Chapter 38

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.