A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [350]
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General Sam Jones in Charleston had decided it was time for the Federals to feel what the city’s civilian population had been enduring for the past eight months, and fifty Federal prisoners of war (all officers) had been moved to a converted prison in one of the most heavily shelled neighborhoods. He knew that an attempt to capture the city was still being prepared—his scouts had reported that thirteen warships and forty-six troop transports were anchored less than a hundred miles away in Port Royal Sound, which had been captured by the Federals early on in the war.4 But the timing of the attack remained a mystery. Captain Henry Feilden was not taking any chances: he had drawn up a will in Julia’s favor even though their wedding had not yet taken place. If he were to be killed now, he told her,
I should feel as if I was leaving a wife behind in you, and it is my duty to attend to your wants. I thought of you, darling, last night whilst I was sitting out on the ground, I thought of you and felt happy to be able to render my small mite in defence of your country. You will trust me dearest, wont you, to love you ever as I do now, whatever happens if I am alive you will be protected … someone who will think of nothing else for the rest of his life but making you happy.5
General Beauregard had recommended Feilden for promotion:
Though I do not think there is much chance of their refusing it, personally I do not care whether they do or do not [Feilden admitted]. I really look forward to the war ending this year, and if [only] we are spared to one another, we shall be able to settle so comfortably in Charleston. I will go into some business and work very hard, and then I shall have you to comfort me and inspire me. Then you will be able to amuse yourself with all your old friends and acquaintances. Dearest Julie, if I can only make you as perfectly happy as we mortals can expect to be, I shall have no other wish on this earth.6
Feilden’s respect for General Jones plummeted after the Federal officers were used as human shields. He had urged Jones to reconsider the order, pointing out that retaliation would probably follow. “My argument then and now was the homely adage that ‘two wrongs can never make a right,’ ” he related to Julia.7 Feilden was so troubled that on June 30 he went down to check on the Federal prisoners. He wore his best uniform for the visit, “to show that we are not quite ragged yet in the Confederacy.” There were five generals among the fifty officers. Feilden struck up a conversation with General Truman Seymour, who was so interesting and pleasant that he regretted the folly of General Jones all the more: “I hardly ever met a Yankee before, never a Yankee General and thought the contact would make one’s flesh crawl, but strange to say, I could not blow Seymour from a gun or hang him without a good deal of repugnance. Indeed, I felt more inclined to ask him to dinner and show him around Charleston.”8
Feilden’s prophesy of retaliation was soon fulfilled. The commandant of Fort Delaware, on Pea Patch Island in the Delaware River, received an order to select fifty officers from among the 12,500 Confederate prisoners and dispatch them to one of the captured forts in Charleston Harbor so that they would be in the line of Confederate fire. The inmates assumed that there would be more random selections in the future, and the thought spurred many to look for a way of escape. There was only one route out, however, through sewage drains that led to the Delaware River. Among the six prisoners willing to try was the Scotsman Bennet G. Burley, who had been captured on May 12, 1864, while planting torpedoes on the Rappahannock River. When Burley was searched, they found an unusual pass that granted him the freedom to cross