These two letters, a total of 10 pages in ink, were written by the famous author of the book, The Immortal Six Hundred.  Murray is gathering facts for his book that he would publish 4 years later.  In these two letters the first dated 11/20/1901 and the second 12/12/1901, Murray describes in graphic detail the horrors that he and the Immortal 600 men encountered as prisoners of war.  Read the letters carefully.  They paint a vivid picture of this dark event in U.S. history.  As a collateral item for the collector of the Immortal 600, and for the use in a P.O.W. display these letters provide an amazing opportunity! 

           

                 First Letter:
                                                                                                                    Charleston, Jeff. Co. W. Va. 11th 20th 1901

My dear old Comrade and friend,

            Your welcome letter and photo came today, and I have hung it with the other
members of the 600, who were true, through the terrible ordeal of fire and starvation
of 1864-65, on Morris Island, Hilton Head and Fort Pulaski.  You have changed the
minutes of the past have set upon you, but not with heavy hand.  I would not have
recognized you had we met before I saw your photo and I pray the great giver of all
good, if we do not meet in this life we may meet beyond the river in Gods camp.  I am in
my 63 year and save for the Rheumatism feel like a youth.  Time has dealt lightly with
me, but fate has played me pranks.  Yet I look back upon the past and have no regrets,
and have as dearly today the cause we loved and lost as the day I bade my loved ones
farewell in St. Louis and headed for my home in Virginia to link my fall and fortune
with the cause of the South for truth, justice and humanity and I as honestly and
sincerely believe today our cause was just and right, as I believe in a future, daily time
confirms our cause.  Daily time compels even the Yankees to say we were honest in our

convictions.  Comrade, the day will come, it may not be in our day but it will come,
when even the Yankee nation will declare that the greatest calamity that ever befell the
American continent was the day the Confederate States became a memory only. 

            I do most well remember the man who called out that the Gunboats were in sight,
that mate, of the crescent city who was charged with running the ship a ground never
said one word to the prisoners about it.  Had he done so, we surely would have taken
that ship, without the least parley.

            Do you ever recall the stench down in the hole of that ship especially so while we
 lay off Charleston pending the action of the Flag of Truce boats.  Really, I sometimes
wonder if hell itself could be worse, bad drinking water, no rations, heat of the ship,
heat of the weather, all combined to make our condition horrible, then the brutality of
those 100 day Ohio men who guarded us.  It comes now to me like a horrible dream,
when we landed Sept 7th, 1864 on Morris Island.  The two nights spent on board of
those old schooner hulks was heaven compared to the lower decks of the crescent city. 
Then our march up the bush in the hot sun under guard of those (54) Mass. niggers,
those small A tents four men crowded into them, those barrel sunk in the ground for our
water supply, our four hardtack crackers, one ounce of meat, half pint of bean or rice
soup.  Well it makes me wicked to think of it; I know you will never forget the 2nd day
of the Island, when the Yankee fleet and Batteries had the dual with our Forts &
batteries really the shelling of that 9th Sept. beat Gettysburg all holler I can hear more
 the question, “wonder if our people know we are in range of their guns?”  Col. Hallowell
with his yellow hair, red eyes, long jaw, always reminded me of a blaze fared steer,
then that little cork sparrow of a Lieut. who took reports of the roll call with his long
saber dangling after him, that fellow always amused me.  Is it not wonderful when we
stop to think of the terrible torture that more of our fellows did not take the oath.  There

was but seventeen scaly - wags in our crowd, the others god bless them, were Gods
people, no torture could make them untrue.  I love as a brother any man who remained
true to that ordeal and I never forget to thank God that he made me one of that 600,
and gave me strength to bear it all, and be alive today.  When I am dead, I tell my boys
to put on my tombstone simply, J. Ogden Murray one of the 600, under fire on Morris
Island, and true unto the end.  I am prouder of that ordeal than I am of all my army
records put together.  I wish could write more today am suffering with Rheumatism can
hardly hold my pen.  Would like to get down to Dallas, but fear it will not be possible to
 do so, yet my good luck may make it possible and I hope we will meet there.  Lamar
Fontaine has been trying to organize the 600 into a society, but for some reason the boys
don’t take to him.  He was a good soldier.  I know him when he belonged to E Company
2nd Va. Cavalry lost sight of him until I met him at Ft. Delaware.  I spoke to Genl. Gordon
on one occasion of forming a society but nothing came of it.  I wanted him at Charleston
to give us right of column in the parade but he did not to it, so I dropped the matter.  I
enclose you completion of the battles of the Stonewall Brigade.  I compiled for the
Winchester Daughters of Confederacy next time I go over to Winchester will send you
copies of the songs we sung in the Ft. Delaware Minstrel Troops after our return from
the trip south.

