le in
atrocities, cruelties, starvation and death. A place where thirteen
thousand Union soldiers, became victims to the vindictiveness of their
captors--no not their captors but their jailors--for the soldier, whether
federal or confederate, who had the courage to risk his life in the field
where prisoners were captured, possessed too great a sense of honor to
treat with such heartless cruelty, those who so gallantly opposed them.

I say that when we arrived at Salisbury, we learned that there had been a
desperate attempt made by the enlisted men confined there, to overpower
the guard and make their escape that afternoon, and the artillery had
opened on the prison pen with grape and cannister, killing, and wounding,
many of the Union prisoners confined there. Great excitement still
prevailed when we arrived, and threats of shooting the d--d Yanks were
freely indulged in by the "new issue," as the home guard were called.

But we were not molested; probably owing to the fact that we had a guard
over us, of soldiers who were ready and willing to protect their prisoners
from interference from outside parties.

We staid in Salisbury until about eleven o'clock p. m., during which time
the reb guard, and their lady friends, were parading around the depot
where we were waiting for the train, singing, flirting, and talking about
the Yankee prisoners.

While we were sitting on the depot platform waiting, we were smoking, and
as the platform was filled with bales of cotton, we were, while apparently
uninterested spectators of what was going on, emptying our pipes into the
cotton bales.

We thus managed to set fire to a number of these bales of cotton, well
knowing that after we were gone and the guard had retired, there would be
apt to be a blaze; and the next day we heard that the depot at Salisbury
was burned the night before, destroying a large amount of cotton stored
there. On my arrival at Danville, I met Colonel W. C. Raulston, of the
24th New York Cavalry, with whom I was acquainted, and who introduced me
to the members of his mess, Brigadier-General A. N. Duffie,
Brigadier-General Hays, and Lieutenants Leydon and VanDerweed, who were
all anxious to talk with me about the chances of escape. Knowing that I
had had considerable experience in that line, they naturally concluded
that I could give them some valuable points on how to escape, and how best
to reach our lines after we had got out.

Well, we held a long and an