My history classes in school might have left out a few details about the Civil War period, or perhaps I was not paying attention. Of late when I have read historical events with a familial connection, the happenings have become vibrant and real, not merely words in Social Studies books. Suddenly those who fought bravely, suffered unimaginably and left this legacy for me, speak from the dust and I understand more fully what they experienced. Unfortunately, in this case my eyes have been opened to great sadness - the shocking reality of the inhumanity of man during wartime. This story is about the life of my Great, Great Grandfather Henley C. Rigney.
Henley was born in 1823 in Montgomery, Virginia. Little is known about his early years. He married Eliza Edwards when he was twenty-five and the couple had six children, two sons and four daughters.
In February, 1861, just after the birth of Henley’s sixth child, when Henley was thirty-eight, seven states seceded from the United States, forming a confederacy. Two months later Virginia’s convention voted to secede.
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| Confederate Soldier Hat |
It seems that Henley was reluctant to join the cause, waiting two and a half years before he volunteered in Dublin, a town forty-four miles north of Fancy Gap, for the duration of the war. He left his wife and six children to become a Private in Company G, 45th Regiment of the Virginia Infantry.
It was in the third battle of Winchester that Henley was captured along with 78 other Confederate soldiers on September 19, 1864. He was sent to a prisoner camp at Point Lookout, Maryland, the largest Union prison camp, which had been established after the Battle of Gettysburg.
The atrocities that occurred in the prison camp are shocking, but their truth is attested by many first-hand journal accounts from prisoners. Below are excerpts from diaries, journals, letters, and civil testimony of other Confederate prisoners held at Point Lookout. Henley did not leave any accounts or writings about his time there. I have attempted to give an idea of the suffering in the prison camp while avoiding the most graphic and disturbing descriptions.- "Our tents were miserable affairs, being full of holes, and very rotten and into each sixteen men were crowded. In order to lay down at night, the men were compelled to lay so close together as to exclude sleep."
- "Gloom, privation and starvation were staring us in the face, snow fell and there was not a stick of wood in camp. The day was bitter cold, most of us were but poorly clad, and very few of us had shoes of any description. We were compelled to stand in our damp tents, and "mark time" to keep from freezing."
- "Our rations were now reduced as follows: for breakfast, half-pint, coffee, or, 'regather', slop water; for dinner, half-pint greasy water (called soup for etiquette), also a small piece of meat, perhaps three or four ounces. For bread we were allowed eight ounces per day; this you could press together in your hand and take at a mouthful. Our water was of such a character that we could scarcely use it, being so highly tinctured with sulphur and iron as to render it almost unbearable. Clothes which were washed in it were turned black and yellow. To our suffering from the cold and the want of pure water was now added that of hunger. To those who have never suffered in this respect, it is almost impossible to describe the sensations. The writer has known large, stout men to lay in their tents at night and cry like little babies from hunger and cold. We were not allowed to walk about, but were compelled to retire to our tents at "taps," which were sounded quite early. Even the poor privilege of keeping ourselves warm by walking up and down in front of our tents was denied us, and we were compelled to lay in the cold. The supply of blankets was very scant, and bunks were unknown. The cold ground was our bed, and pillows we had none."
- "The shooting of a prisoner was looked upon as an everyday affair. ... The health of the men began to fail; fever in every shape abounded, and smallpox was epidemic. Nearly every tent contained one or two cases of this loathsome disease. The hospital could not accommodate all the sick, and they were left in their tents, many of them with only a blanket to protect them from the damp ground, and entirely destitute of proper nourishment."
- "The guards never let an opportunity pass to show their animosity and hatred towards us, and the man who shot a Rebel was regarded as a good soldier. They carried their authority to the extreme, and would shoot upon the slightest provocation. If a prisoner happened to violate even one of the simplest regulations, he was sure to be shot at, and should he be so unfortunate as to turn over in his sleep, groan or make any noise, which some were apt to do while sleeping, the tent in which he lay would be fired into. For instance, one night someone happened to groan in his sleep. The patrol was near, heard it, and fired into the tent, killing two and wounding several others. These were killed while sleeping and were unconscious of having committed any offense whatever."
- "I was assigned, with two others, to a tent having already twenty-three occupants. I cannot describe the appearance of that tent and the men in it. If there is a word more comprehensive than filthy I would use it. There was given me a half loaf of bread and a small rusty salt mackerel, which I was informed was for next day's rations. I declared I would not sleep in the tent, but was told there was no alternative, as the guards or patrol would shoot me if I slept outside. It was a horrible night. Weary, exhausted, almost heart-broken, I ate a part of my scanty loaf, and placed the remainder under my head with the fish. I soon forgot my troubles in sleep. Waked in the morning and found I had been relieved of any further anxiety for my bread, as it had been taken from me by some starving individual (a common occurrence). The mackerel was left as undesirable."
- " Many were without shelter of any kind and exposed to the bad weather. We had but few blankets and most of us had to lie on the bare ground; so when it rained our situation became truly deplorable. Our rations were just such as kept us perpetually on the point of starvation, causing a painful feeling of hunger to us helpless, half starved prisoners. The scurvy, brought on by this wretched diet, was prevalent in its most awful form."
- "The hospital could only accommodate about twelve hundred sick, and there were no less than six thousand sick and dying men lying within the main building and in the tents surrounding it."
- "The praying, crying, and the fearful struggles of the dying during the dark night, lit up by a single small lantern, was awful. The first night about five or six died, and the next morning found me lying next to two dead comrades."
- "Stringent orders were given to the guard to fire upon any prisoners who were seen out of their quarters after eight o’clock at night. Many prisoners were unaware of the orders and incautiously ventured out for the performance of nature calls, when they were ruthlessly shot down. Several cases of the kind occurred."
- "I have known persons to be frost bitten, and when some of them provided for themselves little mud chimneys to their tents, gathering chips and other small fuel, the Yankee officers would send a guard to ruthlessly destroy them and deprive them of the extra blankets which were their own personal property, leaving the soldier to freeze to death."
- "Catching rats and selling them for food became quite a business, and they pursued the avocation with quite a profit, the demand being steady. Many died from insufficient and improper food."
- "No barracks were ever built. The Confederate soldiers were given tents to sleep in until overcrowding became so bad, there were not even enough tents to go around."
- "One Confederate who had managed to purchase his freedom from the prison reported that 'murder was not only not scrupled at, but guards were known to have been offered as much as $10 and $15 apiece for every prisoner they could shoot in the discharge of their duty.'"
On January 1, 1864, after my Great, Great Grandfather Henley had endured four months in these conditions, an order came from Washington that a list of prisoners should be made out for exchange, consisting of those only who, by reason of age, sickness, or wounds, would be unfit for service for sixty days. Henley was among those selected for exchange as he had contracted dysentery.
Less than three weeks later Henley passed away on February 14, 1865.
