A great joy has come
to me this day, an unlooked-for, an inexpressible joy! A card was brought to
me, and I took it with a sigh, because so many cards are brought in and we have
so little time for rest. But the name upon that particular card made my heart
thump and thump so fast I thought it would thump clean out of my body. It was
my dear brother's name—the scout, who has been in prison two years, first at
Camp Chase and recently at Fort Delaware. Without stopping as usual to give a
last touch to my hair, I rushed into his presence and into his arms. He's the
rowdiest, shabbiest, patchiest looking fellow you ever saw, but as handsome as
ever, and the same old darling. We talked and talked; we crowded the talk of
two long years of separation into two short hours of face to face. It is a
thrilling romance, the way he escaped from prison. In a dead man's shoes it
was! That man's name was Jesse Tredway, and he died in his bunk after his name
had been entered on the list of exchange. My brother put his dead comrade in
his own bunk and said nothing. He answered to his name in the roll call and
quietly took his place in the ranks of the outgoing prisoners. The details of
that journey homeward, the recital of his adventures and narrow escapes from
detection all along the route, is something to be heard from his own lips in
order to be appreciated. The recital made the blood tingle in my veins and then
suddenly run cold; made my pulses throb and then suddenly cease almost to throb
at all. Think of it! The recklessness of the deed, and his subsequent anxiety
and fear of detection every moment. In the soft veil of the night, in the white
light of the morning, under the noonday sun, under the midnight stars, even in
the stillness of sleep, never to be rid of the fear of detection. His very life
hung upon the issue, for he had made up his mind to shoot down the first man
who remanded him back to prison. Thank God! he was never detected, never
remanded back! He will now journey on without delay, on foot, for the most
part. He has no money to pay his passage—but what of that? It is a pleasure to
him to walk on God's fair earth again, no longer a shut-up animal in a cage;
the earth is full of a new glory for him, the glory of sweet liberty. The exile
has returned to his home.
SOURCE: South
Carolina State Committee United Daughters of the Confederacy, South
Carolina Women in the Confederacy, Vol. 1, “A Confederate
Girl's Diary,” p. 282-3
