UNION PRISONERS SOUTH

Michael Stansbury, forty-eight years of age, a seafaring man, a southerner by birth and raising, formerly captain of U. S. light ship Long Shoal, station’d at Long Shoal Point, Pamlico Sound—though a southerner, a firm Union man—was captur’d February 17, 1863, and has been nearly two years in the Confederate prisons; was at one time order’d releas’d by Governor Vance, but a rebel officer re-arrested him; then sent on to Richmond for exchange—but instead of being exchanged was sent down (as a southern citizen, not a soldier) to Salisbury, N. C., where he remain’d until lately, when he escap’d among the exchang’d by assuming the name of a dead soldier, and coming up via Wilmington with the rest. Was about sixteen months in Salisbury. Subsequent to October, ’64, there were about eleven thousand Union prisoners in the stockade; about one hundred of them southern unionists, two hundred U. S. deserters. During the past winter one thousand five hundred of the prisoners, to save their lives, join’d the confederacy, on condition of being assign’d merely to guard duty. Out of the eleven thousand not more than two thousand five hundred came out; five hundred of these were pitiable, helpless wretches—the rest were in a condition to travel. There were often sixty dead bodies to be buried in the morning; the daily average would be about forty. The regular food was a meal of corn, the cob and husk ground together, and sometimes once a week a ration of sorghum molasses. A diminutive ration of meat might possibly come once a month, not oftener. In the stockade, containing the eleven thousand men, there was a partial show of tents, not enough for two thousand. A large proportion of the men lived in holes in the ground, in the utmost wretchedness. Some froze to death, others had their hands and feet frozen. The rebel guards would occasionally, and on the least pretence, fire into the prison from mere demonism and wantonness. All the horrors that can be named, starvation, lassitude, filth, vermin, despair, swift loss of self-respect, idiocy, insanity, and frequent murder, were there. Stansbury has a wife and child living in Newbern—has written to them from here—is in the U. S. lighthouse employ still—(had been home to Newbern to see his family, and on his return to the ship was captured in his boat). Has seen men brought there to Salisbury as hearty as you ever see in your life—in a few weeks completely dead gone, much of it from thinking on their condition—hope all gone. Has himself a hard, sad, strangely deaden’d kind of look, as of one chill’d for years in the cold and dark, where his good manly nature had no room to exercise itself.