In Defense of the Flag: A true war story: A pen picture of scenes and incidents during the great rebellion.--Thrilling experiences during escape from southern prisons, etc. — John Shaqi
In Defense of the Flag: A true war story: A pen picture of scenes and incidents during the great rebellion.--Thrilling experiences during escape from southern prisons, etc.Stafford, David W.
History
In Defense of the Flag: A true war story: A pen picture of scenes and incidents during the great rebellion.--Thrilling experiences during escape from southern prisons, etc.
Stafford, David W.
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Personal narratives; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Prisoners and prisons; United States. Army. Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, 83rd (1861-1865)
We had to change our course and leave this road, never to travel it
again. We struck out to the west of this road, the road, as I have
stated, running north and south. We made as good time as we could in
order to reach a forest that seemed to lay off to the west. By this
time it was now well on toward two o’clock in the morning. We succeeded
in getting into a thick swampy region which we had every reason to
believe saved our lives, for from the sounds we heard we came to the
conclusion that we were being looked after in this swamp, and that it
was no desirable place to be in. It was a very bad quagmire swamp, with
moss hanging from the trees, and a bad place to stop in at night, let
alone the day. For the next few days and nights, without a smell of
meat or hoecake, or any such thing, except hard corn, we had nothing
more to eat, and our company day and night was moccasin snakes and
other rattling and hissing reptiles. Still we traveled, not fearing the
wild animals as much as we did the rebels with their horns and hounds.
Well, I must say that, young as I was at that time, it was one of the
worst and most dreary times in the lines of life’s pages. To even
contemplate it now seems almost like a dream.
Well, after sleeping and traveling almost night and day
continually—cloudy weather some of the time and lost some of the
time—we finally came out where there was a large plantation on this
Shelterford road some sixty miles from where I had been shot at and to
which I had been directed by hearing the dancing of two small negroes
and the patting and singing of a large negro in one of the negro huts.
Here we stopped and ate the last meal together and the last night
that we ever traveled together in this southern country. Oh, how sad
it makes me feel when I think back of the lonely nights that we both
spent, traveling the balance of our journey! Well, as I was speaking of
our last meal together: It was at the supper of two rebel bushwhackers,
and these two rebels who were staying at this rebel plantation were
men who would shoot down a poor fleeing prisoner on sight, and this
made us uneasy to get away. This darkey had placed in the fire, in an
old-fashioned fire place, a mess of large sweet potatoes for us to
carry along with us, as he told us, but this he did intending to keep
us until the two rebel guerillas came in on us. We had told this negro
how well the old Quaker had used us during our stay with him, and I
think that this darkey took advantage of this to fool us in telling us
that one of these men staying here was a Quaker and he did not know
what the other was. He seemed to be so uneasy that it aroused us, and
we had just arose to go when the gate opened in front of the hut and
the two little black darkies slipped out unbeknown to us. They had
taken with them a ham that Henry carried along with him. Just at this
time we did not know what to do, for an instant, but I had learned
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