Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 30.djvu/265

 Johnson's Island. 257

For thirty years the father and mother, who live near Nashville, Tenn., have sought their son. They found him during a reunion of the North and the South, in the graveyard of a northern prison.

John Holt died in 1865, and was one of the three thousand or more officers who looked for liberty through one of the most stu- pendous plots of the war of the rebellion an uprising in the North. The finding of his grave by his parents the other day brings back to mind the great conspiracy to liberate 20,000 Confederate prisoners in the North, seize the northern frontier, and put a period to the struggle in the South by one grand stroke of arms. Sandusky was the theatre of these tragic events, and Johnson's Island was to be the first point of attack. As one looks over the peaceful little island to-day, as it lies in the pretty land-locked bay three miles from Sandusky, he can scarcely realize that it was once peopled with troops; that the flower of the Southern armies was imprisoned there, behind a strong stockade, and that it was the scene of one of most sensational events of the late war. Yet the block-house, the powder magazines, the officers' quarters, the old church and the little cemetery are still there, and the earthen embankments of the two forts are forcible reminders that heavy ordnance were once planted there, commanding a sweep of the entire island.

While the people of the North were resting in fancied security, John Holt and his companions were watching and waiting patiently for the signal that would inform them of the capture of the man-of- war Michigan, the throwing open of the prison gates at Camp Doug- las, near Chicago, where 8,000 Confederates were confined; at Camp Chase, near Columbus, O., where there were 8,000 more, and at Camp Morton, Indianapolis, with about 4,000. The 3,200 officers on Johnson's Island were to command this army of newly liberated Confederate soldiers and sweep the North across its entire breadth, carrying havoc and panic throughout its course, and possibly turn- ing the tide in favor of the South. The time was ripe for such a gigantic conspiracy. It was in 1864, when the Democrats of the North were preparing to declare in national convention that the war was a failure; when the North was filled with discontent, and Canada was flowing over with Southern sympathizers under the leadership of Jake Thompson.

The time arranged for simultaneously releasing all of these pris- oners was to be guaged by General Early' s attack upon Washing- ton, so that it would be impossible to send troops to the North.

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