Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/93

Rh used principally as a place of rendezvous for detachments of Confederate prisoners on their way to permanent places of imprisonment at Point Lookout, Fort Delaware, Johnson's Island, &c.

Prisoners brought in from the lines of the Army of the Potomac in small detachments were here assorted and sent away, the officers to Johnson's Island and Fort Delaware, the privates to Point Lookout, &c. detachments being often held for a week or two until suitable arrangements could be made for them at some of the more populous, if not more popular places of resort.

Now it chanced that after the battle of Gettysburg a number of surgeons and chaplains found their way along with other prisoners to this point d'appui, having either been detailed for hospital service and left behind on the retreat from Pennsylvania, or having voluntarily remained with the wounded and dying of their commands.

If any one should ask me how it came that surgeons and chaplains were held as prisoners of war by the Federal Government, I can only answer that I do not know. In all civilized warfare surgeons and chaplains being considered as non-combatants and their mission being regarded as one of mercy, are not reckoned as prisoners of war, but, when captured, are released upon their own parole and sent into the lines of the army they serve. But I also know that I was captured in the afternoon of a beautiful Sabbath day, the 5th of July, 1863, in a hospital tent, on the battlefield of Gettysburg, in the midst of a religious service, surrounded by the wounded on every hand, to whom I was ministering, and at whose urgent solicitation I had voluntarily remained within the enemy's lines.

I was sent, as already narrated, to the headquarters of General Schenck, and by him ordered to prison quarters at Fort McHenry, and although, through the influence of prominent citizens of Baltimore, General Schenck was induced to issue an order for my return to the South on the day following my incarceration, and I was actually taken on board the flag of truce boat to Old Point, yet orders were received at Fortress Monroe to return me to prison, and after a fortnight's confinement in Fort Norfolk I was returned to Fort McHenry, and kept there as a prisoner until, through the unwearied intercession of Colonel Ould, our humane and courteous Agent of Exchange, a cartel was arranged by which we could be exchanged.

Without stopping, however, to inquire into the hows and wherefores of this vexed question, suffice it to say that at the time to