CHAPTER XXXVIII.

After the execution—­formation of A police force—­its first chief —­“Spanking” An offender.

After the executions Key, knowing that he, and all those prominently connected with the hanging, would be in hourly danger of assassination if they remained inside, secured details as nurses and ward-masters in the hospital, and went outside.  In this crowd were Key, Ned Carrigan, Limber Jim, Dick McCullough, the six hangmen, the two Corporals who pulled the props from under the scaffold, and perhaps some others whom I do not now remember.

In the meanwhile provision had been made for the future maintenance of order in the prison by the organization of a regular police force, which in time came to number twelve hundred men.  These were divided into companies, under appropriate officers.  Guards were detailed for certain locations, patrols passed through the camp in all directions continually, and signals with whistles could summon sufficient assistance to suppress any disturbance, or carry out any orders from the chief.

The chieftainship was first held by Key, but when he went outside he appointed Sergeant A. R. Hill, of the One Hundredth O. V. I.—­now a resident of Wauseon, Ohio,—­his successor.  Hill was one of the notabilities of that immense throng.  A great, broad-shouldered, giant, in the prime of his manhood—­the beginning of his thirtieth year—­he was as good-natured as big, and as mild-mannered as brave.  He spoke slowly, softly, and with a slightly rustic twang, that was very tempting to a certain class of sharps to take him up for a “luberly greeny.”  The man who did so usually repented his error in sack-cloth and ashes.

Hill first came into prominence as the victor in the most stubbornly contested fight in the prison history of Belle Isle.  When the squad of the One Hundredth Ohio—­captured at Limestone Station, East Tennessee, in September,1863—­arrived on Belle Isle, a certain Jack Oliver, of the Nineteenth Indiana, was the undisputed fistic monarch of the Island.  He did not bear his blushing honors modestly; few of a right arm that indefinite locality known as “the middle of next week,” is something that the possessor can as little resist showing as can a girl her first solitaire ring.  To know that one can certainly strike a disagreeable fellow out of time is pretty sure to breed a desire to do that thing whenever occasion serves.  Jack Oliver was one who did not let his biceps rust in inaction, but thrashed everybody on the Island whom he thought needed it, and his ideas as to those who should be included in this class widened daily, until it began to appear that he would soon feel it his duty to let no unwhipped man escape, but pound everybody on the Island.

One day his evil genius led him to abuse a rather elderly man belonging to Hill’s mess.  As he fired off his tirade of contumely, Hill said with more than his usual “soft” rusticity: