It is not my purpose to give a complete history of the military prisons in St. Louis during the war. There were several of them. They were for the most part improvised to meet the exigencies of the hour. The military authorities seized certain buildings belonging to the disloyal, which, by a little alteration, were easily and quickly made suitable for the reception of political prisoners. Among these buildings was the slave-pen, mentioned in the preceding chapter, at the corner of Fifth and Myrtle Streets. Another was the McDowell Medical College on Gratiot Street.

Dr. McDowell, who founded this college, and had conducted it successfully for many years, was one of the staunchest of pro-slavery men, and a pronounced and bitter secessionist. He was tall and imposing in appearance. His long, white locks, thrust back of his ears, hung down over his coat collar. His eyes gleamed from beneath shaggy, gray eyebrows. Any stranger would have noted him in a crowd as an unusual character. Although he was old, his step had the elasticity of youth. He was an antagonist that few men cared to encounter. For years he had been active in politics. On the stump he at times denounced those of opposite views in terms of unmeasured severity. On one occasion, having some apprehension that his opprobrious epithets might provoke violent opposition, just as he began his speech, as a warning to all antagonists, he drew his revolver and ostentatiously laid it down on the desk before him and then proceeded with his fiery harangue. At the beginning of the war he left our city for the more congenial society of the Southern Confederacy, and the military authorities confiscated his college building and made it serve the cause that its owner hated and denounced.

The military prisons of St. Louis were sanitary and well kept. No one within them was permitted unnecessarily to suffer. All had enough wholesome food. The fare of the prisoners was as good as that of the soldiers who guarded them. In winter, so far as it was possible, they were kept warm and comfortably clad. Most of them were incarcerated, not for ordinary criminal acts, but because taken in arms against the United States, or detected in aiding those who were intent on breaking up the Union. Not a few of them had been accustomed to the luxuries of life, and could not but contrast their prison with the homes from which they had come. Still, while they inevitably suffered more or less, taking everything into consideration, the government treated them with great leniency. Their friends were often permitted not only to minister to their necessities, but also to eke out their prison fare with the delicacies of the season.

But a few incidents, which came under my observation, and in some of which I was an active participant, will more clearly reveal what transpired in those military prisons than any general statements that I could make, however full and just they might be. Early in the war I received a note from an officer at the Arsenal, stating that the son of an honored Baptist minister of Illinois was a prisoner in the Guard-house and wished me to visit him. I at once went to see the young man in his prison-house. I found him in a wretched plight. The Guard-house was far from being a model of neatness. The young man’s clothing was begrimed and repulsive, his face and hands unwashed, his hair unkempt, and to his foot was riveted a chain to which was attached a heavy iron ball. He was cowed in spirit, and had nearly lost heart and hope. He timidly told me his story. He was a boy scarcely out of his teens. He had patriotically enlisted in the Union army, but having had a very imperfect notion of the rigorous discipline to which every soldier must necessarily be subjected, he had grown weary of his task and more than once had tried to desert, not fully realizing how heinous his offence was. I saw at a glance that, instead of being cast down on account of his heavy punishment, he ought to be grateful that he had not been court-martialed and shot. While his condition aroused my sympathy, I laid before him the gravity of his crime, then vainly pleaded with the military authorities for his release. They argued that his offence was so great he richly deserved further punishment, and that his release would be detrimental to the discipline of the army. The boy at last became very sick in his prison. His father, large both in body and in heart, came, and so put the case of his son before the officers in command, that they discharged him from the army.

This case was a type of many others. Some young men, among the hundreds of thousands that enlisted in the Northern and Southern armies, failed adequately to count the cost of what they so enthusiastically undertook to do. Two young men of St. Louis, who enlisted in the Confederate army, were doing duty under Price, in Missouri. November had come with its chilling storms of rain and sleet; and without a tent they were compelled to spend a night in the shelterless field. They had gathered some logs and sticks and were endeavoring, as the gusts of wind swept over them, to light a fire; but their kindling was wet and the wind would quickly blow out their matches. Shivering with cold that seemed to pierce to the very marrow of their bones, looking in blank despair on those wet sticks and logs, one of them said: “Joe, soldiering is not what it is cracked up to be. It is just hell, and I am going to get out of it as soon as I can.” Still he was an ardent Southerner, but just for a little his burning zeal was damped and cooled by a chill November rain.

