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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Andersonville, complete, by John McElroy

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Title: Andersonville, complete

Author: John McElroy

Release Date: August 22, 2006 [EBook #3072]
Last Updated: August 24, 2023

Language: English

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Produced by: David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANDERSONVILLE, COMPLETE ***




                             ANDERSONVILLE
                   A STORY OF REBEL MILITARY PRISONS

                FIFTEEN MONTHS A GUEST OF THE SO-CALLED
                          SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY

                     A PRIVATE SOLDIERS EXPERIENCE
                                   IN
               RICHMOND, ANDERSONVILLE, SAVANNAH, MILLEN
                        BLACKSHEAR AND FLORENCE


                            BY JOHN McELROY
                      Late of Co. L. 16th Ill Cav.
                                  1879




                           TO THE HONORABLE

                             NOAH H. SWAYNE.

           JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES,
        A JURIST OF DISTINGUISHED TALENTS AND EXALTED CHARACTER;
                        ONE OF THE LAST OF THAT
       ADMIRABLE ARRAY OF PURE PATRIOTS AND SAGACIOUS COUNSELORS,
                                WHO, IN
                    THE YEARS OF THE NATION’S TRIAL,
               FAITHFULLY SURROUNDED THE GREAT PRESIDENT,
                     AND, WITH HIM, BORE THE BURDEN
                                   OF
                         THOSE MOMENTOUS DAYS;
         AND WHOSE WISDOM AND FAIRNESS HAVE DONE SO MUCH SINCE
                                   TO
                      CONSERVE WHAT WAS THEN WON,
         THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH RESPECT AND APPRECIATION,

                              BY THE AUTHOR.




INTRODUCTION.

The fifth part of a century almost has sped with the flight of time
since the outbreak of the Slaveholder’s Rebellion against the United
States. The young men of to-day were then babes in their cradles, or,
if more than that, too young to be appalled by the terror of the times.
Those now graduating from our schools of learning to be teachers of
youth and leaders of public thought, if they are ever prepared to teach
the history of the war for the Union so as to render adequate honor to
its martyrs and heroes, and at the same time impress the obvious moral
to be drawn from it, must derive their knowledge from authors who can
each one say of the thrilling story he is spared to tell: “All of which
I saw, and part of which I was.”

The writer is honored with the privilege of introducing to the reader
a volume written by an author who was an actor and a sufferer in the
scenes he has so vividly and faithfully described, and sent forth to
the public by a publisher whose literary contributions in support of
the loyal cause entitle him to the highest appreciation. Both author
and publisher have had an honorable and efficient part in the great
struggle, and are therefore worthy to hand down to the future a record
of the perils encountered and the sufferings endured by patriotic
soldiers in the prisons of the enemy. The publisher, at the beginning
of the war, entered, with zeal and ardor upon the work of raising
a company of men, intending to lead them to the field. Prevented
from carrying out this design, his energies were directed to a more
effective service. His famous “Nasby Letters” exposed the absurd and
sophistical argumentations of rebels and their sympathisers, in such
broad, attractive and admirable burlesque, as to direct against them
the “loud, long laughter of a world!” The unique and telling satire of
these papers became a power and inspiration to our armies in the field
and to their anxious friends at home, more than equal to the might of
whole battalions poured in upon the enemy. An athlete in logic may
lay an error writhing at his feet, and after all it may recover to do
great mischief. But the sharp wit of the humorist drives it before the
world’s derision into shame and everlasting contempt. These letters
were read and shouted over gleefully at every camp-fire in the Union
Army, and eagerly devoured by crowds of listeners when mails were
opened at country post-offices. Other humorists were content when they
simply amused the reader, but “Nasby’s” jests were arguments--they had
a meaning--they were suggested by the necessities and emergencies of the
Nation’s peril, and written to support, with all earnestness, a most
sacred cause.

The author, when very young, engaged in journalistic work, until the
drum of the recruiting officer called him to join the ranks of his
country’s defenders. As the reader is told, he was made a prisoner.
He took with him into the terrible prison enclosure not only a brave,
vigorous, youthful spirit, but invaluable habits of mind and thought
for storing up the incidents and experiences of his prison life. As a
journalist he had acquired the habit of noticing and memorizing every
striking or thrilling incident, and the experiences of his prison
life were adapted to enstamp themselves indelibly on both feeling and
memory. He speaks from personal experience and from the stand-paint of
tender and complete sympathy with those of his comrades who suffered
more than he did himself. Of his qualifications, the writer of these
introductory words need not speak. The sketches themselves testify to
his ability with such force that no commendation is required.

This work is needed. A generation is arising who do not know what the
preservation of our free government cost in blood and suffering. Even
the men of the passing generation begin to be forgetful, if we may
judge from the recklessness or carelessness of their political action.
The soldier is not always remembered nor honored as he should be. But,
what to the future of the great Republic is more important, there is
great danger of our people under-estimating the bitter animus and
terrible malignity to the Union and its defenders cherished by those
who made war upon it. This is a point we can not afford to be mistaken
about. And yet, right at this point this volume will meet its severest
criticism, and at this point its testimony is most vital and necessary.

Many will be slow to believe all that is here told most truthfully
of the tyranny and cruelty of the captors of our brave boys in
blue. There are no parallels to the cruelties and malignities here
described in Northern society. The system of slavery, maintained for
over two hundred years at the South, had performed a most perverting,
morally desolating, and we might say, demonizing work on the dominant
race, which people bred under our free civilization can not at once
understand, nor scarcely believe when it is declared unto them. This
reluctance to believe unwelcome truths has been the snare of our
national life. We have not been willing to believe how hardened,
despotic, and cruel the wielders of irresponsible power may become.

When the anti-slavery reformers of thirty years ago set forth the
cruelties of the slave system, they were met with a storm of indignant
denial, villification and rebuke. When Theodore D. Weld issued his
“Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses,” to the cruelty of slavery, he
introduced it with a few words, pregnant with sound philosophy, which
can be applied to the work now introduced, and may help the reader
better to accept and appreciate its statements. Mr. Weld said:

“Suppose I should seize you, rob you of your liberty, drive you into
the field, and make you work without pay as long as you lived. Would
that be justice? Would it be kindness? Or would it be monstrous
injustice and cruelty? Now, is the man who robs you every day too
tender-hearted ever to cuff or kick you? He can empty your pockets
without remorse, but if your stomach is empty, it cuts him to the
quick. He can make you work a life-time without pay, but loves you
too well to let you go hungry. He fleeces you of your rights with a
relish, but is shocked if you work bare-headed in summer, or without
warm stockings in winter. He can make you go without your liberty,
but never without a shirt. He can crush in you all hope of bettering
your condition by vowing that you shall die his slave, but though he
can thus cruelly torture your feelings, he will never lacerate your
back--he can break your heart, but is very tender of your skin. He can
strip you of all protection of law, and all comfort in religion, and
thus expose you to all outrages, but if you are exposed to the weather,
half-clad and half-sheltered, how yearn his tender bowels! What! talk
of a man treating you well while robbing you of all you get, and as
fast as you get it? And robbing you of yourself, too, your hands and
feet, your muscles, limbs and senses, your body and mind, your liberty
and earnings, your free speech and rights of conscience, your right to
acquire knowledge, property and reputation, and yet you are content to
believe without question that men who do all this by their slaves have
soft hearts oozing out so lovingly toward their human chattles that
they always keep them well housed and well clad, never push them too
hard in the field, never make their dear backs smart, nor let their
dear stomachs get empty!”

In like manner we may ask, are not the cruelties and oppressions
described in the following pages what we should legitimately expect
from men who, all their lives, have used whip and thumb-screw, shot-gun
and bloodhound, to keep human beings subservient to their will? Are we
to expect nothing but chivalric tenderness and compassion from men who
made war on a tolerant government to make more secure their barbaric
system of oppression?

These things are written because they are true. Duty to the brave
dead, to the heroic living, who have endured the pangs of a hundred
deaths for their country’s sake; duty to the government which depends
on the wisdom and constancy of its good citizens for its support and
perpetuity, calls for this “round, unvarnished tale” of suffering
endured for freedom’s sake.

The publisher of this work urged his friend and associate in journalism
to write and send forth these sketches because the times demanded just
such an expose of the inner hell of the Southern prisons. The tender
mercies of oppressors are cruel. We must accept the truth and act in
view of it. Acting wisely on the warnings of the past, we shall be able
to prevent treason, with all its fearful concomitants, from being again
the scourge and terror of our beloved land.

ROBERT McCUNE.




AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Fifteen months ago--and one month before it was begun--I had no more
idea of writing this book than I have now of taking up my residence in
China.

While I have always been deeply impressed with the idea that the
public should know much more of the history of Andersonville and other
Southern prisons than it does, it had never occurred to me that I was
in any way charged with the duty of increasing that enlightenment.

No affected deprecation of my own abilities had any part is this.
I certainly knew enough of the matter, as did every other boy who
had even a month’s experience in those terrible places, but the
very magnitude of that knowledge overpowered me, by showing me the
vast requirements of the subject-requirements that seemed to make
it presumption for any but the greatest pens in our literature to
attempt the work. One day at Andersonville or Florence would be task
enough for the genius of Carlyle or Hugo; lesser than they would fail
preposterously to rise to the level of the theme. No writer ever
described such a deluge of woes as swept over the unfortunates confined
in Rebel prisons in the last year-and-a-half of the Confederacy’s life.
No man was ever called upon to describe the spectacle and the process
of seventy thousand young, strong, able-bodied men, starving and
rotting to death. Such a gigantic tragedy as this stuns the mind and
benumbs the imagination.

I no more felt myself competent to the task than to accomplish one of
Michael Angelo’s grand creations in sculpture or painting.

Study of the subject since confirms me in this view, and my only claim
for this book is that it is a contribution--a record of individual
observation and experience--which will add something to the material
which the historian of the future will find available for his work.

The work was begun at the suggestion of Mr. D. R. Locke, (Petroleum V.
Nasby), the eminent political satirist. At first it was only intended
to write a few short serial sketches of prison life for the columns
of the TOLEDO BLADE. The exceeding favor with which the first of the
series was received induced a great widening of their scope, until
finally they took the range they now have.

I know that what is contained herein will be bitterly denied. I am
prepared for this. In my boyhood I witnessed the savagery of the
Slavery agitation--in my youth I felt the fierceness of the hatred
directed against all those who stood by the Nation. I know that hell
hath no fury like the vindictiveness of those who are hurt by the
truth being told of them. I apprehend being assailed by a sirocco
of contradiction and calumny. But I solemnly affirm in advance the
entire and absolute truth of every material fact, statement and
description. I assert that, so far from there being any exaggeration
in any particular, that in no instance has the half of the truth
been told, nor could it be, save by an inspired pen. I am ready to
demonstrate this by any test that the deniers of this may require,
and I am fortified in my position by unsolicited letters from over
3,000 surviving prisoners, warmly indorsing the account as thoroughly
accurate in every respect.

It has been charged that hatred of the South is the animus of this
work. Nothing can be farther from the truth. No one has a deeper love
for every part of our common country than I, and no one to-day will
make more efforts and sacrifices to bring the South to the same plane
of social and material development with the rest of the Nation than I
will. If I could see that the sufferings at Andersonville and elsewhere
contributed in any considerable degree to that end, and I should not
regret that they had been. Blood and tears mark every step in the
progress of the race, and human misery seems unavoidable in securing
human advancement. But I am naturally embittered by the fruitlessness,
as well as the uselessness of the misery of Andersonville. There was
never the least military or other reason for inflicting all that
wretchedness upon men, and, as far as mortal eye can discern, no
earthly good resulted from the martyrdom of those tens of thousands.
I wish I could see some hope that their wantonly shed blood has sown
seeds that will one day blossom, and bear a rich fruitage of benefit to
mankind, but it saddens me beyond expression that I can not.

The years 1864-5 were a season of desperate battles, but in that
time many more Union soldiers were slain behind the Rebel armies, by
starvation and exposure, than were killed in front of them by cannon
and rifle. The country has heard much of the heroism and sacrifices of
those loyal youths who fell on the field of battle; but it has heard
little of the still greater number who died in prison pen. It knows
full well how grandly her sons met death in front of the serried ranks
of treason, and but little of the sublime firmness with which they
endured unto the death, all that the ingenious cruelty of their foes
could inflict upon them while in captivity.

It is to help supply this deficiency that this book is written. It is
a mite contributed to the better remembrance by their countrymen of
those who in this way endured and died that the Nation might live. It
is an offering of testimony to future generations of the measureless
cost of the expiation of a national sin, and of the preservation of our
national unity.

This is all. I know I speak for all those still living comrades who
went with me through the scenes that I have attempted to describe, when
I say that we have no revenges to satisfy, no hatreds to appease. We do
not ask that anyone shall be punished. We only desire that the Nation
shall recognize and remember the grand fidelity of our dead comrades,
and take abundant care that they shall not have died in vain.

For the great mass of Southern people we have only the kindliest
feeling. We but hate a vicious social system, the lingering shadow of
a darker age, to which they yield, and which, by elevating bad men to
power, has proved their own and their country’s bane.

The following story does not claim to be in any sense a history of
Southern prisons. It is simply a record of the experience of one
individual--one boy--who staid all the time with his comrades inside
the prison, and had no better opportunities for gaining information
than any other of his 60,000 companions.

The majority of the illustrations in this work are from the skilled
pencil of Captain O. J. Hopkins, of Toledo, who served through the war
in the ranks of the Forty-second Ohio. His army experience has been of
peculiar value to the work, as it has enabled him to furnish a series
of illustrations whose life-like fidelity of action, pose and detail
are admirable.

Some thirty of the pictures, including the frontispiece, and the
allegorical illustrations of War and Peace, are from the atelier of Mr.
O. Reich, Cincinnati, O.

A word as to the spelling: Having always been an ardent believer in
the reformation of our present preposterous system--or rather, no
system--of orthography, I am anxious to do whatever lies in my power
to promote it. In the following pages the spelling is simplified to
the last degree allowed by Webster. I hope that the time is near when
even that advanced spelling reformer will be left far in the rear by
the progress of a people thoroughly weary of longer slavery to the
orthographical absurdities handed down to us from a remote and grossly
unlearned ancestry.

Toledo, O., Dec. 10, 1879.

JOHN McELROY.




We wait beneath the furnace blast
The pangs of transformation;
Not painlessly doth God recast
And mold anew the nation.
Hot burns the fire
Where wrongs expire;
Nor spares the hand
That from the land
Uproots the ancient evil.

The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared
Its bloody rain is dropping;
The poison plant the fathers spared
All else is overtopping.
East, West, South, North,
It curses the earth;
All justice dies,
And fraud and lies
Live only in its shadow.

Then let the selfish lip be dumb
And hushed the breath of sighing;
Before the joy of peace must come
The pains of purifying.
God give us grace
Each in his place
To bear his lot,
And, murmuring not,
Endure and wait and labor!

WHITTIER






ANDERSONVILLE

A STORY OF REBEL MILITARY PRISONS




CHAPTER I.

A STRANGE LAND--THE HEART OF THE APPALACHIANS--THE GATEWAY OF AN EMPIRE
--A SEQUESTERED VALE, AND A PRIMITIVE, ARCADIAN, NON-PROGRESSIVE PEOPLE.

A low, square, plainly-hewn stone, set near the summit of the eastern
approach to the formidable natural fortress of Cumberland Gap,
indicates the boundaries of--the three great States of Virginia,
Kentucky and Tennessee. It is such a place as, remembering the old
Greek and Roman myths and superstitions, one would recognize as fitting
to mark the confines of the territories of great masses of strong,
aggressive, and frequently conflicting peoples. There the god Terminus
should have had one of his chief temples, where his shrine would be
shadowed by barriers rising above the clouds, and his sacred solitude
guarded from the rude invasion of armed hosts by range on range of
battlemented rocks, crowning almost inaccessible mountains, interposed
across every approach from the usual haunts of men.

Roundabout the land is full of strangeness and mystery. The throes of
some great convulsion of Nature are written on the face of the four
thousand square miles of territory, of which Cumberland Gap is the
central point. Miles of granite mountains are thrust up like giant
walls, hundreds of feet high, and as smooth and regular as the side of
a monument.

Huge, fantastically-shaped rocks abound everywhere--sometimes rising
into pinnacles on lofty summits--sometimes hanging over the verge of
beetling cliffs, as if placed there in waiting for a time when they
could be hurled down upon the path of an advancing army, and sweep it
away.

Large streams of water burst out in the most unexpected planes,
frequently far up mountain sides, and fall in silver veils upon
stones beaten round by the ceaseless dash for ages. Caves, rich in
quaintly formed stalactites and stalagmites, and their recesses filled
with metallic salts of the most powerful and diverse natures; break
the mountain sides at frequent intervals. Everywhere one is met by
surprises and anomalies. Even the rank vegetation is eccentric, and as
prone to develop into bizarre forms as are the rocks and mountains.

The dreaded panther ranges through the primeval, rarely trodden
forests; every crevice in the rocks has for tenants rattlesnakes or
stealthy copperheads, while long, wonderfully swift “blue racers” haunt
the edges of the woods, and linger around the fields to chill his
blood who catches a glimpse of their upreared heads, with their great,
balefully bright eyes, and “white-collar” encircled throats.

The human events happening here have been in harmony with the natural
ones. It has always been a land of conflict. In 1540--339 years ago
--De Soto, in that energetic but fruitless search for gold which
occupied his later years, penetrated to this region, and found it the
fastness of the Xualans, a bold, aggressive race, continually warring
with its neighbors. When next the white man reached the country--a
century and a half later--he found the Xualans had been swept away by
the conquering Cherokees, and he witnessed there the most sanguinary
contest between Indians of which our annals give any account--a pitched
battle two days in duration, between the invading Shawnees, who lorded
it over what is now Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana--and the Cherokees, who
dominated the country the southeast of the Cumberland range. Again the
Cherokees were victorious, and the discomfited Shawnees retired north
of the Gap.

Then the white man delivered battle for the possession the land, and
bought it with the lives of many gallant adventurers. Half a century
later Boone and his hardy companion followed, and forced their way into
Kentucky.

Another half century saw the Gap the favorite haunt of the greatest
of American bandits--the noted John A. Murrell--and his gang. They
infested the country for years, now waylaying the trader or drover
threading his toilsome way over the lone mountains, now descending upon
some little town, to plunder its stores and houses.

At length Murrell and his band were driven out, and sought a new field
of operations on the Lower Mississippi. They left germs behind them,
however, that developed into horse thieve counterfeiters, and later
into guerrillas and bushwhackers.

When the Rebellion broke out the region at once became the theater of
military operations. Twice Cumberland Gap was seized by the Rebels, and
twice was it wrested away from them. In 1861 it was the point whence
Zollicoffer launched out with his legions to “liberate Kentucky,” and
it was whither they fled, beaten and shattered, after the disasters of
Wild Cat and Mill Springs. In 1862 Kirby Smith led his army through the
Gap on his way to overrun Kentucky and invade the North. Three months
later his beaten forces sought refuge from their pursuers behind its
impregnable fortifications. Another year saw Burnside burst through the
Gap with a conquering force and redeem loyal East Tennessee from its
Rebel oppressors.

Had the South ever been able to separate from the North the boundary
would have been established along this line.

Between the main ridge upon which Cumberland Gap is situated, and the
next range on the southeast which runs parallel with it, is a narrow,
long, very fruitful valley, walled in on either side for a hundred
miles by tall mountains as a City street is by high buildings. It is
called Powell’s Valley. In it dwell a simple, primitive people, shut
out from the world almost as much as if they lived in New Zealand, and
with the speech, manners and ideas that their fathers brought into the
Valley when they settled it a century ago. There has been but little
change since then. The young men who have annually driven cattle to
the distant markets in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, have brought
back occasional stray bits of finery for the “women folks,” and the
latest improved fire-arms for themselves, but this is about all the
innovations the progress of the world has been allowed to make. Wheeled
vehicles are almost unknown; men and women travel on horseback as
they did a century ago, the clothing is the product of the farm and
the busy looms of the women, and life is as rural and Arcadian as any
ever described in a pastoral. The people are rich in cattle, hogs,
horses, sheep and the products of the field. The fat soil brings forth
the substantials of life in opulent plenty. Having this there seems
to be little care for more. Ambition nor avarice, nor yet craving
after luxury, disturb their contented souls or drag them away from the
non-progressive round of simple life bequeathed them by their fathers.




CHAPTER II.

SCARCITY OF FOOD FOR THE ARMY--RAID FOR FORAGE--ENCOUNTER WIT THE
REBELS --SHARP CAVALRY FIGHT--DEFEAT OF THE “JOHNNIES”--POWELL’S VALLEY
OPENED UP.

As the Autumn of 1863 advanced towards Winter the difficulty of
supplying the forces concentrated around Cumberland Gap--as well as
the rest of Burnside’s army in East Tennessee--became greater and
greater. The base of supplies was at Camp Nelson, near Lexington,
Ky., one hundred and eighty miles from the Gap, and all that the Army
used had to be hauled that distance by mule teams over roads that, in
their best state were wretched, and which the copious rains and heavy
traffic had rendered well-nigh impassable. All the country to our
possession had been drained of its stock of whatever would contribute
to the support of man or beast. That portion of Powell’s Valley
extending from the Gap into Virginia was still in the hands of the
Rebels; its stock of products was as yet almost exempt from military
contributions. Consequently a raid was projected to reduce the Valley
to our possession, and secure its much needed stores. It was guarded by
the Sixty-fourth Virginia, a mounted regiment, made up of the young men
of the locality, who had then been in the service about two years.

Maj. C. H. Beer’s third Battalion, Sixteenth Illinois Cavalry--four
companies, each about 75 strong--was sent on the errand of driving
out the Rebels and opening up the Valley for our foraging teams. The
writer was invited to attend the excursion. As he held the honorable,
but not very lucrative position of “high, private” in Company L, of the
Battalion, and the invitation came from his Captain, he did not feel at
liberty to decline. He went, as private soldiers have been in the habit
of doing ever since the days of the old Centurion, who said with the
characteristic boastfulness of one of the lower grades of commissioned
officers when he happens to be a snob:

     For I am also a man set under authority, having under me soldiers,
     and I say unto one, Go; and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he
     cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

Rather “airy” talk that for a man who nowadays would take rank with
Captains of infantry.

Three hundred of us responded to the signal of “boots and saddles,”
buckled on three hundred more or less trusty sabers and revolvers,
saddled three hundred more or less gallant steeds, came into line
“as companies” with the automatic listlessness of the old soldiers,
“counted off by fours” in that queer gamut-running style that makes a
company of men “counting off”--each shouting a number in a different
voice from his neighbor--sound like running the scales on some great
organ badly out of tune; something like this:

One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four.

Then, as the bugle sounded “Right forward! fours right!” we moved off
at a walk through the melancholy mist that soaked through the very
fiber of man and horse, and reduced the minds of both to a condition of
limp indifference as to things past, present and future.

Whither we were going we knew not, nor cared. Such matters had long
since ceased to excite any interest. A cavalryman soon recognizes
as the least astonishing thing in his existence the signal to “Fall
in!” and start somewhere. He feels that he is the “Poor Joe” of the
Army--under perpetual orders to “move on.”

Down we wound over the road that zig-tagged through the forts,
batteries and rifle-pits covering the eastern ascent to the Flap-past
the wonderful Murrell Spring--so-called because the robber chief had
killed, as he stooped to drink of its crystal waters, a rich drover,
whom he was pretending to pilot through the mountains--down to where
the “Virginia road” turned off sharply to the left and entered Powell’s
Valley. The mist had become a chill, dreary rain, through, which we
plodded silently, until night closed in around us some ten miles from
the Gap. As we halted to go into camp, an indignant Virginian resented
the invasion of the sacred soil by firing at one of the guards moving
out to his place. The guard looked at the fellow contemptuously, as
if he hated to waste powder on a man who had no better sense than to
stay out in such a rain, when he could go in-doors, and the bushwhacker
escaped, without even a return shot.

Fires were built, coffee made, horses rubbed, and we laid down with
feet to the fire to get what sleep we could.

Before morning we were awakened by the bitter cold. It had cleared off
during the night and turned so cold that everything was frozen stiff.
This was better than the rain, at all events. A good fire and a hot cup
of coffee would make the cold quite endurable.

At daylight the bugle sounded “Right forward! fours right!” again, and
the 300 of us resumed our onward plod over the rocky, cedar-crowned
hills.

In the meantime, other things were taking place elsewhere. Our esteemed
friends of the Sixty-fourth Virginia, who were in camp at the little
town of Jonesville, about 40 miles from the Gap, had learned of our
starting up the Valley to drive them out, and they showed that warm
reciprocity characteristic of the Southern soldier, by mounting and
starting down the Valley to drive us out. Nothing could be more
harmonious, it will be perceived. Barring the trifling divergence of
yews as to who was to drive and who be driven, there was perfect accord
in our ideas.

Our numbers were about equal. If I were to say that they considerably
outnumbered us, I would be following the universal precedent. No
soldier-high or low-ever admitted engaging an equal or inferior force
of the enemy.

About 9 o’clock in the morning--Sunday--they rode through the streets
of Jonesville on their way to give us battle. It was here that most of
the members of the Regiment lived. Every man, woman and child in the
town was related in some way to nearly every one of the soldiers.

The women turned out to wave their fathers, husbands, brothers and
lovers on to victory. The old men gathered to give parting counsel and
encouragement to their sons and kindred. The Sixty-fourth rode away to
what hope told them would be a glorious victory.

At noon we are still straggling along without much attempt at soldierly
order, over the rough, frozen hill-sides. It is yet bitterly cold, and
men and horses draw themselves together, as if to expose as little
surface as possible to the unkind elements. Not a word had been spoken
by any one for hours.

The head of the column has just reached the top of the hill, and the
rest of us are strung along for a quarter of a mile or so back.

Suddenly a few shots ring out upon the frosty air from the carbines
of the advance. The general apathy is instantly, replaced by keen
attention, and the boys instinctively range themselves into fours--the
cavalry unit of action. The Major, who is riding about the middle of
the first Company--I--dashes to the front. A glance seems to satisfy
him, for he turns in his saddle and his voice rings out:

“Company I! FOURS LEFT INTO LINE!--MARCH!!”

The Company swings around on the hill-top like a great, jointed toy
snake. As the fours come into line on a trot, we see every man draw
his saber and revolver. The Company raises a mighty cheer and dashes
forward.

Company K presses forward to the ground Company I has just left,
the fours sweep around into line, the sabers and revolvers come out
spontaneously, the men cheer and the Company flings itself forward.

All this time we of Company L can see nothing except what the companies
ahead of us are doing. We are wrought up to the highest pitch. As
Company K clears its ground, we press forward eagerly. Now we go into
line just as we raise the hill, and as my four comes around, I catch
a hurried glimpse through a rift in the smoke of a line of butternut
and gray clad men a hundred yards or so away. Their guns are at their
faces, and I see the smoke and fire spurt from the muzzles. At the same
instant our sabers and revolvers are drawn. We shout in a frenzy of
excitement, and the horses spring forward as if shot from a bow.

I see nothing more until I reach the place where the Rebel line stood.
Then I find it is gone. Looking beyond toward the bottom of the hill,
I see the woods filled with Rebels, flying in disorder and our men
yelling in pursuit. This is the portion of the line which Companies
I and K struck. Here and there are men in butternut clothing, prone
on the frozen ground, wounded and dying. I have just time to notice
closely one middle-aged man lying almost under my horse’s feet. He has
received a carbine bullet through his head and his blood colors a great
space around him.

One brave man, riding a roan horse, attempts to rally his companions.
He halts on a little knoll, wheels his horse to face us, and waves his
hat to draw his companions to him. A tall, lank fellow in the next four
to me--who goes by the nickname of “’Leven Yards”--aims his carbine at
him, and, without checking his horse’s pace, fires. The heavy Sharpe’s
bullet tears a gaping hole through the Rebel’s heart. He drops from his
saddle, his life-blood runs down in little rills on either side of the
knoll, and his riderless horse dashes away in a panic.

At this instant comes an order for the Company to break up into fours
and press on through the forest in pursuit. My four trots off to the
road at the right. A Rebel bugler, who hag been cut off, leaps his
horse into the road in front of us. We all fire at him on the impulse
of the moment. He falls from his horse with a bullet through his back.
Company M, which has remained in column as a reserve, is now thundering
up close behind at a gallop. Its seventy-five powerful horses are
spurning the solid earth with steel-clad hoofs. The man will be ground
into a shapeless mass if left where he has fallen. We spring from our
horses and drag him into a fence corner; then remount and join in the
pursuit.

This happened on the summit of Chestnut Ridge, fifteen miles from
Jonesville.

Late in the afternoon the anxious watchers at Jonesville saw a single
fugitive urging his well-nigh spent horse down the slope of the hill
toward town. In an agony of anxiety they hurried forward to meet him
and learn his news.

The first messenger who rushed into Job’s presence to announce the
beginning of the series of misfortunes which were to afflict the
upright man of Uz is a type of all the cowards who, before or since
then, have been the first to speed away from the field of battle to
spread the news of disaster. He said:

    “And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have
    slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped
    alone to tell thee.”

So this fleeing Virginian shouted to his expectant friends:

“The boys are all cut to pieces; I’m the only one that got away.”

The terrible extent of his words was belied a little later, by the
appearance on the distant summit of the hill of a considerable mob
of fugitives, flying at the utmost speed of their nearly exhausted
horses. As they came on down the hill as almost equally disorganized
crowd of pursuers appeared on the summit, yelling in voices hoarse
with continued shouting, and pouring an incessant fire of carbine and
revolver bullets upon the hapless men of the Sixty-fourth Virginia.

The two masses of men swept on through the town. Beyond it, the road
branched in several directions, the pursued scattered on each of these,
and the worn-out pursuers gave up the chase.

Returning to Jonesville, we took an account of stock, and found that
we were “ahead” one hundred and fifteen prisoners, nearly that many
horses, and a considerable quantity of small arms. How many of the
enemy had been killed and wounded could not be told, as they were
scattered over the whole fifteen miles between where the fight occurred
and the pursuit ended. Our loss was trifling.

Comparing notes around the camp-fires in the evening, we found that
our success had been owing to the Major’s instinct, his grasp of the
situation, and the soldierly way in which he took advantage of it. When
he reached the summit of the hill he found the Rebel line nearly formed
and ready for action. A moment’s hesitation might have been fatal to
us. At his command Company I went into line with the thought-like
celerity of trained cavalry, and instantly dashed through the right
of the Rebel line. Company K followed and plunged through the Rebel
center, and when we of Company L arrived on the ground, and charged the
left, the last vestige of resistance was swept away. The whole affair
did not probably occupy more than fifteen minutes.

This was the way Powell’s Valley was opened to our foragers.




CHAPTER III.

LIVING OFF THE ENEMY--REVELING IN THE FATNESS OF THE COUNTRY--SOLDIERLY
PURVEYING AND CAMP COOKERY--SUSCEPTIBLE TEAMSTERS AND THEIR TENDENCY TO
FLIGHTINESS--MAKING SOLDIER’S BED.

For weeks we rode up and down--hither and thither--along the length
of the narrow, granite-walled Valley; between mountains so lofty that
the sun labored slowly over them in the morning, occupying half the
forenoon in getting to where his rays would reach the stream that ran
through the Valley’s center. Perpetual shadow reigned on the northern
and western faces of these towering Nights--not enough warmth and
sunshine reaching them in the cold months to check the growth of the
ever-lengthening icicles hanging from the jutting cliffs, or melt the
arabesque frost-forms with which the many dashing cascades decorated
the adjacent rocks and shrubbery. Occasionally we would see where some
little stream ran down over the face of the bare, black rocks for many
hundred feet, and then its course would be a long band of sheeny white,
like a great rich, spotless scarf of satin, festooning the war-grimed
walls of some old castle.

Our duty now was to break up any nuclei of concentration that the
Rebels might attempt to form, and to guard our foragers--that is, the
teamsters and employee of the Quartermaster’s Department--who were
loading grain into wagons and hauling it away.

This last was an arduous task. There is no man in the world that needs
as much protection as an Army teamster. He is worse in this respect
than a New England manufacturer, or an old maid on her travels. He is
given to sudden fears and causeless panics. Very innocent cedars have
a fashion of assuming in his eyes the appearance of desperate Rebels
armed with murderous guns, and there is no telling what moment a rock
may take such a form as to freeze his young blood, and make each
particular hair stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
One has to be particular about snapping caps in his neighborhood,
and give to him careful warning before discharging a carbine to
clean it. His first impulse, when anything occurs to jar upon his
delicate nerves, is to cut his wheel-mule loose and retire with the
precipitation of a man having an appointment to keep and being behind
time. There is no man who can get as much speed out of a mule as a
teamster falling back from the neighborhood of heavy firing.

This nervous tremor was not peculiar to the engineers of our
transportation department. It was noticeable in the gentry who carted
the scanty provisions of the Rebels. One of Wheeler’s cavalrymen told
me that the brigade to which he belonged was one evening ordered to
move at daybreak. The night was rainy, and it was thought best to
discharge the guns and reload before starting. Unfortunately, it was
neglected to inform the teamsters of this, and at the first discharge
they varnished from the scene with such energy that it was over a week
before the brigade succeeded in getting them back again.

Why association with the mule should thus demoralize a man, has
always been a puzzle to me, for while the mule, as Col. Ingersoll has
remarked, is an animal without pride of ancestry or hope of posterity,
he is still not a coward by any means. It is beyond dispute that a
full-grown and active lioness once attacked a mule in the grounds
of the Cincinnati Zoological Garden, and was ignominiously beaten,
receiving injuries from which she died shortly afterward.

The apparition of a badly-scared teamster urging one of his wheel mules
at break-neck speed over the rough ground, yelling for protection
against “them Johnnies,” who had appeared on some hilltop in sight of
where he was gathering corn, was an almost hourly occurrence. Of course
the squad dispatched to his assistance found nobody.

Still, there were plenty of Rebels in the country, and they hung around
our front, exchanging shots with us at long taw, and occasionally
treating us to a volley at close range, from some favorable point.
But we had the decided advantage of them at this game. Our Sharpe’s
carbines were much superior in every way to their Enfields. They
would shoot much farther, and a great deal more rapidly, so that the
Virginians were not long in discovering that they were losing more than
they gained in this useless warfare.

Once they played a sharp practical joke upon us. Copper River is a
deep, exceedingly rapid mountain stream, with a very slippery rocky
bottom. The Rebels blockaded a ford in such a way that it was almost
impossible for a horse to keep his feet. Then they tolled us off in
pursuit of a small party to this ford. When we came to it there was
a light line of skirmishers on the opposite bank, who popped away at
us industriously. Our boys formed in line, gave the customary, cheer,
and dashed in to carry the ford at a charge. As they did so at least
one-half of the horses went down as if they were shot, and rolled over
their riders in the swift running, ice-cold waters. The Rebels yelled
a triumphant laugh, as they galloped away, and the laugh was re-echoed
by our fellows, who were as quick to see the joke as the other side. We
tried to get even with them by a sharp chase, but we gave it up after a
few miles, without having taken any prisoners.

But, after all, there was much to make our sojourn in the Valley
endurable. Though we did not wear fine linen, we fared sumptuously--for
soldiers--every day. The cavalryman is always charged by the infantry
and artillery with having a finer and surer scent for the good things
in the country than any other man in the service. He is believed to
have an instinct that will unfailingly lead him, in the dankest night,
to the roosting place of the most desirable poultry, and after he has
camped in a neighborhood for awhile it would require a close chemical
analysis to find a trace of ham.

We did our best to sustain the reputation of our arm of the service.
We found the most delicious hams packed away in the ash-houses. They
were small, and had that; exquisite nutty flavor, peculiar to mast-fed
bacon. Then there was an abundance of the delightful little apple known
as “romanites.” There were turnips, pumpkins, cabbages, potatoes, and
the usual products of the field in plenty, even profusion. The corn
in the fields furnished an ample supply of breadstuff. We carried it
to and ground it in the quaintest, rudest little mills that can be
imagined outside of the primitive affairs by which the women of Arabia
coarsely powder the grain for the family meal. Sometimes the mill would
consist only of four stout posts thrust into the ground at the edge of
some stream. A line of boulders reaching diagonally across the stream
answered for a dam, by diverting a portion of the volume of water to a
channel at the side, where it moved a clumsily constructed wheel, that
turned two small stones, not larger than good-sized grindstones. Over
this would be a shed made by resting poles in forked posts stuck into
the ground, and covering these with clapboards held in place by large
flat stones. They resembled the mills of the gods--in grinding slowly.
It used to seem that a healthy man could eat the meal faster than they
ground it.

But what savory meals we used to concoct around the campfires, out of
the rich materials collected during the day’s ride! Such stews, such
soups, such broils, such wonderful commixtures of things diverse in
nature and antagonistic in properties such daring culinary experiments
in combining materials never before attempted to be combined. The
French say of untasteful arrangement of hues in dress “that the colors
swear at each other.” I have often thought the same thing of the
heterogeneities that go to make up a soldier’s pot-a feu.

But for all that they never failed to taste deliciously after a long
day’s ride. They were washed down by a tincupful of coffee strong
enough to tan leather, then came a brier-wood pipeful of fragrant
kinnikinnic, and a seat by the ruddy, sparkling fire of aromatic cedar
logs, that diffused at once warmth, and spicy, pleasing incense. A
chat over the events of the day, and the prospect of the morrow, the
wonderful merits of each man’s horse, and the disgusting irregularities
of the mails from home, lasted until the silver-voiced bugle rang out
the sweet, mournful tattoo of the Regulations, to the flowing cadences
of which the boys had arranged the absurdly incongruous words:

          “S-a-y--D-e-u-t-c-h-e-r-will-you fight-mit Sigel!
          Zwei-glass of lager-bier, ja! ja! JA!”

Words were fitted to all the calls, which generally bore some
relativeness to the signal, but these were as, destitute of congruity
as of sense.

Tattoo always produces an impression of extreme loneliness. As its
weird, half-availing notes ring out and are answered back from
the distant rocks shrouded in night, and perhaps concealing the
lurking foe, the soldier remembers that he is far away from home and
friends--deep in the enemy’s country, encompassed on every hand by
those in deadly hostility to him, who are perhaps even then maturing
the preparations for his destruction.

As the tattoo sounds, the boys arise from around the fire, visit the
horse line, see that their horses are securely tied, rub off from
the fetlocks and legs such specks of mud as may have escaped the
cleaning in the early evening, and if possible, smuggle their faithful
four-footed friends a few ears of corn, or another bunch of hay.

If not too tired, and everything else is favorable, the cavalryman has
prepared himself a comfortable couch for the night. He always sleeps
with a chum. The two have gathered enough small tufts of pine or cedar
to make a comfortable, springy, mattress-like foundation. On this is
laid the poncho or rubber blanket. Next comes one of their overcoats,
and upon this they lie, covering themselves with the two blankets and
the other overcoat, their feet towards the fire, their boots at the
foot, and their belts, with revolver, saber and carbine, at the sides
of the bed. It is surprising what an amount of comfort a man can get
out of such a couch, and how, at an alarm, he springs from it, almost
instantly dressed and armed.

Half an hour after tattoo the bugle rings out another sadly sweet
strain, that hath a dying sound.




CHAPTER IV.

A BITTER COLD MORNING AND A WARM AWAKENING--TROUBLE ALL ALONG THE LINE
--FIERCE CONFLICTS, ASSAULTS AND DEFENSE--PROLONGED AND DESPERATE
STRUGGLE ENDING WITH A SURRENDER.

The night had been the most intensely cold that the country had
known for many years. Peach and other tender trees had been killed
by the frosty rigor, and sentinels had been frozen to death in our
neighborhood. The deep snow on which we made our beds, the icy covering
of the streams near us, the limbs of the trees above us, had been
cracking with loud noises all night, from the bitter cold.

We were camped around Jonesville, each of the four companies lying on
one of the roads leading from the town. Company L lay about a mile from
the Court House. On a knoll at the end of the village toward us, and at
a point where two roads separated,--one of which led to us,--stood a
three-inch Rodman rifle, belonging to the Twenty-second Ohio Battery.
It and its squad of eighteen men, under command of Lieutenant Alger and
Sergeant Davis, had been sent up to us a few days before from the Gap.

The comfortless gray dawn was crawling sluggishly over the
mountain-tops, as if numb as the animal and vegetable life which had
been shrinking all the long hours under the fierce chill.

The Major’s bugler had saluted the morn with the lively, ringing
tarr-r-r-a-ta-ara of the Regulation reveille, and the company buglers,
as fast as they could thaw out their mouth-pieces, were answering him.

I lay on my bed, dreading to get up, and yet not anxious to lie still.
It was a question which would be the more uncomfortable. I turned over,
to see if there was not another position in which it would be warmer,
and began wishing for the thousandth time that the efforts for the
amelioration of the horrors of warfare would progress to such a point
as to put a stop to all Winter soldiering, so that a fellow could go
home as soon as cold weather began, sit around a comfortable stove in
a country store; and tell camp stories until the Spring was far enough
advanced to let him go back to the front wearing a straw hat and a
linen duster.

Then I began wondering how much longer I would dare lie there, before
the Orderly Sergeant would draw me out by the heels, and accompany the
operation with numerous unkind and sulphurous remarks.

This cogitation, was abruptly terminated by hearing an excited shout
from the Captain:

“Turn Out!--COMPANY L!! TURNOUT!!!”

Almost at the same instant rose that shrill, piercing Rebel yell, which
one who has once heard it rarely forgets, and this was followed by a
crashing volley from apparently a regiment of rifles.

I arose-promptly.

There was evidently something of more interest on hand than the weather.

Cap, overcoat, boots and revolver belt went on, and eyes opened at
about the same instant.

As I snatched up my carbine, I looked out in front, and the whole woods
appeared to be full of Rebels, rushing toward us, all yelling and some
firing. My Captain and First Lieutenant had taken up position on the
right front of the tents, and part of the boys were running up to form
a line alongside them. The Second Lieutenant had stationed himself on a
knoll on the left front, and about a third of the company was rallying
around him.

My chum was a silent, sententious sort of a chap, and as we ran forward
to the Captain’s line, he remarked earnestly:

“Well: this beats hell!”

I thought he had a clear idea of the situation.

All this occupied an inappreciably short space of time. The Rebels
had not stopped to reload, but were rushing impetuously toward us. We
gave them a hot, rolling volley from our carbines. Many fell, more
stopped to load and reply, but the mass surged straight forward at us.
Then our fire grew so deadly that they showed a disposition to cover
themselves behind the rocks and trees. Again they were urged forward;
and a body of them headed by their Colonel, mounted on a white horse,
pushed forward through the gap between us and the Second Lieutenant.
The Rebel Colonel dashed up to the Second Lieutenant, and ordered him
to surrender. The latter-a gallant old graybeard--cursed the Rebel
bitterly and snapped his now empty revolver in his face. The Colonel
fired and killed him, whereupon his squad, with two of its Sergeants
killed and half its numbers on the ground, surrendered.

The Rebels in our front and flank pressed us with equal closeness. It
seemed as if it was absolutely impossible to check their rush for an
instant, and as we saw the fate of our companions the Captain gave
the word for every man to look out for himself. We ran back a little
distance, sprang over the fence into the fields, and rushed toward
Town, the Rebels encouraging us to make good time by a sharp fire into
our backs from the fence.

While we were vainly attempting to stem the onset of the column dashed
against us, better success was secured elsewhere. Another column swept
down the other road, upon which there was only an outlying picket.
This had to come back on the run before the overwhelming numbers, and
the Rebels galloped straight for the three-inch Rodman. Company M was
the first to get saddled and mounted, and now came up at a steady,
swinging gallop, in two platoons, saber and revolver in hand, and led
by two Sergeants-Key and McWright,--printer boys from Bloomington,
Illinois. They divined the object of the Rebel dash, and strained every
nerve to reach the gun first. The Rebels were too near, and got the
gun and turned it. Before they could fire it, Company M struck them
headlong, but they took the terrible impact without flinching, and
for a few minutes there was fierce hand-to-hand work, with sword and
pistol. The Rebel leader sank under a half-dozen simultaneous wounds,
and fell dead almost under the gun. Men dropped from their horses each
instant, and the riderless steeds fled away. The scale of victory was
turned by the Major dashing against the Rebel left flank at the head of
Company I, and a portion of the artillery squad. The Rebels gave ground
slowly, and were packed into a dense mass in the lane up which they
had charged. After they had been crowded back, say fifty yards, word
was passed through our men to open to the right and left on the sides
of the road. The artillerymen had turned the gun and loaded it with a
solid shot. Instantly a wide lane opened through our ranks; the man
with the lanyard drew the fatal cord, fire burst from the primer and
the muzzle, the long gun sprang up and recoiled, and there seemed to
be a demoniac yell in its ear-splitting crash, as the heavy ball left
the mouth, and tore its bloody way through the bodies of the struggling
mass of men and horses.

This ended it. The Rebels gave way in disorder, and our men fell back
to give the gun an opportunity to throw shell and canister.

The Rebels now saw that we were not to be run over like a field of
cornstalks, and they fell back to devise further tactics, giving us a
breathing spell to get ourselves in shape for defense.

The dullest could see that we were in a desperate situation. Critical
positions were no new experience to us, as they never are to a cavalry
command after a few months in the field, but, though the pitcher goes
often to the well, it is broken at last, and our time was evidently at
hand. The narrow throat of the Valley, through which lay the road back
to the Gap, was held by a force of Rebels evidently much superior to
our own, and strongly posted. The road was a slender, tortuous one,
winding through rocks and gorges. Nowhere was there room enough to
move with even a platoon front against the enemy, and this precluded
all chances of cutting out. The best we could do was a slow, difficult
movement, in column of fours, and this would have been suicide. On the
other side of the Town the Rebels were massed stronger, while to the
right and left rose the steep mountain sides. We were caught-trapped as
surely as a rat ever was in a wire trap.

As we learned afterwards, a whole division of cavalry, under command of
the noted Rebel, Major General Sam Jones, had been sent to effect our
capture, to offset in a measure Longstreet’s repulse at Knoxville. A
gross overestimate of our numbers had caused the sending of so large a
force on this errand, and the rough treatment we gave the two columns
that attacked us first confirmed the Rebel General’s ideas of our
strength, and led him to adopt cautious tactics, instead of crushing us
out speedily, by a determined advance of all parts of his encircling
lines.

The lull in the fight did not last long. A portion of the Rebel line on
the east rushed forward to gain a more commanding position.

We concentrated in that direction and drove it back, the Rodman
assisting with a couple of well-aimed shells.--This was followed by a
similar but more successful attempt by another part of the Rebel line,
and so it went on all day--the Rebels rushing up first on this side,
and then on that, and we, hastily collecting at the exposed points,
seeking to drive them back. We were frequently successful; we were on
the inside, and had the advantage of the short interior lines, so that
our few men and our breech-loaders told to a good purpose.

There were frequent crises in the struggle, that at some times gave
encouragement, but never hope. Once a determined onset was made
from the East, and was met by the equally determined resistance of
nearly our whole force. Our fire was so galling that a large number
of our foes crowded into a house on a knoll, and making loopholes in
its walls, began replying to us pretty sharply. We sent word to our
faithful artillerists, who trained the gun upon the house. The first
shell screamed over the roof, and burst harmlessly beyond. We suspended
fire to watch the next. It crashed through the side; for an instant
all was deathly still; we thought it had gone on through. Then came a
roar and a crash; the clapboards flew off the roof, and smoke poured
out; panic-stricken Rebels rushed from the doors and sprang from the
windows--like bees from a disturbed hive; the shell had burst among
the confined mass of men inside! We afterwards heard that twenty-five
were killed there.

At another time a considerable force of rebels gained the cover of a
fence in easy range of our main force. Companies L and K were ordered
to charge forward on foot and dislodge them. Away we went, under a
fire that seemed to drop a man at every step. A hundred yards in front
of the Rebels was a little cover, and behind this our men lay down as
if by one impulse. Then came a close, desperate duel at short range.
It was a question between Northern pluck and Southern courage, as to
which could stand the most punishment. Lying as flat as possible on the
crusted snow, only raising the head or body enough to load and aim, the
men on both sides, with their teeth set, their glaring eyes fastened
on the foe, their nerves as tense as tightly-drawn steel wires, rained
shot on each other as fast as excited hands could crowd cartridges into
the guns and discharge them.

Not a word was said.

The shallower enthusiasm that expresses itself in oaths and shouts
had given way to the deep, voiceless rage of men in a death grapple.
The Rebel line was a rolling torrent of flame, their bullets shrieked
angrily as they flew past, they struck the snow in front of us,
and threw its cold flakes in faces that were white with the fires
of consuming hate; they buried themselves with a dull thud in the
quivering bodies of the enraged combatants.

Minutes passed; they seemed hours.

Would the villains, scoundrels, hell-hounds, sons of vipers never go?

At length a few Rebels sprang up and tried to fly. They were shot down
instantly.

Then the whole line rose and ran!

The relief was so great that we jumped to our feet and cheered wildly,
forgetting in our excitement to make use of our victory by shooting
down our flying enemies.

Nor was an element of fun lacking. A Second Lieutenant was ordered
to take a party of skirmishers to the top of a hill and engage those
of the Rebels stationed on another hill-top across a ravine. He had
but lately joined us from the Regular Army, where he was a Drill
Sergeant. Naturally, he was very methodical in his way, and scorned
to do otherwise under fire than he would upon the parade ground. He
moved his little command to the hill-top, in close order, and faced
them to the front. The Johnnies received them with a yell and a volley,
whereat the boys winced a little, much to the Lieutenant’s disgust, who
swore at them; then had them count off with great deliberation, and
deployed them as coolly as if them was not an enemy within a hundred
miles. After the line deployed, he “dressed” it, commanded “Front!” and
“Begin, firing!” his attention was called another way for an instant,
and when he looked back again, there was not a man of his nicely formed
skirmish line visible. The logs and stones had evidently been put there
for the use of skirmishers, the boys thought, and in an instant they
availed themselves of their shelter.

Never was there an angrier man than that Second Lieutenant; he
brandished his saber and swore; he seemed to feel that all his
soldierly reputation was gone, but the boys stuck to their shelter for
all that, informing him that when the Rebels would stand out in the
open field and take their fire, they would likewise.

Despite all our efforts, the Rebel line crawled up closer an closer to
us; we were driven back from knoll to knoll, and from one fence after
another. We had maintained the unequal struggle for eight hours; over
one-fourth of our number were stretched upon the snow, killed or badly
wounded. Our cartridges were nearly all gone; the cannon had fired its
last shot long ago, and having a blank cartridge left, had shot the
rammer at a gathering party of the enemy.

Just as the Winter sun was going down upon a day of gloom the bugle
called us all up on the hillside. Then the Rebels saw for the first
time how few there were, and began an almost simultaneous charge all
along the line. The Major raised piece of a shelter tent upon a pole.
The line halted. An officer rode out from it, followed by two privates.

Approaching the Major, he said, “Who is in command this force?”

The Major replied: “I am.”

“Then, Sir, I demand your sword.”

“What is your rank, Sir!”

“I am Adjutant of the Sixty-fourth Virginia.”

The punctillious soul of the old “Regular”--for such the Major was
swelled up instantly, and he answered:

“By ---, sir, I will never surrender to my inferior in rank!”

The Adjutant reined his horse back. His two followers leveled their
pieces at the Major and waited orders to fire. They were covered by a
dozen carbines in the hands of our men. The Adjutant ordered his men to
“recover arms,” and rode away with them. He presently returned with a
Colonel, and to him the Major handed his saber.

As the men realized what was being done, the first thought of many
of them was to snatch out the cylinder’s of their revolvers, and the
slides of their carbines, and throw them away, so as to make the arms
useless.

We were overcome with rage and humiliation at being compelled to yield
to an enemy whom we had hated so bitterly. As we stood there on the
bleak mountain-side, the biting wind soughing through the leafless
branches, the shadows of a gloomy winter night closing around us, the
groans and shrieks of our wounded mingling with the triumphant yells of
the Rebels plundering our tents, it seemed as if Fate could press to
man’s lips no cup with bitterer dregs in it than this.




CHAPTER V.

THE REACTION--DEPRESSION--BITTING COLD--SHARP HUNGER AND SAD REFLEXION.

          “Of being taken by the Insolent foe.”--Othello.


The night that followed was inexpressibly dreary: The high-wrought
nervous tension, which had been protracted through the long hours
that the fight lasted, was succeeded by a proportionate mental
depression, such as naturally follows any strain upon the mind.
This was intensified in our cases by the sharp sting of defeat, the
humiliation of having to yield ourselves, our horses and our arms into
the possession of the enemy, the uncertainty as to the future, and the
sorrow we felt at the loss of so many of our comrades.

Company L had suffered very severely, but our chief regret was for the
gallant Osgood, our Second Lieutenant. He, above all others, was our
trusted leader. The Captain and First Lieutenant were brave men, and
good enough soldiers, but Osgood was the one “whose adoption tried,
we grappled to our souls with hooks of steel.” There was never any
difficulty in getting all the volunteers he wanted for a scouting
party. A quiet, pleasant spoken gentleman, past middle age, he looked
much better fitted for the office of Justice of the Peace, to which
his fellow-citizens of Urbana, Illinois, had elected and reelected
him, than to command a troop of rough riders in a great civil war. But
none more gallant than he ever vaulted into saddle to do battle for
the right. He went into the Army solely as a matter of principle, and
did his duty with the unflagging zeal of an olden Puritan fighting for
liberty and his soul’s salvation. He was a superb horseman--as all the
older Illinoisans are and, for all his two-score years and ten, he
recognized few superiors for strength and activity in the Battalion. A
radical, uncompromising Abolitionist, he had frequently asserted that
he would rather die than yield to a Rebel, and he kept his word in this
as in everything else.

As for him, it was probably the way he desired to die. No one believed
more ardently than he that

               Whether on the scaffold high,
               Or in the battle’s van;
               The fittest place for man to die,
               Is where he dies for man.

Among the many who had lost chums and friends was Ned Johnson, of
Company K. Ned was a young Englishman, with much of the suggestiveness
of the bull-dog common to the lower class of that nation. His fist was
readier than his tongue. His chum, Walter Savage was of the same surly
type. The two had come from England twelve years before, and had been
together ever since. Savage was killed in the struggle for the fence
described in the preceding chapter. Ned could not realize for a while
that his friend was dead. It was only when the body rapidly stiffened
on its icy bed, and the eyes which had been gleaming deadly hate when
he was stricken down were glazed over with the dull film of death, that
he believed he was gone from him forever. Then his rage was terrible.
For the rest of the day he was at the head of every assault upon the
enemy. His voice could ever be heard above the firing, cursing the
Rebels bitterly, and urging the boys to “Stand up to ’em! Stand right
up to ’em! Don’t give a inch! Let them have the best you got in the
shop! Shoot low, and don’t waste a cartridge!”

When we surrendered, Ned seemed to yield sullenly to the inevitable.
He threw his belt and apparently his revolver with it upon the snow. A
guard was formed around us, and we gathered about the fires that were
started. Ned sat apart, his arms folded, his head upon his breast,
brooding bitterly upon Walter’s death. A horseman, evidently a Colonel
or General, clattered up to give some directions concerning us. At the
sound of his voice Ned raised his head and gave him a swift glance;
the gold stars upon the Rebel’s collar led him to believe that he was
the commander of the enemy. Ned sprang to his feet, made a long stride
forward, snatched from the breast of his overcoat the revolver he had
been hiding there, cocked it and leveled it at the Rebel’s breast.
Before he could pull the trigger Orderly Sergeant Charles Bentley, of
his Company, who was watching him, leaped forward, caught his wrist
and threw the revolver up. Others joined in, took the weapon away, and
handed it over to the officer, who then ordered us all to be searched
for arms, and rode away.

All our dejection could not make us forget that we were intensely
hungry. We had eaten nothing all day. The fight began before we had
time to get any breakfast, and of course there was no interval for
refreshments during the engagement. The Rebels were no better off than
we, having been marched rapidly all night in order to come upon us by
daylight.

Late in the evening a few sacks of meal were given us, and we took the
first lesson in an art that long and painful practice afterward was to
make very familiar to us. We had nothing to mix the meal in, and it
looked as if we would have to eat it dry, until a happy thought struck
some one that our caps would do for kneading troughs. At once every
cap was devoted to this. Getting water from an adjacent spring, each
man made a little wad of dough--unsalted--and spreading it upon a flat
stone or a chip, set it up in front of the fire to bake. As soon as it
was browned on one side, it was pulled off the stone, and the other
side turned to the fire. It was a very primitive way of cooking and I
became thoroughly disgusted with it. It was fortunate for me that I
little dreamed that this was the way I should have to get my meals for
the next fifteen months.

After somewhat of the edge had been taken off our hunger by this food,
we crouched around the fires, talked over the events of the day,
speculated as to what was to be done with us, and snatched such sleep
as the biting cold would permit.




CHAPTER VI.

“ON TO RICHMOND!”--MARCHING ON FOOT OVER THE MOUNTAINS--MY HORSE HAS A
NEW RIDER--UNSOPHISTICATED MOUNTAIN GIRLS--DISCUSSING THE ISSUES OF THE
WAR--PARTING WITH “HIATOGA.”

At dawn we were gathered together, more meal issued to us, which we
cooked in the same way, and then were started under heavy guard to
march on foot over the mountains to Bristol, a station at the point
where the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad crosses the line between
Virginia and Tennessee.

As we were preparing to set out a Sergeant of the First Virginia
cavalry came galloping up to us on my horse! The sight of my faithful
“Hiatoga” bestrid by a Rebel, wrung my heart. During the action I had
forgotten him, but when it ceased I began to worry about his fate. As
he and his rider came near I called out to him; he stopped and gave
a whinny of recognition, which seemed also a plaintive appeal for an
explanation of the changed condition of affairs.

The Sergeant was a pleasant, gentlemanly boy of about my own age. He
rode up to me and inquired if it was my horse, to which I replied in
the affirmative, and asked permission to take from the saddle pockets
some letters, pictures and other trinkets. He granted this, and we
became friends from thence on until we separated. He rode by my side as
we plodded over the steep, slippery hills, and we beguiled the way by
chatting of the thousand things that soldiers find to talk about, and
exchanged reminiscences of the service on both sides. But the subject
he was fondest of was that which I relished least: my--now his--horse.
Into the open ulcer of my heart he poured the acid of all manner of
questions concerning my lost steed’s qualities and capabilities: would
he swim? how was he in fording? did he jump well! how did he stand
fire? I smothered my irritation, and answered as pleasantly as I could.

In the afternoon of the third day after the capture, we came up to
where a party of rustic belles were collected at “quilting.” The
“Yankees” were instantly objects of greater interest than the parade of
a menagerie would have been. The Sergeant told the girls we were going
to camp for the night a mile or so ahead, and if they would be at a
certain house, he would have a Yankee for them for close inspection.
After halting, the Sergeant obtained leave to take me out with a
guard, and I was presently ushered into a room in which the damsels
were massed in force, --a carnation-checked, staring, open-mouthed,
linsey-clad crowd, as ignorant of corsets and gloves as of Hebrew, and
with a propensity to giggle that was chronic and irrepressible. When
we entered the room there was a general giggle, and then a shower of
comments upon my appearance,--each sentence punctuated with the chorus
of feminine cachination. A remark was made about my hair and eyes, and
their risibles gave way; judgment was passed on my nose, and then came
a ripple of laughter. I got very red in the face, and uncomfortable
generally. Attention was called to the size of my feet and hands, and
the usual chorus followed. Those useful members of my body seemed to
swell up as they do to a young man at his first party.

Then I saw that in the minds of these bucolic maidens I was scarcely,
if at all, human; they did not understand that I belonged to the
race; I was a “Yankee”--a something of the non-human class, as the
gorilla or the chimpanzee. They felt as free to discuss my points
before my face as they would to talk of a horse or a wild animal in a
show. My equanimity was partially restored by this reflection, but I
was still too young to escape embarrassment and irritation at being
thus dissected and giggled at by a party of girls, even if they were
ignorant Virginia mountaineers.

I turned around to speak to the Sergeant, and in so doing showed my
back to the ladies. The hum of comment deepened into surprise, that
half stopped and then intensified the giggle.

I was puzzled for a minute, and then the direction of their glances,
and their remarks explained it all. At the rear of the lower part of
the cavalry jacket, about where the upper ornamental buttons are on
the tail of a frock coat, are two funny tabs, about the size of small
pin-cushions. They are fastened by the edge, and stick out straight
behind. Their use is to support the heavy belt in the rear, as the
buttons do in front. When the belt is off it would puzzle the Seven
Wise Men to guess what they are for. The unsophisticated young ladies,
with that swift intuition which is one of lovely woman’s salient mental
traits, immediately jumped at the conclusion that the projections
covered some peculiar conformation of the Yankee anatomy--some
incipient, dromedary-like humps, or perchance the horns of which they
had heard so much.

This anatomical phenomena was discussed intently for a few minutes,
during which I heard one of the girls inquire whether “it would hurt
him to cut ’em off?” and another hazarded the opinion that “it would
probably bleed him to death.”

Then a new idea seized them, and they said to the Sergeant “Make him
sing! Make him sing!”

This was too much for the Sergeant, who had been intensely amused at
the girls’ wonderment. He turned to me, very red in the face, with:

“Sergeant: the girls want to hear you sing.”

I replied that I could not sing a note. Said he:

“Oh, come now. I know better than that; I never seed or heerd of a
Yankee that couldn’t sing.”

I nevertheless assured him that there really were some Yankees that
did not have any musical accomplishments, and that I was one of that
unfortunate number. I asked him to get the ladies to sing for me, and
to this they acceded quite readily. One girl, with a fair soprano, who
seemed to be the leader of the crowd, sang “The Homespun Dress,” a song
very popular in the South, and having the same tune as the “Bonnie Blue
Flag.” It began,

               I envy not the Northern girl
               Their silks and jewels fine,

and proceeded to compare the homespun habiliments of the Southern women
to the finery and frippery of the ladies on the other side of Mason and
Dixon’s line in a manner very disadvantageous to the latter.

The rest of the girls made a fine exhibition of the lung-power acquired
in climbing their precipitous mountains, when they came in on the chorus

               Hurra! Hurra! for southern rights Hurra!
               Hurra for the homespun dress,
               The Southern ladies wear.

This ended the entertainment.

On our journey to Bristol we met many Rebel soldiers, of all ranks, and
a small number of citizens. As the conscription had then been enforced
pretty sharply for over a year the only able-bodied men seen in civil
life were those who had some trade which exempted them from being
forced into active service. It greatly astonished us at first to find
that nearly all the mechanics were included among the exempts, or could
be if they chose; but a very little reflection showed us the wisdom of
such a policy. The South is as nearly a purely agricultural country
as is Russia or South America. The people have, little inclination
or capacity for anything else than pastoral pursuits. Consequently
mechanics are very scarce, and manufactories much scarcer. The limited
quantity of products of mechanical skill needed by the people was
mostly imported from the North or Europe. Both these sources of supply
were cutoff by the war, and the country was thrown upon its own slender
manufacturing resources. To force its mechanics into the army would
therefore be suicidal. The Army would gain a few thousand men, but its
operations would be embarrassed, if not stopped altogether, by a want
of supplies. This condition of affairs reminded one of the singular
paucity of mechanical skill among the Bedouins of the desert, which
renders the life of a blacksmith sacred. No matter how bitter the feud
between tribes, no one will kill the other’s workers of iron, and
instances are told of warriors saving their lives at critical periods
by falling on their knees and making with their garments an imitation
of the action of a smith’s bellows.

All whom we met were eager to discuss with us the causes, phases and
progress of the war, and whenever opportunity offered or could be
made, those of us who were inclined to talk were speedily involved in
an argument with crowds of soldiers and citizens. But, owing to the
polemic poverty of our opponents, the argument was more in name than
in fact. Like all people of slender or untrained intellectual powers
they labored under the hallucination that asserting was reasoning, and
the emphatic reiteration of bald statements, logic. The narrow round
which all from highest to lowest--traveled was sometimes comical, and
sometimes irritating, according to one’s mood! The dispute invariably
began by their asking:

“Well, what are you ’uns down here a-fightin’ we ’uns for?”

As this was replied to the newt one followed:

“Why are you’uns takin’ our niggers away from we ’uns for?”

Then came:

“What do you ’uns put our niggers to fightin’ we’uns for?” The windup
always was: “Well, let me tell you, sir, you can never whip people that
are fighting for liberty, sir.”

Even General Giltner, who had achieved considerable military reputation
as commander of a division of Kentucky cavalry, seemed to be as
slenderly furnished with logical ammunition as the balance, for as he
halted by us he opened the conversation with the well-worn formula:

“Well: what are you ’uns down here a-fighting we’uns for?”

The question had become raspingly monotonous to me, whom he addressed,
and I replied with marked acerbity:

“Because we are the Northern mudsills whom you affect to despise, and
we came down here to lick you into respecting us.”

The answer seemed to tickle him, a pleasanter light came into his
sinister gray eyes, he laughed lightly, and bade us a kindly good day.

Four days after our capture we arrived in Bristol. The guards who had
brought us over the mountains were relieved by others, the Sergeant
bade me good by, struck his spurs into “Hiatoga’s” sides, and he and my
faithful horse were soon lost to view in the darkness.

A new and keener sense of desolation came over me at the final
separation from my tried and true four-footed friend, who had been
my constant companion through so many perils and hardships. We had
endured together the Winter’s cold, the dispiriting drench of the rain,
the fatigue of the long march, the discomforts of the muddy camp, the
gripings of hunger, the weariness of the drill and review, the perils
of the vidette post, the courier service, the scout and the fight. We
had shared in common

               The whips and scorns of time,
               The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
               The insolence of office, and the spurns

which a patient private and his horse of the unworthy take; we had had
our frequently recurring rows with other fellows and their horses, over
questions of precedence at watering places, and grass-plots, had had
lively tilts with guards of forage piles in surreptitious attempts to
get additional rations, sometimes coming off victorious and sometimes
being driven off ingloriously. I had often gone hungry that he might
have the only ear of corn obtainable. I am not skilled enough in horse
lore to speak of his points or pedigree. I only know that his strong
limbs never failed me, and that he was always ready for duty and ever
willing.

Now at last our paths diverged. I was retired from actual service to
a prison, and he bore his new master off to battle against his old
friends.

               ...........................

Packed closely in old, dilapidated stock and box cars, as if cattle
in shipment to market, we pounded along slowly, and apparently
interminably, toward the Rebel capital.

The railroads of the South were already in very bad condition. They
were never more than passably good, even in their best estate, but now,
with a large part of the skilled men engaged upon them escaped back to
the North, with all renewal, improvement, or any but the most necessary
repairs stopped for three years, and with a marked absence of even
ordinary skill and care in their management, they were as nearly ruined
as they could well be and still run.

One of the severe embarrassments under which the roads labored was
a lack of oil. There is very little fatty matter of any kind in the
South. The climate and the food plants do not favor the accumulation of
adipose tissue by animals, and there is no other source of supply. Lard
oil and tallow were very scarce and held at exorbitant prices.

Attempts were made to obtain lubricants from the peanut and the cotton
seed. The first yielded a fine bland oil, resembling the ordinary grade
of olive oil, but it was entirely too expensive for use in the arts.
The cotton seed oil could be produced much cheaper, but it had in it
such a quantity of gummy matter as to render it worse than useless for
employment on machinery.

This scarcity of oleaginous matter produced a corresponding scarcity of
soap and similar detergents, but this was a deprivation which caused
the Rebels, as a whole, as little inconvenience as any that they
suffered from. I have seen many thousands of them who were obviously
greatly in need of soap, but if they were rent with any suffering on
that account they concealed it with marvelous self-control.

There seemed to be a scanty supply of oil provided for the locomotives,
but the cars had to run with unlubricated axles, and the screaking and
groaning of the grinding journals in the dry boxes was sometimes almost
deafening, especially when we were going around a curve.

Our engine went off the wretched track several times, but as she was
not running much faster than a man could walk, the worst consequence to
us was a severe jolting. She was small, and was easily pried back upon
the track, and sent again upon her wheezy, straining way.

The depression which had weighed us down for a night and a day after
our capture had now been succeeded by a more cheerful feeling. We began
to look upon our condition as the fortune of war. We were proud of our
resistance to overwhelming numbers. We knew we had sold ourselves at a
price which, if the Rebels had it to do over again, they would not pay
for us. We believed that we had killed and seriously wounded as many
of them as they had killed, wounded and captured of us. We had nothing
to blame ourselves for. Moreover, we began to be buoyed up with the
expectation that we would be exchanged immediately upon our arrival at
Richmond, and the Rebel officers confidently assured us that this would
be so. There was then a temporary hitch in the exchange, but it would
all be straightened out in a few days, and it might not be a month
until we were again marching out of Cumberland Gap, on an avenging
foray against some of the force which had assisted in our capture.

Fortunately for this delusive hopefulness there was no weird and boding
Cassandra to pierce the veil of the future for us, and reveal the
length and the ghastly horror of the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
through which we must pass for hundreds of sad days, stretching out
into long months of suffering and death. Happily there was no one to
tell us that of every five in that party four would never stand under
the Stars and Stripes again, but succumbing to chronic starvation,
long-continued exposure, the bullet of the brutal guard, the loathsome
scurvy, the hideous gangrene, and the heartsickness of hope deferred,
would find respite from pain low in the barren sands of that hungry
Southern soil.

Were every doom foretokened by appropriate omens, the ravens along our
route would have croaked themselves hoarse.

But, far from being oppressed by any presentiment of coming evil, we
began to appreciate and enjoy the picturesque grandeur of the scenery
through which we were moving. The rugged sternness of the Appalachian
mountain range, in whose rock-ribbed heart we had fought our losing
fight, was now softening into less strong, but more graceful outlines
as we approached the pine-clad, sandy plains of the seaboard, upon
which Richmond is built. We were skirting along the eastern base of
the great Blue Ridge, about whose distant and lofty summits hung a
perpetual veil of deep, dark, but translucent blue, which refracted the
slanting rays of the morning and evening sun into masses of color more
gorgeous than a dreamer’s vision of an enchanted land. At Lynchburg
we saw the famed Peaks of Otter--twenty miles away--lifting their
proud heads far into the clouds, like giant watch-towers sentineling
the gateway that the mighty waters of the James had forced through
the barriers of solid adamant lying across their path to the far-off
sea. What we had seen many miles back start from the mountain sides
as slender rivulets, brawling over the worn boulders, were now great,
rushing, full-tide streams, enough of them in any fifty miles of our
journey to furnish water power for all the factories of New England.
Their amazing opulence of mechanical energy has lain unutilized, almost
unnoticed; in the two and one-half centuries that the white man has
dwelt near them, while in Massachusetts and her near neighbors every
rill that can turn a wheel has been put into harness and forced to do
its share of labor for the benefit of the men who have made themselves
its masters.

Here is one of the differences between the two sections: In the North
man was set free, and the elements made to do his work. In the South
man was the degraded slave, and the elements wantoned on in undisturbed
freedom.

As we went on, the Valleys of the James and the Appomattox, down which
our way lay, broadened into an expanse of arable acres, and the faces
of those streams were frequently flecked by gem-like little islands.




CHAPTER VII.

ENTERING RICHMOND--DISAPPOINTMENT AT ITS APPEARANCE--EVERYBODY IN
UNIFORM--CURLED DARLINGS OF THE CAPITAL--THE REBEL FLAG--LIBBY PRISON
--DICK TURNER--SEARCHING THE NEW COMERS.

Early on the tenth morning after our capture we were told that we were
about to enter Richmond. Instantly all were keenly observant of every
detail in the surroundings of a City that was then the object of the
hopes and fears of thirty-five millions of people--a City assailing
which seventy-five thousand brave men had already laid down their
lives, defending which an equal number had died, and which, before
it fell, was to cost the life blood of another one hundred and fifty
thousand valiant assailants and defenders.

So much had been said and written about Richmond that our boyish
minds had wrought up the most extravagant expectations of it and its
defenses. We anticipated seeing a City differing widely from anything
ever seen before; some anomaly of nature displayed in its site, itself
guarded by imposing and impregnable fortifications, with powerful forts
and heavy guns, perhaps even walls, castles, postern gates, moats and
ditches, and all the other panoply of defensive warfare, with which
romantic history had made us familiar.

We were disappointed--badly disappointed--in seeing nothing of this
as we slowly rolled along. The spires and the tall chimneys of the
factories rose in the distance very much as they had in other Cities
we had visited. We passed a single line of breastworks of bare yellow
sand, but the scrubby pines in front were not cut away, and there were
no signs that there had ever been any immediate expectation of use
for the works. A redoubt or two--without guns--could be made out, and
this was all. Grim-visaged war had few wrinkles on his front in that
neighborhood. They were then seaming his brow on the Rappahannock,
seventy miles away, where the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of
the Potomac lay confronting each other.

At one of the stopping places I had been separated from my companions
by entering a car in which were a number of East Tennesseeans, captured
in the operations around Knoxville, and whom the Rebels, in accordance
with their usual custom, were treating with studied contumely. I had
always had a very warm side for these simple rustics of the mountains
and valleys. I knew much of their unwavering fidelity to the Union, of
the firm steadfastness with which they endured persecution for their
country’s sake, and made sacrifices even unto death; and, as in those
days I estimated all men simply by their devotion to the great cause
of National integrity, (a habit that still clings to me) I rated these
men very highly. I had gone into their car to do my little to encourage
them, and when I attempted to return to my own I was prevented by the
guard.

Crossing the long bridge, our train came to a halt on the other side
of the river with the usual clamor of bell and whistle, the usual
seemingly purposeless and vacillating, almost dizzying, running
backward and forward on a network of sidetracks and switches, that
seemed unavoidably necessary, a dozen years ago, in getting a train
into a City.

Still unable to regain my comrades and share their fortunes, I was
marched off with the Tennesseeans through the City to the office of
some one who had charge of the prisoners of war.

The streets we passed through were lined with retail stores, in which
business was being carried on very much as in peaceful times. Many
people were on the streets, but the greater part of the men wore some
sort of a uniform. Though numbers of these were in active service, yet
the wearing of a military garb did not necessarily imply this. Nearly
every able-bodied man in Richmond was; enrolled in some sort of an
organization, and armed, and drilled regularly. Even the members of the
Confederate Congress were uniformed and attached, in theory at least,
to the Home Guards.

It was obvious even to the casual glimpse of a passing prisoner of war,
that the City did not lack its full share of the class which formed
so large an element of the society of Washington and other Northern
Cities during the war--the dainty carpet soldiers, heros of the
promenade and the boudoir, who strutted in uniforms when the enemy was
far off, and wore citizen’s clothes when he was close at hand. There
were many curled darlings displaying their fine forms in the nattiest
of uniforms, whose gloss had never suffered from so much as a heavy
dew, let alone a rainy day on the march. The Confederate gray could be
made into a very dressy garb. With the sleeves lavishly embroidered
with gold lace, and the collar decorated with stars indicating the
wearer’s rank--silver for the field officers, and gold for the higher
grade,--the feet compressed into high-heeled, high-instepped boots,
(no Virginian is himself without a fine pair of skin-tight boots)
and the head covered with a fine, soft, broad-brimmed hat, trimmed
with a gold cord, from which a bullion tassel dangled several inches
down the wearer’s back, you had a military swell, caparisoned for
conquest--among the fair sex.

On our way we passed the noted Capitol of Virginia--a handsome marble
building,--of the column-fronted Grecian temple style. It stands
in the center of the City. Upon the grounds is Crawford’s famous
equestrian statue of Washington, surrounded by smaller statues of other
Revolutionary patriots.

The Confederate Congress was then in session in the Capitol, and also
the Legislature of Virginia, a fact indicated by the State flag of
Virginia floating from the southern end of the building, and the new
flag of the Confederacy from the northern end. This was the first time
I had seen the latter, which had been recently adopted, and I examined
it with some interest. The design was exceedingly plain. Simply a white
banner, with a red field in the corner where the blue field with stars
is in ours. The two blue stripes were drawn diagonally across this
field in the shape of a letter X, and in these were thirteen white
stars, corresponding to the number of States claimed to be in the
Confederacy.

The battle-flag was simply the red field. My examination of all this
was necessarily very brief. The guards felt that I was in Richmond
for other purposes than to study architecture, statuary and heraldry,
and besides they were in a hurry to be relieved of us and get their
breakfast, so my art-education was abbreviated sharply.

We did not excite much attention on the streets. Prisoners had by that
time become too common in Richmond to create any interest. Occasionally
passers by would fling opprobrious epithets at “the East Tennessee
traitors,” but that was all.

The commandant of the prisons directed the Tennesseeans to be taken to
Castle Lightning--a prison used to confine the Rebel deserters, among
whom they also classed the East Tennesseeans, and sometimes the West
Virginians, Kentuckians, Marylanders and Missourians found fighting
against them. Such of our men as deserted to them were also lodged
there, as the Rebels, very properly, did not place a high estimate upon
this class of recruits to their army, and, as we shall see farther
along, violated all obligations of good faith with them, by putting
them among the regular prisoners of war, so as to exchange them for
their own men.

Back we were all marched to a street which ran parallel to the river
and canal, and but one square away from them. It was lined on both
sides by plain brick warehouses and tobacco factories, four and five
stories high, which were now used by the Rebel Government as prisons
and military storehouses.

The first we passed was Castle Thunder, of bloody repute. This occupied
the same place in Confederate history, that, the dungeons beneath the
level of the water did in the annals of the Venetian Council of Ten. It
was believed that if the bricks in its somber, dirt-grimed walls could
speak, each could tell a separate story of a life deemed dangerous to
the State that had gone down in night, at the behest of the ruthless
Confederate authorities. It was confidently asserted that among the
commoner occurrences within its confines was the stationing of a doomed
prisoner against a certain bit of blood-stained, bullet-chipped wall,
and relieving the Confederacy of all farther fear of him by the rifles
of a firing party. How well this dark reputation was deserved, no one
but those inside the inner circle of the Davis Government can say. It
is safe to believe that more tragedies were enacted there than the
archives of the Rebel civil or military judicature give any account of.
The prison was employed for the detention of spies, and those charged
with the convenient allegation of “treason against the Confederate
States of America.” It is probable that many of these were sent out
of the world with as little respect for the formalities of law as was
exhibited with regard to the ‘suspects’ during the French Revolution.

Next we came to Castle Lightning, and here I bade adieu to my Tennessee
companions.

A few squares more and we arrived at a warehouse larger than any of the
others. Over the door was a sign

                    THOMAS LIBBY & SON,
                 SHIP CHANDLERS AND GROCERS.

This was the notorious “Libby Prison,” whose name was painfully
familiar to every Union man in the land. Under the sign was a broad
entrance way, large enough to admit a dray or a small wagon. On one
side of this was the prison office, in which were a number of dapper,
feeble-faced clerks at work on the prison records.

As I entered this space a squad of newly arrived prisoners were being
searched for valuables, and having their names, rank and regiment
recorded in the books. Presently a clerk addressed as “Majah Tunnah,”
the man who was superintending these operations, and I scanned him
with increased interest, as I knew then that he was the ill-famed Dick
Turner, hated all over the North for his brutality to our prisoners.

He looked as if he deserved his reputation. Seen upon the street he
would be taken for a second or third class gambler, one in whom a
certain amount of cunning is pieced out by a readiness to use brute
force. His face, clean-shaved, except a “Bowery-b’hoy” goatee, was
white, fat, and selfishly sensual. Small, pig-like eyes, set close
together, glanced around continually. His legs were short, his body
long, and made to appear longer, by his wearing no vest--a custom
common them with Southerners.

His faculties were at that moment absorbed in seeing that no person
concealed any money from him. His subordinates did not search closely
enough to suit him, and he would run his fat, heavily-ringed fingers
through the prisoner’s hair, feel under their arms and elsewhere where
he thought a stray five dollar greenback might be concealed. But with
all his greedy care he was no match for Yankee cunning. The prisoners
told me afterward that, suspecting they would be searched, they had
taken off the caps of the large, hollow brass buttons of their coats,
carefully folded a bill into each cavity, and replaced the cap. In this
way they brought in several hundred dollars safely.

There was one dirty old Englishman in the party, who, Turner was
convinced, had money concealed about his person. He compelled him to
strip off everything, and stand shivering in the sharp cold, while he
took up one filthy rag after another, felt over each carefully, and
scrutinized each seam and fold. I was delighted to see that after all
his nauseating work he did not find so much as a five cent piece.

It came my turn. I had no desire, in that frigid atmosphere, to strip
down to what Artemus Ward called “the skanderlous costoom of the Greek
Slave;” so I pulled out of my pocket my little store of wealth--ten
dollars in greenbacks, sixty dollars in Confederate graybacks--and
displayed it as Turner came up with, “There’s all I have, sir.” Turner
pocketed it without a word, and did not search me. In after months,
when I was nearly famished, my estimation of “Majah Tunnah” was hardly
enhanced by the reflection that what would have purchased me many good
meals was probably lost by him in betting on a pair of queens, when his
opponent held a “king full.”

I ventured to step into the office to inquire after my comrades.
One of the whey-faced clerks said with the supercilious asperity
characteristic of gnat-brained headquarters attaches:

“Get out of here!” as if I had been a stray cur wandering in in search
of a bone lunch.

I wanted to feed the fellow to a pile-driver. The utmost I could hope
for in the way of revenge was that the delicate creature might some day
make a mistake in parting his hair, and catch his death of cold.

The guard conducted us across the street, and into the third story of
a building standing on the next corner below. Here I found about four
hundred men, mostly belonging to the Army of the Potomac, who crowded
around me with the usual questions to new prisoners: What was my
Regiment, where and when captured, and:

What were the prospects of exchange?

It makes me shudder now to recall how often, during the dreadful months
that followed, this momentous question was eagerly propounded to every
new comer: put with bated breath by men to whom exchange meant all that
they asked of this world, and possibly of the next; meant life, home,
wife or sweet-heart, friends, restoration to manhood, and self-respect
--everything, everything that makes existence in this world worth
having.

I answered as simply and discouragingly as did the tens of thousands
that came after me:

“I did not hear anything about exchange.”

A soldier in the field had many other things of more immediate interest
to think about than the exchange of prisoners. The question only became
a living issue when he or some of his intimate friends fell into the
enemy’s hands.

Thus began my first day in prison.




CHAPTER VIII.

INTRODUCTION TO PRISON LIFE--THE PEMBERTON BUILDING AND ITS
OCCUPANTS --NEAT SAILORS--ROLL CALL--RATIONS AND CLOTHING--CHIVALRIC
“CONFISCATION.”

I began acquainting myself with my new situation and surroundings. The
building into which I had been conducted was an old tobacco factory,
called the “Pemberton building,” possibly from an owner of that name,
and standing on the corner of what I was told were Fifteenth and Carey
streets. In front it was four stories high; behind but three, owing to
the rapid rise of the hill, against which it was built.

It fronted towards the James River and Kanawha Canal, and the James
River--both lying side by side, and only one hundred yards distant,
with no intervening buildings. The front windows afforded a fine view.
To the right front was Libby, with its guards pacing around it on the
sidewalk, watching the fifteen hundred officers confined within its
walls. At intervals during each day squads of fresh prisoners could
be seen entering its dark mouth, to be registered, and searched, and
then marched off to the prison assigned them. We could see up the James
River for a mile or so, to where the long bridges crossing it bounded
the view. Directly in front, across the river, was a flat, sandy plain,
said to be General Winfield Scott’s farm, and now used as a proving
ground for the guns cast at the Tredegar Iron Works.

The view down the river was very fine. It extended about twelve miles,
to where a gap in the woods seemed to indicate a fort, which we
imagined to be Fort Darling, at that time the principal fortification
defending the passage of the James.

Between that point and where we were lay the river, in a long, broad
mirror-like expanse, like a pretty little inland lake. Occasionally
a busy little tug would bustle up or down, a gunboat move along with
noiseless dignity, suggestive of a reserved power, or a schooner
beat lazily from one side to the other. But these were so few as to
make even more pronounced the customary idleness that hung over the
scene. The tug’s activity seemed spasmodic and forced--a sort of
protest against the gradually increasing lethargy that reigned upon
the bosom of the waters --the gunboat floated along as if performing
a perfunctory duty, and the schooners sailed about as if tired of
remaining in one place. That little stretch of water was all that was
left for a cruising ground. Beyond Fort Darling the Union gunboats
lay, and the only vessel that passed the barrier was the occasional
flag-of-truce steamer.

The basement of the building was occupied as a store-house for the
taxes-in-kind which the Confederate Government collected. On the first
floor were about five hundred men. On the second floor--where I was
--were about four hundred men. These were principally from the First
Division, First Corps distinguished by a round red patch on their
caps; First Division, Second Corps, marked by a red clover leaf; and
the First Division, Third Corps, who wore a red diamond. They were
mainly captured at Gettysburg and Mine Run. Besides these there was
a considerable number from the Eighth Corps, captured at Winchester,
and a large infusion of Cavalry-First, Second and Third West
Virginia--taken in Averill’s desperate raid up the Virginia Valley,
with the Wytheville Salt Works as an objective.

On the third floor were about two hundred sailors and marines, taken
in the gallant but luckless assault upon the ruins of Fort Sumter, in
the September previous. They retained the discipline of the ship in
their quarters, kept themselves trim and clean, and their floor as
white as a ship’s deck. They did not court the society of the “sojers”
below, whose camp ideas of neatness differed from theirs. A few old
barnacle-backs always sat on guard around the head of the steps leading
from the lower rooms. They chewed tobacco enormously, and kept their
mouths filled with the extracted juice. Any luckless “sojer” who
attempted to ascend the stairs usually returned in haste, to avoid the
deluge of the filthy liquid.

For convenience in issuing rations we were divided into messes of
twenty, each mess electing a Sergeant as its head, and each floor
electing a Sergeant-of-the-Floor, who drew rations and enforced what
little discipline was observed.

Though we were not so neat as the sailors above us, we tried to keep
our quarters reasonably clean, and we washed the floor every morning;
getting down on our knees and rubbing it clean and dry with rags.
Each mess detailed a man each day to wash up the part of the floor it
occupied, and he had to do this properly or no ration would be given
him. While the washing up was going on each man stripped himself
and made close examination of his garments for the body-lice, which
otherwise would have increased beyond control. Blankets were also
carefully hunted over for these “small deer.”

About eight o’clock a spruce little lisping rebel named Ross would
appear with a book, and a body-guard, consisting of a big Irishman,
who had the air of a Policeman, and carried a musket barrel made
into a cane. Behind him were two or three armed guards. The
Sergeant-of-the-Floor commanded:

“Fall in in four ranks for roll-call.”

We formed along one side of the room; the guards halted at the head of
the stairs; Ross walked down in front and counted the files, closely
followed by his Irish aid, with his gun-barrel cane raised ready for
use upon any one who should arouse his ruffianly ire. Breaking ranks
we returned to our places, and sat around in moody silence for three
hours. We had eaten nothing since the previous noon. Rising hungry, our
hunger seemed to increase in arithmetical ratio with every quarter of
an hour.

These times afforded an illustration of the thorough subjection of
man to the tyrant Stomach. A more irritable lot of individuals could
scarcely be found outside of a menagerie than these men during the
hours waiting for rations. “Crosser than, two sticks” utterly failed
as a comparison. They were crosser than the lines of a check apron.
Many could have given odds to the traditional bear with a sore head,
and run out of the game fifty points ahead of him. It was astonishingly
easy to get up a fight at these times. There was no need of going
a step out of the way to search for it, as one could have a full
fledged article of overwhelming size on his hands at any instant, by
a trifling indiscretion of speech or manner. All the old irritating
flings between the cavalry, the artillery and the infantry, the older
“first-call” men, and the later or “Three-Hundred-Dollar-men,” as
they were derisively dubbed, between the different corps of the Army
of the Potomac, between men of different States, and lastly between
the adherents and opponents of McClellan, came to the lips and were
answered by a blow with the fist, when a ring would be formed around
the combatants by a crowd, which would encourage them with yells to do
their best. In a few minutes one of the parties to the fistic debate,
who found the point raised by him not well taken, would retire to the
sink to wash the blood from his battered face, and the rest would
resume their seats and glower at space until some fresh excitement
roused them. For the last hour or so of these long waits hardly a word
would be spoken. We were too ill-natured to talk for amusement, and
there was nothing else to talk for.

This spell was broken about eleven o’clock by the appearance at the
head of the stairway of the Irishman with the gun-barrel cane, and his
singing out:

“Sargint uv the flure: fourtane min and a bread-box!”

Instantly every man sprang to his feet, and pressed forward to be one
of the favored fourteen. One did not get any more gyrations or obtain
them any sooner by this, but it was a relief, and a change to walk the
half square outside the prison to the cookhouse, and help carry the
rations back.

For a little while after our arrival in Richmond, the rations were
tolerably good. There had been so much said about the privations
of the prisoners that our Government had, after much quibbling and
negotiation, succeeded in getting the privilege of sending food and
clothing through the lines to us. Of course but a small part of that
sent ever reached its destination. There were too many greedy Rebels
along its line of passage to let much of it be received by those for
whom it was intended. We could see from our windows Rebels strutting
about in overcoats, in which the box wrinkles were still plainly
visible, wearing new “U. S.” blankets as cloaks, and walking in
Government shoes, worth fabulous prices in Confederate money.

Fortunately for our Government the rebels decided to out themselves off
from this profitable source of supply. We read one day in the Richmond
papers that “President Davis and his Cabinet had come to the conclusion
that it was incompatible with the dignity of a sovereign power to
permit another power with which it was at war, to feed and clothe
prisoners in its hands.”

I will not stop to argue this point of honor, and show its absurdity by
pointing out that it is not an unusual practice with nations at war. It
is a sufficient commentary upon this assumption of punctiliousness that
the paper went on to say that some five tons of clothing and fifteen
tons of food, which had been sent under a flag of truce to City Point,
would neither be returned nor delivered to us, but “converted to the
use of the Confederate Government.”

               “And surely they are all honorable men!”

Heaven save the mark.




CHAPTER IX.
BRANS OR PEAS--INSUFFICIENCY OF DARKY TESTIMONY--A GUARD KILLS A
PRISONER--PRISONERS TEAZE THE GUARDS--DESPERATE OUTBREAK.

But, to return to the rations--a topic which, with escape or exchange,
were to be the absorbing ones for us for the next fifteen months. There
was now issued to every two men a loaf of coarse bread--made of a
mixture of flour and meal--and about the size and shape of an ordinary
brick. This half loaf was accompanied, while our Government was allowed
to furnish rations, with a small piece of corned beef. Occasionally we
got a sweet potato, or a half-pint or such a matter of soup made from
a coarse, but nutritious, bean or pea, called variously “nigger-pea,”
“stock-pea,” or “cow-pea.”

