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brought in and thrown down to divide.
Sept. 17 the yard was so foul that no resting-place could be found.
There was no shade.
Night was welcome.
Only salts were given as medicine.
Sept. 20 the yard was submerged in consequence of two days rain, and the filth was intolerable.
Colonel Jones, the commandant, did not reply to remonstrances for three days, and a second application brought answer that it was the best they could do.
Capt. Timson's statement is to be found in the New York Tribune of March 15, 1865.
Capt. C. W. Brunt, First N. Y. Cavalry, was confined in hospital at Rykersville, four miles from
Charleston, in September, 1864.
He testifies that
Dr. George R. C. Todd was in charge, and claimed to be a brother of
Mrs. Lincoln.
He states that
Todd was a profane, obscene, and brutal man. In his madness he would pound and kick the
Union officers, and caused some to be bucked and gagged for spitting on the floor.
Brunt testifies later as follows:—
‘One of the colored nurses (a soldier captured at Wagner) stopped to talk to me. Todd saw him and ordered the guard to have him whipped.
Soon the screams of the poor fellow convinced me the order was being executed.’
In the ‘New York Times,’ of May 10, 1891, there appeared the following account of our men in Charleston Jail:—
‘On the third floor were confined a number of our colored soldiers who had been captured at Wagner and different points along the coast.
They were lean, dirty, and ragged; not a few had repaired their trousers and coats with pieces of canvas purloined from the tents in the yard, and the effect was very odd. Our colored comrades were not only the “innocent cause of the war,” but they were also the cause of the suspension of the cartel agreed to for the exchange of prisoners.
Yet I never heard a decent Union soldier say a word against them, and I can bear evidence to the fortitude with which they bore their privations, and their simple faith in the ultimate triumph of the Union cause.
Often after nine o'clock at night, when by the rules we were confined in our quarters, I have been aroused from a doze by the singing of the colored prisoners.
At such times the voices coming down from the upper floors of the jail sounded very sweet, and there was a certain weird, indescribable sadness in the minor key melodies, that told of camp-meeting days and the ’
