“Lewis be a good egg; he’s just a temper. He’s been there fer us, hain’t he?”
“Some part of me feels guilty fer trying to escape, like my old man wouldn’t approve if he knowed that I was about to defy the authority I surrendered to.”
“Don’t make much sense to me, Stephen. We’re not meant to be penned, so we trying to get free so we can rejoin our regiment. We give Lewis a wide berth, an’ he’ll do right by us. I can’t wait to get out of these walls, an’ this be our chance to get free before the next one of us dies of disease or runs afoul of some character hereabouts.”
Stephen shook his head. “I’m not sure I can do it, Fred. I don’t want to stay here an’ die neither. But I don’t want to be in the hands of Lewis. I don’t trust him. What if we get exchanged? We escape an’ get caught, what they do to us then?”
“I don’t see any obligation to stay either way, Stephen. You escape if you can. If they left no guards around an’ the door was open, would you just stay? I’d be out the door an’ runnin’ fast as I can. This may be the only way we get out of here.”
“So you’re committed? You going to go?” Stephen looked down at the ground as the two walked to their barracks keeper’s station.
“Can’t say that I want to stay, Stephen. You be safe, an’ Lewis isn’t that bad.”
“If you think we be safe with each other.”
“Sure, Stephen; you’ll see. It’ll be a snap.”
Stephen nodded glumly. Many things here no longer met the standard of morality and living imparted by his father. Living under the authority you are in, respecting the will of those in power and command, turning the other cheek. Those all made sense while he was living at home, but they did not comport to POW life. His father might tell the tale of Peter and John in the prison when the walls shook and the doors flew open, offering escape to all the prisoners but they stayed confined because it was the right thing to do. He had surrendered because there was nothing left to do. Was he under obligation to stay a prisoner? Any real obligation? He’d not thought it possible for men to die by the score charging up a hill and doing it over and over again either, but he’d already witnessed that too.
Chapter 14
Camp Chase, Ohio, August 11, 1862
Stephen Murdoch fidgeted nervously with the newly carved chess piece. It was crude by any other standards but elegant enough to adorn the rough, three-foot-by-six-foot hardtack box with chessboard that it would sit upon. Rescued from a ration box, the board had been etched with squares and painted black and red in the usual checkerboard pattern.
“I’ve found a spot on the stockade wall where the guards can’t see us. I stood there for a long time the other day, and no one took notice of me.” Lewis Hopewell rubbed his dirty hands in anticipation as he looked around cautiously. “Now, we ain’t got days to do this without arousing suspicion, so we got two days to see if it really gonna work.”
He picked up a chess piece and turned it in his long, lithe fingers. “Now, we can set up our board and use this box here against the stockade wall. Some of those boards at the base are loose. This box is big enough for a man to crawl inside and saw on the boards to cut a hole. Then one by one, we’ll all slip through the box and take our chances on the outside.”
“I don’t remember much of the camp or how far from the road we are,” Stephen said as he looked at the forbiddingly high stockade wall. They had been marched into the camp, but what was on the outside of those walls no one knew for sure.
Peter looked wistfully at the gate which barred their way to the outside.
“You’re the smallest of us, Pete, you’ll have to do the cutting while we play.” Lewis fixed Peter with his cold, grey eyes. This was serious business, and the youthful Pritchert did not always exude confidence.
“Sure, I can manage that, Lewis,” Peter said, drawing himself up.
Peter smiled wanly. Lewis’s hard glare bored into him, and he quickly turned away.
Fredrick Lester sat with his legs splayed and his hands cupped between his knees. His sky-blue pants were dirty and spotted with stains; rips and tears repaired as best he could manage until they were too numerous now to keep up with, and his thread had given out long ago. Gaunt and perpetually tired, he had the appearance of an old man. “If anybody going to bother us, two days will show it.”
Lewis tapped the box they were sitting on. The hollow sound offered each a hope of freedom as they envisioned one by one crawling through it and outside of those high walls. “We go day after tomorrow. Not a word to anyone about this. We’ll just mosey on over there, an’ Fred here will teach us the finer points of chess, an’ we’ll just sit and play a couple of games a day until they decide we’re always going to be there playing.”
Lewis stood up and towered over his companions. Motioning to Peter and the others to get up as well, he stooped down to pick up an end to the box, and he and Peter carried it to their chosen spot at the far end of the compound. Trying to look nonchalant, a challenge for arguably the tallest man in the compound, Lewis and the others picked their way through the crowds of men staring at them with quizzical expressions. Sensing something might be up, a few followed them at a distance.
“What are we gonna do?” Peter asked, looking about.
“Act normal!” Lewis said angrily over his shoulder. The box’s bottom edge was rough and unfinished, and it rubbed uneasily on his begrimed hands. Lewis stared straight ahead as a man who knows where and what he is doing as Peter struggled to keep up, the box bouncing clumsily in his hands and into Lewis’s back. By now a growing crowd was following, drawing the attention of the guards along the catwalk on the wall’s top.
A few men called out to Lewis and the group, wondering what they were up to.
“Just going to teach these fine men the art of chess,” Fredrick called back each time. Not satisfied, the crowd persisted in following.
