Johnson’s Island- Part 5 - Lorrie Halblaub

At the prison camp on Johnson’s Island, every day started and ended the same way.  Roll Call. It didn’t matter if it was raining, snowing, or 90 degrees, the prisoners stood in rows and the corporal called off their names. If a prisoner did not answer, the guards searched the camp and then the island while the rest of the prisoners continued to stand in formation. Punishment for an attempted escape was; being put in confinement, wearing a ball and chain, and being fed a diet of bread and water until release.

At first Johnson’s Island wasn’t a bad place to wait out the war. But as that news that the Union Army prisoners being held in the South were being mistreated in camps like Andersonville, the prisoners at Johnson’s Island felt the sting of retaliation from their captors.  So escape was on every prisoner’s mind.  I imagine that the first question they asked upon arrival at the camp was “How far is it to Canada?”

The prisoners quickly learned that tunneling under the wall was going to get them nowhere.  Like everywhere else around here, there is little soil before one hits solid limestone. The rock also made digging latrines difficult.  They could not be very deep, so they filled quickly then new ones were dug.  The stench was always there. One group cut a hole in the wall and made it to the beach hoping to build a raft, but they were caught because there were hardly any trees.

One prisoner, Charlie Pierce, tried to escape 7 times. He attempted tunneling, stealing a guard’s uniform and trying to drive out the gates with the offal cart. He tried making a ladder from scrap lumber, and scaling the wall. When Charlie ran onto the ice with the fort’s guns blazing, the ice broke and he was caught.  Once he traveled 12 miles before some local farm boys captured and returned him.  Then for five months he secretly made a fake musket from scrap wood, fruit tins, and other pieces from the trash.   He stole a federal uniform from the hospital and, with his “gun” fell in with the soldiers who were inspecting the fort. He almost made it out the gate until the lieutenant in command inspected HIS OWN troops and found Charlie.  That was the last of his escapes.

No one is quite sure how many prisoners actually escaped, but the number is estimated to be around 10.  One local woman told a story about going into her barn and realizing she was not alone. She could see and hear signs of someone, but she pretended not to notice and the next day that person was gone.

As the war dragged on, the men even lost the ability to buy things from the sutler. Island owner L.B. Johnson was the sutler in 1864 and made a little extra money selling photographs of the prison and the island. When no one wanted to buy them, he made a rule that the prisoner had to buy a photo before he bought anything else.  That caused the prisoners to riot, so Johnson was fired and the store was closed for the rest of the war.

However, all this misery could have been avoided by “Swallowing the Eagle.” That meant that any prisoner could take an oath of allegiance to U.S., forsaking their allegiance to the Confederacy and immediately they received better food and housing, away from the other prisoners for their own safety. However, these former officers, would now serve in the U.S. Army as privates.  Some 50 prisoners on Johnson’s Island chose this route.   The other prisoners called them “Galvanized Yankees” and when the new recruits (traitors) names were announced, the prisoners would holler and drown out their names. 

                              Next month: The biggest escape plan of all!