Irish Lace

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “At first I was confident that with good health and strength I could survive this place. But I was wrong. My life is flowing away.

  “I would like to have come home and lived out my life to its proper length. I would have been ready to give my life on the field of honor for my country. It would have been a glory to die of a musket ball or a bayonet. Yet I was born to die in Chicago. There is little glory in that.

  “I have only two regrets. One is Lavinia, and she knows that regret. The other is that during my short run of life I have not been grateful or loving to you and to Father and to my sister and brother. I took the love of all of you for granted. I am deeply sorry that I didn’t respond generously to that love every day of my all too short life.

  “Please forgive me.

  “I grow weaker. I have watched how the men react to someone who will not live to see the next day. Some walk by pretending that he is not there. Others stop and smile piteously and encourage the poor wretch to false hopes.

  “That is how they treat me today. My strength fails. I can hardly hold my pencil. I will die before the night is over. I will see all of you in heaven.

  “All my love,

  ”Your son,

  Ralph Pickering

  14th Georgia Volunteers”

  I reflect, Nuala Anne, as I read that letter, that but for the grace of God, there goes Dermot Michael Coyne. You can tell me whether you identify with poor Lavinia.

  Maybe in Paradise we will meet them both.

  The other letter, from an officer in the 10th Texas, is much shorter:

  “My dearest Elizabeth,

  “I don’t have much longer to live. I think I have smallpox. Soon they will bring me to the smallpox hospital from which none return. I’ll be buried in the wretched cemetery behind the place. I will never see you and the children again.

  “Please forgive me, Elizabeth, for dying so soon and leaving you a widow with three children to care for. I will love you always.

  “Your loving husband,

  Edward”

  Nuala bowed her head after she had read those letters. Her fists clenched, her fingers turned white. I waited for her to explode. However, she said nothing and continued to read, her face grim and pale, her lips tight.

  I’ve tried in my first report to give all the background of Chicago and of the problem of prisoners of war in the early 1860s. Those constitute, I believe extenuating circumstances for what happened. While some guards were cruel and many camp commandants were unconscionably indifferent, cruelty was not a matter of national policy as it was in Japanese, North Korean, and North Vietnamese prison camps during their respective wars with us. While there may have been some deliberate torture, torture was surely not something that the camp commandants demanded.

  Yet, from the point of view of many of the men who endured Camp Douglas and survived it, those fine distinctions are irrelevant. Take the case of Private M. J. Bradley of Company G of the 10th Kentucky Infantry who was captured near Pound Gap, Virginia on July 7, 1863 and spent nineteen months at Camp Douglas. He contributed an article to a collection of prison memoirs published by one Griffin Frost in 1867 at Quincy, Illinois. The memoirs, compiled as they were just after the war, have the full flavor of the anger that many of the ex-POWs must have felt. Only Union camps are described, and one has the feeling that, in part, the book is a response to the prosecution of the Confederate officers from Andersonville, a kind of “You were as bad as we were and worse.”

  Allowing for that perspective and for Bradley’s rhetoric, his account is still one of great horror.

  He begins by complaining that he and his fellow prisoners were treated at Kemper Barracks in Cincinnati worse than men would treat “mean-spirited curs.” Camp Douglas was a little better. “Had we been a lot of horses under their care, we would have been provided for, by having good warm stables, to ward off the inclemency of the blast and with plenty of good substantial food to satisfy the craving of our appetites, but being rebel prisoners we were denied either of these essentials.”

  At first, he says, friends and relatives of the prisoners were able to provide them with food and clothing, but as the camp grew more crowded, their rations were reduced to a “small piece of tough beef or pickled pork and bread, with occasionally some beans and a little vinegar.” They were allowed neither “sugar, coffee, bacon, potatoes or vegetables of any kind.” When they complained, they were told that this was retaliation for what their prisoners were suffering in Confederate prisons.

  “His Satanic Majesty is swift in excuses and always prompt in furnishing them to his followers, when called upon.”

  They were compelled to “muster and stand in line every morning whether hot or cold, and there to remain in the scorching sun, the pelting rain or the driving snow, sometimes for hours.”

  They slept on pine planks without mattresses. They were allowed a blanket for every two men, though “some poor fellows” were left without blankets. They were forbidden to speak after sundown. They were surrounded by guards at all times and spies among the prisoners.

  “I may safely say that thousands of my fellow prisoners died of privations—or, in other words—starved to death! Murdered by slow torture, being denied month after month even the common necessities—white their fat-fed, wellclothed sentinels mocked our sufferings and laughed at our miseries. O, it was all human nature could endure to see these brave men thus dying of starvation day after day, at the hands of those vile, detestable, unfeeling villains who were rolling in affluence, stolen from the letters of these prisoners whose friends had sent them aid, which they poor, deluded mortals, thought the federal authorities would allow them to receive.”

  For a time, they were allowed to eat the meat bones that the cooks had cooked until they were so soft that they could chew them. Then these bones had to be thrown into a slop barrel. Some who tried to raid these barrels were shot summarily. Others were punished by having the bone “fastened between his teeth, across his mouth and made to fall down and crawl around on his hands and knees like a dog.”