Will Hunter watched the procession with interest from his barracks steps. The barracks were situated in the center of the large compound, with the yard space between them and then between each barrack house and the high walls surrounding them. From his perch in the officer’s compound, Will fancied a little visit to the enlisted men’s compound.
Finally at their destination, Lewis dropped his end of the box and turned to look at his companions. Upon the top of the box the chessboard was quickly set, and the pieces were fished out of their pockets until a fine scene it made. At seeing the true aim of the little group, the rest of the onlookers wandered away, some with downcast eyes, having expected a good game of cards or chuck-a-luck where they could chance some much-needed item. A few souls stuck around so that Fredrick was compelled to actually teach chess. In a loud voice, he tried to lay out the rules.
Although his pupils were rough and ill-suited for the boring nature of chess, Stephen and Lewis caught on well enough and seemed to get the hang of the game’s strategy. Peter, on the other hand, was a challenge. Young and impetuous, he did not understand what all the fuss was about with the game. To make things look normal, they needed to each play one of the others while the remaining two looked on. Occasionally they invited an interested onlooker to play. Though he could beat all of them handily, Fredrick tried not to make it so obvious.
After a few hours of round-robin playing and teaching, the group decided it was enough and carried their box back through the camp, this time with little fanfare. Smiling, Lewis Hopewell took an easier stride. The boards were thick and well-planted at the base of the stockade wall, and they would be impossible to dig under or out without being noticed. A saw would have to be obtained. Each barracks had a keeper, a Federal soldier assigned to keep watch over the inmates and sound the alarm should there be some emergency. He was also keeper of the limited tools provided. One would have to be pinched—and only on the day of the attempt if they were to succeed.
Will, from his perch on the steps, took note of their leaving, convinced now that this was more than a game of chess with that ugly crack
er box as a table. Also lounging on the steps was Jackson Kearns, who was watching Will watch the privates. Few of the other officers had taken note of the activity. Will marveled at the group’s audacity: trooping back and forth through the camp with that box hadn’t even drawn the attention of any of the wall guards for long. He’d have to see for himself next time.
****
The barracks keepers were green soldiers, barely trained and not very attentive. On several occasions Fredrick was able to strike up limited conversations with a few. The keeper was relieved every six hours, and the ones assigned lately were all recent volunteers from Hudson College in Columbus. Fredrick kept an eager eye open for an opportunity to steal a saw. The Hudson students, much like himself, were eager to talk about literature and politics, and one in particular seemed keen to talk and while the time away. In general, these men had been ordered to not fraternize with the prison population, but as with all orders not overseen by an officer, the enlisted men would do it anyway.
The keeper’s office was a room built on one side of the great barracks, accessible only from the outside through a door that was kept locked, with two windows on each outside wall with bars and a similar window facing the inside of the barracks. From there, it was possible for the keeper to see what was going on inside as well as out.
Fredrick would loll against the outside of their keeper’s window and chat with whomever was assigned, but especially with Oliver whenever it was his duty. Oliver seemed much taken with discussing Robespierre and the French Revolution, John Locke’s essays on government, and the rights of men.
Stephen sometimes sat nearby while Fredrick and Oliver argued about these two philosophers and their role in shaping the current strife between the sections of the country. To Stephen, it was all just heady mishmash. Arguing over who could rightly claim responsibility for the war with England and the Southern claim to continue that revolutionary principle was neither here nor there. There was a war on, and freedom hung in the balance—freedom for the whites, that was.
“But Locke didn’t extend rights to the race of black men if they were already property. He himself was vested in the slave trade and helped shape the colony of Carolina with its charter and assembly. You cannot say that Locke’s ideals on freedom extended past the white man,” Fredrick was arguing.
“And that is why he was in error and a hypocrite! He argued against the owning of property in men in his other works, especially in his defense of Christianity and his writings on St. Paul’s epistles. He would also have argued against a superior class who did no labor,” Oliver said sharply.
“Yet he also states that one’s labor leads to the right to own property and that government should not impinge upon that right. The federal government does not have the right to decide what property a man chooses to own or disown of his own accord. I am not a slave owner, but I do not truck with allowing someone to decide what is and what is not property when it has been paid for by the labor of others.”
And so the discussions would go on, with a dizzying array of topics and points that Stephen was ill at ease to fully follow. His education had not been genteel, as his father would put it. Last year, the rights of the Southern states had been paramount in the rush to volunteer before war should end and he and his fellows should miss the fun. It was everything to oppose the Lincolnites from the North and to avenge Southern manhood and honor on the field of battle. Jaded by months of privation and one of the largest engagements in the war, and seeing his best friend cut down, had blunted that desire to represent Southern honor. What if they were to succeed in escaping? He’d have to rejoin his regiment. He was starting to get used to the idea of being in prison, of having done his part. Who was even still left in the 6th Mississippi anyway? He might find himself shouldering a musket alongside total strangers.