            May God protect and keep you and yours, may your life be prolonged to them for
 years to come with the love of comradeships made in those days of tribulation and

sorrow.

                                        I am your Comrade & friend,                       

                                                                                    J. Ogden Murray

 

Write me whenever you can, it’s always a pleasure to hear from one of the 600.

        Second Letter:
                                                                                                                                            Charleston, Jeff. Co. W. Va. 
                                                                                                                                                                   12th 12th 1901

                                Capt. P. H. Benson

                        My dear Comrade and friend

                                    Your kind letter of 7th date came this am also one from Capt. J. B.
Lindsay S.C. who was one of the 600, was with me at Fort Pulaski.  He is grand old
fellow true as steel and does not forgive nor forget the brutality inflicted upon us in
1864-65.  I cannot find the name of “Hardy” in my list the Marylanders of our party
were Maj. William W. Goldsborough, Capt. Geo. Howard, W. H. Griffin, Eugene Diggs,
Lieuts. J. E. V. Pue, E. J. Duley.  Howard is marked exchanged on my list Dec. 14th,
1864 at Hilton Head.  He was relative of Capt. Moale one of Foresters staff, and this
Moale fixed us the exchange for Howard, Goldsborough, Griffin and Diggs were with
me at Ft. Pulaski. After the close of the war, Diggs became rampant Republican went
out to Texas and may be there yet.  Goldsborough is in Phild. in poor health.  Griffin
is dead as is Howard.  I expect if Duley is not the man who took the oath, Hardy must
have joined tho our party after our arrival on Morris Island.  There was two Colonels
if you remember went with our party from Ft. Delaware.  They were kept in the cabin
of the crescent city, with the Yankee officers and were not put in the pen with us on
the island.  Col. Van Manning said to me he had positive information, those two
colonels were deserters and put on the boat as spies but the Yankees were afraid to
put them in the pen with us on the island.  Below is correct list of the fellows reported
 who took the oath,

Col. Jno. A. Baker 3rd N.C. Cavalry, Capt. R. W. Atkinson 2nd N.C. Cavalry, R. C.
Gillispie 45th Va., Capt. W. H. Craft Tenn., J. G. Kelly Capt. Engineers Hubert’s Staff,
Capt. Charles L. Minor Shelby’s KY. Cavalry, Lieut. Wm. Haliburton Fireman’s Battery
Ga., Lieut. L. B. Doyle 5th Va. Infantry, Lieut. R. A. Glenn 22nd N.C., J. W. Davis 20th
Va. Cavalry, Lieut. W. A. Cameran 25 Tenn., Lieut. Linn Foley 19 Miss., Lieut. C. D.
Covington 45th Tenn., S. S. Atkins 10th KY. Cavalry, Lieut. J. W. Boyd 6th Tenn.

