The 4th Michigan Infantry in the Civil War

McClellan Moves Slow but Sure

33 c hapter 3 McClellan Moves Slow but Sure The day after Privates Tuttle and Wirts were captured, good news reached the 4th Michigan—Capt. Sam DeGolyer was alive. On August 11, Colonel Woodbury stood before the regiment, reading aloud a letter from the captain. He and Lt. Simon B. Preston were prisoners in Richmond, hoping to be exchanged soon. No one had been sure up to this point whether they had been killed at Bull Run. “Cheer after cheer resounded through the air,” wrote Sgt. William F. Robinson, “and it seemed as though the boys of his Company could not restrain themselves, so filled were they with joy.”1 DeGolyer and Preston, reportedly captured near the stone bridge over the creek, were among a thousand or so prisoners. By foot and by train, they were brought to the Rebel capital and initially housed in the Liggon & Co.’s tobacco factory. Within a day or so some were shifted into an adjacent building. The Union men were allowed to see local newspapers, and DeGolyer was concerned about reports that the prisoners would soon be put to work on Rebel fortifications or moved to North Carolina. Neither prospect appealed to him; he told Lieutenant Preston that he was going to try to escape. Preston thought this too risky, but Quartermaster Sgt. Henry C. Jencks of the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry was willing. While prisoners still had some money and valuables in their possession, they could purchase and send out for items. DeGolyer obtained === c hapter 3 === 34 some dark-colored clothing and got an old slouch hat from the chaplain of a Connecticut regiment. They also got 10 cents’ worth of soda crackers and a loaf of bread. But perhaps most important of all, DeGolyer and Jencks got help from unnamed friends in Richmond. On the night of August 13, they made their move, taking advantage of the system that was set up for prisoners’ messes, cooking arrangements, for groups of men sharing food rations. “We saved our cold meat and bread, cut it up, put in seasoning and made a stew,” the captain later explained, “the officer of the guard permitting one of us [from each mess] to go into the yards to the fire to cook it.” He and Jencks got permission and went down to the yard. Though neither man revealed details that might compromise those who aided them, DeGolyer’s vaguely worded account suggested they may have crept into a drain or ditch, or perhaps under a wagon, possibly when a distraction was staged to draw attention away from them. However they did it, he and Jencks got away from the prison undetected. “By the aid of friends yet in Richmond, of whom it would not be policy to speak,” he wrote, “we stepped in between the outer guard and a small barn, between two brick buildings. We were fastened in here. When the Negroes and cooks left we were left in there alone. By starting off a board, we crawled through and dropped down into a ravine and made our way down near the [James] River.2 Who helped the men? History shows that Union sympathizer and spy Elizabeth Van Lew and her black servants, dedicated secret agents, helped many prisoners escape from Richmond. But there was also the suggestion that Jencks’s family owned a factory in Richmond and may have had connections willing and able to aid the escapees. For the record, the tobacco building was near the river. The night was cloudy and the men waited in a ravine, listening for an alarm. None came. They made their way northeast and reached some fortifications outside of town. Here they remained still for some three hours before deciding no soldiers were posted there. The escapees removed their shoes and passed through quietly, and reached a bridge from which the planks or treads had been removed. They edged their way across the narrow beams over what was probably the Chickahominy River. The men took to the woods and underbrush, crawling through briars and thickets in the rain, trying to move north. Unfortunately, they found when the sun came up they’d made a large circle and come back to that same bridge they crossed hours before. The men hurried into a muddy ditch near the woods when an overseer arrived that morning with slaves who spent the day cutting timber close by. “We felt relieved when night came,” DeGolyer wrote.3 For the...