As Stephen sat whittling and listening to Oliver and Fredrick debate, his mind wandered back to his father’s dinner-table debates, and with a sigh he longed for those simpler days once more. Though not exactly at this level of learned discussion of philosophy, his father, the deacon, would engage his guests with his own standard of learning in the deeper spiritual philosophies of Scripture. Then too, the table discussions between master of the house and traveling guests would often stray into the same discussions of the rights of men and the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, and of the slave’s role in those rights. Being a good churchman, his father would not stray from the right of the owner to own what had been paid for and the duty of the slave to do his master’s bidding. To him, it was not a question of race so much as a question of position. That the slave had been degraded was accepted as fact; that his degradation was natural due to retarded evolutionary and social growth in the wilds of Africa was the common belief.
There were slaves in the POW compound, taken under arms with their masters, and they did not live any meaner a life than he in the confines of the prison. They stood by their charges and often fought other servants over the meager rations to provide for their masters. If anyone had opportunity to leave these walls, it was they. They chose instead to remain. This did not puzzle Stephen as much as it did Oliver.
“Take these niggers who was captured along with their masters, for instance,” Oliver proclaimed after a brief silence, pointing to the black men in the distance. “Why do they stay? Why not petition Colonel Moody to have them released? Why don’t they take the oath and walk out of those gates free men?”
“Because they serve a family,” Fredrick answered. “They have accepted the fate of their master just as their master accepts their fate. Some were taken under arms. Others were harmless manservants who came with their masters to serve their needs in the army. They may have been bought, they or their ancestors, but they are part of a family now, and they serve that family even here. That is just the way it is with them. Perhaps freedom in a foreign land is just as much a slavery as being in bondage in a land you grew up in and trust.”
Fredrick looked over at Stephen as if to confirm his hypothesis. Stephen gave a curt nod but allowed his eyes to wander across the compound to the clumps of prisoners going about their daily routines. Here and there an officer’s servant could be seen moving about on some errand or heading to the common sink. They were dressed not unlike their fellow captives and held no inferior position.
“Yet the slave is not free to experience the freedoms spoken of in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution. You will not deny that they are not born equal to you or I under state-supported slavery,” Oliver said.
Oliver pressed his youthful, peach-fuzz-covered chin between the bars of the outside window and fixed Fredrick with a triumphant gaze. A boy of nineteen and only in his first year at Hudson College, his clean face stood in stark contrast to those of his companions, whose beards grew more shaggy by the day. Though washing was available, soap was in limited supply, as were scissors for trimming and grooming. In general, the prison population resembled shaggy frontiersmen more than soldiers.
“Nor under Ohio state statutes either,” Fredrick argued back. “The freedman or free black cannot vote, own property, nor exercise the other freedoms so laid out by your own Bill of Rights. We do not pretend to offer them freedom, but we keep them protected by the auspices of ownership and care. Your free blacks endure a mean existence compared with our slaves.”
Stephen got up from his perch and wandered away from the debate. Though his comrade sounded right—there were as many laws guiding the treatment of slaves as there were those regulating their freedom when freed—there did seem to be an incongruence in his arguments. Stephen thought about St. Paul’s words in his letters to slaves to be content in their current circumstances while he also urged them to be free if they could. To be free was in the nature of all men. Yet, the fact that some of the blacks were choosing to stand by their masters was difficult to swallow if he indeed believed that all men yearned for freedom.
Other men had attempted escape before, singly or in s
mall groups, and most had been recaptured easily enough. But getting outside of the walls was only part of the problem. Getting back to friendly lines was something else while deep in enemy territory. Though some civilians in Columbus had proven themselves sympathetic to the cause, their help was hardly to be counted on. No one in their little group was familiar with the countryside. They were soldiers, though, and used to privation. They would have to make it as they could.
Stephen made his way to where the others were lounging by the side of their barracks. The day was hot and muggy, not unlike Mississippi in the summer, though it would grow much cooler in the evening. The others greeted him with a casual nod. Lewis was busily prying the boards off one side of the box they would be using so as to gain easy access to the stockade wall. Peter was listlessly fingering a chess piece and bombarding Lewis with questions about the game.
“So why isn’t the king the most important piece?”
“Wouldn’t you fight for the honor of your woman?”
“Well, yeah, but I don’t get why the king shouldn’t be the piece to capture. I mean, if the Yankees could capture President Davis, they would. They wouldn’t bother with his wife.”
Lewis, a bewildered look upon his face, gave a cry of frustration and slapped his hands down upon his knees. A thin layer of dust rose from his dirty wool pants. “That’s just how the game is played.”
Stephen smiled and took his seat next to Peter. Stephen wasn’t that far behind Peter in his understanding of chess. It was the perfect game for whiling the hours away. For Stephen, that meant pretending he knew what he was doing. He’d watched Fredrick stare at the pieces for fifteen minutes at a time, hunched over the board, sometimes touching a piece to move it, then moving it back, then touching another, only to leave it alone before leaning back and sighing contentedly. At least Stephen had seen a chessboard before. Some of Peter’s rough-carved pieces looked nothing like what they were supposed to look like. Fredrick had spent an hour trying to describe a rook, but Peter’s idea of a castle just didn’t match up to Fredrick’s.
The Shiloh Series: Books 1-3 Page 49
