by Chad Fraser
Recognizing the lateness of the season, West and Gregg got started right away. And as it turned out, good fortune would favour them; the winter of 1862 was unusually mild, allowing them to work without pause until colder weather finally arrived in early January. Another advantage was the natural supply of timber available for cutting on the island, which reduced the need to haul more across Sandusky Bay.
In the end, West and Gregg brought the project in on time and under budget. Johnson’s Island prison was ready to house its first occupants by February 1862. At this early point in its life, the prison was intended to hold captives of all ranks, but a few months later it was designated for officers only.
While a cut above most prison camps in terms of amenities (there was a library, a laundry, and even two tailors, though most of these services were prisoner-run), the prison’s thin-walled barracks robbed the inmates of any privacy whatsoever, and the conditions inside were downright life-threatening in winter. Johnson’s Island inmate Henry Kyd Douglas describes the prison in his memoir, I Rode with Stonewall:
The prison was an oblong, bare piece of ground enclosed by a high fence, and perched up on this fence, or barricade, at intervals, in sentry boxes, were armed sentinels. The barracks or prison houses were long buildings, hastily erected of wood and weatherboard, called wards. The weatherboarding was a single layer nailed to upright beams, and there was no plastering of any kind. The weatherboarding would sometimes warp, and in all the rooms there were many knotholes, through which one laying in bed could look out upon the moon or water; but when the weather got below zero, the scenery was scarcely compensation for the suffering. Bunks were ranged along the walls — if they can be called walls — in three tiers.
With West and Gregg moving steadily forward on the construction front, Hoffman turned his attention to staffing the new facility. With the help of Ohio governor William Dennison, Hoffman put his administrative skills to work yet again, managing to pull off yet another minor miracle. Over the winter he raised a military staff of over one hundred local men, mainly by letting it be known that those who enlisted for duty on Johnson’s Island would receive the same pay as soldiers in the field, with the advantage of being able to work near home — and not amongst the horror and death of the front lines.
Dennison, for his part, recommended that the new guard corps be named the Hoffman Battalion, in the commissary-general’s honour; a suggestion that was readily adopted. In turn, Hoffman’s recruiters ran the following ad in the January 1, 1862 edition of the Sandusky Register: “Hoffman Battalion! $100 Reward! Men enlisted to garrison Government section on Johnson’s Island, receive above bounty in addition to good pay, excellent quarters and abundant rations. Men must be of good height, and between the ages of twenty and forty.”
Photo courtesy of Sandusky Library Archives Research Center
Soldiers’ barracks at the Johnson’s Island prison. The Hoffman Battalion, which guarded the prisoners, is formed up in front.
With the final puzzle piece in place, and after a few delays caused by bad weather, the prison “welcomed” its first occupants on April 11, 1862. The Confederates, or “secesh” as the Sandusky Register derisively referred to them, arrived at Sandusky by train from Camp Chase in Columbus. Curious townspeople, eager to see the captives up close, gathered to watch as the prisoners were marched from the train to the Island Queen for the short trip across the bay and into captivity.
When the prisoners finally arrived on Johnson’s Island, they found a place of both strict order and nearly endless boredom. Breakfast, served at six o’clock, consisted of coffee, bread, and beef, then the iceman and milkman came at seven-thirty. At eight o’clock the prison sutler, a private businessman who ran the general store, arrived to sell fruit and vegetables to prisoners who could afford to buy them.
The class system remained firmly in place among the prison population, and though Confederate ranks were not recognized, the ability to buy fruit and vegetables was far from the only way that well-to-do prisoners prospered behind the walls. They could also buy heavy coats and winter clothing from the sutler, though these could also be provided to poorer prisoners — with the recommendation of the medical officer. In an ironic twist, at least one slave-owning prisoner is thought to have brought his servant with him into captivity.