This, by the way, became a fruitful bone of contention during our stay
in the South. One strong party among us maintained that it was a bean,
because it was shaped like one, and brown, which they claimed no pea
ever was. The other party held that it was a pea because its various
names all agreed in describing it as a pea, and because it was so full
of bugs--none being entirely free from insects, and some having as many
as twelve by actual count--within its shell. This, they declared, was a
distinctive characteristic of the pea family. The contention began with
our first instalment of the leguminous ration, and was still raging
between the survivors who passed into our lines in 1865. It waxed hot
occasionally, and each side continually sought evidence to support
its view of the case. Once an old darky, sent into the prison on some
errand, was summoned to decide a hot dispute that was raging in the
crowd to which I belonged. The champion of the pea side said, producing
one of the objects of dispute:

“Now, boys, keep still, till I put the question fairly. Now, uncle,
what do they call that there?”

The colored gentleman scrutinized the vegetable closely, and replied,

“Well, dey mos’ generally calls ’em stock-peas, round hyar aways.”

“There,” said the pea-champion triumphantly.

“But,” broke in the leader of the bean party, “Uncle, don’t they also
call them beans?”

“Well, yes, chile, I spec dat lots of ’em does.”

And this was about the way the matter usually ended.

I will not attempt to bias the reader’s judgment by saying which side I
believed to be right. As the historic British showman said, in reply to
the question as to whether an animal in his collection was a rhinoceros
or an elephant, “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”

The rations issued to us, as will be seen above, though they appear
scanty, were still sufficient to support life and health, and months
afterward, in Andersonville, we used to look back to them as sumptuous.
We usually had them divided and eaten by noon, and, with the gnawings
of hunger appeased, we spent the afternoon and evening comfortably.
We told stories, paced up and down, the floor for exercise, played
cards, sung, read what few books were available, stood at the windows
and studied the landscape, and watched the Rebels trying their guns
and shells, and so on as long as it was daylight. Occasionally it was
dangerous to be about the windows. This depended wholly on the temper
of the guards. One day a member of a Virginia regiment, on guard on
the pavement in front, deliberately left his beat, walked out into
the center of the street, aimed his gun at a member of the Ninth West
Virginia, who was standing at a window near, and firing, shot him
through the heart, the bullet passing through his body, and through the
floor above. The act was purely malicious, and was done, doubtless,
in revenge for some injury which our men had done the assassin or his
family.

We were not altogether blameless, by any means. There were few
opportunities to say bitterly offensive things to the guards, let pass
unimproved.

The prisoners in the third floor of the Smith building, adjoining us,
had their own way of teasing them. Late at night, when everybody would
be lying down, and out of the way of shots, a window in the third story
would open, a broomstick, with a piece nailed across to represent arms,
and clothed with a cap and blouse, would be protruded, and a voice
coming from a man carefully protected by the wall, would inquire:

“S-a-y, g-uarr-d, what time is it?”

If the guard was of the long suffering kind he would answer:

“Take yo’ head back in, up dah; you kno hits agin all odahs to do dat?”

Then the voice would say, aggravatingly, “Oh, well, go to ---- you ----
Rebel ----, if you can’t answer a civil question.”

Before the speech was ended the guard’s rifle would be at his shoulder
and he would fire. Back would come the blouse and hat in haste, only to
go out again the next instant, with a derisive laugh, and,

“Thought you were going to hurt somebody, didn’t you, you ---- ----
---- ---- ----. But, Lord, you can’t shoot for sour apples; if I
couldn’t shoot no better than you, Mr. Johnny Reb, I would ----”

By this time the guard, having his gun loaded again, would cut short
the remarks with another shot, which, followed up with similar remarks,
would provoke still another, when an alarm sounding, the guards at
Libby and all the other buildings around us would turn out. An officer
of the guard would go up with a squad into the third floor, only
to find everybody up there snoring away as if they were the Seven
Sleepers. After relieving his mind of a quantity of vigorous profanity,
and threats to “buck and gag” and cut off the rations of the whole
room, the officer would return to his quarters in the guard house, but
before he was fairly ensconced there the cap and blouse would go out
again, and the maddened guard be regaled with a spirited and vividly
profane lecture on the depravity of Rebels in general, and his own
unworthiness in particular.

One night in January things took a more serious turn. The boys on the
lower floor of our building had long considered a plan of escape. There
were then about fifteen thousand prisoners in Richmond--ten thousand on
Belle Isle and five thousand in the buildings. Of these one thousand
five hundred were officers in Libby. Besides there were the prisoners
in Castles Thunder and Lightning. The essential features of the plan
were that at a preconcerted signal we at the second and third floors
should appear at the windows with bricks and irons from the tobacco
presses, which a should shower down on the guards and drive them away,
while the men of the first floor would pour out, chase the guards
into the board house in the basement, seize their arms, drive those
away from around Libby and the other prisons, release the officers,
organize into regiments and brigades, seize the armory, set fire to the
public buildings and retreat from the City, by the south side of the
James, where there was but a scanty force of Rebels, and more could be
prevented from coming over by burning the bridges behind us.

It was a magnificent scheme, and might have been carried out, but there
was no one in the building who was generally believed to have the
qualities of a leader.

But while it was being debated a few of the hot heads on the lower
floor undertook to precipitate the crisis. They seized what they
thought was a favorable opportunity, overpowered the guard who stood at
the foot of the stairs, and poured into the street. The other guards
fell back and opened fire on them; other troops hastened up, and soon
drove them back into the building, after killing ten or fifteen. We of
the second and third floors did not anticipate the break at that time,
and were taken as much by surprise as were the Rebels. Nearly all were
lying down and many were asleep. Some hastened to the windows, and
dropped missiles out, but before any concerted action could be taken it
was seen that the case was hopeless, and we remained quiet.

Among those who led in the assault was a drummer-boy of some New York
Regiment, a recklessly brave little rascal. He had somehow smuggled a
small four-shooter in with him, and when they rushed out he fired it
off at the guards.

After the prisoners were driven back, the Rebel officers came in and
vapored around considerably, but confined themselves to big words.
They were particularly anxious to find the revolver, and ordered a
general and rigorous search for it. The prisoners were all ranged on
one side of the room and carefully examined by one party, while another
hunted through the blankets and bundles. It was all in vain; no pistol
could be found. The boy had a loaf of wheat bread, bought from a baker
during the day. It was a round loaf, set together in two pieces like
a biscuit. He pulled these apart, laid the fourshooter between them,
pressed the two halves together, and went on calmly nibbling away at
the loaf while the search was progressing.

Two gunboats were brought up the next morning, and anchored in the
canal near us, with their heavy guns trained upon the building. It was
thought that this would intimidate as from a repetition of the attack,
but our sailors conceived that, as they laid against the shore next to
us, they could be easily captured, and their artillery made to assist
us. A scheme to accomplish this was being wrought out, when we received
notice to move, and it came to naught.




CHAPTER X.

THE EXCHANGE AND THE CAUSE OF ITS INTERRUPTION--BRIEF RESUME OF THE
DIFFERENT CARTELS, AND THE DIFFICULTIES THAT LED TO THEIR SUSPENSION.

Few questions intimately connected with the actual operations of
the Rebellion have been enveloped with such a mass of conflicting
statement as the responsibility for the interruption of the exchange.
Southern writers and politicians, naturally anxious to diminish as
much as possible the great odium resting upon their section for the
treatment of prisoners of war during the last year and a half of the
Confederacy’s existence, have vehemently charged that the Government of
the United States deliberately and pitilessly resigned to their fate
such of its soldiers as fell into the hands of the enemy, and repelled
all advances from the Rebel Government looking toward a resumption
of exchange. It is alleged on our side, on the other hand, that our
Government did all that was possible, consistent with National dignity
and military prudence, to secure a release of its unfortunate men in
the power of the Rebels.

Over this vexed question there has been waged an acrimonious
war of words, which has apparently led to no decision, nor any
convictions--the disputants, one and all, remaining on the sides of the
controversy occupied by them when the debate began.

I may not be in possession of all the facts bearing upon the case, and
may be warped in judgment by prejudices in favor of my own Government’s
wisdom and humanity, but, however this may be, the following is my firm
belief as to the controlling facts in this lamentable affair:

1. For some time after the beginning of hostilities our Government
refused to exchange prisoners with the Rebels, on the ground that this
might be held by the European powers who were seeking a pretext for
acknowledging the Confederacy, to be admission by us that the war was
no longer an insurrection but a revolution, which had resulted in the
‘de facto’ establishment of a new nation. This difficulty was finally
gotten over by recognizing the Rebels as belligerents, which, while it
placed them on a somewhat different plane from mere insurgents, did not
elevate them to the position of soldiers of a foreign power.

2. Then the following cartel was agreed upon by Generals Dig on our
side and Hill on that of the Rebels:

HAXALL’S LANDING, ON JAMES RIVER, July 22, 1882.

The undersigned, having been commissioned by the authorities they
respectively represent to make arrangements for a general exchange of
prisoners of war, have agreed to the following articles:

ARTICLE I.--It is hereby agreed and stipulated, that all prisoners
of war, held by either party, including those taken on private armed
vessels, known as privateers, shall be exchanged upon the conditions
and terms following:

Prisoners to be exchanged man for man and officer for officer.
Privateers to be placed upon the footing of officers and men of the
navy.

Men and officers of lower grades may be exchanged for officers of
a higher grade, and men and officers of different services may be
exchanged according to the following scale of equivalents:

A General-commanding-in-chief, or an Admiral, shall be exchanged for
officers of equal rank, or for sixty privates or common seamen.

A Commodore, carrying a broad pennant, or a Brigadier General, shall
be exchanged for officers of equal rank, or twenty privates or common
seamen.

A Captain in the Navy, or a Colonel, shall be exchanged for officers of
equal rank, or for fifteen privates or common seamen.

A Lieutenant Colonel, or Commander in the Navy, shall be exchanged for
officers of equal rank, or for ten privates or common seamen.

A Lieutenant, or a Master in the Navy, or a Captain in the Army or
marines shall be exchanged for officers of equal rank, or six privates
or common seamen.

Master’s-mates in the Navy, or Lieutenants or Ensigns in the Army,
shall be exchanged for officers of equal rank, or four privates or
common seamen. Midshipmen, warrant officers in the Navy, masters of
merchant vessels and commanders of privateers, shall be exchanged for
officers of equal rank, or three privates or common seamen; Second
Captains, Lieutenants or mates of merchant vessels or privateers, and
all petty officers in the Navy, and all noncommissioned officers in
the Army or marines, shall be severally exchanged for persons of equal
rank, or for two privates or common seamen; and private soldiers or
common seamen shall be exchanged for each other man for man.

ARTICLE II.--Local, State, civil and militia rank held by persons
not in actual military service will not be recognized; the basis of
exchange being the grade actually held in the naval and military
service of the respective parties.

ARTICLE III.--If citizens held by either party on charges of
disloyalty, or any alleged civil offense, are exchanged, it shall only
be for citizens. Captured sutlers, teamsters, and all civilians in the
actual service of either party, to be exchanged for persons in similar
positions.

ARTICLE IV.--All prisoners of war to be discharged on parole in ten
days after their capture; and the prisoners now held, and those
hereafter taken, to be transported to the points mutually agreed
upon, at the expense of the capturing party. The surplus prisoners
not exchanged shall not be permitted to take up arms again, nor to
serve as military police or constabulary force in any fort, garrison
or field-work, held by either of the respective parties, nor as guards
of prisoners, deposits or stores, nor to discharge any duty usually
performed by soldiers, until exchanged under the provisions of this
cartel. The exchange is not to be considered complete until the officer
or soldier exchanged for has been actually restored to the lines to
which he belongs.

ARTICLE V.--Each party upon the discharge of prisoners of the other
party is authorized to discharge an equal number of their own officers
or men from parole, furnishing, at the same time, to the other party a
list of their prisoners discharged, and of their own officers and men
relieved from parole; thus enabling each party to relieve from parole
such of their officers and men as the party may choose. The lists
thus mutually furnished, will keep both parties advised of the true
condition of the exchange of prisoners.

ARTICLE VI.--The stipulations and provisions above mentioned to be of
binding obligation during the continuance of the war, it matters not
which party may have the surplus of prisoners; the great principles
involved being, First, An equitable exchange of prisoners, man for
man, or officer for officer, or officers of higher grade exchanged
for officers of lower grade, or for privates, according to scale of
equivalents. Second, That privates and officers and men of different
services may be exchanged according to the same scale of equivalents.
Third, That all prisoners, of whatever arm of service, are to be
exchanged or paroled in ten days from the time of their capture, if it
be practicable to transfer them to their own lines in that time; if
not, so soon thereafter as practicable. Fourth, That no officer, or
soldier, employed in the service of either party, is to be considered
as exchanged and absolved from his parole until his equivalent has
actually reached the lines of his friends. Fifth, That parole forbids
the performance of field, garrison, police, or guard or constabulary
duty.

                                   JOHN A. DIX, Major General.

                                   D. H. HILL, Major General, C. S. A.

SUPPLEMENTARY ARTICLES.

ARTICLE VII.--All prisoners of war now held on either side, and all
prisoners hereafter taken, shall be sent with all reasonable dispatch
to A. M. Aiken’s, below Dutch Gap, on the James River, in Virginia, or
to Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, in the State of Mississippi,
and there exchanged of paroled until such exchange can be effected,
notice being previously given by each party of the number of prisoners
it will send, and the time when they will be delivered at those points
respectively; and in case the vicissitudes of war shall change the
military relations of the places designated in this article to the
contending parties, so as to render the same inconvenient for the
delivery and exchange of prisoners, other places bearing as nearly as
may be the present local relations of said places to the lines of said
parties, shall be, by mutual agreement, substituted. But nothing in
this article contained shall prevent the commanders of the two opposing
armies from exchanging prisoners or releasing them on parole, at other
points mutually agreed on by said commanders.

ARTICLE VIII.--For the purpose of carrying into effect the foregoing
articles of agreement, each party will appoint two agents for the
exchange of prisoners of war, whose duty it shall be to communicate
with each other by correspondence and otherwise; to prepare the lists
of prisoners; to attend to the delivery of the prisoners at the places
agreed on, and to carry out promptly, effectually, and in good faith,
all the details and provisions of the said articles of agreement.

ARTICLE IX.--And, in case any misunderstanding shall arise in regard
to any clause or stipulation in the foregoing articles, it is mutually
agreed that such misunderstanding shall not affect the release of
prisoners on parole, as herein provided, but shall be made the subject
of friendly explanation, in order that the object of this agreement may
neither be defeated nor postponed.

                              JOHN A. DIX, Major General.
                              D. H. HILL, Major General. C. S. A.


This plan did not work well. Men on both sides, who wanted a little
rest from soldiering, could obtain it by so straggling in the vicinity
of the enemy. Their parole--following close upon their capture,
frequently upon the spot--allowed them to visit home, and sojourn
awhile where were pleasanter pastures than at the front. Then the
Rebels grew into the habit of paroling everybody that they could
constrain into being a prisoner of war. Peaceable, unwarlike and
decrepit citizens of Kentucky, East Tennessee, West Virginia, Missouri
and Maryland were “captured” and paroled, and setoff against regular
Rebel soldiers taken by us.

3. After some months of trial of this scheme, a modification of
the cartel was agreed upon, the main feature of which was that all
prisoners must be reduced to possession, and delivered to the exchange
officers either at City Point, Va., or Vicksburg, Miss. This worked
very well for some months, until our Government began organizing negro
troops. The Rebels then issued an order that neither these troops nor
their officers should be held as amenable to the laws of war, but that,
when captured, the men should be returned to slavery, and the officers
turned over to the Governors of the States in which they were taken, to
be dealt with according to the stringent law punishing the incitement
of servile insurrection. Our Government could not permit this for a
day. It was bound by every consideration of National honor to protect
those who wore its uniform and bore its flag. The Rebel Government was
promptly informed that rebel officers and men would be held as hostages
for the proper treatment of such members of colored regiments as might
be taken.

4. This discussion did not put a stop to the exchange, but while it
was going on Vicksburg was captured, and the battle of Gettysburg was
fought. The first placed one of the exchange points in our hands. At
the opening of the fight at Gettysburg Lee captured some six thousand
Pennsylvania militia. He sent to Meade to have these exchanged on
the field of battle. Meade declined to do so for two reasons: first,
because it was against the cartel, which prescribed that prisoners must
be reduced to possession; and second, because he was anxious to have
Lee hampered with such a body of prisoners, since it was very doubtful
if he could get his beaten army back across the Potomac, let alone his
prisoners. Lee then sent a communication to General Couch, commanding
the Pennsylvania militia, asking him to receive prisoners on parole,
and Couch, not knowing what Meade had done, acceded to the request.
Our Government disavowed Couch’s action instantly, and ordered the
paroles to be treated as of no force, whereupon the Rebel Government
ordered back into the field twelve thousand of the prisoners captured
by Grant’s army at Vicksburg.

5. The paroling now stopped abruptly, leaving in the hands of both
sides the prisoners captured at Gettysburg, except the militia above
mentioned. The Rebels added considerably to those in their hands by
their captures at Chickamauga, while we gained a great many at Mission
Ridge, Cumberland Gap and elsewhere, so that at the time we arrived in
Richmond the Rebels had about fifteen thousand prisoners in their hands
and our Government had about twenty-five thousand.

6. The rebels now began demanding that the prisoners on both sides be
exchanged--man for man--as far as they went, and the remainder paroled.
Our Government offered to exchange man for man, but declined--on
account of the previous bad faith of the Rebels--to release the balance
on parole. The Rebels also refused to make any concessions in regard to
the treatment of officers and men of colored regiments.

7. At this juncture General B. F. Butler was appointed to the command
of the Department of the Blackwater, which made him an ex-officio
Commissioner of Exchange. The Rebels instantly refused to treat
with him, on the ground that he was outlawed by the proclamation of
Jefferson Davis. General Butler very pertinently replied that this only
placed him nearer their level, as Jefferson Davis and all associated
with him in the Rebel Government had been outlawed by the proclamation
of President Lincoln. The Rebels scorned to notice this home thrust by
the Union General.

8. On February 12, 1864, General Butler addressed a letter to the Rebel
Commissioner Ould, in which be asked, for the sake of humanity, that
the questions interrupting the exchange be left temporarily in abeyance
while an informal exchange was put in operation. He would send five
hundred prisoners to City Point; let them be met by a similar number
of Union prisoners. This could go on from day to day until all in each
other’s hands should be transferred to their respective flags.

The five hundred sent with the General’s letter were received, and
five hundred Union prisoners returned for them. Another five hundred,
sent the next day, were refused, and so this reasonable and humane
proposition ended in nothing.

This was the condition of affairs in February, 1864, when the Rebel
authorities concluded to send us to Andersonville. If the reader will
fix these facts in his minds I will explain other phases as they
develop.




CHAPTER XI.

PUTTING IN THE TIME--RATIONS--COOKING UTENSILS--“FIAT” SOUP--“SPOONING”
--AFRICAN NEWSPAPER VENDERS--TRADING GREENBACKS FOR CONFEDERATE MONEY
--VISIT FROM JOHN MORGAN.

The Winter days passed on, one by one, after the manner described in
a former chapter,--the mornings in ill-nature hunger; the afternoons
and evenings in tolerable comfort. The rations kept growing lighter
and lighter; the quantity of bread remained the same, but the meat
diminished, and occasional days would pass without any being issued.
Then we receive a pint or less of soup made from the beans or peas
before mentioned, but this, too, suffered continued change, in the
gradually increasing proportion of James River water, and decreasing of
that of the beans.

The water of the James River is doubtless excellent: it looks well--at
a distance--and is said to serve the purposes of ablution and
navigation admirably. There seems to be a limit however, to the extent
of its advantageous combination with the bean (or pea) for nutritive
purposes. This, though, was or view of the case, merely, and not
shared in to any appreciably extent by the gentlemen who were managing
our boarding house. We seemed to view the matter through allopathic
spectacles, they through homoeopathic lenses. We thought that the
atomic weight of peas (or beans) and the James River fluid were about
equal, which would indicate that the proper combining proportions would
be, say a bucket of beans (or peas) to a bucket of water. They held
that the nutritive potency was increased by the dilution, and the best
results were obtainable when the symptoms of hunger were combated by
the trituration of a bucketful of the peas-beans with a barrel of ‘aqua
jamesiana.’

My first experience with this “flat” soup was very instructive, if
not agreeable. I had come into prison, as did most other prisoners,
absolutely destitute of dishes, or cooking utensils. The well-used,
half-canteen frying-pan, the blackened quart cup, and the spoon, which
formed the usual kitchen outfit of the cavalryman in the field, were
in the haversack on my saddle, and were lost to me when I separated
from my horse. Now, when we were told that we were to draw soup, I was
in great danger of losing my ration from having no vessel in which to
receive it. There were but few tin cups in the prison, and these were,
of course, wanted by their owners. By great good fortune I found an
empty fruit can, holding about a quart. I was also lucky enough to find
a piece from which to make a bail. I next manufactured a spoon and
knife combined from a bit of hoop-iron.

These two humble utensils at once placed myself and my immediate
chums on another plane, as far as worldly goods were concerned. We
were better off than the mass, and as well off as the most fortunate.
It was a curious illustration of that law of political economy which
teaches that so-called intrinsic value is largely adventitious. Their
possession gave us infinitely more consideration among our fellows than
would the possession of a brown-stone front in an eligible location,
furnished with hot and cold water throughout, and all the modern
improvements. It was a place where cooking utensils were in demand,
and title-deeds to brown-stone fronts were not. We were in possession
of something which every one needed every day, and, therefore, were
persons of consequence and consideration to those around us who were
present or prospective borrowers.

On our side we obeyed another law of political economy: We clung to
our property with unrelaxing tenacity, made the best use of it in our
intercourse with our fellows, and only gave it up after our release and
entry into a land where the plenitude of cooking utensils of superior
construction made ours valueless. Then we flung them into the sea, with
little gratitude for the great benefit they had been to us. We were
more anxious to get rid of the many hateful recollections clustering
around them.

But, to return to the alleged soup: As I started to drink my first
ration it seemed to me that there was a superfluity of bugs upon its
surface. Much as I wanted animal food, I did not care for fresh meat
in that form. I skimmed them off carefully, so as to lose as little
soup as possible. But the top layer seemed to be underlaid with another
equally dense. This was also skimmed off as deftly as possible. But
beneath this appeared another layer, which, when removed, showed still
another; and so on, until I had scraped to the bottom of the can, and
the last of the bugs went with the last of my soup. I have before
spoken of the remarkable bug fecundity of the beans (or peas). This was
a demonstration of it. Every scouped out pea (or bean) which found its
way into the soup bore inside of its shell from ten to twenty of these
hard-crusted little weevil. Afterward I drank my soup without skimming.
It was not that I hated the weevil less, but that I loved the soup
more. It was only another step toward a closer conformity to that grand
rule which I have made the guiding maxim of my life:

‘When I must, I had better.’

I recommend this to other young men starting on their career.

The room in which we were was barely large enough for all of us to lie
down at once. Even then it required pretty close “spooning” together
--so close in fact that all sleeping along one side would have to turn
at once. It was funny to watch this operation. All, for instance, would
be lying on their right sides. They would begin to get tired, and one
of the wearied ones would sing out to the Sergeant who was in command
of the row--

“Sergeant: let’s spoon the other way.”

That individual would reply:

“All right. Attention! LEFT SPOON!!” and the whole line would at once
flop over on their left sides.

The feet of the row that slept along the east wall on the floor below
us were in a line with the edge of the outer door, and a chalk line
drawn from the crack between the door and the frame to the opposite
wall would touch, say 150 pairs of feet. They were a noisy crowd down
there, and one night their noise so provoked the guard in front of the
door that he called out to them to keep quiet or he would fire in upon
them. They greeted this threat with a chorus profanely uncomplimentary
to the purity of the guard’s ancestry; they did not imply his descent
a la Darwin, from the remote monkey, but more immediate generation
by a common domestic animal. The incensed Rebel opened the door wide
enough to thrust his gun in, and he fired directly down the line of
toes. His piece was apparently loaded with buckshot, and the little
balls must have struck the legs, nipped off the toes, pierced the feet,
and otherwise slightly wounded the lower extremities of fifty men. The
simultaneous shriek that went up was deafening. It was soon found out
that nobody had been hurt seriously, and there was not a little fun
over the occurrence.

One of the prisoners in Libby was Brigadier General Neal Dow, of Maine,
who had then a National reputation as a Temperance advocate, and the
author of the famous Maine Liquor Law. We, whose places were near the
front window, used to see him frequently on the street, accompanied
by a guard. He was allowed, we understood, to visit our sick in the
hospital. His long, snowy beard and hair gave him a venerable and
commanding appearance.

Newsboys seemed to be a thing unknown in Richmond. The papers were
sold on the streets by negro men. The one who frequented our section
with the morning journals had a mellow; rich baritone for which we
would be glad to exchange the shrill cries of our street Arabs. We long
remembered him as one of the peculiar features of Richmond. He had one
unvarying formula for proclaiming his wares. It ran in this wise:

“Great Nooze in de papahs!

“Great Nooze from Orange Coaht House, Virginny!

“Great Nooze from Alexandry, Virginny!

“Great Nooze from Washington City!

“Great Nooze from Chattanoogy, Tennessee!

“Great Nooze from Chahlston, Sou’ Cahlina!

“Great Nooze in depapahs!”

It did not matter to him that the Rebels had not been at some of these
places for months. He would not change for such mere trifles as the
entire evaporation of all possible interest connected with Chattanooga
and Alexandria. He was a true Bourbon Southerner--he learned nothing
and forgot nothing.

There was a considerable trade driven between the prisoners and the
guard at the door. This was a very lucrative position for the latter,
and men of a commercial turn of mind generally managed to get stationed
there. The blockade had cut off the Confederacy’s supplies from the
outer world, and the many trinkets about a man’s person were in good
demand at high prices. The men of the Army of the Potomac, who were
paid regularly, and were always near their supplies, had their pockets
filled with combs, silk handkerchiefs, knives, neckties, gold pens,
pencils, silver watches, playing cards, dice, etc. Such of these as
escaped appropriation by their captors and Dick Turner, were eagerly
bought by the guards, who paid fair prices in Confederate money, or
traded wheat bread, tobacco, daily papers, etc., for them.

There was also considerable brokerage in money, and the manner of doing
this was an admirable exemplification of the folly of the “fiat” money
idea. The Rebels exhausted their ingenuity in framing laws to sustain
the purchasing power of their paper money. It was made legal tender for
all debts public and private; it was decreed that the man who refused
to take it was a public enemy; all the considerations of patriotism
were rallied to its support, and the law provided that any citizens
found trafficking in the money of the enemy--i.e., greenbacks, should
suffer imprisonment in the Penitentiary, and any soldier so offending
should suffer death.

Notwithstanding all this, in Richmond, the head and heart of the
Confederacy, in January, 1864--long before the Rebel cause began to
look at all desperate--it took a dollar to buy such a loaf of bread as
now sells for ten cents; a newspaper was a half dollar, and everything
else in proportion. And still worse: There was not a day during our
stay in Richmond but what one could go to the hole in the door before
which the guard was pacing and call out in a loud whisper:

“Say, Guard: do you want to buy some greenbacks?”

And be sure that the reply would be, after a furtive glance around to
see that no officer was watching:

“Yes; how much do you want for them?”

The reply was then: “Ten for one.”

“All right; how much have you got?”

The Yankee would reply; the Rebel would walk to the farther end of his
beat, count out the necessary amount, and, returning, put up one hand
with it, while with the other he caught hold of one end of the Yankee’s
greenback. At the word, both would release their holds simultaneously,
the exchange was complete, and the Rebel would pace industriously
up and down his beat with the air of the school boy who “ain’t been
a-doin’ nothing.”

There was never any risk in approaching any guard with a proposition of
this kind. I never heard of one refusing to trade for greenbacks, and
if the men on guard could not be restrained by these stringent laws,
what hope could there be of restraining anybody else?

One day we were favored with a visit from the redoubtable General
John H. Morgan, next to J. E. B. Stuart the greatest of Rebel cavalry
leaders. He had lately escaped from the Ohio Penitentiary. He was
invited to Richmond to be made a Major General, and was given a grand
ovation by the citizens and civic Government. He came into our building
to visit a number of the First Kentucky Cavalry (loyal)--captured at
New Philadelphia, East Tennessee--whom he was anxious to have exchanged
for men of his own regiment--the First Kentucky Cavalry (Rebel)--who
were captured at the same time he was. I happened to get very close to
him while he was standing there talking to his old acquaintances, and I
made a mental photograph of him, which still retains all its original
distinctness. He was a tall, heavy man, with a full, coarse, and
somewhat dull face, and lazy, sluggish gray eyes. His long black hair
was carefully oiled, and turned under at the ends, as was the custom
with the rural beaux some years ago. His face was clean shaved, except
a large, sandy goatee. He wore a high silk hat, a black broadcloth
coat, Kentucky jeans pantaloons, neatly fitting boots, and no vest.
There was nothing remotely suggestive of unusual ability or force of
character, and I thought as I studied him that the sting of George D.
Prentice’s bon mot about him was in its acrid truth. Said Mr. Prentice:

“Why don’t somebody put a pistol to Basil Duke’s head, and blow John
Morgan’s brains out!” [Basil Duke was John Morgan’s right hand man.]




CHAPTER XII.

REMARKS AS TO NOMENCLATURE--VACCINATION AND ITS EFFECTS--“N’YAARKER’S”
--THEIR CHARACTERISTICS AND THEIR METHODS OF OPERATING.

Before going any further in this narrative it may be well to state that
the nomenclature employed is not used in any odious or disparaging
sense. It is simply the adoption of the usual terms employed by the
soldiers of both sides in speaking to or of each other. We habitually
spoke of them and to them, as “Rebels,” and “Johnnies;” they of
and to us, as “Yanks,” and “Yankees.” To have said “Confederates,”
“Southerners,” “Secessionists,” or “Federalists,” “Unionists,”
“Northerners” or “Nationalists,” would have seemed useless euphemism.
The plainer terms suited better, and it was a day when things were more
important than names.

For some inscrutable reason the Rebels decided to vaccinate us all.
Why they did this has been one of the unsolved problems of my life. It
is true that there was small pox in the City, and among the prisoners
at Danville; but that any consideration for our safety should have
led them to order general inoculation is not among the reasonable
inferences. But, be that as it may, vaccination was ordered, and
performed. By great good luck I was absent from the building with the
squad drawing rations, when our room was inoculated, so I escaped what
was an infliction to all, and fatal to many. The direst consequences
followed the operation. Foul ulcers appeared on various parts of the
bodies of the vaccinated. In many instances the arms literally rotted
off; and death followed from a corruption of the blood. Frequently the
faces, and other parts of those who recovered, were disfigured by the
ghastly cicatrices of healed ulcers. A special friend of mine, Sergeant
Frank Beverstock--then a member of the Third Virginia Cavalry, (loyal),
and after the war a banker in Bowling Green, O.,--bore upon his temple
to his dying day, (which occurred a year ago), a fearful scar, where
the flesh had sloughed off from the effects of the virus that had
tainted his blood.

This I do not pretend to account for. We thought at the time that the
Rebels had deliberately poisoned the vaccine matter with syphilitic
virus, and it was so charged upon them. I do not now believe that this
was so; I can hardly think that members of the humane profession of
medicine would be guilty of such subtle diabolism--worse even than
poisoning the wells from which an enemy must drink. The explanation
with which I have satisfied myself is that some careless or stupid
practitioner took the vaccinating lymph from diseased human bodies, and
thus infected all with the blood venom, without any conception of what
he was doing. The low standard of medical education in the South makes
this theory quite plausible.

We now formed the acquaintance of a species of human vermin that united
with the Rebels, cold, hunger, lice and the oppression of distraint, to
leave nothing undone that could add to the miseries of our prison life.

These were the fledglings of the slums and dives of New York--graduates
of that metropolitan sink of iniquity where the rogues and criminals of
the whole world meet for mutual instruction in vice.

They were men who, as a rule, had never known, a day of honesty and
cleanliness in their misspent lives; whose fathers, brothers and
constant companions were roughs, malefactors and, felons; whose
mothers, wives and sisters were prostitutes, procuresses and thieves;
men who had from infancy lived in an atmosphere of sin, until it
saturated every fiber of their being as a dweller in a jungle imbibes
malaria by every one of his, millions of pores, until his very marrow
is surcharged with it.

They included representatives from all nationalities, and their
descendants, but the English and Irish elements predominated. They
had an argot peculiar to themselves. It was partly made up of the
“flash” language of the London thieves, amplified and enriched by the
cant vocabulary and the jargon of crime of every European tongue.
They spoke it with a peculiar accent and intonation that made them
instantly recognizable from the roughs of all other Cities. They called
themselves “N’Yaarkers;” we came to know them as “Raiders.”

If everything in the animal world has its counterpart among men, then
these were the wolves, jackals and hyenas of the race at once cowardly
and fierce--audaciously bold when the power of numbers was on their
side, and cowardly when confronted with resolution by anything like an
equality of strength.

Like all other roughs and rascals of whatever degree, they were utterly
worthless as soldiers. There may have been in the Army some habitual
corner loafer, some fistic champion of the bar-room and brothel, some
Terror of Plug Uglyville, who was worth the salt in the hard tack he
consumed, but if there were, I did not form his acquaintance, and I
never heard of any one else who did. It was the rule that the man who
was the readiest in the use of fist and slungshot at home had the
greatest diffidence about forming a close acquaintance with cold lead
in the neighborhood of the front. Thousands of the so-called “dangerous
classes” were recruited, from whom the Government did not receive so
much service as would pay for the buttons on their uniforms. People
expected that they would make themselves as troublesome to the Rebels
as they were to good citizens and the Police, but they were only
pugnacious to the provost guard, and terrible to the people in the rear
of the Army who had anything that could be stolen.

The highest type of soldier which the world has yet produced is the
intelligent, self-respecting American boy, with home, and father and
mother and friends behind him, and duty in front beckoning him on. In
the sixty centuries that war has been a profession no man has entered
its ranks so calmly resolute in confronting danger, so shrewd and
energetic in his aggressiveness, so tenacious of the defense and the
assault, so certain to rise swiftly to the level of every emergency,
as the boy who, in the good old phrase, had been “well-raised” in a
Godfearing home, and went to the field in obedience to a conviction
of duty. His unfailing courage and good sense won fights that the
incompetency or cankering jealousy of commanders had lost. High
officers were occasionally disloyal, or willing to sacrifice their
country to personal pique; still more frequently they were ignorant
and inefficient; but the enlisted man had more than enough innate
soldiership to make amends for these deficiencies, and his superb
conduct often brought honors and promotions to those only who deserved
shame and disaster.

Our “N’Yaarkers,” swift to see any opportunity for dishonest gain, had
taken to bounty-jumping, or, as they termed it, “leppin’ the bounty,”
for a livelihood. Those who were thrust in upon us had followed this
until it had become dangerous, and then deserted to the Rebels. The
latter kept them at Castle Lightning for awhile, and then, rightly
estimating their character, and considering that it was best to trade
them off for a genuine Rebel soldier, sent them in among us, to be
exchanged regularly with us. There was not so much good faith as good
policy shown by this. It was a matter of indifference to the Rebels
how soon our Government shot these deserters after getting them in its
hands again. They were only anxious to use them to get their own men
back.

The moment they came into contact with us our troubles began. They
stole whenever opportunities offered, and they were indefatigable in
making these offer; they robbed by actual force, whenever force would
avail; and more obsequious lick-spittles to power never existed--they
were perpetually on the look-out for a chance to curry favor by
betraying some plan or scheme to those who guarded us.

I saw one day a queer illustration of the audacious side of these
fellows’ characters, and it shows at the same time how brazen
effrontery will sometimes get the better of courage. In a room in an
adjacent building were a number of these fellows, and a still greater
number of East Tennesseeans. These latter were simple, ignorant
folks, but reasonably courageous. About fifty of them were sitting in
a group in one corner of the room, and near them a couple or three
“N’Yaarkers.” Suddenly one of the latter said with an oath:

“I was robbed last night; I lost two silver watches, a couple of rings,
and about fifty dollars in greenbacks. I believe some of you fellers
went through me.”

This was all pure invention; he no more had the things mentioned than
he had purity of heart and a Christian spirit, but the unsophisticated
Tennesseeans did not dream of disputing his statement, and answered in
chorus:

“Oh, no, mister; we didn’t take your things; we ain’t that kind.”

This was like the reply of the lamb to the wolf, in the fable, and the
N’Yaarker retorted with a simulated storm of passion, and a torrent of
oaths:

“---- ---- I know ye did; I know some uv yez has got them; stand up
agin the wall there till I search yez!”

And that whole fifty men, any one of whom was physically equal to the
N’Yaarker, and his superior in point of real courage, actually stood
against the wall, and submitted to being searched and having taken
from them the few Confederate bills they had, and such trinkets as the
searcher took a fancy to.

I was thoroughly disgusted.




CHAPTER XIII.

BELLE ISLE--TERRIBLE SUFFERING FROM COLD AND HUNGER--FATE OF LIEUTENANT
BOISSEUX’S DOG--OUR COMPANY MYSTERY--TERMINATION OF ALL HOPES OF ITS
SOLUTION.

In February my chum--B. B. Andrews, now a physician in Astoria,
Illinois --was brought into our building, greatly to my delight and
astonishment, and from him I obtained the much desired news as to the
fate of my comrades. He told me they had been sent to Belle Isle,
whither he had gone, but succumbing to the rigors of that dreadful
place, he had been taken to the hospital, and, upon his convalesence,
placed in our prison.

Our men were suffering terribly on the island. It was low, damp, and
swept by the bleak, piercing winds that howled up and down the surface
of the James. The first prisoners placed on the island had been given
tents that afforded them some shelter, but these were all occupied when
our battalion came in, so that they were compelled to lie on the snow
and frozen ground, without shelter, covering of any kind, or fire.
During this time the cold had been so intense that the James had frozen
over three times.

The rations had been much worse than ours. The so-called soup had been
diluted to a ridiculous thinness, and meat had wholly disappeared.
So intense became the craving for animal food, that one day when
Lieutenant Boisseux--the Commandant--strolled into the camp with his
beloved white bull-terrier, which was as fat as a Cheshire pig, the
latter was decoyed into a tent, a blanket thrown over him, his throat
cut within a rod of where his master was standing, and he was then
skinned, cut up, cooked, and furnished a savory meal to many hungry men.

When Boisseux learned of the fate of his four-footed friend he was, of
course, intensely enraged, but that was all the good it did him. The
only revenge possible was to sentence more prisoners to ride the cruel
wooden horse which he used as a means of punishment.

Four of our company were already dead. Jacob Lowry and John Beach were
standing near the gate one day when some one snatched the guard’s
blanket from the post where he had hung it, and ran. The enraged
sentry leveled his gun and fired into the crowd. The balls passed
through Lowry’s and Beach’s breasts. Then Charley Osgood, son of our
Lieutenant, a quiet, fair-haired, pleasant-spoken boy, but as brave and
earnest as his gallant father, sank under the combination of hunger and
cold. One stinging morning he was found stiff and stark, on the hard
ground, his bright, frank blue eyes glazed over in death.

One of the mysteries of our company was a tall, slender, elderly
Scotchman, who appeared on the rolls as William Bradford. What his
past life had been, where he had lived, what his profession, whether
married or single, no one ever knew. He came to us while in Camp of
Instruction near Springfield, Illinois, and seemed to have left all his
past behind him as he crossed the line of sentries around the camp.
He never received any letters, and never wrote any; never asked for a
furlough or pass, and never expressed a wish to be elsewhere than in
camp. He was courteous and pleasant, but very reserved. He interfered
with no one, obeyed orders promptly and without remark, and was always
present for duty. Scrupulously neat in dress, always as clean-shaved as
an old-fashioned gentleman of the world, with manners and conversation
that showed him to have belonged to a refined and polished circle,
he was evidently out of place as a private soldier in a company of
reckless and none-too-refined young Illinois troopers, but he never
availed himself of any of the numerous opportunities offered to change
his associations. His elegant penmanship would have secured him an easy
berth and better society at headquarters, but he declined to accept a
detail. He became an exciting mystery to a knot of us imaginative young
cubs, who sorted up out of the reminiscential rag-bag of high colors
and strong contrasts with which the sensational literature that we
most affected had plentifully stored our minds, a half-dozen intensely
emotional careers for him. We spent much time in mentally trying these
on, and discussing which fitted him best. We were always expecting
a denouement that would come like a lightning flash and reveal his
whole mysterious past, showing him to have been the disinherited scion
of some noble house, a man of high station, who was expiating some
fearful crime; an accomplished villain eluding his pursuers--in short,
a Somebody who would be a fitting hero for Miss Braddon’s or Wilkie
Collins’s literary purposes. We never got but two clues of his past,
and they were faint ones. One day, he left lying near me a small copy
of “Paradise Lost,” that he always carried with him. Turning over its
leaves I found all of Milton’s bitter invectives against women heavily
underscored. Another time, while on guard with him, he spent much of
his time in writing some Latin verses in very elegant chirography
upon the white painted boards of a fence along which his beat ran. We
pressed in all the available knowledge of Latin about camp, and found
that the tenor of the verses was very uncomplimentary to that charming
sex which does us the honor of being our mothers and sweethearts.
These evidences we accepted as sufficient demonstration that there was
a woman at the bottom of the mystery, and made us more impatient for
further developments. These were never to come. Bradford pined away an
Belle Isle, and grew weaker, but no less reserved, each day. At length,
one bitter cold night ended it all. He was found in the morning stone
dead, with his iron-gray hair frozen fast to the ground, upon which he
lay. Our mystery had to remain unsolved. There was nothing about his
person to give any hint as to his past.




CHAPTER XIV.

HOPING FOR EXCHANGE--AN EXPOSITION OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHANCES --OFF
FOR ANDERSONVILLE--UNCERTAINTY AS TO OUR DESTINATION--ARRIVAL AT
ANDERSONVILLE.

As each lagging day closed, we confidently expected that the next would
bring some news of the eagerly-desired exchange. We hopefully assured
each other that the thing could not be delayed much longer; that the
Spring was near, the campaign would soon open, and each government
would make an effort to get all its men into the field, and this would
bring about a transfer of prisoners. A Sergeant of the Seventh Indiana
Infantry stated his theory to me this way:

“You know I’m just old lightnin’ on chuck-a-luck. Now the way I bet is
this: I lay down, say on the ace, an’ it don’t come up; I just double
my bet on the ace, an’ keep on doublin’ every time it loses, until at
last it comes up an’ then I win a bushel o’ money, and mebbe bust the
bank. You see the thing’s got to come up some time; an’ every time it
don’t come up makes it more likely to come up the next time. It’s just
the same way with this ’ere exchange. The thing’s got to happen some
day, an’ every day that it don’t happen increases the chances that it
will happen the next day.”

Some months later I folded the sanguine Sergeant’s stiffening hands
together across his fleshless ribs, and helped carry his body out to
the dead-house at Andersonville, in order to get a piece of wood to
cook my ration of meal with.

On the evening of the 17th of February, 1864, we were ordered to get
ready to move at daybreak the next morning. We were certain this could
mean nothing else than exchange, and our exaltation was such that we
did little sleeping that night. The morning was very cold, but we
sang and joked as we marched over the creaking bridge, on our way to
the cars. We were packed so tightly in these that it was impossible
to even sit down, and we rolled slow ly away after a wheezing engine
to Petersburg, whence we expected to march to the exchange post. We
reached Petersburg before noon, and the cars halted there along time,
we momentarily expecting an order to get out. Then the train started up
and moved out of the City toward the southeast. This was inexplicable,
but after we had proceeded this way for several hours some one
conceived the idea that the Rebels, to avoid treating with Butler, were
taking us into the Department of some other commander to exchange us.
This explanation satisfied us, and our spirits rose again.

Night found us at Gaston, N. C., where we received a few crackers for
rations, and changed cars. It was dark, and we resorted to a little
strategy to secure more room. About thirty of us got into a tight
box car, and immediately announced that it was too full to admit any
more. When an officer came along with another squad to stow away, we
would yell out to him to take some of the men out, as we were crowded
unbearably. In the mean time everybody in the car would pack closely
around the door, so as to give the impression that the car was densely
crowded. The Rebel would look convinced, and demand:

“Why, how many men have you got in de cah?”

Then one of us would order the imaginary host in the invisible recesses
to--

“Stand still there, and be counted,” while he would gravely count up to
one hundred or one hundred and twenty, which was the utmost limit of
the car, and the Rebel would hurry off to put his prisoners somewhere
else. We managed to play this successfully during the whole journey,
and not only obtained room to lie down in the car, but also drew three
or four times as many rations as were intended for us, so that while we
at no time had enough, we were farther from starvation than our less
strategic companions.

The second afternoon we arrived at Raleigh, the capitol of North
Carolina, and were camped in a piece of timber, and shortly after dark
orders were issued to us all to lie flat on the ground and not rise up
till daylight. About the middle of the night a man belonging to a New
Jersey regiment, who had apparently forgotten the order, stood up, and
was immediately shot dead by the guard.

For four or five days more the decrepit little locomotive strained
along, dragging after it the rattling’ old cars. The scenery was
intensely monotonous. It was a flat, almost unending, stretch of pine
barrens and the land so poor that a disgusted Illinoisan, used to the
fertility of the great American Bottom, said rather strongly, that,

“By George, they’d have to manure this ground before they could even
make brick out of it.”

It was a surprise to all of us who had heard so much of the wealth of
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to find the soil
a sterile sand bank, interspersed with swamps.

We had still no idea of where we were going. We only knew that our
general course was southward, and that we had passed through the
Carolinas, and were in Georgia. We furbished up our school knowledge
of geography and endeavored to recall something of the location of
Raleigh, Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta, through which we passed, but
the attempt was not a success.

Late on the afternoon of the 25th of February the Seventh Indiana
Sergeant approached me with the inquiry:

“Do you know where Macon is?”

The place had not then become as well known as it was afterward.

It seemed to me that I had read something of Macon in Revolutionary
history, and that it was a fort on the sea coast. He said that the
guard had told him that we were to be taken to a point near that place,
and we agreed that it was probably a new place of exchange. A little
later we passed through the town of Macon, Ga, and turned upon a road
that led almost due south.

About midnight the train stopped, and we were ordered off. We were in
the midst of a forest of tall trees that loaded the air with the heavy
balsamic odor peculiar to pine trees. A few small rude houses were
scattered around near.

Stretching out into the darkness was a double row of great heaps of
burning pitch pine, that smoked and flamed fiercely, and lit up a
little space around in the somber forest with a ruddy glare. Between
these two rows lay a road, which we were ordered to take.

The scene was weird and uncanny. I had recently read the “Iliad,” and
the long lines of huge fires reminded me of that scene in the first
book, where the Greeks burn on the sea shore the bodies of those
smitten by Apollo’s pestilential-arrows

          For nine long nights, through all the dusky air,
          The pyres, thick flaming shot a dismal glare.

Five hundred weary men moved along slowly through double lines of
guards. Five hundred men marched silently towards the gates that were
to shut out life and hope from most of them forever. A quarter of a
mile from the railroad we came to a massive palisade of great squared
logs standing upright in the ground. The fires blazed up and showed
us a section of these, and two massive wooden gates, with heavy iron
hinges and bolts. They swung open as we stood there and we passed
through into the space beyond.

We were in Andersonville.




CHAPTER XV.

GEORGIA--A LEAN AND HUNGRY LAND--DIFFERENCE BETWEEN UPPER AND LOWER
GEORGIA--THE PILLAGE OF ANDERSONVILLE.

As the next nine months of the existence of those of us who survived
were spent in intimate connection with the soil of Georgia, and, as it
exercised a potential influence upon our comfort and well-being, or
rather lack of these--a mention of some of its peculiar characteristics
may help the reader to a fuller comprehension of the conditions
surrounding us--our environment, as Darwin would say.

Georgia, which, next to Texas, is the largest State in the South, and
has nearly twenty-five per cent. more area than the great State of New
York, is divided into two distinct and widely differing sections, by a
geological line extending directly across the State from Augusta, on
the Savannah River, through Macon, on the Ocmulgee, to Columbus, on the
Chattahoochie. That part lying to the north and west of this line is
usually spoken of as “Upper Georgia;” while that lying to the south and
east, extending to the Atlantic Ocean and the Florida line, is called
“Lower Georgia.” In this part of the State--though far removed from
each other--were the prisons of Andersonville, Savannah, Millen and
Blackshear, in which we were incarcerated one after the other.

Upper Georgia--the capital of which is Atlanta--is a fruitful,
productive, metalliferous region, that will in time become quite
wealthy. Lower Georgia, which has an extent about equal to that of
Indiana, is not only poorer now than a worn-out province of Asia Minor,
but in all probability will ever remain so.

It is a starved, sterile land, impressing one as a desert in the first
stages of reclamation into productive soil, or a productive soil in
the last steps of deterioration into a desert. It is a vast expanse
of arid, yellow sand, broken at intervals by foul swamps, with a
jungle-life growth of unwholesome vegetation, and teeming With venomous
snakes, and all manner of hideous crawling thing.

The original forest still stands almost unbroken on this wide stretch
of thirty thousand square miles, but it does not cover it as we say
of forests in more favored lands. The tall, solemn pines, upright and
symmetrical as huge masts, and wholly destitute of limbs, except the
little, umbrella-like crest at the very top, stand far apart from each
other in an unfriendly isolation. There is no fraternal interlacing of
branches to form a kindly, umbrageous shadow. Between them is no genial
undergrowth of vines, shrubs, and demi-trees, generous in fruits,
berries and nuts, such as make one of the charms of Northern forests.
On the ground is no rich, springing sod of emerald green, fragrant
with the elusive sweetness of white clover, and dainty flowers, but
a sparse, wiry, famished grass, scattered thinly over the surface in
tufts and patches, like the hair on a mangy cur.

The giant pines seem to have sucked up into their immense boles all the
nutriment in the earth, and starved out every minor growth. So wide and
clean is the space between them, that one can look through the forest
in any direction for miles, with almost as little interference with the
view as on a prairie. In the swampier parts the trees are lower, and
their limbs are hung with heavy festoons of the gloomy Spanish moss, or
“death moss,” as it is more frequently called, because where it grows
rankest the malaria is the deadliest. Everywhere Nature seems sad,
subdued and somber.

I have long entertained a peculiar theory to account for the decadence
and ruin of countries. My reading of the world’s history seems to teach
me that when a strong people take possession of a fertile land, they
reduce it to cultivation, thrive upon its bountifulness, multiply into
millions the mouths to be fed from it, tax it to the last limit of
production of the necessities of life, take from it continually, and
give nothing back, starve and overwork it as cruel, grasping men do a
servant or a beast, and when at last it breaks down under the strain,
it revenges itself by starving many of them with great famines, while
the others go off in search of new countries to put through the same
process of exhaustion. We have seen one country after another undergo
this process as the seat of empire took its westward way, from the
cradle of the race on the banks of the Oxus to the fertile plains in
the Valley of the Euphrates. Impoverishing these, men next sought the
Valley of the Nile, then the Grecian Peninsula; next Syracuse and the
Italian Peninsula, then the Iberian Peninsula, and the African shores
of the Mediterranean. Exhausting all these, they were deserted for the
French, German and English portions of Europe. The turn of the latter
is now come; famines are becoming terribly frequent, and mankind is
pouring into the virgin fields of America.

Lower Georgia, the Carolinas and Eastern Virginia have all the
characteristics of these starved and worn-out lands. It would seem as
if, away back in the distance of ages, some numerous and civilized race
had drained from the soil the last atom of food-producing constituents,
and that it is now slowly gathering back, as the centuries pass, the
elements that have been wrung from the land.

Lower Georgia is very thinly settled. Much of the land is still in
the hands of the Government. The three or four railroads which pass
through it have little reference to local traffic. There are no towns
along them as a rule; stations are made every ten miles, and not named,
but numbered, as “Station No. 4”--“No. 10”, etc. The roads were built
as through lines, to bring to the seaboard the rich products of the
interior.

Andersonville is one of the few stations dignified with a same,
probably because it contained some half dozen of shabby houses, whereas
at the others there was usually nothing more than a mere open shed, to
shelter goods and travelers. It is on a rudely constructed, rickety
railroad, that runs from Macon to Albany, the head of navigation on
the Flint River, which is, one hundred and six miles from Macon, and
two hundred and fifty from the Gulf of Mexico. Andersonville is about
sixty miles from Macon, and, consequently, about three hundred miles
from the Gulf. The camp was merely a hole cut in the wilderness. It was
as remote a point from, our armies, as they then lay, as the Southern
Confederacy could give. The nearest was Sherman, at Chattanooga, four
hundred miles away, and on the other side of a range of mountains
hundreds of miles wide.

To us it seemed beyond the last forlorn limits of civilization. We felt
that we were more completely at the mercy of our foes than ever. While
in Richmond we were in the heart of the Confederacy; we were in the
midst of the Rebel military and, civil force, and were surrounded on
every hand by visible evidences of the great magnitude of that power,
but this, while it enforced our ready submission, did not overawe us
depressingly, We knew that though the Rebels were all about us in great
force, our own men were also near, and in still greater force--that
while they were very strong our army was still stronger, and there was
no telling what day this superiority of strength, might be demonstrated
in such a way as to decisively benefit us.

But here we felt as did the Ancient Mariner:

               Alone on a wide, wide sea,
               So lonely ’twas that God himself
               Scarce seemed there to be.




CHAPTER XVI.

WAKING UP IN ANDERSONVILLE--SOME DESCRIPTION OF THE PLACE--OUR FIRST
MAIL--BUILDING SHELTER--GEN. WINDER--HIMSELF AND LINEAGE.

We roused up promptly with the dawn to take a survey of our new abiding
place. We found ourselves in an immense pen, about one thousand feet
long by eight hundred wide, as a young surveyor--a member of the
Thirty-fourth Ohio--informed us after he had paced it off. He estimated
that it contained about sixteen acres. The walls were formed by pine
logs twenty-five feet long, from two to three feet in diameter, hewn
square, set into the ground to a depth of five feet, and placed so
close together as to leave no crack through which the country outside
could be seen. There being five feet of the logs in the ground, the
wall was, of course, twenty feet high. This manner of enclosure was in
some respects superior to a wall of masonry. It was equally unscalable,
and much more difficult to undermine or batter down.

The pen was longest due north and south. It was divided in the center
by a creek about a yard wide and ten inches deep, running from west to
east. On each side of this was a quaking bog of slimy ooze one hundred
and fifty feet wide, and so yielding that one attempting to walk upon
it would sink to the waist. From this swamp the sand-hills sloped north
and south to the stockade. All the trees inside the stockade, save two,
had been cut down and used in its construction. All the rank vegetation
of the swamp had also been cut off.

There were two entrances to the stockade, one on each side of the
creek, midway between it and the ends, and called respectively the
“North Gate” and the “South Gate.” These were constructed double, by
building smaller stockades around them on the outside, with another
set of gates. When prisoners or wagons with rations were brought in,
they were first brought inside the outer gates, which were carefully
secured, before the inner gates were opened. This was done to prevent
the gates being carried by a rush by those confined inside.

At regular intervals along the palisades were little perches, upon
which stood guards, who overlooked the whole inside of the prison.

The only view we had of the outside was that obtained by looking from
the highest points of the North or South Sides across the depression
where the stockade crossed the swamp. In this way we could see about
forty acres at a time of the adjoining woodland, or say one hundred and
sixty acres altogether, and this meager landscape had to content us for
the next half year.

Before our inspection was finished, a wagon drove in with rations, and
a quart of meal, a sweet potato and a few ounces of salt beef were
issued to each one of us.

In a few minutes we were all hard at work preparing our first meal in
Andersonville. The debris of the forest left a temporary abundance
of fuel, and we had already a cheerful fire blazing for every little
squad. There were a number of tobacco presses in the rooms we occupied
in Richmond, and to each of these was a quantity of sheets of tin,
evidently used to put between the layers of tobacco. The deft hands of
the mechanics among us bent these up into square pans, which were real
handy cooking utensils, holding about--a quart. Water was carried in
them from the creek; the meal mixed in them to a dough, or else boiled
as mush in the same vessels; the potatoes were boiled; and their final
service was to hold a little meal to be carefully browned, and then
water boiled upon it, so as to form a feeble imitation of coffee. I
found my education at Jonesville in the art of baking a hoe-cake now
came in good play, both for myself and companions. Taking one of the
pieces of tin which had not yet been made into a pan, we spread upon
it a layer of dough about a half-inch thick. Propping this up nearly
upright before the fire, it was soon nicely browned over. This process
made it sweat itself loose from the tin, when it was turned over and
the bottom browned also. Save that it was destitute of salt, it was
quite a toothsome bit of nutriment for a hungry man, and I recommend my
readers to try making a “pone” of this kind once, just to see what it
was like.

The supreme indifference with which the Rebels always treated the
matter of cooking utensils for us, excited my wonder. It never seemed
to occur to them that we could have any more need of vessels for our
food than cattle or swine. Never, during my whole prison life, did I
see so much as a tin cup or a bucket issued to a prisoner. Starving men
were driven to all sorts of shifts for want of these. Pantaloons or
coats were pulled off and their sleeves or legs used to draw a mess’s
meal in. Boots were common vessels for carrying water, and when the
feet of these gave way the legs were ingeniously closed up with pine
pegs, so as to form rude leathern buckets. Men whose pocket knives had
escaped the search at the gates made very ingenious little tubs and
buckets, and these devices enabled us to get along after a fashion.

After our meal was disposed of, we held a council on the situation.
Though we had been sadly disappointed in not being exchanged, it
seemed that on the whole our condition had been bettered. This first
ration was a decided improvement on those of the Pemberton building;
we had left the snow and ice behind at Richmond--or rather at some
place between Raleigh, N. C., and Columbia, S. C.--and the air here,
though chill, was not nipping, but bracing. It looked as if we would
have a plenty of wood for shelter and fuel, it was certainly better
to have sixteen acres to roam over than the stiffing confines of a
building; and, still better, it seemed as if there would be plenty of
opportunities to get beyond the stockade, and attempt a journey through
the woods to that blissful land --“Our lines.”

We settled down to make the best of things. A Rebel Sergeant came
in presently and arranged us in hundreds. We subdivided these into
messes of twenty-five, and began devising means for shelter. Nothing
showed the inborn capacity of the Northern soldier to take care of
himself better than the way in which we accomplished this with the
rude materials at our command. No ax, spade nor mattock was allowed
us by the Rebels, who treated us in regard to these the same as in
respect to culinary vessels. The only tools were a few pocket-knives,
and perhaps half-a-dozen hatchets which some infantrymen-principally
members of the Third Michigan--were allowed to retain. Yet, despite
all these drawbacks, we had quite a village of huts erected in a few
days,--nearly enough, in fact, to afford tolerable shelter for the
whole five hundred of us first-comers.

The wither and poles that grew in the swamp were bent into the shape
of the semi-circular bows that support the canvas covers of army
wagons, and both ends thrust in the ground. These formed the timbers
of our dwellings. They were held in place by weaving in, basket-wise,
a network of briers and vines. Tufts of the long leaves which are the
distinguishing characteristic of the Georgia pine (popularly known as
the “long-leaved pine”) were wrought into this network until a thatch
was formed, that was a fair protection against the rain--it was like
the Irishman’s unglazed window-sash, which “kep’ out the coarsest uv
the cold.”

The results accomplished were as astonishing to us as to the Rebels,
who would have lain unsheltered upon the sand until bleached out like
field-rotted flax, before thinking to protect themselves in this
way. As our village was approaching completion, the Rebel Sergeant
who called the roll entered. He was very odd-looking. The cervical
muscles were distorted in such a way as to suggest to us the name of
“Wry-necked Smith,” by which we always designated him. Pete Bates, of
the Third Michigan, who was the wag of our squad, accounted for Smith’s
condition by saying that while on dress parade once the Colonel of
Smith’s regiment had commanded “eyes right,” and then forgot to give
the order “front.” Smith, being a good soldier, had kept his eyes in
the position of gazing at the buttons of the third man to the right,
waiting for the order to restore them to their natural direction,
until they had become permanently fixed in their obliquity and he was
compelled to go through life taking a biased view of all things.

Smith walked in, made a diagonal survey of the encampment, which, if
he had ever seen “Mitchell’s Geography,” probably reminded him of the
picture of a Kaffir village, in that instructive but awfully dull book,
and then expressed the opinion that usually welled up to every Rebel’s
lips:

“Well, I’ll be durned, if you Yanks don’t just beat the devil.”

Of course, we replied with the well-worn prison joke, that we supposed
we did, as we beat the Rebels, who were worse than the devil.

There rode in among us, a few days after our arrival, an old man whose
collar bore the wreathed stars of a Major General. Heavy white locks
fell from beneath his slouched hat, nearly to his shoulders. Sunken
gray eyes, too dull and cold to light up, marked a hard, stony face,
the salient feature of which was a thin-upped, compressed mouth, with
corners drawn down deeply--the mouth which seems the world over to be
the index of selfish, cruel, sulky malignance. It is such a mouth as
has the school-boy--the coward of the play ground, who delights in
pulling off the wings of flies. It is such a mouth as we can imagine
some remorseless inquisitor to have had--that is, not an inquisitor
filled with holy zeal for what he mistakenly thought the cause of
Christ demanded, but a spleeny, envious, rancorous shaveling, who
tortured men from hatred of their superiority to him, and sheer love of
inflicting pain.

The rider was John H. Winder, Commissary General of Prisoners,
Baltimorean renegade and the malign genius to whose account should be
charged the deaths of more gallant men than all the inquisitors of the
world ever slew by the less dreadful rack and wheel. It was he who in
August could point to the three thousand and eighty-one new made graves
for that month, and exultingly tell his hearer that he was “doing more
for the Confederacy than twenty regiments.”

His lineage was in accordance with his character. His father was that
General William H. Winder, whose poltroonery at Bladensburg, in 1814,
nullified the resistance of the gallant Commodore Barney, and gave
Washington to the British.

The father was a coward and an incompetent; the son, always cautiously
distant from the scene of hostilities, was the tormentor of those whom
the fortunes of war, and the arms of brave men threw into his hands.

Winder gazed at us stonily for a few minutes without speaking, and,
turning, rode out again.

Our troubles, from that hour, rapidly increased.




CHAPTER XVII.

THE PLANTATION NEGROS--NOT STUPID TO BE LOYAL--THEIR DITHYRAMBIC MUSIC
--COPPERHEAD OPINION OF LONGFELLOW.

The stockade was not quite finished at the time of our arrival--a gap
of several hundred feet appearing at the southwest corner. A gang of
about two hundred negros were at work felling trees, hewing legs, and
placing them upright in the trenches. We had an opportunity--soon
to disappear forever--of studying the workings of the “peculiar
institution” in its very home. The negros were of the lowest field-hand
class, strong, dull, ox-like, but each having in our eyes an admixture
of cunning and secretiveness that their masters pretended was not in
them. Their demeanor toward us illustrated this. We were the objects
of the most supreme interest to them, but when near us and in the
presence of a white Rebel, this interest took the shape of stupid,
open-eyed, open-mouthed wonder, something akin to the look on the face
of the rustic lout, gazing for the first time upon a locomotive or a
steam threshing machine. But if chance threw one of them near us when
he thought himself unobserved by the Rebels, the blank, vacant face
lighted up with an entirely different expression. He was no longer the
credulous yokel who believed the Yankees were only slightly modified
devils, ready at any instant to return to their original horn-and-tail
condition and snatch him away to the bluest kind of perdition; he knew,
apparently quite as well as his master, that they were in some way his
friends and allies, and he lost no opportunity in communicating his
appreciation of that fact, and of offering his services in any possible
way. And these offers were sincere. It is the testimony of every Union
prisoner in the South that he was never betrayed by or disappointed in
a field-negro, but could always approach any one of them with perfect
confidence in his extending all the aid in his power, whether as a
guide to escape, as sentinel to signal danger, or a purveyor of food.
These services were frequently attended with the greatest personal
risk, but they were none the less readily undertaken. This applies only
to the field-hands; the house servants were treacherous and wholly
unreliable. Very many of our men who managed to get away from the
prisons were recaptured through their betrayal by house servants, but
none were retaken where a field hand could prevent it.

We were much interested in watching the negro work. They wove in a
great deal of their peculiar, wild, mournful music, whenever the
character of the labor permitted. They seemed to sing the music for
the music’s sake alone, and were as heedless of the fitness of the
accompanying words, as the composer of a modern opera is of his
libretto. One middle aged man, with a powerful, mellow baritone, like
the round, full notes of a French horn, played by a virtuoso, was the
musical leader of the party. He never seemed to bother himself about
air, notes or words, but improvised all as he went along, and he sang
as the spirit moved him. He would suddenly break out with--

     “Oh, he’s gone up dah, nevah to come back agin,”

At this every darkey within hearing would roll out, in admirable
consonance with the pitch, air and time started by the leader--

     “O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!”

Then would ring out from the leader as from the throbbing lips of a
silver trumpet,

     “Lord bress him soul; I done hope he is happy now!”

And the antiphonal two hundred would chant back

     “O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!”

And so on for hours. They never seemed to weary of singing, and we
certainly did not of listening to them. The absolute independence
of the conventionalities of tune and sentiment, gave them freedom
to wander through a kaleideoscopic variety of harmonic effects, as
spontaneous and changeful as the song of a bird.

I sat one evening, long after the shadows of night had fallen upon the
hillside, with one of my chums--a Frank Berkstresser, of the Ninth
Maryland Infantry, who before enlisting was a mathematical tutor in
college at Hancock, Maryland. As we listened to the unwearying flow of
melody from the camp of the laborers, I thought of and repeated to him
Longfellow’s fine lines:

THE SLAVE SINGING AT MIDNIGHT.

And the voice of his devotion
Filled my soul with strong emotion;
For its tones by turns were glad
Sweetly solemn, wildly sad.

          Paul and Silas, in their prison,
          Sang of Christ, the Lord arisen,
          And an earthquake’s arm of might
          Broke their dungeon gates at night.

          But, alas, what holy angel
          Brings the slave this glad evangel
          And what earthquake’s arm of might.
          Breaks his prison gags at night.

Said I: “Now, isn’t that fine, Berkstresser?”

He was a Democrat, of fearfully pro-slavery ideas, and he replied,
sententiously:

“O, the poetry’s tolerable, but the sentiment’s damnable.”




CHAPTER XVIII.

SCHEMES AND PLANS TO ESCAPE--SCALING THE STOCKADE--ESTABLISHING THE
DEAD LINE--THE FIRST MAN KILLED.

The official designation of our prison was “Camp Sumpter,” but this
was scarcely known outside of the Rebel documents, reports and orders.
It was the same way with the prison five miles from Millen, to which
we were afterward transferred. The Rebels styled it officially “Camp
Lawton,” but we called it always “Millen.”

Having our huts finished, the next solicitude was about escape,
and this was the burden of our thoughts, day and night. We held
conferences, at which every man was required to contribute all the
geographical knowledge of that section of Georgia that he might have
left over from his schoolboy days, and also that gained by persistent
questioning of such guards and other Rebels as he had come in contact
with. When first landed in the prison we were as ignorant of our
whereabouts as if we had been dropped into the center of Africa. But
one of the prisoners was found to have a fragment of a school atlas,
in which was an outline map of Georgia, that had Macon, Atlanta,
Milledgeville, and Savannah laid down upon it. As we knew we had
come southward from Macon, we felt pretty certain we were in the
southwestern corner of the State. Conversations with guards and others
gave us the information that the Chattahooche flowed some two score of
miles to the westward, and that the Flint lay a little nearer on the
east. Our map showed that these two united and flowed together into
Appalachicola Bay, where, some of us remembered, a newspaper item had
said that we had gunboats stationed. The creek that ran through the
stockade flowed to the east, and we reasoned that if we followed its
course we would be led to the Flint, down which we could float on a log
or raft to the Appalachicola. This was the favorite scheme of the party
with which I sided. Another party believed the most feasible plan was
to go northward, and endeavor to gain the mountains, and thence get
into East Tennessee.

But the main thing was to get away from the stockade; this, as the
French say of all first steps, was what would cost.

Our first attempt was made about a week after our arrival. We found two
logs on the east side that were a couple of feet shorter than the rest,
and it seemed as if they could be successfully scaled. About fifty of
us resolved to make the attempt. We made a rope twenty-five or thirty
feet long, and strong enough to bear a man, out of strings and strips
of cloth. A stout stick was fastened to the end, so that it would catch
on the logs on either side of the gap. On a night dark enough to favor
our scheme, we gathered together, drew cuts to determine each boy’s
place in the line, fell in single rank, according to this arrangement,
and marched to the place. The line was thrown skillfully, the stick
caught fairly in the notch, and the boy who had drawn number one
climbed up amid a suspense so keen that I could hear my heart beating.
It seemed ages before he reached the top, and that the noise he made
must certainly attract the attention of the guard. It did not. We saw
our comrade’s. figure outlined against the sky as he slid, over the
top, and then heard the dull thump as he sprang to the ground on the
other side. “Number two,” was whispered by our leader, and he performed
the feat as successfully as his predecessor. “Number, three,” and he
followed noiselessly and quickly. Thus it went on, until, just as we
heard number fifteen drop, we also heard a Rebel voice say in a vicious
undertone:

“Halt! halt, there, d--n you!”

This was enough. The game was up; we were discovered, and the remaining
thirty-five of us left that locality with all the speed in our heels,
getting away just in time to escape a volley which a squad of guards,
posted in the lookouts, poured upon the spot where we had been standing.

The next morning the fifteen who had got over the Stockade were brought
in, each chained to a sixty-four pound ball. Their story was that one
of the N’Yaarkers, who had become cognizant of our scheme, had sought
to obtain favor in the Rebel eyes by betraying us. The Rebels stationed
a squad at the crossing place, and as each man dropped down from the
Stockade he was caught by the shoulder, the muzzle of a revolver thrust
into his face, and an order to surrender whispered into his ear. It was
expected that the guards in the sentry-boxes would do such execution
among those of us still inside as would prove a warning to other
would-be escapes. They were defeated in this benevolent intention by
the readiness with which we divined the meaning of that incautiously
loud halt, and our alacrity in leaving the unhealthy locality.

The traitorous N’Yaarker was rewarded with a detail into the commissary
department, where he fed and fattened like a rat that had secured
undisturbed homestead rights in the center of a cheese. When the
miserable remnant of us were leaving Andersonville months afterward,
I saw him, sleek, rotund, and well-clothed, lounging leisurely in the
door of a tent. He regarded us a moment contemptuously, and then went
on conversing with a fellow N’Yaarker, in the foul slang that none but
such as he were low enough to use.

I have always imagined that the fellow returned home, at the close of
the war, and became a prominent member of Tweed’s gang.

We protested against the barbarity of compelling men to wear irons
for exercising their natural right of attempting to escape, but no
attention was paid to our protest.

Another result of this abortive effort was the establishment of the
notorious “Dead Line.” A few days later a gang of negros came in and
drove a line of stakes down at a distance of twenty feet from the
stockade. They nailed upon this a strip of stuff four inches wide, and
then an order was issued that if this was crossed, or even touched, the
guards would fire upon the offender without warning.

Our surveyor figured up this new contraction of our space, and came to
the conclusion that the Dead Line and the Swamp took up about three
acres, and we were left now only thirteen acres. This was not of much
consequence then, however, as we still had plenty of room.

The first man was killed the morning after the Dead-Line was put up.
The victim was a German, wearing the white crescent of the Second
Division of the Eleventh Corps, whom we had nicknamed “Sigel.” Hardship
and exposure had crazed him, and brought on a severe attack of St.
Vitus’s dance. As he went hobbling around with a vacuous grin upon
his face, he spied an old piece of cloth lying on the ground inside
the Dead Line. He stooped down and reached under for it. At that
instant the guard fired. The charge of ball-and-buck entered the poor
old fellow’s shoulder and tore through his body. He fell dead, still
clutching the dirty rag that had cost him his Life.




CHAPTER XIX.

CAPT. HENRI WIRZ--SOME DESCRIPTION OF A SMALL-MINDED PERSONAGE, WHO
GAINED GREAT NOTORIETY--FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH HIS DISCIPLINARY METHOD.

The emptying of the prisons at Danville and Richmond into Andersonville
went on slowly during the month of March. They came in by train loads
of from five hundred to eight hundred, at intervals of two or three
days. By the end of the month there were about five thousand in the
stockade. There was a fair amount of space for this number, and as yet
we suffered no inconvenience from our crowding, though most persons
would fancy that thirteen acres of ground was a rather limited area for
five thousand men to live, move and have their being a upon. Yet a few
weeks later we were to see seven times that many packed into that space.

One morning a new Rebel officer came in to superintend calling the
roll. He was an undersized, fidgety man, with an insignificant face,
and a mouth that protruded like a rabbit’s. His bright little eyes,
like those of a squirrel or a rat, assisted in giving his countenance
a look of kinship to the family of rodent animals--a genus which
lives by stealth and cunning, subsisting on that which it can steal
away from stronger and braver creatures. He was dressed in a pair of
gray trousers, with the other part of his body covered with a calico
garment, like that which small boys used to wear, called “waists.”
This was fastened to the pantaloons by buttons, precisely as was the
custom with the garments of boys struggling with the orthography of
words in two syllables. Upon his head was perched a little gray cap.
Sticking in his belt, and fastened to his wrist by a strap two or three
feet long, was one of those formidable looking, but harmless English
revolvers, that have ten barrels around the edge of the cylinder, and
fire a musket-bullet from the center. The wearer of this composite
costume, and bearer of this amateur arsenal, stepped nervously about
and sputtered volubly in very broken English. He said to Wry-Necked
Smith:

“Py Gott, you don’t vatch dem dam Yankees glose enough! Dey are
schlippin’ rount, and peatin’ you efery dimes.”

This was Captain Henri Wirz, the new commandant of the interior of
the prison. There has been a great deal of misapprehension of the
character of Wirz. He is usually regarded as a villain of large mental
caliber, and with a genius for cruelty. He was nothing of the kind. He
was simply contemptible, from whatever point of view he was studied.
Gnat-brained, cowardly, and feeble natured, he had not a quality that
commanded respect from any one who knew him. His cruelty did not seem
designed so much as the ebullitions of a peevish, snarling little
temper, united to a mind incapable of conceiving the results of his
acts, or understanding the pain he was Inflicting.

I never heard anything of his profession or vocation before entering
the army. I always believed, however, that he had been a cheap clerk
in a small dry-goods store, a third or fourth rate book-keeper, or
something similar. Imagine, if you please, one such, who never had
brains or self-command sufficient to control himself, placed in command
of thirty-five thousand men. Being a fool he could not help being an
infliction to them, even with the best of intentions, and Wirz was not
troubled with good intentions.

I mention the probability of his having been a dry-goods clerk or
book-keeper, not with any disrespect to two honorable vocations, but
because Wirz had had some training as an accountant, and this was
what gave him the place over us. Rebels, as a rule, are astonishingly
ignorant of arithmetic and accounting, generally. They are good shots,
fine horsemen, ready speakers and ardent politicians, but, like all
noncommercial people, they flounder hopelessly in what people of this
section would consider simple mathematical processes. One of our
constant amusements was in befogging and “beating” those charged with
calling rolls and issuing rations. It was not at all difficult at times
to make a hundred men count as a hundred and ten, and so on.

Wirz could count beyond one hundred, and this determined his selection
for the place. His first move was a stupid change. We had been grouped
in the natural way into hundreds and thousands. He re-arranged the men
in “squads” of ninety, and three of these--two hundred and seventy men
--into a “detachment.” The detachments were numbered in order from the
North Gate, and the squads were numbered “one, two, three.” On the
rolls this was stated after the man’s name. For instance, a chum of
mine, and in the same squad with me, was Charles L. Soule, of the Third
Michigan Infantry. His name appeared on the rolls:

“Chas. L. Soule, priv. Co. E, 8d Mich. Inf., 1-2.”

That is, he belonged to the Second Squad of the First Detachment.

Where Wirz got his, preposterous idea of organization from has always
been a mystery to me. It was awkward in every way--in drawing rations,
counting, dividing into messes, etc.

Wirz was not long in giving us a taste of his quality. The next morning
after his first appearance he came in when roll-call was sounded, and
ordered all the squads and detachments to form, and remain standing in
ranks until all were counted. Any soldier will say that there is no
duty more annoying and difficult than standing still in ranks for any
considerable length of time, especially when there is nothing to do
or to engage the attention. It took Wirz between two and three hours
to count the whole camp, and by that time we of the first detachments
were almost all out of ranks. Thereupon Wirz announced that no rations
would be issued to the camp that day. The orders to stand in ranks
were repeated the next morning, with a warning that a failure to obey
would be punished as that of the previous day had been. Though we were
so hungry, that, to use the words of a Thirty-Fifth Pennsylvanian
standing next to me--his “big intestines were eating his little ones
up,” it was impossible to keep the rank formation during the long
hours. One man after another straggled away, and again we lost our
rations. That afternoon we became desperate. Plots were considered for
a daring assault to force the gates or scale the stockade. The men were
crazy enough to attempt anything rather than sit down and patiently
starve. Many offered themselves as leaders in any attempt that it might
be thought best to make. The hopelessness of any such venture was
apparent, even to famished men, and the propositions went no farther
than inflammatory talk.

The third morning the orders were again repeated. This time we
succeeded in remaining in ranks in such a manner as to satisfy Wirz,
and we were given our rations for that day, but those of the other days
were permanently withheld.

That afternoon Wirz ventured into camp alone. He was assailed with a
storm of curses and execrations, and a shower of clubs. He pulled out
his revolver, as if to fire upon his assailants. A yell was raised to
take his pistol away from him and a crowd rushed forward to do this.
Without waiting to fire a shot, he turned and ran to the gate for dear
life. He did not come in again for a long while, and never afterward
without a retinue of guards.




CHAPTER XX.

PRIZE-FIGHT AMONG THE N’YAARKERS--A GREAT MANY FORMALITIES, AND LITTLE
BLOOD SPILT--A FUTILE ATTEMPT TO RECOVER A WATCH--DEFEAT OF THE LAW AND
ORDER PARTY.

One of the train-loads from Richmond was almost wholly made up of our
old acquaintances--the N’Yaarkers. The number of these had swelled to
four hundred or five hundred--all leagued together in the fellowship of
crime.

We did not manifest any keen desire for intimate social relations with
them, and they did not seem to hunger for our society, so they moved
across the creek to the unoccupied South Side, and established their
camp there, at a considerable distance from us.

One afternoon a number of us went across to their camp, to witness
a fight according to the rules of the Prize Ring, which was to come
off between two professional pugilists. These were a couple of
bounty-jumpers who had some little reputation in New York sporting
circles, under the names of the “Staleybridge Chicken” and the “Haarlem
Infant.”

On the way from Richmond a cast-iron skillet, or spider, had been
stolen by the crowd from the Rebels. It was a small affair, holding a
half gallon, and worth to-day about fifty cents. In Andersonville its
worth was literally above rubies. Two men belonging to different messes
each claimed the ownership of the utensil, on the ground of being
most active in securing it. Their claims were strenuously supported
by their respective messes, at the heads of which were the aforesaid
Infant and Chicken. A great deal of strong talk, and several indecisive
knock-downs resulted in an agreement to settle the matter by wager of
battle between the Infant and Chicken.

When we arrived a twenty-four foot ring had been prepared by drawing
a deep mark in the sand. In diagonally opposite corners of these the
seconds were kneeling on one knee and supporting their principals on
the other by their sides they had little vessels of water, and bundles
of rags to answer for sponges. Another corner was occupied by the
umpire, a foul-mouthed, loud-tongued Tombs shyster, named Pete Bradley.
A long-bodied, short-legged hoodlum, nick-named “Heenan,” armed with a
club, acted as ring keeper, and “belted” back, remorselessly, any of
the spectators who crowded over the line. Did he see a foot obtruding
itself so much as an inch over the mark in the sand--and the pressure
from the crowd behind was so great that it was difficult for the front
fellows to keep off the line--his heavy club and a blasting curse would
fall upon the offender simultaneously.

Every effort was made to have all things conform as nearly as possible
to the recognized practices of the “London Prize Ring.”

At Bradley’s call of “Time!” the principals would rise from their
seconds’ knees, advance briskly to the scratch across the center of the
ring, and spar away sharply for a little time, until one got in a blow
that sent the other to the ground, where he would lie until his second
picked him up, carried him back, washed his face off, and gave him a
drink. He then rested until the next call of time.

This sort of performance went on for an hour or more, with the
knockdowns and other casualities pretty evenly divided between the two.
Then it became apparent that the Infant was getting more than he had
storage room for. His interest in the skillet was evidently abating,
the leering grin he wore upon his face during the early part of the
engagement had disappeared long ago, as the successive “hot ones” which
the Chicken had succeeded in planting upon his mouth, put it out of his
power to “smile and smile,” “e’en though he might still be a villain.”
He began coming up to the scratch as sluggishly as a hired man starting
out for his day’s work, and finally he did not come up at all. A bunch
of blood soaked rags was tossed into the air from his corner, and
Bradley declared the Chicken to be the victor, amid enthusiastic cheers
from the crowd.

We voted the thing rather tame. In the whole hour and a-half there
was not so much savage fighting, not so much damage done, as a couple
of earnest, but unscientific men, who have no time to waste, will
frequently crowd into an impromptu affair not exceeding five minutes in
duration.

Our next visit to the N’Yaarkers was on a different errand. The moment
they arrived in camp we began to be annoyed by their depredations.
Blankets--the sole protection of men--would be snatched off as they
slept at night. Articles of clothing and cooking utensils would go the
same way, and occasionally a man would be robbed in open daylight.
All these, it was believed, with good reason, were the work of the
N’Yaarkers, and the stolen things were conveyed to their camp.
Occasionally depredators would be caught and beaten, but they would
give a signal which would bring to their assistance the whole body of
N’Yaarkers, and turn the tables on their assailants.

We had in our squad a little watchmaker named Dan Martin, of the Eighth
New York Infantry. Other boys let him take their watches to tinker up,
so as to make a show of running, and be available for trading to the
guards.

One day Martin was at the creek, when a N’Yaarker asked him to let
him look at a watch. Martin incautiously did so, when the N’Yaarker
snatched it and sped away to the camp of his crowd. Martin ran back to
us and told his story. This was the last feather which was to break
the camel’s back of our patience. Peter Bates, of the Third Michigan,
the Sergeant of our squad, had considerable confidence in his muscular
ability. He flamed up into mighty wrath, and swore a sulphurous oath
that we would get that watch back, whereupon about two hundred of us
avowed our willingness to help reclaim it.

Each of us providing ourselves with a club, we started on our errand.
The rest of the camp--about four thousand--gathered on the hillside to
watch us. We thought they might have sent us some assistance, as it
was about as much their fight as ours, but they did not, and we were
too proud to ask it. The crossing of the swamp was quite difficult.
Only one could go over at a time, and he very slowly. The N’Yaarkers
understood that trouble was pending, and they began mustering to
receive us. From the way they turned out it was evident that we should
have come over with three hundred instead of two hundred, but it was
too late then to alter the program. As we came up a stalwart Irishman
stepped out and asked us what we wanted.

Bates replied: “We have come over to get a watch that one of your
fellows took from one of ours, and by --- we’re going to have it.”

The Irishman’s reply was equally explicit though not strictly logical
in construction. Said he: “We havn’t got your watch, and be ye can’t
have it.”

This joined the issue just as fairly as if it had been done by all the
documentary formula that passed between Turkey and Russia prior to
the late war. Bates and the Irishman then exchanged very derogatory
opinions of each other, and began striking with their clubs. The rest
of us took this as our cue, and each, selecting as small a N’Yaarker as
we could readily find, sailed in.

There is a very expressive bit of slang coming into general use in the
West, which speaks of a man “biting off more than he can chew.”

That is what we had done. We had taken a contract that we should have
divided, and sub-let the bigger half. Two minutes after the engagement
became general there was no doubt that we would have been much better
off if we had staid on our own side of the creek. The watch was a very
poor one, anyhow. We thought we would just say good day to our N’Yaark
friends, and return home hastily. But they declined to be left so
precipitately. They wanted to stay with us awhile. It was lots of fun
for them, and for the four thousand yelling spectators on the opposite
hill, who were greatly enjoying our discomfiture. There was hardly
enough of the amusement to go clear around, however, and it all fell
short just before it reached us. We earnestly wished that some of the
boys would come over and help us let go of the N’Yaarkers, but they
were enjoying the thing too much to interfere.

We were driven down the hill, pell-mell, with the N’Yaarkers pursuing
hotly with yell and blow. At the swamp we tried to make a stand to
secure our passage across, but it was only partially successful. Very
few got back without some severe hurts, and many received blows that
greatly hastened their deaths.

After this the N’Yaarkers became bolder in their robberies, and more
arrogant in their demeanor than ever, and we had the poor revenge upon
those who would not assist us, of seeing a reign of terror inaugurated
over the whole camp.




CHAPTER XXI.

DIMINISHING RATIONS--A DEADLY COLD RAIN--HOVERING OVER PITCH PINE FIRES
--INCREASE ON MORTALITY--A THEORY OF HEALTH.

The rations diminished perceptibly day by day. When we first entered
we each received something over a quart of tolerably good meal, a
sweet potato, a piece of meat about the size of one’s two fingers, and
occasionally a spoonful of salt. First the salt disappeared. Then the
sweet potato took unto itself wings and flew away, never to return.
An attempt was ostensibly made to issue us cow-peas instead, and the
first issue was only a quart to a detachment of two hundred and seventy
men. This has two-thirds of a pint to each squad of ninety, and made
but a few spoonfuls for each of the four messes in the squad. When it
came to dividing among the men, the beans had to be counted. Nobody
received enough to pay for cooking, and we were at a loss what to do
until somebody suggested that we play poker for them. This met general
acceptance, and after that, as long as beans were drawn, a large
portion of the day was spent in absorbing games of “bluff” and “draw,”
at a bean “ante,” and no “limit.”

After a number of hours’ diligent playing, some lucky or skillful
player would be in possession of all the beans in a mess, a squad, and
sometimes a detachment, and have enough for a good meal.

Next the meal began to diminish in quantity and deteriorate in quality.
It became so exceedingly coarse that the common remark was that the
next step would be to bring us the corn in the shock, and feed it to
us like stock. Then meat followed suit with the rest. The rations
decreased in size, and the number of days that we did not get any, kept
constantly increasing in proportion to the days that we did, until
eventually the meat bade us a final adieu, and joined the sweet potato
in that undiscovered country from whose bourne no ration ever returned.

The fuel and building material in the stockade were speedily exhausted.
The later comers had nothing whatever to build shelter with.

But, after the Spring rains had fairly set in, it seemed that we had
not tasted misery until then. About the middle of March the windows of
heaven opened, and it began a rain like that of the time of Noah. It
was tropical in quantity and persistency, and arctic in temperature.
For dreary hours that lengthened into weary days and nights, and these
again into never-ending weeks, the driving, drenching flood poured
down upon the sodden earth, searching the very marrow of the five
thousand hapless men against whose chilled frames it beat with pitiless
monotony, and soaked the sand bank upon which we lay until it was like
a sponge filled with ice-water. It seems to me now that it must have
been two or three weeks that the sun was wholly hidden behind the
dripping clouds, not shining out once in all that time. The intervals
when it did not rain were rare and short. An hour’s respite would be
followed by a day of steady, regular pelting of the great rain drops.

I find that the report of the Smithsonian Institute gives the average
annual rainfall in the section around Andersonville, at fifty-six
inches --nearly five feet--while that of foggy England is only
thirty-two. Our experience would lead me to think that we got the five
feet all at once.

We first comers, who had huts, were measurably better off than the
later arrivals. It was much drier in our leaf-thatched tents, and we
were spared much of the annoyance that comes from the steady dash of
rain against the body for hours.

The condition of those who had no tents was truly pitiable.

They sat or lay on the hill-side the live-long day and night, and took
the washing flow with such gloomy composure as they could muster.

All soldiers will agree with me that there is no campaigning hardship
comparable to a cold rain. One can brace up against the extremes of
heat and cold, and mitigate their inclemency in various ways. But there
is no escaping a long-continued, chilling rain. It seems to penetrate
to the heart, and leach away the very vital force.

The only relief attainable was found in huddling over little fires kept
alive by small groups with their slender stocks of wood. As this wood
was all pitch-pine, that burned with a very sooty flame, the effect
upon the appearance of the hoverers was, startling. Face, neck and
hands became covered with mixture of lampblack and turpentine, forming
a coating as thick as heavy brown paper, and absolutely irremovable by
water alone. The hair also became of midnight blackness, and gummed up
into elflocks of fantastic shape and effect. Any one of us could have
gone on the negro minstrel stage, without changing a hair, and put to
blush the most elaborate make-up of the grotesque burnt-cork artists.

No wood was issued to us. The only way of getting it was to stand
around the gate for hours until a guard off duty could be coaxed or
hired to accompany a small party to the woods, to bring back a load of
such knots and limbs as could be picked up. Our chief persuaders to
the guards to do us this favor were rings, pencils, knives, combs, and
such trifles as we might have in our pockets, and, more especially, the
brass buttons on our uniforms. Rebel soldiers, like Indians, negros
and other imperfectly civilized people, were passionately fond of
bright and gaudy things. A handful of brass buttons would catch every
one of them as swiftly and as surely as a piece of red flannel will a
gudgeon. Our regular fee for an escort for three of us to the woods was
six over-coat or dress-coat buttons, or ten or twelve jacket buttons.
All in the mess contributed to this fund, and the fuel obtained was
carefully guarded and husbanded.

This manner of conducting the wood business is a fair sample of the
management, or rather the lack of it, of every other detail of prison
administration. All the hardships we suffered from lack of fuel and
shelter could have been prevented without the slightest expense or
trouble to the Confederacy. Two hundred men allowed to go out on
parole, and supplied with ages, would have brought in from the adjacent
woods, in a week’s time, enough material to make everybody comfortable
tents, and to supply all the fuel needed.

The mortality caused by the storm was, of course, very great. The
official report says the total number in the prison in March was four
thousand six hundred and three, of whom two hundred and eighty-three
died.

Among the first to die was the one whom we expected to live longest.
He was by much the largest man in prison, and was called, because of
this, “BIG JOE.” He was a Sergeant in the Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry,
and seemed the picture of health. One morning the news ran through the
prison that “Big Joe is dead,” and a visit to his squad showed his
stiff, lifeless form, occupying as much ground as Goliath’s, after his
encounter with David.

