Limestone Cove, Tennessee

 
  History is full of little moments, little events that make up a larger picture. The gruesome events at Limestone Cove, in present-day Unicoi County, Tennessee, in November 1863, are the pieces of a small event in a much larger piece of history.

   From the fall of 1862, after the passage of the Confederate Conscription Act, there seems to be a steady stream of Unionists and dissidents crossing over the mountains of North Carolina and into Tennessee, attempting to get to Union lines. Often, these men had guides. Sometimes it was just a handful of men, but at other times, there were scores attempting to get through. At times, these groups were able to find sympathetic families who provided food. Many times, they were forced to steal for sustinence. The Confederate and state governments used home guard battalions and regular troops to try and stem the tide of men crossing over.

   John Q. A. Bryan spent the first part of November recruiting in Wilkes County, North Carolina. He gathered more than fifty new recruits for the Tenth Tennessee Cavalry (US), and soon they were making their way through the mountains toward Knoxville. On the morning of November 19, 1863, the group could be found at the home of Dr. David Bell in present-day Unicoi County. Born in Ireland, Bell had moved his family to Carter County in the 1850s. The Bells were affluent, slave owners, and pronounced Unionists. 

   From out of nowhere, elements of the Thirty-Fourth Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, burst upon the scene. As the mounted troops came into view, the Unionists broke for the brush. The majority escaped, and the Confederates were only able to capture seven. All seven were killed. Calvin Cartrel was shot, and then his brains "knocked...out"; John Sparks "was shot in the head... which completely tore the top of his head off, leaving his brains perfectly exposed"; William Royal was shot at least once, and then a "fence-stake" was used to "beat his head into the earth"; Elijah Gentry was shot and killed instantly; Jacob Lyons was shot and fell into a creek; B. Blackburn was shot in the shoulder, then beaten to death; and Preston Prewett was shot, and while imploring his captors to send word of his demise, had his brains knocked "out with the butts of their guns." Others were wounded. Jacob Pruitt sought a pension after the war for wounds sustained in the attack. A doctor testified that Pruitt was shot near the Bell home, "the ball having entered his body on the left side of spinal column, passing out through the stomach about one half of an inch above the naval." John W. Brooks was shot in the knee but hid behind a log and escaped death. Bryan was reported to have escaped, killing a soldier who pursued him. Just how many others were wounded and escaped is unknown. 

   Returning to the home, James Bell was dragged outside. His wife followed, attempting to intercede for Bell. The soldiers drove her back in the house, "threatening to shoot her if she offered to speak again in his behalf." According to an article written a few months later, Bell was "forced to lay his head on a chunk in the road, and with stones and clubs they beat his brains out. They took some of the blood and brains and rubbed them under his wife's nose, cursing her, and telling her to smell them!" Next, the band turned their attention to the home, which was burned. Those killed were buried close by the house in a cemetery now known as the Bell Cemetery. A Tennessee Historical Marker denotes the cemetery.

   You can read more on an earlier post here.

   I last stopped in the cemetery in April 2019.

The types of prisoners at Salisbury Prison

   Recently, The Scuppernong Press released a small book, edited by Donna Peeler Poteat, on Salisbury Prison. It is actually a post-war reminiscence of Dr. Adolphus W. Mangum. Born in 1834 in Orange (now Durham) County, North Carolina, Mangum was a graduate of Randolph-Macon College, who was also in the ministry, riding circuit in Hillsborough, and then pastoring a church in Chapel Hill. He was a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In 1860, he moved to a church in Salisbury. When the war came, Magnum became chaplain of the 6^th North Carolina State Troops, but later in 1861, resigned due to poor health. Back in Salisbury, he worked with prisoners at Salisbury.

   Magnum wrote his reminiscences in 1893, and they appeared as two separate articles in the Charlotte Observer in May and June. He provides some interesting information regarding the prison. The site, an old cotton factory, was conveyed to the Confederate States on November 2, 1861, as a prison “for Confederates under sentence of court martial, and those arrested for alleged disloyalty, for deserters from the Federal army and for prisoners of war.” Those are four different groups of men: court martialed Confederates; disloyal Southerners; Federal deserters; and, Federal prisoners of war.[1]