  There were worse tortures:

  “A piece of timber four feet long had four legs nailed to it and made very much to resemble a carpenter’s trestle ten or twelve feet high, was made into what they called by way of taunt and ridicule, ‘the wooden horse’ or ‘Morgan’s mule.’ For the most minor and almost unavoidable violation of any of the rules and regulations, we were made to climb up as best we could and sit astride of this narrow piece of wood for hours at a time, day or night, hot or cold, rain or snow.”

  He describes how a plot of crazed men to rush the guards, seize their guns, regardless of casualties, and break out of the camp was frustrated by an informer.

  Then a more serious attempt was made to dig a tunnel out of the camp. The plot almost succeeded (as did a much more successful plot a few years before) but was also betrayed by an informer.

  The whole camp was mustered on the parade ground and made to stand day after day until the plotters were named. Those who fell to the ground were shot promptly. When the guards found the guilty men they put them in the “white oak” dungeon where many of them died.

  “A ‘dead line’ was drawn around prisons on the inside of the fence enclosing the barracks. Several men were shot by guards along this line, without any provocation whatever. I remember one circumstance in particular, which I do not think I will ever forget; a man who had just come into prison, being very thirsty, and the water having been shut off from us as had frequently been the case, seeing snow lying near the fence on the ground, attempted to pick up some and eat it, when he was shot by the guard without any warning whatever.”

  Their money was often stolen, he claims, either from their mail or by federal officers searching their few belongings during a daylong outdoor inspection on Sunday, no matter what the weather.

  He would have been treated better, he tells us, if he were imprisoned by a group of “woolly-headed Negroes” because there was something in the character
of Union soldiers that made them particularly evil.

  While Bradley’s charges may sound exaggerated, they are all confirmed by other reports and studies. Tens of thousands of dollars of “Confederate funds” (sent by family and friends) simply disappeared. Cruelty was rampant, especially during the later days of Camp Douglas when he was there.

  “I don’t want to read any more of this horrible stuff,” Nuala said and tossed aside my essay. “I’m sick of the whole frigging mess and all them disgusting shite hawks. Dermot Michael, don’t make me read any more.”

  She jumped up off the swing and paced back and forth like an angry lioness.

  “You don’t have to read it, Nuala love,” I said as I gathered up the pages from the floor.

  “I don’t want to hear a word about your frigging Camp Douglas ever again. Not at all, at all. Do you hear that, Dermot Michael?”

  “I do indeed.”

  Then she sat down and picked up my rearranged manuscript. She started to read again.

  “I thought you didn’t want to read any more,” I said very cautiously.

  “I don’t. But she’s making me.”

  “Who’s making you?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know!”

  I shivered. Was my love thinking she was in contact with the dead again?

  However, there was another side to the story; not one which cancels the horrors, but reveals that not all the guards were as bad as the men Bradley describes.

  A story from a man named M. J. Vesey of the 14th Mississippi presents a different picture:

  “I was a member of Company I, of the same regiment, and my mess of eight men occupied three small rooms at one end of the barracks. We had been drawing rations with the company, but, being dissatisfied, we asked the commissary to allow us to draw our rations separately. He said: ‘Well, as you can’t find anything else to secede from, you want to secede from your company.’ However, being a good-natured old fellow, he granted our request. Instead of drawing the black molasses and the brown sugar, we got good vegetables, cabbage, potatoes, etc. instead, and fared fine from then on until we were exchanged.

  “Our guards were Mulligan’s Irish Brigade, who had been captured at Springfield, Mo., by the Confederates. They were a nice, clever lot of men and never oppressed us. We had in our mess an Irishman named McGrority. Frequently a little Irish guard would come in early with a canteen of whisky and give McGrority and others a drink.

  “While Mulligan’s Brigade was guarding us, a Lieutenant Morrison had charge of the barracks occupied by the 14th Mississippi. He was as nice and clever a gentleman as I ever met. When his command was ordered South to reinforce Grant before the battle of Shiloh, a number of us prepared and signed a paper setting out how nice Lieutenant Morrison had been to us and asked that, in the event of his capture, he be treated with consideration. Among those who signed this paper was a young man named Billups, a son of Colonel Billups, a wealthy and prominent citizen of Columbus, Miss. It so happened that Lieutenant Morrison was captured at Shiloh and sent as a prisoner of war to Columbus Miss., and he wrote to us of his experience. After being in prison a few days, he thought of this letter and showed it to the officer of the day. The latter borrowed it and showed it to Colonel Billups, who, recognizing his son’s signature, went to the commandant of the Post and procured Lieutenant Morrison’s release to his care and then took him to his elegant home. Colonel Billups had two beautiful and accomplished daughters, and Morrison wrote us as he was having the time of his life.”

