File:Popular history of the civil war (1894) (14576387357).jpg

Identifier: popularhistoryof00chen (find matches)
Title: Popular history of the civil war
Year: 1894 (1890s)
Authors: Cheney, C. Emma (Clara Emma)
Subjects:
Publisher: Boston : Estes and Lauriat
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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winter of 1863-64 there was a Starvation Club,which met in Richmond every Tuesday evening, where therefreshments consisted of cold water. Women plaited prettyrice-straw hats for themselves, and trimmed them with cockstails. Old silk dresses, of every color and style, were set offby those made of homespun cotton cloth; and the bravegirls who wore them never once wished for Northern fash-ions or finery. Towns and cities freely gave their church-bells to be cast into cannon. Envelopes were made ofwall-paper with the figures inside, while leaves of old ac-count-books served for letter-paper. But for the pluckwhich proved them near of kin to the hated Yankees,the Confederates would have given up the struggle longbefore. In no way was the feeling of bitterness manifestedto such a degree as by their treatment of the Union pris-oners. They refused to exchange colored troops, and evenordered the shooting of white officers captured while com-manding them. Mr. Lincoln quickly ended this state of
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i863.) A Peep Inside. 495 affairs, however, by ordering, that for every Union soldierthus executed a Confederate prisoner should die ; also, ifcolored troops were enslaved again. Confederate prisonersshould be put at hard labor on the public works. In 1861 there was a three-story warehouse on the cornerof Carey and Twentieth Streets in the city of Richmond,backing upon the Canal and James River. A plain sign-board upon one corner bore the inscription : — LIBBY & SON, SHIP-CHANDLERS. That warehouse became the famous Libby Prison. Atone time twelve thousand Union prisoners, officers of allgrades, were confined within its walls. Nearly all the win-dows were broken ; and the climate of Virginia, always severein its extremes of heat and cold, was especially trying to thehalf-clad and half-starved inmates, Only one blanket wasallowed to each : many had none. The food was scanty,stale, and maggoty. But bitter as was the lot of officerswithin the walls of Libby Prison, that of private s

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