His early demise was an example of a general law, the workings of which
few in the army failed to notice. It was always the large and strong
who first succumbed to hardship. The stalwart, huge-limbed, toil-inured
men sank down earliest on the march, yielded soonest to malarial
influences, and fell first under the combined effects of home-sickness,
exposure and the privations of army life. The slender, withy boys,
as supple and weak as cats, had apparently the nine lives of those
animals. There were few exceptions to this rule in the army--there were
none in Andersonville. I can recall few or no instances where a large,
strong, “hearty” man lived through a few months of imprisonment. The
survivors were invariably youths, at the verge of manhood,--slender,
quick, active, medium-statured fellows, of a cheerful temperament, in
whom one would have expected comparatively little powers of endurance.

The theory which I constructed for my own private use in accounting for
this phenomenon I offer with proper diffidence to others who may be in
search of a hypothesis to explain facts that they have observed. It is
this:

a. The circulation of the blood maintains health, and consequently
life by carrying away from the various parts of the body the particles
of worn-out and poisonous tissue, and replacing them with fresh,
structure-building material.

b. The man is healthiest in whom this process goes on most freely and
continuously.

c. Men of considerable muscular power are disposed to be sluggish;
the exertion of great strength does not favor circulation. It rather
retards it, and disturbs its equilibrium by congesting the blood in
quantities in the sets of muscles called into action.

d. In light, active men, on the other hand, the circulation goes on
perfectly and evenly, because all the parts are put in motion, and kept
so in such a manner as to promote the movement of the blood to every
extremity. They do not strain one set of muscles by long continued
effort, as a strong man does, but call one into play after another.

There is no compulsion on the reader to accept this speculation at any
valuation whatever. There is not even any charge for it. I will lay
down this simple axiom:

               No strong man, is a healthy man

from the athlete in the circus who lifts pieces of artillery and
catches cannon balls, to the exhibition swell in a country gymnasium.
If my theory is not a sufficient explanation of this, there is nothing
to prevent the reader from building up one to suit him better.




CHAPTER XXII.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ALABAMIANS AND GEORGIANS--DEATH OF “POLL PARROTT”
--A GOOD JOKE UPON THE GUARD--A BRUTAL RASCAL.

There were two regiments guarding us--the Twenty-Sixth Alabama and the
Fifty-Fifth Georgia. Never were two regiments of the same army more
different. The Alabamians were the superiors of the Georgians in every
way that one set of men could be superior to another. They were manly,
soldierly, and honorable, where the Georgians were treacherous and
brutal. We had nothing to complain of at the hands of the Alabamians;
we suffered from the Georgians everything that mean-spirited cruelty
could devise. The Georgians were always on the look-out for something
that they could torture into such apparent violation of orders, as
would justify them in shooting men down; the Alabamians never fired
until they were satisfied that a deliberate offense was intended. I can
recall of my own seeing at least a dozen instances where men of the
Fifty-Fifth Georgia Killed prisoners under the pretense that they were
across the Dead Line, when the victims were a yard or more from the
Dead Line, and had not the remotest idea of going any nearer.

The only man I ever knew to be killed by one of the Twenty-Sixth
Alabama was named Hubbard, from Chicago, Ills., and a member of the
Thirty-Eighth Illinois. He had lost one leg, and went hobbling about
the camp on crutches, chattering continually in a loud, discordant
voice, saying all manner of hateful and annoying things, wherever
he saw an opportunity. This and his beak-like nose gained for him
the name of “Poll Parrot.” His misfortune caused him to be tolerated
where another man would have been suppressed. By-and-by he gave still
greater cause for offense by his obsequious attempts to curry favor
with Captain Wirz, who took him outside several times for purposes that
were not well explained. Finally, some hours after one of Poll Parrot’s
visits outside, a Rebel officer came in with a guard, and, proceeding
with suspicious directness to a tent which was the mouth of a large
tunnel that a hundred men or more had been quietly pushing forward,
broke the tunnel in, and took the occupants of the tent outside for
punishment. The question that demanded immediate solution then was:

“Who is the traitor who has informed the Rebels?”

Suspicion pointed very strongly to “Poll Parrot.” By the next morning
the evidence collected seemed to amount to a certainty, and a crowd
caught the Parrot with the intention of lynching him. He succeeded
in breaking away from them and ran under the Dead Line, near where I
was sitting in, my tent. At first it looked as if he had done this
to secure the protection of the guard. The latter--a Twenty-Sixth
Alabamian --ordered him out. Poll Parrot rose up on his one leg, put
his back against the Dead Line, faced the guard, and said in his harsh,
cackling voice:

“No; I won’t go out. If I’ve lost the confidence of my comrades I want
to die.”

Part of the crowd were taken back by this move, and felt disposed
to accept it as a demonstration of the Parrot’s innocence. The rest
thought it was a piece of bravado, because of his belief that the
Rebels would not injure, him after he had served them. They renewed
their yells, the guard again ordered the Parrot out, but the latter,
tearing open his blouse, cackled out:

“No, I won’t go; fire at me, guard. There’s my heart shoot me right
there.”

There was no help for it. The Rebel leveled his gun and fired. The
charge struck the Parrot’s lower jaw, and carried it completely away,
leaving his tongue and the roof of his mouth exposed. As he was carried
back to die, he wagged his tongue rigorously, in attempting to speak,
but it was of no use.

The guard set his gun down and buried his face in his hands. It was the
only time that I saw a sentinel show anything but exultation at killing
a Yankee.

A ludicrous contrast to this took place a few nights later. The rains
had ceased, the weather had become warmer, and our spirits rising
with this increase in the comfort of our surroundings, a number of
us were sitting around “Nosey”--a boy with a superb tenor voice--who
was singing patriotic songs. We were coming in strong on the chorus,
in a way that spoke vastly more for our enthusiasm for the Union than
our musical knowledge. “Nosey” sang the “Star Spangled Banner,” “The
Battle Cry of Freedom,” “Brave Boys are They,” etc., capitally, and we
threw our whole lungs into the chorus. It was quite dark, and while
our noise was going on the guards changed, new men coming on duty.
Suddenly, bang! went the gun of the guard in the box about fifty feet
away from us. We knew it was a Fifty-Fifth Georgian, and supposed that,
irritated at our singing, he was trying to kill some of us for spite.
At the sound of the gun we jumped up and scattered. As no one gave
the usual agonized yell of a prisoner when shot, we supposed the ball
had not taken effect. We could hear the sentinel ramming down another
cartridge, hear him “return rammer,” and cock his rifle. Again the gun
cracked, and again there was no sound of anybody being hit. Again we
could hear the sentry churning down another cartridge. The drums began
beating the long roll in the camps, and officers could be heard turning
the men out. The thing was becoming exciting, and one of us sang out to
the guard:

“S-a-y! What the are you shooting at, any how?”

“I’m a shootin’ at that ---- ---- Yank thar by the Dead Line, and by
--- if you’uns don’t take him in I’ll blow the whole head offn him.”

“What Yank? Where’s any Yank?”

“Why, thar--right thar--a-standin’ agin the Ded Line.”

“Why, you Rebel fool, that’s a chunk of wood. You can’t get any
furlough for shooting that!”

At this there was a general roar from the rest of the camp, which the
other guards took up, and as the Reserves came double-quicking up, and
learned the occasion of the alarm, they gave the rascal who had been so
anxious to kill somebody a torrent of abuse for having disturbed them.

A part of our crowd had been out after wood during the day, and secured
a piece of a log as large as two of them could carry, and bringing it
in, stood it up near the Dead Line. When the guard mounted to his post
he was sure he saw a temerarious Yankee in front of him, and hastened
to slay him.

It was an unusual good fortune that nobody was struck. It was very
rare that the guards fired into the prison without hitting at least
one person. The Georgia Reserves, who formed our guards later in the
season, were armed with an old gun called a Queen Anne musket, altered
to percussion. It carried a bullet as big as a large marble, and three
or four buckshot. When fired into a group of men it was sure to bring
several down.

I was standing one day in the line at the gate, waiting for a chance to
go out after wood. A Fifty-Fifth Georgian was the gate guard, and he
drew a line in the sand with his bayonet which we should not cross. The
crowd behind pushed one man till he put his foot a few inches over the
line, to save himself from falling; the guard sank a bayonet through
the foot as quick as a flash.




CHAPTER XXIII.

A NEW LOT OF PRISONERS--THE BATTLE OF OOLUSTEE--MEN SACRIFICED TO
A GENERAL’S INCOMPETENCY--A HOODLUM REINFORCEMENT--A QUEER CROWD
--MISTREATMENT OF AN OFFICER OF A COLORED REGIMENT--KILLING THE
SERGEANT OF A NEGRO SQUAD.

So far only old prisoners--those taken at Gettysburg, Chicamauga
and Mine Run--had been brought in. The armies had been very quiet
during the Winter, preparing for the death grapple in the Spring.
There had been nothing done, save a few cavalry raids, such as our
own, and Averill’s attempt to gain and break up the Rebel salt works
at Wytheville, and Saltville. Consequently none but a few cavalry
prisoners were added to the number already in the hands of the Rebels.

The first lot of new ones came in about the middle of March. There
were about seven hundred of them, who had been captured at the battle
of Oolustee, Fla., on the 20th of February. About five hundred
of them were white, and belonged to the Seventh Connecticut, the
Seventh New Hampshire, Forty Seventh, Forty-Eighth and One Hundred
and Fifteenth New York, and Sherman’s regular battery. The rest were
colored, and belonged to the Eighth United States, and Fifty-Fourth
Massachusetts. The story they told of the battle was one which had
many shameful reiterations during the war. It was the story told
whenever Banks, Sturgis, Butler, or one of a host of similar smaller
failures were trusted with commands. It was a senseless waste of the
lives of private soldiers, and the property of the United States by
pretentious blunderers, who, in some inscrutable manner, had attained
to responsible commands. In this instance, a bungling Brigadier named
Seymore had marched his forces across the State of Florida, to do he
hardly knew what, and in the neighborhood of an enemy of whose numbers,
disposition, location, and intentions he was profoundly ignorant.
The Rebels, under General Finnegan, waited till he had strung his
command along through swamps and cane brakes, scores of miles from his
supports, and then fell unexpectedly upon his advance. The regiment
was overpowered, and another regiment that hurried up to its support,
suffered the same fate. The balance of the regiments were sent in in
the same manner--each arriving on the field just after its predecessor
had been thoroughly whipped by the concentrated force of the Rebels.
The men fought gallantly, but the stupidity of a Commanding General is
a thing that the gods themselves strive against in vain. We suffered a
humiliating defeat, with a loss of two thousand men and a fine rifled
battery, which was brought to Andersonville and placed in position to
command the prison.

The majority of the Seventh New Hampshire were an unwelcome addition
to our numbers. They were N’Yaarkers--old time colleagues of those
already in with us--veteran bounty jumpers, that had been drawn to
New Hampshire by the size of the bounty offered there, and had been
assigned to fill up the wasted ranks of the veteran Seventh regiment.
They had tried to desert as soon as they received their bounty, but
the Government clung to them literally with hooks of steel, sending
many of them to the regiment in irons. Thus foiled, they deserted to
the Rebels during the retreat from the battlefield. They were quite an
accession to the force of our N’Yaarkers, and helped much to establish
the hoodlum reign which was shortly inaugurated over the whole prison.

The Forty-Eighth New Yorkers who came in were a set of chaps so odd
in every way as to be a source of never-failing interest. The name of
their regiment was ‘L’Enfants Perdu’ (the Lost Children), which we
anglicized into “The Lost Ducks.” It was believed that every nation
in Europe was represented in their ranks, and it used to be said
jocularly, that no two of them spoke the same language. As near as I
could find out they were all or nearly all South Europeans, Italians,
Spaniards; Portuguese, Levantines, with a predominance of the French
element. They wore a little cap with an upturned brim, and a strap
resting on the chin, a coat with funny little tales about two inches
long, and a brass chain across the breast; and for pantaloons they had
a sort of a petticoat reaching to the knees, and sewed together down
the middle. They were just as singular otherwise as in their looks,
speech and uniform. On one occasion the whole mob of us went over in
a mass to their squad to see them cook and eat a large water snake,
which two of them had succeeded in capturing in the swamps, and carried
off to their mess, jabbering in high glee over their treasure trove.
Any of us were ready to eat a piece of dog, cat, horse or mule, if we
could get it, but, it was generally agreed, as Dawson, of my company
expressed it, that “Nobody but one of them darned queer Lost Ducks
would eat a varmint like a water snake.”

Major Albert Bogle, of the Eighth United States, (colored) had fallen
into the hands of the rebels by reason of a severe wound in the leg,
which left him helpless upon the field at Oolustee. The Rebels treated
him with studied indignity. They utterly refused to recognize him as an
officer, or even as a man. Instead of being sent to Macon or Columbia,
where the other officers were, he was sent to Andersonville, the same
as an enlisted man. No care was given his wound, no surgeon would
examine it or dress it. He was thrown into a stock car, without a bed
or blanket, and hauled over the rough, jolting road to Andersonville.
Once a Rebel officer rode up and fired several shots at him, as he lay
helpless on the car floor. Fortunately the Rebel’s marksmanship was as
bad as his intentions, and none of the shots took effect. He was placed
in a squad near me, and compelled to get up and hobble into line when
the rest were mustered for roll-call. No opportunity to insult, “the
nigger officer,” was neglected, and the N’Yaarkers vied with the Rebels
in heaping abuse upon him. He was a fine, intelligent young man, and
bore it all with dignified self-possession, until after a lapse of some
weeks the Rebels changed their policy and took him from the prison to
send to where the other officers were.

The negro soldiers were also treated as badly as possible. The wounded
were turned into the Stockade without having their hurts attended
to. One stalwart, soldierly Sergeant had received a bullet which
had forced its way under the scalp for some distance, and partially
imbedded itself in the skull, where it still remained. He suffered
intense agony, and would pass the whole night walking up and down the
street in front of our tent, moaning distressingly. The bullet could
be felt plainly with the fingers, and we were sure that it would not
be a minute’s work, with a sharp knife, to remove it and give the man
relief. But we could not prevail upon the Rebel Surgeons even to see
the man. Finally inflammation set in and he died.

The negros were made into a squad by themselves, and taken out every
day to work around the prison. A white Sergeant was placed over them,
who was the object of the contumely of the guards and other Rebels. One
day as he was standing near the gate, waiting his orders to come out,
the gate guard, without any provocation whatever, dropped his gun until
the muzzle rested against the Sergeant’s stomach, and fired, killing
him instantly.

The Sergeantcy was then offered to me, but as I had no accident policy,
I was constrained to decline the honor.




CHAPTER XXIV.

APRIL--LONGING TO GET OUT--THE DEATH RATE--THE PLAGUE OF LICE --THE
SO-CALLED HOSPITAL.

April brought sunny skies and balmy weather. Existence became much
more tolerable. With freedom it would have been enjoyable, even had we
been no better fed, clothed and sheltered. But imprisonment had never
seemed so hard to bear--even in the first few weeks--as now. It was
easier to submit to confinement to a limited area, when cold and rain
were aiding hunger to benumb the faculties and chill the energies than
it was now, when Nature was rousing her slumbering forces to activity,
and earth, and air and sky were filled with stimulus to man to imitate
her example. The yearning to be up and doing something-to turn these
golden hours to good account for self and country--pressed into heart
and brain as the vivifying sap pressed into tree-duct and plant cell,
awaking all vegetation to energetic life.

To be compelled, at such a time, to lie around in vacuous idleness
--to spend days that should be crowded full of action in a monotonous,
objectless routine of hunting lice, gathering at roll-call, and drawing
and cooking our scanty rations, was torturing.

But to many of our number the aspirations for freedom were not, as
with us, the desire for a wider, manlier field of action, so much as
an intense longing to get where care and comforts would arrest their
swift progress to the shadowy hereafter. The cruel rains had sapped
away their stamina, and they could not recover it with the meager and
innutritious diet of coarse meal, and an occasional scrap of salt meat.
Quick consumption, bronchitis, pneumonia, low fever and diarrhea seized
upon these ready victims for their ravages, and bore them off at the
rate of nearly a score a day.

It now became a part of, the day’s regular routine to take a walk past
the gates in the morning, inspect and count the dead, and see if any
friends were among them. Clothes having by this time become a very
important consideration with the prisoners, it was the custom of the
mess in which a man died to remove from his person all garments that
were of any account, and so many bodies were carried out nearly naked.
The hands were crossed upon the breast, the big toes tied together with
a bit of string, and a slip of paper containing the man’s name, rank,
company and regiment was pinned on the breast of his shirt.

The appearance of the dead was indescribably ghastly. The unclosed eyes
shone with a stony glitter--

               An orphan’s curse would drag to hell
               A spirit from on high:
               But, O, more terrible than that,
               Is the curse in a dead man’s eye.

The lips and nostrils were distorted with pain and hunger, the sallow,
dirt-grimed skin drawn tensely over the facial bones, and the whole
framed with the long, lank, matted hair and beard. Millions of lice
swarmed over the wasted limbs and ridged ribs. These verminous pests
had become so numerous--owing to our lack of changes of clothing, and
of facilities for boiling what we had--that the most a healthy man
could do was to keep the number feeding upon his person down to a
reasonable limit--say a few tablespoonfuls. When a man became so sick
as to be unable to help himself, the parasites speedily increased into
millions, or, to speak more comprehensively, into pints and quarts. It
did not even seem exaggeration when some one declared that he had seen
a dead man with more than a gallon of lice on him.

There is no doubt that the irritation from the biting of these myriads
materially the days of those who died.

Where a sick man had friends or comrades, of course part of their duty,
in taking care of him, was to “louse” his clothing. One of the most
effectual ways of doing this was to turn the garments wrong side out
and hold the seams as close to the fire as possible, without burning
the cloth. In a short time the lice would swell up and burst open,
like pop-corn. This method was a favorite one for another reason than
its efficacy: it gave one a keener sense of revenge upon his rascally
little tormentors than he could get in any other way.

As the weather grew warmer and the number in the prison increased, the
lice became more unendurable. They even filled the hot sand under our
feet, and voracious troops would climb up on one like streams of ants
swarming up a tree. We began to have a full comprehension of the third
plague with which the Lord visited the Egyptians:

    And the Lord said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod,
    and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice through all
    the land of Egypt.

    And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and
    smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man and in beast;
    all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of
    Egypt.

The total number of deaths in April, according to the official report,
was five hundred and seventy-six, or an average of over nineteen a day.
There was an average of five thousand prisoner’s in the pen during
all but the last few days of the month, when the number was increased
by the arrival of the captured garrison of Plymouth. This would make
the loss over eleven per cent., and so worse than decimation. At that
rate we should all have died in about eight months. We could have gone
through a sharp campaign lasting those thirty days and not lost so
great a proportion of our forces. The British had about as many men as
were in the Stockade at the battle of New Orleans, yet their loss in
killed fell much short of the deaths in the pen in April.

A makeshift of a hospital was established in the northeastern corner of
the Stockade. A portion of the ground was divided from the rest of the
prison by a railing, a few tent flies were stretched, and in these the
long leaves of the pine were made into apologies for beds of about the
goodness of the straw on which a Northern farmer beds his stock. The
sick taken there were no better off than if they had staid with their
comrades.

What they needed to bring about their recovery was clean clothing,
nutritious food, shelter and freedom from the tortures of the lice.
They obtained none of these. Save a few decoctions of roots, there were
no medicines; the sick were fed the same coarse corn meal that brought
about the malignant dysentery from which they all suffered; they wore
and slept in the same vermin-infested clothes, and there could be but
one result: the official records show that seventy-six per cent. of
those taken to the hospitals died there.

The establishment of the hospital was specially unfortunate for my
little squad. The ground required for it compelled a general reduction
of the space we all occupied. We had to tear down our huts and move.
By this time the materials had become so dry that we could not rebuild
with them, as the pine tufts fell to pieces. This reduced the tent
and bedding material of our party--now numbering five--to a cavalry
overcoat and a blanket. We scooped a hole a foot deep in the sand and
stuck our tent-poles around it. By day we spread our blanket over the
poles for a tent. At night we lay down upon the overcoat and covered
ourselves with the blanket. It required considerable stretching to make
it go over five; the two out side fellows used to get very chilly, and
squeeze the three inside ones until they felt no thicker than a wafer.
But it had to do, and we took turns sleeping on the outside. In the
course of a few weeks three of my chums died and left myself and B. B.
Andrews (now Dr. Andrews, of Astoria, Ill.) sole heirs to and occupants
of, the overcoat and blanket.




CHAPTER XXV.

THE “PLYMOUTH PILGRIMS”--SAD TRANSITION FROM COMFORTABLE BARRACKS
TO ANDERSONVILLE--A CRAZED PENNSYLVANIAN--DEVELOPMENT OF THE BUTLER
BUSINESS.

We awoke one morning, in the last part of April, to find about two
thousand freshly arrived prisoners lying asleep in the main streets
running from the gates. They were attired in stylish new uniforms, with
fancy hats and shoes; the Sergeants and Corporals wore patent leather
or silk chevrons, and each man had a large, well-filled knapsack, of
the kind new recruits usually carried on coming first to the front, and
which the older soldiers spoke of humorously as “bureaus.” They were
the snuggest, nattiest lot of soldiers we had ever seen, outside of the
“paper collar” fellows forming the headquarter guard of some General in
a large City. As one of my companions surveyed them, he said:

“Hulloa! I’m blanked if the Johnnies haven’t caught a regiment of
Brigadier Generals, somewhere.”

By-and-by the “fresh fish,” as all new arrivals were termed, began to
wake up, and then we learned that they belonged to a brigade consisting
of the Eighty-Fifth New York, One Hundred and First and One Hundred
and Third Pennsylvania, Sixteenth Connecticut, Twenty-Fourth New York
Battery, two companies of Massachusetts heavy artillery, and a company
of the Twelfth New York Cavalry.

They had been garrisoning Plymouth, N. C., an important seaport on the
Roanoke River. Three small gunboats assisted them in their duty. The
Rebels constructed a powerful iron clad called the “Albemarle,” at a
point further up the Roanoke, and on the afternoon of the 17th, with
her and three brigades of infantry, made an attack upon the post. The
“Albemarle” ran past the forts unharmed, sank one of the gunboats, and
drove the others away. She then turned her attention to the garrison,
which she took in the rear, while the infantry attacked in front. Our
men held out until the 20th, when they capitulated. They were allowed
to retain their personal effects, of all kinds, and, as is the case
with all men in garrison, these were considerable.

The One Hundred and First and One Hundred and Third Pennsylvania and
Eighty-Fifth New York had just “veteranized,” and received their first
instalment of veteran bounty. Had they not been attacked they would
have sailed for home in a day or two, on their veteran furlough, and
this accounted for their fine raiment. They were made up of boys
from good New York and Pennsylvania families, and were, as a rule,
intelligent and fairly educated.

Their horror at the appearance of their place of incarceration was
beyond expression. At one moment they could not comprehend that we
dirty and haggard tatterdemalions had once been clean, self-respecting,
well-fed soldiers like themselves; at the next they would affirm that
they knew they could not stand it a month, in here we had then endured
it from four to nine months. They took it, in every way, the hardest of
any prisoners that came in, except some of the ‘Hundred-Days’ men, who
were brought in in August, from the Valley of Virginia. They had served
nearly all their time in various garrisons along the seacoast--from
Fortress Monroe to Beaufort--where they had had comparatively little of
the actual hardships of soldiering in the field. They had nearly always
had comfortable quarters, an abundance of food, few hard marches or
other severe service. Consequently they were not so well hardened for
Andersonville as the majority who came in. In other respects they were
better prepared, as they had an abundance of clothing, blankets and
cooking utensils, and each man had some of his veteran bounty still in
possession.

It was painful to see how rapidly many of them sank under the miseries
of the situation. They gave up the moment the gates were closed upon
them, and began pining away. We older prisoners buoyed ourselves up
continually with hopes of escape or exchange. We dug tunnels with the
persistence of beavers, and we watched every possible opportunity to
get outside the accursed walls of the pen. But we could not enlist the
interest of these discouraged ones in any of our schemes, or talk. They
resigned themselves to Death, and waited despondingly till he came.

A middle-aged One Hundred and First Pennsylvanian, who had taken up
his quarters near me, was an object of peculiar interest. Reasonably
intelligent and fairly read, I presume that he was a respectable
mechanic before entering the Army. He was evidently a very domestic
man, whose whole happiness centered in his family.

When he first came in he was thoroughly dazed by the greatness of his
misfortune. He would sit for hours with his face in his hands and
his elbows on his knees, gazing out upon the mass of men and huts,
with vacant, lack-luster eyes. We could not interest him in anything.
We tried to show him how to fix his blanket up to give him some
shelter, but he went at the work in a disheartened way, and finally
smiled feebly and stopped. He had some letters from his family and a
melaineotype of a plain-faced woman--his wife--and her children, and
spent much time in looking at them. At first he ate his rations when
he drew them, but finally began to reject, them. In a few days he was
delirious with hunger and homesick ness. He would sit on the sand for
hours imagining that he was at his family table, dispensing his frugal
hospitalities to his wife and children.

Making a motion, as if presenting a dish, he would say:

“Janie, have another biscuit, do!”

Or,

“Eddie, son, won’t you have another piece of this nice steak?”

Or,

“Maggie, have some more potatos,” and so on, through a whole family of
six, or more. It was a relief to us when he died in about a month after
he came in.

As stated above, the Plymouth men brought in a large amount of
money --variously estimated at from ten thousand to one hundred
thousand dollars. The presence of this quantity of circulating medium
immediately started a lively commerce. All sorts of devices were
resorted to by the other prisoners to get a little of this wealth.
Rude chuck-a-luck boards were constructed out of such material as was
attainable, and put in operation. Dice and cards were brought out by
those skilled in such matters. As those of us already in the Stockade
occupied all the ground, there was no disposition on the part of many
to surrender a portion of their space without exacting a pecuniary
compensation. Messes having ground in a good location would frequently
demand and get ten dollars for permission for two or three to quarter
with them. Then there was a great demand for poles to stretch blankets
over to make tents; the Rebels, with their usual stupid cruelty, would
not supply these, nor allow the prisoners to go out and get them
themselves. Many of the older prisoners had poles to spare which they
were saying up for fuel. They sold these to the Plymouth folks at the
rate of ten dollars for three--enough to put up a blanket.

The most considerable trading was done through the gates. The Rebel
guards were found quite as keen to barter as they had been in Richmond.
Though the laws against their dealing in the money of the enemy were
still as stringent as ever, their thirst for greenbacks was not abated
one whit, and they were ready to sell anything they had for the
coveted currency. The rate of exchange was seven or eight dollars in
Confederate money for one dollar in greenbacks. Wood, tobacco, meat,
flour, beans, molasses, onions and a villainous kind of whisky made
from sorghum, were the staple articles of trade. A whole race of little
traffickers in these articles sprang up, and finally Selden, the Rebel
Quartermaster, established a sutler shop in the center of the North
Side, which he put in charge of Ira Beverly, of the One Hundredth
Ohio, and Charlie Huckleby, of the Eighth Tennessee. It was a fine
illustration of the development of the commercial instinct in some men.
No more unlikely place for making money could be imagined, yet starting
in without a cent, they contrived to turn and twist and trade, until
they had transferred to their pockets a portion of the funds which were
in some one else’s. The Rebels, of course, got nine out of every ten
dollars there was in the prison, but these middle men contrived to have
a little of it stick to their fingers.

It was only the very few who were able to do this. Nine hundred and
ninety-nine out of every thousand were, like myself, either wholly
destitute of money and unable to get it from anybody else, or they paid
out what money they had to the middlemen, in exorbitant prices for
articles of food.

The N’Yaarkers had still another method for getting food, money,
blankets and clothing. They formed little bands called “Raiders,”
under the leadership of a chief villain. One of these bands would
select as their victim a man who had good blankets, clothes, a watch,
or greenbacks. Frequently he would be one of the little traders, with
a sack of beans, a piece of meat, or something of that kind. Pouncing
upon him at night they would snatch away his possessions, knock down
his friends who came to his assistance, and scurry away into the
darkness.




CHAPTER XXVI.

LONGINGS FOR GOD’S COUNTRY--CONSIDERATIONS OF THE METHODS OF GETTING
THERE--EXCHANGE AND ESCAPE--DIGGING TUNNELS, AND THE DIFFICULTIES
CONNECTED THEREWITH--PUNISHMENT OF A TRAITOR.

To our minds the world now contained but two grand divisions, as widely
different from each other as happiness and misery. The first--that
portion over which our flag floated was usually spoken of as “God’s
Country;” the other--that under the baneful shadow of the banner of
rebellion--was designated by the most opprobrious epithets at the
speaker’s command.

To get from the latter to the former was to attain, at one bound, the
highest good. Better to be a doorkeeper in the House of the Lord, under
the Stars and Stripes, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness, under
the hateful Southern Cross.

To take even the humblest and hardest of service in the field now would
be a delightsome change. We did not ask to go home--we would be content
with anything, so long as it was in that blest place “within our
lines.” Only let us get back once, and there would be no more grumbling
at rations or guard duty--we would willingly endure all the hardships
and privations that soldier flesh is heir to.

There were two ways of getting back--escape and exchange. Exchange was
like the ever receding mirage of the desert, that lures the thirsty
traveler on over the parched sands, with illusions of refreshing
springs, only to leave his bones at last to whiten by the side of those
of his unremembered predecessors. Every day there came something to
build up the hopes that exchange was near at hand--every day brought
something to extinguish the hopes of the preceding one. We took these
varying phases according to our several temperaments. The sanguine
built themselves up on the encouraging reports; the desponding sank
down and died under the discouraging ones.

Escape was a perpetual allurement. To the actively inclined among us
it seemed always possible, and daring, busy brains were indefatigable
in concocting schemes for it. The only bit of Rebel brain work that I
ever saw for which I did not feel contempt was the perfect precautions
taken to prevent our escape. This is shown by the fact that, although,
from first to last, there were nearly fifty thousand prisoners in
Andersonville, and three out of every five of these were ever on the
alert to take French leave of their captors, only three hundred and
twenty-eight succeeded in getting so far away from Andersonville as to
leave it to be presumed that they had reached our lines.

The first, and almost superhuman difficulty was to get outside the
Stockade. It was simply impossible to scale it. The guards were too
close together to allow an instant’s hope to the most sanguine, that
he could even pass the Dead Line without being shot by some one of
them. This same closeness prevented any hope of bribing them. To be
successful half those on post would have to be bribed, as every part of
the Stockade was clearly visible from every other part, and there was
no night so dark as not to allow a plain view to a number of guards of
the dark figure outlined against the light colored logs of any Yankee
who should essay to clamber towards the top of the palisades.

The gates were so carefully guarded every time they were opened as to
preclude hope of slipping out through theme. They were only unclosed
twice or thrice a day--once to admit, the men to call the roll, once
to let them out again, once to let the wagons come in with rations,
and once, perhaps, to admit, new prisoners. At all these times every
precaution was taken to prevent any one getting out surreptitiously.

This narrowed down the possibilities of passing the limits of the pen
alive, to tunneling. This was also surrounded by almost insuperable
difficulties. First, it required not less than fifty feet of
subterranean excavation to get out, which was an enormous work with
our limited means. Then the logs forming the Stockade were set in the
ground to a depth of five feet, and the tunnel had to go down beneath
them. They had an unpleasant habit of dropping down into the burrow
under them. It added much to the discouragements of tunneling to think
of one of these massive timbers dropping upon a fellow as he worked his
mole-like way under it, and either crushing him to death outright, or
pinning him there to die of suffocation or hunger.

In one instance, in a tunnel near me, but in which I was not
interested, the log slipped down after the digger had got out beyond
it. He immediately began digging for the surface, for life, and was
fortunately able to break through before he suffocated. He got his head
above the ground, and then fainted. The guard outside saw him, pulled
him out of the hole, and when he recovered sensibility hurried him back
into the Stockade.

In another tunnel, also near us, a broad-shouldered German, of the
Second Minnesota, went in to take his turn at digging. He was so much
larger than any of his predecessors that he stuck fast in a narrow
part, and despite all the efforts of himself and comrades, it was
found impossible to move him one way or the other. The comrades were
at last reduced to the humiliation of informing the Officer of the
Guard of their tunnel and the condition of their friend, and of asking
assistance to release him, which was given.

The great tunneling tool was the indispensable half-canteen. The
inventive genius of our people, stimulated by the war, produced nothing
for the comfort and effectiveness of the soldier equal in usefulness
to this humble and unrecognized utensil. It will be remembered that a
canteen was composed of two pieces of tin struck up into the shape of
saucers, and soldered together at the edges. After a soldier had been
in the field a little while, and thrown away or lost the curious and
complicated kitchen furniture he started out with, he found that by
melting the halves of his canteen apart, he had a vessel much handier
in every way than any he had parted with. It could be used for anything
--to make soup or coffee in, bake bread, brown coffee, stew vegetables,
etc., etc. A sufficient handle was made with a split stick. When the
cooking was done, the handle was thrown away, and the half canteen
slipped out of the road into the haversack. There seemed to be no end
of the uses to which this ever-ready disk of blackened sheet iron could
be turned. Several instances are on record where infantry regiments,
with no other tools than this, covered themselves on the field with
quite respectable rifle pits.

The starting point of a tunnel was always some tent close to the Dead
Line, and sufficiently well closed to screen the operations from the
sight of the guards near by. The party engaged in the work organized
by giving every man a number to secure the proper apportionment of the
labor. Number One began digging with his half canteen. After he had
worked until tired, he came out, and Number Two took his place, and so
on. The tunnel was simply a round, rat-like burrow, a little larger
than a man’s body. The digger lay on his stomach, dug ahead of him,
threw the dirt under him, and worked it back with his feet till the man
behind him, also lying on his stomach, could catch it and work it back
to the next. As the tunnel lengthened the number of men behind each
other in this way had to be increased, so that in a tunnel seventy-five
feet long there would be from eight to ten men lying one behind the
other. When the dirt was pushed back to the mouth of the tunnel it was
taken up in improvised bags, made by tying up the bottoms of pantaloon
legs, carried to the Swamp, and emptied. The work in the tunnel was
very exhausting, and the digger had to be relieved every half-hour.

The greatest trouble was to carry the tunnel forward in a straight
line. As nearly everybody dug most of the time with the right hand,
there was an almost irresistible tendency to make the course veer
to the left. The first tunnel I was connected with was a ludicrous
illustration of this. About twenty of us had devoted our nights for
over a week to the prolongation of a burrow. We had not yet reached
the Stockade, which astonished us, as measurement with a string showed
that we had gone nearly twice the distance necessary for the purpose.
The thing was inexplicable, and we ceased operations to consider the
matter. The next day a man walking by a tent some little distance from
the one in which the hole began, was badly startled by the ground
giving way under his feet, and his sinking nearly to his waist in a
hole. It was very singular, but after wondering over the matter for
some hours, there came a glimmer of suspicion that it might be, in some
way, connected with the missing end of our tunnel. One of us started
through on an exploring expedition, and confirmed the suspicions by
coming out where the man had broken through. Our tunnel was shaped like
a horse shoe, and the beginning and end were not fifteen feet apart.
After that we practised digging with our left hand, and made certain
compensations for the tendency to the sinister side.

Another trouble connected with tunneling was the number of traitors and
spies among us. There were many--principally among the N’Yaarker crowd
who were always zealous to betray a tunnel, in order to curry favor
with the Rebel officers. Then, again, the Rebels had numbers of their
own men in the pen at night, as spies. It was hardly even necessary
to dress these in our uniform, because a great many of our own men
came into the prison in Rebel clothes, having been compelled to trade
garments with their captors.

One day in May, quite an excitement was raised by the detection of one
of these “tunnel traitors” in such a way as left no doubt of his guilt.
At first everybody was in favor of killing him, and they actually
started to beat him to death. This was arrested by a proposition to
“have Captain Jack tattoo him,” and the suggestion was immediately
acted upon.

“Captain Jack” was a sailor who had been with us in the Pemberton
building at Richmond. He was a very skilful tattoo artist, but, I am
sure, could make the process nastier than any other that I ever saw
attempt it. He chewed tobacco enormously. After pricking away for a few
minutes at the design on the arm or some portion of the body, he would
deluge it with a flood of tobacco spit, which, he claimed, acted as
a kind of mordant. Piping this off with a filthy rag, he would study
the effect for an instant, and then go ahead with another series of
prickings and tobacco juice drenchings.

The tunnel-traitor was taken to Captain Jack. That worthy decided to
brand him with a great “T,” the top part to extend across his forehead
and the stem to run down his nose. Captain Jack got his tattooing kit
ready, and the fellow was thrown upon the ground and held there. The
Captain took his head between his legs, and began operations. After an
instant’s work with the needles, he opened his mouth, and filled the
wretch’s face and eyes full of the disgusting saliva. The crowd round
about yelled with delight at this new process. For an hour, that was
doubtless an eternity to the rascal undergoing branding, Captain Jack
continued his alternate pickings and drenchings. At the end of that
time the traitor’s face was disfigured with a hideous mark that he
would bear to his grave. We learned afterwards that he was not one of
our men, but a Rebel spy. This added much to our satisfaction with the
manner of his treatment. He disappeared shortly after the operation was
finished, being, I suppose, taken outside. I hardly think Captain Jack
would be pleased to meet him again.




CHAPTER XXVII.

THE HOUNDS, AND THE DIFFICULTIES THEY PUT IN THE WAY OF ESCAPE --THE
WHOLE SOUTH PATROLLED BY THEM.

Those who succeeded, one way or another, in passing the Stockade
limits, found still more difficulties lying between them and freedom
than would discourage ordinarily resolute men. The first was to get
away from the immediate vicinity of the prison. All around were Rebel
patrols, pickets and guards, watching every avenue of egress. Several
packs of hounds formed efficient coadjutors of these, and were more
dreaded by possible “escapes,” than any other means at the command
of our jailors. Guards and patrols could be evaded, or circumvented,
but the hounds could not. Nearly every man brought back from a futile
attempt at escape told the same story: he had been able to escape
the human Rebels, but not their canine colleagues. Three of our
detachment--members of the Twentieth Indiana--had an experience of this
kind that will serve to illustrate hundreds of others. They had been
taken outside to do some work upon the cook-house that was being built.
A guard was sent with the three a little distance into the woods to
get a piece of timber. The boys sauntered, along carelessly with the
guard, and managed to get pretty near him. As soon as they were fairly
out of sight of the rest, the strongest of them--Tom Williams--snatched
the Rebel’s gun away from him, and the other two springing upon him as
swift as wild cats, throttled him, so that he could not give the alarm.
Still keeping a hand on his throat, they led him off some distance,
and tied him to a sapling with strings made by tearing up one of their
blouses. He was also securely gagged, and the boys, bidding him a
hasty, but not specially tender, farewell, struck out, as they fondly
hoped, for freedom. It was not long until they were missed, and the
parties sent in search found and released the guard, who gave all the
information he possessed as to what had become of his charges. All the
packs of hounds, the squads of cavalry, and the foot patrols were sent
out to scour the adjacent country. The Yankees kept in the swamps and
creeks, and no trace of them was found that afternoon or evening. By
this time they were ten or fifteen miles away, and thought that they
could safely leave the creeks for better walking on the solid ground.
They had gone but a few miles, when the pack of hounds Captain Wirz was
with took their trail, and came after them in full cry. The boys tried
to ran, but, exhausted as they were, they could make no headway. Two of
them were soon caught, but Tom Williams, who was so desperate that he
preferred death to recapture, jumped into a mill-pond near by. When he
came up, it was in a lot of saw logs and drift wood that hid him from
being seen from the shore. The dogs stopped at the shore, and bayed
after the disappearing prey. The Rebels with them, who had seen Tom
spring in, came up and made a pretty thorough search for him. As they
did not think to probe around the drift wood this was unsuccessful, and
they came to the conclusion that Tom had been drowned. Wirz marched
the other two back and, for a wonder, did not punish them, probably
because he was so rejoiced at his success in capturing them. He was
beaming with delight when he returned them to our squad, and said, with
a chuckle:

“Brisoners, I pring you pack two of dem tam Yankees wat got away
yesterday, unt I run de oder raskal into a mill-pont and trowntet him.”

What was our astonishment, about three weeks later, to see Tom, fat
and healthy, and dressed in a full suit of butternut, come stalking
into the pen. He had nearly reached the mountains, when a pack of
hounds, patrolling for deserters or negros, took his trail, where he
had crossed the road from one field to another, and speedily ran him
down. He had been put in a little country jail, and well fed till an
opportunity occurred to send him back. This patrolling for negros and
deserters was another of the great obstacles to a successful passage
through the country. The rebels had put, every able-bodied white man in
the ranks, and were bending every energy to keep him there. The whole
country was carefully policed by Provost Marshals to bring out those
who were shirking military duty, or had deserted their colors, and to
check any movement by the negros. One could not go anywhere without
a pass, as every road was continually watched by men and hounds. It
was the policy of our men, when escaping, to avoid roads as much as
possible by traveling through the woods and fields.

From what I saw of the hounds, and what I could learn from others,
I believe that each pack was made up of two bloodhounds and from
twenty-five to fifty other dogs. The bloodhounds were debased
descendants of the strong and fierce hounds imported from Cuba--many of
them by the United States Government--for hunting Indians, during the
Seminole war. The other dogs were the mongrels that are found in such
plentifulness about every Southern house--increasing, as a rule, in
numbers as the inhabitant of the house is lower down and poorer. They
are like wolves, sneaking and cowardly when alone, fierce and bold when
in packs. Each pack was managed by a well-armed man, who rode a mule;
and carried, slung over his shoulders by a cord, a cow horn, scraped
very thin, with which he controlled the band by signals.

What always puzzled me much was why the hounds took only Yankee trails,
in the vicinity of the prison. There was about the Stockade from six
thousand to ten thousand Rebels and negros, including guards, officers,
servants, workmen, etc. These were, of course, continually in motion
and must have daily made trails leading in every direction. It was the
custom of the Rebels to send a pack of hounds around the prison every
morning, to examine if any Yankees had escaped during the night. It was
believed that they rarely failed to find a prisoner’s tracks, and still
more rarely ran off upon a Rebel’s. If those outside the Stockade had
been confined to certain path and roads we could have understood this,
but, as I understand, they were not. It was part of the interest of the
day, for us, to watch the packs go yelping around the pen searching
for tracks. We got information in this way whether any tunnel had been
successfully opened during the night.

The use of hounds furnished us a crushing reply to the ever recurring
Rebel question:

“Why are you-uns puttin’ niggers in the field to fight we-uns for?”

The questioner was always silenced by the return interrogatory:

“Is that as bad as running white men down with blood hounds?”




CHAPTER XXVIII.

MAY--INFLUX OF NEW PRISONERS--DISPARITY IN NUMBERS BETWEEN THE EASTERN
AND WESTERN ARMIES--TERRIBLE CROWDING--SLAUGHTER OF MEN AT THE CREEK.

In May the long gathering storm of war burst with angry violence all
along the line held by the contending armies. The campaign began
which was to terminate eleven months later in the obliteration of the
Southern Confederacy. May 1, Sigel moved up the Shenandoah Valley
with thirty thousand men; May 3, Butler began his blundering movement
against Petersburg; May 3, the Army of the Potomac left Culpeper, and
on the 5th began its deadly grapple with Lee, in the Wilderness; May 6,
Sherman moved from Chattanooga, and engaged Joe Johnston at Rocky Face
Ridge and Tunnel Hill.

Each of these columns lost heavily in prisoners. It could not be
otherwise; it was a consequence of the aggressive movements. An army
acting offensively usually suffers more from capture than one on the
defensive. Our armies were penetrating the enemy’s country in close
proximity to a determined and vigilant foe. Every scout, every skirmish
line, every picket, every foraging party ran the risk of falling into a
Rebel trap. This was in addition to the risk of capture in action.

The bulk of the prisoners were taken from the Army of the Potomac. For
this there were two reasons: First, that there were many more men in
that Army than in any other; and second, that the entanglement in the
dense thickets and shrubbery of the Wilderness enabled both sides to
capture great numbers of the other’s men. Grant lost in prisoners from
May 5 to May 31, seven thousand four hundred and fifty; he probably
captured two-thirds of that number from the Johnnies.

Wirz’s headquarters were established in a large log house which had
been built in the fort a little distant from the southeast corner of
the prison. Every day--and sometimes twice or thrice a day--we would
see great squads of prisoners marched up to these headquarters, where
they would be searched, their names entered upon the prison records,
by clerks (detailed prisoners; few Rebels had the requisite clerical
skill) and then be marched into the prison. As they entered, the Rebel
guards would stand to arms. The infantry would be in line of battle,
the cavalry mounted, and the artillerymen standing by their guns, ready
to open at the instant with grape and canister.

The disparity between the number coming in from the Army of the
Potomac and Western armies was so great, that we Westerners began to
take some advantage of it. If we saw a squad of one hundred and fifty
or thereabouts at the headquarters, we felt pretty certain they were
from Sherman, and gathered to meet them, and learn the news from our
friends. If there were from five hundred to two thousand we knew they
were from the Army of the Potomac, and there were none of our comrades
among them. There were three exceptions to this rule while we were in
Andersonville. The first was in June, when the drunken and incompetent
Sturgis (now Colonel of the Seventh United States Cavalry) shamefully
sacrificed a superb division at Guntown, Miss. The next was after Hood
made his desperate attack on Sherman, on the 22d of July, and the third
was when Stoneman was captured at Macon. At each of these times about
two thousand prisoners were brought in.

By the end of May there were eighteen thousand four hundred and
fifty-four prisoners in the Stockade. Before the reader dismisses this
statement from his mind let him reflect how great a number this is.
It is more active, able-bodied young men than there are in any of our
leading Cities, save New York and Philadelphia. It is more than the
average population of an Ohio County. It is four times as many troops
as Taylor won the victory of Buena Vista with, and about twice as many
as Scott went into battle with at any time in his march to the City of
Mexico.

These eighteen thousand four hundred and fifty-four men were cooped up
on less than thirteen acres of ground, making about fifteen hundred
to the acre. No room could be given up for streets, or for the usual
arrangements of a camp, and most kinds of exercise were wholly
precluded. The men crowded together like pigs nesting in the woods on
cold nights. The ground, despite all our efforts, became indescribably
filthy, and this condition grew rapidly worse as the season advanced
and the sun’s rays gained fervency. As it is impossible to describe
this adequately, I must again ask the reader to assist with a few
comparisons. He has an idea of how much filth is produced, on an
ordinary City lot, in a week, by its occupation by a family say of six
persons. Now let him imagine what would be the result if that lot,
instead of having upon it six persons, with every appliance for keeping
themselves clean, and for removing and concealing filth, was the home
of one hundred and eight men, with none of these appliances.

That he may figure out these proportions for himself, I will repeat
some of the elements of the problem: We will say that an average City
lot is thirty feet front by one hundred deep. This is more front than
most of them have, but we will be liberal. This gives us a surface of
three thousand square feet. An acre contains forty-three thousand five
hundred and sixty square feet. Upon thirteen of these acres, we had
eighteen thousand four hundred and fifty-four men. After he has found
the number of square feet that each man had for sleeping apartment,
dining room, kitchen, exercise grounds and outhouses, and decided that
nobody could live for any length of time in such contracted space, I
will tell him that a few weeks later double that many men were crowded
upon that space that over thirty-five thousand were packed upon those
twelve and a-half or thirteen acres.

But I will not anticipate. With the warm weather the condition of the
swamp in the center of the prison became simply horrible. We hear so
much now-a-days of blood poisoning from the effluvia of sinks and
sewers, that reading it, I wonder how a man inside the Stockade, and
into whose nostrils came a breath of that noisomeness, escaped being
carried off by a malignant typhus. In the slimy ooze were billions of
white maggots. They would crawl out by thousands on the warm sand, and,
lying there a few minutes, sprout a wing or a pair of them. With these
they would essay a clumsy flight, ending by dropping down upon some
exposed portion of a man’s body, and stinging him like a gad-fly. Still
worse, they would drop into what he was cooking, and the utmost care
could not prevent a mess of food from being contaminated with them.

All the water that we had to use was that in the creek which flowed
through this seething mass of corruption, and received its sewerage.
How pure the water was when it came into the Stockade was a question.
We always believed that it received the drainage from the camps of the
guards, a half-a-mile away.

A road was made across the swamp, along the Dead Line at the west side,
where the creek entered the pen. Those getting water would go to this
spot, and reach as far up the stream as possible, to get the water that
was least filthy. As they could reach nearly to the Dead Line this
furnished an excuse to such of the guards as were murderously inclined
to fire upon them. I think I hazard nothing in saying that for weeks
at least one man a day was killed at this place. The murders became
monotonous; there was a dreadful sameness to them. A gun would crack;
looking up we would see, still smoking, the muzzle of the musket of
one of the guards on either side of the creek. At the same instant
would rise a piercing shriek from the man struck, now floundering in
the creek in his death agony. Then thousands of throats would yell out
curses and denunciations, and--

“O, give the Rebel ---- ---- ---- ---- a furlough!”

It was our belief that every guard who killed a Yankee was rewarded
with a thirty-day furlough. Mr. Frederick Holliger, now of Toledo,
formerly a member of the Seventy-Second Ohio, and captured at Guntown,
tells me, as his introduction to Andersonville life, that a few hours
after his entry he went to the brook to get a drink, reached out too
far, and was fired upon by the guard, who missed him, but killed
another man and wounded a second. The other prisoners standing near
then attacked him, and beat him nearly to death, for having drawn the
fire of the guard.

Nothing could be more inexcusable than these murders. Whatever defense
there might be for firing on men who touched the Dead Line in other
parts of the prison, there could be none here. The men had no intention
of escaping; they had no designs upon the Stockade; they were not
leading any party to assail it. They were in every instance killed in
the act of reaching out with their cups to dip up a little water.




CHAPTER XXIX.

SOME DISTINCTION BETWEEN SOLDIERLY DUTY AND MURDER--A PLOT TO ESCAPE
--IT IS REVEALED AND FRUSTRATED.

Let the reader understand that in any strictures I make I do not
complain of the necessary hardships of war. I understood fully and
accepted the conditions of a soldier’s career. My going into the
field uniformed and armed implied an intention, at least, of killing,
wounding, or capturing, some of the enemy. There was consequently no
ground of complaint if I was, myself killed, wounded, or captured.
If I did not want to take these chances I ought to stay at home. In
the same way, I recognized the right of our captors or guards to take
proper precautions to prevent our escape. I never questioned for an
instant the right of a guard to fire upon those attempting to escape,
and to kill them. Had I been posted over prisoners I should have
had no compunction about shooting at those trying to get away, and
consequently I could not blame the Rebels for doing the same thing. It
was a matter of soldierly duty.

But not one of the men assassinated by the guards at Andersonville were
trying to escape, nor could they have got away if not arrested by a
bullet. In a majority of instances there was not even a transgression
of a prison rule, and when there was such a transgression it was a mere
harmless inadvertence. The slaying of every man there was a foul crime.

The most of this was done by very young boys; some of it by old men.
The Twenty-Sixth Alabama and Fifty-Fifth Georgia, had guarded us since
the opening of the prison, but now they were ordered to the field, and
their places filled by the Georgia “Reserves,” an organization of boys
under, and men over the military age. As General Grant aptly-phrased
it, “They had robbed the cradle and the grave,” in forming these
regiments. The boys, who had grown up from children since the war
began, could not comprehend that a Yankee was a human being, or that it
was any more wrongful to shoot one than to kill a mad dog. Their young
imaginations had been inflamed with stories of the total depravity of
the Unionists until they believed it was a meritorious thing to seize
every opportunity to exterminate them.

Early one morning I overheard a conversation between two of these
youthful guards:

“Say, Bill, I heerd that you shot a Yank last night?”

“Now, you just bet I did. God! you jest ought to’ve heerd him holler.”

Evidently the juvenile murderer had no more conception that he had
committed crime than if he had killed a rattlesnake.

Among those who came in about the last of the month were two thousand
men from Butler’s command, lost in the disastrous action of May 15,
by which Butler was “bottled up” at Bermuda Hundreds. At that time
the Rebel hatred for Butler verged on insanity, and they vented this
upon these men who were so luckless--in every sense--as to be in his
command. Every pains was taken to mistreat them. Stripped of every
article of clothing, equipment, and cooking utensils--everything,
except a shirt and a pair of pantaloons, they were turned bareheaded
and barefooted into the prison, and the worst possible place in the pen
hunted out to locate them upon. This was under the bank, at the edge of
the Swamp and at the eastern side of the prison, where the sinks were,
and all filth from the upper part of the camp flowed down to them. The
sand upon which they lay was dry and burning as that of a tropical
desert; they were without the slightest shelter of any kind, the maggot
flies swarmed over them, and the stench was frightful. If one of them
survived the germ theory of disease is a hallucination.

The increasing number of prisoners made it necessary for the Rebels to
improve their means of guarding and holding us in check. They threw
up a line of rifle pits around the Stockade for the infantry guards.
At intervals along this were piles of hand grenades, which could be
used with fearful effect in case of an outbreak. A strong star fort
was thrown up at a little distance from the southwest corner. Eleven
field pieces were mounted in this in such a way as to rake the Stockade
diagonally. A smaller fort, mounting five guns, was built at the
northwest corner, and at the northeast and southeast corners were small
lunettes, with a couple of howitzers each. Packed as we were we had
reason to dread a single round from any of these works, which could not
fail to produce fearful havoc.

Still a plot was concocted for a break, and it seemed to the sanguine
portions of us that it must prove successful. First a secret society
was organized, bound by the most stringent oaths that could be devised.
The members of this were divided into companies of fifty men each;
under officers regularly elected. The secrecy was assumed in order
to shut out Rebel spies and the traitors from a knowledge of the
contemplated outbreak. A man named Baker--belonging, I think, to some
New York regiment--was the grand organizer of the scheme. We were
careful in each of our companies to admit none to membership except
such as long acquaintance gave us entire confidence in.

The plan was to dig large tunnels to the Stockade at various places,
and then hollow out the ground at the foot of the timbers, so that a
half dozen or so could be pushed over with a little effort, and make
a gap ten or twelve feet wide. All these were to be thrown down at
a preconcerted signal, the companies were to rush out and seize the
eleven guns of the headquarters fort. The Plymouth Brigade was then
to man these and turn them on the camp of the Reserves who, it was
imagined, would drop their arms and take to their heels after receiving
a round or so of shell. We would gather what arms we could, and place
them in the hands of the most active and determined. This would give us
frown eight to ten thousand fairly armed, resolute men, with which we
thought we could march to Appalachicola Bay, or to Sherman.

We worked energetically at our tunnels, which soon began to assume such
shape as to give assurance that they would answer our expectations in
opening the prison walls.

Then came the usual blight to all such enterprises: a spy or a traitor
revealed everything to Wirz. One day a guard came in, seized Baker and
took him out. What was done with him I know not; we never heard of him
after he passed the inner gate.

Immediately afterward all the Sergeants of detachments were summoned
outside. There they met Wirz, who made a speech informing them that he
knew all the details of the plot, and had made sufficient preparations
to defeat it. The guard had been strongly reinforced, and disposed in
such a manner as to protect the guns from capture. The Stockade had
been secured to prevent its falling, even if undermined. He said, in
addition, that Sherman had been badly defeated by Johnston, and driven
back across the river, so that any hopes of co-operation by him would
be ill-founded.

When the Sergeants returned, he caused the following notice to be
posted on the gates:

                                NOTICE.

    Not wishing to shed the blood of hundreds, not connected with those
    who concocted a mad plan to force the Stockade, and make in this way
    their escape, I hereby warn the leaders and those who formed
    themselves into a band to carry out this, that I am in possession of
    all the facts, and have made my dispositions accordingly, so as to
    frustrate it. No choice would be left me but to open with grape and
    canister on the Stockade, and what effect this would have, in this
    densely crowded place, need not be told.

    May 25, 1864.
                                            H. Wirz.

The next day a line of tall poles, bearing white flags, were put up at
some little distance from the Dead Line, and a notice was read to us
at roll call that if, except at roll call, any gathering exceeding one
hundred was observed, closer the Stockade than these poles, the guns
would open with grape and canister without warning.

The number of deaths in the Stockade in May was seven hundred and
eight, about as many as had been killed in Sherman’s army during the
same time.




CHAPTER XXX.

JUNE--POSSIBILITIES OF A MURDEROUS CANNONADE--WHAT WAS PROPOSED TO
BE DONE IN THAT EVENT--A FALSE ALARM--DETERIORATION OF THE RATIONS
--FEARFUL INCREASE OF MORTALITY.

After Wirz’s threat of grape and canister upon the slightest
provocation, we lived in daily apprehension of some pretext being found
for opening the guns upon us for a general massacre. Bitter experience
had long since taught us that the Rebels rarely threatened in vain.
Wirz, especially, was much more likely to kill without warning, than
to warn without killing. This was because of the essential weakness of
his nature. He knew no art of government, no method of discipline save
“kill them!” His petty little mind’s scope reached no further. He could
conceive of no other way of managing men than the punishment of every
offense, or seeming offense, with death. Men who have any talent for
governing find little occasion for the death penalty. The stronger they
are in themselves--the more fitted for controlling others--the less
their need of enforcing their authority by harsh measures.

There was a general expression of determination among the prisoners to
answer any cannonade with a desperate attempt to force the Stockade.
It was agreed that anything was better than dying like rats in a pit
or wild animals in a battue. It was believed that if anything would
occur which would rouse half those in the pen to make a headlong effort
in concert, the palisade could be scaled, and the gates carried, and,
though it would be at a fearful loss of life, the majority of those
making the attempt would get out. If the Rebels would discharge grape
and canister, or throw a shell into the prison, it would lash everybody
to such a pitch that they would see that the sole forlorn hope of
safety lay in wresting the arms away from our tormentors. The great
element in our favor was the shortness of the distance between us and
the cannon. We could hope to traverse this before the guns could be
reloaded more than once.

Whether it would have been possible to succeed I am unable to say.
It would have depended wholly upon the spirit and unanimity with
which the effort was made. Had ten thousand rushed forward at once,
each with a determination to do or die, I think it would have been
successful without a loss of a tenth of the number. But the insuperable
trouble--in our disorganized state--was want of concert of action. I am
quite sure, however, that the attempt would have been made had the guns
opened.

One day, while the agitation of this matter was feverish, I was cooking
my dinner--that is, boiling my pitiful little ration of unsalted meal,
in my fruit can, with the aid of a handful of splinters that I had been
able to pick up by a half day’s diligent search. Suddenly the long
rifle in the headquarters fort rang out angrily. A fuse shell shrieked
across the prison--close to the tops of the logs, and burst in the
woods beyond. It was answered with a yell of defiance from ten thousand
throats.

I sprang up-my heart in my mouth. The long dreaded time had arrived;
the Rebels had opened the massacre in which they must exterminate us,
or we them.

I looked across to the opposite bank, on which were standing twelve
thousand men--erect, excited, defiant. I was sure that at the next shot
they would surge straight against the Stockade like a mighty human
billow, and then a carnage would begin the like of which modern times
had never seen.

The excitement and suspense were terrible. We waited for what seemed
ages for the next gun. It was not fired. Old Winder was merely showing
the prisoners how he could rally the guards to oppose an outbreak.
Though the gun had a shell in it, it was merely a signal, and the
guards came double-quicking up by regiments, going into position in the
rifle pits and the hand-grenade piles.

As we realized what the whole affair meant, we relieved our surcharged
feelings with a few general yells of execration upon Rebels generally,
and upon those around us particularly, and resumed our occupation of
cooking rations, killing lice, and discussing the prospects of exchange
and escape.

The rations, like everything else about us, had steadily grown worse. A
bakery was built outside of the Stockade in May and our meal was baked
there into loaves about the size of brick. Each of us got a half of one
of these for a day’s ration. This, and occasionally a small slice of
salt pork, was call that I received. I wish the reader would prepare
himself an object lesson as to how little life can be supported on for
any length of time, by procuring a piece of corn bread the size of an
ordinary brickbat, and a thin slice of pork, and then imagine how he
would fare, with that as his sole daily ration, for long hungry weeks
and months. Dio Lewis satisfied himself that he could sustain life on
sixty cents, a week. I am sure that the food furnished us by the Rebels
would not, at present prices cost one-third that. They pretended to
give us one-third of pound of bacon and one and one-fourth pounds of
corn meal. A week’s rations then would be two and one-third pounds of
bacon--worth ten cents, and eight and three-fourths pounds of meal,
worth, say, ten cents more. As a matter of fact, I do not presume that
at any time we got this full ration. It would surprise me to learn that
we averaged two-thirds of it.

The meal was ground very coarse and produced great irrition in the
bowels. We used to have the most frightful cramps that men ever
suffered from. Those who were predisposed intestinal affections were
speedily carried off by incurable diarrhea and dysentery. Of the
twelve thousand and twelve men who died, four thousand died of chronic
diarrhea; eight hundred and seventeen died of acute diarrhea, and one
thousand three hundred and eighty-four died of dysenteria, making total
of six thousand two hundred and one victims to enteric disorders.

Let the reader reflect a moment upon this number, till comprehends
fully how many six thousand two hundred and men are, and how much
force, energy, training, and rich possibilities for the good of the
community and country died with those six thousand two hundred and
one young, active men. It may help his perception of the magnitude of
this number to remember that the total loss of the British, during the
Crimean war, by death in all shapes, was four thousand five hundred and
ninety-five, or one thousand seven hundred and six less than the deaths
in Andersonville from dysenteric diseases alone.

The loathsome maggot flies swarmed about the bakery, and dropped into
the trough where the dough was being mixed, so that it was rare to get
a ration of bread not contaminated with a few of them.

It was not long until the bakery became inadequate to supply bread
for all the prisoners. Then great iron kettles were set, and mush was
issued to a number of detachments, instead of bread. There was not
so much cleanliness and care in preparing this as a farmer shows in
cooking food for stock. A deep wagon-bed would be shoveled full of
the smoking paste, which was then hailed inside and issued out to the
detachments, the latter receiving it on blankets, pieces of shelter
tents, or, lacking even these, upon the bare sand.

As still more prisoners came in, neither bread nor mush could be
furnished them, and a part of the detachments received their rations
in meal. Earnest solicitation at length resulted in having occasional
scanty issues of wood to cook this with. My detachment was allowed to
choose which it would take--bread, mush or meal. It took the latter.

Cooking the meal was the topic of daily interest. There were three
ways of doing it: Bread, mush and “dumplings.” In the latter the
meal was dampened until it would hold together, and was rolled into
little balls, the size of marbles, which were then boiled. The bread
was the most satisfactory and nourishing; the mush the bulkiest--it
made a bigger show, but did not stay with one so long. The dumplings
held an intermediate position--the water in which they were boiled
becoming a sort of a broth that helped to stay the stomach. We received
no salt, as a rule. No one knows the intense longing for this, when
one goes without it for a while. When, after a privation of weeks we
would get a teaspoonful of salt apiece, it seemed as if every muscle
in our bodies was invigorated. We traded buttons to the guards for
red peppers, and made our mush, or bread, or dumplings, hot with the
fiery-pods, in hopes that this would make up for the lack of salt, but
it was a failure. One pinch of salt was worth all the pepper pods in
the Southern Confederacy. My little squad--now diminished by death from
five to three--cooked our rations together to economize wood and waste
of meal, and quarreled among ourselves daily as to whether the joint
stock should be converted into bread, mush or dumplings. The decision
depended upon the state of the stomach. If very hungry, we made mush;
if less famished, dumplings; if disposed to weigh matters, bread.

This may seem a trifling matter, but it was far from it. We all
remember the man who was very fond of white beans, but after having
fifty or sixty meals of them in succession, began to find a suspicion
of monotony in the provender. We had now six months of unvarying diet
of corn meal and water, and even so slight a change as a variation in
the way of combining the two was an agreeable novelty.

At the end of June there were twenty-six thousand three hundred
and sixty-seven prisoners in the Stockade, and one thousand two
hundred--just forty per day--had died during the month.




CHAPTER XXXI.

DYING BY INCHES--SEITZ, THE SLOW, AND HIS DEATH--STIGGALL AND EMERSON
--RAVAGES ON THE SCURVY.

May and June made sad havoc in the already thin ranks of our battalion.
Nearly a score died in my company--L--and the other companies suffered
proportionately. Among the first to die of my company comrades, was
a genial little Corporal, “Billy” Phillips--who was a favorite with
us all. Everything was done for him that kindness could suggest, but
it was of little avail. Then “Bruno” Weeks--a young boy, the son of a
preacher, who had run away from his home in Fulton County, Ohio, to
join us, succumbed to hardship and privation.

The next to go was good-natured, harmless Victor Seitz, a Detroit cigar
maker, a German, and one of the slowest of created mortals. How he ever
came to go into the cavalry was beyond the wildest surmises of his
comrades. Why his supernatural slowness and clumsiness did not result
in his being killed at least once a day, while in the service, was even
still farther beyond the power of conjecture. No accident ever happened
in the company that Seitz did not have some share in. Did a horse fall
on a slippery road, it was almost sure to be Seitz’s, and that imported
son of the Fatherland was equally sure to be caught under him. Did
somebody tumble over a bank of a dark night, it was Seitz that we soon
heard making his way back, swearing in deep German gutterals, with
frequent allusion to ‘tausend teuflin.’ Did a shanty blow down, we ran
over and pulled Seitz out of the debris, when he would exclaim:

“Zo! dot vos pretty vunny now, ain’t it?”

And as he surveyed the scene of his trouble with true German phlegm,
he would fish a brier-wood pipe from the recesses of his pockets, fill
it with tobacco, and go plodding off in a cloud of smoke in search of
some fresh way to narrowly escape destruction. He did not know enough
about horses to put a snaffle-bit in one’s mouth, and yet he would draw
the friskiest, most mettlesome animal in the corral, upon whose back he
was scarcely more at home than he would be upon a slack rope. It was
no uncommon thing to see a horse break out of ranks, and go past the
battalion like the wind, with poor Seitz clinging to his mane like the
traditional grim Death to a deceased African. We then knew that Seitz
had thoughtlessly sunk the keen spurs he would persist in wearing; deep
into the flanks of his high-mettled animal.

These accidents became so much a matter-of-course that when anything
unusual occurred in the company our first impulse was to go and help
Seitz out.

When the bugle sounded “boots and saddles,” the rest of us would pack
up, mount, “count off by fours from the right,” and be ready to move
out before the last notes of the call had fairly died away. Just then
we would notice an unsaddled horse still tied to the hitching place. It
was Seitz’s, and that worthy would be seen approaching, pipe in mouth,
and bridle in hand, with calm, equable steps, as if any time before the
expiration of his enlistment would be soon enough to accomplish the
saddling of his steed. A chorus of impatient and derisive remarks would
go up from his impatient comrades:

“For heaven’s sake, Seitz, hurry up!”

“Seitz! you are like a cow’s tail--always behind!”

“Seitz, you are slower than the second coming of the Savior!”

“Christmas is a railroad train alongside of you, Seitz!”

“If you ain’t on that horse in half a second, Seitz, we’ll go off and
leave you, and the Johnnies will skin you alive!” etc., etc.

Not a ripple of emotion would roll over Seitz’s placid features under
the sharpest of these objurgations. At last, losing all patience, two
or three boys would dismount, run to Seitz’s horse, pack, saddle and
bridle him, as if he were struck with a whirlwind. Then Seitz would
mount, and we would move ’off.

For all this, we liked him. His good nature was boundless, and his
disposition to oblige equal to the severest test. He did not lack a
grain of his full share of the calm, steadfast courage of his race, and
would stay where he was put, though Erebus yawned and bade him fly.
He was very useful, despite his unfitness for many of the duties of a
cavalryman. He was a good guard, and always ready to take charge of
prisoners, or be sentry around wagons or a forage pile-duties that most
of the boys cordially hated.

But he came into the last trouble at Andersonville. He stood up pretty
well under the hardships of Belle Isle, but lost his cheerfulness--his
unrepining calmness--after a few weeks in the Stockade. One day we
remembered that none of us had seen him for several days, and we
started in search of him. We found him in a distant part of the camp,
lying near the Dead Line. His long fair hair was matted together, his
blue eyes had the flush of fever. Every part of his clothing was gray
with the lice that were hastening his death with their torments. He
uttered the first complaint I ever heard him make, as I came up to him:

“My Gott, M ----, dis is worse dun a dog’s det!”

In a few days we gave him all the funeral in our power; tied his big
toes together, folded his hands across his breast, pinned to his shirt
a slip of paper, upon which was written:

               VICTOR E. SEITZ,
          Co. L, Sixteenth Illinois Cavalry.

And laid his body at the South Gate, beside some scores of others that
were awaiting the arrival of the six-mule wagon that hauled them to the
Potter’s Field, which was to be their last resting-place.

John Emerson and John Stiggall, of my company, were two Norwegian boys,
and fine specimens of their race--intelligent, faithful, and always
ready for duty. They had an affection for each other that reminded
one of the stories told of the sworn attachment and the unfailing
devotion that were common between two Gothic warrior youths. Coming
into Andersonville some little time after the rest of us, they found
all the desirable ground taken up, and they established their quarters
at the base of the hill, near the Swamp. There they dug a little hole
to lie in, and put in a layer of pine leaves. Between them they had an
overcoat and a blanket. At night they lay upon the coat and covered
themselves with the blanket. By day the blanket served as a tent. The
hardships and annoyances that we endured made everybody else cross and
irritable. At times it seemed impossible to say or listen to pleasant
words, and nobody was ever allowed to go any length of time spoiling
for a fight. He could usually be accommodated upon the spot to any
extent he desired, by simply making his wishes known. Even the best of
chums would have sharp quarrels and brisk fights, and this disposition
increased as disease made greater inroads upon them. I saw in one
instance two brothers-both of whom died the next day of scurvy--and
who were so helpless as to be unable to rise, pull themselves up on
their knees by clenching the poles of their tents --in order to strike
each other with clubs, and they kept striking until the bystanders
interfered and took their weapons away from them.

But Stiggall and Emerson never quarreled with each other. Their
tenderness and affection were remarkable to witness. They began to
go the way that so many were going; diarrhea and scurvy set in; they
wasted away till their muscles and tissues almost disappeared, leaving
the skin lying fiat upon the bones; but their principal solicitude was
for each other, and each seemed actually jealous of any person else
doing anything for the other. I met Emerson one day, with one leg drawn
clear out of shape, and rendered almost useless by the scurvy. He was
very weak, but was hobbling down towards the Creek with a bucket made
from a boot leg. I said:

“Johnny, just give me your bucket. I’ll fill it for you, and bring it
up to your tent.”

“No; much obliged, M ----” he wheezed out; “my pardner wants a cool
drink, and I guess I’d better get it for him.”

Stiggall died in June. He was one of the first victims of scurvy,
which, in the succeeding few weeks, carried off so many. All of us who
had read sea-stories had read much of this disease and its horrors, but
we had little conception of the dreadful reality. It usually manifested
itself first in the mouth. The breath became unbearably fetid; the
gums swelled until they protruded, livid and disgusting, beyond the
lips. The teeth became so loose that they frequently fell out, and
the sufferer would pick them up and set them back in their sockets.
In attempting to bite the hard corn bread furnished by the bakery the
teeth often stuck fast and were pulled out. The gums had a fashion
of breaking away, in large chunks, which would be swallowed or spit
out. All the time one was eating his mouth would be filled with blood,
fragments of gums and loosened teeth.

Frightful, malignant ulcers appeared in other parts of the body; the
ever-present maggot flies laid eggs in these, and soon worms swarmed
therein. The sufferer looked and felt as if, though he yet lived and
moved, his body was anticipating the rotting it would undergo a little
later in the grave.

The last change was ushered in by the lower parts of the legs
swelling. When this appeared, we considered the man doomed. We all
had scurvy, more or less, but as long as it kept out of our legs we
were hopeful. First, the ankle joints swelled, then the foot became
useless. The swelling increased until the knees became stiff, and the
skin from these down was distended until it looked pale, colorless and
transparent as a tightly blown bladder. The leg was so much larger at
the bottom than at the thigh, that the sufferers used to make grim
jokes about being modeled like a churn, “with the biggest end down.”
The man then became utterly helpless and usually died in a short time.

The official report puts down the number of deaths from scurvy at
three thousand five hundred and seventy-four, but Dr. Jones, the Rebel
surgeon, reported to the Rebel Government his belief that nine-tenths
of the great mortality of the prison was due, either directly or
indirectly, to this cause.

The only effort made by the Rebel doctors to check its ravages was
occasionally to give a handful of sumach berries to some particularly
bad case.

When Stiggall died we thought Emerson would certainly follow him in a
day or two, but, to our surprise, he lingered along until August before
dying.




CHAPTER XXXII.

“OLE BOO,” AND “OLE SOL, THE HAYMAKER”--A FETID, BURNING
DESERT--NOISOME WATER, AND THE EFFECTS OF DRINKING IT--STEALING SOFT
SOAP.

The gradually lengthening Summer days were insufferably long and
wearisome. Each was hotter, longer and more tedious than its
predecessors. In my company was a none-too-bright fellow, named Dawson.
During the chilly rains or the nipping, winds of our first days in
prison, Dawson would, as he rose in, the morning, survey the forbidding
skies with lack-luster eyes and remark, oracularly:

“Well, Ole Boo gits us agin, to-day.”

He was so unvarying in this salutation to the morn that his designation
of disagreeable weather as “Ole Boo” became generally adopted by us.
When the hot weather came on, Dawson’s remark, upon rising and seeing
excellent prospects for a scorcher, changed to: “Well, Ole Sol, the
Haymaker, is going to git in his work on us agin to-day.”

As long as he lived and was able to talk, this was Dawson’s invariable
observation at the break of day.

He was quite right. The Ole Haymaker would do some famous work before
he descended in the West, sending his level rays through the wide
interstices between the somber pines.

By nine o’clock in the morning his beams would begin to fairly singe
everything in the crowded pen. The hot sand would glow as one sees it
in the center of the unshaded highway some scorching noon in August.
The high walls of the prison prevented the circulation inside of any
breeze that might be in motion, while the foul stench rising from the
putrid Swamp and the rotting ground seemed to reach the skies.

One can readily comprehend the horrors of death on the burning sands
of a desert. But the desert sand is at least clean; there is nothing
worse about it than heat and intense dryness. It is not, as that was
at Andersonville, poisoned with the excretions of thousands of sick
and dying men, filled with disgusting vermin, and loading the air with
the germs of death. The difference is as that between a brick-kiln and
a sewer. Should the fates ever decide that I shall be flung out upon
sands to perish, I beg that the hottest place in the Sahara may be
selected, rather than such a spot as the interior of the Andersonville
Stockade.

It may be said that we had an abundance of water, which made a decided
improvement on a desert. Doubtless--had that water been pure. But
every mouthful of it was a blood poison, and helped promote disease
and death. Even before reaching the Stockade it was so polluted by
the drainage of the Rebel camps as to be utterly unfit for human
use. In our part of the prison we sank several wells--some as deep
as forty feet--to procure water. We had no other tools for this than
our ever-faithful half canteens, and nothing wherewith to wall the
wells. But a firm clay was reached a few feet below the surface, which
afforded tolerable strong sides for the lower part, ana furnished
material to make adobe bricks for curbs to keep out the sand of the
upper part. The sides were continually giving away, however, and
fellows were perpetually falling down the holes, to the great damage of
their legs and arms. The water, which was drawn up in little cans, or
boot leg buckets, by strings made of strips of cloth, was much better
than that of the creek, but was still far from pure, as it contained
the seepage from the filthy ground.

The intense heat led men to drink great quantities of water, and this
superinduced malignant dropsical complaints, which, next to diarrhea,
scurvy and gangrene, were the ailments most active in carrying men off.
Those affected in this way swelled up frightfully from day to day.
Their clothes speedily became too small for them, and were ripped off,
leaving them entirely naked, and they suffered intensely until death
at last came to their relief. Among those of my squad who died in this
way, was a young man named Baxter, of the Fifth Indiana Cavalry, taken
at Chicamauga. He was very fine looking--tall, slender, with regular
features and intensely black hair and eyes; he sang nicely, and was
generally liked. A more pitiable object than he, when last I saw him,
just before his death, can not be imagined. His body had swollen until
it seemed marvelous that the human skin could bear so much distention
without disruption, All the old look of bright intelligence had been.
driven from his face by the distortion of his features. His swarthy
hair and beard, grown long and ragged, had that peculiar repulsive look
which the black hair of the sick is prone to assume.

I attributed much of my freedom from the diseases to which others
succumbed to abstention from water drinking. Long before I entered the
army, I had constructed a theory--on premises that were doubtless as
insufficient as those that boyish theories are usually based upon--that
drinking water was a habit, and a pernicious one, which sapped away
the energy. I took some trouble to curb my appetite for water, and
soon found that I got along very comfortably without drinking anything
beyond that which was contained in my food. I followed this up after
entering the army, drinking nothing at any time but a little coffee,
and finding no need, even on the dustiest marches, for anything more. I
do not presume that in a year I drank a quart of cold water. Experience
seemed to confirm my views, for I noticed that the first to sink under
a fatigue, or to yield to sickness, were those who were always on the
lookout for drinking water, springing from their horses and struggling
around every well or spring on the line of march for an opportunity to
fill their canteens.

I made liberal use of the Creek for bathing purposes, however, visiting
it four or five times a day during the hot days, to wash myself all
over. This did not cool one off much, for the shallow stream was nearly
as hot as the sand, but it seemed to do some good, and it helped pass
away the tedious hours. The stream was nearly all the time filled as
full of bathers as they could stand, and the water could do little
towards cleansing so many. The occasional rain storms that swept
across the prison were welcomed, not only because they cooled the air
temporarily, but because they gave us a shower-bath. As they came up,
nearly every one stripped naked and got out where he could enjoy the
full benefit of the falling water. Fancy, if possible, the spectacle
of twenty-five thousand or thirty thousand men without a stitch of
clothing upon them. The like has not been seen, I imagine, since the
naked followers of Boadicea gathered in force to do battle to the Roman
invaders.

It was impossible to get really clean. Our bodies seemed covered with
a varnish-like, gummy matter that defied removal by water alone. I
imagined that it came from the rosin or turpentine, arising from the
little pitch pine fires over which we hovered when cooking our rations.
It would yield to nothing except strong soap-and soap, as I have before
stated--was nearly as scarce in the Southern Confederacy as salt. We in
prison saw even less of it, or rather, none at all. The scarcity of it,
and our desire for it, recalls a bit of personal experience.

I had steadfastly refused all offers of positions outside the prison
on parole, as, like the great majority of the prisoners, my hatred of
the Rebels grew more bitter, day by day; I felt as if I would rather
die than accept the smallest favor at their hands, and I shared the
common contempt for those who did. But, when the movement for a grand
attack on the Stockade--mentioned in a previous chapter--was apparently
rapidly coming to a head, I was offered a temporary detail outside to,
assist in making up some rolls. I resolved to accept; first because
I thought I might get some information that would be of use in our
enterprise; and, next, because I foresaw that the rush through the gaps
in the Stockade would be bloody business, and by going out in advance
I would avoid that much of the danger, and still be able to give
effective assistance.

I was taken up to Wirz’s office. He was writing at a desk at one end of
a large room when the Sergeant brought me in. He turned around, told
the Sergeant to leave me, and ordered me to sit down upon a box at the
other end of the room.

Turning his back and resuming his writing, in a few minutes he had
forgotten me. I sat quietly, taking in the details for a half-hour, and
then, having exhausted everything else in the room, I began wondering
what was in the box I was sitting upon. The lid was loose; I hitched
it forward a little without attracting Wirz’s attention, and slipped
my left hand down of a voyage of discovery. It seemed very likely that
there was something there that a loyal Yankee deserved better than a
Rebel. I found that it was a fine article of soft soap. A handful was
scooped up and speedily shoved into my left pantaloon pocket. Expecting
every instant that Wirz would turn around and order me to come to the
desk to show my handwriting, hastily and furtively wiped my hand on the
back of my shirt and watched Wirz with as innocent an expression as a
school boy assumes when he has just flipped a chewed paper wad across
the room. Wirz was still engrossed in his writing, and did not look
around. I was emboldened to reach down for another handful. This was
also successfully transferred, the hand wiped off on the back of the
shirt, and the face wore its expression of infantile ingenuousness.
Still Wirz did not look up. I kept dipping up handful after handful,
until I had gotten about a quart in the left hand pocket. After each
handful I rubbed my hand off on the back of my shirt and waited an
instant for a summons to the desk. Then the process was repeated with
the other hand, and a quart of the saponaceous mush was packed in the
right hand pocket.

Shortly after Wirz rose and ordered a guard to take me away and keep
me, until he decided what to do with me. The day was intensely hot, and
soon the soap in my pockets and on the back of my shirt began burning
like double strength Spanish fly blisters. There was nothing to do but
grin and bear it. I set my teeth, squatted down under the shade of the
parapet of the fort, and stood it silently and sullenly. For the first
time in my life I thoroughly appreciated the story of the Spartan boy,
who stole the fox and suffered the animal to tear his bowels out rather
than give a sign which would lead to the exposure of his theft.

Between four and five o’clock-after I had endured the thing for five or
six hours, a guard came with orders from Wirz that I should be returned
to the Stockade. Upon hastily removing my clothes, after coming inside,
I found I had a blister on each thigh, and one down my back, that would
have delighted an old practitioner of the heroic school. But I also had
a half gallon of excellent soft soap. My chums and I took a magnificent
wash, and gave our clothes the same, and we still had soap enough left
to barter for some onions that we had long coveted, and which tasted as
sweet to us as manna to the Israelites.




CHAPTER XXXIII.

“POUR PASSER LE TEMPS”--A SET OF CHESSMEN PROCURED UNDER DIFFICULTIES
--RELIGIOUS SERVICES--THE DEVOTED PRIEST--WAR SONG.

The time moved with leaden feet. Do the best we could, there were very
many tiresome hours for which no occupation whatever could be found.
All that was necessary to be done during the day--attending roll
call, drawing and cooking rations, killing lice and washing--could be
disposed of in an hour’s time, and we were left with fifteen or sixteen
waking hours, for which there was absolutely no employment. Very many
tried to escape both the heat and ennui by sleeping as much as possible
through the day, but I noticed that those who did this soon died, and
consequently I did not do it. Card playing had sufficed to pass away
the hours at first, but our cards soon wore out, and deprived us of
this resource. My chum, Andrews, and I constructed a set of chessmen
with an infinite deal of trouble. We found a soft, white root in the
swamp which answered our purpose. A boy near us had a tolerably sharp
pocket-knife, for the use of which a couple of hours each day, we gave
a few spoonfuls of meal. The knife was the only one among a large
number of prisoners, as the Rebel guards had an affection for that
style of cutlery, which led them to search incoming prisoners, very
closely. The fortunate owner of this derived quite a little income of
meal by shrewdly loaning it to his knifeless comrades. The shapes that
we made for pieces and pawns were necessarily very rude, but they were
sufficiently distinct for identification. We blackened one set with
pitch pine soot, found a piece of plank that would answer for a board
and purchased it from its possessor for part of a ration of meal, and
so were fitted out with what served until our release to distract our
attention from much of the surrounding misery.

Every one else procured such amusement as they could. Newcomers, who
still had money and cards, gambled as long as their means lasted. Those
who had books read them until the leaves fell apart. Those who had
paper and pen and ink tried to write descriptions and keep journals,
but this was usually given up after being in prison a few weeks. I
was fortunate enough to know a boy who had brought a copy of “Gray’s
Anatomy” into prison with him. I was not specially interested in the
subject, but it was Hobson’s choice; I could read anatomy or nothing,
and so I tackled it with such good will that before my friend became
sick and was taken outside, and his book with him, I had obtained a
very fair knowledge of the rudiments of physiology.

There was a little band of devoted Christian workers, among whom were
Orderly Sergeant Thomas J. Sheppard, Ninety-Seventh O. Y. L, now a
leading Baptist minister in Eastern Ohio; Boston Corbett, who afterward
slew John Wilkes Booth, and Frank Smith, now at the head of the
Railroad Bethel work at Toledo. They were indefatigable in trying to
evangelize the prison. A few of them would take their station in some
part of the Stockade (a different one every time), and begin singing
some old familiar hymn like:

               “Come, Thou fount of every blessing,”

and in a few minutes they would have an attentive audience of as many
thousand as could get within hearing. The singing would be followed
by regular services, during which Sheppard, Smith, Corbett, and some
others would make short, spirited, practical addresses, which no doubt
did much good to all who heard them, though the grains of leaven were
entirely too small to leaven such an immense measure of meal. They
conducted several funerals, as nearly like the way it was done at home
as possible. Their ministrations were not confined to mere lip service,
but they labored assiduously in caring for the sick, and made many a
poor fellow’s way to the grave much smoother for him.

This was about all the religious services that we were favored with.
The Rebel preachers did not make that effort to save our misguided
souls which one would have imagined they would having us where we could
not choose but hear they might have taken advantage of our situation
to rake us fore and aft with their theological artillery. They only
attempted it in one instance. While in Richmond a preacher came into
our room and announced in an authoritative way that he would address us
on religious subjects. We uncovered respectfully, and gathered around
him. He was a loud-tongued, brawling Boanerges, who addressed the Lord
as if drilling a brigade.

He spoke but a few moments before making apparent his belief that the
worst of crimes was that of being a Yankee, and that a man must not
only be saved through Christ’s blood, but also serve in the Rebel army
before he could attain to heaven.

Of course we raised such a yell of derision that the sermon was brought
to an abrupt conclusion.

The only minister who came into the Stockade was a Catholic priest,
middle-aged, tall, slender, and unmistakably devout. He was unwearied
in his attention to the sick, and the whole day could be seen moving
around through the prison, attending to those who needed spiritual
consolation. It was interesting to see him administer the extreme
unction to a dying man. Placing a long purple scarf about his own
neck and a small brazen crucifix in the hands of the dying one, he
would kneel by the latter’s side and anoint him upon the eyes, ears,
nostrils; lips, hands, feet and breast, with sacred oil; from a little
brass vessel, repeating the while, in an impressive voice, the solemn
offices of the Church.

His unwearying devotion gained the admiration of all, no matter how
little inclined one might be to view priestliness generally with favor.
He was evidently of such stuff as Christian heros have ever been made
of, and would have faced stake and fagot, at the call of duty, with
unquailing eye. His name was Father Hamilton, and he was stationed
at Macon. The world should know more of a man whose services were so
creditable to humanity and his Church:

The good father had the wisdom of the serpent, with the harmlessness
of the dove. Though full of commiseration for the unhappy lot of the
prisoners, nothing could betray him into the slightest expression of
opinion regarding the war or those who were the authors of all this
misery. In our impatience at our treatment, and hunger for news, we
forgot his sacerdotal character, and importuned him for tidings of
the exchange. His invariable reply was that he lived apart from these
things and kept himself ignorant of them.

“But, father,” said I one day, with an impatience that I could not
wholly repress, “you must certainly hear or read something of this,
while you are outside among the Rebel officers.” Like many other
people, I supposed that the whole world was excited over that in which
I felt a deep interest.

“No, my son,” replied he, in his usual calm, measured tones. “I go not
among them, nor do I hear anything from them. When I leave the prison
in the evening, full of sorrow at what I have seen here, I find that
the best use I can make of my time is in studying the Word of God, and
especially the Psalms of David.”

We were not any longer good company for each other. We had heard over
and over again all each other’s stories and jokes, and each knew as
much about the other’s previous history as we chose to communicate. The
story of every individual’s past life, relations, friends, regiment,
and soldier experience had been told again and again, until the
repetition was wearisome. The cool nights following the hot days were
favorable to little gossiping seances like the yarn-spinning watches
of sailors on pleasant nights. Our squad, though its stock of stories
was worn threadbare, was fortunate enough to have a sweet singer in
Israel “Nosey” Payne--of whose tunefulness we never tired. He had a
large repertoire of patriotic songs, which he sang with feeling and
correctness, and which helped much to make the calm Summer nights pass
agreeably. Among the best of these was “Brave Boys are They,” which
I always thought was the finest ballad, both in poetry and music,
produced by the War.




CHAPTER XXXIV.

MAGGOTS, LICE AND RAIDERS--PRACTICES OF THESE HUMAN VERMIN--PLUNDERING
THE SICK AND DYING--NIGHT ATTACKS, AND BATTLES BY DAY--HARD TIMES FOR
THE SMALL TRADERS.

With each long, hot Summer hour the lice, the maggot-flies and the
N’Yaarkers increased in numbers and venomous activity. They were
ever-present annoyances and troubles; no time was free from them. The
lice worried us by day and tormented us by night; the maggot-flies
fouled our food, and laid in sores and wounds larvae that speedily
became masses of wriggling worms. The N’Yaarkers were human vermin that
preyed upon and harried us unceasingly.

They formed themselves into bands numbering from five to twenty-five,
each led by a bold, unscrupulous, energetic scoundrel. We now called
them “Raiders,” and the most prominent and best known of the bands were
called by the names of their ruffian leaders, as “Mosby’s Raiders,”
“Curtis’s Raiders,” “Delaney’s Raiders,” “Sarsfield’s Raiders,”
“Collins’s Raiders,” etc.

As long as we old prisoners formed the bulk of those inside the
Stockade, the Raiders had slender picking. They would occasionally
snatch a blanket from the tent poles, or knock a boy down at the
Creek and take his silver watch from him; but this was all. Abundant
opportunities for securing richer swag came to them with the advent of
the Plymouth Pilgrims. As had been before stated, these boys brought
in with them a large portion of their first instalment of veteran
bounty--aggregating in amount, according to varying estimates, between
twenty-five thousand and one hundred thousand dollars. The Pilgrims
were likewise well clothed, had an abundance of blankets and camp
equipage, and a plentiful supply of personal trinkets, that could be
readily traded off to the Rebels. An average one of them--even if his
money were all gone--was a bonanza to any band which could succeed in
plundering him. His watch and chain, shoes, knife, ring, handkerchief,
combs and similar trifles, would net several hundred dollars in
Confederate money. The blockade, which cut off the Rebel communication
with the outer world, made these in great demand. Many of the prisoners
that came in from the Army of the Potomac repaid robbing equally
well. As a rule those from that Army were not searched so closely as
those from the West, and not unfrequently they came in with all their
belongings untouched, where Sherman’s men, arriving the same day, would
be stripped nearly to the buff.

The methods of the Raiders were various, ranging all the way from sneak
thievery to highway robbery. All the arts learned in the prisons and
purlieus of New York were put into exercise. Decoys, “bunko-steerers”
at home, would be on the look-out for promising subjects as each crowd
of fresh prisoners entered the gate, and by kindly offers to find them
a sleeping place, lure them to where they could be easily despoiled
during the night. If the victim resisted there was always sufficient
force at hand to conquer him, and not seldom his life paid the penalty
of his contumacy. I have known as many as three of these to be killed
in a night, and their bodies--with throats cut, or skulls crushed
in--be found in the morning among the dead at the gates.

