A fictionalized account of Reuben DeLay’s time in Confederate prisons

            Reuben gently pushed the blanket he shared with Dawes over the form of his softly snoring bedmate. The air was cold and his joints ached from sleeping on the hard ground. He needed to stretch and get his blood circulating. He crawled out of the makeshift shebang and stood surveying the chaos of the camp in the damp, grey South Carolina morning.  He noted that the water in the only pail his mess owned was not frozen. That was a relief. The weather at Camp Asylum had been miserable, but at least the men were better protected than at the open Camp Sorghum.

            The Johnnies upgraded us from an open field to a lunatic asylum, He thought. What’s next, the Astor House?

The former South Carolina Lunatic Asylum was an improvement over some of the prisons he had been confined in. The sick could recover in the hospital building. His mess had constructed their shebang near the outer wall to gain some shelter from the wind. They had stitched together some tent scraps and hung them over an arbor of willows driven into the ground. It leaked; badly.

Reuben shared the sheebang with Dawes and four other Lieutenants. They slept together, messed together, and generally looked after each other. They shared what little they had; a griddle fashioned from some sheet iron, the rusty pail, a worn-out deck of cards, a tattered Bible, two pocket knives, and not much else. They had three blankets for six men. Dawes and Anderson had no shoes. Blaine had had no hat to protect his balding head.

            A handful of men were already up and awake. Reuben moved toward a man who was tending a small fire. He looked gaunt with stooped shoulders, sunken eyes, and the blackness of pitch pine smoke residue covering his face. Like everyone, his beard and hair were long and shaggy.

            “Greetings my friend, and a Happy New Year to you!” said the man.

            “Happy New Year!” Reuben responded automatically.

It was now 1865. A year ago, he had been on his way home to Iowa. The furlough had been surreal. People celebrated the return of the Third Iowa with dinners and speeches. For the moment, the war was forgotten. Now he was a prisoner of the Confederacy. Would he ever know the warmth of an Iowa fireplace again? Would he live to see Margaret and the kids? He barely knew the two youngest. Six-year-old Rosellen was now old enough to print “I love you Papa,” at the end of her mother’s letters. He received their last letter in Memphis two weeks before his capture. He still carried what was left of it in his pocket. Reading it was one of his few comforts in prison.

            Gradually, more men began to assemble around the little fire. They huddled together like cattle in a storm to keep warm. Greetings were terse. Some simply nodded in recognition.

“Hell of a way to spend New Year’s,” one grumbled as he pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders.

            “Well, here we are,” said the philosopher of the group. “Lincoln is probably holding a reception at the White House today. Jeff Davis is eating crow ‘cuz Uncle Billy just marched across Georgia and took Savannah. If he heads north this Spring, we’ll be between him and Grant.”

            “Unfortunately, Lee and Johnson’s armies are in the middle with us,” someone pointed out. “Johnson might be retreating all over the South, but Grant cain’t seem to make any headway against Lee.”

            The others, some from Grant’s army, nodded in agreement. The Butcher’s Bill in Virginia was a hell of a price to pay for victory. Still, they could hope.

            “The South is runnin’ out of everything; men, material, food,” remarked the philosopher. ‘Their money is worthless and they can’t get anything past the blockade. Just look at those miserable wretches guarding us. They’re defeated and they know it. I heard two of them deserted last week.”

            “When I made it to the Blue Ridge, the mountains full of shirkers from the Confederate draft and deserters from their army,” said Meigs. “They ain’t got nuthin’ invested in the Rebel cause and they know the jig is up.”

            The others grunted in agreement. Someone asked, “Anyone made one of those New Year’s resolutions?”

            “Yep,” said one. “I’m gonna lose me some weight.”

            This brought a hearty laugh from those present. Most had lost a third of their weight on the miserable rations provided by their captors. After seven months of captivity, Reuben was a shadow of his former self. It was hard to tell how much of him was left under his loose-fitting uniform.

            “I think I’ll escape two or three more times,” said Meigs. The men laughed. He had escaped from their last camp twice. He almost made it to Tennessee and freedom the second time.  The Home Guard had captured him stealing a chicken from a farmer.

            “I’m gonna study the Bible. All of it. Maybe I’ll take up preachin’ if’n I survive,” said another.

            “You mend your ways?” chimed in his companion. “That’ll be the day!”

            “I’m gonna take all my back pay and move to Montana,’” said a man with a New York accent. “I hear the gold in Bannack is lying on the ground, ready for the taking.”

            “You couldn’t even dig out a privy, let alone bust up hard rock and quartz city feller!” chided a grizzled Captain from Sherman’s Army of the West. “The Sioux or the Cheyenne would be skinnin’ you alive before you got half there.”

            “And what about you, Lieutenant?” asked Major Bowers. “Got any notions for 1865?

            Reuben thought long and hard. Then he said, “Some of my New Year’s resolutions didn’t pan out.”

            “How so?”

            “Well, in 1856 I resolved to become a success as a Kansas sod-buster.”

            “Kansas? You were in all the troubles at Lawrence then?”

            “No, I bypassed Lawrance to settle farther south in Linn County. Big mistake.”

            Those Border Ruffians from Missouri give you a hard time?”

            You might say so. I got shot at a few times and they burned me out once.”

            “Burned you out/. How long did you stay?”

            “Two years. I stuck it out as long as I could. By the time I left, I was married with one kid and another on the way.”

            “Lucky you made it that long. What kept you alive?”

            I joined up with Montgomery’s Self-Protective Company. We got even with some of those buggers from Missouri.”

            “You were a Jayhawker?” asked Major Bowers incredulously.

            “I suppose you could say that. Montgomery didn’t cotton much to thievin’ except when we needed something for the cause. I left Kansas for the last time with some fine Missouri horses though. Sold them for enough to get a good place back in Iowa. I had to live under an alias until the war started. Those Missouri sheriffs have long memories and sometimes they stray into Iowa.”

            “Was that Colonel Montgomery of the colored South Carolina regiment??

            “That would be him, ‘cept when I knew him, he was a preacher and a dirt-poor farmer. He got in a little deep but managed to stick it out. He volunteered when the War started and they dropped all the warrants.”

            “Any of your other resolutions work out?”

            “In ’57 I resolved to marry the purdiest gal in Iowa. We’ve got four kids now. My wartime resolutions weren’t so hot though.”

“Don’t I know that one. Last year mine was Win the War in Sixty-Four!” chuckled Bowers. He was followed by a chorus of wartime slogans from the men.

“Victory in ninety days!”

“Save the Union!”

“Home by Christmas!”

The men all laughed at their naïve objectives for the war.

Then Reuben spoke, “I suppose we all need resolutions to keep us going. A man without a goal in this place is a dead man.”

The men nodded soberly as Reuben pondered what to say next. It had been a long, tough war. He had risked his life in battle and suffered the privations of prison. Heavy on his conscience was the fate of the twenty men under his command when he was forced to surrender at Ripley the previous summer. At first, he had been able to look after them and keep up their morale.  Then he had been sent to the officers’ prison at Macon.  He now had no idea what had become of his men. Most were from Appanoose County. If he ever made it home he would have to face their families.

All eyes were on Reuben when he finally spoke.

“I am going to survive this damn place. And when I get back to God’s Country, I am going to make sure that nothing like this ever happens to anyone else.”

“Here, here!’ shouted a chorus of voices.

LDT January 1, ‘25

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