Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 22.djvu/139

 Prison Experience of a Confederate Soldier. 127

[From the Bristol Courier, of September 14, 1893.]

THE PRISON EXPERIENCE OF A CONFEDERATE

SOLDIER.

Narrative of the Hardships, Sufferings, and Hazards of Six Hundred Officers

of the Confederate States Army, who were Prisoners from August

i6th, 1864, to March 4th, 1865, and for Six Weeks on

Morris Island, by Federal Effort, were Under

Fire from Confederate Batteries.

By ABRAM FULKERSON, late Colonel Sixty-third Tennessee Infantry, Army of Northern Virginia.

The writer of the following " unvarnished tale " is a prominent citizen of Virginia, who has honorably served the State in her Councils. There was no more gallant officer in the Confederate Army than he.

With Dr. W. W. Parker, late Major of Artillery, C. S. A., in July last, he served as ''Commissioner for Virginia, to locate the positions of Virginia troops at the battle of Chickamauga."

We would not now "set down aught in malice," and in the justice of history, alone, present here these truthful details.

A list of the companions of Colonel Fulkerson, who shared his hardships and his hazards on Morris Island, under the fire of their own comrades in arms, is given in Vol. XVII, Southern Historical Society Papers, pages 34- 36, inclusive.

At the request of friends and old comrades I give my recollections of prison life in some of the Federal prisons, during the late war, prefaced by a few incidents occurring at, and immediately preceding my capture at Petersburg, Virginia, on the ijth day of June, 1864.

After the battle of Drewry's Bluff, in May, 1864, by the failure of General Whiting to come up from Swift Creek, General Butler and his army escaped capture, and made good their retreat to the en- trenched camp at Bermuda Hundreds, closely followed by General Beauregard's little army, which took position in front of Butler, on a line extending from the Hewlett House, on James River, overlook- ing Dutch Gap, and reaching to the Appomattox River.

The sand battery at the Hewlett House was hastily constructed and the line fortified by throwing up heavy earthworks, and thus, in the language of General Grant, " Butler was bottled."