  Mulligan (not above corruption charges himself) was replaced by a much more nefarious officer named Tucker. Vesey notes the change and then, with his irrepressible sense of humor tells what he made of it:

  “While Mulligan was in command at Camp Douglas, a great number of the good people of Chicago visited us daily, keeping us well supplied with tobacco, cigars, shirts, socks, etc. and once in a while smuggled in a citizen’s suit of clothes to someone who had procured money and was anxious to escape. When Mulligan’s command was sent to the front, some six-months troops under the command of a Colonel Tucker were brought there to guard us. Colonel Tucker proclaimed that no more prisoners would escape and no visitors would be allowed without a pass signed by him, so but few visitors were seen by us for a while. One day a visitor lost his pass. It was found by a prisoner and brought to me to see if I could make a good imitation of it. After practicing for a while, I got so I could imitate Colonel’s signature to perfection. After that, whenever a prisoner could get a citizen’s suit of clothing, he would come to me and I would give him a pass and he could go out without molestation. Two men from my company, an Ed Liller and a Mr. Lochart, went out on a pass. Just outside of the the gate was a higher tower where people have a view of the prison. The day Ed Liller went out, I saw him at the top of this tower,1 taking a farewell look at his former prison.”

  Many but not all of the visitors were opponents of the war and Confederate sympathizers. Many were merely decent human beings.

  Among the frequent visitors to the camp were the family of a certain John Walsh, the owner of a cartage company in Chicago and the father of three lovely and “high-spirited” young women who were lace makers.

  While some men were killed by the guards (certainly twenty and perhaps forty-five), most of the deaths came from causes over which the guards had no control. Even the good commandants were no match for the constant overcrowding as each new batch of rebel prisoners came in, nor for unhealthy sheds in which the prisons were jammed, nor the disease, especially smallpox (of which more than 1,000 died).

  Moreover, the prisoners were also victims of corrupt subcontractors who delivered rotted food, venal doctors, inadequate medical supplies, sutlers (men who operated a kind of post exchange) who charged exorbitant prices, and a federal bureaucracy that had other matters to occupy its attention.

  I have a lot other material, Nuala, my love, especially diaries and letters from prisoners, many of which would break your heart. There is one from a man who spent almost four years in the camp. Each day he records the names of friends who have died. I think to myself that each one of these men had a mother and/or a wife and maybe children somewhere whose lives would never be the same. It makes me want to weep.

  What can we do?

  I don’t know, Nuala Anne; these awful tragedies happened long ago. They cannot be undone. We cannot console the bereaved. Lavinia and Elizabeth long ago joined their lovers in death.

  We can remember them. We can remind Chicago what happened where the peaceful lawns of Lake Meadows are today. We can realize how inept and stupid bureaucracies are when they face crisis. We can decry the folly of war. Above all, maybe, we can practice more compassion in our lives. Towards everyone.

  I’m sounding more like George the Priest.

  I imagine that most of the screams you heard came from the smallpox hospital, the White Oak dungeon, and from the men dying of starvation.

  Each death, someone wrote of the 45 million people who died during World War II, was a personal tragedy for the person who died and for that person’s survivors. Camp Douglas is small potatoes compared to the Holocaust or the Gulag or the Great Famine. But I am with your friend George Orwell: after the death of the first child, tragedy increases only quantitatively.

  May it never happen again in this city and this country. Or anywhere else.

  6

  THEN SHE read it through a second time. She put it down on the swing and sighed.

  “It’s very nicely done, Derm. The comic and the tragic mixed together.”

  “It resonates with what you experienced last Sunday.”

  “The tragic part of it. That darling Lieutenant Morrison sent me no messages. Don’t ask me how I know he was a darling. I know.”

  “I won’t argue. Did he marry one of those beautiful and accomplished women?”

  “Of course he did. After the war.”

  She picked up the paper again, thumbed through it, and then put it back on the swing.r />
  “I agree with everything you say about the lessons. I might want to make it a little more explicit that, like your man from Georgia, we should never stop saying thank-you to them who love us and whom we love.”

  “Right.”

  “Even though she wants me to get involved, I’m not sure why we’re in this. You’ve answered my question about who the men were that I heard screaming and why they were screaming. Maybe that’s enough. Aren’t these frigging ‘bursts’ often irrelevant? Sometimes they don’t mean anything at all. We drove by that street on the way up to Grand Beach, didn’t we, and nothing happened then?”

  “We did.”

  “But we both think that this particular experience is very important, don’t we?”

  “We do.”

  “who?”

  “I don’t know, Nuala Anne.”

  “You think the conspiracy is important for both of us?”

  “I think it might be.”

  “We might learn something from it, is it now?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You want me to solve that mystery?”

  “I do, Nuala Holmes.”

  “Go ’long with you, Dermot Michael Watson.”

  She pounded my arm, more delicately than sometimes.

  “And I’ve got to find that letter,” she said as her stubborn jaw took on its most stubborn form, “from your man, and himself going to a play on Good Friday.”

  “I’ll work on it all day Monday and give it to you Monday night.”

  “Grand! Now, me bucko, let’s go over to the tennis court so I can beat the shite out of you again and come back here to help your ma and the other women with lunch.”