ury
and a quarter ago, that the age of chivalry is gone, we may point to
this great martyrdom, the brightest painting on the darkest background
in all our history--thousands choosing to die for the country which
seemed to disown them!

My diary records, and I believe it correct, that on the 17th of
February, there were ten deaths in the Danville prisons. A little before
midnight of that day the Danville prisoners were loaded into box cars,
and the train was started for Richmond. Three, it was reported, died in
the cars that night, and one next morning in the street on the way to
Libby.

During the next three days I obtained the autographs of two hundred and
fifteen of my fellow officers there. The little book is precious. A few
still survive; but the great majority have joined the faithful whom they
commanded.

On Fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead!

On the twenty-second we were taken for exchange down the James. As we
passed through the lines into what we were accustomed fondly to call
"God's Country," salvos of artillery and signs of universal rejoicing
greeted us. Our reception made us imagine for an hour that our arrival
perceptibly heightened the general joy of the Washington anniversary.
But many of us could not help wishing we were asleep with the thousands
who were filling nameless graves at Danville and Salisbury.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] See Putnam's account of this incident in his _A Prisoner of War in
Virginia_, p. 67.

CHAPTER X

Results and Reflections--The Right and the Wrong of it All.

A few days of waiting in the buildings of the Naval Academy at Annapolis
while exchange papers were preparing gave us opportunity for a
much-needed transformation. Our old clothing, encrusted with dirt and
infested with vermin, in many cases had to be destroyed. One of our
number especially unkempt, Captain T., who gave up for an hour or two
his beloved trousers, found to his surprise and horror when he called
for their return that they had been burned with four hundred dollars in
greenbacks sewed up in the lining! We smiled at his irrepressible grief;
it was poetic justice. He had carefully concealed the fact of his being
flush, pretending all along to be like the rest _in forma pauperis_, and
contriving, it was said, to transfer in crooked ways our pennies into
his pockets!

Fumigated, parboiled,