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Front Cover	Back, Spine, and Cover	Dedication Page

Excerpts
Excerpts from Seven Months a Prisoner by John Vestal Hadley (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898, pgs. 16, 18-19).

Page 16

The roll of musketry was incessant. Smoke was hovering in the clouds among the trees, and it was only after a dozen efforts that I learned from a lieutenant that General Rice had lately gone up the line. Amid the din my horse was as wild as a ranger. I headed him into a slightly opened avenue and gave him rein, and he dashed frantically along through the timber, squatting and dodging at the sound of the bullets. While at full speed a ball struck him near my left leg. I saw him sink to his breast, saw his nose plough along the ground and double under his breast - and I saw or remembered no more.

Boardman, of the One Hundred and Forty-seventh, told me how it was. My horse was killed while at full speed in the rear of their regiment, and in falling threw me against a tree and then pitched headlong upon me. Soon after my misfortune our line of battle fell back, and in the movement the men freed me from the horse; but being unconscious and bleeding copiously from the mouth and nose, I was left upon the field as mortally wounded. Later in the day some of the same regiment, in passing the spot as prisoners, laid me upon a blanket and carried me to a Confederate field-hospital.

Pages 18-19

.I awoke as if from sleep about 7 o'clock in the morning of the 6th, in the old house and tried but failed to get up. My left eye was entirely closed and I felt pain in my left breast and shoulder. I was evidently hurt, but knew not how or how much. The first thing that attracted my attention was a column of troops hurrying silently along the road. Their uniforms looked gray, but I thought the color might be due to my injured sight. I rubbed my eyes and tried it again, with the same result, and then turned upon my elbow and looked around. Those immediately near had on blue, as also did a soldier bending over a prostrate form with a canteen.

"Soldier, come here. Am I a prisoner?"

"Yes," he replied.

I asked no more questions but lay back and felt a little more willing to "give up the ghost" just then than I ever expect to be again. Mortally wounded as I felt, in the hands of the enemy, and denied the ministration of friends, with the thought that if I recovered I would be sent South in the hot season to some prison-pen, to starve or die of epidemic, I had absolutely no hope. What little life I seemed to have so painfully recoiled upon itself that I felt actual regret that the injuring force had not been a little stronger.

Indianapolis Star Article

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Foreword to the Reprint

Forward to the Reprint of Seven Months a Prisoner.
By Libbe Hughes

This is a story of imprisonment and escape, adventure and suspense. Four men escape from a Confederate prison in the cold of November, 1864 and struggle to make their way north to safety. It is a journey of some two hundred miles over rough terrain where any chance encounter with the local populace runs the risk of recapture. Loyalties are tested and friendships forged. It is written with humor and an honesty often lacking in Civil War narratives.

The author, John Vestal Hadley, was the youngest of seven children born to Jonathan and Ara Carter Hadley. The family had emigrated from Guilford County, North Carolina to Indiana in 1822 and by the time of John's birth on October 31, 1840 were well established on a large farm in Guilford Township, Hendricks County.¹ Jonathan Hadley died from typhoid fever in 1842 and Ara Carter Hadley retained the family farm and raised the children, five of whom reached adulthood. She never remarried.

John attended the local common schools throughout his childhood and entered Northwestern Christian University (now Butler University) in Indianapolis in 1859.² He left his studies at the end of his sophomore year to enlist in the Union Army on August 20, 1861 as a private in Company B, Seventh Regiment Indiana Volunteer Infantry.³

The Seventh Indiana left Indianapolis in September, 1861 for duty in the Cheat Mountain District of western Virginia where they remained until December, 1861.⁴ They moved to Green Springs Run and remained there until their participation in the Battle of Winchester in March, 1862. Hadley was promoted to corporal in April and the regiment moved to Fredericksburg in May, 1862. They were involved in action at Front Royal and Port Republic, Virginia in May and early June.

Attached to the Fourth Brigade, Second Division, Third Army Corps of the Army of Virginia, the Seventh Indiana saw action again at the Second Battle of Manassas. Hadley was shot through the hip during the battle and spent the next several months recovering from his wound in a Washington, D.C. army hospital, thereby missing the regiment's service at Antietam and Fredericksburg.⁵

Hadley returned to his regiment in late December, 1862 following his promotion to first lieutenant.⁶ Now attached to the Army of the Potomac, the Seventh took part in Burnside's "Mud March" in January; 1863, the Battle of Chancellorsville in May, 1863; and the Battle of Gettysburg in July. October, 1863 found the regiment on duty around the Rapidan and Rappahannock Rivers. During this time, Hadley was detailed to serve on the staff of Brigadier General James C. Rice with the Second Brigade, First Division of the First Army Corps.⁷ The regiment saw action in the Mine Run Campaign (November 26 through December 2, 1863) and wintered in the vicinity of the Rapidan River.