All men having money or valuables were under continual espionage,
and when found in places convenient for attack, a rush was made for
them. They were knocked down and their persons rifled with such swift
dexterity that it was done before they realized what had happened.

At first these depredations were only perpetrated at night. The quarry
was selected during the day, and arrangements made for a descent. After
the victim was asleep the band dashed down upon him, and sheared him
of his goods with incredible swiftness. Those near would raise the cry
of “Raiders!” and attack the robbers. If the latter had secured their
booty they retreated with all possible speed, and were soon lost in
the crowd. If not, they would offer battle, and signal for assistance
from the other bands. Severe engagements of this kind were of continual
occurrence, in which men were so badly beaten as to die from the
effects. The weapons used were fists, clubs, axes, tent-poles, etc.
The Raiders were plentifully provided with the usual weapons of their
class--slung-shots and brass-knuckles. Several of them had succeeded in
smuggling bowie-knives into prison.

They had the great advantage in these rows of being well acquainted
with each other, while, except the Plymouth Pilgrims, the rest of the
prisoners were made up of small squads of men from each regiment in
the service, and total strangers to all outside of their own little
band. The Raiders could concentrate, if necessary, four hundred or five
hundred men upon any point of attack, and each member of the gangs had
become so familiarized with all the rest by long association in New
York, and elsewhere, that he never dealt a blow amiss, while their
opponents were nearly as likely to attack friends as enemies.

By the middle of June the continual success of the Raiders emboldened
them so that they no longer confined their depredations to the night,
but made their forays in broad daylight, and there was hardly an hour
in the twenty-four that the cry of “Raiders! Raiders!” did, not go up
from some part of the pen, and on looking in the direction of the cry,
one would see a surging commotion, men struggling, and clubs being
plied vigorously. This was even more common than the guards shooting
men at the Creek crossing.

One day I saw “Dick Allen’s Raiders,” eleven in number, attack a man
wearing the uniform of Ellett’s Marine Brigade. He was a recent comer,
and alone, but he was brave. He had come into possession of a spade,
by some means or another, and he used this with delightful vigor and
effect. Two or three times he struck one of his assailants so fairly
on the head and with such good will that I congratulated myself that
he had killed him. Finally, Dick Allen managed to slip around behind
him unnoticed, and striking him on the head with a slung-shot, knocked
him down, when the whole crowd pounced upon him to kill him, but were
driven off by others rallying to his assistance.

The proceeds of these forays enabled the Raiders to wax fat and lusty,
while others were dying from starvation. They all had good tents,
constructed of stolen blankets, and their headquarters was a large,
roomy tent, with a circular top, situated on the street leading to
the South Gate, and capable of accommodating from seventy-five to one
hundred men. All the material for this had been wrested away from
others. While hundreds were dying of scurvy and diarrhea, from the
miserable, insufficient food, and lack of vegetables, these fellows
had flour, fresh meat, onions, potatoes, green beans, and other
things, the very looks of which were a torture to hungry, scorbutic,
dysenteric men. They were on the best possible terms with the Rebels,
whom they fawned upon and groveled before, and were in return allowed
many favors, in the way of trading, going out upon detail, and making
purchases.

Among their special objects of attack were the small traders in the
prison. We had quite a number of these whose genius for barter was
so strong that it took root and flourished even in that unpropitious
soil, and during the time when new prisoners were constantly coming in
with money, they managed to accumulate small sums--from ten dollars
upward, by trading between the guards and the prisoners. In the period
immediately following a prisoner’s entrance he was likely to spend
all his money and trade off all his possessions for food, trusting to
fortune to get him out of there when these were gone. Then was when
he was profitable to these go-betweens, who managed to make him pay
handsomely for what he got. The Raiders kept watch of these traders,
and plundered them whenever occasion served. It reminded one of the
habits of the fishing eagle, which hovers around until some other bird
catches a fish, and then takes it away.




CHAPTER XXXV.

A COMMUNITY WITHOUT GOVERNMENT--FORMATION OF THE REGULATORS--RAIDERS
ATTACK KEY BUT ARE BLUFFED OFF--ASSAULT OF THE REGULATORS ON THE
RAIDERS --DESPERATE BATTLE--OVERTHROW OF THE RAIDERS.

To fully appreciate the condition of affairs let it be remembered
that we were a community of twenty-five thousand boys and young
men--none too regardful of control at best--and now wholly destitute
of government. The Rebels never made the slightest attempt to maintain
order in the prison. Their whole energies were concentrated in
preventing our escape. So long as we staid inside the Stockade, they
cared as little what we did there as for the performances of savages
in the interior of Africa. I doubt if they would have interfered had
one-half of us killed and eaten the other half. They rather took a
delight in such atrocities as came to their notice. It was an ocular
demonstration of the total depravity of the Yankees.

Among ourselves there was no one in position to lay down law and
enforce it. Being all enlisted men we were on a dead level as far as
rank was concerned--the highest being only Sergeants, whose stripes
carried no weight of authority. The time of our stay was--it was
hoped--too transient to make it worth while bothering about organizing
any form of government. The great bulk of the boys were recent comers,
who hoped that in another week or so they would be out again. There
were no fat salaries to tempt any one to take upon himself the duty of
ruling the masses, and all were left to their own devices, to do good
or evil, according to their several bents, and as fear of consequences
swayed them. Each little squad of men was a law unto themselves, and
made and enforced their own regulations on their own territory. The
administration of justice was reduced to its simplest terms. If a
fellow did wrong he was pounded--if there was anybody capable of doing
it. If not he went free.

The almost unvarying success of the Raiders in--their forays gave the
general impression that they were invincible--that is, that not enough
men could be concentrated against them to whip them. Our ill-success in
the attack we made on them in April helped us to the same belief. If we
could not beat them then, we could not now, after we had been enfeebled
by months of starvation and disease. It seemed to us that the Plymouth
Pilgrims, whose organization was yet very strong, should undertake
the task; but, as is usually the case in this world, where we think
somebody else ought to undertake the performance of a disagreeable
public duty, they did not see it in the light that we wished them to.
They established guards around their squads, and helped beat off the
Raiders when their own territory was invaded, but this was all they
would do. The rest of us formed similar guards. In the southwest corner
of the Stockade--where I was--we formed ourselves into a company of
fifty active boys--mostly belonging to my own battalion and to other
Illinois regiments--of which I was elected Captain. My First Lieutenant
was a tall, taciturn, long-armed member of the One Hundred and Eleventh
Illinois, whom we called “Egypt,” as he came from that section of
the State. He was wonderfully handy with his fists. I think he could
knock a fellow down so that he would fall-harder, and lie longer than
any person I ever saw. We made a tacit division of duties: I did the
talking, and “Egypt” went through the manual labor of knocking our
opponents down. In the numerous little encounters in which our company
was engaged, “Egypt” would stand by my side, silent, grim and patient,
while I pursued the dialogue with the leader of the other crowd. As
soon as he thought the conversation had reached the proper point, his
long left arm stretched out like a flash, and the other fellow dropped
as if he had suddenly come in range of a mule that was feeling well.
That unexpected left-hander never failed. It would have made Charles
Reade’s heart leap for joy to see it.

In spite of our company and our watchfulness, the Raiders beat us
badly on one occasion. Marion Friend, of Company I of our battalion,
was one of the small traders, and had accumulated forty dollars by his
bartering. One evening at dusk Delaney’s Raiders, about twenty-five
strong, took advantage of the absence of most of us drawing rations, to
make a rush for Marion. They knocked him down, cut him across the wrist
and neck with a razor, and robbed him of his forty dollars. By the time
we could rally Delaney and his attendant scoundrels were safe from
pursuit in the midst of their friends.

This state of things had become unendurable. Sergeant Leroy L. Key,
of Company M, our battalion, resolved to make an effort to crush the
Raiders. He was a printer, from Bloomington, Illinois, tall, dark,
intelligent and strong-willed, and one of the bravest men I ever knew.
He was ably seconded by “Limber Jim,” of the Sixty-Seventh Illinois,
whose lithe, sinewy form, and striking features reminded one of a young
Sioux brave. He had all of Key’s desperate courage, but not his brains
or his talent for leadership. Though fearfully reduced in numbers, our
battalion had still about one hundred well men in it, and these formed
the nucleus for Key’s band of “Regulators,” as they were styled. Among
them were several who had no equals in physical strength and courage
in any of the Raider chiefs. Our best man was Ned Carrigan, Corporal
of Company I, from Chicago--who was so confessedly the best man in the
whole prison that he was never called upon to demonstrate it. He was a
big-hearted, genial Irish boy, who was never known to get into trouble
on his own account, but only used his fists when some of his comrades
were imposed upon. He had fought in the ring, and on one occasion had
killed a man with a single blow of his fist, in a prize fight near
St. Louis. We were all very proud of him, and it was as good as an
entertainment to us to see the noisiest roughs subside into deferential
silence as Ned would come among them, like some grand mastiff in the
midst of a pack of yelping curs. Ned entered into the regulating scheme
heartily. Other stalwart specimens of physical manhood in our battalion
were Sergeant Goody, Ned Johnson, Tom Larkin, and others, who, while
not approaching Carrigan’s perfect manhood, were still more than a
match for the best of the Raiders.

Key proceeded with the greatest secrecy in the organization of his
forces. He accepted none but Western men, and preferred Illinoisans,
Iowans, Kansans, Indianians and Ohioans. The boys from those States
seemed to naturally go together, and be moved by the same motives. He
informed Wirz what he proposed doing, so that any unusual commotion
within the prison might not be mistaken for an attempt upon the
Stockade, and made the excuse for opening with the artillery. Wirz,
who happened to be in a complaisant humor, approved of the design, and
allowed him the use of the enclosure of the North Gate to confine his
prisoners in.

In spite of Key’s efforts at secrecy, information as to his scheme
reached the Raiders. It was debated at their headquarters, and decided
there that Key must be killed. Three men were selected to do this
work. They called on Key, a dusk, on the evening of the 2d of July. In
response to their inquiries, he came out of the blanket-covered hole
on the hillside that he called his tent. They told him what they had
heard, and asked if it was true. He said it was. One of them then drew
a knife, and the other two, “billies” to attack him. But, anticipating
trouble, Key had procured a revolver which one of the Pilgrims had
brought in in his knapsack and drawing this he drove them off, but
without firing a shot.

The occurrence caused the greatest excitement. To us of the Regulators
it showed that the Raiders had penetrated our designs, and were
prepared for them. To the great majority of the prisoners it was the
first intimation that such a thing was contemplated; the news spread
from squad to squad with the greatest rapidity, and soon everybody was
discussing the chances of the movement. For awhile men ceased their
interminable discussion of escape and exchange--let those over worked
words and themes have a rare spell of repose--and debated whether
the Raiders would whip the regulators, or the Regulators conquer the
Raiders. The reasons which I have previously enumerated, induced a
general disbelief in the probability of our success. The Raiders were
in good health well fed, used to operating together, and had the
confidence begotten by a long series of successes. The Regulators
lacked in all these respects.

Whether Key had originally fixed on the next day for making the attack,
or whether this affair precipitated the crisis, I know not, but later
in the evening he sent us all order: to be on our guard all night, and
ready for action the next morning.

There was very little sleep anywhere that night. The Rebels learned
through their spies that something unusual was going on inside, and as
their only interpretation of anything unusual there was a design upon
the Stockade, they strengthened the guards, took additional precautions
in every way, and spent the hours in anxious anticipation.

We, fearing that the Raiders might attempt to frustrate the scheme
by an attack in overpowering force on Key’s squad, which would be
accompanied by the assassination of him and Limber Jim, held ourselves
in readiness to offer any assistance that might be needed.

The Raiders, though confident of success, were no less exercised.
They threw out pickets to all the approaches to their headquarters,
and provided otherwise against surprise. They had smuggled in some
canteens of a cheap, vile whisky made from sorghum--and they grew quite
hilarious in their Big Tent over their potations. Two songs had long
ago been accepted by us as peculiarly the Raiders’ own--as some one in
their crowd sang them nearly every evening, and we never heard them
anywhere else. The first began:

               In Athol lived a man named Jerry Lanagan;
               He battered away till he hadn’t a pound.
               His father he died, and he made him a man agin;
               Left him a farm of ten acres of ground.

The other related the exploits of an Irish highwayman named Brennan,
whose chief virtue was that

               What he rob-bed from the rich he gave unto the poor.

And this was the villainous chorus in which they all joined, and sang in
such a way as suggested highway robbery, murder, mayhem and arson:

               Brennan on the moor!
               Brennan on the moor!
               Proud and undaunted stood
               John Brennan on the moor.

They howled these two nearly the live-long night. They became
eventually quite monotonous to us, who were waiting and watching. It
would have been quite a relief if they had thrown in a new one every
hour or so, by way of variety.

Morning at last came. Our companies mustered on their grounds, and then
marched to the space on the South Side where the rations were issued.
Each man was armed with a small club, secured to his wrist by a string.

The Rebels--with their chronic fear of an outbreak animating them--had
all the infantry in line of battle with loaded guns. The cannon in the
works were shotted, the fuses thrust into the touch-holes and the men
stood with lanyards in hand ready to mow down everybody, at any instant.

The sun rose rapidly through the clear sky, which soon glowed down on
us like a brazen oven. The whole camp gathered where it could best view
the encounter. This was upon the North Side. As I have before explained
the two sides sloped toward each other like those of a great trough.
The Raiders’ headquarters stood upon the center of the southern slope,
and consequently those standing on the northern slope saw everything as
if upon the stage of a theater.

While standing in ranks waiting the orders to move, one of my comrades
touched me on the arm, and said:

“My God! just look over there!”

I turned from watching the Rebel artillerists, whose intentions gave
me more uneasiness than anything else, and looked in the direction
indicated by the speaker. The sight was the strangest one my eyes
ever encountered. There were at least fifteen thousand perhaps twenty
thousand--men packed together on the bank, and every eye was turned on
us. The slope was such that each man’s face showed over the shoulders
of the one in front of him, making acres on acres of faces. It was
as if the whole broad hillside was paved or thatched with human
countenances.

When all was ready we moved down upon the Big Tent, in as good order
as we could preserve while passing through the narrow tortuous paths
between the tents. Key, Limber Jim, Ned Carigan, Goody, Tom Larkin, and
Ned Johnson led the advance with their companies. The prison was as
silent as a graveyard. As we approached, the Raiders massed themselves
in a strong, heavy line, with the center, against which our advance was
moving, held by the most redoubtable of their leaders. How many there
were of them could not be told, as it was impossible to say where their
line ended and the mass of spectators began. They could not themselves
tell, as the attitude of a large portion of the spectators would be
determined by which way the battle went.

Not a blow was struck until the lines came close together. Then the
Raider center launched itself forward against ours, and grappled
savagely with the leading Regulators. For an instant--it seemed an
hour--the struggle was desperate.

Strong, fierce men clenched and strove to throttle each other; great
muscles strained almost to bursting, and blows with fist and club-dealt
with all the energy of mortal hate--fell like hail. One-perhaps
two-endless minutes the lines surged--throbbed--backward and forward a
step or two, and then, as if by a concentration of mighty effort, our
men flung the Raider line back from it--broken--shattered. The next
instant our leaders were striding through the mass like raging lions.
Carrigan, Limber Jim, Larkin, Johnson and Goody each smote down a swath
of men before them, as they moved resistlessly forward.

We light weights had been sent around on the flanks to separate the
spectators from the combatants, strike the Raiders ‘en revers,’ and, as
far as possible, keep the crowd from reinforcing them.

In five minutes after the first blow--was struck the overthrow of the
Raiders was complete. Resistance ceased, and they sought safety in
flight.

As the result became apparent to the--watchers on the opposite
hillside, they vented their pent-up excitement in a yell that made the
very ground tremble, and we answered them with a shout that expressed
not only our exultation over our victory, but our great relief from the
intense strain we had long borne.

We picked up a few prisoners on the battle field, and retired without
making any special effort to get any more then, as we knew, that they
could not escape us.

We were very tired, and very hungry. The time for drawing rations had
arrived. Wagons containing bread and mush had driven to the gates, but
Wirz would not allow these to be opened, lest in the excited condition
of the men an attempt might be made to carry them. Key ordered
operations to cease, that Wirz might be re-assured and let the rations
enter. It was in vain. Wirz was thoroughly scared. The wagons stood
out in the hot sun until the mush fermented and soured, and had to be
thrown away, while we event rationless to bed, and rose the next day
with more than usually empty stomachs to goad us on to our work.




CHAPTER XXXVI.

WHY THE REGULATORS WERE NOT ASSISTED BY THE ENTIRE CAMP--PECULIARITIES
OF BOYS FROM DIFFERENT SECTIONS--HUNTING THE RAIDERS DOWN--EXPLOITS OF
MY LEFT-HANDED LIEUTENANT--RUNNING THE GAUNTLET.

I may not have made it wholly clear to the reader why we did not have
the active assistance of the whole prison in the struggle with the
Raiders. There were many reasons for this. First, the great bulk of
the prisoners were new comers, having been, at the farthest, but three
or four weeks in the Stockade. They did not comprehend the situation
of affairs as we older prisoners did. They did not understand that
all the outrages--or very nearly all--were the work of--a relatively
small crowd of graduates from the metropolitan school of vice. The
activity and audacity of the Raiders gave them the impression that at
least half the able-bodied men in the Stockade were engaged in these
depredations. This is always the case. A half dozen burglars or other
active criminals in a town will produce the impression that a large
portion of the population are law breakers. We never estimated that the
raiding N’Yaarkers, with their spies and other accomplices, exceeded
five hundred, but it would have been difficult to convince a new
prisoner that there were not thousands of them. Secondly, the prisoners
were made up of small squads from every regiment at the front along the
whole line from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. These were strangers
to and distrustful of all out side their own little circles. The
Eastern men were especially so. The Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers each
formed groups, and did not fraternize readily with those outside their
State lines. The New Jerseyans held aloof from all the rest, while the
Massachusetts soldiers had very little in Common with anybody--even
their fellow New Englanders. The Michigan men were modified New
Englanders. They had the same tricks of speech; they said “I be”
for “I am,” and “haag” for “hog;” “Let me look at your knife half a
second,” or “Give me just a sup of that water,” where we said simply
“Lend me your knife,” or “hand me a drink.” They were less reserved
than the true Yankees, more disposed to be social, and, with all their
eccentricities, were as manly, honorable a set of fellows as it was
my fortune to meet with in the army. I could ask no better comrades
than the boys of the Third Michigan Infantry, who belonged to the same
“Ninety” with me. The boys from Minnesota and Wisconsin were very much
like those from Michigan. Those from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and
Kansas all seemed cut off the same piece. To all intents and purposes
they might have come from the same County. They spoke the same dialect,
read the same newspapers, had studied McGuffey’s Readers, Mitchell’s
Geography, and Ray’s Arithmetics at school, admired the same great men,
and held generally the same opinions on any given subject. It was never
difficult to get them to act in unison--they did it spontaneously;
while it required an effort to bring about harmony of action with those
from other sections. Had the Western boys in prison been thoroughly
advised of the nature of our enterprise, we could, doubtless, have
commanded their cordial assistance, but they were not, and there was no
way in which it could be done readily, until after the decisive blow
was struck.

The work of arresting the leading Raiders went on actively all day on
the Fourth of July. They made occasional shows of fierce resistance,
but the events of the day before had destroyed their prestige, broken
their confidence, and driven away from their support very many who
followed their lead when they were considered all-powerful. They
scattered from their former haunts, and mingled with the crowds in
other parts of the prison, but were recognized, and reported to Key,
who sent parties to arrest them. Several times they managed to collect
enough adherents to drive off the squads sent after them, but this
only gave them a short respite, for the squad would return reinforced,
and make short work of them. Besides, the prisoners generally were
beginning to understand and approve of the Regulators’ movement, and
were disposed to give all the assistance needed.

Myself and “Egypt,” my taciturn Lieutenant of the sinewy left arm, were
sent with our company to arrest Pete Donnelly, a notorious character,
and leader of, a bad crowd. He was more “knocker” than Raider, however.
He was an old Pemberton building acquaintance, and as we marched up to
where he was standing at the head of his gathering clan, he recognized
me and said:

“Hello, Illinoy,” (the name by which I was generally known in prison)
“what do you want here?”

I replied, “Pete, Key has sent me for you. I want you to go to
headquarters.”

“What the ---- does Key want with me?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure; he only said to bring you.”

“But I haven’t had anything to do with them other snoozers you have
been a-having trouble with.”

“I don’t know anything about that; you can talk to Key as to that. I
only know that we are sent for you.”

“Well, you don’t think you can take me unless I choose to go? You haint
got anybody in that crowd big enough to make it worth while for him to
waste his time trying it.”

I replied diffidently that one never knew what--he could do till he
tried; that while none of us were very big, we were as willing a lot of
little fellows as he ever saw, and if it were all the same to him, we
would undertake to waste a little time getting him to headquarters.

The conversation seemed unnecessarily long to “Egypt,” who stood by my
side; about a half step in advance. Pete was becoming angrier and more
defiant every minute. His followers were crowding up to us, club in
hand. Finally Pete thrust his fist in my face, and roared out:

“By ---, I ain’t a going with ye, and ye can’t take me, you ---- ----
---- ”

This was “Egypt’s” cue. His long left arm uncoupled like the loosening
of the weight of a pile-driver. It caught Mr. Donnelly under the chin,
fairly lifted him from his feet, and dropped him on his back among his
followers. It seemed to me that the predominating expression in his
face as he went, over was that of profound wonder as to where that blow
could have come from, and why he did not see it in time to dodge or
ward it off.

As Pete dropped, the rest of us stepped forward with our clubs, to
engage his followers, while “Egypt” and one or two others tied his
hands and otherwise secured him. But his henchmen made no effort to
rescue him, and we carried him over to headquarters without molestation.

The work of arresting increased in interest and excitement until it
developed into the furore of a hunt, with thousands eagerly engaged
in it. The Raiders’ tents were torn down and pillaged. Blankets, tent
poles, and cooking utensils were carried off as spoils, and the ground
was dug over for secreted property. A large quantity of watches,
chains, knives, rings, gold pens, etc., etc.--the booty of many a
raid--was found, and helped to give impetus to the hunt. Even the Rebel
Quartermaster, with the characteristic keen scent of the Rebels for
spoils, smelled from the outside the opportunity for gaining plunder,
and came in with a squad of Rebels equipped with spades, to dig for
buried treasures. How successful he was I know not, as I took no part
in any of the operations of that nature.

It was claimed that several skeletons of victims of the Raiders were
found buried beneath the tent. I cannot speak with any certainty as to
this, though my impression is that at least one was found.

By evening Key had perhaps one hundred and twenty-five of the most
noted Raiders in his hands. Wirz had allowed him the use of the small
stockade forming the entrance to the North Gate to confine them in.

The next thing was the judgment and punishment of the arrested ones.
For this purpose Key organized a court martial composed of thirteen
Sergeants, chosen from the latest arrivals of prisoners, that they
might have no prejudice against the Raiders. I believe that a man named
Dick McCullough, belonging to the Third Missouri Cavalry, was the
President of the Court. The trial was carefully conducted, with all
the formality of a legal procedure that the Court and those managing
the matter could remember as applicable to the crimes with which
the accused were charged. Each of these confronted by the witnesses
who testified against him, and allowed to cross-examine them to any
extent he desired. The defense was managed by one of their crowd,
the foul-tongued Tombs shyster, Pete Bradley, of whom I have before
spoken. Such was the fear of the vengeance of the Raiders and their
friends that many who had been badly abused dared not testify against
them, dreading midnight assassination if they did. Others would not go
before the Court except at night. But for all this there was no lack
of evidence; there were thousands who had been robbed and maltreated,
or who had seen these outrages committed on others, and the boldness
of the leaders in their bight of power rendered their identification a
matter of no difficulty whatever.

The trial lasted several days, and concluded with sentencing quite a
large number to run the gauntlet, a smaller number to wear balls and
chains, and the following six to be hanged:

  John Sarsfield, One Hundred and Forty-Fourth New York.
  William Collins, alias “Mosby,” Company D, Eighty-Eighth Pennsylvania,
  Charles Curtis, Company A, Fifth Rhode Island Artillery.
  Patrick Delaney, Company E, Eighty-Third Pennsylvania.
  A. Muir, United States Navy.
  Terence Sullivan, Seventy-Second New York.

These names and regiments are of little consequence, however, as I
believe all the rascals were professional bounty-jumpers, and did not
belong to any regiment longer than they could find an opportunity to
desert and join another.

Those sentenced to ball-and-chain were brought in immediately, and had
the irons fitted to them that had been worn by some of our men as a
punishment for trying to escape.

It was not yet determined how punishment should be meted out to the
remainder, but circumstances themselves decided the matter. Wirz
became tired of guarding so large a number as Key had arrested, and
he informed Key that he should turn them back into the Stockade
immediately. Key begged for little farther time to consider the
disposition of the cases, but Wirz refused it, and ordered the Officer
of the Guard to return all arrested, save those sentenced to death, to
the Stockade. In the meantime the news had spread through the prison
that the Raiders were to be sent in again unpunished, and an angry
mob, numbering some thousands, and mostly composed of men who had
suffered injuries at the hands of the marauders, gathered at the South
Gate, clubs in hand, to get such satisfaction as they could out of the
rascals. They formed in two long, parallel lines, facing inward, and
grimly awaited the incoming of the objects of their vengeance.

The Officer of the Guard opened the wicket in the gate, and began
forcing the Raiders through it--one at a time--at the point of the
bayonet, and each as he entered was told what he already realized
well--that he must run for his life. They did this with all the energy
that they possessed, and as they ran blows rained on their heads, arms
and backs. If they could succeed in breaking through the line at any
place they were generally let go without any further punishment. Three
of the number were beaten to death. I saw one of these killed. I had no
liking for the gauntlet performance, and refused to have anything to
do with it, as did most, if not all, of my crowd. While the gauntlet
was in operation, I was standing by my tent at the head of a little
street, about two hundred feet from the line, watching what was being
done. A sailor was let in. He had a large bowie knife concealed about
his person somewhere, which he drew, and struck savagely with at his
tormentors on either side. They fell back from before him, but closed
in behind and pounded him terribly. He broke through the line, and ran
up the street towards me. About midway of the distance stood a boy
who had helped carry a dead man out during the day, and while out had
secured a large pine rail which he had brought in with him. He was
holding this straight up in the air, as if at a “present arms.” He
seemed to have known from the first that the Raider would run that way.
Just as he came squarely under it, the boy dropped the rail like the
bar of a toll gate. It struck the Raider across the head, felled him as
if by a shot, and his pursuers then beat him to death.




CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE EXECUTION--BUILDING THE SCAFFOLD--DOUBTS OF THE CAMP-CAPTAIN
WIRZ THINKS IT IS PROBABLY A RUSE TO FORCE THE STOCKADE--HIS
PREPARATIONS AGAINST SUCH AN ATTEMPT--ENTRANCE OF THE DOOMED
ONES--THEY REALIZE THEIR FATE--ONE MAKES A DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO
ESCAPE--HIS RECAPTURE--INTENSE EXCITEMENT--WIRZ ORDERS THE GUNS TO
OPEN--FORTUNATELY THEY DO NOT--THE SIX ARE HANGED--ONE BREAKS HIS
ROPE--SCENE WHEN THE RAIDERS ARE CUT DOWN.

It began to be pretty generally understood through the prison that
six men had been sentenced to be hanged, though no authoritative
announcement of the fact had been made. There was much canvassing
as to where they should be executed, and whether an attempt to hang
them inside of the Stockade would not rouse their friends to make a
desperate effort to rescue them, which would precipitate a general
engagement of even larger proportions than that of the 3d. Despite
the result of the affairs of that and the succeeding days, the camp
was not yet convinced that the Raiders were really conquered, and the
Regulators themselves were not thoroughly at ease on that score. Some
five thousand or six thousand new prisoners had come in since the first
of the month, and it was claimed that the Raiders had received large
reinforcements from those,--a claim rendered probable by most of the
new-comers being from the Army of the Potomac.

Key and those immediately about him kept their own counsel in the
matter, and suffered no secret of their intentions to leak out, until
on the morning of the 11th, when it became generally known that the
sentences were too be carried into effect that day, and inside the
prison.

My first direct information as to this was by a messenger from Key with
an order to assemble my company and stand guard over the carpenters
who were to erect the scaffold. He informed me that all the Regulators
would be held in readiness to come to our relief if we were attacked in
force. I had hoped that if the men were to be hanged I would be spared
the unpleasant duty of assisting, for, though I believed they richly
deserved that punishment, I had much rather some one else administered
it upon them. There was no way out of it, however, that I could see,
and so “Egypt” and I got the boys together, and marched down to the
designated place, which was an open space near the end of the street
running from the South Gate, and kept vacant for the purpose of issuing
rations. It was quite near the spot where the Raiders’ Big Tent had
stood, and afforded as good a view to the rest of the camp as could be
found.

Key had secured the loan of a few beams and rough planks, sufficient
to build a rude scaffold with. Our first duty was to care for these
as they came in, for such was the need of wood, and plank for tent
purposes, that they would scarcely have fallen to the ground before
they were spirited away, had we not stood over them all the time with
clubs.

The carpenters sent by Key came over and set to work. The N’Yaarkers
gathered around in considerable numbers, sullen and abusive. They
cursed us with all their rich vocabulary of foul epithets, vowed that
we should never carry out the execution, and swore that they had marked
each one for vengeance. We returned the compliments in kind, and
occasionally it seemed as if a general collision was imminent; but we
succeeded in avoiding this, and by noon the scaffold was finished. It
was a very simple affair. A stout beam was fastened on the top of two
posts, about fifteen feet high. At about the height of a man’s head
a couple of boards stretched across the space between the posts, and
met in the center. The ends at the posts laid on cleats; the ends in
the center rested upon a couple of boards, standing upright, and each
having a piece of rope fastened through a hole in it in such a manner,
that a man could snatch it from under the planks serving as the floor
of the scaffold, and let the whole thing drop. A rude ladder to ascend
by completed the preparations.

As the arrangements neared completion the excitement in and around the
prison grew intense. Key came over with the balance of the Regulators,
and we formed a hollow square around the scaffold, our company marking
the line on the East Side. There were now thirty thousand in the
prison. Of these about one-third packed themselves as tightly about our
square as they could stand. The remaining twenty thousand were wedged
together in a solid mass on the North Side. Again I contemplated the
wonderful, startling, spectacle of a mosaic pavement of human faces
covering the whole broad hillside.

Outside, the Rebel, infantry was standing in the rifle pits, the
artillerymen were in place about their loaded and trained pieces, the
No. 4 of each gun holding the lanyard cord in his hand, ready to fire
the piece at the instant of command. The small squad of cavalry was
drawn up on the hill near the Star Fort, and near it were the masters
of the hounds, with their yelping packs.

All the hangers-on of the Rebel camp--clerks, teamsters, employer,
negros, hundreds of white and colored women, in all forming a motley
crowd of between one and two thousand, were gathered together in a
group between the end of the rifle pits and the Star Fort. They had a
good view from there, but a still better one could be had, a little
farther to the right, and in front of the guns. They kept edging up in
that direction, as crowds will, though they knew the danger they would
incur if the artillery opened.

The day was broiling hot. The sun shot his perpendicular rays down with
blistering fierceness, and the densely packed, motionless crowds made
the heat almost insupportable.

Key took up his position inside the square to direct matters. With him
were Limber Jim, Dick McCullough, and one or two others. Also, Ned
Johnson, Tom Larkin, Sergeant Goody, and three others who were to act
as hangmen. Each of these six was provided with a white sack, such as
the Rebels brought in meal in. Two Corporals of my company--“Stag”
Harris and Wat Payne--were appointed to pull the stays from under the
platform at the signal.

A little after noon the South Gate opened, and Wirz rode in, dressed
in a suit of white duck, and mounted on his white horse--a conjunction
which had gained for him the appellation of “Death on a Pale Horse.”
Behind him walked the faithful old priest, wearing his Church’s purple
insignia of the deepest sorrow, and reading the service for the
condemned. The six doomed men followed, walking between double ranks of
Rebel guards.

All came inside the hollow square and halted. Wirz then said:

“Brizners, I return to you dose men so Boot as I got dem. You haf tried
dem yourselves, and found dem guilty--I haf had notting to do wit it. I
vash my hands of eferyting connected wit dem. Do wit dem as you like,
and may Gott haf mercy on you and on dem. Garts, about face! Voryvarts,
march!”

With this he marched out and left us.

For a moment the condemned looked stunned. They seemed to comprehend
for the first time that it was really the determination of the
Regulators to hang them. Before that they had evidently thought that
the talk of hanging was merely bluff. One of them gasped out:

“My God, men, you don’t really mean to hang us up there!”

Key answered grimly and laconically:

“That seems to be about the size of it.”

At this they burst out in a passionate storm of intercessions and
imprecations, which lasted for a minute or so, when it was stopped by
one of them saying imperatively:

“All of you stop now, and let the priest talk for us.”

At this the priest closed the book upon which he had kept his eyes bent
since his entrance, and facing the multitude on the North Side began a
plea for mercy.

The condemned faced in the same direction, to read their fate in the
countenances of those whom he was addressing. This movement brought
Curtis--a low-statured, massively built man--on the right of their
line, and about ten or fifteen steps from my company.

The whole camp had been as still as death since Wirz’s exit. The
silence seemed to become even more profound as the priest began his
appeal. For a minute every ear was strained to catch what he said.
Then, as the nearest of the thousands comprehended what he was saying
they raised a shout of “No! no!! NO!!” “Hang them! hang them!” “Don’t
let them go! Never!”

“Hang the rascals! hang the villains!”

“Hang, ’em! hang ’em! hang ’em!”

This was taken up all over the prison, and tens of thousands throats
yelled it in a fearful chorus.

Curtis turned from the crowd with desperation convulsing his features.
Tearing off the broad-brimmed hat which he wore, he flung it on the
ground with the exclamation!

“By God, I’ll die this way first!” and, drawing his head down and
folding his arms about it, he dashed forward for the center of my
company, like a great stone hurled from a catapult.

“Egypt” and I saw where he was going to strike, and ran down the line
to help stop him. As he came up we rained blows on his head with our
clubs, but so many of us struck at him at once that we broke each
other’s clubs to pieces, and only knocked him on his knees. He rose
with an almost superhuman effort, and plunged into the mass beyond.

The excitement almost became delirium. For an instant I feared that
everything was gone to ruin. “Egypt” and I strained every energy to
restore our lines, before the break could be taken advantage of by
the others. Our boys behaved splendidly, standing firm, and in a few
seconds the line was restored.

As Curtis broke through, Delaney, a brawny Irishman standing next to
him, started to follow. He took one step. At the same instant Limber
Jim’s long legs took three great strides, and placed him directly in
front of Delaney. Jim’s right hand held an enormous bowie-knife, and as
he raised it above Delaney he hissed out:

“If you dare move another step, I’ll open you ---- ---- ----, I’ll open
you from one end to the other.

Delaney stopped. This checked the others till our lines reformed.

When Wirz saw the commotion he was panic-stricken with fear that the
long-dreaded assault on the Stockade had begun. He ran down from the
headquarter steps to the Captain of the battery, shrieking:

“Fire! fire! fire!”

The Captain, not being a fool, could see that the rush was not towards
the Stockade, but away from it, and he refrained from giving the order.

But the spectators who had gotten before the guns, heard Wirz’s
excited yell, and remembering the consequences to themselves should
the artillery be discharged, became frenzied with fear, and screamed,
and fell down over and trampled upon each other in endeavoring to get
away. The guards on that side of the Stockade ran down in a panic, and
the ten thousand prisoners immediately around us, expecting no less
than that the next instant we would be swept with grape and canister,
stampeded tumultuously. There were quite a number of wells right around
us, and all of these were filled full of men that fell into them as the
crowd rushed away. Many had legs and arms broken, and I have no doubt
that several were killed.

It was the stormiest five minutes that I ever saw.

While this was going on two of my company, belonging to the Fifth Iowa
Cavalry, were in hot pursuit of Curtis. I had seen them start and
shouted to them to come back, as I feared they would be set upon by the
Raiders and murdered. But the din was so overpowering that they could
not hear me, and doubtless would not have come back if they had heard.

Curtis ran diagonally down the hill, jumping over the tents and
knocking down the men who happened in his way. Arriving at the swamp
he plunged in, sinking nearly to his hips in the fetid, filthy ooze.
He forged his way through with terrible effort. His pursuers followed
his example, and caught up to him just as he emerged on the other side.
They struck him on the back of the head with their clubs, and knocked
him down.

By this time order had been restored about us. The guns remained
silent, and the crowd massed around us again. From where we were we
could see the successful end of the chase after Curtis, and could see
his captors start back with him. Their success was announced with a
roar of applause from the North Side. Both captors and captured were
greatly exhausted, and they were coming back very slowly. Key ordered
the balance up on to the scaffold. They obeyed promptly. The priest
resumed his reading of the service for the condemned. The excitement
seemed to make the doomed ones exceedingly thirsty. I never saw
men drink such inordinate quantities of water. They called for it
continually, gulped down a quart or more at a time, and kept two men
going nearly all the time carrying it to them.

When Curtis finally arrived, he sat on the ground for a minute or so,
to rest, and then, reeking with filth, slowly and painfully climbed the
steps. Delaney seemed to think he was suffering as much from fright as
anything else, and said to him:

“Come on up, now, show yourself a man, and die game.”

Again the priest resumed his reading, but it had no interest to
Delaney, who kept calling out directions to Pete Donelly, who was
standing in the crowd, as to dispositions to be made of certain bits of
stolen property: to give a watch to this one, a ring to another, and so
on. Once the priest stopped and said:

“My son, let the things of this earth go, and turn your attention
toward those of heaven.”

Delaney paid no attention to this admonition. The whole six then began
delivering farewell messages to those in the crowd. Key pulled a watch
from his pocket and said:

“Two minutes more to talk.”

Delaney said cheerfully:

“Well, good by, b’ys; if I’ve hurted any of y ez, I hope ye’ll forgive
me. Shpake up, now, any of yez that I’ve hurted, and say yell forgive
me.”

We called upon Marion Friend, whose throat Delaney had tried to cut
three weeks before while robbing him of forty dollars, to come forward,
but Friend was not in a forgiving mood, and refused with an oath.

Key said:

“Time’s up!” put the watch back in his pocket and raised his hand like
an officer commanding a gun. Harris and Payne laid hold of the ropes to
the supports of the planks. Each of the six hangmen tied a condemned
man’s hands, pulled a meal sack down over his head, placed the noose
around his neck, drew it up tolerably close, and sprang to the ground.
The priest began praying aloud.

Key dropped his hand. Payne and Harris snatched the supports out with
a single jerk. The planks fell with a clatter. Five of the bodies
swung around dizzily in the air. The sixth that of “Mosby,” a large,
powerful, raw-boned man, one of the worst in the lot, and who, among
other crimes, had killed Limber Jim’s brother-broke the rope, and fell
with a thud to the ground. Some of the men ran forward, examined the
body, and decided that he still lived. The rope was cut off his neck,
the meal sack removed, and water thrown in his face until consciousness
returned. At the first instant he thought he was in eternity. He gasped
out:

“Where am I? Am I in the other world?”

Limber Jim muttered that they would soon show him where he was, and
went on grimly fixing up the scaffold anew. “Mosby” soon realized what
had happened, and the unrelenting purpose of the Regulator Chiefs. Then
he began to beg piteously for his life, saying:

“O for God’s sake, do not put me up there again! God has spared my life
once. He meant that you should be merciful to me.”

Limber Jim deigned him no reply. When the scaffold was rearranged, and
a stout rope had replaced the broken one, he pulled the meal sack once
more over “Mosby’s” head, who never ceased his pleadings. Then picking
up the large man as if he were a baby, he carried him to the scaffold
and handed him up to Tom Larkin, who fitted the noose around his neck
and sprang down. The supports had not been set with the same delicacy
as at first, and Limber Jim had to set his heel and wrench desperately
at them before he could force them out. Then “Mosby” passed away
without a struggle.

After hanging till life was extinct, the bodies were cut down, the
meal-sacks pulled off their faces, and the Regulators formal two
parallel lines, through which all the prisoners passed and took a look
at the bodies. Pete Donnelly and Dick Allen knelt down and wiped the
froth off Delaney’s lips, and swore vengeance against those who had
done him to death.




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:

“Mister--I--don’t--think--it--just--right--for--a--young--man--to--call
--an--old--one--such--bad names.”

Jack Oliver turned on him savagely.

“Well! may be you want to take it up?”

The grin on Hill’s face looked still more verdant, as he answered with
gentle deliberation:

“Well--mister--I--don’t--go--around--a--hunting--things--but--I
--ginerally--take--care--of--all--that’s--sent--me!”

Jack foamed, but his fiercest bluster could not drive that infantile
smile from Hill’s face, nor provoke a change in the calm slowness of
his speech.

It was evident that nothing would do but a battle-royal, and Jack
had sense enough to see that the imperturbable rustic was likely to
give him a job of some difficulty. He went off and came back with his
clan, while Hill’s comrades of the One Hundredth gathered around to
insure him fair play. Jack pulled off his coat and vest, rolled up his
sleeves, and made other elaborate preparations for the affray. Hill,
without removing a garment, said, as he surveyed him with a mocking
smile:

“Mister--you--seem--to--be--one--of--them--partick-e-ler--fellers.”

Jack roared out,

“By ---, I’ll make you partickeler before I get through with you. Now,
how shall we settle this? Regular stand-up-and knock-down, or rough and
tumble?”

If anything Hill’s face was more vacantly serene, and his tones blander
than ever, as he answered:

“Strike--any--gait--that--suits--you,--Mister;--I guess--I--will--be
--able--to--keep--up--with--you.”

They closed. Hill feinted with his left, and as Jack uncovered to
guard, he caught him fairly on the lower left ribs, by a blow from his
mighty right fist, that sounded--as one of the by-standers expressed
it--“like striking a hollow log with a maul.”

The color in Jack’s face paled. He did not seem to understand how
he had laid himself open to such a pass, and made the same mistake,
receiving again a sounding blow in the short ribs. This taught him
nothing, either, for again he opened his guard in response to a feint,
and again caught a blow on his luckless left, ribs, that drove the
blood from his face and the breath from his body. He reeled back
among his supporters for an instant to breathe. Recovering his wind,
be dashed at Hill feinted strongly with his right, but delivered a
terrible kick against the lower part of the latter’s abdomen. Both
closed and fought savagely at half-arm’s length for an instant;
during which Hill struck Jack so fairly in the mouth as to break out
three front teeth, which the latter swallowed. Then they clenched and
struggled to throw each other. Hill’s superior strength and skill
crushed his opponent to the ground, and he fell upon him. As they
grappled there, one of Jack’s followers sought to aid his leader by
catching Hill by the hair, intending to kick him in the face. In an
instant he was knocked down by a stalwart member of the One Hundredth,
and then literally lifted out of the ring by kicks.

Jack was soon so badly beaten as to be unable to cry “enough!” One of
his friends did that service for him, the fight ceased, and thenceforth
Mr. Oliver resigned his pugilistic crown, and retired to the shades of
private life. He died of scurvy and diarrhea, some months afterward, in
Andersonville.

The almost hourly scenes of violence and crime that marked the days and
nights before the Regulators began operations were now succeeded by the
greatest order. The prison was freer from crime than the best governed
City. There were frequent squabbles and fights, of course, and many
petty larcenies. Rations of bread and of wood, articles of clothing,
and the wretched little cans and half canteens that formed our cooking
utensils, were still stolen, but all these were in a sneak-thief
way. There was an entire absence of the audacious open-day robbery
and murder --the “raiding” of the previous few weeks. The summary
punishment inflicted on the condemned was sufficient to cow even bolder
men than the Raiders, and they were frightened into at least quiescence.

Sergeant Hill’s administration was vigorous, and secured the best
results. He became a judge of all infractions of morals and law, and
sat at the door of his tent to dispense justice to all comers, like the
Cadi of a Mahometan Village. His judicial methods and punishments also
reminded one strongly of the primitive judicature of Oriental lands.
The wronged one came before him and told his tale: he had his blouse,
or his quart cup, or his shoes, or his watch, or his money stolen
during the night. The suspected one was also summoned, confronted with
his accuser, and sharply interrogated. Hill would revolve the stories
in his mind, decide the innocence or guilt of the accused, and if he
thought the accusation sustained, order the culprit to punishment. He
did not imitate his Mussulman prototypes to the extent of bowstringing
or decapitating the condemned, nor did he cut any thief’s hands off,
nor yet nail his ears to a doorpost, but he introduced a modification
of the bastinado that made those who were punished by it even wish
they were dead. The instrument used was what is called in the South
a “shake” --a split shingle, a yard or more long, and with one end
whittled down to form a handle. The culprit was made to bend down until
he could catch around his ankles with his hands. The part of the body
thus brought into most prominence was denuded of clothing and “spanked”
from one to twenty times, as Hill ordered, by the “shake” in same
strong and willing hand. It was very amusing--to the bystanders. The
“spankee” never seemed to enter very heartily into the mirth of the
occasion. As a rule he slept on his face for a week or so after, and
took his meals standing.

The fear of the spanking, and Hill’s skill in detecting the guilty
ones, had a very salutary effect upon the smaller criminals.

The Raiders who had been put into irons were very restive under the
infliction, and begged Hill daily to release them. They professed the
greatest penitence, and promised the most exemplary behavior for the
future. Hill refused to release them, declaring that they should wear
the irons until delivered up to our Government.

One of the Raiders--named Heffron--had, shortly after his arrest,
turned State’s evidence, and given testimony that assisted materially
in the conviction of his companions. One morning, a week or so after
the hanging, his body was found lying among the other dead at the South
Gate. The impression made by the fingers of the hand that had strangled
him, were still plainly visible about the throat. There was no doubt as
to why he had been killed, or that the Raiders were his murderers, but
the actual perpetrators were never discovered.




CHAPTER XXXIX.

JULY--THE PRISON BECOMES MORE CROWDED, THE WEATHER HOTTER, NATIONS
POORER, AND MORTALITY GREATER--SOME OF THE PHENOMENA OF SUFFERING AND
DEATH.

All during July the prisoners came streaming in by hundreds and
thousands from every portion of the long line of battle, stretching
from the Eastern bank of the Mississippi to the shores of the Atlantic.
Over one thousand squandered by Sturgis at Guntown came in; two
thousand of those captured in the desperate blow dealt by Hood against
the Army of the Tennessee on the 22d of the month before Atlanta;
hundreds from Hunter’s luckless column in the Shenandoah Valley,
thousands from Grant’s lines in front of Petersburg. In all, seven
thousand one hundred and twenty-eight were, during the month, turned
into that seething mass of corrupting humanity to be polluted and
tainted by it, and to assist in turn to make it fouler and deadlier.
Over seventy hecatombs of chosen victims --of fair youths in the
first flush of hopeful manhood, at the threshold of a life of honor
to themselves and of usefulness to the community; beardless boys,
rich in the priceless affections of homes, fathers, mothers, sisters
and sweethearts, with minds thrilling with high aspirations for the
bright future, were sent in as the monthly sacrifice to this Minotaur
of the Rebellion, who, couched in his foul lair, slew them, not with
the merciful delivery of speedy death, as his Cretan prototype did the
annual tribute of Athenian youths and maidens, but, gloating over his
prey, doomed them to lingering destruction. He rotted their flesh with
the scurvy, racked their minds with intolerable suspense, burned their
bodies with the slow fire of famine, and delighted in each separate
pang, until they sank beneath the fearful accumulation. Theseus
[Sherman. D.W.]--the deliverer--was coming. His terrible sword could
be seen gleaming as it rose and fell on the banks of the James, and
in the mountains beyond Atlanta, where he was hewing his way towards
them and the heart of the Southern Confederacy. But he came too late
to save them. Strike as swiftly and as heavily as he would, he could
not strike so hard nor so sure at his foes with saber blow and musket
shot, as they could at the hapless youths with the dreadful armament of
starvation and disease.

Though the deaths were one thousand eight hundred and seventeen more
than were killed at the battle of Shiloh--this left the number in
the prison at the end of the month thirty-one thousand six hundred
and seventy-eight. Let me assist the reader’s comprehension of the
magnitude of this number by giving the population of a few important
Cities, according to the census of 1870:

Cambridge, Mass 89,639
Charleston, S. C. 48,958
Columbus, O. 31,274
Dayton, O. 30,473
Fall River, Mass 26,766
Kansas City, Mo 32,260

The number of prisoners exceeded the whole number of men between
the ages of eighteen and forty-five in several of the States and
Territories in the Union. Here, for instance, are the returns for 1870,
of men of military age in some portions of the country:

Arizona 5,157
Colorado 15,166
Dakota 5,301
Idaho 9,431
Montana 12,418
Nebraska 35,677
Nevada 24,762
New Hampshire 60,684
Oregon 23,959
Rhode Island 44,377
Vermont 62,450
West Virginia 6,832

It was more soldiers than could be raised to-day, under strong
pressure, in either Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado,
Connecticut, Dakota, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho,
Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire,
New Medico, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont or West
Virginia.

These thirty-one thousand six hundred and seventy-eight active young
men, who were likely to find the confines of a State too narrow for
them, were cooped up on thirteen acres of ground--less than a farmer
gives for play-ground for a half dozen colts or a small flock of sheep.
There was hardly room for all to lie down at night, and to walk a few
hundred feet in any direction would require an hour’s patient threading
of the mass of men and tents.

The weather became hotter and hotter; at midday the sand would burn
the hand. The thin skins of fair and auburn-haired men blistered under
the sun’s rays, and swelled up in great watery puffs, which soon
became the breeding grounds of the hideous maggots, or the still more
deadly gangrene. The loathsome swamp grew in rank offensiveness with
every burning hour. The pestilence literally stalked at noon-day, and
struck his victims down on every hand. One could not look a rod in any
direction without seeing at least a dozen men in the last frightful
stages of rotting Death.

Let me describe the scene immediately around my own tent during the
last two weeks of July, as a sample of the condition of the whole
prison: I will take a space not larger than a good sized parlor or
sitting room. On this were at least fifty of us. Directly in front of
me lay two brothers--named Sherwood--belonging to Company I, of my
battalion, who came originally from Missouri. They were now in the
last stages of scurvy and diarrhea. Every particle of muscle and fat
about their limbs and bodies had apparently wasted away, leaving the
skin clinging close to the bone of the face, arms, hands, ribs and
thighs--everywhere except the feet and legs, where it was swollen tense
and transparent, distended with gallons of purulent matter. Their livid
gums, from which most of their teeth had already fallen, protruded
far beyond their lips. To their left lay a Sergeant and two others
of their company, all three slowly dying from diarrhea, and beyond
was a fair-haired German, young and intelligent looking, whose life
was ebbing tediously away. To my right was a handsome young Sergeant
of an Illinois Infantry Regiment, captured at Kenesaw. His left arm
had been amputated between the shoulder and elbow, and he was turned
into the Stockade with the stump all undressed, save the ligating of
the arteries. Of course, he had not been inside an hour until the
maggot flies had laid eggs in the open wound, and before the day was
gone the worms were hatched out, and rioting amid the inflamed and
super-sensitive nerves, where their every motion was agony. Accustomed
as we were to misery, we found a still lower depth in his misfortune,
and I would be happier could I forget his pale, drawn face, as he
wandered uncomplainingly to and fro, holding his maimed limb with his
right hand, occasionally stopping to squeeze it, as one does a boil,
and press from it a stream of maggots and pus. I do not think he ate or
slept for a week before he died. Next to him staid an Irish Sergeant of
a New York Regiment, a fine soldierly man, who, with pardonable pride,
wore, conspicuously on his left breast, a medal gained by gallantry
while a British soldier in the Crimea. He was wasting away with
diarrhea, and died before the month was out.

This was what one could see on every square rod of the prison. Where I
was was not only no worse than the rest of the prison, but was probably
much better and healthier, as it was the highest ground inside,
farthest from the Swamp, and having the dead line on two sides, had a
ventilation that those nearer the center could not possibly have. Yet,
with all these conditions in our favor, the mortality was as I have
described.

Near us an exasperating idiot, who played the flute, had established
himself. Like all poor players, he affected the low, mournful notes, as
plaintive as the distant cooing of the dove in lowering, weather. He
played or rather tooted away in his “blues”-inducing strain hour after
hour, despite our energetic protests, and occasionally flinging a club
at him. There was no more stop to him than to a man with a hand-organ,
and to this day the low, sad notes of a flute are the swiftest reminder
to me of those sorrowful, death-laden days.

I had an illustration one morning of how far decomposition would
progress in a man’s body before he died. My chum and I found a
treasure-trove in the streets, in the shape of the body of a man who
died during the night. The value of this “find” was that if we took it
to the gate, we would be allowed to carry it outside to the deadhouse,
and on our way back have an opportunity to pick up a chunk of wood, to
use in cooking. While discussing our good luck another party came up
and claimed the body. A verbal dispute led to one of blows, in which
we came off victorious, and I hastily caught hold of the arm near the
elbow to help bear the body away. The skin gave way under my hand,
and slipped with it down to the wrist, like a torn sleeve. It was
sickening, but I clung to my prize, and secured a very good chunk of
wood while outside with it. The wood was very much needed by my mess,
as our squad had then had none for more than a week.




CHAPTER XL.

THE BATTLE OF THE 22D OF JULY--THE ARMS OF THE TENNESSEE ASSAULTED
FRONT AND REAR--DEATH OF GENERAL MCPHERSON--ASSUMPTION OF COMMAND BY
GENERAL LOGAN--RESULT OF THE BATTLE.

Naturally, we had a consuming hunger for news of what was being
accomplished by our armies toward crushing the Rebellion. Now, more
than ever, had we reason to ardently wish for the destruction of the
Rebel power. Before capture we had love of country and a natural desire
for the triumph of her flag to animate us. Now we had a hatred of the
Rebels that passed expression, and a fierce longing to see those who
daily tortured and insulted us trampled down in the dust of humiliation.

The daily arrival of prisoners kept us tolerably well
informed as to the general progress of the campaign, and we
added to the information thus obtained by getting--almost
daily--in some manner or another--a copy of a Rebel paper.
Most frequently these were Atlanta papers, or an issue of the
“Memphis-Corinth-Jackson-Grenada-Chattanooga-Resacca-Marietta-Atlanta
Appeal,” as they used to facetiously term a Memphis paper that left
that City when it was taken in 1862, and for two years fell back from
place to place, as Sherman’s Army advanced, until at last it gave up
the struggle in September, 1864, in a little Town south of Atlanta,
after about two thousand miles of weary retreat from an indefatigable
pursuer. The papers were brought in by “fresh fish,” purchased from
the guards at from fifty cents to one dollar apiece, or occasionally
thrown in to us when they had some specially disagreeable intelligence,
like the defeat of Banks, or Sturgis, or Bunter, to exult over. I was
particularly fortunate in getting hold of these. Becoming installed as
general reader for a neighborhood of several thousand men, everything
of this kind was immediately brought to me, to be read aloud for the
benefit of everybody. All the older prisoners knew me by the nick-name
of “Illinoy” --a designation arising from my wearing on my cap, when
I entered prison, a neat little white metal badge of “ILLS.” When any
reading matter was brought into our neighborhood, there would be a
general cry of:

“Take it up to ‘Illinoy,’” and then hundreds would mass around my
quarters to bear the news read.

The Rebel papers usually had very meager reports of the operations of
the armies, and these were greatly distorted, but they were still very
interesting, and as we always started in to read with the expectation
that the whole statement was a mass of perversions and lies, where
truth was an infrequent accident, we were not likely to be much
impressed with it.

There was a marled difference in the tone of the reports brought in
from the different armies. Sherman’s men were always sanguine. They
had no doubt that they were pushing the enemy straight to the wall,
and that every day brought the Southern Confederacy much nearer its
downfall. Those from the Army of the Potomac were never so hopeful.
They would admit that Grant was pounding Lee terribly, but the shadow
of the frequent defeats of the Army of the Potomac seemed to hang
depressingly over them.

There came a day, however, when our sanguine hopes as to Sherman were
checked by a possibility that he had failed; that his long campaign
towards Atlanta had culminated in such a reverse under the very walls
of the City as would compel an abandonment of the enterprise, and
possibly a humiliating retreat. We knew that Jeff. Davis and his
Government were strongly dissatisfied with the Fabian policy of Joe
Johnston. The papers had told us of the Rebel President’s visit to
Atlanta, of his bitter comments on Johnston’s tactics; of his going so
far as to sneer about the necessity of providing pontoons at Key West,
so that Johnston might continue his retreat even to Cuba. Then came the
news of Johnston’s Supersession by Hood, and the papers were full of
the exulting predictions of what would now be accomplished “when that
gallant young soldier is once fairly in the saddle.”

All this meant one supreme effort to arrest the onward course of
Sherman. It indicated a resolve to stake the fate of Atlanta, and
the fortunes of the Confederacy in the West, upon the hazard of one
desperate fight. We watched the summoning up of every Rebel energy for
the blow with apprehension. We dreaded another Chickamauga.

The blow fell on the 22d of July. It was well planned. The Army of
the Tennessee, the left of Sherman’s forces, was the part struck.
On the night of the 21st Hood marched a heavy force around its left
flank and gained its rear. On the 22d this force fell on the rear with
the impetuous violence of a cyclone, while the Rebels in the works
immediately around Atlanta attacked furiously in front.

It was an ordeal that no other army ever passed through successfully.
The steadiest troops in Europe would think it foolhardiness to attempt
to withstand an assault in force in front and rear at the same time.
The finest legions that follow any flag to-day must almost inevitably
succumb to such a mode of attack. But the seasoned veterans of the
Army of the Tennessee encountered the shock with an obstinacy which
showed that the finest material for soldiery this planet holds was that
in which undaunted hearts beat beneath blue blouses. Springing over
the front of their breastworks, they drove back with a withering fire
the force assailing them in the rear. This beaten off, they jumped
back to their proper places, and repulsed the assault in front. This
was the way the battle was waged until night compelled a cessation of
operations. Our boys were alternately behind the breastworks firing at
Rebels advancing upon the front, and in front of the works firing upon
those coming up in the rear. Sometimes part of our line would be on one
side of the works, and part on the other.

In the prison we were greatly excited over the result of the
engagement, of which we were uncertain for many days. A host of new
prisoners perhaps two thousand--was brought in from there, but as they
were captured during the progress of the fight, they could not speak
definitely as to its issue. The Rebel papers exulted without stint
over what they termed “a glorious victory.” They were particularly
jubilant over the death of McPherson, who, they claimed, was the brain
and guiding hand of Sherman’s army. One paper likened him to the
pilot-fish, which guides the shark to his prey. Now that he was gone,
said the paper, Sherman’s army becomes a great lumbering hulk, with no
one in it capable of directing it, and it must soon fall to utter ruin
under the skilfully delivered strokes of the gallant Hood.

We also knew that great numbers of wounded had been brought to the
prison hospital, and this seemed to confirm the Rebel claim of a
victory, as it showed they retained possession of the battle field.

About the 1st of August a large squad of Sherman’s men, captured in one
of the engagements subsequent to the 22d, came in. We gathered around
them eagerly. Among them I noticed a bright, curly-haired, blue-eyed
infantryman--or boy, rather, as he was yet beardless. His cap was
marked “68th O. Y. Y. L,” his sleeves were garnished with re-enlistment
stripes, and on the breast of his blouse was a silver arrow. To the
eye of the soldier this said that he was a veteran member of the
Sixty-Eighth Regiment of Ohio Infantry (that is, having already served
three years, he had re-enlisted for the war), and that he belonged
to the Third Division of the Seventeenth Army Corps. He was so young
and fresh looking that one could hardly believe him to be a veteran,
but if his stripes had not said this, the soldierly arrangement of
clothing and accouterments, and the graceful, self-possessed pose of
limbs and body would have told the observer that he was one of those
“Old Reliables” with whom Sherman and Grant had already subdued a third
of the Confederacy. His blanket, which, for a wonder, the Rebels had
neglected to take from him, was tightly rolled, its ends tied together,
and thrown over his shoulder scarf-fashion. His pantaloons were tucked
inside his stocking tops, that were pulled up as far as possible,
and tied tightly around his ankle with a string. A none-too-clean
haversack, containing the inevitable sooty quart cup, and even blacker
half-canteen, waft slung easily from the shoulder opposite to that on
which the blanket rested. Hand him his faithful Springfield rifle, put
three days’ rations in his haversack, and forty rounds in his cartridge
bog, and he would be ready, without an instant’s demur or question,
to march to the ends of the earth, and fight anything that crossed
his path. He was a type of the honest, honorable, self respecting
American boy, who, as a soldier, the world has not equaled in the sixty
centuries that war has been a profession. I suggested to him that he
was rather a youngster to be wearing veteran chevrons. “Yes,” said he,
“I am not so old as some of the rest of the boys, but I have seen about
as much service and been in the business about as long as any of them.
They call me ‘Old Dad,’ I suppose because I was the youngest boy in the
Regiment, when we first entered the service, though our whole Company,
officers and all, were only a lot of boys, and the Regiment to day,
what’s left of ’em, are about as young a lot of officers and men as
there are in the service. Why, our old Colonel ain’t only twenty-four
years old now, and he has been in command ever since we went into
Vicksburg. I have heard it said by our boys that since we veteranized
the whole Regiment, officers, and men, average less than twenty-four
years old. But they are gray-hounds to march and stayers in a fight,
you bet. Why, the rest of the troops over in West Tennessee used to
call our Brigade ‘Leggett’s Cavalry,’ for they always had us chasing
Old Forrest, and we kept him skedaddling, too, pretty lively. But I
tell you we did get into a red hot scrimmage on the 22d. It just laid
over Champion Hills, or any of the big fights around Vicksburg, and
they were lively enough to amuse any one.”

“So you were in the affair on the 22d, were you! We are awful anxious
to hear all about it. Come over here to my quarters and tell us all you
know. All we know is that there has been a big fight, with McPherson
killed, and a heavy loss of life besides, and the Rebels claim a great
victory.”

“O, they be -----. It was the sickest victory they ever got. About one
more victory of that kind would make their infernal old Confederacy
ready for a coroner’s inquest. Well, I can tell you pretty much all
about that fight, for I reckon if the truth was known, our regiment
fired about the first and last shot that opened and closed the fighting
on that day. Well, you see the whole Army got across the river, and
were closing in around the City of Atlanta. Our Corps, the Seventeenth,
was the extreme left of the army, and were moving up toward the City
from the East. The Fifteenth (Logan’s) Corps joined us on the right,
then the Army of the Cumberland further to the right. We run onto the
Rebs about sundown the 21st. They had some breastworks on a ridge in
front of us, and we had a pretty sharp fight before we drove them
off. We went right to work, and kept at it all night in changing and
strengthening the old Rebel barricades, fronting them towards Atlanta,
and by morning had some good solid works along our whole line. During
the night we fancied we could hear wagons or artillery moving away in
front of us, apparently going South, or towards our left. About three
or four o’clock in the morning, while I was shoveling dirt like a
beaver out on the works, the Lieutenant came to me and said the Colonel
wanted to see me, pointing to a large tree in the rear, where I could
find him. I reported and found him with General Leggett, who commanded
our Division, talking mighty serious, and Bob Wheeler, of F Company,
standing there with his Springfield at a parade rest. As soon as I came
up, the Colonel says:

“Boys, the General wants two level-headed chaps to go out beyond the
pickets to the front and toward the left. I have selected you for the
duty. Go as quietly as possible and as fast as you can; keep your eyes
and ears open; don’t fire a shot if you can help it, and come back and
tell us exactly what you have seen and heard, and not what you imagine
or suspect. I have selected you for the duty.’

“He gave us the countersign, and off we started over the breastworks
and through the thick woods. We soon came to our skirmish or pickets,
only a few rods in front of our works, and cautioned them not to fire
on us in going or returning. We went out as much as half a mile or
more, until we could plainly hear the sound of wagons and artillery.
We then cautiously crept forward until we could see the main road
leading south from the City filled with marching men, artillery and
teams. We could hear the commands of the officers and see the flags
and banners of regiment after regiment as they passed us. We got back
quietly and quickly, passed through our picket line all right, and
found the General and our Colonel sitting on a log where we had left
them, waiting for us. We reported what we had seen and heard, and
gave it as our opinion that the Johnnies were evacuating Atlanta. The
General shook his head, and the Colonel says: ‘You may return to your
company.’ Bob says to me:

“‘The old General shakes his head as though he thought them d---d Rebs
ain’t evacuating Atlanta so mighty sudden, but are up to some devilment
again. I ain’t sure but he’s right. They ain’t going to keep falling
back and falling back to all eternity, but are just agoin’ to give us
a rip-roaring great big fight one o’ these days--when they get a good
ready. You hear me!’

“Saying which we both went to our companies, and laid down to get a
little sleep. It was about daylight then, and I must have snoozed
away until near noon, when I heard the order ‘fall in!’ and found the
regiment getting into line, and the boys all tallying about going right
into Atlanta; that the Rebels had evacuated the City during the night,
and that we were going to have a race with the Fifteenth Corps as to
which would get into the City first. We could look away out across a
large field in front of our works, and see the skirmish line advancing
steadily towards the main works around the City. Not a shot was being,
fired on either side.

“To our surprise, instead of marching to the front and toward the
City, we filed off into a small road cut through the woods and marched
rapidly to the rear. We could not understand what it meant. We marched
at quick time, feeling pretty mad that we had to go to the rear, when
the rest of our Division were going into Atlanta.

“We passed the Sixteenth Corps lying on their arms, back in some open
fields, and the wagon trains of our Corps all comfortably corralled,
and finally found ourselves out by the Seventeenth Corps headquarters.
Two or three companies were sent out to picket several roads that
seemed to cross at that point, as it was reported ‘Rebel Cavalry’ had
been seen on these roads but a short time before, and this accounted
for our being rushed out in such a great hurry.

“We had just stacked arms and were going to take a little rest after
our rapid march, when several Rebel prisoners were brought in by some
of the boys who had straggled a little. They found the Rebels on the
road we had just marched out on. Up to this time not a shot had been
fired. All was quiet back at the main works we had just left, when
suddenly we saw several staff officers come tearing up to the Colonel,
who ordered us to ‘fall in!’ ‘Take aims!’ ‘about, face!’ The Lieutenant
Colonel dashed down one of the roads where one of the companies had
gone out on picket. The Major and Adjutant galloped down the others. We
did not wait for them to come back, though, but moved right back on the
road we had just come out, in line of battle, our colors in the road,
and our flanks in open timber. We soon reached a fence enclosing a
large field, and there could see a line of Rebels moving by the flank,
and forming, facing toward Atlanta, but to the left and in the rear of
the position occupied by our Corps. As soon as we reached the fence we
fired a round or two into the backs of these gray coats, who broke into
confusion.

“Just then the other companies joined us, and we moved off on ‘double
quick by the right flank,’ for you see we were completely cut off from
the troops up at the front, and we had to get well over to the right
to get around the flank of the Rebels. Just about the time we fired on
the rebels the Sixteenth Corps opened up a hot fire of musketry and
artillery on them, some of their shot coming over mighty close to where
we were. We marched pretty fast, and finally turned in through some
open fields to the left, and came out just in the rear of the Sixteenth
Corps, who were fighting like devils along their whole line.

“Just as we came out into the open field we saw General R. K. Scott,
who used to be our Colonel, and who commanded our brigade, come
tearing toward us with one or two aids or orderlies. He was on his
big clay-bank horse, ‘Old Hatchie,’ as we called him, as we captured
him on the battlefield at the battle of ‘Matamora,’ or ‘Hell on the
Hatchie,’ as our boys always called it. He rode up to the Colonel, said
something hastily, when all at once we heard the all-firedest crash of
musketry and artillery way up at the front where we had built the works
the night before and left the rest of our brigade and Division getting
ready to prance into Atlanta when we were sent off to the rear. Scott
put spurs to his old horse, who was one of the fastest runners in our
Division, and away he went back towards the position where his brigade
and the troops immediately to their left were now hotly engaged. He
rode right along in rear of the Sixteenth Corps, paying no attention
apparently to the shot and shell and bullets that were tearing up
the earth and exploding and striking all around him. His aids and
orderlies vainly tried to keep up with him. We could plainly see the
Rebel lines as they came out of the woods into the open grounds to
attack the Sixteenth Corps, which had hastily formed in the open field,
without any signs of works, and were standing up like men, having a
hand-to-hand fight. We were just far enough in the rear so that every
blasted shot or shell that was fired too high to hit the ranks of the
Sixteenth Corps came rattling over amongst us. All this time we were
marching fast, following in the direction General Scott had taken, who
evidently had ordered the Colonel to join his brigade up at the front.
We were down under the crest of a little hill, following along the bank
of a little creek, keeping under cover of the bank as much as possible
to protect us from the shots of the enemy. We suddenly saw General
Logan and one or two of his staff upon the right bank of the ravine
riding rapidly toward us. As he neared the head of the regiment he
shouted:

“‘Halt! What regiment is that, and where are you going?’” The Colonel,
in a loud voice, that all could hear, told him: “The Sixty-Eighth Ohio;
going to join our brigade of the Third Division--your old Division,
General, of the Seventeenth Corps.”

“Logan says, ‘you had better go right in here on the left of Dodge. The
Third Division have hardly ground enough left now to bury their dead.
God knows they need you. But try it on, if you think you can get to
them.’

“Just at this moment a staff officer came riding up on the opposite
side of the ravine from where Logan was and interrupted Logan, who was
about telling the Colonel not to try to go to the position held by the
Third Division by the road cut through the woods whence we had come
out, but to keep off to the right towards the Fifteenth Corps, as the
woods referred to were full of Rebels. The officer saluted Logan, and
shouted across:

“General Sherman directs me to inform you of the death of General
McPherson, and orders you to take command of the Army of the Tennessee;
have Dodge close well up to the Seventeenth Corps, and Sherman will
reinforce you to the extent of the whole army.’

“Logan, standing in his stirrups, on his beautiful black horse, formed
a picture against the blue sky as we looked up the ravine at him, his
black eyes fairly blazing and his long black hair waving in the wind.
He replied in a ringing, clear tone that we all could hear:

“Say to General Sherman I have heard of McPherson’s death, and have
assumed the command of the Army of the Tennessee, and have already
anticipated his orders in regard to closing the gap between Dodge and
the Seventeenth Corps.’

“This, of course, all happened in one quarter of the time I have been
telling you. Logan put spurs to his horse and rode in one direction,
the staff officer of General Sherman in another, and we started on
a rapid step toward the front. This was the first we had heard of
McPherson’s death, and it made us feel very bad. Some of the officers
and men cried as though they had lost a brother; others pressed their
lips, gritted their teeth, and swore to avenge his death. He was a
great favorite with all his Army, particularly of our Corps, which he
commanded for a long while. Our company, especially, knew him well,
and loved him dearly, for we had been his Headquarters Guard for over
a year. As we marched along, toward the front, we could see brigades,
and regiments, and batteries of artillery; coming over from the right
of the Army, and taking position in new lines in rear of the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Corps. Major Generals and their staffs, Brigadier
Generals and their staffs, were mighty thick along the banks of the
little ravine we were following; stragglers and wounded men by the
hundred were pouring in to the safe shelter formed by the broken ground
along which we were rapidly marching; stories were heard of divisions,
brigades and regiments that these wounded or stragglers belonged,
having been all cut to pieces; officers all killed; and the speaker,
the only one of his command not killed, wounded or captured. But you
boys have heard and seen the same cowardly sneaks, probably, in fights
that you were in. The battle raged furiously all this time; part of the
time the Sixteenth Corps seemed to be in the worst; then it would let
up on them and the Seventeenth Corps would be hotly engaged along their
whole front.

“We had probably marched half an hour since leaving Logan, and were
getting pretty near back to our main line of works, when the Colonel
ordered a halt and knapsacks to be unslung and piled up. I tell you it
was a relief to get them off, for it was a fearful hot day, and we had
been marching almost double quick. We knew that this meant business
though, and that we were stripping for the fight, which we would soon
be in. Just at this moment we saw an ambulance, with the horses on a
dead run, followed by two or three mounted officers and men, coming
right towards us out of the very woods Logan had cautioned the Colonel
to avoid. When the ambulance got to where we were it halted. It was
pretty well out of danger from the bullets and shell of the enemy.
They stopped, and we recognized Major Strong, of McPherson’s Staff,
whom the all knew, as he was the Chief Inspector of our Corps, and
in the ambulance he had the body of General McPherson. Major Strong,
it appears, during a slight lull in the fighting at that part of the
line, having taken an ambulance and driven into the very jaws of death
to recover the remains of his loved commander. It seems he found the
body right by the side of the little road that we had gone out on when
we went to the rear. He was dead when he found him, having been shot
off his horse, the bullet striking him in the back, just below his
heart, probably killing him instantly. There was a young fellow with
him who was wounded also, when Strong found them. He belonged to our
First Division, and recognized General McPherson, and stood by him
until Major Strong came up. He was in the ambulance with the body of
McPherson when they stopped by us.

“It seems that when the fight opened away back in the rear where we
had been, and at the left of the Sixteenth Corps which was almost
directly in the rear of the Seventeenth Corps, McPherson sent his
staff and orderlies with various orders to different parts of the
line, and started himself to ride over from the Seventeenth Corps to
the Sixteenth Corps, taking exactly the same course our Regiment had,
perhaps an hour before, but the Rebels had discovered there was a gap
between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Corps, and meeting no opposition
to their advances in this strip of woods, where they were hidden from
view, they had marched right along down in the rear, and with their
line at right angles with the line of works occupied by the left of
the Seventeenth Corps; they were thus parallel and close to the little
road McPherson had taken, and probably he rode right into them and was
killed before he realized the true situation.

“Having piled our knapsacks, and left a couple of our older men, who
were played out with the heat and most ready to drop with sunstroke, to
guard them, we started on again. The ambulance with the corpse of Gen.
McPherson moved off towards the right of the Army, which was the last
we ever saw of that brave and handsome soldier.

“We bore off a little to the right of a large open field on top of a
high hill where one of our batteries was pounding away at a tremendous
rate. We came up to the main line of works just about at the left of
the Fifteenth Corps. They seemed to be having an easy time of it just
then --no fighting going on in their front, except occasional shots
from some heavy guns on the main line of Rebel works around the City.
We crossed right over the Fifteenth Corps’ works and filed to the left,
keeping along on the outside of our works. We had not gone far before
the Rebel gunners in the main works around the City discovered us; and
the way they did tear loose at us was a caution. Their aim was rather
bad, however, and most of their shots went over us. We saw one of
them--I think it was a shell--strike an artillery caisson belonging to
one of our-batteries. It exploded as it struck, and then the caisson,
which was full of ammunition, exploded with an awful noise, throwing
pieces of wood and iron and its own load of shot and shell high into
the air, scattering death and destruction to the men and horses
attached to it. We thought we saw arms and legs and parts of bodies of
men flying in every direction; but we were glad to learn afterwards
that it was the contents of the knapsacks of the Battery boys, who had
strapped them on the caissons for transportation.

“Just after passing the hill where our battery was making things so
lively, they stopped firing to let us pass. We saw General Leggett,
our Division Commander, come riding toward us. He was outside of our
line of works, too. You know how we build breastworks--sort of zigzag
like, you know, so they cannot be enfiladed. Well, that’s just the way
the works were along there, and you never saw such a curious shape
as we formed our Division in. Why, part of them were on one side of
the works, and go along a little further and here was a regiment, or
part of a regiment on the other side, both sets firing in opposite
directions.

“No sir’ee, they were not demoralized or in confusion, they were cool
and as steady as on parade. But the old Division had, you know, never
been driven from any position they had once taken, in all their long
service, and they did not propose to leave that ridge until they got
orders from some one beside the Rebs.

“There were times when a fellow did not know which side of the works
was the safest, for the Johnnies were in front of us and in rear of us.
You see, our Fourth Division, which had been to the left of us, had
been forced to quit their works, when the Rebs got into the works in
their rear, so that our Division was now at the point where our line
turned sharply to the left, and rear--in the direction of the Sixteenth
Corps.

“We got into business before we had been there over three minutes. A
line of the Rebs tried to charge across the open fields in front of
us, but by the help of the old twenty-four pounders (which proved to
be part of Cooper’s Illinois Battery, that we had been alongside of in
many a hard fight before), we drove them back a-flying, only to have to
jump over on the outside of our works the next minute to tackle a heavy
force that came for our rear through that blasted strip of woods. We
soon drove them off, and the firing on both sides seemed to have pretty
much stopped.

“‘Our Brigade,’ which we discovered, was now commanded by ‘Old
Whiskers’ (Colonel Piles, of the Seventy-Eighth Ohio. I’ll bet he’s
got the longest whiskers of any man in the Army.) You see General
Scott had not been seen or heard of since he had started to the rear
after our regiment when the fighting first commenced. We all believed
that he was either killed or captured, or he would have been with his
command. He was a splendid soldier, and a bull-dog of a fighter. His
absence was a great loss, but we had not much time to think of such
things, for our brigade was then ordered to leave the works and to move
to the right about twenty or thirty rods across a large ravine, where
we were placed in position in an open corn-field, forming a new line
at quite an angle from the line of works we had just left, extending
to the left, and getting us back nearer onto a line with the Sixteenth
Corps. The battery of howitzers, now reinforced by a part of the Third
Ohio heavy guns, still occupied the old works on the highest part of
the hill, just to the right of our new line. We took our position just
on the brow of a hill, and were ordered to lie down, and the rear rank
to go for rails, which we discovered a few rods behind us in the shape
of a good ten-rail fence. Every rear-rank chap came back with all the
rails he could lug, and we barely had time to lay them down in front
of us, forming a little barricade of six to eight or ten inches high,
when we heard the most unearthly Rebel yell directly in front of us.
It grew louder and came nearer and nearer, until we could see a solid
line of the gray coats coming out of the woods and down the opposite
slope, their battle flags flying, officers in front with drawn swords,
arms at right shoulder, and every one of them yelling like so many
Sioux Indians. The line seemed to be massed six or eight ranks deep,
followed closely by the second line, and that by the third, each, if
possible, yelling louder and appearing more desperately reckless than
the one ahead. At their first appearance we opened on them, and so did
the bully old twenty-four-pounders, with canister.

“On they came; the first line staggered and wavered back on to the
second, which was coming on the double quick. Such a raking as we did
give them. Oh, Lordy, how we did wish that we had the breech loading
Spencers or Winchesters. But we had the old reliable Springfields,
and we poured it in hot and heavy. By the time the charging column
got down the opposite slope, and were struggling through the thicket
of undergrowth in the ravine, they were one confused mass of officers
and men, the three lines now forming one solid column, which made
several desperate efforts to rush up to the top of the hill where we
were punishing them so. One of their first surges came mighty near
going right over the left of our Regiment, as they were lying down
behind their little rail piles. But the boys clubbed their guns and the
officers used their revolvers and swords and drove them back down the
hill.

“The Seventy-Eighth and Twentieth Ohio, our right and left bowers, who
had been brigaded with us ever since ‘Shiloh,’ were into it as hot and
heavy as we had been, and had lost numbers of their officers and men,
but were hanging on to their little rail piles when the fight was over.
At one time the Rebs were right in on top of the Seventy-Eighth. One
big Reb grabbed their colors, and tried to pull them out of the hands
of the color-bearer. But old Captain Orr, a little, short, dried-up
fellow, about sixty years old, struck him with his sword across the
back of the neck, and killed him deader than a mackerel, right in his
tracks.

“It was now getting dark, and the Johnnies concluded they had taken a
bigger contract in trying to drive us off that hill in one day than
they had counted on, so they quit charging on us, but drew back under
cover of the woods and along the old line of works that we had left,
and kept up a pecking away and sharp-shooting at us all night long.
They opened fire on us from a number of pieces of artillery from the
front, from the left, and from some heavy guns away over to the right
of us, in the main works around Atlanta.

“We did not fool away much time that night, either. We got our shovels
and picks, and while part of us were sharpshooting and trying to keep
the Rebels from working up too close to us, the rest of the boys were
putting up some good solid earthworks right where our rail piles had
been, and by morning we were in splendid shape to have received our
friends, no matter which way they had come at us, for they kept up such
an all-fired shelling of us from so many different directions; that the
boys had built traverses and bomb-proofs at all sorts of angles and in
all directions.

“There was one point off to our right, a few rods up along our old line
of works where there was a crowd of Rebel sharpshooters that annoyed
us more than all the rest, by their constant firing at us through the
night. They killed one of Company H’s boys, and wounded several others.
Finally Captain Williams, of D Company, came along and said he wanted
a couple of good shots out of our company to go with him, so I went
for one. He took about ten of us, and we crawled down into the ravine
in front of where we were building the works, and got behind a large
fallen tree, and we laid there and could just fire right up into the
rear of those fellows as they lay behind a traverse extending back
from our old line of works. It was so dark we could only see where to
fire by the flash of guns, but every time they would shoot, some of us
would let them have one. They staid there until almost daylight, when
they, concluded as things looked, since we were going to stay, they had
better be going.

“It was an awful night. Down in the ravine below us lay hundreds of
killed and wounded Rebels, groaning and crying aloud for water and for
help. We did do what we could for those right around us--but it was
so dark, and so many shell bursting and bullets flying around that a
fellow could not get about much. I tell you it was pretty tough next
morning to go along to the different companies of our regiment and
hear who were among the killed and wounded, and to see the long row
of graves that were being dug to bury our comrades and our officers.
There was the Captain of Company E, Nelson Skeeles, of Fulton County,
O., one of--the bravest and best officers in the regiment. By his
side lay First Sergeant Lesnit, and next were the two great, powerful
Shepherds--cousins but more like brothers. One, it seems, was killed
while supporting the head of the other, who had just received a death
wound, thus dying in each other’s arms.

“But I can’t begin to think or tell you the names of all the poor boys
that we laid away to rest in their last, long sleep on that gloomy day.
Our Major was severely wounded, and several other officers had been hit
more or less badly.

“It was a frightful sight, though, to go over the field in front of
our works on that morning. The Rebel dead and badly wounded laid where
they had fallen. The bottom and opposite side of the ravine showed
how destructive our fire and that of the canister from the howitzers
had been. The underbrush was cut, slashed, and torn into shreds, and
the larger trees were scarred, bruised and broken by the thousands of
bullets and other missiles that had been poured into them from almost
every conceivable direction during the day before.

“A lot of us boys went way over to the left into Fuller’s Division of
the Sixteenth Corps, to see how some of our boys over there had got
through the scrimmage, for they had about as nasty a fight as any part
of the Army, and if it had not been for their being just where they
were, I am not sure but what the old Seventeenth Corps would have had
a different story to tell now. We found our friends had been way out
by Decatur, where their brigade had got into a pretty lively fight on
their own hook.

“We got back to camp, and the first thing I knew I was detailed for
picket duty, and we were posted over a few rods across the ravine in
our front. We had not been out but a short time when we saw a flag
of truce, borne by an officer, coming towards us. We halted him, and
made him wait until a report was sent back to Corps headquarters. The
Rebel officer was quite chatty and talkative with our picket officer,
while waiting. He said he was on General Cleburne’s staff, and that the
troops that charged us so fiercely the evening before was Cleburne’s
whole Division, and that after their last repulse, knowing the hill
where we were posted was the most important position along our line,
he felt that if they would keep close to us during the night, and keep
up a show of fight, that we would pull out and abandon the hill before
morning. He said that he, with about fifty of their best men, had
volunteered to keep up the demonstration, and it was his party that had
occupied the traverse in our old works the night before and had annoyed
us and the Battery men by their constant sharpshooting, which we
fellows behind the old tree had finally tired out. He said they staid
until almost daylight, and that he lost more than half his men before
he left. He also told us that General Scott was captured by their
Division, at about the time and almost the same spot as where General
McPherson was killed, and that he was not hurt or wounded, and was now
a prisoner in their hands.

“Quite a lot of our staff officers soon came out, and as near as we
could learn the Rebels wanted a truce to bury their dead. Our folks
tried to get up an exchange of prisoners that had been taken by both
sides the day before, but for some reason they could not bring it
about. But the truce for burying the dead was agreed to. Along about
dusk some of the boys on my post got to telling about a lot of silver
and brass instruments that belonged to one of the bands of the Fourth
Division, which had been hung up in some small trees a little way over
in front of where we were when the fight was going on the day before,
and that when, a bullet would strike one of the horns they could hear
it go ‘pin-g’ and in a few minutes ‘pan-g’ would go another bullet
through one of them.

“A new picket was just coming’ on, and I had picked up my blanket and
haversack, and was about ready to start back to camp, when, thinks I,
‘I’ll just go out there and see about them horns.’ I told the boys what
I was going to do. They all seemed to think it was safe enough, so out
I started. I had not gone more than a hundred yards, I should think,
when here I found the horns all hanging around on the trees just as the
boys had described. Some of them had lots of bullet holes in them. But
I saw a beautiful, nice looking silver bugle hanging off to one side a
little. ‘I Thinks,’ says I, ‘I’ll just take that little toot horn in
out of the wet, and take it back to camp.’ I was just reaching up after
it when I heard some one say,

“‘Halt!’ and I’ll be dog-Boned if there wasn’t two of the meanest
looking Rebels, standing not ten feet from me, with their guns cocked
and pointed at me, and, of course, I knew I was a goner; they walked me
back about one hundred and fifty yards, where their picket line was.
From there I was kept going for an hour or two until we got over to
a place on the railroad called East Point. There I got in with a big
crowd of our prisoners, who were taken the day before, and we have been
fooling along in a lot of old cattle cars getting down here ever since.

“So this is ‘Andersonville,’ is it! Well, by ----!”




CHAPTER XLI.

CLOTHING: ITS RAPID DETERIORATION, AND DEVICES TO REPLENISH
IT--DESPERATE EFFORTS TO COVER NAKEDNESS--“LITTLE RED CAP” AND HIS
LETTER.

Clothing had now become an object of real solicitude to us older
prisoners. The veterans of our crowd--the surviving remnant of those
captured at Gettysburg--had been prisoners over a year. The next in
seniority--the Chickamauga boys--had been in ten months. The Mine Run
fellows were eight months old, and my battalion had had seven months’
incarceration. None of us were models of well-dressed gentlemen when
captured. Our garments told the whole story of the hard campaigning we
had undergone. Now, with months of the wear and tear of prison life,
sleeping on the sand, working in tunnels, digging wells, etc., we were
tattered and torn to an extent that a second-class tramp would have
considered disgraceful.

This is no reflection upon the quality of the clothes furnished by
the Government. We simply reached the limit of the wear of textile
fabrics. I am particular to say this, because I want to contribute my
little mite towards doing justice to a badly abused part of our Army
organization --the Quartermaster’s Department. It is fashionable to
speak of “shoddy,” and utter some stereotyped sneers about “brown paper
shoes,” and “musketo-netting overcoats,” when any discussion of the
Quartermaster service is the subject of conversation, but I have no
hesitation in asking the indorsement of my comrades to the statement
that we have never found anywhere else as durable garments as those
furnished us by the Government during our service in the Army. The
clothes were not as fine in texture, nor so stylish in cut as those we
wore before or since, but when it came to wear they could be relied on
to the last thread. It was always marvelous to me that they lasted so
well, with the rough usage a soldier in the field must necessarily give
them.

But to return to my subject. I can best illustrate the way our
clothes dropped off us, piece by piece, like the petals from the last
rose of Summer, by taking my own case as an example: When I entered
prison I was clad in the ordinary garb of an enlisted man of the
cavalry--stout, comfortable boots, woolen pocks, drawers, pantaloons,
with a “reenforcement,” or “ready-made patches,” as the infantry
called them; vest, warm, snug-fitting jacket, under and over shirts,
heavy overcoat, and a forage-cap. First my boots fell into cureless
ruin, but this was no special hardship, as the weather had become
quite warm, and it was more pleasant than otherwise to go barefooted.
Then part of the underclothing retired from service. The jacket and
vest followed, their end being hastened by having their best portions
taken to patch up the pantaloons, which kept giving out at the most
embarrassing places. Then the cape of the overcoat was called upon to
assist in repairing these continually-recurring breaches in the nether
garments. The same insatiate demand finally consumed the whole coat, in
a vain attempt to prevent an exposure of person greater than consistent
with the usages of society. The pantaloons--or what, by courtesy, I
called such, were a monument of careful and ingenious, but hopeless,
patching, that should have called forth the admiration of a Florentine
artist in mosaic. I have been shown--in later years--many table tops,
ornamented in marquetry, inlaid with thousands of little bits of wood,
cunningly arranged, and patiently joined together. I always look at
them with interest, for I know the work spent upon them: I remember my
Andersonville pantaloons.

The clothing upon the upper part of my body had been reduced to the
remains of a knit undershirt. It had fallen into so many holes that it
looked like the coarse “riddles” through which ashes and gravel are
sifted. Wherever these holes were the sun had burned my back, breast
and shoulders deeply black. The parts covered by the threads and
fragments forming the boundaries of the holes, were still white. When
I pulled my alleged shirt off, to wash or to free it from some of its
teeming population, my skin showed a fine lace pattern in black and
white, that was very interesting to my comrades, and the subject of
countless jokes by them.

They used to descant loudly on the chaste elegance of the design, the
richness of the tracing, etc., and beg me to furnish them with a copy
of it when I got home, for their sisters to work window curtains or
tidies by. They were sure that so striking a novelty in patterns would
be very acceptable. I would reply to their witticisms in the language
of Portia’s Prince of Morocco:

Mislike me not for my complexion-- The shadowed livery of the burning
sun.

One of the stories told me in my childhood by an old negro nurse, was
of a poverty stricken little girl “who slept on the floor and was
covered with the door,” and she once asked--

“Mamma how do poor folks get along who haven’t any door?”

In the same spirit I used to wonder how poor fellows got along who
hadn’t any shirt.

One common way of keeping up one’s clothing was by stealing mealsacks.
The meal furnished as rations was brought in in white cotton sacks.
Sergeants of detachments were required to return these when the
rations were issued the next day. I have before alluded to the general
incapacity of the Rebels to deal accurately with even simple numbers.
It was never very difficult for a shrewd Sergeant to make nine sacks
count as ten. After awhile the Rebels began to see through this sleight
of hand manipulation, and to check it. Then the Sergeants resorted to
the device of tearing the sacks in two, and turning each half in as a
whole one. The cotton cloth gained in this way was used for patching,
or, if a boy could succeed in beating the Rebels out of enough of
it, he would fabricate himself a shirt or a pair of pantaloons. We
obtained all our thread in the same way. A half of a sack, carefully
raveled out, would furnish a couple of handfuls of thread. Had it not
been for this resource all our sewing and mending would have come to a
standstill.