By far the most eagerly anticipated moment of the prisoner’s day was mail call, with its packages and letters from loved ones. The sutler also returned at this time with the day’s papers (available only to those who could afford them, of course). These consisted mainly of New York papers, plus the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Sandusky Register. All would be a day old save for the Register, the local daily, which was not popular among the prisoners because of its pro-Union stance. Likewise, the authorities would later ban the prisoners’ favourite paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, because of its pro-secessionist bias.
After lunch, the prisoners were free to spend the afternoon as they saw fit until dinner was served at sundown. Afterward, the men ambled back to their bunks, many engrossed in conversation about the progress of the war, others silently thinking of friends and family back home. Prisoner Edmund DeWitt Patterson, who was captured during the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, gives an apt description of the monotony of prison life in his diary:
We ramble about through the pen, which comprises sixteen acres, during the day and at night retire to our quarters, some to read, some to write, and others to play chess, whist, Old sledge, Euchre, Cribbage, and a dozen other games unnecessary to mention. We spend our time at this manner until half past nine o’clock, when at the tap of the drum, all of the lights must go out. And we retire to our “bunks,” some to sleep — “aye, perchance to dream,” and others to study of home and loved ones there.
The monotony aside, life at Johnson’s Island was more bearable than at many other Civil War prison camps. Still, the Confederates endured periods of considerable privation. On a number of occasions, the sutler’s services were suspended in retaliation for atrocities, real or imagined, suffered by Union prisoners in Confederate camps. There arose from this many stories of men eating rats in order to subsist, but these all seem to stem more from a sense of boredom and culinary sport among the Southerners rather than any real need.
So while there seems to have been enough food for the men at Johnson’s Island, its nutritional value was certainly lacking. (According to Charles E. Fishman’s authoritative book, Rebels on Lake Erie, fifty-six prisoners came down with scurvy, caused by a lack of vitamin C, between November 1, 1863 and March 20, 1865, even though the disease had been largely eradicated sixty years earlier.) In the face of protests from local townsfolk that the prisoners were treated too well — better than Union soldiers in the field, they argued — the health of the men at Johnson’s Island remained generally stable, with roughly 200 prisoners being laid to rest in the prison cemetery during the prison’s three-year career. By contrast, 13,000 of the 45,000 Union prisoners held at the notorious Confederate prison at Andersonville (or Camp Sumter as it was officially known) died from malnutrition, disease, overcrowding, and exposure in just fourteen months.
By far the greatest physical danger the Southerners faced was the brutal Lake Erie winter. As the mercury dropped through November and December, the men were left with nothing to do but hunker down as best they could, gathering around the pot-bellied stoves that heated the barracks and occupying themselves with chopping wood, which was delivered to the prison in one-metre lengths. To Henry Kyd Douglas, Johnson’s Island “was just the place to convert visitors to the theological belief of the Norwegian that Hell has torments of cold instead of heat.” Douglas also noted the lengths to which prisoners went to stay warm when, one night in January 1864, “two men would squeeze into one bunk so as to double blankets, would wrap themselves up head and feet, and in the morning break through crackling ice, formed by the congealing of the breath that escaped, as one has seen on the blankets of horses at sleighing time.”
These dangers and discomforts notwithstanding, prison life was overwhelmingly monotonous for the Southern soldiers at Johnson’s Island. Yet it was punctuated with more than a few moments of intrigue — and genuine terror. Escape attempts were not uncommon, and a few prisoners even managed to succeed against the keen eyes of the guards, the expanse of Sandusky Bay that separated them from the mainland, and Lake Erie’s often treacherous weather. One such success story occurred on the brutally cold night of January 1, 1864, when five prisoners used a ladder to climb over the fence in a brazen attempt to catch the guards napping during record-setting cold temperatures. A heavy blizzard and violent gales had roared through the area the night before, nearly killing the lightkeeper and his family on nearby Green Island (see Chapter 6). Of the five who went over the fence that frigid night, one, who lacked proper clothing, chose to stay behind. The rest made their way across the frozen bay and eventually to Detroit. From there, another death-defying scramble across the partially frozen Detroit River brought them to Canada and safety. Lieutenant William E. Killen, another Johnson’s Island prisoner, made note of the escape and the brutal weather conditions in his diary: “Jan. 2, 1864: Saturday. Still very cold. The thermometer must be from 12 to 15 degrees [Fahrenheit] below zero several prisoners made their escape. One was caught and brought back . . .”