   Court Martialed Confederates: The number of Confederate soldiers court martialed for some infraction of the Articles of War is unknown. One historian estimated the number at 20,000, based upon ledgers that survived the fires in Richmond on the night of April 2, 1865. Many of those found guilty were sentenced to loss of pay, reduced back to the ranks if a non-commissioned officer, company punishment, or if an officer, cashiered from the service. Or punishment could be confinement or hard labor. There were two places where these periods of confinement were conducted: Castle Thunder in Richmond, and Salisbury. There were Confederate soldiers confined at Salisbury. Pvt. Samuel S. Bryant (57th Virginia Infantry) was one such prisoner. Bryant was absent from his command from June 1863 until March 1864. He was tried for desertion, found guilty, and ordered to be confined on bread and water.[2] It is unclear just how many Confederate soldiers were confined at Salisbury over the course of the war. On December 1, 1864, the Adjutant and Inspector General’s office issued an order releasing all of those court martialed and ordering them to return to their regiments. Bryant was one of them, along with 155 others at the Salisbury Prison Camp.[3]

   Disloyal Southerners: While for generations writers portrayed the South as one big happy family, there were many who objected to secession and to the Confederate government. One conservative account places the number of political prisoners, those arrested for being disloyal, at 4,108 civilians.[4] In February 1863, at the bequest of the Confederate Congress, the commandant prepared a list of political prisoners then confined at Salisbury. The list contains 131 names. They included C.C. Sheets, a Winston County, Alabama, law student, suspected of “treasonable conduct”; R.B. Elliott a overseer from Tarboro, North Carolina, suspected of being a spy and “trading with the enemy”; and, George Billingsly, a Claiborne County, Tennessee, blacksmith, charged with “aiding and supplying stock for the enemy at Cumberland Gap.” [5] It is unclear just how many political prisoners passed through the Salisbury prison camp.

   Federal deserters: There were roughly 2,000 Federal deserters confined at the Salisbury prison. Many of them simply walked off picket post and into the Confederate lines. An interesting case is that of Peter and Jacques Sneyers, members of the 35^th Massachusetts Infantry (substitutes). They were captured on September 30, 1864, near Petersburg. Both of their Compiled Service Records contain “Memorandum from Prisoner of War Records” and both state that they “joined the Rebel army while a Pris of war at Salisbury, N.C. date not given.” Mangum tells us that “A Col Tucker came there for the purpose of getting recruits from their number for the Confederate army. Only foreigners were allowed to enlist. Nearly eighteen hundred took the oath. . . Some may have taken this step in good faith. . . but the greater number chose it as the only means of escape from their terrible den. They were called ‘galvanized Yankees,” and though most of them made scarcely a show of fighting when the test came, a few stood their ground and fought with true courage.”[6]

   Federal prisoners of war: Mangum tell us that the first prisoners of war arrived on December 9, 1861, numbering 120. An additional 176 arrived on December 26, and 80 more on February 7. “These different installments came from various points – some being captured in Virginia, some on the coast of North Carolina and some by the Army of the west in Kentucky. By the middle of March, 1862, their number aggregated nearly 1,500.” [7] Over the course of the war, a little over 10,000 men were incarcerated. An estimated 4,500 died.[8]

   Mangum talked about many other issues, such as prison escapes, the death of a Confederate surgeon, African-American prisoners brought in during the last months of the war, along with the horrors of the prison itself. He considered his story one of “dark history of this great reservoir of misery and death.”[9] If you would like to read more of Dr. Adolphus W. Mangum’s account, check out the book through The Scuppernong Press:

 

 

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[1]  Poteat, Confederate States Military Prison at Salisbury, NC, 3.

[2] Bunch, Military Justice in the Confederate States Army, 8, 70.

[3] Brown, The Salisbury Prison Camp, 259-260.

[4] Neely, Southern Rights, 1.

[5] Brown, The Salisbury Prison Camp, 233.

[6] Poteat, Confederate States Military Prison at Salisbury, NC, 32.

[7] Poteat, Confederate States Military Prison at Salisbury, NC, 5.

[8] Speer, Portals to Hell, 339

[9] Poteat, Confederate States Military Prison, 36.

The Strange Cases of William Marsh, Carter County, Tennessee

Louis Brown, in his book on the Salisbury Prison, has a long list of civilian prisoners incarcerated at the North Carolina stockade. One of those men listed is William Marsh. In 1860, Marsh was living in Elizabethton, Carter County, Tennessee, working as a hatter. Marsh was twenty-four years old, married to Ellen, with two children. They were all born in Virginia. His personal estate was only worth $50, so being a hatter was obviously not a lucrative job in mid-nineteenth-century Elizabethton.