Most of our needles were manufactured by ourselves from bones. A piece
of bone, split as near as possible to the required size, was carefully
rubbed down upon a brick, and then had an eye laboriously worked
through it with a bit of wire or something else available for the
purpose. The needles were about the size of ordinary darning needles,
and answered the purpose very well.

These devices gave one some conception of the way savages provide for
the wants of their lives. Time was with them, as with us, of little
importance. It was no loss of time to them, nor to us, to spend a large
portion of the waking hours of a week in fabricating a needle out of a
bone, where a civilized man could purchase a much better one with the
product of three minutes’ labor. I do not think any red Indian of the
plains exceeded us in the patience with which we worked away at these
minutia of life’s needs.

Of course the most common source of clothing was the dead, and no body
was carried out with any clothing on it that could be of service to the
survivors. The Plymouth Pilgrims, who were so well clothed on coming
in, and were now dying off very rapidly, furnished many good suits to
cover the nakedness of older, prisoners. Most of the prisoners from the
Army of the Potomac were well dressed, and as very many died within a
month or six weeks after their entrance, they left their clothes in
pretty good condition for those who constituted themselves their heirs,
administrators and assigns.

For my own part, I had the greatest aversion to wearing dead men’s
clothes, and could only bring myself to it after I had been a year in
prison, and it became a question between doing that and freezing to
death.

Every new batch of prisoners was besieged with anxious inquiries on the
subject which lay closest to all our hearts:

“What are they doing about exchange!”

Nothing in human experience--save the anxious expectancy of a sail by
castaways on a desert island--could equal the intense eagerness with
which this question was asked, and the answer awaited. To thousands now
hanging on the verge of eternity it meant life or death. Between the
first day of July and the first of November over twelve thousand men
died, who would doubtless have lived had they been able to reach our
lines--“get to God’s country,” as we expressed it.

The new comers brought little reliable news of contemplated exchange.
There was none to bring in the first place, and in the next, soldiers
in active service in the field had other things to busy themselves
with than reading up the details of the negotiations between the
Commissioners of Exchange. They had all heard rumors, however, and by
the time they reached Andersonville, they had crystallized these into
actual statements of fact. A half hour after they entered the Stockade,
a report like this would spread like wildfire:

“An Army of the Potomac man has just come in, who was captured in front
of Petersburg. He says that he read in the New York Herald, the day
before he was taken, that an exchange had been agreed upon, and that
our ships had already started for Savannah to take us home.”

Then our hopes would soar up like balloons. We fed ourselves on such
stuff from day to day, and doubtless many lives were greatly prolonged
by the continual encouragement. There was hardly a day when I did not
say to myself that I would much rather die than endure imprisonment
another month, and had I believed that another month would see me
still there, I am pretty certain that I should have ended the matter
by crossing the Dead Line. I was firmly resolved not to die the
disgusting, agonizing death that so many around me were dying.

One of our best purveyors of information was a bright, blue-eyed,
fair-haired little drummer boy, as handsome as a girl, well-bred as
a lady, and evidently the darling of some refined loving mother. He
belonged, I think, to some loyal Virginia regiment, was captured in
one of the actions in the Shenandoa Valley, and had been with us
in Richmond. We called him “Red Cap,” from his wearing a jaunty,
gold-laced, crimson cap. Ordinarily, the smaller a drummer boy is
the harder he is, but no amount of attrition with rough men could
coarse the ingrained refinement of Red Cap’s manners. He was between
thirteen and fourteen, and it seemed utterly shameful that men, calling
themselves soldier should make war on such a tender boy and drag him
off to prison.

But no six-footer had a more soldierly heart than little Red Cap, and
none were more loyal to the cause. It was a pleasure to hear him tell
the story of the fights and movements his regiment had been engaged
in. He was a good observer and told his tale with boyish fervor.
Shortly after Wirz assumed command he took Red Cap into his office as
an Orderly. His bright face and winning manner; fascinated the women
visitors at headquarters, and numbers of them tried to adopt him,
but with poor success. Like the rest of us, he could see few charms
in an existence under the Rebel flag, and turned a deaf ear to their
blandishments. He kept his ears open to the conversation of the Rebel
officers around him, and frequently secured permission to visit the
interior of the Stockade, when he would communicate to us all that he
has heard. He received a flattering reception every time he cams in,
and no orator ever secured a more attentive audience than would gather
around him to listen to what he had to say. He was, beyond a doubt, the
best known and most popular person in the prison, and I know all the
survivors of his old admirer; share my great interest in him, and my
curiosity as to whether he yet lives, and whether his subsequent career
has justified the sanguine hopes we all had as to his future. I hope
that if he sees this, or any one who knows anything about him, he will
communicate with me. There are thousands who will be glad to hear from
him.

A most remarkable coincidence occurred in regard to this comrade.
Several days after the above had been written, and “set up,” but before
it had yet appeared in the paper, I received the following letter:

                                             ECKHART MINES,
                              Alleghany County, Md., March 24.

To the Editor of the BLADE:

Last evening I saw a copy of your paper, in which was a chapter or
two of a prison life of a soldier during the late war. I was forcibly
struck with the correctness of what he wrote, and the names of several
of my old comrades which he quoted: Hill, Limber Jim, etc., etc. I
was a drummer boy of Company I, Tenth West Virginia Infantry, and was
fifteen years of age a day or two after arriving in Andersonville,
which was in the last of February, 1884. Nineteen of my comrades were
there with me, and, poor fellows, they are there yet. I have no doubt
that I would have remained there, too, had I not been more fortunate.

I do not know who your soldier correspondent is, but assume to say
that from the following description he will remember having seen me
in Andersonville: I was the little boy that for three or four months
officiated as orderly for Captain Wirz. I wore a red cap, and every
day could be seen riding Wirz’s gray mare, either at headquarters,
or about the Stockade. I was acting in this capacity when the six
raiders --“Mosby,” (proper name Collins) Delaney, Curtis, and--I forget
the other names--were executed. I believe that I was the first that
conveyed the intelligence to them that Confederate General Winder had
approved their sentence. As soon as Wirz received the dispatch to that
effect, I ran down to the stocks and told them.

I visited Hill, of Wauseon, Fulton County, O., since the war, and found
him hale and hearty. I have not heard from him for a number of years
until reading your correspondent’s letter last evening. It is the only
letter of the series that I have seen, but after reading that one, I
feel called upon to certify that I have no doubts of the truthfulness
of your correspondent’s story. The world will never know or believe the
horrors of Andersonville and other prisons in the South. No living,
human being, in my judgment, will ever be able to properly paint the
horrors of those infernal dens.

I formed the acquaintance of several Ohio soldiers whilst in
prison. Among these were O. D. Streeter, of Cleveland, who went to
Andersonville about the same time that I did, and escaped, and was the
only man that I ever knew that escaped and reached our lines. After an
absence of several months he was retaken in one of Sherman’s battles
before Atlanta, and brought back. I also knew John L. Richards, of
Fostoria, Seneca County, O. or Eaglesville, Wood County. Also, a man
by the name of Beverly, who was a partner of Charley Aucklebv, of
Tennessee. I would like to hear from all of these parties. They all
know me.

Mr. Editor, I will close by wishing all my comrades who shared in the
sufferings and dangers of Confederate prisons, a long and useful life.

                                   Yours truly,
                                                  RANSOM T. POWELL




CHAPTER XLII.

SOME FEATURES OF THE MORTALITY--PERCENTAGE OF DEATHS TO THOSE LIVING
--AN AVERAGE MEAN ONLY STANDS THE MISERY THREE MONTHS--DESCRIPTION
OF THE PRISON AND THE CONDITION OF THE MEN THEREIN, BY A LEADING
SCIENTIFIC MAN OF THE SOUTH.

Speaking of the manner in which the Plymouth Pilgrims were now dying,
I am reminded of my theory that the ordinary man’s endurance of this
prison life did not average over three months. The Plymouth boys
arrived in May; the bulk of those who died passed away in July and
August. The great increase of prisoners from all sources was in May,
June and July. The greatest mortality among these was in August,
September and October.

Many came in who had been in good health during their service in the
field, but who seemed utterly overwhelmed by the appalling misery they
saw on every hand, and giving way to despondency, died in a few days
or weeks. I do not mean to include them in the above class, as their
sickness was more mental than physical. My idea is that, taking one
hundred ordinarily healthful young soldiers from a regiment in active
service, and putting them into Andersonville, by the end of the third
month at least thirty-three of those weakest and most vulnerable to
disease would have succumbed to the exposure, the pollution of ground
and air, and the insufficiency of the ration of coarse corn meal. After
this the mortality would be somewhat less, say at the end of six months
fifty of them would be dead. The remainder would hang on still more
tenaciously, and at the end of a year there would be fifteen or twenty
still alive. There were sixty-three of my company taken; thirteen
lived through. I believe this was about the usual proportion for those
who were in as long as we. In all there were forty-five thousand six
hundred and thirteen prisoners brought into Andersonville. Of these
twelve thousand nine hundred and twelve died there, to say nothing of
thousands that died in other prisons in Georgia and the Carolinas,
immediately after their removal from Andersonville. One of every
three and a-half men upon whom the gates of the Stockade closed never
repassed them alive. Twenty-nine per cent. of the boys who so much as
set foot in Andersonville died there. Let it be kept in mind all the
time, that the average stay of a prisoner there was not four months.
The great majority came in after the 1st of May, and left before the
middle of September. May 1, 1864, there were ten thousand four hundred
and twenty-seven in the Stockade. August 8 there were thirty-three
thousand one hundred and fourteen; September 30 all these were dead
or gone, except eight thousand two hundred and eighteen, of whom four
thousand five hundred and ninety died inside of the next thirty days.
The records of the world can shove no parallel to this astounding
mortality.

Since the above matter was first published in the BLADE, a friend has
sent me a transcript of the evidence at the Wirz trial, of Professor
Joseph Jones, a Surgeon of high rank in the Rebel Army, and who
stood at the head of the medical profession in Georgia. He visited
Andersonville at the instance of the Surgeon-General of the Confederate
States’ Army, to make a study, for the benefit of science, of the
phenomena of disease occurring there. His capacity and opportunities
for observation, and for clearly estimating the value of the facts
coming under his notice were, of course, vastly superior to mine,
and as he states the case stronger than I dare to, for fear of being
accused of exaggeration and downright untruth, I reproduce the major
part of his testimony--embodying also his official report to medical
headquarters at Richmond--that my readers may know how the prison
appeared to the eyes of one who, though a bitter Rebel, was still a
humane man and a conscientious observer, striving to learn the truth:

                         MEDICAL TESTIMONY.

[Transcript from the printed testimony at the Wirz Trial, pages 618 to
639, inclusive.]

                                             OCTOBER 7, 1885.

Dr. Joseph Jones, for the prosecution:

By the Judge Advocate:

Question. Where do you reside

Answer. In Augusta, Georgia.

Q. Are you a graduate of any medical college?

A. Of the University of Pennsylvania.

Q. How long have you been engaged in the practice of medicine?

A. Eight years.

Q. Has your experience been as a practitioner, or rather as an
investigator of medicine as a science?

A. Both.

Q. What position do you hold now?

A. That of Medical Chemist in the Medical College of Georgia, at
Augusta.

Q. How long have you held your position in that college?

A. Since 1858.

Q. How were you employed during the Rebellion?

A. I served six months in the early part of it as a private in the
ranks, and the rest of the time in the medical department.

Q. Under the direction of whom?

A. Under the direction of Dr. Moore, Surgeon General.

Q. Did you, while acting under his direction, visit Andersonville,
professionally?

A. Yes, Sir.

Q. For the purpose of making investigations there?

A. For the purpose of prosecuting investigations ordered by the Surgeon
General.

Q. You went there in obedience to a letter of instructions?

A. In obedience to orders which I received.

Q. Did you reduce the results of your investigations to the shape of a
report?

A. I was engaged at that work when General Johnston surrendered his
army.

(A document being handed to witness.)

Q. Have you examined this extract from your report and compared it with
the original?

A. Yes, Sir; I have.

Q. Is it accurate?

A. So far as my examination extended, it is accurate.’

The document just examined by witness was offered in evidence, and is as
follows:

Observations upon the diseases of the Federal prisoners, confined to
Camp Sumter, Andersonville, in Sumter County, Georgia, instituted
with a view to illustrate chiefly the origin and causes of hospital
gangrene, the relations of continued and malarial fevers, and the
pathology of camp diarrhea and dysentery, by Joseph Jones; Surgeon P.
A. C. S., Professor of Medical Chemistry in the Medical College of
Georgia, at Augusta, Georgia.


Hearing of the unusual mortality among the Federal prisoners confined
at Andersonville; Georgia, in the month of August, 1864, during a visit
to Richmond, Va., I expressed to the Surgeon General, S. P. Moore,
Confederate States of America, a desire to visit Camp Sumter, with
the design of instituting a series of inquiries upon the nature and
causes of the prevailing diseases. Smallpox had appeared among the
prisoners, and I believed that this would prove an admirable field
for the establishment of its characteristic lesions. The condition
of Peyer’s glands in this disease was considered as worthy of minute
investigation. It was believed that a large body of men from the
Northern portion of the United States, suddenly transported to a warm
Southern climate, and confined upon a small portion of land, would
furnish an excellent field for the investigation of the relations of
typhus, typhoid, and malarial fevers.

The Surgeon General of the Confederate States of America furnished me
with the following letter of introduction to the Surgeon in charge of
the Confederate States Military Prison at Andersonville, Ga.:

                              CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA,
                              SURGEON GENERAL’S OFFICE, RICHMOND, VA.,
                              August 6, 1864.

SIR:--The field of pathological investigations afforded by the large
collection of Federal prisoners in Georgia, is of great extant and
importance, and it is believed that results of value to the profession
may be obtained by careful investigation of the effects of disease upon
the large body of men subjected to a decided change of climate and
those circumstances peculiar to prison life. The Surgeon in charge of
the hospital for Federal prisoners, together with his assistants, will
afford every facility to Surgeon Joseph Jones, in the prosecution of
the labors ordered by the Surgeon General. Efficient assistance must
be rendered Surgeon Jones by the medical officers, not only in his
examinations into the causes and symptoms of the various diseases, but
especially in the arduous labors of post mortem examinations.

The medical officers will assist in the performance of such
post-mortems as Surgeon Jones may indicate, in order that this great
field for pathological investigation may be explored for the benefit of
the Medical Department of the Confederate Army.

                                        S. P. MOORE, Surgeon General.
Surgeon ISAIAH H. WHITE,

     In charge of Hospital for Federal prisoners, Andersonville, Ga.


In compliance with this letter of the Surgeon General, Isaiah H.
White, Chief Surgeon of the post, and R. R. Stevenson, Surgeon in
charge of the Prison Hospital, afforded the necessary facilities for
the prosecution of my investigations among the sick outside of the
Stockade. After the completion of my labors in the military prison
hospital, the following communication was addressed to Brigadier
General John H. Winder, in consequence of the refusal on the part of
the commandant of the interior of the Confederate States Military
Prison to admit me within the Stockade upon the order of the Surgeon
General:

                              CAMP SUMTER, ANDERSONVILLE GA.,
                              September 16, 1864.

GENERAL:--I respectfully request the commandant of the post of
Andersonville to grant me permission and to furnish the necessary pass
to visit the sick and medical officers within the Stockade of the
Confederate States Prison. I desire to institute certain inquiries
ordered by the Surgeon General. Surgeon Isaiah H. White, Chief Surgeon
of the post, and Surgeon R. R. Stevenson, in charge of the Prison
Hospital, have afforded me every facility for the prosecution of my
labors among the sick outside of the Stockade.
               Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
                         JOSEPH JONES, Surgeon P. A. C. S.

Brigadier General JOHN H. WINDER,
Commandant, Post Andersonville.


In the absence of General Winder from the post, Captain Winder furnished
the following order:

                              CAMP SUMTER, ANDERSONVILLE;
                                        September 17, 1864.

CAPTAIN:--You will permit Surgeon Joseph Jones, who has orders from the
Surgeon General, to visit the sick within the Stockade that are under
medical treatment. Surgeon Jones is ordered to make certain
investigations which may prove useful to his profession. By direction of
General Winder.
                              Very respectfully,
                                        W. S. WINDER, A. A. G.

Captain H. WIRZ, Commanding Prison.


     Description of the Confederate States Military Prison Hospital at
     Andersonville. Number of prisoners, physical condition, food,
     clothing, habits, moral condition, diseases.

The Confederate Military Prison at Andersonville, Ga., consists of a
strong Stockade, twenty feet in height, enclosing twenty-seven acres.
The Stockade is formed of strong pine logs, firmly planted in the
ground. The main Stockade is surrounded by two other similar rows of
pine logs, the middle Stockade being sixteen feet high, and the outer
twelve feet. These are intended for offense and defense. If the inner
Stockade should at any time be forced by the prisoners, the second
forms another line of defense; while in case of an attempt to deliver
the prisoners by a force operating upon the exterior, the outer line
forms an admirable protection to the Confederate troops, and a most
formidable obstacle to cavalry or infantry. The four angles of the
outer line are strengthened by earthworks upon commanding eminences,
from which the cannon, in case of an outbreak among the prisoners, may
sweep the entire enclosure; and it was designed to connect these works
by a line of rifle pits, running zig-zag, around the outer Stockade;
those rifle pits have never been completed. The ground enclosed by the
innermost Stockade lies in the form of a parallelogram, the larger
diameter running almost due north and south. This space includes the
northern and southern opposing sides of two hills, between which a
stream of water runs from west to east. The surface soil of these hills
is composed chiefly of sand with varying admixtures of clay and oxide
of iron. The clay is sufficiently tenacious to give a considerable
degree of consistency to the soil. The internal structure of the hills,
as revealed by the deep wells, is similar to that already described.
The alternate layers of clay and sand, as well as the oxide of iron,
which forms in its various combinations a cement to the sand, allow of
extensive tunneling. The prisoners not only constructed numerous dirt
huts with balls of clay and sand, taken from the wells which they have
excavated all over those hills, but they have also, in some cases,
tunneled extensively from these wells. The lower portions of these
hills, bordering on the stream, are wet and boggy from the constant
oozing of water. The Stockade was built originally to accommodate only
ten thousand prisoners, and included at first seventeen acres. Near the
close of the month of June the area was enlarged by the addition of
ten acres. The ground added was situated on the northern slope of the
largest hill.

The average number of square feet of ground to each prisoner in August
1864: 35.7

Within the circumscribed area of the Stockade the Federal prisoners
were compelled to perform all the offices of life--cooking, washing,
the calls of nature, exercise, and sleeping. During the month of March
the prison was less crowded than at any subsequent time, and then the
average space of ground to each prisoner was only 98.7 feet, or less
than seven square yards. The Federal prisoners were gathered from all
parts of the Confederate States east of the Mississippi, and crowded
into the confined space, until in the month of June the average number
of square feet of ground to each prisoner was only 33.2 or less than
four square yards. These figures represent the condition of the
Stockade in a better light even than it really was; for a considerable
breadth of land along the stream, flowing from west to east between
the hills, was low and boggy, and was covered with the excrement of
the men, and thus rendered wholly uninhabitable, and in fact useless
for every purpose except that of defecation. The pines and other small
trees and shrubs, which originally were scattered sparsely over these
hills, were in a short time cut down and consumed by the prisoners
for firewood, and no shade tree was left in the entire enclosure
of the stockade. With their characteristic industry and ingenuity,
the Federals constructed for themselves small huts and caves, and
attempted to shield themselves from the rain and sun and night damps
and dew. But few tents were distributed to the prisoners, and those
were in most cases torn and rotten. In the location and arrangement of
these tents and huts no order appears to have been followed; in fact,
regular streets appear to be out of the question in so crowded an
area; especially too, as large bodies of prisoners were from time to
time added suddenly without any previous preparations. The irregular
arrangement of the huts and imperfect shelters was very unfavorable for
the maintenance of a proper system of police.

The police and internal economy of the prison was left almost entirely
in the hands of the prisoners themselves; the duties of the Confederate
soldiers acting as guards being limited to the occupation of the
boxes or lookouts ranged around the stockade at regular intervals,
and to the manning of the batteries at the angles of the prison.
Even judicial matters pertaining to themselves, as the detection and
punishment of such crimes as theft and murder appear to have been
in a great measure abandoned to the prisoners. A striking instance
of this occurred in the month of July, when the Federal prisoners
within the Stockade tried, condemned, and hanged six (6) of their own
number, who had been convicted of stealing and of robbing and murdering
their fellow-prisoners. They were all hung upon the same day, and
thousands of the prisoners gathered around to witness the execution.
The Confederate authorities are said not to have interfered with these
proceedings. In this collection of men from all parts of the world,
every phase of human character was represented; the stronger preyed
upon the weaker, and even the sick who were unable to defend themselves
were robbed of their scanty supplies of food and clothing. Dark stories
were afloat, of men, both sick and well, who were murdered at night,
strangled to death by their comrades for scant supplies of clothing or
money. I heard a sick and wounded Federal prisoner accuse his nurse, a
fellow-prisoner of the United States Army, of having stealthily, during
his sleep inoculated his wounded arm with gangrene, that he might
destroy his life and fall heir to his clothing.

               ....................................

The large number of men confined within the Stockade soon, under a
defective system of police, and with imperfect arrangements, covered
the surface of the low grounds with excrements. The sinks over
the lower portions of the stream were imperfect in their plan and
structure, and the excrements were in large measure deposited so near
the borders of the stream as not to be washed away, or else accumulated
upon the low boggy ground. The volume of water was not sufficient to
wash away the feces, and they accumulated in such quantities in the
lower portion of the stream as to form a mass of liquid excrement heavy
rains caused the water of the stream to rise, and as the arrangements
for the passage of the increased amounts of water out of the Stockade
were insufficient, the liquid feces overflowed the low grounds and
covered them several inches, after the subsidence of the waters.
The action of the sun upon this putrefying mass of excrements and
fragments of bread and meat and bones excited most rapid fermentation
and developed a horrible stench. Improvements were projected for the
removal of the filth and for the prevention of its accumulation, but
they were only partially and imperfectly carried out. As the forces of
the prisoners were reduced by confinement, want of exercise, improper
diet, and by scurvy, diarrhea, and dysentery, they were unable to
evacuate their bowels within the stream or along its banks, and the
excrements were deposited at the very doors of their tents. The vast
majority appeared to lose all repulsion to filth, and both sick and
well disregarded all the laws of hygiene and personal cleanliness. The
accommodations for the sick were imperfect and insufficient. From the
organization of the prison, February 24, 1864, to May 22, the sick
were treated within the Stockade. In the crowded condition of the
Stockade, and with the tents and huts clustered thickly around the
hospital, it was impossible to secure proper ventilation or to maintain
the necessary police. The Federal prisoners also made frequent forays
upon the hospital stores and carried off the food and clothing of the
sick. The hospital was, on the 22d of May, removed to its present site
without the Stockade, and five acres of ground covered with oaks and
pines appropriated to the use of the sick.

The supply of medical officers has been insufficient from the
foundation of the prison.

The nurses and attendants upon the sick have been most generally
Federal prisoners, who in too many cases appear to have been devoid of
moral principle, and who not only neglected their duties, but were also
engaged in extensive robbing of the sick.

From the want of proper police and hygienic regulations alone it
is not wonderful that from February 24 to September 21, 1864, nine
thousand four hundred and seventy-nine deaths, nearly one-third the
entire number of prisoners, should have been recorded. I found the
Stockade and hospital in the following condition during my pathological
investigations, instituted in the month of September, 1864:


               STOCKADE, CONFEDERATE STATES MILITARY PRISON.

At the time of my visit to Andersonville a large number of Federal
prisoners had been removed to Millen, Savannah; Charleston, and other
parts of, the Confederacy, in anticipation of an advance of General
Sherman’s forces from Atlanta, with the design of liberating their
captive brethren; however, about fifteen thousand prisoners remained
confined within the limits of the Stockade and Confederate States
Military Prison Hospital.

In the Stockade, with the exception of the damp lowlands bordering the
small stream, the surface was covered with huts, and small ragged tents
and parts of blankets and fragments of oil-cloth, coats, and blankets
stretched upon stacks. The tents and huts were not arranged according
to any order, and there was in most parts of the enclosure scarcely
room for two men to walk abreast between the tents and huts.

If one might judge from the large pieces of corn-bread scattered
about in every direction on the ground the prisoners were either very
lavishly supplied with this article of diet, or else this kind of food
was not relished by them.

Each day the dead from the Stockade were carried out by their
fellow-prisoners and deposited upon the ground under a bush arbor, just
outside of the Southwestern Gate. From thence they were carried in
carts to the burying ground, one-quarter of a mile northwest, of the
Prison. The dead were buried without coffins, side by side, in trenches
four feet deep.

The low grounds bordering the stream were covered with human excrements
and filth of all kinds, which in many places appeared to be alive with
working maggots. An indescribable sickening stench arose from these
fermenting masses of human filth.

There were near five thousand seriously ill Federals in the Stockade
and Confederate States Military Prison Hospital, and the deaths
exceeded one hundred per day, and large numbers of the prisoners
who were walking about, and who had not been entered upon the
sick reports, were suffering from severe and incurable diarrhea,
dysentery, and scurvy. The sick were attended almost entirely by
their fellow-prisoners, appointed as nurses, and as they received but
little attention, they were compelled to exert themselves at all times
to attend to the calls of nature, and hence they retained the power
of moving about to within a comparatively short period of the close
of life. Owing to the slow progress of the diseases most prevalent,
diarrhea, and chronic dysentery, the corpses were as a general rule
emaciated.

I visited two thousand sick within the Stockade, lying under some long
sheds which had been built at the northern portion for themselves. At
this time only one medical officer was in attendance, whereas at least
twenty medical officers should have been employed.

Died in the Stockade from its organization, February 24, 186l to
September 2l ....................................................3,254
Died in Hospital during same time ...............................6,225

Total deaths in Hospital and Stockade ...........................9,479

Scurvy, diarrhea, dysentery, and hospital gangrene were the prevailing
diseases. I was surprised to find but few cases of malarial fever, and
no well-marked cases either of typhus or typhoid fever. The absence
of the different forms of malarial fever may be accounted for in the
supposition that the artificial atmosphere of the Stockade, crowded
densely with human beings and loaded with animal exhalations, was
unfavorable to the existence and action of the malarial poison. The
absence of typhoid and typhus fevers amongst all the causes which
are supposed to generate these diseases, appeared to be due to the
fact that the great majority of these prisoners had been in captivity
in Virginia, at Belle Island, and in other parts of the Confederacy
for months, and even as long as two years, and during this time they
had been subjected to the same bad influences, and those who had not
had these fevers before either had them during their confinement in
Confederate prisons or else their systems, from long exposure, were
proof against their action.

The effects of scurvy were manifested on every hand, and in all its
various stages, from the muddy, pale complexion, pale gums, feeble,
languid muscular motions, lowness of spirits, and fetid breath, to the
dusky, dirty, leaden complexion, swollen features, spongy, purple,
livid, fungoid, bleeding gums, loose teeth, oedematous limbs, covered
with livid vibices, and petechiae spasmodically flexed, painful and
hardened extremities, spontaneous hemorrhages from mucous canals, and
large, ill-conditioned, spreading ulcers covered with a dark purplish
fungus growth. I observed that in some of the cases of scurvy the
parotid glands were greatly swollen, and in some instances to such an
extent as to preclude entirely the power to articulate. In several
cases of dropsy of the abdomen and lower extremities supervening upon
scurvy, the patients affirmed that previously to the appearance of the
dropsy they had suffered with profuse and obstinate diarrhea, and that
when this was checked by a change of diet, from Indian corn-bread baked
with the husk, to boiled rice, the dropsy appeared. The severe pains
and livid patches were frequently associated with swellings in various
parts, and especially in the lower extremities, accompanied with
stiffness and contractions of the knee joints and ankles, and often
with a brawny feel of the parts, as if lymph had been effused between
the integuments and apeneuroses, preventing the motion of the skin over
the swollen parts. Many of the prisoners believed that the scurvy was
contagious, and I saw men guarding their wells and springs, fearing
lest some man suffering with the scurvy might use the water and thus
poison them.

I observed also numerous cases of hospital gangrene, and of spreading
scorbutic ulcers, which had supervened upon slight injuries. The
scorbutic ulcers presented a dark, purple fungoid, elevated surface,
with livid swollen edges, and exuded a thin; fetid, sanious fluid,
instead of pus. Many ulcers which originated from the scorbutic
condition of the system appeared to become truly gangrenous, assuming
all the characteristics of hospital gangrene. From the crowded
condition, filthy habits, bad diet, and dejected, depressed condition
of the prisoners, their systems had become so disordered that the
smallest abrasion of the skin, from the rubbing of a shoe, or from
the effects of the sun, or from the prick of a splinter, or from
scratching, or a musketo bite, in some cases, took on rapid and
frightful ulceration and gangrene. The long use of salt meat, ofttimes
imperfectly cured, as well as the most total deprivation of vegetables
and fruit, appeared to be the chief causes of the scurvy. I carefully
examined the bakery and the bread furnished the prisoners, and found
that they were supplied almost entirely with corn-bread from which the
husk had not been separated. This husk acted as an irritant to the
alimentary canal, without adding any nutriment to the bread. As far as
my examination extended no fault could be found with the mode in which
the bread was baked; the difficulty lay in the failure to separate the
husk from the corn-meal. I strongly urged the preparation of large
quantities of soup made from the cow and calves’ heads with the brains
and tongues, to which a liberal supply of sweet potatos and vegetables
might have been advantageously added. The material existed in abundance
for the preparation of such soup in large quantities with but little
additional expense. Such aliment would have been not only highly
nutritious, but it would also have acted as an efficient remedial
agent for the removal of the scorbutic condition. The sick within the
Stockade lay under several long sheds which were originally built for
barracks. These sheds covered two floors which were open on all sides.
The sick lay upon the bare boards, or upon such ragged blankets as they
possessed, without, as far as I observed, any bedding or even straw.

                    ............................

The haggard, distressed countenances of these miserable, complaining,
dejected, living skeletons, crying for medical aid and food, and
cursing their Government for its refusal to exchange prisoners, and
the ghastly corpses, with their glazed eye balls staring up into
vacant space, with the flies swarming down their open and grinning
mouths, and over their ragged clothes, infested with numerous lice,
as they lay amongst the sick and dying, formed a picture of helpless,
hopeless misery which it would be impossible to portray bywords or by
the brush. A feeling of disappointment and even resentment on account
of the United States Government upon the subject of the exchange
of prisoners, appeared to be widespread, and the apparent hopeless
nature of the negotiations for some general exchange of prisoners
appeared to be a cause of universal regret and deep and injurious
despondency. I heard some of the prisoners go so far as to exonerate
the Confederate Government from any charge of intentionally subjecting
them to a protracted confinement, with its necessary and unavoidable
sufferings, in a country cut off from all intercourse with foreign
nations, and sorely pressed on all sides, whilst on the other hand they
charged their prolonged captivity upon their own Government, which
was attempting to make the negro equal to the white man. Some hundred
or more of the prisoners had been released from confinement in the
Stockade on parole, and filled various offices as clerks, druggists,
and carpenters, etc., in the various departments. These men were well
clothed, and presented a stout and healthy appearance, and as a general
rule they presented a much more robust and healthy appearance than the
Confederate troops guarding the prisoners.

The entire grounds are surrounded by a frail board fence, and are
strictly guarded by Confederate soldiers, and no prisoner except the
paroled attendants is allowed to leave the grounds except by a special
permit from the Commandant of the Interior of the Prison.

The patients and attendants, near two thousand in number, are crowded
into this confined space and are but poorly supplied with old and
ragged tents. Large numbers of them were without any bunks in the
tents, and lay upon the ground, oft-times without even a blanket.
No beds or straw appeared to have been furnished. The tents extend
to within a few yards of the small stream, the eastern portion of
which, as we have before said, is used as a privy and is loaded with
excrements; and I observed a large pile of corn-bread, bones, and
filth of all kinds, thirty feet in diameter and several feet in hight,
swarming with myriads of flies, in a vacant space near the pots used
for cooking. Millions of flies swarmed over everything, and covered the
faces of the sleeping patients, and crawled down their open mouths,
and deposited their maggots in the gangrenous wounds of the living,
and in the mouths of the dead. Musketos in great numbers also infested
the tents, and many of the patients were so stung by these pestiferous
insects, that they resembled those suffering from a slight attack of
the measles.

The police and hygiene of the hospital were defective in the extreme;
the attendants, who appeared in almost every instance to have been
selected from the prisoners, seemed to have in many cases but little
interest in the welfare of their fellow-captives. The accusation was
made that the nurses in many cases robbed the sick of their clothing,
money, and rations, and carried on a clandestine trade with the paroled
prisoners and Confederate guards without the hospital enclosure, in
the clothing, effects of the sick, dying, and dead Federals. They
certainly appeared to neglect the comfort and cleanliness of the sick
intrusted to their care in a most shameful manner, even after making
due allowances for the difficulties of the situation. Many of the sick
were literally encrusted with dirt and filth and covered with vermin.
When a gangrenous wound needed washing, the limb was thrust out a
little from the blanket, or board, or rags upon which the patient was
lying, and water poured over it, and all the putrescent matter allowed
to soak into the ground floor of the tent. The supply of rags for
dressing wounds was said to be very scant, and I saw the most filthy
rags which had been applied several times, and imperfectly washed, used
in dressing wounds. Where hospital gangrene was prevailing, it was
impossible for any wound to escape contagion under these circumstances.
The results of the treatment of wounds in the hospital were of the
most unsatisfactory character, from this neglect of cleanliness, in
the dressings and wounds themselves, as well as from various other
causes which will be more fully considered. I saw several gangrenous
wounds filled with maggots. I have frequently seen neglected wounds
amongst the Confederate soldiers similarly affected; and as far as my
experience extends, these worms destroy only the dead tissues and do
not injure specially the well parts. I have even heard surgeons affirm
that a gangrenous wound which had been thoroughly cleansed by maggots,
healed more rapidly than if it had been left to itself. This want of
cleanliness on the part of the nurses appeared to be the result of
carelessness and inattention, rather than of malignant design, and
the whole trouble can be traced to the want of the proper police and
sanitary regulations, and to the absence of intelligent organization
and division of labor. The abuses were in a large measure due to the
almost total absence of system, government, and rigid, but wholesome
sanitary regulations. In extenuation of these abuses it was alleged by
the medical officers that the Confederate troops were barely sufficient
to guard the prisoners, and that it was impossible to obtain any number
of experienced nurses from the Confederate forces. In fact the guard
appeared to be too small, even for the regulation of the internal
hygiene and police of the hospital.

The manner of disposing of the dead was also calculated to depress
the already desponding spirits of these men, many of whom have been
confined for months, and even for nearly two years in Richmond and
other places, and whose strength had been wasted by bad air, bad
food, and neglect of personal cleanliness. The dead-house is merely a
frame covered with old tent cloth and a few bushes, situated in the
southwestern corner of the hospital grounds. When a patient dies, he
is simply laid in the narrow street in front of his tent, until he is
removed by Federal negros detailed to carry off the dead; if a patient
dies during the night, he lies there until the morning, and during the
day even the dead were frequently allowed to remain for hours in these
walks. In the dead-house the corpses lie upon the bare ground, and were
in most cases covered with filth and vermin.

                    ............................

The cooking arrangements are of the most defective character. Five
large iron pots similar to those used for boiling sugar cane, appeared
to be the only cooking utensils furnished by the hospital for the
cooking of nearly two thousand men; and the patients were dependent in
great measure upon their own miserable utensils. They were allowed to
cook in the tent doors and in the lanes, and this was another source
of filth, and another favorable condition for the generation and
multiplication of flies and other vermin.

The air of the tents was foul and disagreeable in the extreme, and
in fact the entire grounds emitted a most nauseous and disgusting
smell. I entered nearly all the tents and carefully examined the cases
of interest, and especially the cases of gangrene, upon numerous
occasions, during the prosecution of my pathological inquiries at
Andersonville, and therefore enjoyed every opportunity to judge
correctly of the hygiene and police of the hospital.

There appeared to be almost absolute indifference and neglect on
the part of the patients of personal cleanliness; their persons and
clothing inmost instances, and especially of those suffering with
gangrene and scorbutic ulcers, were filthy in the extreme and covered
with vermin. It was too often the case that patients were received from
the Stockade in a most deplorable condition. I have seen men brought
in from the Stockade in a dying condition, begrimed from head to foot
with their own excrements, and so black from smoke and filth that they,
resembled negros rather than white men. That this description of the
Stockade and hospital has not been overdrawn, will appear from the
reports of the surgeons in charge, appended to this report.

                    .........................

We will examine first the consolidated report of the sick and wounded
Federal prisoners. During six months, from the 1st of March to the
31st of August, forty-two thousand six hundred and eighty-six cases of
diseases and wounds were reported. No classified record of the sick in
the Stockade was kept after the establishment of the hospital without
the Prison. This fact, in conjunction with those already presented
relating to the insufficiency of medical officers and the extreme
illness and even death of many prisoners in the tents in the Stockade,
without any medical attention or record beyond the bare number of the
dead, demonstrate that these figures, large as they, appear to be, are
far below the truth.

As the number of prisoners varied greatly at different periods, the
relations between those reported sick and well, as far as those
statistics extend, can best be determined by a comparison of the
statistics of each month.

During this period of six months no less than five hundred and
sixty-five deaths are recorded under the head of ‘morbi vanie.’ In
other words, those men died without having received sufficient medical
attention for the determination of even the name of the disease causing
death.

During the month of August fifty-three cases and fifty-three deaths
are recorded as due to marasmus. Surely this large number of deaths
must have been due to some other morbid state than slow wasting. If
they were due to improper and insufficient food, they should have been
classed accordingly, and if to diarrhea or dysentery or scurvy, the
classification should in like manner have been explicit.

We observe a progressive increase of the rate of mortality, from
3.11 per cent. in March to 9.09 per cent. of mean strength, sick and
well, in August. The ratio of mortality continued to increase during
September, for notwithstanding the removal of one-half of the entire
number of prisoners during the early portion of the month, one thousand
seven hundred and sixty-seven (1,767) deaths are registered from
September 1 to 21, and the largest number of deaths upon any one day
occurred during this month, on the 16th, viz. one hundred and nineteen.

The entire number of Federal prisoners confined at Andersonville was
about forty thousand six hundred and eleven; and during the period of
near seven months, from February 24 to September 21, nine thousand four
hundred and seventy-nine (9,479) deaths were recorded; that is, during
this period near one-fourth, or more, exactly one in 4.2, or 13.3 per
cent., terminated fatally. This increase of mortality was due in great
measure to the accumulation of the sources of disease, as the increase
of excrements and filth of all kinds, and the concentration of noxious
effluvia, and also to the progressive effects of salt diet, crowding,
and the hot climate.


                              CONCLUSIONS.

1st. The great mortality among the Federal prisoners confined in the
military prison at Andersonville was not referable to climatic causes,
or to the nature of the soil and waters.

2d. The chief causes of death were scurvy and its results and bowel
affections-chronic and acute diarrhea and dysentery. The bowel
affections appear to have been due to the diet, the habits of the
patients, the depressed, dejected state of the nervous system and
moral and intellectual powers, and to the effluvia arising from the
decomposing animal and vegetable filth. The effects of salt meat, and
an unvarying diet of cornmeal, with but few vegetables, and imperfect
supplies of vinegar and syrup, were manifested in the great prevalence
of scurvy. This disease, without doubt, was also influenced to an
important extent in its origin and course by the foul animal emanations.

3d. From the sameness of the food and form, the action of the poisonous
gases in the densely crowded and filthy Stockade and hospital, the
blood was altered in its constitution, even before the manifestation of
actual disease. In both the well and the sick the red corpuscles were
diminished; and in all diseases uncomplicated with inflammation, the
fibrous element was deficient. In cases of ulceration of the mucous
membrane of the intestinal canal, the fibrous element of the blood was
increased; while in simple diarrhea, uncomplicated with ulceration, it
was either diminished or else remained stationary. Heart clots were
very common, if not universally present, in cases of ulceration of
the intestinal mucous membrane, while in the uncomplicated cases of
diarrhea and scurvy, the blood was fluid and did not coagulate readily,
and the heart clots and fibrous concretions were almost universally
absent. From the watery condition of the blood, there resulted various
serous effusions into the pericardium, ventricles of the brain, and
into the abdomen. In almost all the cases which I examined after death,
even the most emaciated, there was more or less serous effusion into
the abdominal cavity. In cases of hospital gangrene of the extremities,
and in cases of gangrene of the intestines, heart clots and fibrous
coagula were universally present. The presence of those clots in the
cases of hospital gangrene, while they were absent in the cases in
which there was no inflammatory symptoms, sustains the conclusion that
hospital gangrene is a species of inflammation, imperfect and irregular
though it may be in its progress, in which the fibrous element and
coagulation of the blood are increased, even in those who are suffering
from such a condition of the blood, and from such diseases as are
naturally accompanied with a decrease in the fibrous constituent.

4th. The fact that hospital Gangrene appeared in the Stockade first,
and originated spontaneously without any previous contagion, and
occurred sporadically all over the Stockade and prison hospital, was
proof positive that this disease will arise whenever the conditions of
crowding, filth, foul air, and bad diet are present. The exhalations
from the hospital and Stockade appeared to exert their effects to
a considerable distance outside of these localities. The origin of
hospital gangrene among these prisoners appeared clearly to depend in
great measure upon the state of the general system induced by diet, and
various external noxious influences. The rapidity of the appearance
and action of the gangrene depended upon the powers and state of the
constitution, as well as upon the intensity of the poison in the
atmosphere, or upon the direct application of poisonous matter to the
wounded surface. This was further illustrated by the important fact
that hospital gangrene, or a disease resembling it in all essential
respects, attacked the intestinal canal of patients laboring under
ulceration of the bowels, although there were no local manifestations
of gangrene upon the surface of the body. This mode of termination
in cases of dysentery was quite common in the foul atmosphere of the
Confederate States Military Hospital, in the depressed, depraved
condition of the system of these Federal prisoners.

5th. A scorbutic condition of the system appeared to favor the origin
of foul ulcers, which frequently took on true hospital gangrene. Scurvy
and hospital gangrene frequently existed in the same individual. In
such cases, vegetable diet, with vegetable acids, would remove the
scorbutic condition without curing the hospital gangrene. From the
results of the existing war for the establishment of the independence
of the Confederate States, as well as from the published observations
of Dr. Trotter, Sir Gilbert Blane, and others of the English navy
and army, it is evident that the scorbutic condition of the system,
especially in crowded ships and camps, is most favorable to the origin
and spread of foul ulcers and hospital gangrene. As in the present
case of Andersonville, so also in past times when medical hygiene was
almost entirely neglected, those two diseases were almost universally
associated in crowded ships. In many cases it was very difficult to
decide at first whether the ulcer was a simple result of scurvy or of
the action of the prison or hospital gangrene, for there was great
similarity in the appearance of the ulcers in the two diseases. So
commonly have those two diseases been combined in their origin and
action, that the description of scorbutic ulcers, by many authors,
evidently includes also many of the prominent characteristics of
hospital gangrene. This will be rendered evident by an examination
of the observations of Dr. Lind and Sir Gilbert Blane upon scorbutic
ulcers.

6th. Gangrenous spots followed by rapid destruction of tissue
appeared in some cases where there had been no known wound. Without
such well-established facts, it might be assumed that the disease
was propagated from one patient to another. In such a filthy and
crowded hospital as that of the Confederate States Military Prison
at Andersonville, it was impossible to isolate the wounded from the
sources of actual contact of the gangrenous matter. The flies swarming
over the wounds and over filth of every kind, the filthy, imperfectly
washed and scanty supplies of rags, and the limited supply of washing
utensils, the same wash-bowl serving for scores of patients, were
sources of such constant circulation of the gangrenous matter that
the disease might rapidly spread from a single gangrenous wound.
The fact already stated, that a form of moist gangrene, resembling
hospital gangrene, was quite common in this foul atmosphere, in cases
of dysentery, both with and without the existence of the disease upon
the entire surface, not only demonstrates the dependence of the disease
upon the state of the constitution, but proves in the clearest manner
that neither the contact of the poisonous matter of gangrene, nor the
direct action of the poisonous atmosphere upon the ulcerated surfaces
is necessary to the development of the disease.

7th. In this foul atmosphere amputation did not arrest hospital
gangrene; the disease almost invariably returned. Almost every
amputation was followed finally by death, either from the effects of
gangrene or from the prevailing diarrhea and dysentery. Nitric acid and
escharotics generally in this crowded atmosphere, loaded with noxious
effluvia, exerted only temporary effects; after their application
to the diseased surfaces, the gangrene would frequently return with
redoubled energy; and even after the gangrene had been completely
removed by local and constitutional treatment, it would frequently
return and destroy the patient. As far as my observation extended, very
few of the cases of amputation for gangrene recovered. The progress of
these cases was frequently very deceptive. I have observed after death
the most extensive disorganization of the structures of the stump, when
during life there was but little swelling of the part, and the patient
was apparently doing well. I endeavored to impress upon the medical
officers the view that in this disease treatment was almost useless,
without an abundant supply of pure, fresh air, nutritious food, and
tonics and stimulants. Such changes, however, as would allow of the
isolation of the cases of hospital gangrene appeared to be out of the
power of the medical officers.

8th. The gangrenous mass was without true pus, and consisted chiefly of
broken-down, disorganized structures. The reaction of the gangrenous
matter in certain stages was alkaline.

9th. The best, and in truth the only means of protecting large armies
and navies, as well as prisoners, from the ravages of hospital
gangrene, is to furnish liberal supplies of well-cured meat, together
with fresh beef and vegetables, and to enforce a rigid system of
hygiene.

10th. Finally, this gigantic mass of human misery calls loudly
for relief, not only for the sake of suffering humanity, but also
on account of our own brave soldiers now captives in the hands of
the Federal Government. Strict justice to the gallant men of the
Confederate Armies, who have been or who may be, so unfortunate as
to be compelled to surrender in battle, demands that the Confederate
Government should adopt that course which will best secure their health
and comfort in captivity; or at least leave their enemies without a
shadow of an excuse for any violation of the rules of civilized warfare
in the treatment of prisoners.

                    [End of the Witness’s Testimony.]


The variation--from month to month--of the proportion of deaths to the
whole number living is singular and interesting. It supports the theory
I have advanced above, as the following facts, taken from the official
report, will show:
     In April one in every sixteen died.
     In May one in every twenty-six died.
     In June one in every twenty-two died.
     In July one in every eighteen died.
     In August one in every eleven died.
     In September one in every three died.
     In October one in every two died.
     In November one in every three died.

Does the reader fully understand that in September one-third of those
in the pen died, that in October one-half of the remainder perished,
and in November one-third of those who still survived, died? Let him
pause for a moment and read this over carefully again; because its
startling magnitude will hardly dawn upon him at first reading. It is
true that the fearfully disproportionate mortality of those months
was largely due to the fact that it was mostly the sick that remained
behind, but even this diminishes but little the frightfulness of the
showing. Did any one ever hear of an epidemic so fatal that one-third
of those attacked by it in one month died; one-half of the remnant the
next month, and one-third of the feeble remainder the next month? If he
did, his reading has been much more extensive than mine.

The greatest number of deaths in one day is reported to have occurred
on the 23d of August, when one hundred and twenty-seven died, or one
man every eleven minutes.

The greatest number of prisoners in the Stockade is stated to have
been August 8, when there were thirty-three thousand one hundred and
fourteen.

I have always imagined both these statements to be short of the truth,
because my remembrance is that one day in August I counted over two
hundred dead lying in a row. As for the greatest number of prisoners,
I remember quite distinctly standing by the ration wagon during the
whole time of the delivery of rations, to see how many prisoners
there really were inside. That day the One Hundred and Thirty-Third
Detachment was called, and its Sergeant came up and drew rations for
a full detachment. All the other detachments were habitually kept
full by replacing those who died with new comers. As each detachment
consisted of two hundred and seventy men, one hundred and thirty-three
detachments would make thirty-five thousand nine hundred and ten,
exclusive of those in the hospital, and those detailed outside as
cooks, clerks, hospital attendants and various other employments--say
from one to two thousand more.




CHAPTER XLIII.

DIFFICULTY OF EXERCISING--EMBARRASSMENTS OF A MORNING WALK--THE RIALTO
OF THE PRISON--CURSING THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY--THE STORY OF THE
BATTLE OF SPOTTSYLVANIA COURTHOUSE.

Certainly, in no other great community, that ever existed upon the face
of the globe was there so little daily ebb and flow as in this. Dull
as an ordinary Town or City may be; however monotonous, eventless,
even stupid the lives of its citizens, there is yet, nevertheless, a
flow every day of its life-blood--its population towards its heart,
and an ebb of the same, every evening towards its extremities. These
recurring tides mingle all classes together and promote the general
healthfulness, as the constant motion hither and yon of the ocean’s
waters purify and sweeten them.

The lack of these helped vastly to make the living mass inside the
Stockade a human Dead Sea--or rather a Dying Sea--a putrefying,
stinking lake, resolving itself into phosphorescent corruption, like
those rotting southern seas, whose seething filth burns in hideous
reds, and ghastly greens and yellows.

Being little call for motion of any kind, and no room to exercise
whatever wish there might be in that direction, very many succumbed
unresistingly to the apathy which was so strongly favored by
despondency and the weakness induced by continual hunger, and lying
supinely on the hot sand, day in and day out, speedily brought
themselves into such a condition as invited the attacks of disease.

It required both determination and effort to take a little walking
exercise. The ground was so densely crowded with holes and other
devices for shelter that it took one at least ten minutes to pick his
way through the narrow and tortuous labyrinth which served as paths
for communication between different parts of the Camp. Still further,
there was nothing to see anywhere or to form sufficient inducement for
any one to make so laborious a journey. One simply encountered at every
new step the same unwelcome sights that he had just left; there was
a monotony in the misery as in everything else, and consequently the
temptation to sit or lie still in one’s own quarters became very great.

I used to make it a point to go to some of the remoter parts of the
Stockade once every day, simply for exercise. One can gain some idea of
the crowd, and the difficulty of making one’s way through it, when I
say that no point in the prison could be more than fifteen hundred feet
from where I staid, and, had the way been clear, I could have walked
thither and back in at most a half an hour, yet it usually took me from
two to three hours to make one of these journeys.

This daily trip, a few visits to the Creek to wash all over, a few
games of chess, attendance upon roll call, drawing rations, cooking
and eating the same, “lousing” my fragments of clothes, and doing some
little duties for my sick and helpless comrades, constituted the daily
routine for myself, as for most of the active youths in the prison.

The Creek was the great meeting point for all inside the Stockade. All
able to walk were certain to be there at least once during the day, and
we made it a rendezvous, a place to exchange gossip, discuss the latest
news, canvass the prospects of exchange, and, most of all, to curse the
Rebels. Indeed no conversation ever progressed very far without both
speaker and listener taking frequent rests to say bitter things as to
the Rebels generally, and Wirz, Winder and Davis in particular.

A conversation between two boys--strangers to each other who came
to the Creek to wash themselves or their clothes, or for some other
purpose, would progress thus:

First Boy--“I belong to the Second Corps,--Hancock’s, [the Army of the
Potomac boys always mentioned what Corps they belonged to, where the
Western boys stated their Regiment.] They got me at Spottsylvania,
when they were butting their heads against our breast-works, trying to
get even with us for gobbling up Johnson in the morning,”--He stops
suddenly and changes tone to say: “I hope to God, that when our folks
get Richmond, they will put old Ben Butler in command of it, with
orders to limb, skin and jayhawk it worse than he did New Orleans.”

Second Boy, (fervently:) “I wish to God he would, and that he’d catch
old Jeff., and that grayheaded devil, Winder, and the old Dutch
Captain, strip ’em just as we were, put ’em in this pen, with just the
rations they are givin’ us, and set a guard of plantation niggers over
’em, with orders to blow their whole infernal heads off, if they dared
so much as to look at the dead line.”

First Boy--(returning to the story of his capture.) “Old Hancock caught
the Johnnies that morning the neatest you ever saw anything in your
life. After the two armies had murdered each other for four or five
days in the Wilderness, by fighting so close together that much of the
time you could almost shake hands with the Graybacks, both hauled off
a little, and lay and glowered at each other. Each side had lost about
twenty thousand men in learning that if it attacked the other it would
get mashed fine. So each built a line of works and lay behind them, and
tried to nag the other into coming out and attacking. At Spottsylvania
our lines and those of the Johnnies weren’t twelve hundred yards
apart. The ground was clear and clean between them, and any force that
attempted to cross it to attack would be cut to pieces, as sure as
anything. We laid there three or four days watching each other--just
like boys at school, who shake fists and dare each other. At one place
the Rebel line ran out towards us like the top of a great letter ‘A.’
The night of the 11th of May it rained very hard, and then came a fog
so thick that you couldn’t see the length of a company. Hancock thought
he’d take advantage of this. We were all turned out very quietly about
four o’clock in the morning. Not a bit of noise was allowed. We even
had to take off our canteens and tin cups, that they might not rattle
against our bayonets. The ground was so wet that our footsteps couldn’t
be heard. It was one of those deathly, still movements, when you think
your heart is making as much noise as a bass drum.

“The Johnnies didn’t seem to have the faintest suspicion of what was
coming, though they ought, because we would have expected such an
attack from them if we hadn’t made it ourselves. Their pickets were
out just a little ways from their works, and we were almost on to them
before they discovered us. They fired and ran back. At this we raised a
yell and dashed forward at a charge. As we poured over the works, the
Rebels came double-quicking up to defend them. We flanked Johnson’s
Division quicker’n you could say ‘Jack Robinson,’ and had four thousand
of ’em in our grip just as nice as you please. We sent them to the rear
under guard, and started for the next line of Rebel works about a half
a mile away. But we had now waked up the whole of Lee’s army, and they
all came straight for us, like packs of mad wolves. Ewell struck us in
the center; Longstreet let drive at our left flank, and Hill tackled
our right. We fell back to the works we had taken, Warren and Wright
came up to help us, and we had it hot and heavy for the rest of the day
and part of the night. The Johnnies seemed so mad over what we’d done
that they were half crazy. They charged us five times, coming up every
time just as if they were going to lift us right out of the works with
the bayonet. About midnight, after they’d lost over ten thousand men,
they seemed to understand that we had pre-empted that piece of real
estate, and didn’t propose to allow anybody to jump our claim, so they
fell back sullen like to their main works. When they came on the last
charge, our Brigadier walked behind each of our regiments and said:

“Boys, we’ll send ’em back this time for keeps. Give it to ’em by the
acre, and when they begin to waver, we’ll all jump over the works and
go for them with the bayonet.’

“We did it just that way. We poured such a fire on them that the
bullets knocked up the ground in front just like you have seen the
deep dust in a road in the middle of Summer fly up when the first
great big drops of a rain storm strike it. But they came on, yelling
and swearing, officers in front waving swords, and shouting--all that
business, you know. When they got to about one hundred yards from us,
they did not seem to be coming so fast, and there was a good deal of
confusion among them. The brigade bugle sounded:

“Stop firing.”

“We all ceased instantly. The rebels looked up in astonishment. Our
General sang out:

“Fix bayonets!’ but we knew what was coming, and were already executing
the order. You can imagine the crash that ran down the line, as every
fellow snatched his bayonet out and slapped it on the muzzle of his
gun. Then the General’s voice rang out like a bugle:

“Ready!--FORWARD! CHARGE!’

“We cheered till everything seemed to split, and jumped over the works,
almost every man at the same minute. The Johnnies seemed to have been
puzzled at the stoppage of our fire. When we all came sailing over
the works, with guns brought right, down where they meant business,
they were so astonished for a minute that they stood stock still, not
knowing whether to come for us, or run. We did not allow them long
to debate, but went right towards them on the double quick, with the
bayonets looking awful savage and hungry. It was too much for Mr.
Johnny Reb’s nerves. They all seemed to about face’ at once, and they
lit out of there as if they had been sent for in a hurry. We chased
after ’em as fast as we could, and picked up just lots of ’em. Finally
it began to be real funny. A Johnny’s wind would begin to give out
he’d fall behind his comrades; he’d hear us yell and think that we
were right behind him, ready to sink a bayonet through him’; he’d turn
around, throw up his hands, and sing out:

“I surrender, mister! I surrender!’ and find that we were a hundred
feet off, and would have to have a bayonet as long as one of
McClellan’s general orders to touch him.

“Well, my company was the left of our regiment, and our regiment was
the left of the brigade, and we swung out ahead of all the rest of
the boys. In our excitement of chasing the Johnnies, we didn’t see
that we had passed an angle of their works. About thirty of us had
become separated from the company and were chasing a squad of about
seventy-five or one hundred. We had got up so close to them that we
hollered:

“‘Halt there, now, or we’ll blow your heads off.’

“They turned round with, ‘halt yourselves; you ---- Yankee ---- ----’

“We looked around at this, and saw that we were not one hundred feet
away from the angle of the works, which were filled with Rebels
waiting for our fellows to get to where they could have a good flank
fire upon them. There was nothing to do but to throw down our guns
and surrender, and we had hardly gone inside of the works, until the
Johnnies opened on our brigade and drove it back. This ended the battle
at Spottsylvania Court House.”

Second Boy (irrelevantly.) “Some day the underpinning will fly out from
under the South, and let it sink right into the middle kittle o’ hell.”

First Boy (savagely.) “I only wish the whole Southern Confederacy was
hanging over hell by a single string, and I had a knife.”




CHAPTER XLIV.

REBEL MUSIC--SINGULAR LACK OF THE CREATIVE POWER AMONG THE SOUTHERNERS
--CONTRAST WITH SIMILAR PEOPLE ELSEWHERE--THEIR FAVORITE MUSIC, AND
WHERE IT WAS BORROWED FROM--A FIFER WITH ONE TUNE.

I have before mentioned as among the things that grew upon one with
increasing acquaintance with the Rebels on their native heath, was
astonishment at their lack of mechanical skill and at their inability
to grapple with numbers and the simpler processes of arithmetic.
Another characteristic of the same nature was their wonderful lack of
musical ability, or of any kind of tuneful creativeness.

Elsewhere, all over the world, people living under similar conditions
to the Southerners are exceedingly musical, and we owe the great
majority of the sweetest compositions which delight the ear and
subdue the senses to unlettered song-makers of the Swiss mountains,
the Tyrolese valleys, the Bavarian Highlands, and the minstrels of
Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

The music of English-speaking people is very largely made up of these
contributions from the folk-songs of dwellers in the wilder and more
mountainous parts of the British Isles. One rarely goes far out of
the way in attributing to this source any air that he may hear that
captivates him with its seductive opulence of harmony. Exquisite
melodies, limpid and unstrained as the carol of a bird in Spring-time,
and as plaintive as the cooing of a turtle-dove seems as natural
products of the Scottish Highlands as the gorse which blazons on their
hillsides in August. Debarred from expressing their aspirations as
people of broader culture do--in painting, in sculpture, in poetry and
prose, these mountaineers make song the flexible and ready instrument
for the communication of every emotion that sweeps across their souls.

Love, hatred, grief, revenge, anger, and especially war seems to tune
their minds to harmony, and awake the voice of song in them hearts.
The battles which the Scotch and Irish fought to replace the luckless
Stuarts upon the British throne--the bloody rebellions of 1715 and
1745, left a rich legacy of sweet song, the outpouring of loving,
passionate loyalty to a wretched cause; songs which are today esteemed
and sung wherever the English language is spoken, by people who have
long since forgotten what burning feelings gave birth to their favorite
melodies.

For a century the bones of both the Pretenders have moldered in alien
soil; the names of James Edward, and Charles Edward, which were once
trumpet blasts to rouse armed men, mean as little to the multitude of
today as those of the Saxon Ethelbert, and Danish Hardicanute, yet
the world goes on singing--and will probably as long as the English
language is spoken--“Wha’ll be King but Charlie?” “When Jamie Come
Hame,” “Over the Water to Charlie,” “Charlie is my Darling,” “The Bonny
Blue Bonnets are Over the Border,” “Saddle Your Steeds and Awa,” and a
myriad others whose infinite tenderness and melody no modern composer
can equal.

Yet these same Scotch and Irish, the same Jacobite English,
transplanted on account of their chronic rebelliousness to the
mountains of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, seem to have lost
their tunefulness, as some fine singing birds do when carried from
their native shores.

The descendants of those who drew swords for James and Charles at
Preston Pans and Culloden dwell to-day in the dales and valleys of
the Alleganies, as their fathers did in the dales and valleys of the
Grampians, but their voices are mute.

As a rule the Southerners are fond of music. They are fond of singing
and listening to old-fashioned ballads, most of which have never
been printed, but handed down from one generation to the other, like
the ‘Volklieder’ of Germany. They sing these with the wild, fervid
impressiveness characteristic of the ballad singing of unlettered
people. Very many play tolerably on the violin and banjo, and
occasionally one is found whose instrumentation may be called good. But
above this hight they never soar. The only musician produced by the
South of whom the rest of the country has ever heard, is Blind Tom,
the negro idiot. No composer, no song writer of any kind has appeared
within the borders of Dixie.

It was a disappointment to me that even the stress of the war, the
passion and fierceness with which the Rebels felt and fought, could
not stimulate any adherent of the Stars and Bars into the production
of a single lyric worthy in the remotest degree of the magnitude of
the struggle, and the depth of the popular feeling. Where two million
Scotch, fighting to restore the fallen fortunes of the worse than
worthless Stuarts, filled the world with immortal music, eleven million
of Southerners, fighting for what they claimed to be individual freedom
and national life, did not produce any original verse, or a bar of
music that the world could recognize as such. This is the fact; and an
undeniable one. Its explanation I must leave to abler analysts than I
am.

Searching for peculiar causes we find but two that make the South
differ from the ancestral home of these people. These two were Climate
and Slavery. Climatic effects will not account for the phenomenon,
because we see that the peasantry of the mountains of Spain and the
South of France as ignorant as these people, and dwellers in a still
more enervating atmosphere-are very fertile in musical composition,
and their songs are to the Romanic languages what the Scotch and Irish
ballads are to the English.

Then it must be ascribed to the incubus of Slavery upon the intellect,
which has repressed this as it has all other healthy growths in the
South. Slavery seems to benumb all the faculties except the passions.
The fact that the mountaineers had but few or no slaves, does not seem
to be of importance in the case. They lived under the deadly shadow
of the upas tree, and suffered the consequences of its stunting their
development in all directions, as the ague-smitten inhabitant of
the Roman Campana finds every sense and every muscle clogged by the
filtering in of the insidious miasma. They did not compose songs and
music, because they did not have the intellectual energy for that work.

The negros displayed all the musical creativeness of that section.
Their wonderful prolificness in wild, rude songs, with strangely
melodious airs that burned themselves into the memory, was one of the
salient characteristics of that down-trodden race. Like the Russian
serfs, and the bondmen of all ages and lands, the songs they made and
sang all had an undertone of touching plaintiveness, born of ages of
dumb suffering. The themes were exceedingly simple, and the range of
subjects limited. The joys, and sorrows, hopes and despairs of love’s
gratification or disappointment, of struggles for freedom, contests
with malign persons and influences, of rage, hatred, jealousy, revenge,
such as form the motifs for the majority of the poetry of free and
strong races, were wholly absent from their lyrics. Religion, hunger
and toil were their main inspiration. They sang of the pleasures of
idling in the genial sunshine; the delights of abundance of food; the
eternal happiness that awaited them in the heavenly future, where the
slave-driver ceased from troubling and the weary were at rest; where
Time rolled around in endless cycles of days spent in basking, harp in
hand, and silken clad, in golden streets, under the soft effulgence of
cloudless skies, glowing with warmth and kindness emanating from the
Creator himself. Had their masters condescended to borrow the music of
the slaves, they would have found none whose sentiments were suitable
for the ode of a people undergoing the pangs of what was hoped to be
the birth of a new nation.

The three songs most popular at the South, and generally regarded as
distinctively Southern, were “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” “Maryland, My
Maryland,” and “Stonewall Jackson Crossing into Maryland.” The first of
these was the greatest favorite by long odds. Women sang, men whistled,
and the so-called musicians played it wherever we went. While in the
field before capture, it was the commonest of experiences to have
Rebel women sing it at us tauntingly from the house that we passed
or near which we stopped. If ever near enough a Rebel camp, we were
sure to hear its wailing crescendo rising upon the air from the lips
or instruments of some one more quartered there. At Richmond it rang
upon us constantly from some source or another, and the same was true
wherever else we went in the so-called Confederacy. I give the air and words below:

[Music]

All familiar with Scotch songs will readily recognize the name and air
as an old friend, and one of the fierce Jacobite melodies that for a
long time disturbed the tranquility of the Brunswick family on the
English throne. The new words supplied by the Rebels are the merest
doggerel, and fit the music as poorly as the unchanged name of the song
fitted to its new use. The flag of the Rebellion was not a bonnie blue
one; but had quite as much red and white as azure. It did not have a
single star, but thirteen.

Near in popularity was “Maryland, My Maryland.” The versification of
this was of a much higher Order, being fairly respectable. The air is
old, and a familiar one to all college students, and belongs to one of
the most common of German household songs:

          O, Tannenbaum! O, Tannenbaum, wie tru sind deine Blatter!
          Da gruenst nicht nur zur Sommerseit,
          Nein, auch in Winter, when es Schneit, etc.

which Longfellow has finely translated,

O, hemlock tree! O, hemlock tree! how faithful are thy branches!
Green not alone in Summer time,
But in the Winter’s float and rime.
O, hemlock tree O, hemlock tree! how faithful are thy branches. Etc.

The Rebel version ran:

          MARYLAND.

The despot’s heel is on thy shore,
          Maryland!
His touch is at thy temple door,
          Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland!

Hark to the wand’ring son’s appeal,
          Maryland!
My mother State, to thee I kneel,
          Maryland!
For life and death, for woe and weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,
Maryland! My Maryland!

Thou wilt not cower in the duet,
          Maryland!
Thy beaming sword shall never rust
          Maryland!
Remember Carroll’s sacred trust,
Remember Howard’s warlike thrust--
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Maryland! My Maryland!

Come! ’tis the red dawn of the day,
          Maryland!
Come! with thy panoplied array,
          Maryland!
With Ringgold’s spirit for the fray,
With Watson’s blood at Monterey,
With fearless Lowe and dashing May,
Maryland! My Maryland!

Comet for thy shield is bright and strong,
          Maryland!
Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong,
          Maryland!
Come! to thins own heroic throng,
That stalks with Liberty along,
And give a new Key to thy song,
Maryland! My Maryland!

Dear Mother! burst the tyrant’s chain,
          Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
          Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain--
‘Sic semper’ ’tis the proud refrain,
That baffles millions back amain,
          Maryland!
Arise, in majesty again,
Maryland! My Maryland!

I see the blush upon thy cheek,
          Maryland!
But thou wast ever bravely meek,
          Maryland!
But lo! there surges forth a shriek
From hill to hill, from creek to creek--
Potomac calls to Chesapeake,
Maryland! My Maryland!

Thou wilt not yield the vandal toll.
          Maryland!
Thou wilt not crook to his control,
          Maryland!
Better the fire upon thee roll,
Better the blade, the shot, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul,
Maryland! My Maryland!

I hear the distant Thunder hem,
          Maryland!
The Old Line’s bugle, fife, and drum.
          Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb--
Hnzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes--she burns! she’ll come! she’ll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!


“Stonewall Jackson Crossing into Maryland,” was another travesty, of
about the same literary merit, or rather demerit, as “The Bonnie Blue
Flag.” Its air was that of the well-known and popular negro minstrel
song, “Billy Patterson.” For all that, it sounded very martial and
stirring when played by a brass band.

We heard these songs with tiresome iteration, daily and nightly, during
our stay in the Southern Confederacy. Some one of the guards seemed to
be perpetually beguiling the weariness of his watch by singing in all
keys, in every sort of a voice, and with the wildest latitude as to
air and time. They became so terribly irritating to us, that to this
day the remembrance of those soul-lacerating lyrics abides with me as
one of the chief of the minor torments of our situation. They were, in
fact, nearly as bad as the lice.

We revenged ourselves as best we could by constructing fearfully
wicked, obscene and insulting parodies on these, and by singing them
with irritating effusiveness in the hearing of the guards who were
inflicting these nuisances upon us.

Of the same nature was the garrison music. One fife, played by an
asthmatic old fellow whose breathings were nearly as audible as his
notes, and one rheumatic drummer, constituted the entire band for the
post. The fifer actually knew but one tune “The Bonnie Blue Flag” --and
did not know that well. But it was all that he had, and he played it
with wearisome monotony for every camp call--five or six times a day,
and seven days in the week. He called us up in the morning with it for
a reveille; he sounded the “roll call” and “drill call,” breakfast,
dinner and supper with it, and finally sent us to bed, with the same
dreary wail that had rung in our ears all day. I never hated any piece
of music as I came to hate that threnody of treason. It would have
been such a relief if the old asthmatic who played it could have been
induced to learn another tune to play on Sundays, and give us one day
of rest. He did not, but desecrated the Lord’s Day by playing as vilely
as on the rest of the week. The Rebels were fully conscious of their
musical deficiencies, and made repeated but unsuccessful attempts to
induce the musicians among the prisoners to come outside and form a
band.




CHAPTER XLV.

AUGUST--NEEDLES STUCK IN PUMPKIN SEEDS--SOME PHENOMENA OF STARVATION
--RIOTING IN REMEMBERED LUXURIES.

“Illinoy,” said tall, gaunt Jack North, of the One Hundred and
Fourteenth Illinois, to me, one day, as we sat contemplating our naked,
and sadly attenuated underpinning; “what do our legs and feet most look
most like?”

“Give it up, Jack,” said I.

“Why--darning needles stuck in pumpkin seeds, of course.” I never heard
a better comparison for our wasted limbs.

The effects of the great bodily emaciation were sometimes very
startling. Boys of a fleshy habit would change so in a few weeks as
to lose all resemblance to their former selves, and comrades who came
into prison later would utterly fail to recognize them. Most fat men,
as most large men, died in a little while after entering, though there
were exceptions. One of these was a boy of my own company, named George
Hillicks. George had shot up within a few years to over six feet in
hight, and then, as such boys occasionally do, had, after enlisting
with us, taken on such a development of flesh that we nicknamed him
the “Giant,” and he became a pretty good load for even the strongest
horse. George held his flesh through Belle Isle, and the earlier weeks
in Andersonville, but June, July, and August “fetched him,” as the
boys said. He seemed to melt away like an icicle on a Spring day, and
he grew so thin that his hight seemed preternatural. We called him
“Flagstaff,” and cracked all sorts of jokes about putting an insulator
on his head, and setting him up for a telegraph pole, braiding his
legs and using him for a whip lash, letting his hair grow a little
longer, and trading him off to the Rebels for a sponge and staff for
the artillery, etc. We all expected him to die, and looked continually
for the development of the fatal scurvy symptoms, which were to seal
his doom. But he worried through, and came out at last in good shape, a
happy result due as much as to anything else to his having in Chester
Hayward, of Prairie City, Ill.,--one of the most devoted chums I ever
knew. Chester nursed and looked out for George with wife-like fidelity,
and had his reward in bringing him safe through our lines. There were
thousands of instances of this generous devotion to each other by chums
in Andersonville, and I know of nothing that reflects any more credit
upon our boy soldiers.

There was little chance for any one to accumulate flesh on the rations
we were receiving. I say it in all soberness that I do not believe
that a healthy hen could have grown fat upon them. I am sure that any
good-sized “shanghai” eats more every day than the meager half loaf
that we had to maintain life upon. Scanty as this was, and hungry as
all were, very many could not eat it. Their stomachs revolted against
the trash; it became so nauseous to them that they could not force
it down, even when famishing, and they died of starvation with the
chunks of the so-called bread under their head. I found myself rapidly
approaching this condition. I had been blessed with a good digestion
and a talent for sleeping under the most discouraging circumstances.
These, I have no doubt, were of the greatest assistance to me in my
struggle for existence. But now the rations became fearfully obnoxious
to me, and it was only with the greatest effort--pulling the bread into
little pieces and swallowing each, of these as one would a pill--that
I succeeded in worrying the stuff down. I had not as yet fallen away
very much, but as I had never, up, to that time, weighed so much as one
hundred and twenty-five pounds, there was no great amount of adipose to
lose. It was evident that unless some change occurred my time was near
at hand.

There was not only hunger for more food, but longing with an intensity
beyond expression for alteration of some kind in the rations. The
changeless monotony of the miserable saltless bread, or worse mush, for
days, weeks and months, became unbearable. If those wretched mule teams
had only once a month hauled in something different--if they had come
in loaded with sweet potatos, green corn or wheat flour, there would be
thousands of men still living who now slumber beneath those melancholy
pines. It would have given something to look forward to, and remember
when past. But to know each day that the gates would open to admit the
same distasteful apologies for food took away the appetite and raised
one’s gorge, even while famishing for something to eat.

We could for a while forget the stench, the lice, the heat, the
maggots, the dead and dying around us, the insulting malignance of our
jailors; but it was, very hard work to banish thoughts and longings
for food from our minds. Hundreds became actually insane from brooding
over it. Crazy men could be found in all parts of the camp. Numbers of
them wandered around entirely naked. Their babblings and maunderings
about something to eat were painful to hear. I have before mentioned
the case of the Plymouth Pilgrim near me, whose insanity took the form
of imagining that he was sitting at the table with his family, and
who would go through the show of helping them to imaginary viands and
delicacies. The cravings for green food of those afflicted with the
scurvy were, agonizing. Large numbers of watermelons were brought to
the prison, and sold to those who had the money to pay for them at from
one to five dollars, greenbacks, apiece. A boy who had means to buy a
piece of these would be followed about while eating it by a crowd of
perhaps twenty-five or thirty livid-gummed scorbutics, each imploring
him for the rind when he was through with it.

We thought of food all day, and were visited with torturing dreams
of it at night. One of the pleasant recollections of my pre-military
life was a banquet at the “Planter’s House,” St. Louis, at which I was
a boyish guest. It was, doubtless, an ordinary affair, as banquets
go, but to me then, with all the keen appreciation of youth and first
experience, it was a feast worthy of Lucullus. But now this delightful
reminiscence became a torment. Hundreds of times I dreamed I was
again at the “Planter’s.” I saw the wide corridors, with their mosaic
pavement; I entered the grand dining-room, keeping timidly near the
friend to whose kindness I owed this wonderful favor; I saw again the
mirror-lined walls, the evergreen decked ceilings, the festoons and
mottos, the tables gleaming with cutglass and silver, the buffets with
wines and fruits, the brigade of sleek, black, white-aproned waiters,
headed by one who had presence enough for a major General. Again I
reveled in all the dainties and dishes on the bill-of-fare; calling for
everything that I dared to, just to see what each was like, and to be
able to say afterwards that I had partaken of it; all these bewildering
delights of the first realization of what a boy has read and wondered
much over, and longed for, would dance their rout and reel through
my somnolent brain. Then I would awake to find myself a half-naked,
half-starved, vermin-eaten wretch, crouching in a hole in the ground,
waiting for my keepers to fling me a chunk of corn bread.

Naturally the boys--and especially the country boys and new prisoners
--talked much of victuals--what they had had, and what they would have
again, when they got out. Take this as a sample of the conversation
which might be heard in any group of boys, sitting together on the
sand, killin lice and talking of exchange:

Tom--“Well, Bill, when we get back to God’s country, you and Jim and
John must all come to my house and take dinner with me. I want to give
you a square meal. I want to show you just what good livin’ is. You
know my mother is just the best cook in all that section. When she lays
herself out to get up a meal all the other women in the neighborhood
just stand back and admire!”

Bill--“O, that’s all right; but I’ll bet she can’t hold a candle to my
mother, when it comes to good cooking.”

Jim--“No, nor to mine.”

John--(with patronizing contempt.) “O, shucks! None of you fellers were
ever at our house, even when we had one of our common weekday dinners.”

Tom--(unheedful of the counter claims.) I hev teen studyin’ up the
dinner I’d like, and the bill-of-fare I’d set out for you fellers when
you come over to see me. First, of course, we’ll lay the foundation
like with a nice, juicy loin roast, and some mashed potatos.

Bill--(interrupting.) “Now, do you like mashed potatos with beef? The
way may mother does is to pare the potatos, and lay them in the pan
along with the beef. Then, you know, they come out just as nice and
crisp, and brown; they have soaked up all the beef gravy, and they
crinkle between your teeth--”

Jim--“Now, I tell you, mashed Neshannocks with butter on ’em is plenty
good enough for me.”

John--“If you’d et some of the new kind of peachblows that we raised in
the old pasture lot the year before I enlisted, you’d never say another
word about your Neshannocks.”

Tom--(taking breath and starting in fresh.) “Then we’ll hev some fried
Spring chickens, of our dominick breed. Them dominicks of ours have the
nicest, tenderest meat, better’n quail, a darned sight, and the way my
mother can fry Spring chickens----”

Bill--(aside to Jim.) “Every durned woman in the country thinks she can
‘spry ching frickens;’ but my mother---”

John--“You fellers all know that there’s nobody knows half as much
about chicken doin’s as these ’tinerant Methodis’ preachers. They give
’em chicken wherever they go, and folks do say that out in the new
settlements they can’t get no preachin’, no gospel, nor nothin’, until
the chickens become so plenty that a preacher is reasonably sure of
havin’ one for his dinner wherever he may go. Now, there’s old Peter
Cartwright, who has traveled over Illinoy and Indianny since the Year
One, and preached more good sermons than any other man who ever set on
saddle-bags, and has et more chickens than there are birds in a big
pigeon roost. Well, he took dinner at our house when he came up to
dedicate the big, white church at Simpkin’s Corners, and when he passed
up his plate the third time for more chicken, he sez, sez he:--I’ve et
at a great many hundred tables in the fifty years I have labored in the
vineyard of the Redeemer, but I must say, Mrs. Kiggins, that your way
of frying chickens is a leetle the nicest that I ever knew. I only wish
that the sisters generally would get your reseet.’ Yes, that’s what he
said,--‘a leetle the nicest.’”

Tom--“An’ then, we’ll hev biscuits an’ butter. I’ll just bet five
hundred dollars to a cent, and give back the cent if I win, that we
have the best butter at our house that there is in Central Illinoy. You
can’t never hev good butter onless you have a spring house; there’s no
use of talkin’--all the patent churns that lazy men ever invented--all
the fancy milk pans an’ coolers, can’t make up for a spring house.
Locations for a spring house are scarcer than hen’s teeth in Illinoy,
but we hev one, and there ain’t a better one in Orange County, New
York. Then you’ll see dome of the biscuits my mother makes.”

Bill--“Well, now, my mother’s a boss biscuit-maker, too.”

Jim--“You kin just gamble that mine is.”

John--“O, that’s the way you fellers ought to think an’ talk, but my
mother----”

Tom--(coming in again with fresh vigor) “They’re jest as light an’
fluffy as a dandelion puff, and they melt in your month like a ripe
Bartlett pear. You just pull ’em open--Now you know that I think
there’s nothin’ that shows a person’s raisin’ so well as to see him
eat biscuits an’ butter. If he’s been raised mostly on corn bread, an’
common doins,’ an’ don’t know much about good things to eat, he’ll most
likely cut his biscuit open with a case knife, an’ make it fall as flat
as one o’ yesterday’s pancakes. But if he is used to biscuits, has had
’em often at his house, he’ll--just pull ’em open, slow an’ easy like,
then he’ll lay a little slice of butter inside, and drop a few drops
of clear honey on this, an’ stick the two halves back, together again,
an--”

“Oh, for God Almighty’s sake, stop talking that infernal nonsense,”
roar out a half dozen of the surrounding crowd, whose mouths have been
watering over this unctuous recital of the good things of the table.
“You blamed fools, do you want to drive yourselves and everybody else
crazy with such stuff as that. Dry up and try to think of something
else.”




CHAPTER XLVI.

SURLY BRITON--THE STOLID COURAGE THAT MAKES THE ENGLISH FLAG A
BANNER OF TRIUMPH--OUR COMPANY BUGLER, HIS CHARACTERISTICS AND HIS
DEATH--URGENT DEMAND FOR MECHANICS--NONE WANT TO GO--TREATMENT OF
A REBEL SHOEMAKER --ENLARGEMENT OF THE STOCKADE--IT IS BROKEN BY A
STORM--THE WONDERFUL SPRING.

Early in August, F. Marriott, our Company Bugler, died. Previous to
coming to America he had been for many years an English soldier, and
I accepted him as a type of that stolid, doggedly brave class, which
forms the bulk of the English armies, and has for centuries carried
the British flag with dauntless courage into every land under the
sun. Rough, surly and unsocial, he did his duty with the unemotional
steadiness of a machine. He knew nothing but to obey orders, and obeyed
them under all circumstances promptly, but with stony impassiveness.
With the command to move forward into action, he moved forward without
a word, and with face as blank as a side of sole leather. He went
as far as ordered, halted at the word, and retired at command as
phlegmatically as he advanced. If he cared a straw whether he advanced
or retreated, if it mattered to the extent of a pinch of salt whether
we whipped the Rebels or they defeated us, he kept that feeling so
deeply hidden in the recesses of his sturdy bosom that no one ever
suspected it. In the excitement of action the rest of the boys shouted,
and swore, and expressed their tense feelings in various ways, but
Marriott might as well have been a graven image, for all the expression
that he suffered to escape. Doubtless, if the Captain had ordered him
to shoot one of the company through the heart, he would have executed
the command according to the manual of arms, brought his carbine to
a “recover,” and at the word marched back to his quarters without an
inquiry as to the cause of the proceedings. He made no friends, and
though his surliness repelled us, he made few enemies. Indeed, he was
rather a favorite, since he was a genuine character; his gruffness had
no taint of selfish greed in it; he minded his own business strictly,
and wanted others to do the same. When he first came into the company,
it is true, he gained the enmity of nearly everybody in it, but an
incident occurred which turned the tide in his favor. Some annoying
little depredations had been practiced on the boys, and it needed
but a word of suspicion to inflame all their minds against the surly
Englishman as the unknown perpetrator. The feeling intensified, until
about half of the company were in a mood to kill the Bugler outright.
As we were returning from stable duty one evening, some little
occurrence fanned the smoldering anger into a fierce blaze; a couple
of the smaller boys began an attack upon him; others hastened to their
assistance, and soon half the company were engaged in the assault.

He succeeded in disengaging himself from his assailants, and, squaring
himself off, said, defiantly:

“Dom yer cowardly heyes; jest come hat me one hat a time, hand hI’ll
wollop the ’ole gang uv ye’s.”

One of our Sergeants styled himself proudly “a Chicago rough,” and was
as vain of his pugilistic abilities as a small boy is of a father who
plays in the band. We all hated him cordially--even more than we did
Marriott.

He thought this was a good time to show off, and forcing his way
through the crowd, he said, vauntingly:

“Just fall back and form a ring, boys, and see me polish off
the---fool.”

The ring was formed, with the Bugler and the Sergeant in the center.
Though the latter was the younger and stronger the first round showed
him that it would have profited him much more to have let Marriott’s
challenge pass unheeded. As a rule, it is as well to ignore all
invitations of this kind from Englishmen, and especially from those
who, like Marriott, have served a term in the army, for they are likely
to be so handy with their fists as to make the consequences of an
acceptance more lively than desirable.

So the Sergeant found. “Marriott,” as one of the spectators expressed
it, “went around him like a cooper around a barrel.” He planted his
blows just where he wished, to the intense delight of the boys, who
yelled enthusiastically whenever he got in “a hot one,” and their
delight at seeing the Sergeant drubbed so thoroughly and artistically,
worked an entire revolution in his favor.

Thenceforward we viewed his eccentricities with lenient eyes, and
became rather proud of his bull-dog stolidity and surliness. The whole
battalion soon came to share this feeling, and everybody enjoyed
hearing his deep-toned growl, which mischievous boys would incite by
some petty annoyances deliberately designed for that purpose. I will
mention incidentally, that after his encounter with the Sergeant no one
ever again volunteered to “polish” him off.

Andersonville did not improve either his temper or his
communicativeness. He seemed to want to get as far away from the rest
of us as possible, and took up his quarters in a remote corner of
the Stockade, among utter strangers. Those of us who wandered up in
his neighborhood occasionally, to see how he was getting along, were
received with such scant courtesy, that we did not hasten to repeat
the visit. At length, after none of us had seen him for weeks, we
thought that comradeship demanded another visit. We found him in the
last stages of scurvy and diarrhea. Chunks of uneaten corn bread lay
by his head. They were at least a week old. The rations since then had
evidently been stolen from the helpless man by those around him. The
place where he lay was indescribably filthy, and his body was swarming
with vermin. Some good Samaritan had filled his little black oyster
can with water, and placed it within his reach. For a week, at least,
he had not been able to rise from the ground; he could barely reach
for the water near him. He gave us such a glare of recognition as I
remembered to have seen light up the fast-darkening eyes of a savage
old mastiff, that I and my boyish companions once found dying in the
woods of disease and hurts. Had he been able he would have driven us
away, or at least assailed us with biting English epithets. Thus he had
doubtless driven away all those who had attempted to help him. We did
what little we could, and staid with him until the next afternoon, when
he died. We prepared his body, in the customary way: folded the hands
across his breast, tied the toes together, and carried it outside, not
forgetting each of us, to bring back a load of wood.

The scarcity of mechanics of all kinds in the Confederacy, and the
urgent needs of the people for many things which the war and the
blockade prevented their obtaining, led to continual inducements being
offered to the artizans among us to go outside and work at their
trade. Shoemakers seemed most in demand; next to these blacksmiths,
machinists, molders and metal workers generally. Not a week passed
during my imprisonment that I did not see a Rebel emissary of some kind
about the prison seeking to engage skilled workmen for some purpose
or another. While in Richmond the managers of the Tredegar Iron Works
were brazen and persistent in their efforts to seduce what are termed
“malleable iron workers,” to enter their employ. A boy who was master
of any one of the commoner trades had but to make his wishes known, and
he would be allowed to go out on parole to work. I was a printer, and I
think that at least a dozen times I was approached by Rebel publishers
with offers of a parole, and work at good prices. One from Columbia, S.
C., offered me two dollars and a half a “thousand” for composition. As
the highest price for such work that I had received before enlisting
was thirty cents a thousand, this seemed a chance to accumulate untold
wealth. Since a man working in day time can set from thirty-five
to fifty “thousand” a week, this would make weekly wages run from
eighty-seven dollars and fifty cents to one hundred and twenty-five
dollars--but it was in Confederate money, then worth from ten to twenty
cents on the dollar.

Still better offers were made to iron workers of all kinds, to
shoemakers, tanners, weavers, tailors, hatters, engineers, machinists,
millers, railroad men, and similar tradesmen. Any of these could
have made a handsome thing by accepting the offers made them almost
weekly. As nearly all in the prison had useful trades, it would have
been of immense benefit to the Confederacy if they could have been
induced to work at them. There is no measuring the benefit it would
have been to the Southern cause if all the hundreds of tanners and
shoemakers in the Stockade could have, been persuaded to go outside
and labor in providing leather and shoes for the almost shoeless
people and soldiery. The machinists alone could have done more good
to the Southern Confederacy than one of our brigades was doing harm,
by consenting to go to the railroad shops at Griswoldville and ply
their handicraft. The lack of material resources in the South was
one of the strongest allies our arms had. This lack of resources was
primarily caused by a lack of skilled labor to develop those resources,
and nowhere could there be found a finer collection of skilled
laborers than in the thirty-three thousand prisoners incarcerated in
Andersonville.

All solicitations to accept a parole and go outside to work at one’s
trade were treated with the scorn they deserved. If any mechanic
yielded to them, the fact did not come under my notice. The usual reply
to invitations of this kind was:

“No, Sir! By God, I’ll stay in here till I rot, and the maggots carry
me out through the cracks in the Stockade, before I’ll so much as raise
my little finger to help the infernal Confederacy, or Rebels, in any
shape or form.”

In August a Macon shoemaker came in to get some of his trade to go
back with him to work in the Confederate shoe factory. He prosecuted
his search for these until he reached the center of the camp on the
North Side, when some of the shoemakers who had gathered around him,
apparently considering his propositions, seized him and threw him into
a well. He was kept there a whole day, and only released when Wirz cut
off the rations of the prison for that day, and announced that no more
would be issued until the man was returned safe and sound to the gate.

The terrible crowding was somewhat ameliorated by the opening in
July of an addition--six hundred feet long--to the North Side of the
Stockade. This increased the room inside to twenty acres, giving about
an acre to every one thousand seven hundred men,--a preposterously
contracted area still. The new ground was not a hotbed of virulent
poison like the olds however, and those who moved on to it had that
much in their favor.

The palisades between the new and the old portions of the pen were left
standing when the new portion was opened. We were still suffering a
great deal of inconvenience from lack of wood. That night the standing
timbers were attacked by thousands of prisoners armed with every
species of a tool to cut wood, from a case-knife to an ax. They worked
the live-long night with such energy that by morning not only every
inch of the logs above ground had disappeared, but that below had been
dug up, and there was not enough left of the eight hundred foot wall of
twenty-five-foot logs to make a box of matches.

One afternoon--early in August--one of the violent rain storms
common to that section sprung up, and in a little while the water
was falling in torrents. The little creek running through the camp
swelled up immensely, and swept out large gaps in the Stockade, both
in the west and east sides. The Rebels noticed the breaches as soon
as the prisoners. Two guns were fired from the Star Tort, and all the
guards rushed out, and formed so as to prevent any egress, if one was
attempted. Taken by surprise, we were not in a condition to profit by
the opportunity until it was too late.

The storm did one good thing: it swept away a great deal of filth, and
left the camp much more wholesome. The foul stench rising from the
camp made an excellent electrical conductor, and the lightning struck
several times within one hundred feet of the prison.

Toward the end of August there happened what the religously inclined
termed a Providential Dispensation. The water in the Creek was
indescribably bad. No amount of familiarity with it, no increase of
intimacy with our offensive surroundings, could lessen the disgust
at the polluted water. As I have said previously, before the stream
entered the Stockade, it was rendered too filthy for any use by the
contaminations from the camps of the guards, situated about a half-mile
above. Immediately on entering the Stockade the contamination became
terrible. The oozy seep at the bottom of the hillsides drained directly
into it all the mass of filth from a population of thirty-three
thousand. Imagine the condition of an open sewer, passing through the
heart of a city of that many people, and receiving all the offensive
product of so dense a gathering into a shallow, sluggish stream, a yard
wide and five inches deep, and heated by the burning rays of the sun
in the thirty-second degree of latitude. Imagine, if one can, without
becoming sick at the stomach, all of these people having to wash in and
drink of this foul flow.

