d at
Fort Gilmer, have been kindly furnished. _The details of the
sufferings of the enlisted men captured with them we shall
never know, for few of them ever returned to tell the sad
story._

"'An escort was soon formed to conduct the prisoners to
Richmond, some seven or eight miles distant, and the kinder
behavior of that part of the guard which had participated in
the action was suggestive of the freemasonry that exists
between brave fellows to whatever side belonging. On the
road the prisoners were subjected by every passer-by, to
petty insults, the point in every case, more or less
obscene, being the color of their skin. The solitary
exception, curiously enough, being a _nymph du pave_ in the
suburbs of the town.[30]

"'About dusk the prisoners reached the notorious Libby,
where the officers took leave of their enlisted
comrades--from most of them forever. The officers were then
searched and put collectively in a dark hole, whose purpose
undoubtedly was similar to that of the 'Ear of Dionysius.'
In the morning, after being again searched, they were placed
among the rest of the confined officers, among whom was
Capt. Cook, of the Ninth, taken a few weeks previously at
Strawberry Plains. Some time before, the confederates had
made a great haul on the Weldon Railroad, and the prison was
getting uncomfortably full of prisoners and--vermin. After a
few days sojourn in Libby, the authorities prescribed a
change of air, and the prisoners were packed into box and
stock cars and rolled to Salisbury, N. C. The comforts of
this two day's ride are remembered as strikingly similar to
those of Mr. Hog from the West to the Eastern market before
the invention of the S. F. P. C. T. A.

"'At Salisbury the prisoners were stored in the third story
of an abandoned tobacco factory, occupied on the lower
floors by political prisoners, deserters, thieves and spies,
who during the night made an attempt on the property of the
new-comers, but were repulsed after a pitched battle. In the
morning the Post-Commandant ordered the prisoners to some
unused negro quarters in another part of the grounds,
separated from the latter by a line of sentries. During the
week train-loads of prisoners--enlisted men--arrived and
were corralled in the o