In the early hours of the Battle of Wilderness on May 5, 1864, Hadley was ordered by Rice to advance a skirmish line to meet the enemy. In the ensuing action Hadley's horse was cut down while galloping at full speed, throwing Hadley into a tree and rendering him unconscious. He awoke to find himself in Confederate hands. He attempted an escape from a Confederate field hospital on May 15, 1864 but was recaptured a few days later and sent to a prison camp in Macon, Georgia. Over the next seven months Hadley was transferred to Confederate prisons in Savannah, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; and, finally, to Columbia, South Carolina where he escaped on November 4, 1864 with three fellow prisoners. They were successful in reaching the Union lines around Knoxville, Tennessee on December 10, 1864 and Hadley had recovered sufficiently from the ordeal to travel by train back to Indianapolis in late December.

John was discharged from the army in January, 1865 and he returned home to marry Miss Mary Jane Hill on March 15, 1865. Their courtship had been brief and for nearly four years maintained almost exclusively by letters. The correspondence, interrupted only by his imprisonment, began with his letters addressed to "Miss Mollie J. Hill-My dearest friend" and progressed to "Beloved Mary" penned just before his capture in May, 1864.⁸ While they had little contact with each other during the war excepting their letters, he carried Mollie Hill in his thoughts as surely as he carried his gun by his side.

After his marriage, Hadley studied law in Indianapolis and was admitted to the bar in Hendricks County in June, 1866. He returned to Danville and entered into several law partnerships over the next few years until the winter of 1884 when he began practicing on his own. His mother, Ara Carter Hadley, died on January 13, 1866. John and Mollie's three children were also born during this time: Kate Blanche (1867), Hugh Holland (1871), and Walter Gresham (1874).

His law practice was a successful one and apparently public life agreed with him. He was elected state senator in 1868 and served three sessions in the Indiana legislature. In 1888 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. His interests in the local business community were characterized by his presidency of the Board of Directors of the First National Bank of Danville from 1877 to 1888.⁹ His skill as a lawyer earned him an election to circuit court judge in 1888, a position he held until his promotion to the Indiana Supreme Court in 1899. He resigned from the state supreme court in 1911 and returned to private life, which included the management of his prosperous farming operation.

In 1913 Hadley was appointed to the Indian commission making preparations for the fiftieth anniversary reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg. Commission members organized rail transport for the 552 Indiana citizens (former veterans) attending the reunion and Hadley himself presided over the "Indiana Day" portion of the reunion on July 2, 1913.¹⁰

At 73 years of age Hadley undertook the monumental task of editing the History of Hendricks County, Indiana which was published in 1914. He was a lifelong supporter of the Republican Party and outspoken in his opposition to women's right to vote.¹¹ He maintained memberships in the GAR, the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, and the Freemasons.

John V. Hadley died at his home in Danville on November 17, 1915 following a brief illness. The funeral service was conducted at the Danville Christian Church, of which he and his wife were members, and burial was held at the Maple Hill Cemetery in Plainfield, Indiana. Mollie Hadley survived her husband by fourteen years, dying in 1929.

Seven Months A Prisoner has the feel of a story often told to law associates, business partners, fellow veterans, family and friends. It was first published shortly after the war in serial format in a Danville newspaper, The Republican; reissued later in pamphlet form, and finally published as a book in 1898 by Charles Scribner's Sons of New York. The book was endearingly dedicated to Hadley's long-widowed mother, Ara Carter Hadley.

One of Hadley's strengths as a judge was his writing. It was noted that his bench decisions "were characterized by a clearness, candor and breadth of view" and that he wrote his legal opinions "with most painstaking care, weighing words and their varying shades of meaning, writing and re-writing until the proposition he was considering stood out clearly."¹²

Hadley brought this strength to the writing of Seven Months A Prisoner. There is a quality of realism to his story of imprisonment and escape and he makes no attempt to disguise his fears, frustrations, and cynicism. It was a quality apparent in his letters written to Mary during the war. In his letter of October 21, 1863, he explains the delay in answering her letter. "For three weeks we have been all astir, marching and countermarching, advancing and retreating evry day without exception. Don't know what we've accomplished or what escaped, at what we've aimed or how succeeded, lost much sleep, been mighty hungry, and been shot at a few times."¹³

In both letters and book, he recorded his thoughts with an appealing honesty. Returning to his regiment after a furlough home to recuperate from the wounds he received during the Second Manassas, John wrote poignantly to Mary on December 28, 1862 of his loneliness and uncertainties. "The roar of hostile guns that I now hear in front tell me that I am in the presence of an armed foe and that death may be mine before this is yours. The world seemes to be mourning to night Mary. Evrything is hushed and not a noise to break the solitude but the sharp shrill notes of the trumpet which tells the troop[s] that it is time to go to rest and the reverberating echoes of the canonade in front. Everything seemes to sigh. There is enough of solem pathos in one blast of winter wind around the corner of my tent to put all mankind in tears."¹⁴

John Vestal Hadley understood the importance of language and he told his stories with clarity and grace.