There is not a scintilla of exaggeration in this statement. That
it is within the exact truth is demonstrable by the testimony of
any man--Rebel or Union--who ever saw the inside of the Stockade at
Andersonville. I am quite content to have its truth--as well as that of
any other statement made in this book--be determined by the evidence
of any one, no matter how bitter his hatred of the Union, who had any
personal knowledge of the condition of affairs at Andersonville. No one
can successfully deny that there were at least thirty-three thousand
prisoners in the Stockade, and that the one shallow, narrow creek,
which passed through the prison, was at once their main sewer and their
source of supply of water for bathing, drinking and washing. With these
main facts admitted, the reader’s common sense of natural consequences
will furnish the rest of the details.

It is true that some of the more fortunate of us had wells; thanks to
our own energy in overcoming extraordinary obstacles; no thanks to our
gaolers for making the slightest effort to provide these necessities
of life. We dug the wells with case and pocket knives, and half
canteens to a depth of from twenty to thirty feet, pulling up the dirt
in pantaloons legs, and running continual risk of being smothered to
death by the caving in of the unwalled sides. Not only did the Rebels
refuse to give us boards with which to wall the wells, and buckets for
drawing the water, but they did all in their power to prevent us from
digging the wells, and made continual forays to capture the digging
tools, because the wells were frequently used as the starting places
for tunnels. Professor Jones lays special stress on this tunnel feature
in his testimony, which I have introduced in a previous chapter.

The great majority of the prisoners who went to the Creek for water,
went as near as possible to the Dead Line on the West Side, where the
Creek entered the Stockade, that they might get water with as little
filth in it as possible. In the crowds struggling there for their turn
to take a dip, some one nearly every day got so close to the Dead Line
as to arouse a suspicion in the guard’s mind that he was touching it.
The suspicion was the unfortunate one’s death warrant, and also its
execution. As the sluggish brain of the guard conceived it he leveled
his gun; the distance to his victim was not over one hundred feet;
he never failed his aim; the first warning the wretched prisoner got
that he was suspected of transgressing a prison-rule was the charge of
“ball-and-buck” that tore through his body. It was lucky if he was, the
only one of the group killed. More wicked and unjustifiable murders
never were committed than these almost daily assassinations at the
Creek.

One morning the camp was astonished beyond measure to discover that
during the night a large, bold spring had burst out on the North
Side, about midway between the Swamp and the summit of the hill. It
poured out its grateful flood of pure, sweet water in an apparently
exhaustless quantity. To the many who looked in wonder upon it, it
seemed as truly a heaven-wrought miracle as when Moses’s enchanted rod
smote the parched rock in Sinai’s desert waste, and the living waters
gushed forth.

The police took charge of the spring, and every one was compelled to
take his regular turn in filling his vessel. This was kept up during
our whole stay in Andersonville, and every morning, shortly after
daybreak, a thousand men could be seen standing in line, waiting their
turns to fill their cans and cups with the precious liquid.

I am told by comrades who have revisited the Stockade of recent years,
that the spring is yet running as when we left, and is held in most
pious veneration by the negros of that vicinity, who still preserve the
tradition of its miraculous origin, and ascribe to its water wonderful
grace giving and healing properties, similar to those which pious
Catholics believe exist in the holy water of the fountain at Lourdes.

I must confess that I do not think they are so very far from right. If
I could believe that any water was sacred and thaumaturgic, it would
be of that fountain which appeared so opportunely for the benefit of
the perishing thousands of Andersonville. And when I hear of people
bringing water for baptismal purposes from the Jordan, I say in
my heart, “How much more would I value for myself and friends the
administration of the chrismal sacrament with the diviner flow from
that low sand-hill in Western Georgia.”




CHAPTER XLVII.

“SICK CALL,” AND THE SCENES THAT ACCOMPANIED IT--MUSTERING THE LAME,
HALT AND DISEASED AT THE SOUTH GATE--AN UNUSUALLY BAD CASE--GOING OUT
TO THE HOSPITAL--ACCOMMODATION AND TREATMENT OF THE PATIENTS THERE--THE
HORRIBLE SUFFERING IN THE GANGRENE WARD--BUNGLING AMPUTATIONS
BY BLUNDERING PRACTITIONERS--AFFECTION BETWEEN A SAILOR AND HIS
WARD--DEATH OF MY COMRADE.

Every morning after roll-call, thousands of sick gathered at the South
Gate, where the doctors made some pretense of affording medical relief.
The scene there reminded me of the illustrations in my Sunday-School
lessons of that time when “great multitudes came unto Him,” by the
shores of the Sea of Galilee, “having with them those that were
lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others.” Had the crowds worn the
flouting robes of the East, the picture would have lacked nothing
but the presence of the Son of Man to make it complete. Here were
the burning sands and parching sun; hither came scores of groups of
three or four comrades, laboriously staggering under the weight of a
blanket in which they had carried a disabled and dying friend from some
distant part of the Stockade. Beside them hobbled the scorbutics with
swollen and distorted limbs, each more loathsome and nearer death than
the lepers whom Christ’s divine touch made whole. Dozens, unable to
walk, and having no comrades to carry them, crawled painfully along,
with frequent stops, on their hands and knees. Every form of intense
physical suffering that it is possible for disease to induce in the
human frame was visible at these daily parades of the sick of the
prison. As over three thousand (three thousand and seventy-six) died
in August, there were probably twelve thousand dangerously sick at any
given time daring the month; and a large part of these collected at the
South Gate every morning.

Measurably-calloused as we had become by the daily sights of horror
around us, we encountered spectacles in these gatherings which
no amount of visible misery could accustom us to. I remember one
especially that burned itself deeply into my memory. It was of a young
man not over twenty-five, who a few weeks ago--his clothes looked
comparatively new --had evidently been the picture of manly beauty
and youthful vigor. He had had a well-knit, lithe form; dark curling
hair fell over a forehead which had once been fair, and his eyes still
showed that they had gleamed with a bold, adventurous spirit. The red
clover leaf on his cap showed that he belonged to the First Division of
the Second Corps, the three chevrons on his arm that he was a Sergeant,
and the stripe at his cuff that he was a veteran. Some kind-hearted
boys had found him in a miserable condition on the North Side, and
carried him over in a blanket to where the doctors could see him. He
had but little clothing on, save his blouse and cap. Ulcers of some
kind had formed in his abdomen, and these were now masses of squirming
worms. It was so much worse than the usual forms of suffering, that
quite a little crowd of compassionate spectators gathered around and
expressed their pity. The sufferer turned to one who lay beside him
with:

“Comrade: If we were only under the old Stars and Stripes, we wouldn’t
care a G-d d--n for a few worms, would we?”

This was not profane. It was an utterance from the depths of a brave
man’s heart, couched in the strongest language at his command. It
seemed terrible that so gallant a soul should depart from earth in this
miserable fashion. Some of us, much moved by the sight, went to the
doctors and put the case as strongly as possible, begging them to do
something to alleviate his suffering. They declined to see the case,
but got rid of us by giving us a bottle of turpentine, with directions
to pour it upon the ulcers to kill the maggots. We did so. It must have
been cruel torture, and as absurd remedially as cruel, but our hero set
his teeth and endured, without a groan. He was then carried out to the
hospital to die.

I said the doctors made a pretense of affording medical relief. It was
hardly that, since about all the prescription for those inside the
Stockade consisted in giving a handful of sumach berries to each of
those complaining of scurvy. The berries might have done some good, had
there been enough of them, and had their action been assisted by proper
food. As it was, they were probably nearly, if not wholly, useless.
Nothing was given to arrest the ravages of dysentery.

A limited number of the worst cases were admitted to the Hospital
each day. As this only had capacity for about one-quarter of the sick
in the Stockade, new patients could only be admitted as others died.
It seemed, anyway, like signing a man’s death warrant to send him to
the Hospital, as three out of every four who went out there died. The
following from the official report of the Hospital shows this:

Total number admitted .........................................12,900
Died ................................................. 8,663
Exchanged ............................................ 828
Took the oath of allegiance .......................... 25
Sent elsewhere ....................................... 2,889

Total ................................................12,400

Average deaths, 76 per cent.


Early in August I made a successful effort to get out to the Hospital.
I had several reasons for this: First, one of my chums, W. W. Watts,
of my own company, had been sent out a little whale before very sick
with scurvy and pneumonia, and I wanted to see if I could do anything
for him, if he still lived: I have mentioned before that for awhile
after our entrance into Andersonville five of us slept on one overcoat
and covered ourselves with one blanket. Two of these had already died,
leaving as possessors of-the blanket and overcoat, W. W. Watts, B. B.
Andrews, and myself.

Next, I wanted to go out to see if there was any prospect of escape. I
had long since given up hopes of escaping from the Stockade. All our
attempts at tunneling had resulted in dead failures, and now, to make
us wholly despair of success in that direction, another Stockade was
built clear around the prison, at a distance of one hundred and twenty
feet from the first palisades. It was manifest that though we might
succeed in tunneling past one Stockade, we could not go beyond the
second one.

I had the scurvy rather badly, and being naturally slight in frame, I
presented a very sick appearance to the physicians, and was passed out
to the Hospital.

While this was a wretched affair, it was still a vast improvement on
the Stockade. About five acres of ground, a little southeast of the
Stockade, and bordering on a creek, were enclosed by a board fence,
around which the guard walked, trees shaded the ground tolerably well.
There were tents and flies to shelter part of the sick, and in these
were beds made of pine leaves. There were regular streets and alleys
running through the grounds, and as the management was in the hands
of our own men, the place was kept reasonably clean and orderly for
Andersonville.

There was also some improvement in the food. Rice in some degree
replaced the nauseous and innutritious corn bread, and if served in
sufficient quantities, would doubtless have promoted the recovery
of many men dying from dysenteric diseases. We also received small
quantities of “okra,” a plant peculiar to the South, whose pods
contained a mucilaginous matter that made a soup very grateful to those
suffering from scurvy.

But all these ameliorations of condition were too slight to even arrest
the progress of the disease of the thousands of dying men brought out
from the Stockade. These still wore the same lice-infested garments as
in prison; no baths or even ordinary applications of soap and water
cleaned their dirt-grimed skins, to give their pores an opportunity
to assist in restoring them to health; even their long, lank and
matted hair, swarming with vermin, was not trimmed. The most ordinary
and obvious measures for their comfort and care were neglected. If a
man recovered he did it almost in spite of fate. The medicines given
were scanty and crude. The principal remedial agent--as far as my
observation extended--was a rank, fetid species of unrectified spirits,
which, I was told, was made from sorgum seed. It had a light-green
tinge, and was about as inviting to the taste as spirits of turpentine.
It was given to the sick in small quantities mixed with water. I had
had some experience with Kentucky “apple-jack,” which, it was popularly
believed among the boys, would dissolve a piece of the fattest pork
thrown into it, but that seemed balmy and oily alongside of this.
After tasting some, I ceased to wonder at the atrocities of Wirz and
his associates. Nothing would seem too bad to a man who made that his
habitual tipple.

[For a more particular description of the Hospital I must refer my
reader to the testimony of Professor Jones, in a previous chapter.]

Certainly this continent has never seen--and I fervently trust it
will never again see--such a gigantic concentration of misery as that
Hospital displayed daily. The official statistics tell the story of
this with terrible brevity: There were three thousand seven hundred
and nine in the Hospital in August; one thousand four hundred and
eighty-nine--nearly every other man died. The rate afterwards became
much higher than this.

The most conspicuous suffering was in the gangrene wards. Horrible
sores spreading almost visibly from hour to hour, devoured men’s limbs
and bodies. I remember one ward in which the alterations appeared to be
altogether in the back, where they ate out the tissue between the skin
and the ribs. The attendants seemed trying to arrest the progress of
the sloughing by drenching the sores with a solution of blue vitriol.
This was exquisitely painful, and in the morning, when the drenching
was going on, the whole hospital rang with the most agonizing screams.

But the gangrene mostly attacked the legs and arms, and the led more
than the arms. Sometimes it killed men inside of a week; sometimes they
lingered on indefinitely. I remember one man in the Stockade who cut
his hand with the sharp corner of a card of corn bread he was lifting
from the ration wagon; gangrene set in immediately, and he died four
days after.

One form that was quit prevalent was a cancer of the lower one corner
of the mouth, and it finally ate the whole side of the face out. Of
course the sufferer had the greatest trouble in eating and drinking.
For the latter it was customary to whittle out a little wooden tube,
and fasten it in a tin cup, through which he could suck up the water.
As this mouth cancer seemed contagious, none of us would allow any one
afflicted with it to use any of our cooking utensils. The Rebel doctors
at the hospital resorted to wholesale amputations to check the progress
of the gangrene.

They had a two hours session of limb-lopping every morning, each of
which resulted in quite a pile of severed members. I presume more
bungling operations are rarely seen outside of Russian or Turkish
hospitals. Their unskilfulness was apparent even to non-scientific
observers like myself. The standard of medical education in the
South--as indeed of every other form of education--was quite low. The
Chief Surgeon of the prison, Dr. Isaiah White, and perhaps two or three
others, seemed to be gentlemen of fair abilities and attainments. The
remainder were of that class of illiterate and unlearning quacks who
physic and blister the poor whites and negros in the country districts
of the South; who believe they can stop bleeding of the nose by
repeating a verse from the Bible; who think that if in gathering their
favorite remedy of boneset they cut the stem upwards it will purge
their patients, and if downward it will vomit them, and who hold that
there is nothing so good for “fits” as a black cat, killed in the dark
of the moon, cut open, and bound while yet warm, upon the naked chest
of the victim of the convulsions.

They had a case of instruments captured from some of our field
hospitals, which were dull and fearfully out of order. With poor
instruments and unskilled hands the operations became mangling.

In the Hospital I saw an admirable illustration of the affection
which a sailor will lavish on a ship’s boy, whom he takes a fancy to,
and makes his “chicken,” as the phrase is. The United States sloop
“Water Witch” had recently been captured in Ossabaw Sound, and her
crew brought into prison. One of her boys--a bright, handsome little
fellow of about fifteen--had lost one of his arms in the fight. He
was brought into the Hospital, and the old fellow whose “chicken” he
was, was allowed to accompany and nurse him. This “old barnacle-back”
was as surly a growler as ever went aloft, but to his “chicken” he
was as tender and thoughtful as a woman. They found a shady nook in
one corner, and any moment one looked in that direction he could see
the old tar hard at work at something for the comfort and pleasure
of his pet. Now he was dressing the wound as deftly and gently as a
mother caring for a new-born babe; now he was trying to concoct some
relish out of the slender materials he could beg or steal from the
Quartermaster; now trying to arrange the shade of the bed of pine
leaves in a more comfortable manner; now repairing or washing his
clothes, and so on.

All the sailors were particularly favored by being allowed to bring
their bags in untouched by the guards. This “chicken” had a wonderful
supply of clothes, the handiwork of his protector who, like most good
sailors, was very skillful with the needle. He had suits of fine white
duck, embroidered with blue in a way that would ravish the heart of a
fine lady, and blue suits similarly embroidered with white. No belle
ever kept her clothes in better order than these were. When the duck
came up from the old sailor’s patient washing it was as spotless as
new-fallen snow.

I found my chum in a very bad condition. His appetite was entirely
gone, but he had an inordinate craving for tobacco--for strong, black
plug --which he smoked in a pipe. He had already traded off all his
brass buttons to the guards for this. I had accumulated a few buttons
to bribe the guard to take me out for wood, and I gave these also
for tobacco for him. When I awoke one morning the man who laid next
to me on the right was dead, having died sometime during the night.
I searched his pockets and took what was in them. These were a silk
pocket handkerchief, a gutta percha finger-ring, a comb, a pencil, and
a leather pocket-book, making in all quite a nice little “find.” I hied
over to the guard, and succeeded in trading the personal estate which
I had inherited from the intestate deceased, for a handful of peaches,
a handful of hardly ripe figs, and a long plug of tobacco. I hastened
back to Watts, expecting that the figs and peaches would do him a world
of good. At first I did not show him the tobacco, as I was strongly
opposed to his using it, thinking that it was making him much worse.
But he looked at the tempting peaches and figs with lack-luster eyes;
he was too far gone to care for them. He pushed them back to me, saying
faintly:

“No, you take ’em, Mc; I don’t want ’em; I can’t eat ’em!”

I then produced the tobacco, and his face lighted up. Concluding that
this was all the comfort that he could have, and that I might as well
gratify him, I cut up some of the weed, filled his pipe and lighted it.
He smoked calmly and almost happily all the afternoon, hardly speaking
a word to me. As it grew dark he asked me to bring him a drink. I did
so, and as I raised him up he said:

“Mc, this thing’s ended. Tell my father that I stood it as long as I
could, and----”

The death rattle sounded in his throat, and when I laid him back it was
all over. Straightening out his limbs, folding his hands across his
breast, and composing his features as best I could, I lay, down beside
the body and slept till morning, when I did what little else I could
toward preparing for the grave all that was left of my long-suffering
little friend.




CHAPTER XLVIII.

DETERMINATION TO ESCAPE--DIFFERENT PLANS AND THEIR MERITS--I PREFER THE
APPALACHICOLA ROUTE--PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE--A HOT DAY--THE FENCE
PASSED SUCCESSFULLY PURSUED BY THE HOUNDS--CAUGHT --RETURNED TO THE
STOCKADE.

After Watt’s death, I set earnestly about seeing what could be done in
the way of escape. Frank Harney, of the First West Virginia Cavalry, a
boy of about my own age and disposition, joined with me in the scheme.
I was still possessed with my original plan of making my way down the
creeks to the Flint River, down the Flint River to where it emptied
into the Appalachicola River, and down that stream to its debauchure
into the bay that connected with the Gulf of Mexico. I was sure of
finding my way by this route, because, if nothing else offered, I could
get astride of a log and float down the current. The way to Sherman,
in the other direction, was long, torturous and difficult, with a
fearful gauntlet of blood-hounds, patrols and the scouts of Hood’s Army
to be run. I had but little difficulty in persuading Harney into an
acceptance of my views, and we began arranging for a solution of the
first great problem--how to get outside of the Hospital guards. As I
have explained before, the Hospital was surrounded by a board fence,
with guards walking their beats on the ground outside. A small creek
flowed through the southern end of the grounds, and at its lower end
was used as a sink. The boards of the fence came down to the surface
of the water, where the Creek passed out, but we found, by careful
prodding with a stick, that the hole between the boards and the bottom
of the Creek was sufficiently large to allow the passage of our bodies,
and there had been no stakes driven or other precautions used to
prevent egress by this channel. A guard was posted there, and probably
ordered to stand at the edge of the stream, but it smelled so vilely in
those scorching days that he had consulted his feelings and probably
his health, by retiring to the top of the bank, a rod or more distant.
We watched night after night, and at last were gratified to find that
none went nearer the Creak than the top of this bank.

Then we waited for the moon to come right, so that the first part
of the night should be dark. This took several days, but at last we
knew that the next night she would not rise until between 9 and 10
o’clock, which would give us nearly two hours of the dense darkness of
a moonless Summer night in the South. We had first thought of saving
up some rations for the trip, but then reflected that these would be
ruined by the filthy water into which we must sink to go under the
fence. It was not difficult to abandon the food idea, since it was very
hard to force ourselves to lay by even the smallest portion of our
scanty rations.

As the next day wore on, our minds were wrought up into exalted tension
by the rapid approach of the supreme moment, with all its chances
and consequences. The experience of the past few months was not such
as to mentally fit us for such a hazard. It prepared us for sullen,
uncomplaining endurance, for calmly contemplating the worst that could
come; but it did not strengthen that fiber of mind that leads to
venturesome activity and daring exploits. Doubtless the weakness of our
bodies reacted upon our spirits. We contemplated all the perils that
confronted us; perils that, now looming up with impending nearness,
took a clearer and more threatening shape than they had ever done
before.

We considered the desperate chances of passing the guard unseen; or,
if noticed, of escaping his fire without death or severe wounds. But
supposing him fortunately evaded, then came the gauntlet of the hounds
and the patrols hunting deserters. After this, a long, weary journey,
with bare feet and almost naked bodies, through an unknown country
abounding with enemies; the dangers of assassination by the embittered
populace; the risks of dying with hunger and fatigue in the gloomy
depths of a swamp; the scanty hopes that, if we reached the seashore,
we could get to our vessels.

Not one of all these contingencies failed to expand itself to all its
alarming proportions, and unite with its fellows to form a dreadful
vista, like the valleys filled with demons and genii, dragons and
malign enchantments, which confront the heros of the “Arabian Nights,”
when they set out to perform their exploits.

But behind us lay more miseries and horrors than a riotous imagination
could conceive; before us could certainly be nothing worse. We would
put life and freedom to the hazard of a touch, and win or lose it all.

The day had been intolerably hot. The sun’s rays seemed to sear the
earth, like heated irons, and the air that lay on the burning sand was
broken by wavy lines, such as one sees indicate the radiation from a
hot stove.

Except the wretched chain-gang plodding torturously back and forward on
the hillside, not a soul nor an animal could be seen in motion outside
the Stockade. The hounds were panting in their kennel; the Rebel
officers, half or wholly drunken with villainous sorgum whisky, were
stretched at full length in the shade at headquarters; the half-caked
gunners crouched under the shadow of the embankments of the forts, the
guards hung limply over the Stockade in front of their little perches;
the thirty thousand boys inside the Stockade, prone or supine upon
the glowing sand, gasped for breath--for one draft of sweet, cool,
wholesome air that did not bear on its wings the subtle seeds of rank
corruption and death. Everywhere was the prostration of discomfort--the
inertia of sluggishness.

Only the sick moved; only the pain-racked cried out; only the dying
struggled; only the agonies of dissolution could make life assert
itself against the exhaustion of the heat.

Harney and I, lying in the scanty shade of the trunk of a tall pine,
and with hearts filled with solicitude as to the outcome of what the
evening would bring us, looked out over the scene as we had done daily
for long months, and remained silent for hours, until the sun, as if
weary with torturing and slaying, began going down in the blazing West.
The groans of the thousands of sick around us, the shrieks of the
rotting ones in the gangrene wards rang incessantly in our ears.

As the sun disappeared, and the heat abated, the suspended activity
was restored. The Master of the Hounds came out with his yelping pack,
and started on his rounds; the Rebel officers aroused themselves from
their siesta and went lazily about their duties; the fifer produced
his cracked fife and piped forth his unvarying “Bonnie Blue Flag,”
as a signal for dress parade, and drums beaten by unskilled hands in
the camps of the different regiments, repeated the signal. In time
Stockade the mass of humanity became full of motion as an ant hill, and
resembled it very much from our point of view, with the boys threading
their way among the burrows, tents and holes.

It was becoming dark quite rapidly. The moments seemed galloping onward
toward the time when we must make the decisive step. We drew from the
dirty rag in which it was wrapped the little piece of corn bread that
we had saved for our supper, carefully divided it into two equal parts,
and each took one and ate it in silence. This done, we held a final
consultation as to our plans, and went over each detail carefully, that
we might fully understand each other under all possible circumstances,
and act in concert. One point we laboriously impressed upon each other,
and that was; that under no circumstances were we to allow ourselves
to be tempted to leave the Creek until we reached its junction with
the Flint River. I then picked up two pine leaves, broke them off to
unequal lengths, rolled them in my hands behind my back for a second,
and presenting them to Harney with their ends sticking out of my closed
hand, said:

“The one that gets the longest one goes first.”

Harney reached forth and drew the longer one.

We made a tour of reconnaissance. Everything seemed as usual, and
wonderfully calm compared with the tumult in our minds. The Hospital
guards were pacing their beats lazily; those on the Stockade were
drawling listlessly the first “call around” of the evening:

“Post numbah foah! Half-past seven o’clock! and a-l-l’s we-l-ll!”

Inside the Stockade was a Babel of sounds, above all of which rose the
melody of religious and patriotic songs, sung in various parts of the
camp. From the headquarters came the shouts and laughter of the Rebel
officers having a little “frolic” in the cool of the evening. The
groans of the sick around us were gradually hushing, as the abatement
of the terrible heat let all but the worst cases sink into a brief
slumber, from which they awoke before midnight to renew their outcries.
But those in the Gangrene wards seemed to be denied even this scanty
blessing. Apparently they never slept, for their shrieks never ceased.
A multitude of whip-poor-wills in the woods around us began their usual
dismal cry, which had never seemed so unearthly and full of dreadful
presages as now.

It was, now quite dark, and we stole noiselessly down to the Creek
and reconnoitered. We listened. The guard was not pacing his beat, as
we could not hear his footsteps. A large, ill-shapen lump against the
trunk of one of the trees on the bank showed that he was leaning there
resting himself. We watched him for several minutes, but he did not
move, and the thought shot into our minds that he might be asleep; but
it seemed impossible: it was too early in the evening.

Now, if ever, was the opportunity. Harney squeezed my hand, stepped
noiselessly into the Creek, laid himself gently down into the filthy
water, and while my heart was beating so that I was certain it could
be heard some distance from me, began making toward the fence. He
passed under easily, and I raised my eyes toward the guard, while on my
strained ear fell the soft plashing made by Harney as he pulled himself
cautiously forward. It seemed as if the sentinel must hear this; he
could not help it, and every second I expected to see the black lump
address itself to motion, and the musket flash out fiendishly. But he
did not; the lump remained motionless; the musket silent.

When I thought that Harney had gained a sufficient distance I followed.
It seemed as if the disgusting water would smother me as I laid myself
down into it, and such was my agitation that it appeared almost
impossible that I should escape making such a noise as would attract
the guard’s notice. Catching hold of the roots and limbs at the side
of the stream, I pulled myself slowly along, and as noiselessly as
possible.

I passed under the fence without difficulty, and was outside, and
within fifteen feet of the guard. I had lain down into the creek upon
my right side, that my face might be toward the guard, and I could
watch him closely all the time.

As I came under the fence he was still leaning motionless against the
tree, but to my heated imagination he appeared to have turned and be
watching me. I hardly breathed; the filthy water rippling past me
seemed to roar to attract the guard’s attention; I reached my hand out
cautiously to grasp a root to pull myself along by, and caught instead
a dry branch, which broke with a loud crack. My heart absolutely stood
still. The guard evidently heard the noise. The black lump separated
itself from the tree, and a straight line which I knew to be his musket
separated itself from the lump. In a brief instant I lived a year of
mortal apprehension. So certain was I that he had discovered me, and
was leveling his piece to fire, that I could scarcely restrain myself
from springing up and dashing away to avoid the shot. Then I heard him
take a step, and to my unutterable surprise and relief, he walked off
farther from the Creek, evidently to speak to the man whose beat joined
his.

I pulled away more swiftly, but still with the greatest caution, until
after half-an-hour’s painful effort I had gotten fully one hundred and
fifty yards away from the Hospital fence, and found Harney crouched on
a cypress knee, close to the water’s edge, watching for me.

We waited there a few minutes, until I could rest, and calm my
perturbed nerves down to something nearer their normal equilibrium, and
then started on. We hoped that if we were as lucky in our next step as
in the first one we would reach the Flint River by daylight, and have a
good long start before the morning roll-call revealed our absence. We
could hear the hounds still baying in the distance, but this sound was
too customary to give us any uneasiness.

But our progress was terribly slow. Every step hurt fearfully. The
Creek bed was full of roots and snags, and briers, and vines trailed
across it. These caught and tore our bare feet and legs, rendered
abnormally tender by the scurvy. It seemed as if every step was marked
with blood. The vines tripped us, and we frequently fell headlong. We
struggled on determinedly for nearly an hour, and were perhaps a mile
from the Hospital.

The moon came up, and its light showed that the creek continued its
course through a dense jungle like that we had been traversing,
while on the high ground to our left were the open pine woods I have
previously described.

We stopped and debated for a few minutes. We recalled our promise to
keep in the Creek, the experience of other boys who had tried to escape
and been caught by the hounds. If we staid in the Creek we were sure
the hounds would not find our trail, but it was equally certain that at
this rate we would be exhausted and starved before we got out of sight
of the prison. It seemed that we had gone far enough to be out of reach
of the packs patrolling immediately around the Stockade, and there
could be but little risk in trying a short walk on the dry ground. We
concluded to take the chances, and, ascending the bank, we walked and
ran as fast as we could for about two miles further.

All at once it struck me that with all our progress the hounds sounded
as near as when we started. I shivered at the thought, and though
nearly ready to drop with fatigue, urged myself and Harney on.

An instant later their baying rang out on the still night air right
behind us, and with fearful distinctness. There was no mistake now;
they had found our trail, and were running us down. The change from
fearful apprehension to the crushing reality stopped us stock-still in
our tracks.

At the next breath the hounds came bursting through the woods in plain
sight, and in full cry. We obeyed our first impulse; rushed back into
the swamp, forced our way for a few yards through the flesh-tearing
impediments, until we gained a large cypress, upon whose great knees
we climbed--thoroughly exhausted--just as the yelping pack reached the
edge of the water, and stopped there and bayed at us. It was a physical
impossibility for us to go another step.

In a moment the low-browed villain who had charge of the hounds came
galloping up on his mule, tooting signals to his dogs as he came, on
the cow-horn slung from his shoulders.

He immediately discovered us, covered us with his revolver, and yelled
out:

“Come ashore, there, quick: you---- ---- ---- ----s!”

There was no help for it. We climbed down off the knees and started
towards the land. As we neared it, the hounds became almost frantic,
and it seemed as if we would be torn to pieces the moment they could
reach us. But the master dismounted and drove them back. He was surly
--even savage--to us, but seemed in too much hurry to get back to waste
any time annoying us with the dogs. He ordered us to get around in
front of the mule, and start back to camp. We moved as rapidly as our
fatigue and our lacerated feet would allow us, and before midnight were
again in the hospital, fatigued, filthy, torn, bruised and wretched
beyond description or conception.

The next morning we were turned back into the Stockade as punishment.




CHAPTER XLIX.

AUGUST--GOOD LUCK IN NOT MEETING CAPTAIN WIRZ--THAT WORTHY’S TREATMENT
OF RECAPTURED PRISONERS--SECRET SOCIETIES IN PRISON--SINGULAR MEETING
AND ITS RESULT--DISCOVERY AND REMOVAL OF THE OFFICERS AMONG THE
ENLISTED MEN.

Harney and I were specially fortunate in being turned back into the
Stockade without being brought before Captain Wirz.

We subsequently learned that we owed this good luck to Wirz’s absence
on sick leave--his place being supplied by Lieutenant Davis, a moderate
brained Baltimorean, and one of that horde of Marylanders in the Rebel
Army, whose principal service to the Confederacy consisted in working
themselves into “bomb-proof” places, and forcing those whom they
displaced into the field. Winder was the illustrious head of this crowd
of bomb-proof Rebels from “Maryland, My Maryland!” whose enthusiasm for
the Southern cause and consistency in serving it only in such places
as were out of range of the Yankee artillery, was the subject of many
bitter jibes by the Rebels--especially by those whose secure berths
they possessed themselves of.

Lieutenant Davis went into the war with great brashness. He was one of
the mob which attacked the Sixth Massachusetts in its passage through
Baltimore, but, like all of that class of roughs, he got his stomach
full of war as soon as the real business of fighting began, and he
retired to where the chances of attaining a ripe old age were better
than in front of the Army of the Potomac’s muskets. We shall hear of
Davis again.

Encountering Captain Wirz was one of the terrors of an abortive attempt
to escape. When recaptured prisoners were brought before him he would
frequently give way to paroxysms of screaming rage, so violent as
to closely verge on insanity. Brandishing the fearful and wonderful
revolver--of which I have spoken in such a manner as to threaten the
luckless captives with instant death, he would shriek out imprecations,
curses; and foul epithets in French, German and English, until he
fairly frothed at the mouth. There were plenty of stories current in
camp of his having several times given away to his rage so far as to
actually shoot men down in these interviews, and still more of his
knocking boys down and jumping upon them, until he inflicted injuries
that soon resulted in death. How true these rumors were I am unable to
say of my own personal knowledge, since I never saw him kill any one,
nor have I talked with any one who did. There were a number of cases
of this kind testified to upon his trial, but they all happened among
“paroles” outside the Stockade, or among the prisoners inside after we
left, so I knew nothing of them.

One of the Old Switzer’s favorite ways of ending these seances was to
inform the boys that he would have them shot in an hour or so, and
bid them prepare for death. After keeping them in fearful suspense
for hours he would order them to be punished with the stocks, the
ball-and-chain, the chain-gang, or--if his fierce mood had burned
itself entirely out --as was quite likely with a man of his shallop’
brain and vacillating temper--to be simply returned to the stockade.

Nothing, I am sure, since the days of the Inquisition--or still later,
since the terrible punishments visited upon the insurgents of 1848 by
the Austrian aristocrats--has been so diabolical as the stocks and
chain-gangs, as used by Wirz. At one time seven men, sitting in the
stocks near the Star Fort--in plain view of the camp--became objects
of interest to everybody inside. They were never relieved from their
painful position, but were kept there until all of them died. I think
it was nearly two weeks before the last one succumbed. What they
endured in that time even imagination cannot conceive--I do not think
that an Indian tribe ever devised keener torture for its captives.

The chain-gang consisted of a number of men--varying from twelve to
twenty-five, all chained to one sixty-four pound ball. They were also
stationed near the Star Fort, standing out in the hot sun, without a
particle of shade over them. When one moved they all had to move. They
were scourged with the dysentery, and the necessities of some one of
their number kept them constantly in motion. I can see them distinctly
yet, tramping laboriously and painfully back and forward over that
burning hillside, every moment of the long, weary Summer days.

A comrade writes to remind me of the beneficent work of the Masonic
Order. I mention it most gladly, as it was the sole recognition on
the part of any of our foes of our claims to human kinship. The
churches of all denominations--except the solitary Catholic priest,
Father Hamilton, --ignored us as wholly as if we were dumb beasts.
Lay humanitarians were equally indifferent, and the only interest
manifested by any Rebel in the welfare of any prisoner was by the
Masonic brotherhood. The Rebel Masons interested themselves in securing
details outside the Stockade in the cookhouse, the commissary, and
elsewhere, for the brethren among the prisoners who would accept such
favors. Such as did not feel inclined to go outside on parole received
frequent presents in the way of food, and especially of vegetables,
which were literally beyond price. Materials were sent inside to build
tents for the Masons, and I think such as made themselves known before
death, received burial according to the rites of the Order. Doctor
White, and perhaps other Surgeons, belonged to the fraternity, and the
wearing of a Masonic emblem by a new prisoner was pretty sure to catch
their eyes, and be the means of securing for the wearer the tender
of their good offices, such as a detail into the Hospital as nurse,
ward-master, etc.

I was not fortunate enough to be one of the mystic brethren, and
so missed all share in any of these benefits, as well as in any
others, and I take special pride in one thing: that during my whole
imprisonment I was not beholden to a Rebel for a single favor of any
kind. The Rebel does not live who can say that he ever gave me so much
as a handful of meal, a spoonful of salt, an inch of thread, or a
stick of wood. From first to last I received nothing but my rations,
except occasional trifles that I succeeded in stealing from the stupid
officers charged with issuing rations. I owe no man in the Southern
Confederacy gratitude for anything--not even for a kind word.

Speaking of secret society pins recalls a noteworthy story which has
been told me since the war, of boys whom I knew. At the breaking
out of hostilities there existed in Toledo a festive little secret
society, such as lurking boys frequently organize, with no other
object than fun and the usual adolescent love of mystery. There were a
dozen or so members in it who called themselves “The Royal Reubens,”
and were headed by a bookbinder named Ned Hopkins. Some one started
a branch of the Order in Napoleon, O., and among the members was
Charles E. Reynolds, of that town. The badge of the society was a
peculiarly shaped gold pin. Reynolds and Hopkins never met, and had no
acquaintance with each other. When the war broke out, Hopkins enlisted
in Battery H, First Ohio Artillery, and was sent to the Army of the
Potomac, where he was captured, in the Fall of 1863, while scouting,
in the neighborhood of Richmond. Reynolds entered the Sixty-Eighth
Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and was taken in the neighborhood of Jackson,
Miss.,--two thousand miles from the place of Hopkins’s capture.
At Andersonville Hopkins became one of the officers in charge of
the Hospital. One day a Rebel Sergeant, who called the roll in the
Stockade, after studying Hopkins’s pin a minute, said:

“I seed a Yank in the Stockade to-day a-wearing a pin egzackly like
that ere.”

This aroused Hopkins’s interest, and he went inside in search of the
other “feller.” Having his squad and detachment there was little
difficulty in finding him. He recognized the pin, spoke to its wearer,
gave him the “grand hailing sign” of the “Royal Reubens,” and it was
duly responded to. The upshot of the matter was that he took Reynolds
out with him as clerk, and saved his life, as the latter was going down
hill very rapidly. Reynolds, in turn, secured the detail of a comrade
of the Sixty-Eighth who was failing fast, and succeeded in saving his
life--all of which happy results were directly attributable to that
insignificant boyish society, and its equally unimportant badge of
membership.

Along in the last of August the Rebels learned that there were between
two and three hundred Captains and Lieutenants in the Stockade, passing
themselves off as enlisted men. The motive of these officers was
two-fold: first, a chivalrous wish to share the fortunes and fate of
their boys, and second, disinclination to gratify the Rebels by the
knowledge of the rank of their captives. The secret was so well kept
that none of us suspected it until the fact was announced by the Rebels
themselves. They were taken out immediately, and sent to Macon, where
the commissioned officers’ prison was. It would not do to trust such
possible leaders with us another day.




CHAPTER L.

FOOD--THE MEAGERNESS, INFERIOR QUALITY, AND TERRIBLE SAMENESS --REBEL
TESTIMONY ON THE SUBJECT--FUTILITY OF SUCCESSFUL EXPLANATION.

I have in other places dwelt upon the insufficiency and the
nauseousness of the food. No words that I can use, no insistence upon
this theme, can give the reader any idea of its mortal importance to us.

Let the reader consider for a moment the quantity, quality, and variety
of food that he now holds to be necessary for the maintenance of life
and health. I trust that every one who peruses this book--that every
one in fact over whom the Stars and Stripes wave--has his cup of
coffee, his biscuits and his beefsteak for breakfast--a substantial
dinner of roast or boiled--and a lighter, but still sufficient meal in
the evening. In all, certainly not less than fifty different articles
are set before him during the day, for his choice as elements of
nourishment. Let him scan this extended bill-of-fare, which long custom
has made so common-place as to be uninteresting--perhaps even wearisome
to think about --and see what he could omit from it, if necessity
compelled him. After a reluctant farewell to fish, butter, eggs, milk,
sugar, green and preserved fruits, etc., he thinks that perhaps under
extraordinary circumstances he might be able to merely sustain life
for a limited period on a diet of bread and meat three times a day,
washed down with creamless, unsweetened coffee, and varied occasionally
with additions of potatos, onions, beans, etc. It would astonish the
Innocent to have one of our veterans inform him that this was not
even the first stage of destitution; that a soldier who had these was
expected to be on the summit level of contentment. Any of the boys
who followed Grant to Appomattox Court House, Sherman to the Sea, or
“Pap” Thomas till his glorious career culminated with the annihilation
of Hood, will tell him of many weeks when a slice of fat pork on a
piece of “hard tack” had to do duty for the breakfast of beefsteak and
biscuits; when another slice of fat pork and another cracker served for
the dinner of roast beef and vegetables, and a third cracker and slice
of pork was a substitute for the supper of toast and chops.

I say to these veterans in turn that they did not arrive at the first
stages of destitution compared with the depths to which we were
dragged. The restriction for a few weeks to a diet of crackers and fat
pork was certainly a hardship, but the crackers alone, chemists tell
us, contain all the elements necessary to support life, and in our Army
they were always well made and very palatable. I believe I risk nothing
in saying that one of the ordinary square crackers of our Commissary
Department contained much more real nutriment than the whole of our
average ration.

I have before compared the size, shape and appearance of the daily half
loaf of corn bread issued to us to a half-brick, and I do not yet know
of a more fitting comparison. At first we got a small piece of rusty
bacon along with this; but the size of this diminished steadily until
at last it faded away entirely, and during the last six months of our
imprisonment I do not believe that we received rations of meat above a
half-dozen times.

To this smallness was added ineffable badness. The meal was ground
very coarsely, by dull, weakly propelled stones, that imperfectly
crushed the grains, and left the tough, hard coating of the kernels in
large, sharp, mica-like scales, which cut and inflamed the stomach and
intestines, like handfuls of pounded glass. The alimentary canals of
all compelled to eat it were kept in a continual state of irritation
that usually terminated in incurable dysentery.

That I have not over-stated this evil can be seen by reference to the
testimony of so competent a scientific observer as Professor Jones, and
I add to that unimpeachable testimony the following extract from the
statement made in an attempted defense of Andersonville by Doctor R.
Randolph Stevenson, who styles himself, formerly Surgeon in the Army
of the Confederate States of America, Chief Surgeon of the Confederate
States Military Prison Hospitals, Andersonville, Ga.:

V. From the sameness of the food, and from the action of the poisonous
gases in the densely crowded and filthy Stockade and Hospital, the
blood was altered in its constitution, even, before the manifestation
of actual disease.

In both the well and the sick, the red corpuscles were diminished; and
in all diseases uncomplicated with inflammation, the fibrinous element
was deficient. In cases of ulceration of the mucous membrane of the
intestinal canal, the fibrinous element of the blood appeared to be
increased; while in simple diarrhea, uncomplicated with ulceration, and
dependent upon the character of the food and the existence of scurvy,
it was either diminished or remained stationary. Heart-clots were very
common, if not universally present, in the cases of ulceration of
the intestinal mucous membrane; while in the uncomplicated cases of
diarrhea and scurvy, the blood was fluid and did not coagulate readily,
and the heart-clots and fibrinous concretions were almost universally
absent. From the watery condition of the blood there resulted various
serous effusions into the pericardium, into the ventricles of the
brain, and into the abdominal cavity.

In almost all cases which I examined after death, even in the most
emaciated, there was more or less serous effusion into the abdominal
cavity. In cases of hospital gangrene of the extremities, and in
cases of gangrene of the intestines, heart-clots and firm coagula
were universally present. The presence of these clots in the cases of
hospital gangrene, whilst they were absent in the cases in which there
were no inflammatory symptoms, appears to sustain the conclusion that
hospital gangrene is a species of inflammation (imperfect and irregular
though it may be in its progress), in which the fibrinous element
and coagulability of the blood are increased, even in those who are
suffering from such a condition of the blood and from such diseases as
are naturally accompanied with a decrease in the fibrinous constituent.


VI. The impoverished condition of the blood, which led to serous
effusions within the ventricles of the brain, and around the brain
and spinal cord, and into the pericardial and abdominal cavities, was
gradually induced by the action of several causes, but chiefly by the
character of the food.

The Federal prisoners, as a general rule, had been reared upon wheat
bread and Irish potatos; and the Indian corn so extensively used at
the South, was almost unknown to them as an article of diet previous
to their capture. Owing to the impossibility of obtaining the
necessary sieves in the Confederacy for the separation of the husk
from the corn-meal, the rations of the Confederate soldiers, as well
as of the Federal prisoners, consisted of unbolted corn-flour, and
meal and grist; this circumstance rendered the corn-bread still more
disagreeable and distasteful to the Federal prisoners. While Indian
meal, even when prepared with the husk, is one of the most wholesome
and nutritious forms of food, as has been already shown by the health
and rapid increase of the Southern population, and especially of the
negros, previous to the present war, and by the strength, endurance
and activity of the Confederate soldiers, who were throughout the war
confined to a great extent to unbolted corn-meal; it is nevertheless
true that those who have not been reared upon corn-meal, or who have
not accustomed themselves to its use gradually, become excessively
tired of this kind of diet when suddenly confined to it without a due
proportion of wheat bread. Large numbers of the Federal prisoners
appeared to be utterly disgusted with Indian corn, and immense piles
of corn-bread could be seen in the Stockade and Hospital inclosures.
Those who were so disgusted with this form of food that they had no
appetite to partake of it, except in quantities insufficient to supply
the waste of the tissues, were, of course, in the condition of men
slowly starving, notwithstanding that the only farinaceous form of food
which the Confederate States produced in sufficient abundance for the
maintenance of armies was not withheld from them. In such cases, an
urgent feeling of hunger was not a prominent symptom; and even when it
existed at first, it soon disappeared, and was succeeded by an actual
loathing of food. In this state the muscular strength was rapidly
diminished, the tissues wasted, and the thin, skeleton-like forms moved
about with the appearance of utter exhaustion and dejection. The mental
condition connected with long confinement, with the most miserable
surroundings, and with no hope for the future, also depressed all the
nervous and vital actions, and was especially active in destroying
the appetite. The effects of mental depression, and of defective
nutrition, were manifested not only in the slow, feeble motions of the
wasted, skeleton-like forms, but also in such lethargy, listlessness,
and torpor of the mental faculties as rendered these unfortunate men
oblivious and indifferent to their afflicted condition. In many cases,
even of the greatest apparent suffering and distress, instead of
showing any anxiety to communicate the causes of their distress, or to
relate their privations, and their longings for their homes and their
friends and relatives, they lay in a listless, lethargic, uncomplaining
state, taking no notice either of their own distressed condition, or
of the gigantic mass of human misery by which they were surrounded.
Nothing appalled and depressed me so much as this silent, uncomplaining
misery. It is a fact of great interest, that notwithstanding this
defective nutrition in men subjected to crowding and filth, contagious
fevers were rare; and typhus fever, which is supposed to be generated
in just such a state of things as existed at Andersonville, was
unknown. These facts, established by my investigations, stand in
striking contrast with such a statement as the following by a recent
English writer:

“A deficiency of food, especially of the nitrogenous part, quickly
leads to the breaking up of the animal frame. Plague, pestilence and
famine are associated with each other in the public mind, and the
records of every country show how closely they are related. The medical
history of Ireland is remarkable for the illustrations of how much
mischief may be occasioned by a general deficiency of food. Always the
habitat of fever, it every now and then becomes the very hot-bed of its
propagation and development. Let there be but a small failure in the
usual imperfect supply of food, and the lurking seeds of pestilence
are ready to burst into frightful activity. The famine of the present
century is but too forcible and illustrative of this. It fostered
epidemics which have not been witnessed in this generation, and gave
rise to scenes of devastation and misery which are not surpassed by
the most appalling epidemics of the Middle Ages. The principal form
of the scourge was known as the contagious famine fever (typhus),
and it spread, not merely from end to end of the country in which it
had originated, but, breaking through all boundaries, it crossed the
broad ocean, and made itself painfully manifest in localities where
it was previously unknown. Thousands fell under the virulence of its
action, for wherever it came it struck down a seventh of the people,
and of those whom it attacked, one out of nine perished. Even those who
escaped the fatal influence of it, were left the miserable victims of
scurvy and low fever.”

While we readily admit that famine induces that state of the system
which is the most susceptible to the action of fever poisons, and thus
induces the state of the entire population which is most favorable
for the rapid and destructive spread of all contagious fevers, at the
same time we are forced by the facts established by the present war,
as well as by a host of others, both old and new, to admit that we are
still ignorant of the causes necessary for the origin of typhus fever.
Added to the imperfect nature of the rations issued to the Federal
prisoners, the difficulties of their situation were at times greatly
increased by the sudden and desolating Federal raids in Virginia,
Georgia, and other States, which necessitated the sudden transportation
from Richmond and other points threatened of large bodies of prisoners,
without the possibility of much previous preparation; and not only did
these men suffer in transition upon the dilapidated and overburdened
line of railroad communication, but after arriving at Andersonville,
the rations were frequently insufficient to supply the sudden addition
of several thousand men. And as the Confederacy became more and more
pressed, and when powerful hostile armies were plunging through her
bosom, the Federal prisoners of Andersonville suffered incredibly
during the hasty removal to Millen, Savannah, Charleston, and other
points, supposed at the time to be secure from the enemy. Each one of
these causes must be weighed when an attempt is made to estimate the
unusual mortality among these prisoners of war.

VII. Scurvy, arising from sameness of food and imperfect nutrition,
caused, either directly or indirectly, nine-tenths of the deaths among
the Federal prisoners at Andersonville.

Not only were the deaths referred to unknown causes, to apoplexy, to
anasarca, and to debility, traceable to scurvy and its effects; and not
only was the mortality in small-pox, pneumonia, and typhoid fever, and
in all acute diseases, more than doubled by the scorbutic taint, but
even those all but universal and deadly bowel affections arose from the
same causes, and derived their fatal character from the same conditions
which produced the scurvy. In truth, these men at Andersonville were
in the condition of a crew at sea, confined in a foul ship upon salt
meat and unvarying food, and without fresh vegetables. Not only so,
but these unfortunate prisoners were men forcibly confined and crowded
upon a ship tossed about on a stormy ocean, without a rudder, without
a compass, without a guiding-star, and without any apparent boundary
or to their voyage; and they reflected in their steadily increasing
miseries the distressed condition and waning fortunes of devastated
and bleeding country, which was compelled, in justice to her own
unfortunate sons, to hold these men in the most distressing captivity.

I saw nothing in the scurvy which prevailed so universally at
Andersonville, at all different from this disease as described by
various standard writers. The mortality was no greater than that
which has afflicted a hundred ships upon long voyages, and it did not
exceed the mortality which has, upon me than one occasion, and in a
much shorter period of time, annihilated large armies and desolated
beleaguered cities. The general results of my investigations upon
the chronic diarrhea and dysentery of the Federal prisoners of
Andersonville were similar to those of the English surgeons during the
war against Russia.

IX. Drugs exercised but little influence over the progress and fatal
termination of chronic diarrhea and dysentery in the Military Prison
and Hospital at Andersonville, chiefly because the proper form of
nourishment (milk, rice, vegetables, anti-scorbutics, and nourishing
animal and vegetable soups) was not issued, and could not be procured
in sufficient quantities for the sick prisoners.

Opium allayed pain and checked the bowels temporarily, but the frail
dam was soon swept away, and the patient appears to be but little
better, if not the worse, for this merely palliative treatment. The
root of the difficulty could not be reached by drugs; nothing short of
the wanting elements of nutrition would have tended in any manner to
restore the tone of the digestive system, and of all the wasted and
degenerated organs and tissues. My opinion to this effect was expressed
most decidedly to the medical officers in charge of these unfortunate
men. The correctness of this view was sustained by the healthy and
robust condition of the paroled prisoners, who received an extra
ration, and who were able to make considerable sums by trading, and who
supplied themselves with a liberal and varied diet.

X. The fact that hospital gangrene appeared in the Stockade first,
and originated spontaneously, without any previous contagion, and
occurred sporadically all over the Stockade and Prison Hospital, was
proof positive that this disease will arise whenever the conditions of
crowding, filth, foul air, and bad diet are present.

The exhalations from the Hospital and Stockade appeared to exert their
effects to a considerable distance outside of these localities. The
origin of gangrene among these prisoners appeared clearly to depend in
great measure upon the state of the general system, induced by diet,
exposure, neglect of personal cleanliness; and by various external
noxious influences. The rapidity of the appearance and action of the
gangrene depended upon the powers and state of the constitution, as
well as upon the intensity of the poison in the atmosphere, or upon the
direct application of poisonous matter to the wounded surface. This was
further illustrated by the important fact, that hospital gangrene, or a
disease resembling this form of gangrene, attacked the intestinal canal
of patients laboring under ulceration of the bowels, although there
were no local manifestations of gangrene upon the surface of the body.
This mode of termination in cases of dysentery was quite common in the
foul atmosphere of the Confederate States Military Prison Hospital; and
in the depressed, depraved condition of the system of these Federal
prisoners, death ensued very rapidly after the gangrenous state of the
intestines was established.

XI. A scorbutic condition of the system appeared to favor the origin of
foul ulcers, which frequently took on true hospital gangrene.

Scurvy and gangrene frequently existed in the same individual. In such
cases, vegetable diet with vegetable acids would remove the scorbutic
condition without curing the hospital gangrene.. . Scurvy consists
not only in an alteration in the constitution of the blood, which
leads to passive hemorrhages from the bowels, and the effusion into
the various tissues of a deeply-colored fibrinous exudation; but, as
we have conclusively shown by postmortem examination, this state is
attended with consistence of the muscles of the heart, and the mucous
membrane of the alimentary canal, and of solid parts generally. We
have, according to the extent of the deficiency of certain articles
of food, every degree of scorbutic derangement, from the most fearful
depravation of the blood and the perversion of every function
subserved by the blood to those slight derangements which are scarcely
distinguishable from a state of health. We are as yet ignorant of
the true nature of the changes of the blood and tissues in scurvy,
and wide field for investigation is open for the determination the
characteristic changes--physical, chemical, and physiological--of the
blood and tissues, and of the secretions and excretions of scurvy. Such
inquiries would be of great value in their bearing upon the origin
of hospital gangrene. Up to the present war, the results of chemical
investigations upon the pathology of the blood in scurvy were not
only contradictory, but meager, and wanting in that careful detail
of the cases from which the blood was abstracted which would enable
us to explain the cause of the apparent discrepancies in different
analyses. Thus it is not yet settled whether the fibrin is increased
or diminished in this disease; and the differences which exist in the
statements of different writers appear to be referable to the neglect
of a critical examination and record of all the symptoms of the cases
from which the blood was abstracted. The true nature of the changes of
the blood in scurvy can be established only by numerous analyses during
different stages of the disease, and followed up by carefully performed
and recorded postmortem examinations. With such data we could settle
such important questions as whether the increase of fibrin in scurvy
was invariably dependent upon some local inflammation.

XII. Gangrenous spots, followed by rapid destruction of tissue,
appeared in some cases in which there had been no previous or existing
wound or abrasion; and without such well established facts, it might
be assumed that the disease was propagated from one patient to another
in every case, either by exhalations from the gangrenous surface or by
direct contact.

In such a filthy and crowded hospital as that of the Confederate,
States Military Prison of Camp Sumter, Andersonville, it was impossible
to isolate the wounded from the sources of actual contact of the
gangrenous matter. The flies swarming over the wounds and over filth of
every description; the filthy, imperfectly washed, and scanty rags; the
limited number of sponges and wash-bowls (the same wash-bowl and sponge
serving for a score or more of patients), were one and all sources of
such constant circulation of the gangrenous matter, that the disease
might rapidly be propagated from a single gangrenous wound. While the
fact already considered, that a form of moist gangrene, resembling
hospital gangrene, was quite common in this foul atmosphere in cases
of dysentery, both with and without the existence of hospital gangrene
upon the surface, demonstrates the dependence of the disease upon the
state of the constitution, and proves in a clear manner that neither
the contact of the poisonous matter of gangrene, nor the direct action
of the poisoned atmosphere upon the ulcerated surface, is necessary
to the development of the disease; on the other hand, it is equally
well-established that the disease may be communicated by the various
ways just mentioned. It is impossible to determine the length of time
which rags and clothing saturated with gangrenous matter will retain
the power of reproducing the disease when applied to healthy wounds.
Professor Brugmans, as quoted by Guthrie in his commentaries on the
surgery of the war in Portugal, Spain, France, and the Netherlands,
says that in 1797, in Holland, ‘charpie,’ composed of linen threads cut
of different lengths, which, on inquiry, it was found had been already
used in the great hospitals in France, and had been subsequently washed
and bleached, caused every ulcer to which it was applied to be affected
by hospital gangrene. Guthrie affirms in the same work, that the fact
that this disease was readily communicated by the application of
instruments, lint, or bandages which had been in contact with infected
parts, was too firmly established by the experience of every one in
Portugal and Spain to be a matter of doubt. There are facts to show
that flies may be the means of communicating malignant pustules. Dr.
Wagner, who has related several cases of malignant pustule produced in
man and beasts, both by contact and by eating the flesh of diseased
animals, which happened in the village of Striessa in Saxony, in 1834,
gives two very remarkable cases which occurred eight days after any
beast had been affected with the disease. Both were women, one of
twenty-six and the other of fifty years, and in them the pustules were
well marked, and the general symptoms similar to the other cases. The
latter patient said she had been bitten by a fly upon the back d the
neck, at which part the carbuncle appeared; and the former, that she
had also been bitten upon the right upper arm by a gnat. Upon inquiry,
Wagner found that the skin of one of the infected beasts had been hung
on a neighboring wall, and thought it very possible that the insects
might have been attracted to them by the smell, and had thence conveyed
the poison.

[End of Dr. Stevenson’s Statement]

                    ..........................

The old adage says that “Hunger is the best sauce for poor food,” but
hunger failed to render this detestable stuff palatable, and it became
so loathsome that very many actually starved to death because unable to
force their organs of deglutition to receive the nauseous dose and pass
it to the stomach. I was always much healthier than the average of the
boys, and my appetite consequently much better, yet for the last month
that I was in Andersonville, it required all my determination to crowd
the bread down my throat, and, as I have stated before, I could only do
this by breaking off small bits at a time, and forcing each down as I
would a pill.

A large part of this repulsiveness was due to the coarseness and
foulness of the meal, the wretched cooking, and the lack of salt,
but there was a still more potent reason than all these. Nature does
not intend that man shall live by bread alone, nor by any one kind
of food. She indicates this by the varying tastes and longings that
she gives him. If his body needs one kind of constituents, his tastes
lead him to desire the food that is richest in those constituents.
When he has taken as much as his system requires, the sense of satiety
supervenes, and he “becomes tired” of that particular food. If tastes
are not perverted, but allowed a free but temperate exercise, they are
the surest indicators of the way to preserve health and strength by a
judicious selection of alimentation.

In this case Nature was protesting by a rebellion of the tastes against
any further use of that species of food. She was saying, as plainly as
she ever spoke, that death could only be averted by a change of diet,
which would supply our bodies with the constituents they so sadly
needed, and which could not be supplied by corn meal.

How needless was this confinement of our rations to corn meal, and
especially to such wretchedly prepared meal, is conclusively shown by
the Rebel testimony heretofore given. It would have been very little
extra trouble to the Rebels to have had our meal sifted; we would
gladly have done it ourselves if allowed the utensils and opportunity.
It would have been as little trouble to have varied our rations with
green corn and sweet potatos, of which the country was then full.

A few wagon loads of roasting ears and sweet potatos would have
banished every trace of scurvy from the camp, healed up the wasting
dysentery, and saved thousands of lives. Any day that the Rebels had
chosen they could have gotten a thousand volunteers who would have
given their solemn parole not to escape, and gone any distance into the
country, to gather the potatos and corn, and such other vegetables as
were readily obtainable, and bring, them into the camp.

Whatever else may be said in defense of the Southern management of
military prisons, the permitting seven thousand men to die of the
scurvy in the Summer time, in the midst of an agricultural region,
filled with all manner of green vegetation, must forever remain
impossible of explanation.




CHAPTER LI.

SOLICITUDE AS TO THE FATE OF ATLANTA AND SHERMAN’S ARMY--PAUCITY OF
NEWS --HOW WE HEARD THAT ATLANTA HAD FALLEN--ANNOUNCEMENT OF A GENERAL
EXCHANGE--WE LEAVE ANDERSONVILLE.

We again began to be exceedingly solicitous over the fate of Atlanta
and Sherman’s Army: we had heard but little directly from that front
for several weeks. Few prisoners had come in since those captured in
the bloody engagements of the 20th, 22d, and 28th of July. In spite
of their confident tones, and our own sanguine hopes, the outlook
admitted of very grave doubts. The battles of the last week of July
had been looked at it in the best light possible--indecisive. Our men
had held their own, it is true, but an invading army can not afford
to simply hold its own. Anything short of an absolute success is to
it disguised defeat. Then we knew that the cavalry column sent out
under Stoneman had been so badly handled by that inefficient commander
that it had failed ridiculously in its object, being beaten in detail,
and suffering the loss of its commander and a considerable portion
of its numbers. This had been followed by a defeat of our infantry
at Etowah Creek, and then came a long interval in which we received
no news save what the Rebel papers contained, and they pretended no
doubt that Sherman’s failure was already demonstrated. Next came
well-authenticated news that Sherman had raised the siege and fallen
back to the Chattahoochee, and we felt something of the bitterness of
despair. For days thereafter we heard nothing, though the hot, close
Summer air seemed surcharged with the premonitions of a war storm about
to burst, even as nature heralds in the same way a concentration of the
mighty force of the elements for the grand crash of the thunderstorm.
We waited in tense expectancy for the decision of the fates whether
final victory or defeat should end the long and arduous campaign.

At night the guards in the perches around the Stockade called out
every half hour, so as to show the officers that they were awake and
attending to their duty. The formula for this ran thus:

“Post numbah 1; half-past eight o’clock, and a-l-l’s w-e-l-l!”

Post No. 2 repeated this cry, and so it went around.

One evening when our anxiety as to Atlanta was wrought to the highest
pitch, one of the guards sang out:

“Post numbah foah--half past eight o’clock--and Atlanta’s--gone--t-o
--hell.”

The heart of every man within hearing leaped to his mouth. We looked
toward each other, almost speechless with glad surprise, and then
gasped out:

“Did you hear THAT?”

The next instant such a ringing cheer burst out as wells spontaneously
from the throats and hearts of men, in the first ecstatic moments of
victory--a cheer to which our saddened hearts and enfeebled lungs
had long been strangers. It was the genuine, honest, manly Northern
cheer, as different from the shrill Rebel yell as the honest mastiff’s
deep-voiced welcome is from the howl of the prowling wolf.

The shout was taken up all over the prison. Even those who had not
heard the guard understood that it meant that “Atlanta was ours and
fairly won,” and they took up the acclamation with as much enthusiasm
as we had begun it. All thoughts of sleep were put to flight: we would
have a season of rejoicing. Little knots gathered together, debated the
news, and indulged in the most sanguine hopes as to the effect upon
the Rebels. In some parts of the Stockade stump speeches were made. I
believe that Boston Corbett and his party organized a prayer and praise
meeting. In our corner we stirred up our tuneful friend “Nosey,” who
sang again the grand old patriotic hymns that set our thin blood to
bounding, and made us remember that we were still Union soldiers, with
higher hopes than that of starving and dying in Andersonville. He sang
the ever-glorious Star Spangled Banner, as he used to sing it around
the camp fire in happier days, when we were in the field. He sang the
rousing “Rally Round the Flag,” with its wealth of patriotic fire and
martial vigor, and we, with throats hoarse from shouting; joined in the
chorus until the welkin rang again.

The Rebels became excited, lest our exaltation of spirits would lead
to an assault upon the Stockade. They got under arms, and remained so
until the enthusiasm became less demonstrative.

A few days later--on the evening of the 6th of September--the Rebel
Sergeants who called the roll entered the Stockade, and each assembling
his squads, addressed them as follows:

“PRISONERS: I am instructed by General Winder to inform you that a
general exchange has been agreed upon. Twenty thousand men will be
exchanged immediately at Savannah, where your vessels are now waiting
for you. Detachments from One to Ten will prepare to leave early
to-morrow morning.”

The excitement that this news produced was simply indescribable. I
have seen men in every possible exigency that can confront men, and a
large proportion viewed that which impended over them with at least
outward composure. The boys around me had endured all that we suffered
with stoical firmness. Groans from pain-racked bodies could not be
repressed, and bitter curses and maledictions against the Rebels leaped
unbidden to the lips at the slightest occasion, but there was no
murmuring or whining. There was not a day--hardly an hour--in which one
did not see such exhibitions of manly fortitude as made him proud of
belonging to a race of which every individual was a hero.

But the emotion which pain and suffering and danger could not develop,
joy could, and boys sang, and shouted and cried, and danced as if in
a delirium. “God’s country,” fairer than the sweet promised land of
Canaan appeared to the rapt vision of the Hebrew poet prophet, spread
out in glad vista before the mind’s eye of every one. It had come--at
last it had come that which we had so longed for, wished for, prayed
for, dreamed of; schemed, planned, toiled for, and for which went up
the last earnest, dying wish of the thousands of our comrades who would
now know no exchange save into that eternal “God’s country” where

               Sickness and sorrow, pain and death
               Are felt and feared no more.

Our “preparations,” for leaving were few and simple. When the morning
came, and shortly after the order to move, Andrews and I picked our
well-worn blanket, our tattered overcoat, our rude chessmen, and no
less rude board, our little black can, and the spoon made of hoop-iron,
and bade farewell to the hole-in-the-ground that had been our home for
nearly seven long months.

My feet were still in miserable condition from the lacerations received
in the attempt to escape, but I took one of our tent poles as a staff
and hobbled away. We re-passed the gates which we had entered on that
February night, ages since, it seemed, and crawled slowly over to the
depot.

I had come to regard the Rebels around us as such measureless liars
that my first impulse was to believe the reverse of anything they said
to us; and even now, while I hoped for the best, my old habit of mind
was so strongly upon me that I had some doubts of our going to be
exchanged, simply because it was a Rebel who had said so. But in the
crowd of Rebels who stood close to the road upon which we were walking
was a young Second Lieutenant, who said to a Colonel as I passed:

“Weil, those fellows can sing ‘Homeward Bound,’ can’t they?”

This set my last misgiving at rest. Now I was certain that we were
going to be exchanged, and my spirits soared to the skies.

Entering the cars we thumped and pounded toilsomely along, after
the manner of Southern railroads, at the rate of six or eight miles
an hour. Savannah was two hundred and forty miles away, and to our
impatient minds it seemed as if we would never get there. The route
lay the whole distance through the cheerless pine barrens which cover
the greater part of Georgia. The only considerable town on the way was
Macon, which had then a population of five thousand or thereabouts. For
scores of miles there would not be a sign of a human habitation, and in
the one hundred and eighty miles between Macon and Savannah there were
only three insignificant villages. There was a station every ten miles,
at which the only building was an open shed, to shelter from sun and
rain a casual passenger, or a bit of goods.

The occasional specimens of the poor white “cracker” population that
we saw, seemed indigenous products of the starved soil. They suited
their poverty-stricken surroundings as well as the gnarled and scrubby
vegetation suited the sterile sand. Thin-chested, round-shouldered,
scraggy-bearded, dull-eyed and open-mouthed, they all looked alike--all
looked as ignorant, as stupid, and as lazy as they were poor and
weak. They were “low-downers” in every respect, and made our rough
and simple. minded East Tennesseans look like models of elegant and
cultured gentlemen in contrast.

We looked on the poverty-stricken land with good-natured contempt, for
we thought we were leaving it forever, and would soon be in one which,
compared to it, was as the fatness at Egypt to the leanness of the
desert of Sinai.

The second day after leaving Andersonville our train struggled across
the swamps into Savannah, and rolled slowly down the live oak shaded
streets into the center of the City. It seemed like another Deserted
Village, so vacant and noiseless the streets, and the buildings
everywhere so overgrown with luxuriant vegetation: The limbs of the
shade trees crashed along and broke, upon the tops of our cars, as if
no train had passed that way for years. Through the interstices between
the trees and clumps of foliage could be seen the gleaming white marble
of the monuments erected to Greene and Pulaski, looking like giant
tombstones in a City of the Dead. The unbroken stillness--so different
from what we expected on entering the metropolis of Georgia, and a City
that was an important port in Revolutionary days--became absolutely
oppressive. We could not understand it, but our thoughts were more
intent upon the coming transfer to our flag than upon any speculation
as to the cause of the remarkable somnolence of Savannah.

Finally some little boys straggled out to where our car was standing,
and we opened up a conversation with them:

“Say, boys, are our vessels down in the harbor yet?”

The reply came in that piercing treble shriek in which a boy of ten or
twelve makes even his most confidential communications:

“I don’t know.”

“Well,” (with our confidence in exchange somewhat dashed,) “they intend
to exchange us here, don’t they?”

Another falsetto scream, “I don’t know.”

“Well,” (with something of a quaver in the questioner’s voice,) “what
are they going to do, with us, any way?”

“O,” (the treble shriek became almost demoniac) “they are fixing up a
place over by the old jail for you.”

What a sinking of hearts was there then! Andrews and I would not give
up hope so speedily as some others did, and resolved to believe, for
awhile at least, that we were going to be exchanged.

Ordered out of the cars, we were marched along the street. A crowd
of small boys, full of the curiosity of the animal, gathered around
us as we marched. Suddenly a door in a rather nice house opened; an
angry-faced woman appeared on the steps and shouted out:

“Boys! BOYS! What are you doin’ there! Come up on the steps immejitely!
Come away from them n-a-s-t-y things!”

I will admit that we were not prepossessing in appearance; nor were
we as cleanly as young gentlemen should habitually be; in fact, I may
as well confess that I would not now, if I could help it, allow a
tramp, as dilapidated in raiment, as unwashed, unshorn, uncombed, and
populous with insects as we were, to come within several rods of me.
Nevertheless, it was not pleasant to hear so accurate a description
of our personal appearance sent forth on the wings of the wind by a
shrill-voiced Rebel female.

A short march brought us to the place “they were fixing for us by the
old jail.” It was another pen, with high walls of thick pine plank,
which told us only too plainly how vain were our expectations of
exchange.

When we were turned inside, and I realized that the gates of another
prison had closed upon me, hope forsook me. I flung our odious little
possessions-our can, chess-board, overcoat, and blanket-upon the
ground, and, sitting down beside them, gave way to the bitterest
despair. I wanted to die, O, so badly. Never in all my life had I
desired anything in the world so much as I did now to get out of it.
Had I had pistol, knife, rope, or poison, I would have ended my prison
life then and there, and departed with the unceremoniousness of a
French leave. I remembered that I could get a quietus from a guard with
very little trouble, but I would not give one of the bitterly hated
Rebels the triumph of shooting me. I longed to be another Samson, with
the whole Southern Confederacy gathered in another Temple of Dagon,
that I might pull down the supporting pillars, and die happy in slaying
thousands of my enemies.

While I was thus sinking deeper and deeper in the Slough of Despond,
the firing of a musket, and the shriek of the man who was struck,
attracted my attention. Looking towards the opposite end of the pen
I saw a guard bringing his still smoking musket to a “recover arms,”
and, not fifteen feet from him, a prisoner lying on the ground in the
agonies of death. The latter had a pipe in his mouth when he was shot,
and his teeth still clenched its stem. His legs and arms were drawn up
convulsively, and he was rocking backward and forward on his back. The
charge had struck him just above the hip-bone.

The Rebel officer in command of the guard was sitting on his horse
inside the pen at the time, and rode forward to see what the matter
was. Lieutenant Davis, who had come with us from Andersonville, was
also sitting on a horse inside the prison, and he called out in his
usual harsh, disagreeable voice:

“That’s all right, Cunnel; the man’s done just as I awdahed him to.”

I found that lying around inside were a number of bits of plank--each
about five feet long, which had been sawed off by the carpenters
engaged in building the prison. The ground being a bare common, was
destitute of all shelter, and the pieces looked as if they would be
quite useful in building a tent. There may have been an order issued
forbidding the prisoners to touch them, but if so, I had not heard it,
and I imagine the first intimation to the prisoner just killed that the
boards were not to be taken was the bullet which penetrated his vitals.
Twenty-five cents would be a liberal appraisement of the value of the
lumber for which the boy lost his life.

Half an hour afterward we thought we saw all the guards march out of
the front gate. There was still another pile of these same kind of
pieces of board lying at the further side of the prison. The crowd
around me noticed it, and we all made a rush for it. In spite of my
lame feet I outstripped the rest, and was just in the act of stooping
down to pick the boards up when a loud yell from those behind startled
me. Glancing to my left I saw a guard cocking his gun and bringing
it up to shoot me. With one frightened spring, as quick as a flash,
and before he could cover me, I landed fully a rod back in the crowd,
and mixed with it. The fellow tried hard to draw a bead on me, but I
was too quick for him, and he finally lowered his gun with an oath
expressive of disappointment in not being able to kill a Yankee.

Walking back to my place the full ludicrousness of the thing dawned
upon me so forcibly that I forgot all about my excitement and scare,
and laughed aloud. Here, not an hour age I was murmuring because I
could find no way to die; I sighed for death as a bridegroom for the
coming of his bride, an yet, when a Rebel had pointed his gun at me, it
had nearly scared me out of a year’s growth, and made me jump farther
than I could possibly do when my feet were well, and I was in good
condition otherwise.




CHAPTER LII.

SAVANNAH--DEVICES TO OBTAIN MATERIALS FOR A TENT--THEIR ULTIMATE
SUCCESS --RESUMPTION OF TUNNELING--ESCAPING BY WHOLESALE AND BEING
RECAPTURED EN MASSE--THE OBSTACLES THAT LAY BETWEEN US AND OUR LINES.

Andrews and I did not let the fate of the boy who was killed, nor my
own narrow escape from losing the top of my head, deter us from farther
efforts to secure possession of those coveted boards. My readers
remember the story of the boy who, digging vigorously at a hole,
replied to the remark of a passing traveler that there was probably no
ground-hog there, and, even if there was, “ground-hog was mighty poor
eatin’, any way,” with:

“Mister, there’s got to be a ground-hog there; our family’s out o’
meat!”

That was what actuated us: we were out of material for a tent. Our
solitary blanket had rotted and worn full of holes by its long double
duty, as bed-clothes and tent at Andersonville, and there was an
imperative call for a substitute.

Andrews and I flattered ourselves that when we matched our collective
or individual wits against those of a Johnny his defeat was pretty
certain, and with this cheerful estimate of our own powers to animate
us, we set to work to steal the boards from under the guard’s nose. The
Johnny had malice in his heart and buck-and-ball in his musket, but his
eyes were not sufficiently numerous to adequately discharge all the
duties laid upon him. He had too many different things to watch at the
same time. I would approach a gap in the fence not yet closed as if
I intended making a dash through it for liberty, and when the Johnny
had concentrated all his attention on letting me have the contents of
his gun just as soon as he could have a reasonable excuse for doing
so, Andrews would pick u a couple of boards and slip away with them.
Then I would fall back in pretended (and some real) alarm, and--Andrew
would come up and draw his attention by a similar feint, while I made
off with a couple more pieces. After a few hours c this strategy, we
found ourselves the possessors of some dozen planks, with which we made
a lean-to, that formed a tolerable shelter for our heads and the upper
portion of our bodies. As the boards were not over five feet long,
and the slope reduce the sheltered space to about four-and-one-half
feet, it left the lower part of our naked feet and legs to project
out-of-doors. Andrews used to lament very touchingly the sunburning his
toe-nails were receiving. He knew that his complexion was being ruined
for life, and all the Balm of a Thousand Flowers in the world would
not restore his comely ankles to that condition of pristine loveliness
which would admit of their introduction into good society again.
Another defect was that, like the fun in a practical joke, it was all
on one side; there was not enough of it to go clear round. It was very
unpleasant, when a storm came up in a direction different from that we
had calculated upon, to be compelled to get out in the midst of it, and
build our house over to face the other way.

Still we had a tent, and were that much better off than three-fourths
of our comrades who had no shelter at all. We were owners of a brown
stone front on Fifth Avenue compared to the other fellows.

Our tent erected, we began a general survey of our new abiding place.
The ground was a sandy common in the outskirts of Savannah. The sand
was covered with a light sod. The Rebels, who knew nothing of our
burrowing propensities, had neglected to make the plank forming the
walls of the Prison project any distance below the surface of the
ground, and had put up no Dead Line around the inside; so that it
looked as if everything was arranged expressly to invite us to tunnel
out. We were not the boys to neglect such an invitation. By night about
three thousand had been received from Andersonville, and placed inside.
When morning came it looked as if a colony of gigantic rats had been at
work. There was a tunnel every ten or fifteen feet, and at least twelve
hundred of us had gone out through them during the night. I never
understood why all in the pen did not follow our example, and leave the
guards watching a forsaken Prison. There was nothing to prevent it. An
hour’s industrious work with a half-canteen would take any one outside,
or if a boy was too lazy to dig his own tunnel, he could have the use
of one of the hundred others that had been dug.

But escaping was only begun when the Stockade was passed. The site of
Savannah is virtually an island. On the north is the Savannah River;
to the east, southeast and south, are the two Ogeechee rivers, and a
chain of sounds and lagoons connecting with the Atlantic Ocean. To
the west is a canal connecting the Savannah and Big Ogeechee Rivers.
We found ourselves headed off by water whichever way we went. All the
bridges were guarded, and all the boats destroyed. Early in the morning
the Rebels discovered our absence, and the whole garrison of Savannah
was sent out on patrol after us. They picked up the boys in squads of
from ten to thirty, lurking around the shores of the streams waiting
for night to come, to get across, or engaged in building rafts for
transportation. By evening the whole mob of us were back in the pen
again. As nobody was punished for running away, we treated the whole
affair as a lark, and those brought back first stood around the gate
and yelled derisively as the others came in.

That night big fires were built all around the Stockade, and a line
of guards placed on the ground inside of these. In spite of this
precaution, quite a number escaped. The next day a Dead Line was put
up inside of the Prison, twenty feet from the Stockade. This only
increased the labor of burrowing, by making us go farther. Instead of
being able to tunnel out in an hour, it now took three or four hours.
That night several hundred of us, rested from our previous performance,
and hopeful of better luck, brought our faithful half canteens--now
scoured very bright by constant use-into requisition again, and before
the morning. dawned we had gained the high reeds of the swamps, where
we lay concealed until night.

In this way we managed to evade the recapture that came to most of
those who went out, but it was a fearful experience. Having been raised
in a country where venomous snakes abounded, I had that fear and horror
of them that inhabitants of those districts feel, and of which people
living in sections free from such a scourge know little. I fancied
that the Southern swamps were filled with all forms of loathsome and
poisonous reptiles, and it required all my courage to venture into
them barefooted. Besides, the snags and roots hurt our feet fearfully.
Our hope was to find a boat somewhere, in which we could float out to
sea, and trust to being picked up by some of the blockading fleet. But
no boat could we find, with all our painful and diligent search. We
learned afterward that the Rebels made a practice of breaking up all
the boats along the shore to prevent negros and their own deserters
from escaping to the blockading fleet. We thought of making a raft
of logs, but had we had the strength to do this, we would doubtless
have thought it too risky, since we dreaded missing the vessels, and
being carried out to sea to perish of hunger. During the night we came
to the railroad bridge across the Ogeechee. We had some slender hope
that, if we could reach this we might perhaps get across the river,
and find better opportunities for escape. But these last expectations
were blasted by the discovery that it was guarded. There was a post
and a fire on the shore next us, and a single guard with a lantern was
stationed on one of the middle spans. Almost famished with hunger, and
so weary and footsore that we could scarcely move another step, we went
back to a cleared place on the high ground, and laid down to sleep,
entirely reckless as to what became of us. Late in the morning we were
awakened by the Rebel patrol and taken back to the prison. Lieutenant
Davis, disgusted with the perpetual attempts to escape, moved the
Dead Line out forty feet from the Stockade; but this restricted our
room greatly, since the number of prisoners in the pen had now risen
to about six thousand, and, besides, it offered little additional
protection against tunneling.

It was not much more difficult to dig fifty feet than it had been to
dig thirty feet. Davis soon realized this, and put the Dead Line back
to twenty feet. His next device was a much more sensible one. A crowd
of one hundred and fifty negros dug a trench twenty feet wide and five
feet deep around the whole prison on the outside, and this ditch was
filled with water from the City Water Works. No one could cross this
without attracting the attention of the guards.

Still we were not discouraged, and Andrews and I joined a crowd that
was constructing a large tunnel from near our quarters on the east side
of the pen. We finished the burrow to within a few inches of the edge
of the ditch, and then ceased operations, to await some stormy night,
when we could hope to get across the ditch unnoticed.

Orders were issued to guards to fire without warning on men who were
observed to be digging or carrying out dirt after nightfall. They
occasionally did so, but the risk did not keep anyone from tunneling.
Our tunnel ran directly under a sentry box. When carrying dirt away
the bearer of the bucket had to turn his back on the guard and walk
directly down the street in front of him, two hundred or three hundred
feet, to the center of the camp, where he scattered the sand around--so
as to give no indication of where it came from. Though we always
waited till the moon went down, it seemed as if, unless the guard were
a fool, both by nature and training, he could not help taking notice
of what was going on under his eyes. I do not recall any more nervous
promenades in my life, than those when, taking my turn, I received my
bucket of sand at the mouth of the tunnel, and walked slowly away with
it. The most disagreeable part was in turning my back to the guard.
Could I have faced him, I had sufficient confidence in my quickness of
perception, and talents as a dodger, to imagine that I could make it
difficult for him to hit me. But in walling with my back to him I was
wholly at his mercy. Fortune, however, favored us, and we were allowed
to go on with our work--night after night--without a shot.

In the meanwhile another happy thought slowly gestated in Davis’s
alleged intellect. How he came to give birth to two ideas with no more
than a week between them, puzzled all who knew him, and still more
that he survived this extraordinary strain upon the gray matter of the
cerebrum. His new idea was to have driven a heavily-laden mule cart
around the inside of the Dead Line at least once a day. The wheels or
the mule’s feet broke through the thin sod covering the tunnels and
exposed them. Our tunnel went with the rest, and those of our crowd
who wore shoes had humiliation added to sorrow by being compelled to
go in and spade the hole full of dirt. This put an end to subterranean
engineering.

One day one of the boys watched his opportunity, got under the ration
wagon, and clinging close to the coupling pole with hands and feet, was
carried outside. He was detected, however, as he came from under the
wagon, and brought back.




CHAPTER LIII.

FRANK REVERSTOCK’S ATTEMPT AT ESCAPE--PASSING OFF AS REBEL BOY HE
REACHES GRISWOLDVILLE BY RAIL, AND THEN STRIKES ACROSS THE COUNTRY FOR
SHERMAN, BUT IS CAUGHT WITHIN TWENTY MILES OF OUR LINES.

One of the shrewdest and nearest successful attempts to escape that
came under my notice was that of my friend Sergeant Frank Reverstock,
of the Third West Virginia Cavalry, of whom I have before spoken.
Frank, who was quite small, with a smooth boyish face, had converted
to his own use a citizen’s coat, belonging to a young boy, a Sutler’s
assistant, who had died in Andersonville. He had made himself a pair
of bag pantaloons and a shirt from pieces of meal sacks which he had
appropriated from day to day. He had also the Sutler’s assistant’s
shoes, and, to crown all, he wore on his head one of those hideous
looking hats of quilted calico which the Rebels had taken to wearing
in the lack of felt hats, which they could neither make nor buy.
Altogether Frank looked enough like a Rebel to be dangerous to trust
near a country store or a stable full of horses. When we first arrived
in the prison quite a crowd of the Savannahians rushed in to inspect
us. The guards had some difficulty in keeping them and us separate.
While perplexed with this annoyance, one of them saw Frank standing
in our crowd, and, touching him with his bayonet, said, with some
sharpness:

“See heah; you must stand back; you musn’t crowd on them prisoners so.”

Frank stood back. He did it promptly but calmly, and then, as if his
curiosity as to Yankees was fully satisfied, he walked slowly away up
the street, deliberating as he went on a plan for getting out of the
City. He hit upon an excellent one. Going to the engineer of a freight
train making ready to start back to Macon, he told him that his father
was working in the Confederate machine shops at Griswoldville, near
Macon; that he himself was also one of the machinists employed there,
and desired to go thither but lacked the necessary means to pay his
passage. If the engineer would let him ride up on the engine he would
do work enough to pay the fare. Frank told the story ingeniously, the
engineer and firemen were won over, and gave their consent.

No more zealous assistant ever climbed upon a tender than Frank
proved to be. He loaded wood with a nervous industry, that stood him
in place of great strength. He kept the tender in perfect order, and
anticipated, as far as possible, every want of the engineer and his
assistant. They were delighted with him, and treated him with the
greatest kindness, dividing their food with him, and insisting that
he should share their bed when they “laid by” for the night. Frank
would have gladly declined this latter kindness with thanks, as he was
conscious that the quantity of “graybacks” his clothing contained did
not make him a very desirable sleeping companion for any one, but his
friends were so pressing that he was compelled to accede.

His greatest trouble was a fear of recognition by some one of the
prisoners that were continually passing by the train load, on their
way from Andersonville to other prisons. He was one of the best known
of the prisoners in Andersonville; bright, active, always cheerful,
and forever in motion during waking hours,--every one in the Prison
speedily became familiar with him, and all addressed him as “Sergeant
Frankie.” If any one on the passing trains had caught a glimpse of him,
that glimpse would have been followed almost inevitably with a shout of:

“Hello, Sergeant Frankie! What are you doing there?”

Then the whole game would have been up. Frank escaped this by
persistent watchfulness, and by busying himself on the opposite side of
the engine, with his back turned to the other trains.

At last when nearing Griswoldville, Frank, pointing to a large white
house at some distance across the fields, said:

“Now, right over there is where my uncle lives, and I believe I’ll just
run over and see him, and then walk into Griswoldville.”

He thanked his friends fervently for their kindness, promised to call
and see them frequently, bade them good by, and jumped off the train.

He walked towards the white house as long as he thought he could be
seen, and then entered a large corn field and concealed himself in a
thicket in the center of it until dark, when he made his way to the
neighboring woods, and began journeying northward as fast as his legs
could carry him. When morning broke he had made good progress, but
was terribly tired. It was not prudent to travel by daylight, so he
gathered himself some ears of corn and some berries, of which he made
his breakfast, and finding a suitable thicket he crawled into it, fell
asleep, and did not wake up until late in the afternoon.

After another meal of raw corn and berries he resumed his journey, and
that night made still better progress.

He repeated this for several days and nights--lying in the woods in
the day time, traveling by night through woods, fields, and by-paths
avoiding all the fords, bridges and main roads, and living on what he
could glean from the fields, that he might not take even so much risk
as was involved in going to the negro cabins for food.

But there are always flaws in every man’s armor of caution--even in so
perfect a one as Frank’s. His complete success so far had the natural
effect of inducing a growing carelessness, which wrought his ruin. One
evening he started off briskly, after a refreshing rest and sleep. He
knew that he must be very near Sherman’s lines, and hope cheered him up
with the belief that his freedom would soon be won.

Descending from the hill, in whose dense brushwood he had made his
bed all day, he entered a large field full of standing corn, and made
his way between the rows until he reached, on the other side, the
fence that separated it from the main road, across which was another
corn-field, that Frank intended entering.

But he neglected his usual precautions on approaching a road, and
instead of coming up cautiously and carefully reconnoitering in all
directions before he left cover, he sprang boldly over the fence and
strode out for the other side. As he reached the middle of the road,
his ears were assailed with the sharp click of a musket being cocked,
and the harsh command:

“Halt! halt, dah, I say!”

Turning with a start to his left he saw not ten feet from him, a
mounted patrol, the sound of whose approach had been masked by the deep
dust of the road, into which his horse’s hoofs sank noiselessly.

Frank, of course, yielded without a word, and when sent to the officer
in command he told the old story about his being an employee of the
Griswoldville shops, off on a leave of absence to make a visit to sick
relatives. But, unfortunately, his captors belonged to that section
themselves, and speedily caught him in a maze of cross-questioning from
which he could not extricate himself. It also became apparent from his
language that he was a Yankee, and it was not far from this to the
conclusion that he was a spy--a conclusion to which the proximity of
Sherman’s lines, then less than twenty miles distant-greatly assisted.

By the next morning this belief had become so firmly fixed in the minds
of the Rebels that Frank saw a halter dangling alarmingly near, and he
concluded the wisest plan was to confess who he really was.

It was not the smallest of his griefs to realize by how slight a chance
he had failed. Had he looked down the road before he climbed the fence,
or had he been ten minutes earlier or later, the patrol would not have
been there, he could have gained the next field unperceived, and two
more nights of successful progress would have taken him into Sherman’s
lines at Sand Mountain. The patrol which caught him was on the look-out
for deserters and shirking conscripts, who had become unusually
numerous since the fall of Atlanta.

He was sent back to us at Savannah. As he came into the prison gate
Lieutenant Davis was standing near. He looked sternly at Frank and his
Rebel garments, and muttering,

“By God, I’ll stop this!” caught the coat by the tails, tore it to the
collar, and took it and his hat away from Frank.

There was a strange sequel to this episode. A few weeks afterward
a special exchange for ten thousand was made, and Frank succeeded
in being included in this. He was given the usual furlough from the
paroled camp at Annapolis, and went to his home in a little town near
Mansfield, O.

One day while on the cars going--I think to Newark, O., he saw
Lieutenant Davis on the train, in citizens’ clothes. He had been sent
by the Rebel Government to Canada with dispatches relating to some of
the raids then harassing our Northern borders. Davis was the last man
in the world to successfully disguise himself. He had a large, coarse
mouth, that made him remembered by all who had ever seen him. Frank
recognized him instantly and said:

“You are Lieutenant Davis?”

Davis replied:

“You are totally mistaken, sah, I am -----.”

Frank insisted that he was right. Davis fumed and blustered, but though
Frank was small, he was as game as a bantam rooster, and he gave Davis
to understand that there had been a vast change in their relative
positions; that the one, while still the same insolent swaggerer, had
not regiments of infantry or batteries of artillery to emphasize his
insolence, and the other was no longer embarrassed in the discussion by
the immense odds in favor of his jailor opponent.

After a stormy scene Frank called in the assistance of some other
soldiers in the car, arrested Davis, and took him to Camp Chase--near
Columbus, O.,--where he was fully identified by a number of paroled
prisoners. He was searched, and documents showing the nature of his
mission beyond a doubt, were found upon his person.

A court martial was immediately convened for his trial.

This found him guilty, and sentenced him to be hanged as a spy.

At the conclusion of the trial Frank stepped up to the prisoner and
said:

“Mr. Davis, I believe we’re even on that coat, now.”

Davis was sent to Johnson’s Island for execution, but influences were
immediately set at work to secure Executive clemency. What they were
I know not, but I am informed by the Rev. Robert McCune, who was then
Chaplain of the One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Ohio Infantry and the
Post of Johnson’s Island and who was the spiritual adviser appointed to
prepare Davis for execution, that the sentence was hardly pronounced
before Davis was visited by an emissary, who told him to dismiss his
fears, that he should not suffer the punishment.

It is likely that leading Baltimore Unionists were enlisted in his
behalf through family connections, and as the Border State Unionists
were then potent at Washington, they readily secured a commutation of
his sentence to imprisonment during the war.

It seems that the justice of this world is very unevenly dispensed when
so much solicitude is shown for the life of such a man, and none at all
for the much better men whom he assisted to destroy.

The official notice of the commutation of the sentence was not
published until the day set for the execution, but the certain
knowledge that it would be forthcoming enabled Davis to display a
great deal of bravado on approaching what was supposed to be his end.
As the reader can readily imagine, from what I have heretofore said
of him, Davis was the man to improve to the utmost every opportunity
to strut his little hour, and he did it in this instance. He posed,
attitudinized and vapored, so that the camp and the country were filled
with stories of the wonderful coolness with which he contemplated his
approaching fate.

