Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/732

722 The Judge returned the greeting with a stateliness that was in striking contrast with his usual frank and cordial manner, and then introduced the officer to us as "Major Turner, Keeper of the Libby." I had heard of him, and it was with some reluctance that I took his proffered hand. However, I did take it, and at the same time inquired,—

"Are you related to Dr. Turner, of Fayetteville?"

"No, Sir. I am of the old Virginia family." (I never met a negro-whipper nor a negro-trader who did not belong to that family.) "Are you a North-Carolinian?"

"No, Sir"—

Before I could add another word, the Judge said,—

"No, Major; these gentlemen hail from Georgia. They are strangers here, and I'd thank you to show them over the prison."

"Certainly, Colonel, most certainly. I'll do it with great pleasure."

And the little man bustled about, put on his cap, gave a few orders to his subordinates, and then led us, through another outside-door, into the prison. He was a few rods in advance with Colonel Jaquess, when Judge Ould said to me,—

"Your prisoners have belied Turner. You see he's not the hyena they've represented."

"I'm not so sure of that," I replied. "These cringing, mild-mannered men are the worst sort of tyrants, when they have the power."

"But you don't think him a tyrant?"

"I do. He's a coward and a bully, or I can't read English. It is written all over his face."

The Judge laughed boisterously, and called out to Turner,—

"I say, Major, our friend here is painting your portrait."

"I hope he is making a handsome man of me," said Turner, in a sycophantic way.

"No, he isn't. He's drawing you to the life,—as if he'd known you for half a century."

We had entered a room about forty feet wide and a hundred feet deep, with bare brick walls, a rough plank floor, and narrow, dingy windows, to whose sash only a few broken panes were clinging. A row of tin wash-basins, and a wooden trough which served as a bathing-tub, were at one end of it, and half a dozen cheap stools and hard-bottomed chairs were littered about the floor, but it had no other furniture. And this room, with five others of similar size and appointments, and two basements floored with earth and filled with débris, compose the famous Libby Prison, in which, for months together, thousands of the best and bravest men that ever went to battle have been allowed to rot and to starve.

At the date of our visit, not more than a hundred prisoners were in the Libby, its contents having recently been emptied into a worse sink in Georgia; but almost constantly since the war began, twelve and sometimes thirteen hundred of our officers have been hived within those half-dozen desolate rooms and filthy cellars, with a space of only ten feet by two allotted to each for all the purposes of living!

Overrun with vermin, perishing with cold, breathing a stifled, tainted atmosphere, no space allowed them for rest by day, and lying down at night "wormed and dovetailed together like fish in a basket,"—their daily rations only two ounces of stale beef and a small lump of hard corn-bread, and their lives the forfeit, if they caught but one streak of God's blue sky through those filthy windows,—they have endured there all the horrors of the middle-passage. My soul sickened as I looked on the scene of their wretchedness. If the liberty we are fighting for were not worth even so terrible a price,—if it were not cheaply purchased even with the blood and agony of the many brave and true souls who have gone into that foul den only to die, or to come out the shadows of men,—living ghosts, condemned to walk the night and to fade away before the breaking of the great day that is coming,—who would