In October 1903, the Wilkes-Barre Semi-Weekly Record ran a series of interviews with local Civil War veterans. Among those they interviewed was Israel P. Long, a postal worker in Wilkes-Barre, PA who survived numerous wounds during the conflict and several stints in infamous Confederate prisoner of war camps.

Israel P. Long was a native of Huntington Township, Luzerne County. He joined the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves, an infantry regiment that gained some renown during the Civil War for their participation in numerous major battles. Long was just 17 years old when he enlisted in March 1862.

The young soldier was captured in his first major fight, the Battle of Gaines Mill on June 27, 1862. He spent time as a prisoner of war in Richmond, including at the Belle Isle prison camp in the middle of the James River. He was exchanged and returned to his unit.

Months later, at the Battle of Second Bull Run, he was severely wounded. He spent months in a US Army hospital recuperating from his wounds before returning to the regiment just in time for the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. Long returned to the front lines and was promptly wounded yet again.

He was transported to another US Army hospital, this time in the United States Patent Office, where he was treated for his injuries. Long served in the Washington area on detached duty until he was discharged in March 1864. He re-enlisted and went back to his comrades in the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves just in time for a new campaign in May 1864.

Long would again experience combat with the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves and his star-crossed military service continued. He recounted his experience at the Battle of the Wilderness and his subsequent experience at Andersonville Prison in October 1903.

Long described his experience at Andersonville like this:

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It was at the Battle of the Wilderness. We were sent into the fight at the extreme left of the line. A dense wood hid us from the enemy and the first thing we knew we were surrounded by the enemy and found a strong force in our rear. The entire regiment was practically captured, but many made their escape later.

When surrounded we scattered and tried to escape. Mr. Hagenbaugh and I were together and were brought up short by a rebel who fired five shots at us at long range. We dropped behind a log to save our lives and soon after were made prisoners of war with many others. We were taken to Lynchburg and put on a train for Andersonville, reaching the prison on May 22, 1864. The privates were penned up in the stockade and the officer in Macon, Ga.

I remained at Andersonville for four months, until the latter part of September, when, with about 275 of the healthiest prisoners, I was sent to Charleston, SC, and placed under the fire of the Union army. When the Federal troops heard of this inhuman plan, a similar number of southern prisoners were placed in a like position and the Confederates agreed to stop the barbarous practice and I was sent with, the batch to another prison.

When I reached Andersonville the greater part of my apparel was taken from me and I was herded in the dreadful enclosure with several thousand others. The number of prisoners rapidly increased and the number ran top to 28,000 within a few weeks. Then the horrors began and men died like flies. We had no shelter, had to take the hot sun, rain or storm as it came.

Half a pint of corn meal was the daily ration and some days, when the rebels would hear a story that we were digging a tunnel to escape, we would get nothing to eat. We attempted to dig several tunnels. .A crowd would be picked and sworn to secrecy, but at the last moment somebody would squeal and our plan would be frustrated.

Until the stockade was enlarged there was only one entrance and a gruesome spot it was every morning. Those who died during the night were dragged to this entrance and after the wagon would arrive with our portion of corn meal and unload it the dead would be piled up on the wagon and carted away. I saw 263 dead piled up at that gate on July 4, 1864, all having died in one night from scurvy, vermin, fevers and diarrhea, caused by starvation and lack of shelter. The sufferings of the sick and dying were horrible.

I saw a man who got the scurvy in his mouth pick all his teeth out of his jaws with his fingers. Next day he became a raving maniac and died. We had no water for a time except what came from a swamp, and that became so bad during the warm weather and from the crowd of dying men lying about it that it was unfit for cattle. Then we had to keep sixteen feet inside the walls of the stockade, and any person who stepped across the dead line was shot down without a word of warning.

Home sick soldiers would reach over the dead line in an endeavor to get water from the stream less contaminated with the filth of the camp and would be promptly shot by the guards.

Providence came to our aid in our deepest distress. One day, the latter part of July, a heavy rain storm came up and washed away a place in the bank and a stream of pure, cold water gushed out that afterwards supplied us with pure water, saving thousands of lives. I believe the spring is running to this day and I hear there is now a stone monument built over it. One of my fondest desires is to go down there again and drink some of that water. The boys called it “Providential Spring.”