But my chief experiences were with Confederate prisoners. While the disloyal of my own denomination abhorred my politics and exercised at best a rather strained and attenuated brotherly love towards me, when, for any cause, they were so unfortunate as to get into prison, they often urgently appealed to me for succor.

Out on the Gravois road, a few miles west of the city, lived a Baptist preacher. He had sandy hair, a florid face, a muscular frame, and was about six feet in height. While rough in his manners, he was a man of great force. Brought up, or as he said, “raised,” in Mississippi, he was an uncompromising rebel. Late in the autumn of 1861, up in the State, at the town of Mexico, in a dark night, he swiftly rode on horseback through the lines of the Federal troops stationed there, and as he did so holloed: “Hurrah for Jeff Davis.” He was tracked to his home and arrested. He appeared at my door about nine o’clock in the morning, in a buggy, sitting between two United States officers. One of them rang my bell and I went out to see their prisoner. While he heartily despised me for my loyalty, he had evidently concluded that I was just the man to help him in his dire extremity. I asked the officers on what charge he had been arrested. They said that they had not been informed. I then asked him the same question, and he said that he did not know. He told no lie, but at the same time he could have very accurately guessed. Still, he could not have been reasonably expected to incriminate himself before the officers who had him in charge. He blubbered over his sad plight and entreated me to intercede with the provost marshal on his behalf. His tears, however, were not on account of his misdemeanor; he evidently cried because he had been caught. Nevertheless, I told him that I would do what I could for him.

A heavy damp snow was falling fast. I had to go on foot through it fully a mile and a half to intercede for this enemy of my country; while he rode to his prison-house in a buggy at the government’s expense. On my way I met one of my deacons, a physician. He was by birth a Kentuckian, but staunchly loyal. Thinking that I had no right to expose myself to that pitiless storm, he asked me in peremptory tones where I was going. I told him. He then wished to know what offence the imprisoned preacher had committed. I replied that I did not certainly know, but a report was abroad that he had ridden in a dark night through the picket line of the Federal army at Mexico, and, having been called upon to halt, had put spurs to his horse, and had holloed as he rode at breakneck speed to elude the musket-balls of the soldiers, “Hurrah for Jeff Davis!” The deacon cried out in indignation, “You go home out of this storm and let him sweat.” But I could not break my word to the prisoner, so I trudged on, saw the provost marshal, and pleaded as earnestly as I could for my incarcerated brother. He said that he would grant me anything that I might ask within the bounds of reason, but on account of the imperative demands upon him, he could not try the prisoner until the next day. Having done my best at the office of the provost marshal, I walked a mile through the damp snow, that was still copiously falling, to the prison at the corner of Fifth and Myrtle Streets, to make known to my rebel neighbor the result of my effort on his behalf. When I told him that his case could not be heard till the next day, he said in a disappointed tone: “Then, I must stay here all night,—it is a horrible place.” “Yes,” I quickly replied, “it is a slave-pen.” His eyes filled with tears as he said, “I never sold a slave.” His reply made me regret the thrust that I had inconsiderately given him. But in a moment he added, “I wish that I had some apples and tobacco.” Though I did not use tobacco myself I went through the storm about a mile, purchased for him out of my own pocket the desired articles, carried them back to him, and giving him my best wishes, I bade him good day, leaving him in that old slave-pen to his tobacco, apples and thoughts.

The next morning he was brought before the Military court, which having heard his case, through its great leniency decided, in spite of his grave offence, to discharge him. Returning to his home he had to go by my door; but he did not call to thank me for what I had done on his behalf; neither did he write me, nor did he ever in any way express the slightest gratitude or appreciation of what I did for him on that stormy day in order to secure his deliverance from the slave-pen prison.