Among other things he said to his guard, as he washed himself
elaborately the night before the day announced for the execution:

“Well, you can be sure of one thing; to-morrow night there will
certainly be one clean corpse on this Island.”

Unfortunately for his braggadocio, he let it leak out in some way that
he had been well aware all the time that he would not be executed.

He was taken to Fort Delaware for confinement, and died there some time
after.

Frank Beverstock went back to his regiment, and served with it until
the close of the war. He then returned home, and, after awhile became
a banker at Bowling Green, O. He was a fine business man and became
very prosperous. But though naturally healthy and vigorous, his system
carried in it the seeds of death, sown there by the hardships of
captivity. He had been one of the victims of the Rebels’ vaccination;
the virus injected into his blood had caused a large part of his right
temple to slough off, and when it healed it left a ghastly cicatrix.

Two years ago he was taken suddenly ill, and died before his friends
had any idea that his condition was serious.




CHAPTER LIV.

SAVANNAH PROVES TO BE A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER--ESCAPE FROM THE BRATS
OF GUARDS--COMPARISON BETWEEN WIRZ AND DAVIS--A BRIEF INTERVAL OF GOOD
RATIONS--WINDER, THE MAN WITH THE EVIL EYE--THE DISLOYAL WORK OF A
SHYSTER.

After all Savannah was a wonderful improvement on Andersonville.
We got away from the pestilential Swamp and that poisonous ground.
Every mouthful of air was not laden with disease germs, nor every cup
of water polluted with the seeds of death. The earth did not breed
gangrene, nor the atmosphere promote fever. As only the more vigorous
had come away, we were freed from the depressing spectacle of every
third man dying. The keen disappointment prostrated very many who had
been of average health, and I imagine, several hundred died, but there
were hospital arrangements of some kind, and the sick were taken away
from among us. Those of us who tunneled out had an opportunity of
stretching our legs, which we had not had for months in the overcrowded
Stockade we had left. The attempts to escape did all engaged in them
good, even though they failed, since they aroused new ideas and hopes,
set the blood into more rapid circulation, and toned up the mind and
system both. I had come away from Andersonville with considerable
scurvy manifesting itself in my gums and feet. Soon these signs almost
wholly disappeared.

We also got away from those murderous little brats of Reserves, who
guarded us at Andersonville, and shot men down as they would stone
apples out of a tree. Our guards now were mostly, sailors, from the
Rebel fleet in the harbor--Irishmen, Englishmen and Scandinavians, as
free hearted and kindly as sailors always are. I do not think they
ever fired a shot at one of us. The only trouble we had was with that
portion of the guard drawn from the infantry of the garrison. They had
the same rattlesnake venom of the Home Guard crowd wherever we met it,
and shot us down at the least provocation. Fortunately they only formed
a small part of the sentinels.

Best of all, we escaped for a while from the upas-like shadow of Winder
and Wirz, in whose presence strong men sickened and died, as when near
some malign genii of an Eastern story. The peasantry of Italy believed
firmly in the evil eye. Did they ever know any such men as Winder and
his satellite, I could comprehend how much foundation they could have
for such a belief.

Lieutenant Davis had many faults, but there was no comparison between
him and the Andersonville commandant. He was a typical young Southern
man; ignorant and bumptious as to the most common matters of school-boy
knowledge, inordinately vain of himself and his family, coarse in
tastes and thoughts, violent in his prejudices, but after all with
some streaks of honor and generosity that made the widest possible
difference between him and Wirz, who never had any. As one of my chums
said to me:

“Wirz is the most even-tempered man I ever knew; he’s always foaming
mad.”

This was nearly the truth. I never saw Wirz when he was not angry; if
not violently abusive, he was cynical and sardonic. Never, in my little
experience with him did I detect a glint of kindly, generous humanity;
if he ever was moved by any sight of suffering its exhibition in his
face escaped my eye. If he ever had even a wish to mitigate the pain or
hardship of any man the expression of such wish never fell on my ear.
How a man could move daily through such misery as he encountered, and
never be moved by it except to scorn and mocking is beyond my limited
understanding.

Davis vapored a great deal, swearing big round oaths in the broadest of
Southern patois; he was perpetually threatening to:

“Open on ye wid de ahtillery,” but the only death that I knew him to
directly cause or sanction was that I have described in the previous
chapter. He would not put himself out of the way to annoy and oppress
prisoners, as Wirz would, but frequently showed even a disposition to
humor them in some little thing, when it could be done without danger
or trouble to himself.

By-and-by, however, he got an idea that there was some money to be made
out of the prisoners, and he set his wits to work in this direction.
One day, standing at the gate, he gave one of his peculiar yells that
he used to attract the attention of the camp with:

“Wh-ah-ye!!”

We all came to “attention,” and he announced:

“Yesterday, while I wuz in the camps (a Rebel always says camps,)
some of you prisoners picked my pockets of seventy-five dollars in
greenbacks. Now, I give you notice that I’ll not send in any moah
rations till the money’s returned to me.”

This was a very stupid method of extortion, since no one believed that
he had lost the money, and at all events he had no business to have
the greenbacks, as the Rebel laws imposed severe penalties upon any
citizen, and still more upon any soldier dealing with, or having in
his possession any of “the money of the enemy.” We did without rations
until night, when they were sent in. There was a story that some of
the boys in the prison had contributed to make up part of the sum, and
Davis took it and was satisfied. I do not know how true the story was.
At another time some of the boys stole the bridle and halter off an
old horse that was driven in with a cart. The things were worth, at a
liberal estimate, one dollar. Davis cut off the rations of the whole
six thousand of us for one day for this. We always imagined that the
proceeds went into his pocket.

A special exchange was arranged between our Navy Department and
that of the Rebels, by which all seamen and marines among us were
exchanged. Lists of these were sent to the different prisons and
the men called for. About three-fourths of them were dead, but many
soldiers divining, the situation of affairs, answered to the dead men’s
names, went away with the squad and were exchanged. Much of this was
through the connivance of the Rebel officers, who favored those who
had ingratiated themselves with them. In many instances money was paid
to secure this privilege, and I have been informed on good authority
that Jack Huckleby, of the Eighth Tennessee, and Ira Beverly, of the
One Hundredth Ohio, who kept the big sutler shop on the North Side at
Andersonville, paid Davis five hundred dollars each to be allowed to go
with the sailors. As for Andrews and me, we had no friends among the
Rebels, nor money to bribe with, so we stood no show.

The rations issued to us for some time after our arrival seemed
riotous luxury to what we had been getting at Andersonville. Each
of us received daily a half-dozen rude and coarse imitations of our
fondly-remembered hard tack, and with these a small piece of meat or a
few spoonfuls of molasses, and a quart or so of vinegar, and several
plugs of tobacco for each “hundred.” How exquisite was the taste of the
crackers and molasses!

It was the first wheat bread I had eaten since my entry into Richmond
--nine months before--and molasses had been a stranger to me for
years. After the corn bread we had so long lived upon, this was manna.
It seems that the Commissary at Savannah labored under the delusion
that he must issue to us the same rations as were served out to
the Rebel soldiers and sailors. It was some little time before the
fearful mistake came to the knowledge of Winder. I fancy that the
news almost threw him into an apoplectic fit. Nothing, save his being
ordered to the front, could have caused him such poignant sorrow as
the information that so much good food had been worse than wasted in
undoing his work by building up the bodies of his hated enemies.

Without being told, we knew that he had been heard from when the
tobacco, vinegar and molasses failed to come in, and the crackers gave
way to corn meal. Still this was a vast improvement on Andersonville,
as the meal was fine and sweet, and we each had a spoonful of salt
issued to us regularly.

I am quite sure that I cannot make the reader who has not had an
experience similar to ours comprehend the wonderful importance to us
of that spoonful of salt. Whether or not the appetite for salt be, as
some scientists claim, a purely artificial want, one thing is certain,
and that is, that either the habit of countless generations or some
other cause, has so deeply ingrained it into our common nature, that
it has come to be nearly as essential as food itself, and no amount of
deprivation can accustom us to its absence. Rather, it seemed that the
longer we did without it the more overpowering became our craving. I
could get along to-day and to-morrow, perhaps the whole week, without
salt in my food, since the lack would be supplied from the excess I
had already swallowed, but at the end of that time Nature would begin
to demand that I renew the supply of saline constituent of my tissues,
and she would become more clamorous with every day that I neglected her
bidding, and finally summon Nausea to aid Longing.

The light artillery of the garrison of Savannah--four batteries,
twenty-four pieces--was stationed around three sides of the prison, the
guns unlimbered, planted at convenient distance, and trained upon us,
ready for instant use. We could see all the grinning mouths through
the cracks in the fence. There were enough of them to send us as high
as the traditional kite flown by Gilderoy. The having at his beck this
array of frowning metal lent Lieutenant Davis such an importance in
his own eyes that his demeanor swelled to the grandiose. It became
very amusing to see him puff up and vaunt over it, as he did on every
possible occasion. For instance, finding a crowd of several hundred
lounging around the gate, he would throw open the wicket, stalk in
with the air of a Jove threatening a rebellious world with the dread
thunders of heaven, and shout:

“W-h-a-a y-e-e! Prisoners, I give you jist two minutes to cleah away
from this gate, aw I’ll open on ye wid de ahtillery!”

One of the buglers of the artillery was a superb musician--evidently
some old “regular” whom the Confederacy had seduced into its service,
and his instrument was so sweet toned that we imagined that it was made
of silver. The calls he played were nearly the same as we used in the
cavalry, and for the first few days we became bitterly homesick every
time he sent ringing out the old familiar signals, that to us were
so closely associated with what now seemed the bright and happy days
when we were in the field with our battalion. If we were only back in
the valleys of Tennessee with what alacrity we would respond to that
“assembly;” no Orderly’s patience would be worn out in getting laggards
and lazy ones to “fall in for roll-call;” how eagerly we would attend
to “stable duty;” how gladly mount our faithful horses and ride away to
“water,” and what bareback races ride, going and coming. We would be
even glad to hear “guard” and “drill” sounded; and there would be music
in the disconsolate “surgeon’s call:”

    “Come-get-your-q-n-i-n-i-n-e; come, get your quinine; It’ll make you
    sad: It’ll make you sick. Come, come.”

O, if we were only back, what admirable soldiers we would be! One
morning, about three or four o’clock, we were awakened by the ground
shaking and a series of heavy, dull thumps sounding oft seaward. Our
silver-voiced bugler seemed to be awakened, too. He set the echoes
ringing with a vigorously played “reveille;” a minute later came an
equally earnest “assembly,” and when “boots and saddles” followed, we
knew that all was not well in Denmark; the thumping and shaking now had
a significance. It meant heavy Yankee guns somewhere near. We heard
the gunners hitching up; the bugle signal “forward,” the wheels roll
off, and for a half hour afterwards we caught the receding sound of
the bugle commanding “right turn,” “left turn,” etc., as the batteries
marched away. Of course, we became considerably wrought up over the
matter, as we fancied that, knowing we were in Savannah, our vessels
were trying to pass up to the City and take it. The thumping and
shaking continued until late in the afternoon.

We subsequently learned that some of our blockaders, finding time
banging heavy upon their hands, had essayed a little diversion by
knocking Forts Jackson and Bledsoe--two small forts defending the
passage of the Savannah--about their defenders’ ears. After capturing
the forts our folks desisted and came no farther.

Quite a number of the old Raider crowd had come with us from
Andersonville. Among these was the shyster, Peter Bradley. They kept up
their old tactics of hanging around the gates, and currying favor with
the Rebels in every possible way, in hopes to get paroles outside or
other favors. The great mass of the prisoners were so bitter against
the Rebels as to feel that they would rather die than ask or accept
a favor from their hands, and they had little else than contempt for
these trucklers. The raider crowd’s favorite theme of conversation
with the Rebels was the strong discontent of the boys with the manner
of their treatment by our Government. The assertion that there was any
such widespread feeling was utterly false. We all had confidence--as we
continue to have to this day--that our Government would do everything
for us possible, consistent with its honor, and the success of military
operations, and outside of the little squad of which I speak, not
an admission could be extracted from anybody that blame could be
attached to any one, except the Rebels. It was regarded as unmanly and
unsoldier-like to the last degree, as well as senseless, to revile our
Government for the crimes committed by its foes.

But the Rebels were led to believe that we were ripe for revolt against
our flag, and to side with them. Imagine, if possible, the stupidity
that would mistake our bitter hatred of those who were our deadly
enemies, for any feeling that would lead us to join hands with those
enemies. One day we were surprised to see the carpenters erect a rude
stand in the center of the camp. When it was finished, Bradley appeared
upon it, in company with some Rebel officers and guards. We gathered
around in curiosity, and Bradley began making a speech.

He said that it had now become apparent to all of us that our
Government had abandoned us; that it cared little or nothing for us,
since it could hire as many more quite readily, by offering a bounty
equal to the pay which would be due us now; that it cost only a few
hundred dollars to bring over a shipload of Irish, “Dutch,” and French,
who were only too glad to agree to fight or do anything else to get
to this country. [The peculiar impudence of this consisted in Bradley
himself being a foreigner, and one who had only come out under one of
the later calls, and the influence of a big bounty.]

Continuing in this strain he repeated and dwelt upon the old lie,
always in the mouths of his crowd, that Secretary Stanton and General
Halleck had positively refused to enter upon negotiations for exchange,
because those in prison were “only a miserable lot of ‘coffee-boilers’
and ‘blackberry pickers,’ whom the Army was better off without.”

The terms “coffee-boiler,” and “blackberry-pickers” were considered
the worst terms of opprobrium we had in prison. They were applied to
that class of stragglers and skulkers, who were only too ready to give
themselves up to the enemy, and who, on coming in, told some gauzy
story about “just having stopped to boil a cup of coffee,” or to do
something else which they should not have done, when they were gobbled
up. It is not risking much to affirm the probability of Bradley and
most of his crowd having belonged to this dishonorable class.

The assertion that either the great Chief-of-Staff or the still greater
War-Secretary were even capable of applying such epithets to the mass
of prisoners is too preposterous to need refutation, or even denial.
No person outside the raider crowd ever gave the silly lie a moment’s
toleration.

Bradley concluded his speech in some such language as this:

“And now, fellow prisoners, I propose to you this: that we unite in
informing our Government that unless we are exchanged in thirty days,
we will be forced by self-preservation to join the Confederate army.”

For an instant his hearers seemed stunned at the fellow’s audacity, and
then there went up such a roar of denunciation and execration that the
air trembled. The Rebels thought that the whole camp was going to rush
on Bradley and tear him to pieces, and they drew revolvers and leveled
muskets to defend him. The uproar only ceased when Bradley was hurried
out of the prisons but for hours everybody was savage and sullen, and
full of threatenings against him, when opportunity served. We never saw
him afterward.

Angry as I was, I could not help being amused at the tempestuous rage
of a tall, fine-looking and well educated Irish Sergeant of an Illinois
regiment. He poured forth denunciations of the traitor and the Rebels,
with the vivid fluency of his Hibernian nature, vowed he’d “give a year
of me life, be J---s, to have the handling of the dirty spalpeen for
ten minutes; be G-d,” and finally in his rage, tore off his own shirt
and threw it on the ground and trampled on it.

Imagine my astonishment, some time after getting out of prison, to find
the Southern papers publishing as a defense against the charges in
regard to Andersonville, the following document, which they claimed to
have been adopted by “a mass meeting of the prisoners:”

“At a mass meeting held September 28th, 1864, by the Federal prisoners
confined at Savannah, Ga., it was unanimously agreed that the following
resolutions be sent to the President of the United States, in the hope
that he might thereby take such steps as in his wisdom he may think
necessary for our speedy exchange or parole:

“Resolved, That while we would declare our unbounded love for the
Union, for the home of our fathers, and for the graves of those
we venerate, we would beg most respectfully that our situation as
prisoners be diligently inquired into, and every obstacle consistent
with the honor and dignity of the Government at once removed.

“Resolved, That while allowing the Confederate authorities all due
praise for the attention paid to prisoners, numbers of our men are
daily consigned to early graves, in the prime of manhood, far from home
and kindred, and this is not caused intentionally by the Confederate
Government, but by force of circumstances; the prisoners are forced to
go without shelter, and, in a great portion of cases, without medicine.

“Resolved, That, whereas, ten thousand of our brave comrades have
descended into an untimely grave within the last six months, and as
we believe their death was caused by the difference of climate, the
peculiar kind and insufficiency of food, and lack of proper medical
treatment; and, whereas, those difficulties still remain, we would
declare as our firm belief, that unless we are speedily exchanged, we
have no alternative but to share the lamentable fate of our comrades.
Must this thing still go on! Is there no hope?

“Resolved, That, whereas, the cold and inclement season of the year is
fast approaching, we hold it to be our duty as soldiers and citizens
of the United States, to inform our Government that the majority of
our prisoners ate without proper clothing, in some cases being almost
naked, and are without blankets to protect us from the scorching sun by
day or the heavy dews by night, and we would most respectfully request
the Government to make some arrangement whereby we can be supplied with
these, to us, necessary articles.

“Resolved, That, whereas, the term of service of many of our comrades
having expired, they, having served truly and faithfully for the
term of their several enlistments, would most respectfully ask their
Government, are they to be forgotten? Are past services to be ignored?
Not having seen their wives and little ones for over three years, they
would most respectfully, but firmly, request the Government to make
some arrangements whereby they can be exchanged or paroled.

“Resolved, That, whereas, in the fortune of war, it was our lot to
become prisoners, we have suffered patiently, and are still willing to
suffer, if by so doing we can benefit the country; but we must most
respectfully beg to say, that we are not willing to suffer to further
the ends of any party or clique to the detriment of our honor, our
families, and our country, and we beg that this affair be explained to
us, that we may continue to hold the Government in that respect which
is necessary to make a good citizen and soldier.

                                   “P. BRADLEY,

                    “Chairman of Committee in behalf of Prisoners.”


In regard to the above I will simply say this, that while I cannot
pretend to know or even much that went on around me, I do not think it
was possible for a mass meeting of prisoners to have been held without
my knowing it, and its essential features. Still less was it possible
for a mass meeting to have been held which would have adopted any such
a document as the above, or anything else that a Rebel would have
found the least pleasure in republishing. The whole thing is a brazen
falsehood.




CHAPTER LV.

WHY WE WERE HURRIED OUT OF ANDERSONVILLE--THE FALL OF ATLANTA
--OUR LONGING TO HEAR THE NEWS--ARRIVAL OF SOME FRESH FISH--HOW WE KNEW
THEY WERE WESTERN BOYS--DIFFERENCE IN THE APPEARANCE OF THE SOLDIERS OF
THE TWO ARMIES.

The reason of our being hurried out of Andersonville under the false
pretext of exchange dawned on us before we had been in Savannah long.
If the reader will consult the map of Georgia he will understand this,
too. Let him remember that several of the railroads which now appear
were not built then. The road upon which Andersonville is situated
was about one hundred and twenty miles long, reaching from Macon to
Americus, Andersonville being about midway between these two. It had
no connections anywhere except at Macon, and it was hundreds of miles
across the country from Andersonville to any other road. When Atlanta
fell it brought our folks to within sixty miles of Macon, and any day
they were liable to make a forward movement, which would capture that
place, and have us where we could be retaken with ease.

There was nothing left undone to rouse the apprehensions of the Rebels
in that direction. The humiliating surrender of General Stoneman
at Macon in July, showed them what our folks were thinking of, and
awakened their minds to the disastrous consequences of such a movement
when executed by a bolder and abler commander. Two days of one of
Kilpatrick’s swift, silent marches would carry his hard-riding troopers
around Hood’s right flank, and into the streets of Macon, where a
half hour’s work with the torch on the bridges across the Ocmulgee
and the creeks that enter it at that point, would have cut all of the
Confederate Army of the Tennessee’s communications. Another day and
night of easy marching would bring his guidons fluttering through the
woods about the Stockade at Andersonville, and give him a reinforcement
of twelve or fifteen thousand able-bodied soldiers, with whom he could
have held the whole Valley of the Chattahoochie, and become the nether
millstone, against which Sherman could have ground Hood’s army to
powder.

Such a thing was not only possible, but very probable, and doubtless
would have occurred had we remained in Andersonville another week.

Hence the haste to get us away, and hence the lie about exchange, for,
had it not been for this, one-quarter at least of those taken on the
cars would have succeeded in getting off and attempted to have reached
Sherman’s lines.

The removal went on with such rapidity that by the end of September
only eight thousand two hundred and eighteen remained at Andersonville,
and these were mostly too sick to be moved; two thousand seven hundred
died in September, fifteen hundred and sixty in October, and four
hundred and eighty-five in November, so that at the beginning of
December there were only thirteen hundred and fifty-nine remaining.
The larger part of those taken out were sent on to Charleston, and
subsequently to Florence and Salisbury. About six or seven thousand of
us, as near as I remember, were brought to Savannah.

                         .......................


We were all exceedingly anxious to know how the Atlanta campaign had
ended. So far our information only comprised the facts that a sharp
battle had been fought, and the result was the complete possession of
our great objective point. The manner of accomplishing this glorious
end, the magnitude of the engagement, the regiments, brigades and
corps participating, the loss on both sides, the completeness of the
victories, etc., were all matters that we knew nothing of, and thirsted
to learn.

The Rebel papers said as little as possible about the capture, and the
facts in that little were so largely diluted with fiction as to convey
no real information. But few new, prisoners were coming in, and none
of these were from Sherman. However, toward the last of September, a
handful of “fresh fish” were turned inside, whom our experienced eyes
instantly told us were Western boys.

There was never any difficulty in telling, as far as he could be
seen, whether a boy belonged to the East or the west. First, no one
from the Army of the Potomac was ever without his corps badge worn
conspicuously; it was rare to see such a thing on one of Sherman’s men.
Then there was a dressy air about the Army of the Potomac that was
wholly wanting in the soldiers serving west of the Alleghanies.

The Army, of the Potomac was always near to its base of supplies,
always had its stores accessible, and the care of the clothing and
equipments of the men was an essential part of its discipline. A ragged
or shabbily dressed man was a rarity. Dress coats, paper collars,
fresh woolen shirts, neat-fitting pantaloons, good comfortable shoes,
and trim caps or hats, with all the blazing brass of company letters
an inch long, regimental number, bugle and eagle, according to the
Regulations, were as common to Eastern boys as they were rare among the
Westerners.

The latter usually wore blouses, instead of dress coats, and as a rule
their clothing had not been renewed since the opening, of the campaign
--and it showed this. Those who wore good boots or shoes generally had
to submit to forcible exchanges by their captors, and the same was true
of head gear. The Rebels were badly off in regard to hats. They did not
have skill and ingenuity enough to make these out of felt or straw, and
the make-shifts they contrived of quilted calico and long-leaved pine,
were ugly enough to frighten horned cattle.

I never blamed them much for wanting to get rid of these, even if they
did have to commit a sort of highway robbery upon defenseless prisoners
to do so. To be a traitor in arms was bad certainly, but one never
appreciated the entire magnitude of the crime until he saw a Rebel
wearing a calico or a pine-leaf hat. Then one felt as if it would be a
great mistake to ever show such a man mercy.

The Army of Northern Virginia seemed to have supplied themselves with
head-gear of Yankee manufacture of previous years, and they then quit
taking the hats of their prisoners. Johnston’s Army did not have such
good luck, and had to keep plundering to the end of the war.

Another thing about the Army of the Potomac was the variety of the
uniforms. There were members of Zouave regiments, wearing baggy
breeches of various hues, gaiters, crimson fezes, and profusely braided
jackets. I have before mentioned the queer garb of the “Lost Ducks.”
(Les Enfants Perdu, Forty-eighth New York.)

One of the most striking uniforms was that of the “Fourteenth
Brooklyn.” They wore scarlet pantaloons, a blue jacket handsomely
braided, and a red fez, with a white cloth wrapped around the head,
turban-fashion. As a large number of them were captured, they formed
quite a picturesque feature of every crowd. They were generally good
fellows and gallant soldiers.

Another uniform that attracted much, though not so favorable, attention
was that of the Third New Jersey Cavalry, or First New Jersey Hussars,
as they preferred to call themselves. The designer of the uniform
must have had an interest in a curcuma plantation, or else he was a
fanatical Orangeman. Each uniform would furnish occasion enough for a
dozen New York riots on the 12th of July. Never was such an eruption
of the yellows seen outside of the jaundiced livery of some Eastern
potentate. Down each leg of the pantaloons ran a stripe of yellow braid
one and one-half inches wide. The jacket had enormous gilt buttons,
and was embellished with yellow braid until it was difficult to tell
whether it was blue cloth trimmed with yellow, or yellow adorned with
blue. From the shoulders swung a little, false hussar jacket, lined
with the same flaring yellow. The vizor-less cap was similarly warmed
up with the hue of the perfected sunflower. Their saffron magnificence
was like the gorgeous gold of the lilies of the field, and Solomon in
all his glory could not have beau arrayed like one of them. I hope he
was not. I want to retain my respect for him. We dubbed these daffodil
cavaliers “Butterflies,” and the name stuck to them like a poor
relation.

Still another distinction that was always noticeable between the two
armies was in the bodily bearing of the men. The Army of the Potomac
was drilled more rigidly than the Western men, and had comparatively
few long marches. Its members had something of the stiffness and
precision of English and German soldiery, while the Western boys had
the long, “reachy” stride, and easy swing that made forty miles a day a
rather commonplace march for an infantry regiment.

This was why we knew the new prisoners to be Sherman’s boys as soon as
they came inside, and we started for them to hear the news. Inviting
them over to our lean-to, we told them our anxiety for the story of the
decisive blow that gave us the Central Gate of the Confederacy, and
asked them to give it to us.




CHAPTER LVI.

WHAT CAUSED THE FALL OF ATLANTA--A DISSERTATION UPON AN IMPORTANT
PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM--THE BATTLE OF JONESBORO--WHY IT WAS FOUGHT
--HOW SHERMAN DECEIVED HOOD--A DESPERATE BAYONET CHARGE, AND THE ONLY
SUCCESSFUL ONE IN THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN--A GALLANT COLONEL AND HOW HE
DIED--THE HEROISM OF SOME ENLISTED MEN--GOING CALMLY INTO CERTAIN DEATH.

An intelligent, quick-eyed, sunburned boy, without an ounce of
surplus flesh on face or limbs, which had been reduced to gray-hound
condition by the labors and anxieties of the months of battling between
Chattanooga and Atlanta, seemed to be the accepted talker of the crowd,
since all the rest looked at him, as if expecting him to answer for
them. He did so:

“You want to know about how we got Atlanta at last, do you? Well, if
you don’t know, I should think you would want to. If I didn’t, I’d want
somebody to tell me all about it just as soon as he could get to me,
for it was one of the neatest little bits of work that ‘old Billy’ and
his boys ever did, and it got away with Hood so bad that he hardly knew
what hurt him.

“Well, first, I’ll tell you that we belong to the old Fourteenth
Ohio Volunteers, which, if you know anything about the Army of the
Cumberland, you’ll remember has just about as good a record as any that
trains around old Pap Thomas--and he don’t ’low no slouches of any kind
near him, either--you can bet $500 to a cent on that, and offer to give
back the cent if you win. Ours is Jim Steedman’s old regiment--you’ve
all heard of old Chickamauga Jim, who slashed his division of 7,000
fresh men into the Rebel flank on the second day at Chickamauga, in a
way that made Longstreet wish he’d staid on the Rappahannock, and never
tried to get up any little sociable with the Westerners. If I do say
it myself, I believe we’ve got as good a crowd of square, stand-up,
trust ’em-every-minute-in-your-life boys, as ever thawed hard-tack and
sowbelly. We got all the grunters and weak sisters fanned out the first
year, and since then we’ve been on a business basis, all the time.
We’re in a mighty good brigade, too. Most of the regiments have been
with us since we formed the first brigade Pap Thomas ever commanded,
and waded with him through the mud of Kentucky, from Wild Cat to Mill
Springs, where he gave Zollicoffer just a little the awfulest thrashing
that a Rebel General ever got. That, you know, was in January, 1862,
and was the first victory gained by the Western Army, and our people
felt so rejoiced over it that--”

“Yes, yes; we’ve read all about that,” we broke in, “and we’d like to
hear it again, some other time; but tell us now about Atlanta.”

“All right. Let’s see: where was I? O, yes, talking about our brigade.
It is the Third Brigade, of the Third Division, of the Fourteenth
Corps, and is made up of the Fourteenth Ohio, Thirty-eighth Ohio, Tenth
Kentucky, and Seventy-fourth Indiana. Our old Colonel--George P. Este
--commands it. We never liked him very well in camp, but I tell you
he’s a whole team in a fight, and he’d do so well there that all would
take to him again, and he’d be real popular for a while.”

“Now, isn’t that strange,” broke in Andrews, who was given to fits of
speculation of psychological phenomena: “None of us yearn to die, but
the surest way to gain the affection of the boys is to show zeal in
leading them into scrapes where the chances of getting shot are the
best. Courage in action, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. I
have known it to make the most unpopular man in the battalion, the most
popular inside of half an hour. Now, M.(addressing himself to me,)
you remember Lieutenant H., of our battalion. You know he was a very
fancy young fellow; wore as snipish’ clothes as the tailor could make,
had gold lace on his jacket wherever the regulations would allow it,
decorated his shoulders with the stunningest pair of shoulder knots I
ever saw, and so on. Well, he did not stay with us long after we went
to the front. He went back on a detail for a court martial, and staid
a good while. When he rejoined us, he was not in good odor, at all,
and the boys weren’t at all careful in saying unpleasant things when
he could hear them, A little while after he came back we made that
reconnaissance up on the Virginia Road. We stirred up the Johnnies with
our skirmish line, and while the firing was going on in front we sat on
our horses in line, waiting for the order to move forward and engage.
You know how solemn such moments are. I looked down the line and saw
Lieutenant H. at the right of Company --, in command of it. I had not
seen him since he came back, and I sung out:

“‘Hello, Lieutenant, how do you feel?’

“The reply came back, promptly, and with boyish cheerfulness:

“‘Bully, by ----; I’m going to lead seventy men of Company into action
today!’

“How his boys did cheer him. When the bugle sounded--‘forward, trot,’
his company sailed in as if they meant it, and swept the Johnnies off
in short meter. You never heard anybody say anything against Lieutenant
after that.”

“You know how it was with Captain G., of our regiment,” said one of
the Fourteenth to another. “He was promoted from Orderly Sergeant to
a Second Lieutenant, and assigned to Company D. All the members of
Company D went to headquarters in a body, and protested against his
being put in their company, and he was not. Well, he behaved so well at
Chickamauga that the boys saw that they had done him a great injustice,
and all those that still lived went again to headquarters, and asked to
take all back that they had said, and to have him put into the company.”

“Well, that was doing the manly thing, sure; but go on about Atlanta.”

“I was telling about our brigade,” resumed the narrator. “Of course, we
think our regiment’s the best by long odds in the army--every fellow
thinks that of his regiment--but next to it come the other regiments of
our brigade. There’s not a cent of discount on any of them.

“Sherman had stretched out his right away to the south and west of
Atlanta. About the middle of August our corps, commanded by Jefferson
C. Davis, was lying in works at Utoy Creek, a couple of miles from
Atlanta. We could see the tall steeples and the high buildings of the
City quite plainly. Things had gone on dull and quiet like for about
ten days. This was longer by a good deal than we had been at rest since
we left Resaca in the Spring. We knew that something was brewing, and
that it must come to a head soon.

“I belong to Company C. Our little mess--now reduced to three by the
loss of two of our best soldiers and cooks, Disbrow and Sulier, killed
behind head-logs in front of Atlanta, by sharpshooters--had one fellow
that we called ‘Observer,’ because he had such a faculty of picking
up news in his prowling around headquarters. He brought us in so much
of this, and it was generally so reliable that we frequently made up
his absence from duty by taking his place. He was never away from a
fight, though. On the night of the 25th of August, ‘Observer’ came in
with the news that something was in the wind. Sherman was getting awful
restless, and we had found out that this always meant lots of trouble
to our friends on the other side.

“Sure enough, orders came to get ready to move, and the next night we
all moved to the right and rear, out of sight of the Johnnies. Our well
built works were left in charge of Garrard’s Cavalry, who concealed
their horses in the rear, and came up and took our places. The whole
army except the Twentieth Corps moved quietly off, and did it so nicely
that we were gone some time before the enemy suspected it. Then the
Twentieth Corps pulled out towards the North, and fell back to the
Chattahoochie, making quite a shove of retreat. The Rebels snapped up
the bait greedily. They thought the siege was being raised, and they
poured over their works to hurry the Twentieth boys off. The Twentieth
fellows let them know that there was lots of sting in them yet, and the
Johnnies were not long in discovering that it would have been money
in their pockets if they had let that ‘moon-and-star’ (that’s the
Twentieth’s badge, you know) crowd alone.

“But the Rebs thought the rest of us were gone for good and that
Atlanta was saved. Naturally they felt mighty happy over it; and
resolved to have a big celebration--a ball, a meeting of jubilee, etc.
Extra trains were run in, with girls and women from the surrounding
country, and they just had a high old time.

“In the meantime we were going through so many different kinds of
tactics that it looked as if Sherman was really crazy this time, sure.
Finally we made a grand left wheel, and then went forward a long way
in line of battle. It puzzled us a good deal, but we knew that Sherman
couldn’t get us into any scrape that Pap Thomas couldn’t get us out of,
and so it was all right.

“Along on the evening of the 31st our right wing seemed to have run
against a hornet’s nest, and we could hear the musketry and cannon
speak out real spiteful, but nothing came down our way. We had struck
the railroad leading south from Atlanta to Macon, and began tearing
it up. The jollity at Atlanta was stopped right in the middle by the
appalling news that the Yankees hadn’t retreated worth a cent, but had
broken out in a new and much worse spot than ever. Then there was no
end of trouble all around, and Hood started part of his army back after
us.

“Part of Hardee’s and Pat Cleburne’s command went into position in
front of us. We left them alone till Stanley could come up on our left,
and swing around, so as to cut off their retreat, when we would bag
every one of them. But Stanley was as slow as he always was, and did
not come up until it was too late, and the game was gone.

“The sun was just going down on the evening of the 1st of September,
when we began to see we were in for it, sure. The Fourteenth Corps
wheeled into position near the railroad, and the sound of musketry and
artillery became very loud and clear on our front and left. We turned
a little and marched straight toward the racket, becoming more excited
every minute. We saw the Carlin’s brigade of regulars, who were some
distance ahead of us, pile knapsacks, form in line, fix bayonets, and
dash off with arousing cheer.

“The Rebel fire beat upon them like a Summer rain-storm, the ground
shook with the noise, and just as we reached the edge of the cotton
field, we saw the remnant of the brigade come flying back out of the
awful, blasting shower of bullets. The whole slope was covered with
dead and wounded.”

“Yes,” interrupts one of the Fourteenth; “and they made that charge
right gamely, too, I can tell you. They were good soldiers, and well
led. When we went over the works, I remember seeing the body of a
little Major of one of the regiments lying right on the top. If he
hadn’t been killed he’d been inside in a half-a-dozen steps more.
There’s no mistake about it; those regulars will fight.”

“When we saw this,” resumed the narrator, “it set our fellows fairly
wild; they became just crying mad; I never saw them so before. The
order came to strip for the charge, and our knapsacks were piled in
half a minute. A Lieutenant of our company, who was then on the staff
of Gen. Baird, our division commander, rode slowly down the line and
gave us our instructions to load our guns, fix bayonets, and hold fire
until we were on top of the Rebel works. Then Colonel Este sang out
clear and steady as a bugle signal:

“‘Brigade, forward! Guide center! MARCH!!’

“And we started. Heavens, how they did let into us, as we came up
into range. They had ten pieces of artillery, and more men behind the
breastworks than we had in line, and the fire they poured on us was
simply withering. We walked across the hundreds of dead and dying of
the regular brigade, and at every step our own men fell down among
them. General Baud’s horse was shot down, and the General thrown far
over his head, but he jumped up and ran alongside of us. Major Wilson,
our regimental commander, fell mortally wounded; Lieutenant Kirk was
killed, and also Captain Stopfard, Adjutant General of the brigade.
Lieutenants Cobb and Mitchell dropped with wounds that proved fatal in
a few days. Captain Ugan lost an arm, one-third of the enlisted men
fell, but we went straight ahead, the grape and the musketry becoming
worse every step, until we gained the edge of the hill, where we were
checked a minute by the brush, which the Rebels had fixed up in the
shape of abattis. Just then a terrible fire from a new direction,
our left, swept down the whole length of our line. The Colonel of
the Seventeenth New York--as gallant a man as ever lived saw the new
trouble, took his regiment in on the run, and relieved us of this, but
he was himself mortally wounded. If our boys were half-crazy before,
they were frantic now, and as we got out of the entanglement of the
brush, we raised a fearful yell and ran at the works. We climbed the
sides, fired right down into the defenders, and then began with the
bayonet and sword. For a few minutes it was simply awful. On both sides
men acted like infuriated devils. They dashed each other’s brains out
with clubbed muskets; bayonets were driven into men’s bodies up to the
muzzle of the gun; officers ran their swords through their opponents,
and revolvers, after being emptied into the faces of the Rebels, were
thrown with desperate force into the ranks. In our regiment was a
stout German butcher named Frank Fleck. He became so excited that he
threw down his sword, and rushed among the Rebels with his bare fists,
knocking down a swath of them. He yelled to the first Rebel he met:

“Py Gott, I’ve no patience mit you,’ and knocked him sprawling. He
caught hold of the commander of the Rebel Brigade, and snatched him
back over the works by main strength. Wonderful to say, he escaped
unhurt, but the boys will probably not soon let him hear the last of,

“Py Gott, I’ve no patience mit you.’

“The Tenth Kentucky, by the queerest luck in the world, was matched
against the Rebel Ninth Kentucky. The commanders of the two regiments
were brothers-in-law, and the men relatives, friends, acquaintances and
schoolmates. They hated each other accordingly, and the fight between
them was more bitter, if possible, than anywhere else on the line. The
Thirty-Eighth Ohio and Seventy-fourth Indiana put in some work that was
just magnificent. We hadn’t time to look at it then, but the dead and
wounded piled up after the fight told the story.

“We gradually forced our way over the works, but the Rebels were game
to the last, and we had to make them surrender almost one at a time.
The artillerymen tried to fire on us when we were so close we could lay
our hands on the guns.

“Finally nearly all in the works surrendered, and were disarmed and
marched back. Just then an aid came dashing up with the information
that we must turn the works, and get ready to receive Hardee, who was
advancing to retake the position. We snatched up some shovels lying
near, and began work. We had no time to remove the dead and dying
Rebels on the works, and the dirt we threw covered them up. It proved
a false alarm. Hardee had as much as he could do to save his own hide,
and the affair ended about dark.

“When we came to count up what we had gained, we found that we had
actually taken more prisoners from behind breastworks than there
were in our brigade when we started the charge. We had made the only
really successful bayonet charge of the campaign. Every other time
since we left Chattanooga the party standing on the defensive had been
successful. Here we had taken strong double lines, with ten guns,
seven battle flags, and over two thousand prisoners. We had lost
terribly--not less than one-third of the brigade, and many of our best
men. Our regiment went into the battle with fifteen officers; nine of
these were killed or wounded, and seven of the nine lost either their
limbs or lives. The Thirty-Eighth Ohio, and the other regiments of the
brigade lost equally heavy. We thought Chickamauga awful, but Jonesboro
discounted it.”

“Do you know,” said another of the Fourteenth, “I heard our Surgeon
telling about how that Colonel Grower, of the Seventeenth New York, who
came in so splendidly on our left, died? They say he was a Wall Street
broker, before the war. He was hit shortly after he led his regiment
in, and after the fight, was carried back to the hospital. While our
Surgeon was going the rounds Colonel Grower called him, and said
quietly, ‘When you get through with the men, come and see me, please.’

“The Doctor would have attended to him then, but Grower wouldn’t let
him. After he got through he went back to Grower, examined his wound,
and told him that he could only live a few hours. Grower received the
news tranquilly, had the Doctor write a letter to his wife, and gave
him his things to send her, and then grasping the Doctor’s hand, he
said:

“Doctor, I’ve just one more favor to ask; will you grant it?’

“The Doctor said, ‘Certainly; what is it?’

“You say I can’t live but a few hours?’

“Yes; that is true.’

“And that I will likely be in great pain!’

“I am sorry to say so.’

“Well, then, do give me morphia enough to put me to sleep, so that I
will wake up only in another world.’

“The Doctor did so; Colonel Grower thanked him; wrung his hand, bade
him good-by, and went to sleep to wake no more.”

“Do you believe in presentiments and superstitions?” said another of
the Fourteenth. There was Fisher Pray, Orderly Sergeant of Company I.
He came from Waterville, O., where his folks are now living. The day
before we started out he had a presentiment that we were going into
a fight, and that he would be killed. He couldn’t shake it off. He
told the Lieutenant, and some of the boys about it, and they tried
to ridicule him out of it, but it was no good. When the sharp firing
broke out in front some of the boys said, ‘Fisher, I do believe you
are right,’ and he nodded his head mournfully. When we were piling
knapsacks for the charge, the Lieutenant, who was a great friend of
Fisher’s, said:

“Fisher, you stay here and guard the knapsacks.’

“Fisher’s face blazed in an instant.

“No, sir,’ said he; I never shirked a fight yet, and I won’t begin now.’

“So he went into the fight, and was killed, as he knew he would be.
Now, that’s what I call nerve.”

“The same thing was true of Sergeant Arthur Tarbox, of Company A,” said
the narrator; “he had a presentiment, too; he knew he was going to be
killed, if he went in, and he was offered an honorable chance to stay
out, but he would not take it, and went in and was killed.”

“Well, we staid there the next day, buried our dead, took care of our
wounded, and gathered up the plunder we had taken from the Johnnies.
The rest of the army went off, ‘hot blocks,’ after Hardee and the
rest of Hood’s army, which it was hoped would be caught outside of
entrenchments. But Hood had too much the start, and got into the works
at Lovejoy, ahead of our fellows. The night before we heard several
very loud explosions up to the north. We guessed what that meant, and
so did the Twentieth Corps, who were lying back at the Chattahoochee,
and the next morning the General commanding--Slocum--sent out a
reconnaissance. It was met by the Mayor of Atlanta, who said that the
Rebels had blown up their stores and retreated. The Twentieth Corps
then came in and took possession of the City, and the next day--the
3d--Sherman came in, and issued an order declaring the campaign at an
end, and that we would rest awhile and refit.

“We laid around Atlanta a good while, and things quieted down so
that it seemed almost like peace, after the four months of continual
fighting we had gone through. We had been under a strain so long that
now we boys went in the other direction, and became too careless, and
that’s how we got picked up. We went out about five miles one night
after a lot of nice smoked hams that a nigger told us were stored in
an old cotton press, and which we knew would be enough sight better
eating for Company C, than the commissary pork we had lived on so long.
We found the cotton press, and the hams, just as the nigger told us,
and we hitched up a team to take them into camp. As we hadn’t seen any
Johnny signs anywhere, we set our guns down to help load the meat, and
just as we all came stringing out to the wagon with as much meat as we
could carry, a company of Ferguson’s Cavalry popped out of the woods
about one hundred yards in front of us and were on top of us before we
could say I scat. You see they’d heard of the meat, too.”




CHAPTER LVII.

A FAIR SACRIFICE--THE STORY OF ONE BOY WHO WILLINGLY GAVE HIS YOUNG
LIFE FOR HIS COUNTRY.

Charley Barbour was one of the truest-hearted and best-liked of my
school-boy chums and friends. For several terms we sat together on
the same uncompromisingly uncomfortable bench, worried over the same
boy-maddening problems in “Ray’s Arithmetic-Part III.,” learned the
same jargon of meaningless rules from “Greene’s Grammar,” pondered over
“Mitchell’s Geography and Atlas,” and tried in vain to understand why
Providence made the surface of one State obtrusively pink and another
ultramarine blue; trod slowly and painfully over the rugged road
“Bullion” points out for beginners in Latin, and began to believe we
should hate ourselves and everybody else, if we were gotten up after
the manner shown by “Cutter’s Physiology.” We were caught together in
the same long series of school-boy scrapes--and were usually ferruled
together by the same strong-armed teacher. We shared nearly everything
--our fun and work; enjoyment and annoyance--all were generally
meted out to us together. We read from the same books the story of
the wonderful world we were going to see in that bright future “when
we were men;” we spent our Saturdays and vacations in the miniature
explorations of the rocky hills and caves, and dark cedar woods around
our homes, to gather ocular helps to a better comprehension of that
magical land which we were convinced began just beyond our horizon, and
had in it, visible to the eye of him who traveled through its enchanted
breadth, all that “Gulliver’s Fables,” the “Arabian Nights,” and a
hundred books of travel and adventure told of.

We imagined that the only dull and commonplace spot on earth was that
where we lived. Everywhere else life was a grand spectacular drama,
full of thrilling effects.

Brave and handsome young men were rescuing distressed damsels,
beautiful as they were wealthy; bloody pirates and swarthy murderers
were being foiled by quaint spoken backwoodsmen, who carried unerring
rifles; gallant but blundering Irishmen, speaking the most delightful
brogue, and making the funniest mistakes, were daily thwarting cool
and determined villains; bold tars were encountering fearful sea
perils; lionhearted adventurers were cowing and quelling whole tribes
of barbarians; magicians were casting spells, misers hoarding gold,
scientists making astonishing discoveries, poor and unknown boys
achieving wealth and fame at a single bound, hidden mysteries coming
to light, and so the world was going on, making reams of history with
each diurnal revolution, and furnishing boundless material for the most
delightful books.

At the age of thirteen a perusal of the lives of Benjamin Franklin and
Horace Greeley precipitated my determination to no longer hesitate in
launching my small bark upon the great ocean. I ran away from home
in a truly romantic way, and placed my foot on what I expected to be
the first round of the ladder of fame, by becoming “devil boy” in a
printing office in a distant large City. Charley’s attachment to his
mother and his home was too strong to permit him to take this step,
and we parted in sorrow, mitigated on my side by roseate dreams of the
future.

Six years passed. One hot August morning I met an old acquaintance
at the Creek, in Andersonville. He told me to come there the next
morning, after roll-call, and he would take me to see some person who
was very anxious to meet me. I was prompt at the rendezvous, and was
soon joined by the other party. He threaded his way slowly for over
half an hour through the closely-jumbled mass of tents and burrows,
and at length stopped in front of a blanket-tent in the northwestern
corner. The occupant rose and took my hand. For an instant I was
puzzled; then the clear, blue eyes, and well-remembered smile recalled
to me my old-time comrade, Charley Barbour. His story was soon told.
He was a Sergeant in a Western Virginia cavalry regiment--the Fourth,
I think. At the time Hunter was making his retreat from the Valley of
Virginia, it was decided to mislead the enemy by sending out a courier
with false dispatches to be captured. There was a call for a volunteer
for this service. Charley was the first to offer, with that spirit of
generous self-sacrifice that was one of his pleasantest traits when
a boy. He knew what he had to expect. Capture meant imprisonment at
Andersonville; our men had now a pretty clear understanding of what
this was. Charley took the dispatches and rode into the enemy’s lines.
He was taken, and the false information produced the desired effect.
On his way to Andersonville he was stripped of all his clothing
but his shirt and pantaloons, and turned into the Stockade in this
condition. When I saw him he had been in a week or more. He told his
story quietly--almost diffidently--not seeming aware that he had done
more than his simple duty. I left him with the promise and expectation
of returning the next day, but when I attempted to find him again, I
was lost in the maze of tents and burrows. I had forgotten to ask the
number of his detachment, and after spending several days in hunting
for him, I was forced to give the search up. He knew as little of my
whereabouts, and though we were all the time within seventeen hundred
feet of each other, neither we nor our common acquaintance could ever
manage to meet again. This will give the reader an idea of the throng
compressed within the narrow limits of the Stockade. After leaving
Andersonville, however, I met this man once more, and learned from him
that Charley had sickened and died within a month after his entrance to
prison.

So ended his day-dream of a career in the busy world.




CHAPTER LVIII.

WE LEAVE SAVANNAH--MORE HOPES OF EXCHANGE--SCENES AT DEPARTURE
--“FLANKERS”--ON THE BACK TRACK TOWARD ANDERSONVILLE--ALARM THEREAT
--AT THE PARTING OF TWO WAYS--WE FINALLY BRING UP AT CAMP LAWTON.

On the evening of the 11th of October there came an order for one
thousand prisoners to fall in and march out, for transfer to some other
point.

Of course, Andrews and I “flanked” into this crowd. That was our
usual way of doing. Holding that the chances were strongly in favor
of every movement of prisoners being to our lines, we never failed
to be numbered in the first squad of prisoners that were sent out.
The seductive mirage of “exchange” was always luring us on. It must
come some time, certainly, and it would be most likely to come to
those who were most earnestly searching for it. At all events, we
should leave no means untried to avail ourselves of whatever seeming
chances there might be. There could be no other motive for this move,
we argued, than exchange. The Confederacy was not likely to be at
the trouble and expense of hauling us about the country without some
good reason--something better than a wish to make us acquainted with
Southern scenery and topography. It would hardly take us away from
Savannah so soon after bringing us there for any other purpose than
delivery to our people.

The Rebels encouraged this belief with direct assertions of its truth.
They framed a plausible lie about there having arisen some difficulty
concerning the admission of our vessels past the harbor defenses of
Savannah, which made it necessary to take us elsewhere--probably to
Charleston--for delivery to our men.

Wishes are always the most powerful allies of belief. There is
little difficulty in convincing a man of that of which he wants to
be convinced. We forgot the lie told us when we were taken from
Andersonville, and believed the one which was told us now.

Andrews and I hastily snatched our worldly possessions--our overcoat,
blanket, can, spoon, chessboard and men, yelled to some of our
neighbors that they could have our hitherto much-treasured house, and
running down to the gate, forced ourselves well up to the front of the
crowd that was being assembled to go out.

The usual scenes accompanying the departure of first squads were being
acted tumultuously. Every one in the camp wanted to be one of the
supposed-to-be-favored few, and if not selected at first, tried to
“flank in”--that is, slip into the place of some one else who had had
better luck. This one naturally resisted displacement, ‘vi et armis,’
and the fights would become so general as to cause a resemblance to the
famed Fair of Donnybrook. The cry would go up:

“Look out for flankers!”

The lines of the selected would dress up compactly, and outsiders
trying to force themselves in would get mercilessly pounded.

We finally got out of the pen, and into the cars, which soon rolled
away to the westward. We were packed in too densely to be able to lie
down. We could hardly sit down. Andrews and I took up our position in
one corner, piled our little treasures under us, and trying to lean
against each other in such a way as to afford mutual support and rest,
dozed fitfully through a long, weary night.

When morning came we found ourselves running northwest through a poor,
pine-barren country that strongly resembled that we had traversed in
coming to Savannah. The more we looked at it the more familiar it
became, and soon there was no doubt we were going back to Andersonville.

By noon we had reached Millen--eighty miles from Savannah, and
fifty-three from Augusta. It was the junction of the road leading to
Macon and that running to Augusta. We halted a little while at the “Y,”
and to us the minutes were full of anxiety. If we turned off to the
left we were going back to Andersonville. If we took the right hand
road we were on the way to Charleston or Richmond, with the chances in
favor of exchange.

At length we started, and, to our joy, our engine took the right hand
track. We stopped again, after a run of five miles, in the midst of one
of the open, scattering forests of long leaved pine that I have before
described. We were ordered out of the cars, and marching a few rods,
came in sight of another of those hateful Stockades, which seemed to
be as natural products of the Sterile sand of that dreary land as its
desolate woods and its breed of boy murderers and gray-headed assassins.

Again our hearts sank, and death seemed more welcome than incarceration
in those gloomy wooden walls. We marched despondently up to the gates
of the Prison, and halted while a party of Rebel clerks made a list of
our names, rank, companies, and regiments. As they were Rebels it was
slow work. Reading and writing never came by nature, as Dogberry would
say, to any man fighting for Secession. As a rule, he took to them as
reluctantly as if, he thought them cunning inventions of the Northern
Abolitionist to perplex and demoralize him. What a half-dozen boys
taken out of our own ranks would have done with ease in an hour or so,
these Rebels worried over all of the afternoon, and then their register
of us was so imperfect, badly written and misspelled, that the Yankee
clerks afterwards detailed for the purpose, never could succeed in
reducing it to intelligibility.

We learned that the place at which we had arrived was Camp Lawton, but
we almost always spoke of it as “Millen,” the same as Camp Sumter is
universally known as Andersonville.

Shortly after dark we were turned inside the Stockade. Being the first
that had entered, there was quite a quantity of wood--the offal from
the timber used in constructing the Stockade--lying on the ground. The
night was chilly one we soon had a number of fires blazing. Green pitch
pine, when burned, gives off a peculiar, pungent odor, which is never
forgotten by one who has once smelled it. I first became acquainted
with it on entering Andersonville, and to this day it is the most
powerful remembrance I can have of the opening of that dreadful Iliad
of woes. On my journey to Washington of late years the locomotives
are invariably fed with pitch pine as we near the Capital, and as the
well-remembered smell reaches me, I grow sick at heart with the flood
of saddening recollections indissolubly associated with it.

As our fires blazed up the clinging, penetrating fumes diffused
themselves everywhere. The night was as cool as the one when we arrived
at Andersonville, the earth, meagerly sodded with sparse, hard,
wiry grass, was the same; the same piney breezes blew in from the
surrounding trees, the same dismal owls hooted at us; the same mournful
whip-poor-will lamented, God knows what, in the gathering twilight.
What we both felt in the gloomy recesses of downcast hearts Andrews
expressed as he turned to me with:

“My God, Mc, this looks like Andersonville all over again.”

A cupful of corn meal was issued to each of us. I hunted up some water.
Andrews made a stiff dough, and spread it about half an inch thick on
the back of our chessboard. He propped this up before the fire, and
when the surface was neatly browned over, slipped it off the board
and turned it over to brown the other side similarly. This done, we
divided it carefully between us, swallowed it in silence, spread our
old overcoat on the ground, tucked chess-board, can, and spoon under
far enough to be out of the reach of thieves, adjusted the thin blanket
so as to get the most possible warmth out of it, crawled in close
together, and went to sleep. This, thank Heaven, we could do; we could
still sleep, and Nature had some opportunity to repair the waste of the
day. We slept, and forgot where we were.




CHAPTER LIX.

OUR NEW QUARTERS AT CAMP LAWTON--BUILDING A HUT--AN EXCEPTIONAL
COMMANDANT--HE IS a GOOD MAN, BUT WILL TAKE BRIBES--RATIONS.

In the morning we took a survey of our new quarters, and found that
we were in a Stockade resembling very much in construction and
dimensions that at Andersonville. The principal difference was that
the upright logs were in their rough state, whereas they were hewed at
Andersonville, and the brook running through the camp was not bordered
by a swamp, but had clean, firm banks.

Our next move was to make the best of the situation. We were divided
into hundreds, each commanded by a Sergeant. Ten hundreds constituted
a division, the head of which was also a Sergeant. I was elected by my
comrades to the Sergeantcy of the Second Hundred of the First Division.
As soon as we were assigned to our ground, we began constructing
shelter. For the first and only time in my prison experience, we found
a full supply of material for this purpose, and the use we made of it
showed how infinitely better we would have fared if in each prison the
Rebels had done even so slight a thing as to bring in a few logs from
the surrounding woods and distribute them to us. A hundred or so of
these would probably have saved thousands of lives at Andersonville and
Florence.

A large tree lay on the ground assigned to our hundred. Andrews and I
took possession of one side of the ten feet nearest the butt. Other
boys occupied the rest in a similar manner. One of our boys had
succeeded in smuggling an ax in with him, and we kept it in constant
use day and night, each group borrowing it for an hour or so at a time.
It was as dull as a hoe, and we were very weak, so that it was slow
work “niggering off”--(as the boys termed it) a cut of the log. It
seemed as if beavers could have gnawed it off easier and more quickly.
We only cut an inch or so at a time, and then passed the ax to the next
users. Making little wedges with a dull knife, we drove them into the
log with clubs, and split off long, thin strips, like the weatherboards
of a house, and by the time we had split off our share of the log in
this slow and laborious way, we had a fine lot of these strips. We were
lucky enough to find four forked sticks, of which we made the corners
of our dwelling, and roofed it carefully with our strips, held in place
by sods torn up from the edge of the creek bank. The sides and ends
were enclosed; we gathered enough pine tops to cover the ground to a
depth of several inches; we banked up the outside, and ditched around
it, and then had the most comfortable abode we had during our prison
career. It was truly a house builded with our own hands, for we had no
tools whatever save the occasional use of the aforementioned dull axe
and equally dull knife.

The rude little hut represented as much actual hard, manual labor as
would be required to build a comfortable little cottage in the North,
but we gladly performed it, as we would have done any other work to
better our condition.

For a while wood was quite plentiful, and we had the luxury daily of
warm fires, which the increasing coolness of the weather made important
accessories to our comfort.

Other prisoners kept coming in. Those we left behind at Savannah
followed us, and the prison there was broken up. Quite a number also
came in from--Andersonville, so that in a little while we had between
six and seven thousand in the Stockade. The last comers found all the
material for tents and all the fuel used up, and consequently did not
fare so well as the earlier arrivals.

The commandant of the prison--one Captain Bowes--was the best of his
class it was my fortune to meet. Compared with the senseless brutality
of Wirz, the reckless deviltry of Davis, or the stupid malignance of
Barrett, at Florence, his administration was mildness and wisdom itself.

He enforced discipline better than any of those named, but has what
they all lacked--executive ability--and he secured results that they
could not possibly attain, and without anything, like the friction that
attended their efforts. I do not remember that any one was shot during
our six weeks’ stay at Millen--a circumstance simply remarkable, since
I do not recall a single week passed anywhere else without at least one
murder by the guards.

One instance will illustrate the difference of his administration
from that of other prison commandants. He came upon the grounds
of our division one morning, accompanied by a pleasant-faced,
intelligent-appearing lad of about fifteen or sixteen. He said to us:

“Gentlemen: (The only instance during our imprisonment when we received
so polite a designation.) This is my son, who will hereafter call your
roll. He will treat you as gentlemen, and I know you will do the same
to him.”

This understanding was observed to the letter on both sides. Young
Bowes invariably spoke civilly to us, and we obeyed his orders with a
prompt cheerfulness that left him nothing to complain of.

The only charge I have to make against Bowes is made more in detail in
another chapter, and that is, that he took money from well prisoners
for giving them the first chance to go through on the Sick Exchange.
How culpable this was I must leave each reader to decide for himself.
I thought it very wrong at the time, but possibly my views might have
been colored highly by my not having any money wherewith to procure my
own inclusion in the happy lot of the exchanged.

Of one thing I am certain: that his acceptance of money to bias his
official action was not singular on his part. I am convinced that every
commandant we had over us--except Wirz--was habitually in the receipt
of bribes from prisoners. I never heard that any one succeeded in
bribing Wirz, and this is the sole good thing I can say of that fellow.
Against this it may be said, however, that he plundered the boys so
effectually on entering the prison as to leave them little of the
wherewithal to bribe anybody.

Davis was probably the most unscrupulous bribe-taker of the lot. He
actually received money for permitting prisoners to escape to our
lines, and got down to as low a figure as one hundred dollars for this
sort of service. I never heard that any of the other commandants went
this far.

The rations issued to us were somewhat better than those of
Andersonville, as the meal was finer and better, though it was
absurdedly insufficient in quantity, and we received no salt. On
several occasions fresh beef was dealt out to us, and each time the
excitement created among those who had not tasted fresh meat for weeks
and months was wonderful. On the first occasion the meat was simply the
heads of the cattle killed for the use of the guards. Several wagon
loads of these were brought in and distributed. We broke them up so
that every man got a piece of the bone, which was boiled and reboiled,
as long as a single bubble of grease would rise to the surface of the
water; every vestige of meat was gnawed and scraped from the surface
and then the bone was charred until it crumbled, when it was eaten.
No one who has not experienced it can imagine the inordinate hunger
for animal food of those who had eaten little else than corn bread
for so long. Our exhausted bodies were perishing for lack of proper
sustenance. Nature indicated fresh beef as the best medium to repair
the great damage already done, and our longing for it became beyond
description.




CHAPTER LX.

THE RAIDERS REAPPEAR ON THE SCENE--THE ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE THOSE WHO
WERE CONCERNED IN THE EXECUTION--A COUPLE OF LIVELY FIGHTS, IN WHICH
THE RAIDERS ARE DEFEATED--HOLDING AN ELECTION.

Our old antagonists--the Raiders--were present in strong force
in Millen. Like ourselves, they had imagined the departure from
Andersonville was for exchange, and their relations to the Rebels were
such that they were all given a chance to go with the first squads. A
number had been allowed to go with the sailors on the Special Naval
Exchange from Savannah, in the place of sailors and marines who had
died. On the way to Charleston a fight had taken place between them
and the real sailors, during which one of their number--a curly-headed
Irishman named Dailey, who was in such high favor with the Rebels that
he was given the place of driving the ration wagon that came in the
North Side at Andersonville --was killed, and thrown under the wheels
of the moving train, which passed over him.

After things began to settle into shape at Millen, they seemed
to believe that they were in such ascendancy as to numbers and
organization that they could put into execution their schemes of
vengeance against those of us who had been active participants in the
execution of their confederates at Andersonville.

After some little preliminaries they settled upon Corporal “Wat” Payne,
of my company, as their first victim. The reader will remember Payne as
one of the two Corporals who pulled the trigger to the scaffold at the
time of the execution.

Payne was a very good man physically, and was yet in fair condition.
The Raiders came up one day with their best man--Pete Donnelly--and
provoked a fight, intending, in the course of it, to kill Payne. We,
who knew Payee, felt reasonably confident of his ability to handle
even so redoubtable a pugilist as Donnelly, and we gathered together a
little squad of our friends to see fair play.

The fight began after the usual amount of bad talk on both sides, and
we were pleased to see our man slowly get the better of the New York
plug-ugly. After several sharp rounds they closed, and still Payne was
ahead, but in an evil moment he spied a pine knot at his feet, which he
thought he could reach, and end the fight by cracking Donnelly’s head
with it. Donnelly took instant advantage of the movement to get it,
threw Payne heavily, and fell upon him. His crowd rushed in to finish
our man by clubbing him over the head. We sailed in to prevent this,
and after a rattling exchange of blows all around, succeeded in getting
Payne away.

The issue of the fight seemed rather against us, however, and the
Raiders were much emboldened. Payne kept close to his crowd after
that, and as we had shown such an entire willingness to stand by him,
the Raiders --with their accustomed prudence when real fighting was
involved--did not attempt to molest him farther, though they talked
very savagely.

A few days after this Sergeant Goody and Corporal Ned Carrigan, both of
our battalion, came in. I must ask the reader to again recall the fact
that Sergeant Goody was one of the six hangmen who put the meal-sacks
over the heads, and the ropes around the necks of the condemned.
Corporal Carrigan was the gigantic prize fighter, who was universally
acknowledged to be the best man physically among the whole thirty-four
thousand in Andersonville. The Raiders knew that Goody had come in
before we of his own battalion did. They resolved to kill him then and
there, and in broad daylight. He had secured in some way a shelter
tent, and was inside of it fixing it up. The Raider crowd, headed by
Pete Donnelly, and Dick Allen, went up to his tent and one of them
called to him:

“Sergeant, come out; I want to see you.”

Goody, supposing it was one of us, came crawling out on his hands and
knees. As he did so their heavy clubs crashed down upon his head.
He was neither killed nor stunned, as they had reason to expect. He
succeeded in rising to his feet, and breaking through the crowd of
assassins. He dashed down the side of the hill, hotly pursued by them.
Coming to the Creek, he leaped it in his excitement, but his pursuers
could not, and were checked. One of our battalion boys, who saw and
comprehended the whole affair, ran over to us, shouting:

“Turn out! turn out, for God’s sake! the Raiders are killing Goody!”

We snatched up our clubs and started after the Raiders, but before we
could reach them, Ned Carrigan, who also comprehended what the trouble
was, had run to the side of Goody, armed with a terrible looking
club. The sight of Ned, and the demonstration that he was thoroughly
aroused, was enough for the Raider crew, and they abandoned the field
hastily. We did not feel ourselves strong enough to follow them on to
their own dung hill, and try conclusions with them, but we determined
to report the matter to the Rebel Commandant, from whom we had reason
to believe we could expect assistance. We were right. He sent in a
squad of guards, arrested Dick Allen, Pete Donnelly, and several other
ringleaders, took them out and put them in the stocks in such a manner
that they were compelled to lie upon their stomachs. A shallow tin
vessel containing water was placed under their faces to furnish them
drink.

They staid there a day and night, and when released, joined the Rebel
Army, entering the artillery company that manned the guns in the fort
covering the prison. I used to imagine with what zeal they would send
us over; a round of shell or grape if they could get anything like an
excuse.

This gave us good riddance--of our dangerous enemies, and we had little
further trouble with any of them.

The depression in the temperature made me very sensible of the
deficiencies in my wardrobe. Unshod feet, a shirt like a fishing net,
and pantaloons as well ventilated as a paling fence might do very well
for the broiling sun at Andersonville and Savannah, but now, with
the thermometer nightly dipping a little nearer the frost line, it
became unpleasantly evident that as garments their office was purely
perfunctory; one might say ornamental simply, if he wanted to be very
sarcastic. They were worn solely to afford convenient quarters for
multitudes of lice, and in deference to the prejudice which has existed
since the Fall of Man against our mingling with our fellow creatures in
the attire provided us by Nature. Had I read Darwin then I should have
expected that my long exposure to the weather would start a fine suit
of fur, in the effort of Nature to adapt, me to my environment. But no
more indications of this appeared than if I had been a hairless dog of
Mexico, suddenly transplanted to more northern latitudes. Providence
did not seem to be in the tempering-the-wind-to-the-shorn-lamb
business, as far as I was concerned. I still retained an almost
unconquerable prejudice against stripping the dead to secure clothes,
and so unless exchange or death came speedily, I was in a bad fix.

One morning about day break, Andrews, who had started to go to another
part of the camp, came slipping back in a state of gleeful excitement.
At first I thought he either had found a tunnel or had heard some good
news about exchange. It was neither. He opened his jacket and handed
me an infantry man’s blouse, which he had found in the main street,
where it had dropped out of some fellow’s bundle. We did not make any
extra exertion to find the owner. Andrews was in sore need of clothes
himself, but my necessities were so much greater that the generous
fellow thought of my wants first. We examined the garment with as much
interest as ever a belle bestowed on a new dress from Worth’s. It was
in fair preservation, but the owner had cut the buttons off to trade to
the guard, doubtless for a few sticks of wood, or a spoonful of salt.
We supplied the place of these with little wooden pins, and I donned
the garment as a shirt and coat and vest, too, for that matter. The
best suit I ever put on never gave me a hundredth part the satisfaction
that this did. Shortly after, I managed to subdue my aversion so far as
to take a good shoe which a one-legged dead man had no farther use for,
and a little later a comrade gave me for the other foot a boot bottom
from which he had cut the top to make a bucket.

                    ...........................

The day of the Presidential election of 1864 approached. The Rebels
were naturally very much interested in the result, as they believed
that the election of McClellan meant compromise and cessation of
hostilities, while the re-election of Lincoln meant prosecution of
the War to the bitter end. The toadying Raiders, who were perpetually
hanging around the gate to get a chance to insinuate themselves into
the favor of the Rebel officers, persuaded them that we were all so
bitterly hostile to our Government for not exchanging us that if we
were allowed to vote we would cast an overwhelming majority in favor of
McClellan.

The Rebels thought that this might perhaps be used to advantage as
political capital for their friends in the North. They gave orders
that we might, if we chose, hold an election on the same day of the
Presidential election. They sent in some ballot boxes, and we elected
Judges of the Election.

About noon of that day Captain Bowes, and a crowd of tightbooted,
broad-hatted Rebel officers, strutted in with the peculiar
“Ef-yer-don’t-b’lieve--I’m-a-butcher-jest-smell-o’-mebutes” swagger
characteristic of the class. They had come in to see us all voting for
McClellan. Instead, they found the polls surrounded with ticket pedlers
shouting:

“Walk right up here now, and get your
Unconditional-Union-Abraham-Lincoln-tickets!”

“Here’s your straight-haired prosecution-of-the-war ticket.”

“Vote the Lincoln ticket; vote to whip the Rebels, and make peace with
them when they’ve laid down their arms.”

“Don’t vote a McClellan ticket and gratify Rebels, everywhere,” etc.

The Rebel officers did not find the scene what their fancy painted it,
and turning around they strutted out.

When the votes came to be counted out there were over seven thousand
for Lincoln, and not half that many hundred for McClellan. The latter
got very few votes outside the Raider crowd. The same day a similar
election was held in Florence, with like result. Of course this did not
indicate that there was any such a preponderance of Republicans among
us. It meant simply that the Democratic boys, little as they might have
liked Lincoln, would have voted for him a hundred times rather than do
anything to please the Rebels.

I never heard that the Rebels sent the result North.




CHAPTER LXI.

THE REBELS FORMALLY PROPOSE TO US TO DESERT TO THEM--CONTUMELIOUS
TREATMENT OF THE PROPOSITION--THEIR RAGE--AN EXCITING TIME--AN OUTBREAK
THREATENED--DIFFICULTIES ATTENDING DESERTION TO THE REBELS.

One day in November, some little time after the occurrences narrated
in the last chapter, orders came in to make out rolls of all those who
were born outside of the United States, and whose terms of service had
expired.

We held a little council among ourselves as to the meaning of this, and
concluded that some partial exchange had been agreed on, and the Rebels
were going to send back the class of boys whom they thought would be
of least value to the Government. Acting on this conclusion the great
majority of us enrolled ourselves as foreigners, and as having served
out our terms. I made out the roll of my hundred, and managed to give
every man a foreign nativity. Those whose names would bear it were
assigned to England, Ireland, Scotland France and Germany, and the
balance were distributed through Canada and the West Indies. After
finishing the roll and sending it out, I did not wonder that the Rebels
believed the battles for the Union were fought by foreign mercenaries.
The other rolls were made out in the same way, and I do not suppose
that they showed five hundred native Americans in the Stockade.

The next day after sending out the rolls, there came an order that all
those whose names appeared thereon should fall in. We did so, promptly,
and as nearly every man in camp was included, we fell in as for other
purposes, by hundreds and thousands. We were then marched outside,
and massed around a stump on which stood a Rebel officer, evidently
waiting to make us a speech. We awaited his remarks with the greatest
impatience, but He did not begin until the last division had marched
out and came to a parade rest close to the stump.

It was the same old story:

“Prisoners, you can no longer have any doubt that your Government has
cruelly abandoned you; it makes no efforts to release you, and refuses
all our offers of exchange. We are anxious to get our men back, and
have made every effort to do so, but it refuses to meet us on any
reasonable grounds. Your Secretary of War has said that the Government
can get along very well without you, and General Halleck has said that
you were nothing but a set of blackberry pickers and coffee boilers
anyhow.

“You’ve already endured much more than it could expect of you; you
served it faithfully during the term you enlisted for, and now, when it
is through with you, it throws you aside to starve and die. You also
can have no doubt that the Southern Confederacy is certain to succeed
in securing its independence. It will do this in a few months. It now
offers you an opportunity to join its service, and if you serve it
faithfully to the end, you will receive the same rewards as the rest of
its soldiers. You will be taken out of here, be well clothed and fed,
given a good bounty, and, at the conclusion of the War receive a land
warrant for a nice farm. If you”--

But we had heard enough. The Sergeant of our division--a man with a
stentorian voice sprang out and shouted:

“Attention, first Division!”

We Sergeants of hundreds repeated the command down the line. Shouted he:

“First Division, about--”

Said we:

“First Hundred, about--”

“Second Hundred, about--”

“Third Hundred, about--”

“Fourth Hundred, about--” etc., etc.

Said he:--

“FACE!!”

Ten Sergeants repeated “Face!” one after the other, and each man in the
hundreds turned on his heel. Then our leader commanded--

“First Division, forward! MARCH!” and we strode back into the Stockade,
followed immediately by all the other divisions, leaving the orator
still standing on the stump.

The Rebels were furious at this curt way of replying. We had scarcely
reached our quarters when they came in with several companies, with
loaded guns and fixed bayonets. They drove us out of our tents and
huts, into one corner, under the pretense of hunting axes and spades,
but in reality to steal our blankets, and whatever else they could find
that they wanted, and to break down and injure our huts, many of which,
costing us days of patient labor, they destroyed in pure wantonness.

We were burning with the bitterest indignation. A tall, slender man
named Lloyd, a member of the Sixty-First Ohio--a rough, uneducated
fellow, but brim full of patriotism and manly common sense, jumped
up on a stump and poured out his soul in rude but fiery eloquence:
“Comrades,” he said, “do not let the blowing of these Rebel whelps
discourage you; pay no attention to the lies they have told you
to-day; you know well that our Government is too honorable and just to
desert any one who serves it; it has not deserted us; their hell-born
Confederacy is not going to succeed. I tell you that as sure as there
is a God who reigns and judges in Israel, before the Spring breezes
stir the tops of these blasted old pines their Confederacy and all the
lousy graybacks who support it will be so deep in hell that nothing
but a search warrant from the throne of God Almighty can ever find it
again. And the glorious old Stars and Stripes--”

Here we began cheering tremendously. A Rebel Captain came running up,
said to the guard, who was leaning on his gun, gazing curiously at
Lloyd:

“What in ---- are you standing gaping there for? Why don’t you shoot
the ---- ---- Yankee son---- --- -----?” and snatching the gun away
from him, cocked and leveled it at Lloyd, but the boys near jerked the
speaker down from the stump and saved his life.

We became fearfully, wrought up. Some of the more excitable shouted
out to charge on the line of guards, snatch they guns away from them,
and force our way through the gate The shouts were taken up by others,
and, as if in obedience to the suggestion, we instinctively formed in
line-of-battle facing the guards. A glance down the line showed me an
array of desperate, tensely drawn faces, such as one sees who looks a
men when they are summoning up all their resolution for some deed of
great peril. The Rebel officers hastily retreated behind the line of
guards, whose faces blanched, but they leveled the muskets and prepared
to receive us.

Captain Bowes, who was overlooking the prison from an elevation
outside, had, however, divined the trouble at the outset, an was
preparing to meet it. The gunners, who had shotted the pieces and
trained them upon us when we came out to listen t the speech, had again
covered us with them, and were ready to sweep the prison with grape
and canister at the instant of command. The long roll was summoning
the infantry regiments back into line, and some of the cooler-headed
among us pointed these facts out and succeeded in getting the line to
dissolve again into groups of muttering, sullen-faced men. When this
was done, the guards marched out, by a cautious indirect maneuver, so
as not to turn their backs to us.

It was believed that we had some among us who would like to avail
themselves of the offer of the Rebels, and that they would try to
inform the Rebels of their desires by going to the gate during
the night and speaking to the Officer-of-the-Guard. A squad armed
themselves with clubs and laid in wait for these. They succeeded in
catching several --snatching some of then back even after they had
told the guard their wishes in a tone so loud that all near could hear
distinctly. The Officer-of-the-Guard rushed in two or three times in a
vain attempt to save the would be deserter from the cruel hands that
clutched him and bore him away to where he had a lesson in loyalty
impressed upon the fleshiest part of his person by a long, flexible
strip of pine wielded by very willing hands.

After this was kept up for several nights different ideas began I to
prevail. It was felt that if a man wanted to join the Rebels, the
best way was to let him go and get rid of him. He was of no benefit
to the Government, and would be of none to the Rebels. After this no
restriction was put upon any one who desired to go outside and take the
oath. But very few did so, however, and these were wholly confined to
the Raider crowd.




CHAPTER LXII.

SERGEANT LEROY L. KEY--HIS ADVENTURES SUBSEQUENT TO THE EXECUTIONS
--HE GOES OUTSIDE AT ANDERSONVILLE ON PAROLE--LABORS IN THE COOK-HOUSE
--ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE--IS RECAPTURED AND TAKEN TO MACON--ESCAPES FROM
THERE, BUT IS COMPELLED TO RETURN--IS FINALLY EXCHANGED AT SAVANNAH.

Leroy L. Key, the heroic Sergeant of Company M, Sixteenth Illinois
Cavalry, who organized and led the Regulators at Andersonville in their
successful conflict with and defeat of the Raiders, and who presided at
the execution of the six condemned men on the 11th of July, furnishes,
at the request of the author, the following story of his prison career
subsequent to that event:

On the 12th day of July, 1864, the day after the hanging of the six
Raiders, by the urgent request of my many friends (of whom you were
one), I sought and obtained from Wirz a parole for myself and the six
brave men who assisted as executioners of those desperados. It seemed
that you were all fearful that we might, after what had been done,
be assassinated if we remained in the Stockade; and that we might be
overpowered, perhaps, by the friends of the Raiders we had hanged, at a
time possibly, when you would not be on hand to give us assistance, and
thus lose our lives for rendering the help we did in getting rid of the
worst pestilence we had to contend with.

On obtaining my parole I was very careful to have it so arranged and
mutually understood, between Wirz and myself, that at any time that my
squad (meaning the survivors of my comrades, with whom I was originally
captured) was sent away from Andersonville, either to be exchanged or
to go to another prison, that I should be allowed to go with them.
This was agreed to, and so written in my parole which I carried until
it absolutely wore out. I took a position in the cook-house, and the
other boys either went to work there, or at the hospital or grave-yard
as occasion required. I worked here, and did the best I could for the
many starving wretches inside, in the way of preparing their food,
until the eighth day of September, at which time, if you remember,
quite a train load of men were removed, as many of us thought, for the
purpose of exchange; but, as we afterwards discovered, to be taken to
another prison. Among the crowd so removed was my squad, or, at least,
a portion of them, being my intimate mess-mates while in the Stockade.
As soon as I found this to be the case I waited on Wirz at his office,
and asked permission to go with them, which he refused, stating that
he was compelled to have men at the cookhouse to cook for those in the
Stockade until they were all gone or exchanged. I reminded him of the
condition in my parole, but this only had the effect of making him
mad, and he threatened me with the stocks if I did not go back and
resume work. I then and there made up my mind to attempt my escape,
considering that the parole had first been broken by the man that
granted it.

On inquiry after my return to the cook-house, I found four other boys
who were also planning an escape, and who were only too glad to get me
to join them and take charge of the affair. Our plans were well laid
and well executed, as the sequel will prove, and in this particular
my own experience in the endeavor to escape from Andersonville is not
entirely dissimilar from yours, though it had different results. I very
much regret that in the attempt I lost my penciled memorandum, in which
it was my habit to chronicle what went on around me daily, and where I
had the names of my brave comrades who made the effort to escape with
me. Unfortunately, I cannot now recall to memory the name of one of
them or remember to what commands they belonged.

I knew that our greatest risk was run in eluding the guards, and that
in the morning we should be compelled to cheat the blood-hounds. The
first we managed to do very well, not without many hairbreadth escapes,
however; but we did succeed in getting through both lines of guards,
and found ourselves in the densest pine forest I ever saw. We traveled,
as nearly as we could judge, due north all night until daylight. From
our fatigue and bruises, and the long hours that had elapsed since 8
o’clock, the time of our starting, we thought we had come not less than
twelve or fifteen miles. Imagine our surprise and mortification, then,
when we could plainly hear the reveille, and almost the Sergeant’s
voice calling the roll, while the answers of “Here!” were perfectly
distinct. We could not possibly have been more than a mile, or a
mile-and-a-half at the farthest, from the Stockade.

Our anxiety and mortification were doubled when at the usual hour--as
we supposed--we heard the well-known and long-familiar sound of the
hunter’s horn, calling his hounds to their accustomed task of making
the circuit of the Stockade, for the purpose of ascertaining whether
or not any “Yankee” had had the audacity to attempt an escape. The
hounds, anticipating, no doubt, this usual daily work, gave forth glad
barks of joy at being thus called forth to duty. We heard them start,
as was usual, from about the railroad depot (as we imagined), but the
sounds growing fainter and fainter gave us a little hope that our trail
had been missed. Only a short time, however, were we allowed this
pleasant reflection, for ere long--it could not have been more than an
hour--we could plainly see that they were drawing nearer and nearer.
They finally appeared so close that I advised the boys to climb a tree
or sapling in order to keep the dogs from biting them, and to be ready
to surrender when the hunters came up, hoping thus to experience as
little misery as possible, and not dreaming but that we were caught.
On, on came the hounds, nearer and nearer still, till we imagined
that we could see the undergrowth in the forest shaking by coming in
contact with their bodies. Plainer and plainer came the sound of the
hunter’s voice urging them forward. Our hearts were in our throats,
and in the terrible excitement we wondered if it could be possible for
Providence to so arrange it that the dogs would pass us. This last
thought, by some strange fancy, had taken possession of me, and I here
frankly acknowledge that I believed it would happen. Why I believed
it, God only knows. My excitement was so great, indeed, that I almost
lost sight of our danger, and felt like shouting to the dogs myself,
while I came near losing my hold on the tree in which I was hidden. By
chance I happened to look around at my nearest neighbor in distress.
His expression was sufficient to quell any enthusiasm I might have had,
and I, too, became despondent. In a very few minutes our suspense was
over. The dogs came within not less than three hundred yards of us,
and we could even see one of them, God in Heaven can only imagine what
great joy was then, brought to our aching hearts, for almost instantly
upon coming into sight, the hounds struck off on a different trail, and
passed us. Their voices became fainter and fainter, until finally we
could hear them no longer. About noon, however, they were called back
and taken to camp, but until that time not one of us left our position
in the trees.

When we were satisfied that we were safe for the present, we descended
to the ground to get what rest we could, in order to be prepared for
the night’s march, having previously agreed to travel at night and
sleep in the day time. “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” etc., were the
first words that escaped my lips, and the first thoughts that came
to my mind as I landed on terra firma. Never before, or since, had I
experienced such a profound reverence for Almighty God, for I firmly
believe that only through some mighty invisible power were we at that
time delivered from untold tortures. Had we been found, we might have
been torn and mutilated by the dogs, or, taken back to Andersonville,
have suffered for days or perhaps weeks in the stocks or chain gang,
as the humor of Wirz might have dictated at the time--either of which
would have been almost certain death.

It was very fortunate for us that before our escape from Andersonville
we were detailed at the cook-house, for by this means we were enabled
to bring away enough food to live for several days without the
necessity of theft. Each one of us had our haversacks full of such
small delicacies as it was possible for us to get when we started,
these consisting of corn bread and fat bacon--nothing less, nothing
more. Yet we managed to subsist comfortably until our fourth day out,
when we happened to come upon a sweet potato patch, the potatos in
which had not been dug. In a very short space of time we were all well
supplied with this article, and lived on them raw during that day and
the next night.

Just at evening, in going through a field, we suddenly came across
three negro men, who at first sight of us showed signs of running,
thinking, as they told us afterward, that we were the “patrols.” After
explaining to them who we were and our condition, they took us to a
very quiet retreat in the woods, and two of them went off, stating
that they would soon be back. In a very short time they returned laden
with well cooked provisions, which not only gave us a good supper, but
supplied us for the next day with all that we wanted. They then guided
us on our way for several miles, and left us, after having refused
compensation for what they had done.

We continued to travel in this way for nine long weary nights, and on
the morning of the tenth day, as we were going into the woods to hide
as usual, a little before daylight, we came to a small pond at which
there was a negro boy watering two mules before hitching them to a cane
mill, it then being cane grinding time in Georgia. He saw us at the
same time we did him, and being frightened put whip to the animals and
ran off. We tried every way to stop him, but it was no use. He had the
start of us. We were very fearful of the consequences of this mishap,
but had no remedy, and being very tired, could do nothing else but go
into the woods, go to sleep and trust to luck.

The next thing I remembered was being punched in the ribs by my comrade
nearest to me, and aroused with the remark, “We are gone up.” On
opening my eyes, I saw four men, in citizens’ dress, each of whom had a
shot gun ready for use. We were ordered to get up. The first question
asked us was:

“Who are you.”

This was spoken in so mild a tone as to lead me to believe that we
might possibly be in the hands of gentlemen, if not indeed in those of
friends. It was some time before any one answered. The boys, by their
looks and the expression of their countenances, seemed to appeal to
me for a reply to get them out of their present dilemma, if possible.
Before I had time to collect my thoughts, we were startled by these
words, coming from the same man that had asked the original question:

“You had better not hesitate, for we have an idea who you are, and
should it prove that we are correct, it will be the worse for you.”

“‘Who do you think we are?’ I inquired.”

“‘Horse thieves and moss-backs,’ was the reply.”

I jumped at the conclusion instantly that in order to save our lives,
we had better at once own the truth. In a very few words I told them
who we were, where we were from, how long we had been on the road,
etc. At this they withdrew a short distance from us for consultation,
leaving us for the time in terrible suspense as to what our fate might
be. Soon, how ever, they returned and informed us that they would
be compelled to take us to the County Jail, to await further orders
from the Military Commander of the District. While they were talking
together, I took a hasty inventory of what valuables we had on hand.
I found in the crowd four silver watches, about three hundred dollars
in Confederate money, and possibly, about one hundred dollars in
greenbacks. Before their return, I told the boys to be sure not to
refuse any request I should make. Said I:

“‘Gentlemen, we have here four silver watches and several hundred
dollars in Confederate money and greenbacks, all of which we now offer
you, if you will but allow us to proceed on our journey, we taking our
own chances in the future.’”

This proposition, to my great surprise, was refused. I thought then
that possibly I had been a little indiscreet in exposing our valuables,
but in this I was mistaken, for we had, indeed, fallen into the hands
of gentlemen, whose zeal for the Lost Cause was greater than that for
obtaining worldly wealth, and who not only refused the bribe, but took
us to a well-furnished and well-supplied farm house close by, gave us
an excellent breakfast, allowing us to sit at the table in a beautiful
dining-room, with a lady at the head, filled our haversacks with good,
wholesome food, and allowed us to keep our property, with an admonition
to be careful how we showed it again. We were then put into a wagon and
taken to Hamilton, a small town, the county seat of Hamilton County,
Georgia, and placed in jail, where we remained for two days and nights
--fearing, always, that the jail would be burned over our heads, as we
heard frequent threats of that nature, by the mob on the streets. But
the same kind Providence that had heretofore watched over us, seemed
not to have deserted us in this trouble.

One of the days we were confined at this place was Sunday, and some
kind-hearted lady or ladies (I only wish I knew their names, as well
as those of the gentlemen who had us first in charge, so that I could
chronicle them with honor here) taking compassion upon our forlorn
condition, sent us a splendid dinner on a very large china platter.
Whether it was done intentionally or not, we never learned, but it was
a fact, however, that there was not a knife, fork or spoon upon the
dish, and no table to set it upon. It was placed on the floor, around
which we soon gathered, and, with grateful hearts, we “got away” with
it all, in an incredibly short space of time, while many men and boys
looked on, enjoying our ludicrous attitudes and manners.

From here we were taken to Columbus, Ga., and again placed in jail,
and in the charge of Confederate soldiers. We could easily see that we
were gradually getting into hot water again, and that, ere many days,
we would have to resume our old habits in prison. Our only hope now
was that we would not be returned to Andersonville, knowing well that
if we got back into the clutches of Wirz our chances for life would be
slim indeed. From Columbus we were sent by rail to Macon, where we were
placed in a prison somewhat similar to Andersonville, but of nothing
like its pretensions to security. I soon learned that it was only used
as a kind of reception place for the prisoners who were captured in
small squads, and when they numbered two or three hundred, they would
be shipped to Andersonville, or some other place of greater dimensions
and strength. What became of the other boys who were with me, after
we got to Macon, I do not know, for I lost sight of them there. The
very next day after our arrival, there were shipped to Andersonville
from this prison between two and three hundred men. I was called on
to go with the crowd, but having had a sufficient experience of the
hospitality of that hotel, I concluded to play “old soldier,” so I
became too sick to travel. In this way I escaped being sent off four
different times.

Meanwhile, quite a large number of commissioned officers had been
sent up from Charleston to be exchanged at Rough and Ready. With them
were about forty more than the cartel called for, and they were left
at Macon for ten days or two weeks. Among these officers were several
of my acquaintance, one being Lieut. Huntly of our regiment (I am not
quite sure that I am right in the name of this officer, but I think I
am), through whose influence I was allowed to go outside with them on
parole. It was while enjoying this parole that I got more familiarly
acquainted with Captain Hurtell, or Hurtrell, who was in command of the
prison at Macon, and to his honor, I here assert, that he was the only
gentleman and the only officer that had the least humane feeling in his
breast, who ever had charge of me while a prisoner of war after we were
taken out of the hands of our original captors at Jonesville, Va.

It now became very evident that the Rebels were moving the prisoners
from Andersonville and elsewhere, so as to place them beyond the reach
of Sherman and Stoneman. At my present place of confinement the fear
of our recapture had also taken possession of the Rebel authorities,
so the prisoners were sent off in much smaller squads than formerly,
frequently not more than ten or fifteen in a gang, whereas, before,
they never thought of dispatching less than two or three hundred
together. I acknowledge that I began to get very uneasy, fearful that
the “old soldier” dodge would not be much longer successful, and I
would be forced back to my old haunts. It so happened, however, that I
managed to make it serve me, by getting detailed in the prison hospital
as nurse, so that I was enabled to play another “dodge” upon the Rebel
officers. At first, when the Sergeant would come around to find out who
were able to walk, with assistance, to the depot, I was shaking with
a chill, which, according to my representation, had not abated in the
least for several hours. My teeth were actually chattering at the time,
for I had learned how to make them do so. I was passed. The next day
the orders for removal were more stringent than had yet been issued,
stating that all who could stand it to be removed on stretchers must
go. I concluded at once that I was gone, so as soon as I learned how
matters were, I got out from under my dirty blanket, stood up and found
I was able to walk, to my great astonishment, of course. An officer
came early in the morning to muster us into ranks preparatory for
removal. I fell in with the rest. We were marched out and around to the
gate of the prison.

Now, it so happened that just as we neared the gate of the prison,
the prisoners were being marched from the Stockade. The officer in
charge of us--we numbering possibly about ten--undertook to place us
at the head of the column coming out, but the guard in charge of that
squad refused to let him do so. We were then ordered to stand at one
side with no guard over us but the officer who had brought us from the
Hospital.

