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Escape from the Confederacy

Chapter 5: ADDENDA.
By Benjamin F. Hasson
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About This Book

The memoir recounts a cavalry officer's capture and confinement in Confederate prison stockades, the daily deprivations of starvation, disease, and vermin, and the systematic reorganization of prisoners for transport. It follows transfer south in overcrowded freight cars, efforts to plan and execute an escape with comrades, a midnight leap from a moving train, a hazardous trek through swamps and forest while tracked by bloodhounds, and eventual recapture. Appendices provide an account of how capture occurred and lists of fellow prisoners, with emphasis on endurance and practical details of camp life.

ADDENDA.

A most remarkable coincidence connected with this sketch happened since it was first published. While I was engaged in the Civil Service of the Government, in 1901, at Washington, D. C., I was rooming at the house of Mrs. Kiel, No. 12 Sixth St., N. E, and there met Capt. T. T. Westcott, a Confederate soldier, who held a position in the National Capital by the favor of Senator Daniel, of Virginia. Mr. Westcott lives in Accomac County, Va. While talking over our experiences in the war, it was discovered that he was the officer in command of the very train of cars from which I escaped. He well remembered the incident of the departure of myself and friends on the night of March 6, 1864, which he discovered the next morning when his train pulled into Raleigh, N. C. He said he continued on with his load of human freight to Andersonville, Ga.