An Andersonville Survivor––

The Story Of A Local Civil War Vet Includes One Of The War’s Worst Chapters

By Jan Howard

Ephraim Briscoe was only 18 on February 27, 1864, when he lied about his age, claiming to be 21, and enlisted in the 5th Connecticut Infantry in Hartford. Within seven months, he would be a prisoner in the war’s most notorious prison camp –– Andersonville.

In 1916, Mr Briscoe, who once served as adjutant for the Custer Post, No. 46, Grand Army of the Republic, first selectman, and justice of the peace in Newtown, wrote a series of articles for The Newtown Bee about his experiences during the Civil War.

He enlisted in Hartford because Bridgeport was too close to home. His father had forbidden him to enlist, saying, “If you do, I’ll go after you.”

“I wanted to enlist and get clear away before he found it out,” Mr Briscoe wrote. He passed his physical, signed his name to serve for three years, and with $310 was on his way to conscript camp at Grape Vine Point, New Haven.

It all began because his cousin, George Briscoe, who enlisted in Company 1 of the 5th Connecticut in June 1861, wrote to his younger cousin, describing the battles and skirmishes in which he had participated. It must have sounded very exciting to the young man.

In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln ordered that anyone who reenlisted was to have 30 days furlough and $77 bounty. It was then that Mr Briscoe decided that if George reenlisted, he would go with him. George took the reenlistment offer and, home on furlough, impressed his young cousin with $700 he had earned from the government.

At Grape Vine Point, Mr Briscoe was assigned a bunk of soft pine boards. His knapsack contained a tent, rubber poncho, two sets of underwear, and two shirts and socks. He supplied writing materials, a sewing kit, mirror, comb and brush, and shoe brush and blacking. Rations were carried in a haversack that contained a canteen, tin plate, utensils, and a tin cup. A body belt held cartridge and cap boxes and bayonet scabbard.

After ten days learning to march, Mr Briscoe’s regiment left by train for the “sunny south,” its furlough having expired. “We had some great fun going south, for sometimes the train would stop for an hour or two,” he wrote. “Then we would go into some Dutch lager saloon, where we knew we could get some good beer.”

When the men heard the train whistle, they would rush out, not always paying for the beer and cigars. Some men had “sticky fingers,” he said. “There was no redress for we belonged to Uncle Sam. It used to be said of the 5th Connecticut regiment, that if they got within five miles of Richmond, they would steal it.”

Once settled in camp in Tennessee, his duties included guarding the railroad track and picket duty. The only danger there was from Morgan’s and Mosbey’s “gorillas,” who raided the country “to tear up railroads, burn bridges, and rob and plunder.”

The regiment remained in Tennessee for about a week or two, drilling almost every day. Finally, they “started on our march with Sherman to the sea.” Of his role with the regiment, Mr Briscoe wrote, “I was full of music and a little runt, good for nothing else much,” so he became “a sheepskin fiddler,” as drummers were called.

In Resacka, Ga., they met the Johnnies and “began to hear the cannon’s boom.” Near the front line, Gen Knipe gave the order, “Guide left. Double quick. The Rebs are flanking us.” The men started on a run, and, Mr Briscoe wrote, “So did I for the drummer was at the head of the company.”

He was ordered to drop out, however, and report to the drum major, who would find work for him since the regiment didn’t need him. One of his tasks was putting up hospital tents, “which we soon had need for, for they were bringing in wounded faster than we could put up tents for shelter for them.”

He collected pine boughs to be used for bedding with blankets spread over them. “After being saturated with blood there used to arise a sickening odor from them. I never can smell pines now but what it reminds me of those gruesome sights which we nurses had to be subjected to.”

When the regiment moved again, the nurses and doctors tore down tents and, once the wounded were transported to the general hospital, set off to follow the regiment. “Then it was march, march, day after day, going into camp at night, putting out camp and picket guards,” he wrote.

On the march he was taken with chronic dysentery. “I got so weak I began to lag and could not keep up.” The regiment left him in the rear where he found a hovel to rest in but “dared not build a fire” because of a nearby house, “and I knew not whether friend or foe.” The next morning, he packed his knapsack, shouldered his drum, and started after the regiment.