We received about a fist full of corn meal each day for our rations. We melted the solder on a canteen and cooked our meal in the half, building a little fire of shavings cut from a log. As we were not permitted to have knives, the few smuggled into camp were in great demand for cutting our firewood.

For those four months the outside world was a blank to us. We saw a few rebel papers, but they were filled with stuff telling that everybody north was – licked and that our soldiers were deserting.

I entered the prison with a party of five, but two of them died there.

When we entered the stockade there was no law or government in it. Each man was his own guard so far as law and order were concerned. We had all kinds of men there. Some robbed and killed their fellow prisoners and things became so bad that we finally formed a vigilance committee to watch for the raiders.

Men were appointed to stand guard nights and we finally caught six men in the act of murder and robbery. A bad gang had a brush lot in one corner of the stockade and would not allow the rest of us near it. This was their headquarters, but after we caught the six the brush lot was examined and,  several gold watches and a lot of other stolen stuff was found buried there, also the bodies of some prisoners whom they murdered. These robbers were supposed to be our own men and after we caught them we had a regular trial and all were found guilty. The verdict was sealed and sent under a flag of truce to Gen. Sherman, who approved it, and the six were hanged together in the new part of the stockade.

One of the Union prisoners, a scout for Gen. Custer, known as ‘Limber Jim,’ acted as hangman. The rope broke with one of the six and while they were preparing to string him up again he tried to escape and ran into a swamp filled with the filth of the camp, where he stuck fast. I helped to carry him back, and although he begged for his life, he was strung up again with the others and on the second attempt his neck broke instead of the rope.

After the hangings there was better order in the stockade, but the vigilance committee was continued until after I was taken away.

Old Wirz used to come into the stockade every few days and was especially severe if he heard there was an attempt to escape. The dead line, sixteen feet from the stockade, was guarded so closely that a piece of wood that lay a few feet beyond the line could not be lifted before the man who tried to do so would be shot.

I asked Wirz one day to let me get the stick and he growled at me, gave me a kick and said: “Get oudt. What you want around here, you Dutchman?”

Mean? He could do nothing mean enough to the prisoners and was universally hated.

I left the prison in September, being picked out as one of the healthiest and best able to walk. I was in tatters when I left, one of my pants legs being rotted off.

I kept a diary of my experiences in the prison and also took the addresses and last messages of many who died, promising to notify their relatives if I ever was released. But when finally on shipboard for the Union lines, I was taken desperately sick with fever and the soldiers who were caring for me did not know the value of the diary in my knapsack and threw the knapsack into the sea.

It would take pages to tell of the horrors l witnessed during my four months at Andersonville. I hope to visit the place again on the reunion of its Pennsylvania prisoners in November.

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Andersonville was the most infamous of the Confederate prisoner of war camps. Located in rural Georgia, the small encampment quickly became overcrowded and with little food and no access to clean water, prisoners died in the thousands. Modern estimates put the death toll from Andersonville at more than 12,000 of the 45,000 prisoners that passed through its gates.

Henry Wirz, the camp commandant mentioned by Long in his account, was the only Confederate officer executed for war crimes in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Long’s saga as a POW didn’t end at Andersonville. He was pulled out of Andersonville and sent to Charleston, South Carolina as part of a scheme by Confederate military officials to stop by the bombardment of Charleston by US Navy gunboats and US Army artillery. Long and hundreds of other US Army prisoners were placed in position deliberately in areas targeted by Union forces.

After this stunt by Confederate forces ended, Long was sent to a prison camp in Florence, South Carolina. He made an unsuccessful escape attempt from the prison, spending two weeks on the run in the swamps and lowlands around Florence before he was recaptured. He transferred through two additional prison camps in North Carolina before the war ended and Long returned home to Northeastern Pennsylvania.

After the war, Long became one of the first police officers in the newly incorporated City of Wilkes-Barre in 1871 and later worked as a postal worker. He gave numerous interviews and discussed his military service with local newspapers. Israel P. Long died on December 29, 1924 in Wilkes-Barre. He was 80 years old.

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