Delmarva Legends & Lore by Healey David

Author:Healey, David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2010-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

CAVEMAN OF THE CIVIL WAR

Salisbury, Maryland

During the Civil War, it wasn’t uncommon to be drafted against one’s will and forced to put on a blue uniform. One Delmarva man hated the Yankees so much that, to avoid this fate, he spent several years living in underground hideouts.

The ordeal of John Long, “Caveman of the Civil War,” is certainly one of the stranger tales from the Civil War era on Delmarva. His story was described at length in the Salisbury Wicomico News on May 27, 1920.

It is, unfortunately, a secondhand story, recounted from the childhood memories of the newspaper columnist. The newspaper article, and Long’s experiences, have been summarized by the Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture at Salisbury University.

“Having made up his mind that he would not obey the call of his country to duty, his chief thought was to find some place where he could hide until the ‘unpleasantness,’ as he termed it, ‘had blown over,’” the columnist wrote.

Long’s solution was to build “two or three” underground caves. Like most of Delmarva, the region around Salisbury is a flat and sandy place in which caves do not naturally occur. It’s likely that Long built his shelters in stream banks and also along the edge of a place called “Polk’s Pond.”

These caves were more than crude shelters. Long made them big enough to stand up in, with sides and ceilings finished with boards. He built bunks for sleeping but probably had no stove or hearth, which might give away his hiding place. The entrance was more than likely disguised somehow to avoid discovery.

Long was able to keep a sharp eye out thanks to “portholes” that he built to give himself ventilation and as a means to keep watch. The columnist wrote, “Hundreds of times, he said, the (Yankee) soldiers were within a few feet of his hiding place, but by good luck he escaped.”

It seems that the Caveman wasn’t just a draft dodger and Southern sympathizer but rather had somehow gotten himself into trouble with the local Federal authorities. A reward was offered for his arrest, and troops combed the countryside looking for him.

Friends apparently kept Long supplied with food, bringing him supplies under cover of darkness. The Caveman, however, wasn’t content to spend all of his time hiding out. On several occasions, he donned a disguise—sometimes dressing as a “Negro woman”—and ventured into town. Long was described as being a big man who weighed 240 pounds, so the sight of him in a dress must have been interesting, to say the least.

One of his favorite haunts was a saloon run by “Old Man Hawkins” that once stood on East Camden Street. As the columnist described it, “Here the friends of the north and of the south often met and many a wordy conflict finally terminated in a ‘knock down and drag out’ fight.”

It’s a good bet that John Barleycorn played a role when the Caveman got himself into more trouble than he bargained for one night at the saloon.

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