Once there, however, despite help from others carrying his drum and knapsack, he was growing weaker every day so the company doctor gave him a pass to ride in the ambulance.

The army caught up with the “Johnnies” at Dallas, Ga., 30 miles from Atlanta. From the ambulance, he watched the battle. “The Rebs did not stand long. Our boys followed them up, and we drew up in a piece of woods, about a half a mile in the rear.”

Despite wanting to stay with his regiment, because of his illness Mr Briscoe was sent back to Chattanooga. “The captain told me I must or I would die on the road.” He stayed in the hospital for two days and then was sent to convalescent camp for what they called “light duty,” digging graves, unloading freight, and breaking stone for building a bridge across the Tennessee River.

Finally, the doctor excused him from duty. He spent his spare time picking and eating blackberries at the Chickamauga battleground. “They checked my dysentery right off,” he wrote. “I did then and always have given credit to the blackberry for saving my life.”

When a request to return to his regiment was denied, Mr Briscoe made up his mind to go anyway. He found a way, by participating in a cattle drive to Sherman’s army at the front. When the doctors saw his determination to go, he was given a pass. In addition to 600 or 700 other men and 1,700 cattle, there were mule teams, provision and ammunition wagons, and ambulance corps.

One morning, he and a comrade were in the middle of the column when they heard a yell. “It was the Rebs, and we ran right into them. We were 30 miles in the rear of Sherman and were not looking for any Johnnies behind him. I heard a volley of musketry and a shower of bullets came rattling through a board fence just above my head. I had not even a jackknife to defend myself with, so I said, ‘legs do your duty.’”

He ran through a cornfield, “bullets cutting the corn on each side of me,” until finding shelter. Hugging the ground between rows of corn, “I saw two Johnnies coming towards me,” Mr Briscoe wrote. “They pulled down the fence and into the corn they came. They rode up within a rod of me before they saw me. One said, ‘Surrender, come up here.’” As both men had large “horse” pistols, he wrote he was glad to know they were with Wheeler’s cavalry. “I knew that I would be treated as a prisoner of war rather than killed outright by gorillas.”

Mr Briscoe was taken prisoner on August 14, 1864 at 9 am.

As he and 73 other men, two officers, and 830 head of cattle were marched away “double quick,” he wrote, “Our guard had got there, and they had quite a skirmish. I heard them shooting until we were a mile or two away.”

They marched to midnight, stopping only for two hours, then continued until noon, when they rested another two hours. “This is the way they kept us going until we were well inside their lines,” he wrote. The prisoners lived mostly on forage, green corn, and watermelons though “they gave us some of our own beef twice.”

The men marched 125 miles in five days and nights, sometimes wading through rivers. On August 21, they arrived by train at Andersonville.

It was a “black looking hole,” Mr Briscoe wrote, “one of the worst holes that any mortal eye beheld on the face of the earth.” He made a vow, “You will not kill me in here.”

The 28-acre camp contained 35,000 Union soldiers. A six-acre swamp was used as a cesspool. A small stream running through this “quagmire” had once been used for drinking water. On the side of the swamp, holes or basins were dug where water would settle. “I have drank water from them myself when there would be maggots lying on the bottom of them,” he wrote. When wells were finally dug, the water was red from the clay soil.

Mr Briscoe and a comrade used a canteen as a frying pan, and that and a fork, knife, and spoon “composed our outfit for keeping house for almost four months.”

If the prisoners had money they could buy food or tobacco from the guards or trade with them. A day’s food ration consisted of beans or peas, small pieces of bacon, and corn bread, which was doled out in spoonfuls. Some days there was rice but it was often full of flies. Some prisoners might get beef, while others would get bones, which they used for soup. Not everyone received the same food, so the prisoners would trade.

As the war moved closer to Andersonville, prisoners were either paroled or moved to other prisons. Prisoners remaining would try to find the best shelter that had been vacated. Mr Briscoe and another man shared a tent made from a blanket and poles. When the man was exchanged because “Old Billy Sherman” was coming, Mr Briscoe lost his shelter and had to find another.