This, however, was one of the more audacious escapes from Johnson’s Island. The handful of other prisoners who managed to get out did so in more mundane ways, by passing themselves off as parolees to the South or by hiding in the bottoms of the supply wagons that passed through the prison gates.
Executions also occurred at Johnson’s Island, although these appear to have been relatively infrequent, and almost never involved prisoners of war but rather deserters from the Union army, suspected spies, and other criminals; these various types of lawbreakers were often held at prisoner-of-war camps. Perhaps the most intriguing case was that of Reuben Stout, who was put to death for desertion and murder on October 23, 1863. Stout had not returned to his post after his entire regiment had been captured by Confederate troops and subsequently paroled back to the Union. He later claimed his absence had been caused by illness, but in any case, he fell in with a secret society known as the “Knights of the Golden Circle,” who were associated with the antiwar Copperhead movement in the North (“Copperheads,” so known for the copper pins they wore to distinguish themselves, sympathized with the South, were largely proslavery and consisted mainly of Democrats opposed to the Republican Lincoln administration).
In the meantime, the army dispatched Solomon Huffman, a bounty hunter, to track Stout down. Four months later, Huffman found Stout hiding at his brother’s home in Delphi, Indiana. A fight ensued, which ended with Stout shooting and killing Huffman with a pistol. Stout was subsequently sentenced to be “shot to death with musketry” on Johnson’s Island.
Photo by author
The Johnson’s Island cemetery gates stand as a haunting reminder of the Confederate prisoners once held here.
And so it came that on the morning of October 23, 1863, Stout found himself sitting on the end of his own wooden coffin on the south shore of Johnson’s Island. The Hoffman Battalion formed up in front and the chaplain read portions of Stout’s final statement (part of which appeared in the October 29, 1863 New York Times), in which he renounced both the Knights and the Copperheads, stating, “I was led by evil counsels, and my connection with a secret traitorous organization, to stay away from my post of duty in the army. I am truly sorry that I acted thus, or that I for a moment listened to these evil counsels . . .”
But there was to be no atonement in this life for Reuben Stout. When the chaplain finished, Stout was blindfolded and the firing squad given the fateful command. The musket claps echoed through the trees, and Stout’s lifeless body slumped back over his coffin.
Beall’s Privateers
It was just this kind of fate John Yates Beall was hoping to avoid when he set out for Toronto in August 1863. Unbeknownst to the Confederate government of President Jefferson Davis, Beall was on his way to meet Jacob Thompson, a former secretary of the interior under President James Buchanan, who was officially operating as a Confederate commissioner in Canada. Unofficially, however, Thompson’s mission was more than mere diplomacy: armed with over a million dollars from his government, he was tasked with causing as much trouble for the Union on its northern flank as possible. This included everything from assisting the antiwar Copperheads to outright confrontation with the Union army.
There was, however, one major wrinkle: Thompson was under strict orders to respect Canadian, and by extension British, neutrality. To violate it risked bringing Britain into the war on the Union side; a chilling prospect for a Confederate army already stretched dangerously thin.
As for Beall, he had undergone a remarkable transformation over the eighteen months since he had returned to the South from Canada. Spoiling to get back into the fight, he had approached Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory and asked him for permission to launch a privateering mission on the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay, where Beall could wreak havoc on the Union’s waterborne supply line. Mallory accepted this proposal, and granted Beall a navy commission that made him an acting master in the Confederate States Navy.
It was a straightforward deal for Beall and his small crew (which never numbered more than twenty): the Confederate navy would give them arms and supplies, but nothing more. As with most privateering permits of the period, Beall’s men received no direct pay from the government, but were entitled to keep all they could capture. On June 15, 1863, Beall departed Richmond with cutlasses and supplies, and set off for what he thought would be a rousing — and profitable — adventure.
