Libby Prison - The Libby Chronicle

The Libby Chronicle

(The Libby Chronicle, edited by Louis Beaudry, Albany, NY)

The Libby Chronicle was a newsletter written by the inmates of Libby during the summer of 1863; it was read aloud by the editor every Friday morning. Composed in the midst of hardship and brutality, the newsletter expressed irreverent humor.

Issue number two included a poem entitled “Castle Thunder,” with a "dryly witty perspective" on prison life:

We have eighteen kinds of food, though ‘twill stagger your belief, Because we have bread, beef and soup, then bread, soup and beef; Then we sep’rate around with’bout twenty in a group, And thus we get beef, soup and bread, and beef, bread and soup; For dessert we obtain, though it costs us nary red, Soup, bread and beef, (count it well) and beef and soup and bread.

Such poems helped keep up morale among the prisoners. The following week’s issue begins with a segment called “Encore,” which reads, “Yielding to pressing demand from those who heard and from many who did not hear the poem entitled ‘Castle Thunder,’ we reproduce it this week. We are certain that the uproarious laughter caused by this facetious article . . . has done more good in Libby than cartloads of Confederate medicine.”

Commonly expressed was hostility toward President Abraham Lincoln, whom they considered responsible for their being held so long in prison. The editors of The Chronicle rebuked such sentiments, saying, “these officers evince more the spirit of spoiled children than that of manly courage and intelligence which should characterize the actions of the American soldier.”

Men made independent efforts to secure release. For instance, one young surgeon wrote a letter to the editor of the Richmond Sentinel, promising that if he were released he would find the editor’s “Rebel son” and look after him until he could be returned home. Chronicle editors reported that “this same officer was poltroon enough to offer to leave the Federal army if the Confederates would do something for him. But the Rebels didn’t want the poor Judas, and he finds he has eaten dirt without advantage.”