He described the “dead line” that was constructed to keep prisoners from digging out or tunneling under the stockade. If anyone were to touch the fence, they were shot. “There was little chance of escape,” Mr Briscoe wrote. Though there were many attempts, few succeeded, and there were cruel consequences when caught. Guards with bloodhounds circled the camp every morning.

Mr Briscoe wrote that the death rate during August and September 1864 averaged one every 22 and a half minutes; 13,726 died and were buried there. The prisoners would fight over who would carry out the dead because the guard would give them wood for fires. If a dead man’s clothes were in better condition, a prisoner would exchange with them.

There were many cases of gangrene and scurvy. Mr Briscoe wrote that the hospital consisted of only a shed of rough boards, open on all sides, with wooden bunks. Only the worse cases were taken there.

When he began to feel sick, he wrote, “The thread of life was growing weaker every day.”

After four months, in November 1864, it was Mr Briscoe’s turn to be exchanged, only it was only to another prison. His last meal at Andersonville consisted of a piece of raw ham and a piece of corn bread. Though the ham had worms in it, he wrote, “It was the sweetest piece of ham I ever ate.” The prisoners were then loaded into boxcars “like a lot of cattle, 80 in a car.”

The next prison camp was no better than Andersonville, he wrote, though it was cleaner and had a few trees for shade. The weather was getting cooler, and he had few clothes, no tent for shelter, or wood for a fire. He and a comrade finally took possession of a shanty, “this one with a fireplace,” which he wrote, “was the best Charley and I had in the shape of comfort since we were captured.”

Finally, he was to be paroled. The last night he slept on the ground in the rain and drew three sweet potatoes for rations. The prisoners were loaded again into freight cars and taken to Savannah, where they were turned out on the Common. The men were sick, starved, and ill clad for the cold. There were no fires for warmth.

Sick with scurvy, Mr Briscoe said he walked to keep from freezing. The next day, rations of hardtack, a piece of beef rib, and a half pint of molasses, were brought, “the first I had to eat in 60 hours.” The second night there were fires for warmth. Though some women tried to give the prisoners food, the guards stopped them. Mr Briscoe obtained some rice by trading a ring with a boy.

After signing an oath not to take up arms against the Southern Confederacy until he was legally exchanged, Mr Briscoe was taken to a boat, “but I could not get up or stand. Some of us were getting on our last legs.” He fell on the deck and was taken to the hospital boat, which was in neutral waters on the Savannah River. In the morning he was given a breakfast of boiled pork, bread and butter, raw onion, and coffee. “What a dose for a sick man,” he wrote. “Many of the boys died from overeating” after being near starvation in the prison camps.

He was taken to Annapolis where he spent two weeks in the hospital, losing strength every day, so that he was unable to sit up for more than two hours. However, he wanted to go home, though he was told he would not live to get to Connecticut. But he insisted, and after receiving his furlough and ration money, he left Annapolis, arriving at Botsford Station the next day.

Despite his illness, “Home was the uppermost thought in my mind,” he wrote, to see his mother, father, sister, and brother again.

The Botsford stationmaster recognized him, he wrote, but when resident Eli Coger saw him, “He cried like a child.” Emaciated, he had to show his mother a scar to prove to her that he was indeed her son. When he finally reached home, he sat in a chair and could not get up without help.

The doctor was called, who said he was the “poorest person I ever saw, dead or alive.” The doctor expected him to die because, three weeks after being released from prison, he weighed only 72 pounds. “It was two months before I could get out of bed without help,” he wrote. During that time, about 300 people visited him out of curiosity, bringing food and “even money.”

He gained 13 pounds in seven days. Finally, he was better, so much so that on April 14, 1865, he rejoined his regiment. On July 19, 1865, Mr Briscoe was mustered out.

He died on June 7, 1933, at the age of 88 at his home on Botsford Hill. He is buried in Berkshire Cemetery. In his obituary notice, it was written that as first selectman he had established a record as a careful, painstaking official. It was noted he had “suffered a terrible experience while a prisoner in Andersonville Prison.”