In 1864, Marsh wrote Andrew Johnson, then serving as a representative of Tennessee in the United States Senate, explaining that he was once again “under the Stars & Stripes,” albeit by “peculiar circumstances.” Marsh explained that he was a friend of Dan Stover, took an active part of the 1860 presidential election, and was a member of the East Tennessee Convention. In September 1861, he visited his parents in Virginia, where he was arrested for disloyalty. He was first confined in Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, and then sent to the prison in Salisbury. Over the next nine months, Confederate officials repeatedly offered Marsh the opportunity to take the Oath, which he declined, until he felt he was “compelled to take it to save life as my constitution was fast giving way under the treatment received.” In July [1864?], Marsh stated he was “arrested” and sent to a regiment in John C. Breckinridge’s division. When he arrived with his regiment, Marsh was sick, and left at a house, “confined to my room with a fever.” He was afraid that once the troops returned, he would be arrested again, and wanted Johnson to do something to keep him out of the Confederate army. The letter is dated September 24, 1864, Valley of Virginia.

At some point, it appears that Marsh was captured by Federal forces. In October 1864, he was discharged from the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, D.C. He apparently got a job working at the wharf on G Street in Washington, D.C. It seems, maybe in his excitement over being released from confinement, he indulged a little too much one evening, and his employer found that he had dropped his copy of his Oath of Allegiance to the Confederacy. Marsh’s boss had hired Marsh, “a Confederate refugee… through sympathy.” The official wrote that Marsh swore he had not taken such an Oath (prior to losing his Oath). What happened after that point in time is unknown. [1]

There is a little more to story. William Marsh’s name appears on a list of “Union Men Confined at Salisbury, N.C.” in the New York Tribune, July 29, 1862. While there is no information with this article, there is a letter, in the Official Records, from Brig. Gen. James S. Wadsworth (US), written on August 10, 1862, stating that an article from the New York Tribune was being enclosed, and that Wadsworth was holding thirty Confederate citizens from the area between Fredericksburg and Washington, D.C., “as hostages.” [2]

What became of William Marsh? It seems that he hired himself as a substitute for John C. Wellbanks, and was mustered into Company C, 1^st Delaware Infantry. He was mustered in as a private on December 24, 1864, then promoted to sergeant on January 24, 1865. In June, he was promoted to second lieutenant and transferred to Company F. Marsh was mustered out of service on July 12, 1865.  Marsh apparently did not return to East Tennessee. He is listed on the 1870 US Census as a resident of Fort Chiswell, Wythe County, Virginia. It appears that his first wife, Ellen, passed in the previous decade. He was, in 1870, married to Susan V. Marsh and had four children at home. In 1880, he was in Surry County, North Carolina. According to a family history chart on Ancestry, William Marsh died on April 2, 1893, in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, and he was buried in the Bob Marsh Cemetery, Grayson County, Virginia.

Civilians arrested by the Confederate government for disloyalty is a seldom discussed topic. Mark Neely Jr., writes that there were at least 4,108 political prisoners arrested during the war.[3] It would be interesting to find additional information on Marsh, namely, what led to his arrest. Maybe those records will turn up one day.

 

 

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[1] Case Files of Investigations by Levi C. Turner and Lafayette C. Baker, 1861-1866.M797, Record Group 94, NARA. Some of Marsh’s records were microfilmed with those of Adam Mohr.

[2] Official Records, Series 2, volume 4, 368.

[3] Neely, Southern Rights, 1.

Booger Den

During the war, the numerous hollows and caves in western North Carolina provided numerous places for deserters (from both armies), conscript dodgers, and dissidents to hide out. Probably one of the most famous is Linville Caverns, which I wrote about here.

This past Saturday, I had a chance to participate in the Avery County Community Day, held at Cranberry (the site of an iron mine during the war). I like attending such programs – I always seem to come away with some little bit of knowledge that I did not know. This day was not to disappoint. In conversing with the lady at the booth next to mine, I learned of a place called “Booger Den.” According to people she grew up with, this was a shallow, but large, cave that Civil War soldiers hid out in during the war. That is about as much of the story as I currently have, besides its location – on a trail in the Pisgah National Forest between Roseboro and Grandmother Mountain here in Avery County. I see a hike coming in the near future.

I might never find out who hid there during the war. It might have been used by all sides at different points, maybe even by the Blalocks. So many times that is how these stories come. I’ll give one other example, from Avery County. I’ve been told by several people that there was a skirmish during the war in Miller’s Gap. Miller’s Gap is on the way into Newland, close to where you turn off to go to the high school. But that is all of the story that I can get – just a skirmish at Miller’s Gap. And yes, it probably was not much: someone standing behind a tree shooting at some else who was walking up the road. That is so much of the war in Southern Appalachia.