But the expedition would get off to a disappointingly slow start, as Bedinger Lucas writes: “In the first month, nothing more was done than to surprise a camp of ‘Contrabands,’ killing one, capturing one, and putting to flight the remainder.” The upshot was that over these opening weeks, the men captured just enough supplies to turn themselves into a reasonably effective raiding force. Operating from shore using two yawls (essentially small, two-masted sailboats), the privateers took five Union cargo vessels and fourteen prisoners between September 17 and September 20. One of the ships, the schooner Alliance, was carrying $200,000 worth of goods, a veritable fortune at the time.
Arguably the most brazen mission the crew undertook during the excursion was a raid on the Cape Charles lighthouse on Smith Island, in Chesapeake Bay, in early August 1863, just prior to the September raids on the five Union cargo vessels. As soon as the men landed, they quickly disembarked and scrambled for cover while Beall strode toward the lighthouse. “My friend,” he called to the unsuspecting lightkeeper, “I am highly pleased with the lighthouse and your management of it, and I have a party of friends belonging to the Confederate States Navy who, I think, would like to look at it!”
With that, Beall gave a whistle, and his privateers sprang forward, storming through the door. Once inside, they set upon anything of value they could find, destroying or setting off with most of the lamps, machinery, and fixtures. They even managed to take three hundred gallons of oil off the island with them, which was of great value to the Confederacy, choked as it was by an ever-tightening Union naval blockade that had been in place since shortly after the war began. The raiders never laid a hand on the keeper, though it must have been a thoroughly terrifying experience for the man, who Bedinger Lucas describes derisively as “an illiterate and rough specimen.”
As far as the Lake Erie raid was concerned, perhaps Beall’s biggest acquisition in his Chesapeake Bay operations was the acquaintance of the man who would later become his chief lieutenant during the hijacking of the Philo Parsons. Born in Scotland, Bennet G. Burley had been drawn to the Confederacy by the lucrative but dangerous trade of blockade running. The privately owned vessels engaged in this activity brought everything from medical supplies to munitions and food to the Confederacy, and p
aid sailors handsomely. But after a short stint, Burley, too, decided to take a commission in the Confederate navy and join Beall for the privateering expedition, no doubt sensing that it had the potential to be even more lucrative.
Naturally, raids such as these soon began to attract the attention of the Union military. So much so, in fact, that it seems the generals overestimated Beall’s strength when they dispatched a massive force, including a regiment of black infantry, two regiments of cavalry, and one artillery regiment to deal with the privateers. The Union force finally caught up with Beall at Tangier Inlet in early November 1862. Using no less than seven ships to seal off all available escape routes, the Union troops commenced a systematic search of the area. Characteristically undaunted, Beall ordered his two yawls into the inlet anyway, and quickly took a small schooner. Almost immediately afterward, he dispatched most of his men to shore in one of the yawls, while he kept a skeleton crew aboard the schooner, the idea being that fewer privateers on the captured ship would attract less attention.
But this time it was Beall who incorrectly estimated the size of the force opposing him. The men sent ashore were immediately captured and one of them, terrified, started talking, soon giving up the whole operation. Beall and his entire force were subsequently rounded up and transferred to the prison camp at Fort McHenry, near Drummondtown, Maryland. Astonishingly, even though Secretary of War Edwin Stanton ordered that the men be held “not as prisoners of war but as pirates or marauding robbers,” they were exchanged back to the Confederacy in May 1864.
Spies and Saboteurs
Upon his return to Richmond, Beall took a much-needed break, again travelling and visiting old friends. His spirits rose with the extra rest, and in his journal he called this short period “the happiest two weeks of my life.” He briefly considered a government offer to become a Confederate spy, but Beall, the consummate freelancer, was not yet ready to subject himself to superiors with whom he was almost certain to disagree. After taking up his musket to help with the defence of Richmond, around which the war was now tightening, Beall vanished from sight, finally reappearing in Toronto, where Jacob Thompson was headquartered.
