قراءة كتاب Ball's Bluff: An Episode and Its Consequences to Some of Us
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
Ball's Bluff: An Episode and Its Consequences to Some of Us
is contemporary judgment and criticism.
The following stanzas were written by Brigadier General F. W. Lander on hearing that the Confederate Troops said,—"Fewer of the Massachusetts officers would have been killed, had they not been too proud to surrender."
Aye, deem us proud, for we are more
Than proud of all our mighty dead;
Proud of the bleak and rock-bound shore
A crowned oppressor cannot tread.
Proud of each rock, and wood and glen,
Of every river, lake and plain;
Proud of the calm and earnest men,
Who claim the right and will to reign.
Proud of the men who gave us birth,
Who battled with the stormy wave,
To sweep the Red Man from the Earth,
And build their homes upon his grave.
Proud of the holy summer morn
They traced in blood upon its sod;
The rights of freeman yet unborn;
Proud of their language and their God.
Proud that beneath our proudest dome,
And round the cottage cradled hearth,
There is a welcome and a home
For every stricken race on earth.
Proud that yon slowly sinking sun
Saw drowning lips grow white in prayer,
O'er such brief acts of duty done,
As honor gathers from despair.
Pride—'tis our watchword, "Clear the boats,"
"Holmes, Putnam, Bartlett, Peirson—Here"
And while this crazy wherry floats,
"Let's save our wounded," cries Revere.
Old State,—some souls are rudely sped—
This record for thy Twentieth Corps,—
Imprisoned, wounded, dying, dead,
It only asks,—"Has Sparta more?"
The tobacco warehouse which we occupied, is on the main street of Richmond. It was similar to several other buildings and they were all used as Military Prisons, and all called Libby Prison. It is a large, three-story building and built as it was, in a most substantial manner, was well adapted for a Military Prison. The first floor was allotted to the officers captured, some 70 in number, and the other stories filled with the men, perhaps 250 of them. In the centre of the lower or officers' floor is placed the heavy machinery for pressing and preparing the tobacco, thus dividing the space into two equal sections, and occupying one-half of the floor space, which was 65 x 45 feet.
The windows on the street floor are well protected by iron bars, while those opposite are unprovided with bars, and open upon the yard, but guarded by sentinels stationed there, with orders to shoot any prisoners in either story who lean out of the windows. Seven men were shot by these guardsmen while I was confined there. Those dying in the nearby hospital were taken to this yard for shipment elsewhere in wagons.
We had no inducement to peer inquisitively from the windows. The windows on the street, however, afforded us some more interesting views. Some of the towns-people were almost always outside-lookers-in, and occasionally someone would, when unnoticed by the guard at the entrance, show a sign of sympathy. We frequently saw Jeff Davis riding by, and we always took pains to regale him with pertinent remarks befitting his high rank, or with some applicable song. One song was called the Prison Song, to the tune of,—"John Brown's Body lies a-Slumbering in the Ground." The words, descriptive of our situation, I do not remember, but the refrain ran,—"Roll on Sweet Moments, Roll on, and let the poor prisoners go home, go home."
There were ten mess tables made of rough boards, and benches or stools. The fare was meagre; the floor hard for sleeping, though later we procured some cots; the covering insufficient, and the vermin ineffaceable pests. We had almost no books, nothing to help pass the time. We took daily walks by reliefs, up