Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1914 — CAMP FIRE STORIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CAMP FIRE STORIES

MEMORY OF CARTER’S FARNP l|j Humane Treatment of 1,800 Yankee Prisoners on Wosry March From ’ . Winchester to Staunton, Va. Late in the afternoon of June IT* 1863, I stood among a bunch of 1,500 prisoners, reedy for a march of 9Z miles from Winchester, Va., to Staunton, Va. We were the first consignment to the South of the 4,000 men of Milroy’s army that was smashed to pieces on the morning of the 15th, writes J. H. Sawyer, Company B, Eighteenth Connecticut, Soldiers’ Home, Lafayette, Ind., in the National Tribune. Our guard was the Fifty-* eighth Virginia (Colonel Board). - As we stood in line at the foot of the hill north of the town, Colonel Board, sitting on his horse near the center, before he gave the order to march, said: “Men, these Yankees have fallen into our hands by the fortune of war. I want them treated like gentlemen. If I hear of any insults or abuse, it will be punished.” Nothing could have been kinder than the treatment we received from these men during , the mafeh of five days. We always had the feeling of comrades towards them rather than of enemies. I had often wondered if Colonel Board lived to see the end of the war. The matter was settled by Com- . rade Sprecher’s letter. Colonel Board fell at the battle of Carter's farm, July 19, 1864. According to the account, that battle wee upon or near the ground of Milroy’s battle of June 15, 1863. Some of the wounded of onr regiment were taken to the Carter house. Comrade Sprecher mentions that the Confederate line was on the Rutherford farm, and that be revisited the scene in 1892; that he was shown over the grounds by Mr. Rutherford, who, with his family, took refuge in the cellar during the battle of Carter's farm. It appears that one of the family wae a boy about ten years old. That boy grew up, married and had two daughters born, I believe, on the farm. About two years ago those two girls came here to our hospital to take a course in the nurses’ school. I became quite well acquainted with them. After being here about a year they were called home by the sudden death of their mother, and did not return. They called themselves “rebels,” and seemed to take considerable delight in ib Nevertheless, they treated the old Union soldiers in their care with great kindness.