Cavalry.   I must hunt up Hardy.  If you have not taken Duley for Hardy I want my list
correct for the Battle Abby.  I shall give it to the Abby whenever it is completed and
proper person appointed to take charge of such matter.   That fellow Lieut. Davis is the
man that Col. Van Manning, Pete Akers, Tom Perkins, and Will or Buck Kitchen of N.C.
cut the buttons from his coat at Hilton Head, and the Yankees placed him all in close
confinement for doing it.  Manning and Akers gave me full history of it on our way back
to Ft. Delaware.  I have in my diary full account of the plan to capture Hilton Hd.,
written by Pete Akers but he says nothing about Hardy, but does speak of the fellow
Davies. Lamar Fontaine writes me he escaped from Hilton Hd. Hospital and got safely
into Charleston.  He was one of the men sent to the Hospital wounded in thigh & knee if
you recall the face we had 50 wounded men with us and they were exchanged all but
Lieut. Leftwitch, who the Yankees held on some charge, Maj. W. E. Stewart 15th Ark.
escaped from the hospital at Ft. Pulaski.  He lives now in Easton, Md. practicing law,
sent me large photo of himself sometime ago.  I wrote Uncle Abe some days ago, hope
my letter will reach him.  I want to publish my history of the 600, but my last few
years have been in such a financial drag.  Cannot carry out my wish, but I hope to give
it to the public before I die.  The war record published by the Yankee Government has
not much to say about our trip, nor does it tell the rations etc. issued to us.  The
scoundrels are ashamed of it.  Vol. 45 is all the reference you can find to their brutality. 
Our children should have a correct history of our treatment and those scaly-wags who
 took the oath should be held up to the scorn of every true man.  It is a great pity you
could not have taken Hilton Head and killed the last one of those devilish deserters.  I
hate a deserter more than I do a snake, there is two or three by some means got into
our camp, the Genl. Turner Ashby, 240 C. V. Winchester, Va.  But they never came to
camp when I am in Winchester.  They have no business in our camps and I make it not
for them on all occasions.  General Marcus J. Wright of Tenn. now in Washington, D.C.
 in charge of the publication of the Confederate War Records charged it openly that R.
A. Cunningham editor of the Veteran deserted and took the oath one year before the
close of the war, and several others have told me the same thing.  This is the reason I

never would subscribe for the Veteran.  If Cunningham is a deserter or not, I do not
know.  If he is, he surely is not the proper man to edit a Confederate Journal, sometime
when I meet him at reunion or elsewhere I am going to ask him the question as Genl.
Wright makes the declaration publicly that Cunningham is a deserter.  Do you remember
Capt. Harper of 23rd Va. who was so sick at Hilton Head, Lieut. Bill Hunter of Va.
carried him aboard of the Steamer Ashland.  Well he is alive.  Lives in Louisville, KY. 
Wish you could read my history of the 600 and help me out on your personal history of
that day some years ago.  I met at Cold Sulpher Springs, Va. Mrs. Seabrooke of S.C. and
her father Col. Hamilton, she remembered the 600 and told me of plan to rescue us while
on Morris Island, which accounted if you remember while we were on the island.  She
ni**er guard patrolled our camp all one night and extra cannon was put at the head of
each street in Vol. 45 Forster issued orders that any prisoner caught outside of the
stockade after night was to be shot and I suppose all this was in keeping with the plan to
 rescue us Mrs. Seabrooke told me about.  She and her father are both dead when I look
back and recall the hell of that trip I wonder how one man was left to tell the story it
certainly was the most wanton cruelty ever inflected upon human beings.  Really when
we tell the story people look at us and doubt our statement, what was more cruel than
their medical treatment, no matter what was our complaint that no-headed cow doctor
on Morris Island gave us an opium pill or a dose of Tamari Ginger.  Their treatment was
murder and every man who died on that trip was murdered by cruelty of Stanton and
Genl. Foster, who are both dead and I believe are both in hell, where the whole Yankee
outfit would go if I could send them. 

 

            Time has dealt kindly with me.  Save for Rheumatism I get on physically well and
fortune smiles on me kindly.  I made great deal of money after the war but lost it.  Yet I

have never needed a meal thank God and have never had to call on friends.  I make good
living for myself and wife.  This is all I care for, my two boys can take care of themselves
and do.  I always have a bed for comrades and something to eat, and thank God have
never yet been too poor to fail to contribute a mile to a needy comrades comfort, and help
the glorious women to mark the graves of the men who died for a cause as holy and just
as was ours.  Next time I go to Winchester will try and not forget to send you copy of the
 Ft. Delaware songs, poor old Tom Roche who wrote them is dead and I hope looks down
from his seat in heaven upon us poor fellows that are left and knows we do not forget him. 

            I wish you and yours a merry x-mas & happy prosperous New Year, and hope we
shall meet before we cross over the river, if we do not meet here.  God grant we may meet
in the camp of his great love beyond the river.  Write me often as you can there is but few

of the 600 left.  God bless and keep you is the wish of your comrade & friend,

                                                                                                                        J. Ogden Murray

#S86 - Price $1,995

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