A word more in reference to so extraordinary a character may not be amiss. Many months afterwards he had the brass to come to me again. Without any allusion to our relations in the past, he at once went on to say, that General Schofield by a military order had taken away the firearms of all in his neighborhood, and among the rest his shotgun had been seized and confiscated; that wild turkeys were coming into his cornfield, and he wished me to ask the general to grant him a permit to buy a shotgun so that he might shoot them. Making no allusion to what I had done for him in 1861, I asked him, “Are you a Union man?” He replied, “Yes, in the Constitution.” “Why,” I said, “do you say in the Constitution? Why do you not say, yes, I am a Union man?” “Well,” he answered, “the fact is, I am a secessionist.” “Why,” said I, “did you not then honestly say so?” “Oh! I don’t want to talk about that,” he responded, “I want to get a shotgun.” I then said to him, “I will ask the general to grant you a permit to get one on the condition that, if Missouri becomes a free State, you will leave it forever.” He said that he would gladly agree to that since he would not live in a free State. So I went with him to the military headquarters and said to the general: “This is Rev. Mr. ——, a Baptist minister; under your order his shotgun was taken away from him. The wild turkeys are coming into his cornfield and he has nothing to shoot them with. I cannot vouch for his loyalty, but I feel quite sure that if he has a shotgun he will not shoot black-Republicans, and he wishes you to give him a permit to buy one.” The general replied, “I will grant the permit, if you say so.” “Well,” I responded, “I think it safe to do so;” and writing out the permit he handed it to the secession preacher, who went away happy. I never saw him again. A friend told me that a few months afterwards he heard him bitterly denounce me in a large public assembly.

But let us now turn to another scene. On Thanksgiving Day of 1861, a secession family, living next door to me, determined to cheer some of their disloyal friends shut up in the Gratiot Street prison, by setting before them an abundant and delicious dinner. Their neighbors of like political views threw themselves with ardor into the scheme. Early in the day baskets full of appetizing food were brought from every direction, until these parcels, piled one upon another, quite covered the floor of their front hall. Then a covered wagon appeared at the door. Into it all these tempting viands were hastily packed and carried to the military prison. Those in charge of them asked the officer of the day, if they could give the prisoners a Thanksgiving dinner. He assured them that it would give him great pleasure to receive the food that had been so thoughtfully and kindly provided, but since it was contrary to orders to allow any outsiders to enter the prison, he would himself distribute the contents of the baskets and be careful that the most needy should not be overlooked. Two Iowa regiments that had just arrived had been sent down to Gratiot Street to do guard duty. They were weary, cold and hungry. The officer who had received the food, sent by devoted secession women, deeming these newly arrived soldiers to be the most needy, gave to them the roast turkey, fried chicken, mince pies, cranberry sauce, roast pig and apple sauce, and kept the disloyal within the prison walls on wholesome, but coarser, diet. While that commanding officer told no explicit lie, the ethics of his act will hardly bear very close inspection. He may have justified his deception by the fact that we were in a state of war, and have erroneously thought that war excuses “a multitude of sins.”

A little later, one of my ministerial brethren was lodged in the same prison. After having been there for several weeks, being in great anguish of spirit, he sent for me. When I met him he entreated me to secure if possible his discharge from that repulsive place. My heart was touched at his distress, and I assured him that the military authorities would gladly release him if he would take the oath of allegiance to the United States. I urged that this was a very reasonable demand on the part of the government that had protected his property and person for many years, and had never interfered in the slightest degree with his rights or liberty. He was, however, unconvinced, and sullenly refused to do what I urged upon him. But a few days afterwards, sick at heart from lying in prison, he decided to take the oath, did so, and was discharged. But when he went out to his freedom his conscience smote him for what he had done. He walked along the street hesitatingly and in zigzag lines. At times he stopped and gazed intently on the pavement. One of his friends met him and asked: “What is the matter?” He replied: “Matter enough, I was overpersuaded to take the oath of allegiance to the awful government of the United States, and feel as if I should go to hell.”

Such were some of the military prisons and such were some of the prisoners in St. Louis during the civil war. Those who kept these prisons and guarded these prisoners were patriots, intent on preserving the Union; those who were incarcerated and guarded were equally intent on disrupting the Union and establishing the Southern Confederacy, whose corner-stone, according to its Vice-President, was slavery. Both could not have been right, but both believed themselves to be right, and suffered for their faith.