvassed around the cabin-hearth.

Although he was an adept in all branches of learning, yet, in school days, as now, young Pittenger had two favorite studies; and they happened to be the very ones in the prosecution of which his teachers could aid him scarcely at all—History and Astronomy. But, in the face of discouragement, with the aid only of accidental helps, and by the candle-light and the star-light after the sunny hours had been toiled away, he pressed patiently and perseveringly forward in his own chosen methods, until he became an accurate historian, and a practical astronomer. At the age of seventeen, he manufactured, for the most part with his own hands, a reflecting telescope, which his friends came from near and far to see, and gaze through, at the wonderful worlds unthought-of before.

The ambitions of farm-life were not sufficient to occupy the head and hands of this searcher for knowledge. To explore the fields of the firmament with his telescope, gave him intenser pleasure than the most faithful farmer ever realized from furrowing his fields in the dewiest spring mornings. To follow the footsteps of heroes through the world's annals, as they struggled up through conflicts to glorious liberty, thrilled him with a livelier enthusiasm than ever sprang from the music of marching harvesters. While other young men of his age and neighborhood idled their rainy days and winter nights in trifling diversions, there was one who preferred the higher joy of communion with Humboldt in his "Cosmos," Macaulay in his "England," Irving in his "Columbus," or Burritt in his "Geography of the Heavens."

Owing to this decided preference for science and literature, the father found it advisable to indulge his son in the desire to enter a field more consonant with his wishes. He accordingly qualified himself, by close study at home, and without a tutor, for the profession of teaching. In this honorable avocation he labored with industry and promise, until he felt constrained by love of country to quit the desk and the children, for the tent and the hosts of armëd men.

During his career as teacher, he was, for awhile, associated with the writer in the publication of the School Visitor, then issued at Cleveland, Ohio. The enterprise was, at that time, (1857-8,) to the great outer world, an unnoticed and insignificant one; yet to those whose little all was enlisted in the mission of a Day School paper, it was, indeed, something that lay close upon their hearts. That was a cheerless, friendless time in the history of the little Visitor, to at least two inexperienced adventurers in the literary world. But these were hidden trials, and shall be unwritten still.

The never-forgotten teachings of his mother, together with the unconscious tuition resulting from observation and experience, made Pittenger an early and constant friend of freedom. Any mind imbued with an admiration of God's marches in the Heavens as an Omnipotent Creator, and inspired by a contemplation of God's finger in History as a merciful Deliverer, will rise to the high level of universal love to man, and will comprehend the broad equality of Gospel liberty and republican brotherhood. Let a man be educated, head and heart, and he will love freedom, and demand freedom, and "dare and suffer" for freedom, not for himself only, but for all the oppressed of the whole earth.

Reader, you may draw lines. You may profess a conservative Christianity that would theologize the very grace out of the command, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." You may ignore this Christ-like precept, and adopt something more fashionable and aristocratic; but if you do, you entertain in your heart treason, both to your Father in heaven and to your brother on earth. This law of love is revealed to lowly men. It cuts down through crowns and creeds and chains, and rests as a blessed benediction on sufferers and slaves. This is the inspiration that brings victory to our arms, and deals death to destroyers. This was the spirit that prompted our young hero to stand forth, one of the very first from his native county, a soldier for right and righteousness, the moment the Sumter cry rang up the valley of his Ohio home.

When Pittinger became