Taking this in at a glance, I concluded that now was my chance to make
my second attempt to escape. I stepped behind the gate office (a small
frame building with only one room), which was not more than six feet
from me, and as luck (or Providence) would have it, the negro man whose
duty it was, as I knew, to wait on and take care of this office, and
who had taken quite a liking for me, was standing at the back door. I
winked at him and threw him my blanket and the cup, at the same time
telling him in a whisper to hide them away for me until he heard from
me again. With a grin and a nod, he accepted the trust, and I started
down along the walls of the Stockade alone. In order to make this
more plain, and to show what a risk I was running at the time, I will
state that between the Stockade and a brick wall, fully as high as the
Stockade fence that was parallel with it, throughout its entire length
on that side, there was a space of not more than thirty feet. On the
outside of this Stockade was a platform, built for the guards to walk
on, sufficiently clear the top to allow them to look inside with ease,
and on this side, on the platform, were three guards. I had traveled
about fifty feet only, from the gate office, when I heard the command
to “Halt!” I did so, of course.

“Where are you going, you d---d Yank?” said the guard.

“Going after my clothes, that are over there in the wash,” pointing to
a small cabin just beyond the Stockade, where I happened to know that
the officers had their washing done.

“Oh, yes,” said he; “you are one of the Yank’s that’s been on, parole,
are you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, hurry up, or you will get left.”

The other guards heard this conversation and thinking it all right I
was allowed to pass without further trouble. I went to the cabin in
question--for I saw the last guard on the line watching me, and boldly
entered. I made a clear statement to the woman in charge of it about
how I had made my escape, and asked her to secrete me in the house
until night. I was soon convinced, however, from what she told me,
as well as from my own knowledge of how things were managed in the
Confederacy, that it would not be right for me to stay there, for if
the house was searched and I found in it, it would be the worse for
her. Therefore, not wishing to entail misery upon another, I begged her
to give me something to eat, and going to the swamp near by, succeeded
in getting well without detection.

I lay there all day, and during the time had a very severe chill and
afterwards a burning fever, so that when night came, knowing I could
not travel, I resolved to return to the cabin and spend the night, and
give myself up the next morning. There was no trouble in returning. I
learned that my fears of the morning had not been groundless, for the
guards had actually searched the house for me. The woman told them
that I had got my clothes and left the house shortly after my entrance
(which was the truth except the part about the clothes), I thanked
her very kindly and begged to be allowed to stay in the cabin till
morning, when I would present myself at Captain H.’s office and suffer
the consequences. This she allowed me to do. I shall ever feel grateful
to this woman for her protection. She was white and her given name was
“Sallie,” but the other I have forgotten.

About daylight I strolled over near the office and looked around there
until I saw the Captain take his seat at his desk. I stepped into the
door as soon as I saw that he was not occupied and saluted him “a la
militaire.”

“Who are you?” he asked; “you look like a Yank.”

“Yes, sir,” said I, “I am called by that name since I was captured in
the Federal Army.”

“Well, what are you doing here, and what is your name?”

I told him.

“Why didn’t you answer to your name when it was called at the gate
yesterday, sir?”

“I never heard anyone call my name. Where were you?”

“I ran away down into the swamp.”

“Were you re-captured and brought back?”

“No, sir, I came back of my own accord.”

“What do you mean by this evasion?”

“I am not trying to evade, sir, or I might not have been here now. The
truth is, Captain, I have been in many prisons since my capture, and
have been treated very badly in all of them, until I came here.”

“I then explained to him freely my escape from Andersonville, and my
subsequent re-capture, how it was that I had played ‘old soldier’ etc.”

“Now,” said I, “Captain, as long as I am a prisoner of war, I wish to
stay with you, or under your command. This is my reason for running
away yesterday, when I felt confident that if I did not do so I would
be returned under Wirz’s command, and, if I had been so returned, I
would have killed myself rather than submit to the untold tortures
which he would have put me to, for having the audacity to attempt an
escape from him.”

The Captain’s attention was here called to some other matters in hand,
and I was sent back into the Stockade with a command very pleasantly
given, that I should stay there until ordered out, which I very
gratefully promised to do, and did. This was the last chance I ever
had to talk to Captain Hurtrell, to my great sorrow, for I had really
formed a liking for the man, notwithstanding the fact that he was a
Rebel, and a commander of prisoners.

The next day we all had to leave Macon. Whether we were able or not,
the order was imperative. Great was my joy when I learned that we were
on the way to Savannah and not to Andersonville. We traveled over the
same road, so well described in one of your articles on Andersonville,
and arrived in Savannah sometime in the afternoon of the 21st day of
November, 1864. Our squad was placed in some barracks and confined
there until the next day. I was sick at the time, so sick in fact,
that I could hardly hold my head up. Soon after, we were taken to the
Florida depot, as they told us, to be shipped to some prison in those
dismal swamps. I came near fainting when this was told to us, for I was
confident that I could not survive another siege of prison life, if it
was anything to compare to-what I had already suffered. When we arrived
at the depot, it was raining. The officer in charge of us wanted to
know what train to put us on, for there were two, if not three, trains
waiting orders to start. He was told to march us on to a certain flat
car, near by, but before giving the order he demanded a receipt for us,
which the train officer refused. We were accordingly taken back to our
quarters, which proved to be a most fortunate circumstance.

On the 23d day of November, to our great relief, we were called upon to
sign a parole preparatory to being sent down the river on the flat-boat
to our exchange ships, then lying in the harbor. When I say we, I mean
those of us that had recently come from Macon, and a few others, who
had also been fortunate in reaching Savannah in small squads. The other
poor fellows, who had already been loaded on the trains, were taken
away to Florida, and many of them never lived to return. On the 24th
those of us who had been paroled were taken on board our ships, and
were once more safely housed under that great, glorious and beautiful
Star Spangled Banner. Long may she wave.




CHAPTER LXIII.

DREARY WEATHER--THE COLD RAINS DISTRESS ALL AND KILL HUNDREDS--EXCHANGE
OF TEN THOUSAND SICK--CAPTAIN BOWES TURNS A PRETTY, BUT NOT VERY
HONEST, PENNY.

As November wore away long-continued, chill, searching rains desolated
our days and nights. The great, cold drops pelted down slowly,
dismally, and incessantly. Each seemed to beat through our emaciated
frames against the very marrow of our bones, and to be battering its
way remorselessly into the citadel of life, like the cruel drops that
fell from the basin of the inquisitors upon the firmly-fastened head of
their victim, until his reason fled, and the death-agony cramped his
heart to stillness.

The lagging, leaden hours were inexpressibly dreary. Compared with
many others, we were quite comfortable, as our hut protected us from
the actual beating of the rain upon our bodies; but we were much more
miserable than under the sweltering heat of Andersonville, as we lay
almost naked upon our bed of pine leaves, shivering in the raw, rasping
air, and looked out over acres of wretches lying dumbly on the sodden
sand, receiving the benumbing drench of the sullen skies without a
groan or a motion.

It was enough to kill healthy, vigorous men, active and resolute,
with bodies well-nourished and well clothed, and with minds vivacious
and hopeful, to stand these day-and-night-long solid drenchings. No
one can imagine how fatal it was to boys whose vitality was sapped by
long months in Andersonville, by coarse, meager, changeless food, by
groveling on the bare earth, and by hopelessness as to any improvement
of condition.

Fever, rheumatism, throat and lung diseases and despair now came
to complete the work begun by scurvy, dysentery and gangrene, in
Andersonville.

Hundreds, weary of the long struggle, and of hoping against hope, laid
themselves down and yielded to their fate. In the six weeks that we
were at Millen, one man in every ten died. The ghostly pines there sigh
over the unnoted graves of seven hundred boys, for whom life’s morning
closed in the gloomiest shadows. As many as would form a splendid
regiment--as many as constitute the first born of a populous City--more
than three times as many as were slain outright on our side in the
bloody battle of Franklin, succumbed to this new hardship. The country
for which they died does not even have a record of their names. They
were simply blotted out of existence; they became as though they had
never been.

About the middle of the month the Rebels yielded to the importunities
of our Government so far as to agree to exchange ten thousand sick.
The Rebel Surgeons took praiseworthy care that our Government should
profit as little as possible by this, by sending every hopeless case,
every man whose lease of life was not likely to extend much beyond his
reaching the parole boat. If he once reached our receiving officers it
was all that was necessary; he counted to them as much as if he had
been a Goliath. A very large portion of those sent through died on the
way to our lines, or within a few hours after their transports at being
once more under the old Stars and Stripes had moderated.

The sending of the sick through gave our commandant--Captain Bowes--a
fine opportunity to fill his pockets, by conniving at the passage
of well men. There was still considerable money in the hands of a
few prisoners. All this, and more, too, were they willing to give
for their lives. In the first batch that went away were two of the
leading sutlers at Andersonville, who had accumulated perhaps one
thousand dollars each by their shrewd and successful bartering. It was
generally believed that they gave every cent to Bowes for the privilege
of leaving. I know nothing of the truth of this, but I am reasonably
certain that they paid him very handsomely.

Soon we heard that one hundred and fifty dollars each had been
sufficient to buy some men out; then one hundred, seventy-five, fifty,
thirty, twenty, ten, and at last five dollars. Whether the upright
Bowes drew the line at the latter figure, and refused to sell his honor
for less than the ruling rates of a street-walker’s virtue, I know not.
It was the lowest quotation that came to my knowledge, but he may have
gone cheaper. I have always observed that when men or women begin to
traffic in themselves, their price falls as rapidly as that of a piece
of tainted meat in hot weather. If one could buy them at the rate they
wind up with, and sell them at their first price, there would be room
for an enormous profit.

The cheapest I ever knew a Rebel officer to be bought was some weeks
after this at Florence. The sick exchange was still going on. I have
before spoken of the Rebel passion for bright gilt buttons. It used
to be a proverbial comment upon the small treasons that were of daily
occurrence on both sides, that you could buy the soul of a mean man
in our crowd for a pint of corn meal, and the soul of a Rebel guard
for a half dozen brass buttons. A boy of the Fifth-fourth Ohio,
whose home was at or near Lima, O., wore a blue vest, with the gilt,
bright-trimmed buttons of a staff officer. The Rebel Surgeon who was
examining the sick for exchange saw the buttons and admired them very
much. The boy stepped back, borrowed a knife from a comrade, cut the
buttons off, and handed them to the Doctor.

“All right, sir,” said he as his itching palm closed over the coveted
ornaments; “you can pass,” and pass he did to home and friends.

Captain Bowes’s merchandizing in the matter of exchange was as open as
the issuing of rations. His agent in conducting the bargaining was a
Raider--a New York gambler and stool-pigeon--whom we called “Mattie.”
He dealt quite fairly, for several times when the exchange was
interrupted, Bowes sent the money back to those who had paid him, and
received it again when the exchange was renewed.

Had it been possible to buy our way out for five cents each Andrews and
I would have had to stay back, since we had not had that much money for
months, and all our friends were in an equally bad plight. Like almost
everybody else we had spent the few dollars we happened to have on
entering prison, in a week or so, and since then we had been entirely
penniless.

There was no hope left for us but to try to pass the Surgeons as
desperately sick, and we expended our energies in simulating this
condition. Rheumatism was our forte, and I flatter myself we got up
two cases that were apparently bad enough to serve as illustrations
for a patent medicine advertisement. But it would not do. Bad as we
made our condition appear, there were so many more who were infinitely
worse, that we stood no show in the competitive examination. I doubt
if we would have been given an average of “50” in a report. We had to
stand back, and see about one quarter of our number march out and away
home. We could not complain at this--much as we wanted to go ourselves,
since there could be no question that these poor fellows deserved
the precedence. We did grumble savagely, however, at Captain Bowes’s
venality, in selling out chances to moneyed men, since these were
invariably those who were best prepared to withstand the hardships of
imprisonment, as they were mostly new men, and all had good clothes and
blankets. We did not blame the men, however, since it was not in human
nature to resist an opportunity to get away--at any cost-from that
accursed place. “All that a man hath he will give for his life,” and I
think that if I had owned the City of New York in fee simple, I would
have given it away willingly, rather than stand in prison another month.

The sutlers, to whom I have alluded above, had accumulated sufficient
to supply themselves with all the necessaries and some of the comforts
of life, during any probable term of imprisonment, and still have a
snug amount left, but they, would rather give it all up and return to
service with their regiments in the field, than take the chances of any
longer continuance in prison.

I can only surmise how much Bowes realized out of the prisoners by his
venality, but I feel sure that it could not have been less than three
thousand dollars, and I would not be astonished to learn that it was
ten thousand dollars in green.




CHAPTER LXIV.

ANOTHER REMOVAL--SHERMAN’S ADVANCE SCARES THE REBELS INTO RUNNING
US AWAY FROM MILLEN--WE ARE TAKEN TO SAVANNAH, AND THENCE DOWN THE
ATLANTIC & GULF ROAD TO BLACKSHEAR

One night, toward the last of November, there was a general alarm
around the prison. A gun was fired from the Fort, the long-roll was
beaten in the various camps of the guards, and the regiments answered
by getting under arms in haste, and forming near the prison gates.

The reason for this, which we did not learn until weeks later, was that
Sherman, who had cut loose from Atlanta and started on his famous March
to the Sea, had taken such a course as rendered it probable that Millen
was one of his objective points. It was, therefore, necessary that we
should be hurried away with all possible speed. As we had had no news
from Sherman since the end of the Atlanta campaign, and were ignorant
of his having begun his great raid, we were at an utter loss to account
for the commotion among our keepers.

About 3 o’clock in the morning the Rebel Sergeants, who called the
roll, came in and ordered us to turn out immediately and get ready to
move.

The morning was one of the most cheerless I ever knew. A cold rain
poured relentlessly down upon us half-naked, shivering wretches, as
we groped around in the darkness for our pitiful little belongings of
rags and cooking utensils, and huddled together in groups, urged on
continually by the curses and abuse of the Rebel officers sent in to
get us ready to move.

Though roused at 3 o’clock, the cars were not ready to receive us till
nearly noon. In the meantime we stood in ranks--numb, trembling, and
heart-sick. The guards around us crouched over fires, and shielded
themselves as best they could with blankets and bits of tent cloth. We
had nothing to build fires with, and were not allowed to approach those
of the guards.

Around us everywhere was the dull, cold, gray, hopeless desolation of
the approach of minter. The hard, wiry grass that thinly covered the
once and sand, the occasional stunted weeds, and the sparse foliage
of the gnarled and dwarfish undergrowth, all were parched brown and
sere by the fiery heat of the long Summer, and now rattled drearily
under the pitiless, cold rain, streaming from lowering clouds that
seemed to have floated down to us from the cheerless summit of some
great iceberg; the tall, naked pines moaned and shivered; dead, sapless
leaves fell wearily to the sodden earth, like withered hopes drifting
down to deepen some Slough of Despond.

Scores of our crowd found this the culmination of their misery. They
laid down upon the ground and yielded to death as s welcome relief, and
we left them lying there unburied when we moved to the cars.

As we passed through the Rebel camp at dawn, on our way to the cars,
Andrews and I noticed a nest of four large, bright, new tin pans--a
rare thing in the Confederacy at that time. We managed to snatch them
without the guard’s attention being attracted, and in an instant had
them wrapped up in our blanket. But the blanket was full of holes, and
in spite of all our efforts, it would slip at the most inconvenient
times, so as to show a broad glare of the bright metal, just when it
seemed it could not help attracting the attention of the guards or
their officers. A dozen times at least we were on the imminent brink of
detection, but we finally got our treasures safely to the cars, and sat
down upon them.

The cars were open flats. The rain still beat down unrelentingly.
Andrews and I huddled ourselves together so as to make our bodies
afford as much heat as possible, pulled our faithful old overcoat
around us as far as it would go, and endured the inclemency as best we
could.

Our train headed back to Savannah, and again our hearts warmed up with
hopes of exchange. It seemed as if there could be no other purpose of
taking us out of a prison so recently established and at such cost as
Millen.

As we approached the coast the rain ceased, but a piercing cold wind
set in, that threatened to convert our soaked rags into icicles.

Very many died on the way. When we arrived at Savannah almost, if
not quite, every car had upon it one whom hunger no longer gnawed
or disease wasted; whom cold had pinched for the last time, and for
whom the golden portals of the Beyond had opened for an exchange that
neither Davis nor his despicable tool, Winder, could control.

We did not sentimentalize over these. We could not mourn; the thousands
that we had seen pass away made that emotion hackneyed and wearisome;
with the death of some friend and comrade as regularly an event of each
day as roll call and drawing rations, the sentiment of grief had become
nearly obsolete. We were not hardened; we had simply come to look upon
death as commonplace and ordinary. To have had no one dead or dying
around us would have been regarded as singular.

Besides, why should we feel any regret at the passing away of those
whose condition would probably be bettered thereby! It was difficult
to see where we who still lived were any better off than they who were
gone before and now “forever at peace, each in his windowless palace
of rest.” If imprisonment was to continue only another month, we would
rather be with them.

Arriving at Savannah, we were ordered off the cars. A squad from each
car carried the dead to a designated spot, and land them in a row,
composing their limbs as well as possible, but giving no other funeral
rites, not even making a record of their names and regiments. Negro
laborers came along afterwards, with carts, took the bodies to some
vacant ground, and sunk them out of sight in the sand.

We were given a few crackers each--the same rude imitation of “hard
tack” that had been served out to us when we arrived at Savannah
the first time, and then were marched over and put upon a train on
the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad, running from Savannah along the sea
coast towards Florida. What this meant we had little conception, but
hope, which sprang eternal in the prisoner’s breast, whispered that
perhaps it was exchange; that there was some difficulty about our
vessels coming to Savannah, and we were being taken to some other more
convenient sea port; probably to Florida, to deliver us to our folks
there. We satisfied ourselves that we were running along the sea coast
by tasting the water in the streams we crossed, whenever we could get
an opportunity to dip up some. As long as the water tasted salty we
knew we were near the sea, and hope burned brightly.

The truth was--as we afterwards learned--the Rebels were terribly
puzzled what to do with us. We were brought to Savannah, but that did
not solve the problem; and we were sent down the Atlantic & Gulf road
as a temporary expedient.

The railroad was the worst of the many bad ones which it was my
fortune to ride upon in my excursions while a guest of the Southern
Confederacy. It had run down until it had nearly reached the worn-out
condition of that Western road, of which an employee of a rival route
once said, “that all there was left of it now was two streaks of rust
and the right of way.” As it was one of the non-essential roads to the
Southern Confederacy, it was stripped of the best of its rolling-stock
and machinery to supply the other more important lines.

I have before mentioned the scarcity of grease in the South, and the
difficulty of supplying the railroads with lubricants. Apparently there
had been no oil on the Atlantic & Gulf since the beginning of the war,
and the screeches of the dry axles revolving in the worn-out boxes were
agonizing. Some thing would break on the cars or blow out on the engine
every few miles, necessitating a long stop for repairs. Then there was
no supply of fuel along the line. When the engine ran out of wood it
would halt, and a couple of negros riding on the tender would assail
a panel of fence or a fallen tree with their axes, and after an hour
or such matter of hard chopping, would pile sufficient wood upon the
tender to enable us to renew our journey.

Frequently the engine stopped as if from sheer fatigue or inanition.
The Rebel officers tried to get us to assist it up the grade by
dismounting and pushing behind. We respectfully, but firmly, declined.
We were gentlemen of leisure, we said, and decidedly averse to manual
labor; we had been invited on this excursion by Mr. Jeff. Davis and his
friends, who set themselves up as our entertainers, and it would be a
gross breach of hospitality to reflect upon our hosts by working our
passage. If this was insisted upon, we should certainly not visit them
again. Besides, it made no difference to us whether the train got along
or not. We were not losing anything by the delay; we were not anxious
to go anywhere. One part of the Southern Confederacy was just as good
as another to us. So not a finger could they persuade any of us to
raise to help along the journey.

The country we were traversing was sterile and poor--worse even than
that in the neighborhood of Andersonville. Farms and farmhouses were
scarce, and of towns there were none. Not even a collection of houses
big enough to justify a blacksmith shop or a store appeared along the
whole route. But few fields of any kind were seen, and nowhere was
there a farm which gave evidence of a determined effort on the part of
its occupants to till the soil and to improve their condition.

When the train stopped for wood, or for repairs, or from exhaustion,
we were allowed to descend from the cars and stretch our numbed limbs.
It did us good in other ways, too. It seemed almost happiness to be
outside of those cursed Stockades, to rest our eyes by looking away
through the woods, and seeing birds and animals that were free. They
must be happy, because to us to be free once more was the summit of
earthly happiness.

There was a chance, too, to pick up something green to eat, and we
were famishing for this. The scurvy still lingered in our systems,
and we were hungry for an antidote. A plant grew rather plentifully
along the track that looked very much as I imagine a palm leaf fan
does in its green state. The leaf was not so large as an ordinary palm
leaf fan, and came directly out of the ground. The natives called
it “bull-grass,” but anything more unlike grass I never saw, so we
rejected that nomenclature, and dubbed them “green fans.” They were
very hard to pull up, it being usually as much as the strongest of us
could do to draw them out of the ground. When pulled up there was found
the smallest bit of a stock--not as much as a joint of one’s little
finger--that was eatable. It had no particular taste, and probably
little nutriment, still it was fresh and green, and we strained our
weak muscles and enfeebled sinews at every opportunity, endeavoring to
pull up a “green fan.”

At one place where we stopped there was a makeshift of a garden, one of
those sorry “truck patches,” which do poor duty about Southern cabins
for the kitchen gardens of the Northern, farmers, and produce a few
coarse cow peas, a scanty lot of collards (a coarse kind of cabbage,
with a stalk about a yard long) and some onions to vary the usual
side-meat and corn pone, diet of the Georgia “cracker.” Scanning the
patch’s ruins of vine and stalk, Andrews espied a handful of onions,
which had; remained ungathered. They tempted him as the apple did Eve.
Without stopping to communicate his intention to me, he sprang from
the car, snatched the onions from their bed, pulled up, half a dozen
collard stalks and was on his way back before the guard could make
up his mind to fire upon him. The swiftness of his motions saved his
life, for had he been more deliberate the guard would have concluded he
was trying to, escape, and shot him down. As it was he was returning
back before the guard could get his gun up. The onions he had, secured
were to us more delicious than wine upon the lees. They seemed to find
their way into every fiber of our bodies, and invigorate every organ.
The collard stalks he had snatched up, in the expectation of finding
in them something resembling the nutritious “heart” that we remembered
as children, seeking and, finding in the stalks of cabbage. But we
were disappointed. The stalks were as dry and rotten as the bones of
Southern, society. Even hunger could find no meat in them.

After some days of this leisurely journeying toward the South, we
halted permanently about eighty-six miles from Savannah. There was
no reason why we should stop there more than any place else where we
had been or were likely to go. It seemed as if the Rebels had simply
tired of hauling us, and dumped us, off. We had another lot of dead,
accumulated since we left Savannah, and the scenes at that place were
repeated.

The train returned for another load of prisoners.




CHAPTER LXV.

BLACKSHEAR AND PIERCE COUNTRY--WE TAKE UP NEW QUARTERS, BUT ARE CALLED
OUT FOR EXCHANGE--EXCITEMENT OVER SIGNING THE PAROLE--A HAPPY JOURNEY
TO SAVANNAH--GRIEVOUS DISAPPOINTMENT

We were informed that the place we were at was Blackshear, and that it
was the Court House, i. e., the County seat of Pierce County. Where
they kept the Court House, or County seat, is beyond conjecture to
me, since I could not see a half dozen houses in the whole clearing,
and not one of them was a respectable dwelling, taking even so low a
standard for respectable dwellings as that afforded by the majority of
Georgia houses.

Pierce County, as I have since learned by the census report, is one
of the poorest Counties of a poor section of a very poor State. A
population of less than two thousand is thinly scattered over its five
hundred square miles of territory, and gain a meager subsistence by a
weak simulation of cultivating patches of its sandy dunes and plains in
“nubbin” corn and dropsical sweet potatos. A few “razor-back” hogs --a
species so gaunt and thin that I heard a man once declare that he had
stopped a lot belonging to a neighbor from crawling through the cracks
of a tight board fence by simply tying a knot in their tails--roam the
woods, and supply all the meat used.

Andrews used to insist that some of the hogs which we saw were so thin
that the connection between their fore and hindquarters was only a
single thickness of skin, with hair on both sides--but then Andrews
sometimes seemed to me to have a tendency to exaggerate.

The swine certainly did have proportions that strongly resembled those
of the animals which children cut out of cardboard. They were like the
geometrical definition of a superfice--all length and breadth, and no
thickness. A ham from them would look like a palm-leaf fan.

I never ceased to marvel at the delicate adjustment of the development
of animal life to the soil in these lean sections of Georgia. The poor
land would not maintain anything but lank, lazy men, with few wants,
and none but lank, lazy men, with few wants, sought a maintenance from
it. I may have tangled up cause and effect, in this proposition, but if
so, the reader can disentangle them at his leisure.

I was not astonished to learn that it took five hundred square miles of
Pierce County land to maintain two thousand “crackers,” even as poorly
as they lived. I should want fully that much of it to support one
fair-sized Northern family as it should be.

After leaving the cars we were marched off into the pine woods, by the
side of a considerable stream, and told that this was to be our camp. A
heavy guard was placed around us, and a number of pieces of artillery
mounted where they would command the camp.

We started in to make ourselves comfortable, as at Millen, by building
shanties. The prisoners we left behind followed us, and we soon had
our old crowd of five or six thousand, who had been our companions at
Savannah and Millers, again with us. The place looked very favorable
for escape. We knew we were still near the sea coast--really not more
than forty miles away--and we felt that if we could once get there we
should be safe. Andrews and I meditated plans of escape, and toiled
away at our cabin.

About a week after our arrival we were startled by an order for the one
thousand of us who had first arrived to get ready to move out. In a few
minutes we were taken outside the guard line, massed close together,
and informed in a few words by a Rebel officer that we were about to be
taken back to Savannah for exchange.

The announcement took away our breath. For an instant the rush of
emotion made us speechless, and when utterance returned, the first use
we made of it was to join in one simultaneous outburst of acclamation.
Those inside the guard line, understanding what our cheer meant,
answered us with a loud shout of congratulation--the first real,
genuine, hearty cheering that had been done since receiving the
announcement of the exchange at Andersonville, three months before.

As soon as the excitement had subsided somewhat, the Rebel proceeded to
explain that we would all be required to sign a parole. This set us to
thinking. After our scornful rejection of the proposition to enlist in
the Rebel army, the Rebels had felt around among us considerably as to
how we were disposed toward taking what was called the “Non-Combatant’s
Oath;” that is, the swearing not to take up arms against the Southern
Confederacy again during the war. To the most of us this seemed only a
little less dishonorable than joining the Rebel army. We held that our
oaths to our own Government placed us at its disposal until it chose to
discharge us, and we could not make any engagements with its enemies
that might come in contravention of that duty. In short, it looked very
much like desertion, and this we did not feel at liberty to consider.

There were still many among us, who, feeling certain that they could
not survive imprisonment much longer, were disposed to look favorably
upon the Non-Combatant’s Oath, thinking that the circumstances of
the case would justify their apparent dereliction from duty. Whether
it would or not I must leave to more skilled casuists than myself to
decide. It was a matter I believed every man must settle with his own
conscience. The opinion that I then held and expressed was, that if a
boy, felt that he was hopelessly sick, and that he could not live if he
remained in prison, he was justified in taking the Oath. In the absence
of our own Surgeons he would have to decide for himself whether he was
sick enough to be warranted in resorting to this means of saving his
life. If he was in as good health as the majority of us were, with a
reasonable prospect of surviving some weeks longer, there was no excuse
for taking the Oath, for in that few weeks we might be exchanged, be
recaptured, or make our escape. I think this was the general opinion of
the prisoners.

While the Rebel was talking about our signing the parole, there flashed
upon all of us at the same moment, a suspicion that this was a trap to
delude us into signing the Non-Combatant’s Oath. Instantly there went
up a general shout:

“Read the parole to us.”

The Rebel was handed a blank parole by a companion, and he read over
the printed condition at the top, which was that those signing agreed
not to bear arms against the Confederates in the field, or in garrison,
not to man any works, assist in any expedition, do any sort of guard
duty, serve in any military constabulary, or perform any kind of
military service until properly exchanged.

For a minute this was satisfactory; then their ingrained distrust of
any thing a Rebel said or did returned, and they shouted:

“No, no; let some of us read it; let Ilinoy’ read it--”

The Rebel looked around in a puzzled manner.

“Who the h--l is ‘Illinoy!’ Where is he?” said he.

I saluted and said:

“That’s a nickname they give me.”

“Very well,” said he, “get up on this stump and read this parole to
these d---d fools that won’t believe me.”

I mounted the stump, took the blank from his hand and read it over
slowly, giving as much emphasis as possible to the all-important clause
at the end--“until properly exchanged.” I then said:

“Boys, this seems all right to me,” and they answered, with almost one
voice:

“Yes, that’s all right. We’ll sign that.”

I was never so proud of the American soldier-boy as at that moment.
They all felt that signing that paper was to give them freedom and
life. They knew too well from sad experience what the alternative was.
Many felt that unless released another week would see them in their
graves. All knew that every day’s stay in Rebel hands greatly lessened
their chances of life. Yet in all that thousand there was not one
voice in favor of yielding a tittle of honor to save life. They would
secure their freedom honorably, or die faithfully. Remember that this
was a miscellaneous crowd of boys, gathered from all sections of the
country, and from many of whom no exalted conceptions of duty and honor
were expected. I wish some one would point out to me, on the brightest
pages of knightly record, some deed of fealty and truth that equals the
simple fidelity of these unknown heros. I do not think that one of them
felt that he was doing anything especially meritorious. He only obeyed
the natural promptings of his loyal heart.

The business of signing the paroles was then begun in earnest. We
were separated into squads according to the first letters of our
names, all those whose name began with A being placed in one squad,
those beginning with B, in another, and so on. Blank paroles for each
letter were spread out on boxes and planks at different places, and
the signing went on under the superintendence of a Rebel Sergeant and
one of the prisoners. The squad of M’s selected me to superintend the
signing for us, and I stood by to direct the boys, and sign for the
very few who could not write. After this was done we fell into ranks
again, called the roll of the signers, and carefully compared the
number of men with the number of signatures so that nobody should pass
unparoled. The oath was then administered to us, and two day’s rations
of corn meal and fresh beef were issued.

This formality removed the last lingering doubt that we had of the
exchange being a reality, and we gave way to the happiest emotions. We
cheered ourselves hoarse, and the fellows still inside followed our
example, as they expected that they would share our good fortune in a
day or two.

Our next performance was to set to work, cook our two days’ rations at
once and eat them. This was not very difficult, as the whole supply
for two days would hardly make one square meal. That done, many of the
boys went to the guard line and threw their blankets, clothing, cooking
utensils, etc., to their comrades who were still inside. No one thought
they would have any further use for such things.

“To-morrow, at this time, thank Heaven,” said a boy near me, as he
tossed his blanket and overcoat back to some one inside, “we’ll be in
God’s country, and then I wouldn’t touch them d---d lousy old rags with
a ten-foot pole.”

One of the boys in the M squad was a Maine infantryman, who had been
with me in the Pemberton building, in Richmond, and had fashioned
himself a little square pan out of a tin plate of a tobacco press, such
as I have described in an earlier chapter. He had carried it with him
ever since, and it was his sole vessel for all purposes--for cooking,
carrying water, drawing rations, etc. He had cherished it as if it were
a farm or a good situation. But now, as he turned away from signing
his name to the parole, he looked at his faithful servant for a minute
in undisguised contempt; on the eve of restoration to happier, better
things, it was a reminder of all the petty, inglorious contemptible
trials and sorrows he had endured; he actually loathed it for its
remembrances, and flinging it upon the ground he crushed it out of
all shape and usefulness with his feet, trampling upon it as he would
everything connected with his prison life. Months afterward I had to
lend this man my little can to cook his rations in.

Andrews and I flung the bright new tin pans we had stolen at Millen
inside the line, to be scrambled for. It was hard to tell who were the
most surprised at their appearance--the Rebels or our own boys--for
few had any idea that there were such things in the whole Confederacy,
and certainly none looked for them in the possession of two such
poverty-stricken specimens as we were. We thought it best to retain
possession of our little can, spoon, chess-board, blanket, and overcoat.

As we marched down and boarded the train, the Rebels confirmed their
previous action by taking all the guards from around us. Only some
eight or ten were sent to the train, and these quartered themselves in
the caboose, and paid us no further attention.

The train rolled away amid cheering by ourselves and those we left
behind. One thousand happier boys than we never started on a journey.
We were going home. That was enough to wreathe the skies with glory,
and fill the world with sweetness and light. The wintry sun had
something of geniality and warmth, the landscape lost some of its
repulsiveness, the dreary palmettos had less of that hideousness which
made us regard them as very fitting emblems of treason. We even began
to feel a little good-humored contempt for our hateful little Brats of
guards, and to reflect how much vicious education and surroundings were
to be held responsible for their misdeeds.

We laughed and sang as we rolled along toward Savannah--going back much
faster than the came. We re-told old stories, and repeated old jokes,
that had become wearisome months and months ago, but were now freshened
up and given their olden pith by the joyousness of the occasion. We
revived and talked over old schemes gotten up in the earlier days
of prison life, of what “we would do when we got out,” but almost
forgotten since, in the general uncertainty of ever getting out. We
exchanged addresses, and promised faithfully to write to each other and
tell how we found everything at home.

So the afternoon and night passed. We were too excited to sleep, and
passed the hours watching the scenery, recalling the objects we had
passed on the way to Blackshear, and guessing how near we were to
Savannah.

Though we were running along within fifteen or twenty miles of the
coast, with all our guards asleep in the caboose, no one thought of
escape. We could step off the cars and walk over to the seashore as
easily as a man steps out of his door and walks to a neighboring town,
but why should we? Were we not going directly to our vessels in the
harbor of Savannah, and was it not better to do this, than to take the
chances of escaping, and encounter the difficulties of reaching our
blockaders! We thought so, and we staid on the cars.

A cold, gray Winter morning was just breaking as we reached Savannah.
Our train ran down in the City, and then whistled sharply and ran back
a mile or so; it repeated this maneuver two or three times, the evident
design being to keep us on the cars until the people were ready to
receive us. Finally our engine ran with all the speed she was capable
of, and as the train dashed into the street we found ourselves between
two heavy lines of guards with bayonets fixed.

The whole sickening reality was made apparent by one glance at the
guard line. Our parole was a mockery, its only object being to get us
to Savannah as easily as possible, and to prevent benefit from our
recapture to any of Sherman’s Raiders, who might make a dash for the
railroad while we were in transit. There had been no intention of
exchanging us. There was no exchange going on at Savannah.

After all, I do not think we felt the disappointment as keenly as the
first time we were brought to Savannah. Imprisonment had stupefied us;
we were duller and more hopeless.

Ordered down out of the cars, we were formed in line in the street.

Said a Rebel officer:

“Now, any of you fellahs that ah too sick to go to Chahlston, step
fohwahd one pace.”

We looked at each other an instant, and then the whole line stepped
forward. We all felt too sick to go to Charleston, or to do anything
else in the world.




CHAPTER LXVI.

SPECIMEN CONVERSATION WITH AN AVERAGE NATIVE GEORGIAN--WE LEARN THAT
SHERMAN IS HEADING FOR SAVANNAH--THE RESERVES GET A LITTLE SETTLING
DOWN.

As the train left the northern suburbs of Savannah we came upon a scene
of busy activity, strongly contrasting with the somnolent lethargy that
seemed to be the normal condition of the City and its inhabitants.
Long lines of earthworks were being constructed, gangs of negros were
felling trees, building forts and batteries, making abatis, and toiling
with numbers of huge guns which were being moved out and placed in
position.

As we had had no new prisoners nor any papers for some weeks--the
papers being doubtless designedly kept away from us--we were at a loss
to know what this meant. We could not understand this erection of
fortifications on that side, because, knowing as we did how well the
flanks of the City were protected by the Savannah and Ogeeche Rivers,
we could not see how a force from the coast--whence we supposed an
attack must come, could hope to reach the City’s rear, especially as we
had just come up on the right flank of the City, and saw no sign of our
folks in that direction.

Our train stopped for a few minutes at the edge of this line of works,
and an old citizen who had been surveying the scene with senile
interest, tottered over to our car to take a look at us. He was a type
of the old man of the South of the scanty middle class, the small
farmer. Long white hair and beard, spectacles with great round, staring
glasses, a broad-brimmed hat of ante-Revolutionary pattern, clothes
that had apparently descended to him from some ancestor who had come
over with Oglethorpe, and a two-handed staff with a head of buckhorn,
upon which he leaned as old peasants do in plays, formed such an image
as recalled to me the picture of the old man in the illustrations in
“The Dairyman’s Daughter.” He was as garrulous as a magpie, and as
opinionated as a Southern white always is. Halting in front of our car,
he steadied himself by planting his staff, clasping it with both lean
and skinny hands, and leaning forward upon it, his jaws then addressed
themselves to motion thus:

“Boys, who mout these be that ye got?”

One of the Guards:--“O, these is some Yanks that we’ve bin hivin’ down
at Camp Sumter.”

“Yes?” (with an upward inflection of the voice, followed by a close
scrutiny of us through the goggle-eyed glasses,) “Wall, they’re a
powerful ornary lookin’ lot, I’ll declah.”

It will be seen that the old, gentleman’s perceptive powers were much
more highly developed than his politeness.

“Well, they ain’t what ye mout call purty, that’s a fack,” said the
guard.

“So yer Yanks, air ye?” said the venerable Goober-Grabber, (the
nick-name in the South for Georgians), directing his conversation to
me. “Wall, I’m powerful glad to see ye, an’ ’specially whar ye can’t do
no harm; I’ve wanted to see some Yankees ever sence the beginnin’ of
the wah, but hev never had no chance. Whah did ye cum from?”

I seemed called upon to answer, and said: “I came from Illinois; most
of the boys in this car are from Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and
Iowa.”

“’Deed! All Westerners, air ye? Wall, do ye know I alluz liked the
Westerners a heap sight better than them blue-bellied New England
Yankees.”

No discussion with a Rebel ever proceeded very far without his making
an assertion like this. It was a favorite declaration of theirs, but
its absurdity was comical, when one remembered that the majority of
them could not for their lives tell the names of the New England
States, and could no more distinguish a Downeaster from an Illinoisan
than they could tell a Saxon from a Bavarian. One day, while I was
holding a conversation similar to the above with an old man on guard,
another guard, who had been stationed near a squad made up of Germans,
that talked altogether in the language of the Fatherland, broke in with:

“Out there by post numbah foahteen, where I wuz yesterday, there’s a
lot of Yanks who jest jabbered away all the hull time, and I hope I may
never see the back of my neck ef I could understand ary word they said,
Are them the regular blue-belly kind?”

The old gentleman entered upon the next stage of the invariable routine
of discussion with a Rebel:

“Wall, what air you’uns down heah, a-fightin’ we’uns foh?”

As I had answered this question several hundred times, I had found the
most extinguishing reply to be to ask in return:

“What are you’uns coming up into our country to fight we’uns for?”

Disdaining to notice this return in kind, the old man passed on to the
next stage:

“What are you’uns takin’ ouah niggahs away from us foh?”

Now, if negros had been as cheap as oreoide watches, it is doubtful
whether the speaker had ever had money enough in his possession at one
time to buy one, and yet he talked of taking away “ouah niggahs,” as if
they were as plenty about his place as hills of corn. As a rule, the
more abjectly poor a Southerner was, the more readily he worked himself
into a rage over the idea of “takin’ away ouah niggahs.”

I replied in burlesque of his assumption of ownership:

“What are you coming up North to burn my rolling mills and rob my
comrade here’s bank, and plunder my brother’s store, and burn down my
uncle’s factories?”

No reply, to this counter thrust. The old man passed to the third
inevitable proposition:

“What air you’uns puttin’ ouah niggahs in the field to fight we’uns
foh?”

Then the whole car-load shouted back at him at once:

“What are you’uns putting blood-hounds on our trails to hunt us down,
for?”

Old Man--(savagely), “Waal, ye don’t think ye kin ever lick us;
leastways sich fellers as ye air?”

Myself--“Well, we warmed it to you pretty lively until you caught us.
There were none of us but what were doing about as good work as any
stock you fellows could turn out. No Rebels in our neighborhood had
much to brag on. We are not a drop in the bucket, either. There’s
millions more better men than we are where we came from, and they are
all determined to stamp out your miserable Confederacy. You’ve got
to come to it, sooner or later; you must knock under, sure as white
blossoms make little apples. You’d better make up your mind to it.”

Old Man--“No, sah, nevah. Ye nevah kin conquer us! We’re the bravest
people and the best fighters on airth. Ye nevah kin whip any people
that’s a fightin’ fur their liberty an’ their right; an’ ye nevah can
whip the South, sah, any way. We’ll fight ye until all the men air
killed, and then the wimmen’ll fight ye, sah.”

Myself--“Well, you may think so, or you may not. From the way our boys
are snatching the Confederacy’s real estate away, it begins to look as
if you’d not have enough to fight anybody on pretty soon. What’s the
meaning of all this fortifying?”

Old Man--“Why, don’t you know? Our folks are fixin’ up a place foh Bill
Sherman to butt his brains out gain’.”

“Bill Sherman!” we all shouted in surprise: “Why he ain’t within two
hundred miles of this place, is he?”

Old Man--“Yes, but he is, tho’. He thinks he’s played a sharp Yankee
trick on Hood. He found out he couldn’t lick him in a squar’ fight,
nohow; he’d tried that on too often; so he just sneaked ’round behind
him, and made a break for the center of the State, where he thought
there was lots of good stealin’ to be done. But we’ll show him. We’ll
soon hev him just whar we want him, an’ we’ll learn him how to go
traipesin’ ’round the country, stealin’ nigahs, burnin’ cotton, an’
runnin’ off folkses’ beef critters. He sees now the scrape he’s got
into, an’ he’s tryin’ to get to the coast, whar the gun-boats’ll help
’im out. But he’ll nevah git thar, sah; no sah, nevah. He’s mouty nigh
the end of his rope, sah, and we’ll purty’ soon hev him jist whar you
fellows air, sah.”

Myself--“Well, if you fellows intended stopping him, why didn’t you do
it up about Atlanta? What did you let him come clear through the State,
burning and stealing, as you say? It was money in your pockets to head
him off as soon as possible.”

Old Man--“Oh, we didn’t set nothing afore him up thar except Joe
Brown’s Pets, these sorry little Reserves; they’re powerful little
account; no stand-up to’em at all; they’d break their necks runnin’
away ef ye so much as bust a cap near to ’em.”

Our guards, who belonged to these Reserves, instantly felt that the
conversation had progressed farther than was profitable and one of them
spoke up roughly:

“See heah, old man, you must go off; I can’t hev ye talkin’ to these
prisoners; hits agin my awdahs. Go ’way now!”

The old fellow moved off, but as he did he flung this Parthian arrow:

“When Sherman gits down deep, he’ll find somethin’ different from the
little snots of Reserves he ran over up about Milledgeville; he’ll find
he’s got to fight real soldiers.”

We could not help enjoying the rage of the guards, over the low
estimate placed upon the fighting ability of themselves and comrades,
and as they raved, around about what they would do if they were only
given an opportunity to go into a line of battle against Sherman, we
added fuel to the flames of their anger by confiding to each other that
we always “knew that little Brats whose highest ambition was to murder
a defenseless prisoner, could be nothing else than cowards end skulkers
in the field.”

“Yaas--sonnies,” said Charlie Burroughs, of the Third Michigan, in
that nasal Yankee drawl, that he always assumed, when he wanted to say
anything very cutting; “you--trundle--bed--soldiers--who’ve never--seen
--a--real--wild--Yankee--don’t--know--how--different--they--are--from
--the kind--that--are--starved--down--to tameness. They’re--jest--as
--different--as--a--lion in--a--menagerie--is--from--his--brother--in
--the woods--who--has--a--nigger--every day--for-dinner. You--fellows
--will--go--into--a--circus--tent--and--throw--tobacco--quids in--the
--face--of--the--lion--in--the--cage--when--you--haven’t--spunk enough
--to--look--a woodchuck--in--the--eye--if--you--met--him--alone. It’s
--lots--o’--fun--to you--to--shoot--down--a--sick--and--starving-man
--in--the--Stockade, but--when--you--see--a--Yank with--a--gun--in--his
--hand--your--livers get--so--white--that--chalk--would--make--a--black
--mark--on--’em.”

A little later, a paper, which some one had gotten hold of, in some
mysterious manner, was secretly passed to me. I read it as I could find
opportunity, and communicated its contents to the rest of the boys.
The most important of these was a flaming proclamation by Governor Joe
Brown, setting forth that General Sherman was now traversing the State,
committing all sorts of depredations; that he had prepared the way for
his own destruction, and the Governor called upon all good citizens to
rise en masse, and assist in crushing the audacious invader. Bridges
must be burned before and behind him, roads obstructed, and every inch
of soil resolutely disputed.

We enjoyed this. It showed that the Rebels were terribly alarmed, and
we began to feel some of that confidence that “Sherman will come out
all right,” which so marvelously animated all under his command.




CHAPTER LXVII.

OFF TO CHARLESTON--PASSING THROUGH THE RICE SWAMPS--TWO EXTREMES OF
SOCIETY--ENTRY INTO CHARLESTON--LEISURELY WARFARE--SHELLING THE CITY AT
REGULAR INTERVALS--WE CAMP IN A MASS OF RUINS--DEPARTURE FOR FLORENCE.

The train started in a few minutes after the close of the conversation
with the old Georgian, and we soon came to and crossed the Savannah
River into South Carolina. The river was wide and apparently deep; the
tide was setting back in a swift, muddy current; the crazy old bridge
creaked and shook, and the grinding axles shrieked in the dry journals,
as we pulled across. It looked very much at times as if we were to all
crash down into the turbid flood--and we did not care very much if we
did, if we were not going to be exchanged.

The road lay through the tide swamp region of South Carolina, a
peculiar and interesting country. Though swamps and fens stretched in
all directions as far as the eye could reach, the landscape was more
grateful to the eye than the famine-stricken, pine-barrens of Georgia,
which had become wearisome to the sight. The soil where it appeared,
was rich, vegetation was luxuriant; great clumps of laurel showed
glossy richness in the greenness of its verdure, that reminded us of
the fresh color of the vegetation of our Northern homes, so different
from the parched and impoverished look of Georgian foliage. Immense
flocks of wild fowl fluttered around us; the Georgian woods were almost
destitute of living creatures; the evergreen live-oak, with its queer
festoons of Spanish moss, and the ugly and useless palmettos gave
novelty and interest to the view.

The rice swamps through which we were passing were the princely
possessions of the few nabobs who before the war stood at the head
of South Carolina aristocracy--they were South Carolina, in fact, as
absolutely as Louis XIV. was France. In their hands--but a few score
in number--was concentrated about all there was of South Carolina
education, wealth, culture, and breeding. They represented a pinchbeck
imitation of that regime in France which was happily swept out of
existence by the Revolution, and the destruction of which more than
compensated for every drop of blood shed in those terrible days. Like
the provincial ‘grandes seigneurs’ of Louis XVI’s reign, they were
gay, dissipated and turbulent; “accomplished” in the superficial
acquirements that made the “gentleman” one hundred years ago, but are
grotesquely out of place in this sensible, solid age, which demands
that a man shall be of use, and not merely for show. They ran horses
and fought cocks, dawdled through society when young, and intrigued
in politics the rest of their lives, with frequent spice-work of
duels. Esteeming personal courage as a supreme human virtue, and
never wearying of prating their devotion to the highest standard of
intrepidity, they never produced a General who was even mediocre; nor
did any one ever hear of a South Carolina regiment gaining distinction.
Regarding politics and the art of government as, equally with arms,
their natural vocations, they have never given the Nation a statesman,
and their greatest politicians achieved eminence by advocating ideas
which only attracted attention by their balefulness.

Still further resembling the French ‘grandes seigneurs’ of the
eighteenth century, they rolled in wealth wrung from the laborer by
reducing the rewards of his toil to the last fraction that would
support his life and strength. The rice culture was immensely
profitable, because they had found the secret for raising it more
cheaply than even the pauper laborer of the of world could. Their lands
had cost them nothing originally, the improvements of dikes and ditches
were comparatively, inexpensive, the taxes were nominal, and their
slaves were not so expensive to keep as good horses in the North.

Thousands of the acres along the road belonged to the Rhetts,
thousands to the Heywards, thousands to the Manigault the Lowndes, the
Middletons, the Hugers, the Barnwells, and the Elliots--all names too
well known in the history of our country’s sorrows. Occasionally one
of their stately mansions could be seen on some distant elevation,
surrounded by noble old trees, and superb grounds. Here they lived
during the healthy part of the year, but fled thence to summer resort
in the highlands as the miasmatic season approached.

The people we saw at the stations along our route were melancholy
illustrations of the evils of the rule of such an oligarchy. There was
no middle class visible anywhere--nothing but the two extremes. A man
was either a “gentleman,” and wore white shirt and city-made clothes,
or he was a loutish hind, clad in mere apologies for garments. We
thought we had found in the Georgia “cracker” the lowest substratum of
human society, but he was bright intelligence compared to the South
Carolina “clay-eater” and “sand-hiller.” The “cracker” always gave
hopes to one that if he had the advantage of common schools, and could
be made to understand that laziness was dishonorable, he might develop
into something. There was little foundation for such hope in the
average low South Carolinian. His mind was a shaking quagmire, which
did not admit of the erection of any superstructure of education upon
it. The South Carolina guards about us did not know the name of the
next town, though they had been raised in that section. They did not
know how far it was there, or to any place else, and they did not care
to learn. They had no conception of what the war was being waged for,
and did not want to find out; they did not know where their regiment
was going, and did not remember where it had been; they could not tell
how long they had been in service, nor the time they had enlisted for.
They only remembered that sometimes they had had “sorter good times,”
and sometimes “they had been powerful bad,” and they hoped there would
be plenty to eat wherever they went, and not too much hard marching.
Then they wondered “whar a feller’d be likely to make a raise of a
canteen of good whisky?”

Bad as the whites were, the rice plantation negros were even worse,
if that were possible. Brought to the country centuries ago, as
brutal savages from Africa, they had learned nothing of Christian
civilization, except that it meant endless toil, in malarious swamps,
under the lash of the taskmaster. They wore, possibly, a little more
clothing than their Senegambian ancestors did; they ate corn meal, yams
and rice, instead of bananas, yams and rice, as their forefathers did,
and they had learned a bastard, almost unintelligible, English. These
were the sole blessings acquired by a transfer from a life of freedom
in the jungles of the Gold Coast, to one of slavery in the swamps of
the Combahee.

I could not then, nor can I now, regret the downfall of a system of
society which bore such fruits.

Towards night a distressingly cold breeze, laden with a penetrating
mist, set in from the sea, and put an end to future observations by
making us too uncomfortable to care for scenery or social conditions.
We wanted most to devise a way to keep warm. Andrews and I pulled our
overcoat and blanket closely about us, snuggled together so as to make
each one’s meager body afford the other as much heat as possible--and
endured.

We became fearfully hungry. It will be recollected that we ate the
whole of the two days’ rations issued to us at Blackshear at once, and
we had received nothing since. We reached the sullen, fainting stage
of great hunger, and for hours nothing was said by any one, except an
occasional bitter execration on Rebels and Rebel practices.

It was late at night when we reached Charleston. The lights of the
City, and the apparent warmth and comfort there cheered us up somewhat
with the hopes that we might have some share in them. Leaving the
train, we were marched some distance through well-lighted streets, in
which were plenty of people walking to and fro. There were many stores,
apparently stocked with goods, and the citizens seemed to be going
about their business very much as was the custom up North.

At length our head of column made a “right turn,” and we marched away
from the lighted portion of the City, to a part which I could see
through the shadows was filled with ruins. An almost insupportable
odor of gas, escaping I suppose from the ruptured pipes, mingled with
the cold, rasping air from the sea, to make every breath intensely
disagreeable.

As I saw the ruins, it flashed upon me that this was the burnt district
of the city, and they were putting us under the fire of our own guns.
At first I felt much alarmed. Little relish as I had on general
principles, for being shot I had much less for being killed by our own
men. Then I reflected that if they put me there--and kept me--a guard
would have to be placed around us, who would necessarily be in as much
clanger as we were, and I knew I could stand any fire that a Rebel
could.

We were halted in a vacant lot, and sat down, only to jump up the next
instant, as some one shouted:

“There comes one of ’em!”

It was a great shell from the Swamp Angel Battery. Starting from a
point miles away, where, seemingly, the sky came down to the sea, was
a narrow ribbon of fire, which slowly unrolled itself against the
star-lit vault over our heads. On, on it came, and was apparently
following the sky down to the horizon behind us. As it reached the
zenith, there came to our ears a prolonged, but not sharp,

“Whish--ish-ish-ish-ish!”

We watched it breathlessly, and it seemed to be long minutes in running
its course; then a thump upon the ground, and a vibration, told that
it had struck. For a moment there was a dead silence. Then came a loud
roar, and the crash of breaking timber and crushing walls. The shell
had bursted.

Ten minutes later another shell followed, with like results. For awhile
we forgot all about hunger in the excitement of watching the messengers
from “God’s country.” What happiness to be where those shells came
from. Soon a Rebel battery of heavy guns somewhere near and in front
of us, waked up, and began answering with dull, slow thumps that made
the ground shudder. This continued about an hour, when it quieted
down again, but our shells kept coming over at regular intervals with
the same slow deliberation, the same prolonged warning, and the same
dreadful crash when they struck. They had already gone on this way for
over a year, and were to keep it up months longer until the City was
captured.

The routine was the same from day to day, month in, and month out,
from early in August, 1863, to the middle of April, 1865. Every few
minutes during the day our folks would hurl a great shell into the
beleaguered City, and twice a day, for perhaps an hour each time, the
Rebel batteries would talk back. It must have been a lesson to the
Charlestonians of the persistent, methodical spirit of the North. They
prided themselves on the length of the time they were holding out
against the enemy, and the papers each day had a column headed:

               “390th DAY OF THE SIEGE,”

or 391st, 393d, etc., as the number might be since our people opened
fire upon the City. The part where we lay was a mass of ruins. Many
large buildings had been knocked down; very many more were riddled
with shot holes and tottering to their fall. One night a shell passed
through a large building about a quarter of a mile from us. It had
already been struck several times, and was shaky. The shell went
through with a deafening crash. All was still for an instant; then it
exploded with a dull roar, followed by more crashing of timber and
walls. The sound died away and was succeeded by a moment of silence.
Finally the great building fell, a shapeless heap of ruins, with
a noise like that of a dozen field pieces. We wanted to cheer but
restrained ourselves. This was the nearest to us that any shell came.

There was only one section of the City in reach of our guns and this
was nearly destroyed. Fires had come to complete the work begun by
the shells. Outside of the boundaries of this region, the people felt
themselves as safe as in one of our northern Cities to-day. They had
an abiding faith that they were clear out of reach of any artillery
that we could mount. I learned afterwards from some of the prisoners,
who went into Charleston ahead of us, and were camped on the race
course outside of the City, that one day our fellows threw a shell
clear over the City to this race course. There was an immediate and
terrible panic among the citizens. They thought we had mounted some
new guns of increased range, and now the whole city must go. But the
next shell fell inside the established limits, and those following
were equally well behaved, so that the panic abated. I have never
heard any explanation of the matter. It may have been some freak of
the gun-squad, trying the effect of an extra charge of powder. Had our
people known of its signal effect, they could have depopulated the
place in a few hours.

The whole matter impressed me queerly. The only artillery I had ever
seen in action were field pieces. They made an earsplitting crash when
they were discharged, and there was likely to be oceans of trouble for
everybody in that neighborhood about that time. I reasoned from this
that bigger guns made a proportionally greater amount of noise, and
bred an infinitely larger quantity of trouble. Now I was hearing the
giants of the world’s ordnance, and they were not so impressive as a
lively battery of three-inch rifles. Their reports did not threaten
to shatter everything, but had a dull resonance, something like that
produced by striking an empty barrel with a wooden maul. Their shells
did not come at one in that wildly, ferocious way, with which a missile
from a six-pounder convinces every fellow in a long line of battle
that he is the identical one it is meant for, but they meandered over
in a lazy, leisurely manner, as if time was no object and no person
would feel put out at having to wait for them. Then, the idea of firing
every quarter of an hour for a year--fixing up a job for a lifetime,
as Andrews expressed it,--and of being fired back at for an hour at
9 o’clock every morning and evening; of fifty thousand people going
on buying and selling, eating, drinking and sleeping, having dances,
drives and balls, marrying and giving in marriage, all within a few
hundred yards of where the shells were falling-struck me as a most
singular method of conducting warfare.

We received no rations until the day after our arrival, and then they
were scanty, though fair in quality. We were by this time so hungry
and faint that we could hardly move. We did nothing for hours but lie
around on the ground and try to forget how famished we were. At the
announcement of rations, many acted as if crazy, and it was all that
the Sergeants could do to restrain the impatient mob from tearing
the food away and devouring it, when they were trying to divide it
out. Very many--perhaps thirty--died during the night and morning. No
blame for this is attached to the Charlestonians. They distinguished
themselves from the citizens of every other place in the Southern
Confederacy where we had been, by making efforts to relieve our
condition. They sent quite a quantity of food to us, and the Sisters of
Charity came among us, seeking and ministering to the sick. I believe
our experience was the usual one. The prisoners who passed through
Charleston before us all spoke very highly of the kindness shown them
by the citizens there.

We remained in Charleston but a few days. One night we were marched
down to a rickety depot, and put aboard a still more rickety train.
When morning came we found ourselves running northward through a pine
barren country that resembled somewhat that in Georgia, except that the
pine was short-leaved, there was more oak and other hard woods, and the
vegetation generally assumed a more Northern look. We had been put into
close box cars, with guards at the doors and on top. During the night
quite a number of the boys, who had fabricated little saws out of case
knives and fragments of hoop iron, cut holes through the bottoms of the
cars, through which they dropped to the ground and escaped, but were
mostly recaptured after several days. There was no hole cut in our car,
and so Andrews and I staid in.

Just at dusk we came to the insignificant village of Florence, the
junction of the road leading from Charleston to Cheraw with that
running from Wilmington to Kingsville. It was about one hundred and
twenty miles from Charleston, and the same distance from Wilmington.
As our train ran through a cut near the junction a darky stood by the
track gazing at us curiously. When the train had nearly passed him he
started to run up the bank. In the imperfect light the guards mistook
him for one of us who had jumped from the train. They all fired, and
the unlucky negro fell, pierced by a score of bullets.

That night we camped in the open field. When morning came we saw, a few
hundred yards from us, a Stockade of rough logs, with guards stationed
around it. It was another prison pen. They were just bringing the dead
out, and two men were tossing the bodies up into the four-horse wagon
which hauled them away for burial. The men were going about their
business as coolly as if loading slaughtered hogs. One of them would
catch the body by the feet, and the other by the arms. They would give
it a swing--“One, two, three,” and up it would go into the wagon. This
filled heaping full with corpses, a negro mounted the wheel horse,
grasped the lines, and shouted to his animals:

“Now, walk off on your tails, boys.”

The horses strained, the wagon moved, and its load of what were once
gallant, devoted soldiers, was carted off to nameless graves. This was
a part of the daily morning routine.

As we stood looking at the sickeningly familiar architecture of the
prison pen, a Seventh Indianian near me said, in tones of wearisome
disgust:

“Well, this Southern Confederacy is the d---dest country to stand logs
on end on God Almighty’s footstool.”




CHAPTER LXVIII.

FIRST DAYS AT FLORENCE--INTRODUCTION TO LIEUTENANT BARRETT, THE
RED-HEADED KEEPER--A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF OUR NEW QUARTERS--WINDERS
MALIGN INFLUENCE MANIFEST.

It did not require a very acute comprehension to understand that the
Stockade at which we were gazing was likely to be our abiding place for
some indefinite period in the future.

As usual, this discovery was the death-warrant of many whose lives had
only been prolonged by the hoping against hope that the movement would
terminate inside our lines. When the portentous palisades showed to
a fatal certainty that the word of promise had been broken to their
hearts, they gave up the struggle wearily, lay back on the frozen
ground, and died.

Andrews and I were not in the humor for dying just then. The long
imprisonment, the privations of hunger, the scourging by the elements,
the death of four out of every five of our number had indeed dulled and
stupefied us--bred an indifference to our own suffering and a seeming
callosity to that of others, but there still burned in our hearts, and
in the hearts of every one about us, a dull, sullen, smoldering fire of
hate and defiance toward everything Rebel, and a lust for revenge upon
those who had showered woes upon our heads. There was little fear of
death; even the King of Terrors loses most of his awful character upon
tolerably close acquaintance, and we had been on very intimate terms
with him for a year now. He was a constant visitor, who dropped in upon
us at all hours of the day and night, and would not be denied to any
one.

Since my entry into prison fully fifteen thousand boys had died around
me, and in no one of them had I seen the least, dread or reluctance to
go. I believe this is generally true of death by disease, everywhere.
Our ever kindly mother, Nature, only makes us dread death when she
desires us to preserve life. When she summons us hence she tenderly
provides that we shall willingly obey the call.

More than for anything else, we wanted to live now to triumph over
the Rebels. To simply die would be of little importance, but to die
unrevenged would be fearful. If we, the despised, the contemned, the
insulted, the starved and maltreated; could live to come back to our
oppressors as the armed ministers of retribution, terrible in the
remembrance of the wrongs of ourselves and comrade’s, irresistible as
the agents of heavenly justice, and mete out to them that Biblical
return of seven-fold of what they had measured out to us, then we
would be content to go to death afterwards. Had the thrice-accursed
Confederacy and our malignant gaolers millions of lives, our great
revenge would have stomach for them all.

The December morning was gray and leaden; dull, somber, snow-laden
clouds swept across the sky before the soughing wind.

The ground, frozen hard and stiff, cut and hurt our bare feet at every
step; an icy breeze drove in through the holes in our rags, and smote
our bodies like blows from sticks. The trees and shrubbery around were
as naked and forlorn as in the North in the days of early Winter before
the snow comes.

Over and around us hung like a cold miasma the sickening odor peculiar
to Southern forests in Winter time.

Out of the naked, repelling, unlovely earth rose the Stockade, in
hideous ugliness. At the gate the two men continued at their monotonous
labor of tossing the dead of the previous day into the wagon-heaving
into that rude hearse the inanimate remains that had once tempted
gallant, manly hearts, glowing with patriotism and devotion to
country--piling up listlessly and wearily, in a mass of nameless,
emaciated corpses, fluttering with rags, and swarming with vermin, the
pride, the joy of a hundred fair Northern homes, whose light had now
gone out forever.

Around the prison walls shambled the guards, blanketed like Indians,
and with faces and hearts of wolves. Other Rebels--also clad in dingy
butternut--slouched around lazily, crouched over diminutive fires,
and talked idle gossip in the broadest of “nigger” dialect. Officers
swelled and strutted hither and thither, and negro servants loitered
around, striving to spread the least amount of work over the greatest
amount of time.

While I stood gazing in gloomy silence at the depressing surroundings
Andrews, less speculative and more practical, saw a good-sized pine
stump near by, which had so much of the earth washed away from it
that it looked as if it could be readily pulled up. We had had bitter
experience in other prisons as to the value of wood, and Andrews
reasoned that as we would be likely to have a repetition of this in the
Stockade we were about to enter, we should make an effort to secure
the stump. We both attacked it, and after a great deal of hard work,
succeeded in uprooting it. It was very lucky that we did, since it was
the greatest help in preserving our lives through the three long months
that we remained at Florence.

While we were arranging our stump so as to carry it to the best
advantage, a vulgar-faced man, with fiery red hair, and wearing on his
collar the yellow bars of a Lieutenant, approached. This was Lieutenant
Barrett, commandant of the interior of the prison, and a more inhuman
wretch even than Captain Wirz, because he had a little more brains than
the commandant at Andersonville, and this extra intellect was wholly
devoted to cruelty. As he came near he commanded, in loud, brutal tones:

“Attention, Prisoners!”

We all stood up and fell in in two ranks. Said he:

“By companies, right wheel, march!”

This was simply preposterous. As every soldier knows, wheeling by
companies is one of the most difficult of manuvers, and requires
some preparation of a battalion before attempting to execute it. Our
thousand was made up of infantry, cavalry and artillery, representing,
perhaps, one hundred different regiments. We had not been divided off
into companies, and were encumbered with blankets, tents, cooking
utensils, wood, etc., which prevented our moving with such freedom as
to make a company wheel, even had we been divided up into companies
and drilled for the maneuver. The attempt to obey the command was, of
course, a ludicrous failure. The Rebel officers standing near Barrett
laughed openly at his stupidity in giving such an order, but he was
furious. He hurled at us a torrent of the vilest abuse the corrupt
imagination of man can conceive, and swore until he was fairly black in
the face. He fired his revolver off over our heads, and shrieked and
shouted until he had to stop from sheer exhaustion. Another officer
took command then, and marched us into prison.

We found this a small copy of Andersonville. There was a stream running
north and south, on either side of which was a swamp. A Stockade of
rough logs, with the bark still on, inclosed several acres. The front
of the prison was toward the West. A piece of artillery stood before
the gate, and a platform at each corner bore a gun, elevated high
enough to rake the whole inside of the prison. A man stood behind each
of these guns continually, so as to open with them at any moment.
The earth was thrown up against the outside of the palisades in a
high embankment, along the top of which the guards on duty walked, it
being high enough to elevate their head, shoulders and breasts above
the tops of the logs. Inside the inevitable dead-line was traced by
running a furrow around the prison-twenty feet from the Stockade--with
a plow. In one respect it was an improvement on Andersonville: regular
streets were laid off, so that motion about the camp was possible, and
cleanliness was promoted. Also, the crowd inside was not so dense as at
Camp Sumter.

The prisoners were divided into hundreds and thousands, with Sergeants
at the heads of the divisions. A very good police force-organized and
officered by the prisoners--maintained order and prevented crime.
Thefts and other offenses were punished, as at Andersonville, by the
Chief of Police sentencing the offenders to be spanked or tied up.

We found very many of our Andersonville acquaintances inside, and for
several days comparisons of experience were in order. They had left
Andersonville a few days after us, but were taken to Charleston instead
of Savannah. The same story of exchange was dinned into their ears
until they arrived at Charleston, when the truth was told them, that
no exchange was contemplated, and that they had been deceived for the
purpose of getting them safely out of reach of Sherman.

Still they were treated well in Charleston--better than they had been
anywhere else. Intelligent physicians had visited the sick, prescribed
for them, furnished them with proper medicines, and admitted the worst
cases to the hospital, where they were given something of the care that
one would expect in such an institution. Wheat bread, molasses and rice
were issued to them, and also a few spoonfuls of vinegar, daily, which
were very grateful to them in their scorbutic condition. The citizens
sent in clothing, food and vegetables. The Sisters of Charity were
indefatigable in ministering to the sick and dying. Altogether, their
recollections of the place were quite pleasant.

Despite the disagreeable prominence which the City had in the Secession
movement, there was a very strong Union element there, and many men
found opportunity to do favors to the prisoners and reveal to them how
much they abhorred Secession.

After they had been in Charleston a fortnight or more, the yellow fever
broke out in the City, and soon extended its ravages to the prisoners,
quite a number dying from it.

Early in October they had been sent away from the City to their
present location, which was then a piece of forest land. There was no
stockade or other enclosure about them, and one night they forced the
guard-line, about fifteen hundred escaping, under a pretty sharp fire
from the guards. After getting out they scattered, each group taking
a different route, some seeking Beaufort, and other places along the
seaboard, and the rest trying to gain the mountains. The whole State
was thrown into the greatest perturbation by the occurrence. The
papers magnified the proportion of the outbreak, and lauded fulsomely
the gallantry of the guards in endeavoring to withstand the desperate
assaults of the frenzied Yankees. The people were wrought up into
the highest alarm as to outrages and excesses that these flying
desperados might be expected to commit. One would think that another
Grecian horse, introduced into the heart of the Confederate Troy, had
let out its fatal band of armed men. All good citizens were enjoined
to turn out and assist in arresting the runaways. The vigilance of
all patrolling was redoubled, and such was the effectiveness of the
measures taken that before a month nearly every one of the fugitives
had been retaken and sent back to Florence. Few of these complained
of any special ill-treatment by their captors, while many reported
frequent acts of kindness, especially when their captors belonged to
the middle and upper classes. The low-down class--the clay-eaters--on
the other hand, almost always abused their prisoners, and sometimes, it
is pretty certain, murdered them in cold blood.

About this time Winder came on from Andersonville, and then everything
changed immediately to the complexion of that place. He began the
erection of the Stockade, and made it very strong. The Dead Line was
established, but instead of being a strip of plank upon the top of
low posts, as at Andersonville, it was simply a shallow trench, which
was sometimes plainly visible, and sometimes not. The guards always
resolved matters of doubt against the prisoners, and fired on them when
they supposed them too near where the Dead Line ought to be. Fifteen
acres of ground were enclosed by the palisades, of which five were
taken up by the creek and swamp, and three or four more by the Dead
Line; main streets, etc., leaving about seven or eight for the actual
use of the prisoners, whose number swelled to fifteen thousand by the
arrivals from Andersonville. This made the crowding together nearly
as bad as at the latter place, and for awhile the same fatal results
followed. The mortality, and the sending away of several thousand on
the sick exchange, reduced the aggregate number at the time of our
arrival to about eleven thousand, which gave more room to all, but was
still not one-twentieth of the space which that number of men should
have had.

No shelter, nor material for constructing any, was furnished. The
ground was rather thickly wooded, and covered with undergrowth, when
the Stockade was built, and certainly no bit of soil was ever so
thoroughly cleared as this was. The trees and brush were cut down and
worked up into hut building materials by the same slow and laborious
process that I have described as employed in building our huts at
Millen.

Then the stumps were attacked for fuel, and with such persistent
thoroughness that after some weeks there was certainly not enough
woody material left in that whole fifteen acres of ground to kindle a
small kitchen fire. The men would begin work on the stump of a good
sized tree, and chip and split it off painfully and slowly until they
had followed it to the extremity of the tap root ten or fifteen feet
below the surface. The lateral roots would be followed with equal
determination, and trenches thirty feet long, and two or three feet
deep were dug with case-knives and half-canteens, to get a root as
thick as one’s wrist. The roots of shrubs and vines were followed up
and gathered with similar industry. The cold weather and the scanty
issues of wood forced men to do this.

The huts constructed were as various as the materials and the tastes of
the builders. Those who were fortunate enough to get plenty of timber
built such cabins as I have described at Millen. Those who had less
eked out their materials in various ways. Most frequently all that a
squad of three or four could get would be a few slender poles and some
brush. They would dig a hole in the ground two feet deep and large
enough for them all to lie in. Then putting up a stick at each end
and laying a ridge pole across, they, would adjust the rest of their
material so as to form sloping sides capable of supporting earth enough
to make a water-tight roof. The great majority were not so well off as
these, and had absolutely, nothing of which to build. They had recourse
to the clay of the swamp, from which they fashioned rude sun-dried
bricks, and made adobe houses, shaped like a bee hive, which lasted
very well until a hard rain came, when they dissolved into red mire
about the bodies of their miserable inmates.

Remember that all these makeshifts were practiced within a half-a-mile
of an almost boundless forest, from which in a day’s time the camp
could have been supplied with material enough to give every man a
comfortable hut.




CHAPTER LXIX.

BARRETT’S INSANE CRUELTY--HOW HE PUNISHED THOSE ALLEGED TO BE ENGAGED
IN TUNNELING--THE MISERY IN THE STOCKADE--MEN’S LIMBS ROTTING OFF WITH
DRY GANGRENE.

Winder had found in Barrett even a better tool for his cruel purposes
than Wirz. The two resembled each other in many respects. Both were
absolutely destitute of any talent for commanding men, and could no
more handle even one thousand men properly than a cabin boy could
navigate a great ocean steamer. Both were given to the same senseless
fits of insane rage, coming and going without apparent cause, during
which they fired revolvers and guns or threw clubs into crowds of
prisoners, or knocked down such as were within reach of their fists.
These exhibitions were such as an overgrown child might be expected to
make. They did not secure any result except to increase the prisoners’
wonder that such ill-tempered fools could be given any position of
responsibility.

A short time previous to our entry Barrett thought he had reason to
suspect a tunnel. He immediately announced that no more rations should
be issued until its whereabouts was revealed and the ringleaders in the
attempt to escape delivered up to him. The rations at that time were
very scanty, so that the first day they were cut off the sufferings
were fearful. The boys thought he would surely relent the next day, but
they did not know their man. He was not suffering any, why should he
relax his severity? He strolled leisurely out from his dinner table,
picking his teeth with his penknife in the comfortable, self-satisfied
way of a coarse man who has just filled his stomach to his entire
content--an attitude and an air that was simply maddening to the
famishing wretches, of whom he inquired tantalizingly:

“Air ye’re hungry enough to give up them G-d d d s--s of b----s yet?”

That night thirteen thousand men, crazy, fainting with hunger, walked
hither and thither, until exhaustion forced them to become quiet, sat
on the ground and pressed their bowels in by leaning against sticks of
wood laid across their thighs; trooped to the Creek and drank water
until their gorges rose and they could swallow no more--did everything
in fact that imagination could suggest--to assuage the pangs of the
deadly gnawing that was consuming their vitals. All the cruelties of
the terrible Spanish Inquisition, if heaped together, would not sum
up a greater aggregate of anguish than was endured by them. The third
day came, and still no signs of yielding by Barrett. The Sergeants
counseled together. Something must be done. The fellow would starve
the whole camp to death with as little compunction as one drowns blind
puppies. It was necessary to get up a tunnel to show Barrett, and to
get boys who would confess to being leaders in the work. A number of
gallant fellows volunteered to brave his wrath, and save the rest of
their comrades. It required high courage to do this, as there was no
question but that the punishment meted out would be as fearful as the
cruel mind of the fellow could conceive. The Sergeants decided that
four would be sufficient to answer the purpose; they selected these by
lot, marched them to the gate and delivered them over to Barrett, who
thereupon ordered the rations to be sent in. He was considerate enough,
too, to feed the men he was going to torture.

The starving men in the Stockade could not wait after the rations were
issued to cook them, but in many instances mixed the meal up with
water, and swallowed it raw. Frequently their stomachs, irritated by
the long fast, rejected the mess; any very many had reached the stage
where they loathed food; a burning fever was consuming them, and
seething their brains with delirium. Hundreds died within a few days,
and hundreds more were so debilitated by the terrible strain that they
did not linger long afterward.

The boys who had offered themselves as a sacrifice for the rest were
put into a guard house, and kept over night that Barrett might make a
day of the amusement of torturing them. After he had laid in a hearty
breakfast, and doubtless fortified himself with some of the villainous
sorgum whisky, which the Rebels were now reduced to drinking, he set
about his entertainment.

The devoted four were brought out--one by one--and their hands tied
together behind their backs. Then a noose of a slender, strong hemp
rope was slipped over the first one’s thumbs and drawn tight, after
which the rope was thrown over a log projecting from the roof of the
guard house, and two or three Rebels hauled upon it until the miserable
Yankee was lifted from the ground, and hung suspended by the thumbs,
while his weight seemed tearing his limbs from his shoulder blades. The
other three were treated in the same manner.

The agony was simply excruciating. The boys were brave, and had
resolved to stand their punishment without a groan, but this was too
much for human endurance. Their will was strong, but Nature could not
be denied, and they shrieked aloud so pitifully that a young Reserve
standing near fainted. Each one screamed:

“For God’s sake, kill me! kill me! Shoot me if--you want to, but let me
down from here!” The only effect of this upon Barrett was to light up
his brutal face with a leer of fiendish satisfaction. He said to the
guards with a gleeful wink:

“By God, I’ll learn these Yanks to be more afeard of me than of the old
devil himself. They’ll soon understand that I’m not the man to fool
with. I’m old pizen, I am, when I git started. Jest hear ’em squeal,
won’t yer?”

Then walking from one prisoner to another, he said:

“D---n yer skins, ye’ll dig tunnels, will ye? Ye’ll try to git out, and
run through the country stealin’ and carryin’ off niggers, and makin’
more trouble than yer d----d necks are worth. I’ll learn ye all about
that. If I ketch ye at this sort of work again, d----d ef I don’t kill
ye ez soon ez I ketch ye.”

And so on, ad infinitum. How long the boys were kept up there
undergoing this torture can not be said. Perhaps it was an hour or
more. To the locker-on it seemed long hours, to the poor fellows
themselves it was ages. When they were let down at last, all fainted,
and were carried away to the hospital, where they were weeks in
recovering from the effects. Some of them were crippled for life.

When we came into the prison there were about eleven thousand there.
More uniformly wretched creatures I had never before seen. Up to the
time of our departure from Andersonville the constant influx of new
prisoners had prevented the misery and wasting away of life from
becoming fully realized. Though thousands were continually dying,
thousands more of healthy, clean, well-clothed men were as continually
coming in from the front, so that a large portion of those inside
looked in fairly good condition. Put now no new prisoners had come in
for months; the money which made such a show about the sutler shops of
Andersonville had been spent; and there was in every face the same look
of ghastly emaciation, the same shrunken muscles and feeble limbs, the
same lack-luster eyes and hopeless countenances.

One of the commonest of sights was to see men whose hands and feet
were simply rotting off. The nights were frequently so cold that ice
a quarter of an inch thick formed on the water. The naked frames of
starving men were poorly calculated to withstand this frosty rigor, and
thousands had their extremities so badly frozen as to destroy the life
in those parts, and induce a rotting of the tissues by a dry gangrene.
The rotted flesh frequently remained in its place for a long time --a
loathsome but painless mass, that gradually sloughed off, leaving the
sinews that passed through it to stand out like shining, white cords.

While this was in some respects less terrible than the hospital
gangrene at Andersonville, it was more generally diffused, and dreadful
to the last degree. The Rebel Surgeons at Florence did not follow
the habit of those at Andersonville, and try to check the disease by
wholesale amputation, but simply let it run its course, and thousands
finally carried their putrefied limbs through our lines, when the
Confederacy broke up in the Spring, to be treated by our Surgeons.

I had been in prison but a little while when a voice called out from a
hole in the ground, as I was passing:

“S-a-y, Sergeant! Won’t you please take these shears and cut my toes
off?”

“What?” said I, in amazement, stopping in front of the dugout.

“Just take these shears, won’t you, and cut my toes off?” answered the
inmate, an Indiana infantryman--holding up a pair of dull shears in his
hand, and elevating a foot for me to look at.

I examined the latter carefully. All the flesh of the toes, except
little pads at the ends, had rotted off, leaving the bones as clean as
if scraped. The little tendons still remained, and held the bones to
their places, but this seemed to hurt the rest of the feet and annoy
the man.

“You’d better let one of the Rebel doctors see this,” I said, after
finishing my survey, “before you conclude to have them off. May be they
can be saved.”

“No; d----d if I’m going to have any of them Rebel butchers fooling
around me. I’d die first, and then I wouldn’t,” was the reply. “You can
do it better than they can. It’s just a little snip. Just try it.”

“I don’t like to,” I replied. “I might lame you for life, and make you
lots of trouble.”

“O, bother! what business is that of yours? They’re my toes, and I want
’em off. They hurt me so I can’t sleep. Come, now, take the shears and
cut ’em off.”

I yielded, and taking the shears, snipped one tendon after another,
close to the feet, and in a few seconds had the whole ten toes lying in
a heap at the bottom of the dug-out. I picked them up and handed them
to their owner, who gazed at them, complacently, and remarked:

“Well, I’m darned glad they’re off. I won’t be bothered with corns any
more, I flatter myself.”




CHAPTER LXX.

HOUSE AND CLOTHES--EFFORTS TO ERECT A SUITABLE RESIDENCE--DIFFICULTIES
ATTENDING THIS--VARIETIES OF FLORENTINE ARCHITECTURE--WAITING FOR DEAD
MEN’S CLOTHES--CRAVING FOR TOBACCO.

We were put into the old squads to fill the places of those who had
recently died, being assigned to these vacancies according to the
initials of our surnames, the same rolls being used that we had signed
as paroles. This separated Andrews and me, for the “A’s” were taken to
fill up the first hundreds of the First Thousand, while the “M’s,” to
which I belonged, went into the next Thousand.

I was put into the Second Hundred of the Second Thousand, and its
Sergeant dying shortly after, I was given his place, and commanded the
hundred, drew its rations, made out its rolls, and looked out for its
sick during the rest of our stay there.

Andrews and I got together again, and began fixing up what little we
could to protect ourselves against the weather. Cold as this was we
decided that it was safer to endure it and risk frost-biting every
night than to build one of the mud-walled and mud-covered holes that
so many, lived in. These were much warmer than lying out on the frozen
ground, but we believed that they were very unhealthy, and that no one
lived long who inhabited them.

So we set about repairing our faithful old blanket--now full of great
holes. We watched the dead men to get pieces of cloth from their
garments to make patches, which we sewed on with yarn raveled from
other fragments of woolen cloth. Some of our company, whom we found in
the prison, donated us the three sticks necessary to make tent-poles
--wonderful generosity when the preciousness of firewood is remembered.
We hoisted our blanket upon these; built a wall of mud bricks at one
end, and in it a little fireplace to economize our scanty fuel to the
last degree, and were once more at home, and much better off than most
of our neighbors.

One of these, the proprietor of a hole in the ground covered with an
arch of adobe bricks, had absolutely no bed-clothes except a couple of
short pieces of board--and very little other clothing. He dug a trench
in the bottom of what was by courtesy called his tent, sufficiently
large to contain his body below his neck. At nightfall he would crawl
into this, put his two bits of board so that they joined over his
breast, and then say: “Now, boys, cover me over;” whereupon his friends
would cover him up with dry sand from the sides of his domicile, in
which he would slumber quietly till morning, when he would rise, shake
the sand from his garments, and declare that he felt as well refreshed
as if he had slept on a spring mattress.

There has been much talk of earth baths of late years in scientific
and medical circles. I have been sorry that our Florence comrade if he
still lives--did not contribute the results of his experience.

The pinching cold cured me of my repugnance to wearing dead men’s
clothes, or rather it made my nakedness so painful that I was glad
to cover it as best I could, and I began foraging among the corpses
for garments. For awhile my efforts to set myself up in the mortuary
second-hand clothing business were not all successful. I found that
dying men with good clothes were as carefully watched over by sets
of fellows who constituted themselves their residuary legatees as if
they were men of fortune dying in the midst of a circle of expectant
nephews and nieces. Before one was fairly cold his clothes would be
appropriated and divided, and I have seen many sharp fights between
contesting claimants.

I soon perceived that my best chance was to get up very early in the
morning, and do my hunting. The nights were so cold that many could
not sleep, and they would walk up and down the streets, trying to keep
warm by exercise. Towards morning, becoming exhausted, they would lie
down on the ground almost anywhere, and die. I have frequently seen so
many as fifty of these. My first “find” of any importance was a young
Pennsylvania Zouave, who was lying dead near the bridge that crossed
the Creek. His clothes were all badly worn, except his baggy, dark
trousers, which were nearly new. I removed these, scraped out from each
of the dozens of great folds in the legs about a half pint of lice,
and drew the garments over my own half-frozen limbs, the first real
covering those members had had for four or five months. The pantaloons
only came down about half-way between my knees and feet, but still
they were wonderfully comfortable to what I had been--or rather not
been--wearing. I had picked up a pair of boot bottoms, which answered
me for shoes, and now I began a hunt for socks. This took several
morning expeditions, but on one of them I was rewarded with finding a
corpse with a good brown one --army make--and a few days later I got
another, a good, thick genuine one, knit at home, of blue yarn, by some
patient, careful housewife. Almost the next morning I had the good
fortune to find a dead man with a warm, whole, infantry dress-coat, a
most serviceable garment. As I still had for a shirt the blouse Andrews
had given me at Millen, I now considered my wardrobe complete, and left
the rest of the clothes to those who were more needy than I.

Those who used tobacco seemed to suffer more from a deprivation of
the weed than from lack of food. There were no sacrifices they would
not make to obtain it, and it was no uncommon thing for boys to trade
off half their rations for a chew of “navy plug.” As long as one had
anything--especially buttons--to trade, tobacco could be procured from
the guards, who were plentifully supplied with it. When means of barter
were gone, chewers frequently became so desperate as to beg the guards
to throw them a bit of the precious nicotine. Shortly after our arrival
at Florence, a prisoner on the East Side approached one of the Reserves
with the request:

“Say, Guard, can’t you give a fellow a chew of tobacco?”

To which the guard replied:

“Yes; come right across the line there and I’ll drop you down a bit.”

The unsuspecting prisoner stepped across the Dead Line, and the
guard--a boy of sixteen--raised his gun and killed him.

At the North Side of the prison, the path down to the Creek lay right
along side of the Dead Line, which was a mere furrow in the ground.

At night the guards, in their zeal to kill somebody, were very likely
to imagine that any one going along the path for water was across the
Dead Line, and fire upon him. It was as bad as going upon the skirmish
line to go for water after nightfall. Yet every night a group of boys
would be found standing at the head of the path crying out:

“Fill your buckets for a chew of tobacco.”

That is, they were willing to take all the risk of running that
gauntlet for this moderate compensation.




CHAPTER LXXI.

DECEMBER--RATIONS OF WOOD AND FOOD GROW LESS DAILY--UNCERTAINTY AS TO
THE MORTALITY AT FLORENCE--EVEN THE GOVERNMENT’S STATISTICS ARE VERY
DEFICIENT--CARE FOB THE SICK.

The rations of wood grew smaller as the weather grew colder,
until at last they settled down to a piece about the size of a
kitchen rolling-pin per day for each man. This had to serve for
all purposes--cooking, as well as warming. We split the rations up
into slips about the size of a carpenter’s lead pencil, and used
them parsimoniously, never building a fire so big that it could
not be covered with a half-peck measure. We hovered closely over
this--covering it, in fact, with our hands and bodies, so that not a
particle of heat was lost. Remembering the Indian’s sage remark, “That
the white man built a big fire and sat away off from it; the Indian
made a little fire and got up close to it,” we let nothing in the
way of caloric be wasted by distance. The pitch-pine produced great
quantities of soot, which, in cold and rainy days, when we hung over
the fires all the time, blackened our faces until we were beyond the
recognition of intimate friends.

There was the same economy of fuel in cooking. Less than half as much
as is contained in a penny bunch of kindling was made to suffice in
preparing our daily meal. If we cooked mush we elevated our little can
an inch from the ground upon a chunk of clay, and piled the little
sticks around it so carefully that none should burn without yielding
all its heat to the vessel, and not one more was burned than absolutely
necessary. If we baked bread we spread the dough upon our chessboard,
and propped it up before the little fire-place, and used every particle
of heat evolved. We had to pinch and starve ourselves thus, while
within five minutes’ walk from the prison-gate stood enough timber to
build a great city.

The stump Andrews and I had the foresight to save now did us excellent
service. It was pitch pine, very fat with resin, and a little piece
split off each day added much to our fires and our comfort.

One morning, upon examining the pockets of an infantryman of my hundred
who had just died, I had the wonderful luck to find a silver quarter.
I hurried off to tell Andrews of our unexpected good fortune. By an
effort he succeeded in calming himself to the point of receiving the
news with philosophic coolness, and we went into Committee of the
Whole Upon the State of Our Stomachs, to consider how the money could
be spent to the best advantage. At the south side of the Stockade on
the outside of the timbers, was a sutler shop, kept by a Rebel, and
communicating with the prison by a hole two or three feet square,
cut through the logs. The Dead Line was broken at this point, so as
to permit prisoners to come up to the hole to trade. The articles
for sale were corn meal and bread, flour and wheat bread, meat,
beaus, molasses, honey, sweet potatos, etc. I went down to the place,
carefully inspected the stock, priced everything there, and studied
the relative food value of each. I came back, reported my observations
and conclusions to Andrews, and then staid at the tent while he went
on a similar errand. The consideration of the matter was continued
during the day and night, and the next morning we determined upon
investing our twenty-five cents in sweet potatos, as we could get
nearly a half-bushel of them, which was “more fillin’ at the price,” to
use the words of Dickens’s Fat Boy, than anything else offered us. We
bought the potatos, carried them home in our blanket, buried them in
the bottom of our tent, to keep them from being stolen, and restricted
ourselves to two per day until we had eaten them all.

The Rebels did something more towards properly caring for the sick than
at Andersonville. A hospital was established in the northwestern corner
of the Stockade, and separated from the rest of the camp by a line of
police, composed of our own men. In this space several large sheds
were erected, of that rude architecture common to the coarser sort of
buildings in the South. There was not a nail or a bolt used in their
entire construction. Forked posts at the ends and sides supported poles
upon which were laid the long “shakes,” or split shingles, forming the
roofs, and which were held in place by other poles laid upon them. The
sides and ends were enclosed by similar “shakes,” and altogether they
formed quite a fair protection against the weather. Beds of pine leaves
were provided for the sick, and some coverlets, which our Sanitary
Commission had been allowed to send through. But nothing was done to
bathe or cleanse them, or to exchange their lice-infested garments
for others less full of torture. The long tangled hair and whiskers
were not cut, nor indeed were any of the commonest suggestions for
the improvement of the condition of the sick put into execution. Men
who had laid in their mud hovels until they had become helpless and
hopeless, were admitted to the hospital, usually only to die.

The diseases were different in character from those which swept off the
prisoners at Andersonville. There they were mostly of the digestive
organs; here of the respiratory. The filthy, putrid, speedily fatal
gangrene of Andersonville became here a dry, slow wasting away of
the parts, which continued for weeks, even months, without being
necessarily fatal. Men’s feet and legs, and less frequently their hands
and arms, decayed and sloughed off. The parts became so dead that a
knife could be run through them without causing a particle of pain. The
dead flesh hung on to the bones and tendons long after the nerves and
veins had ceased to perform their functions, and sometimes startled one
by dropping off in a lump, without causing pain or hemorrhage.

The appearance of these was, of course, frightful, or would have been,
had we not become accustomed to them. The spectacle of men with their
feet and legs a mass of dry ulceration, which had reduced the flesh
to putrescent deadness, and left the tendons standing out like cords,
was too common to excite remark or even attention. Unless the victim
was a comrade, no one specially heeded his condition. Lung diseases
and low fevers ravaged the camp, existing all the time in a more or
less virulent condition, according to the changes of the weather,
and occasionally ragging in destructive epidemics. I am unable to
speak with any degree of definiteness as to the death rate, since I
had ceased to interest myself about the number dying each day. I had
now been a prisoner a year, and had become so torpid and stupefied,
mentally and physically, that I cared comparatively little for anything
save the rations of food and of fuel. The difference of a few spoonfuls
of meal, or a large splinter of wood in the daily issues to me, were
of more actual importance than the increase or decrease of the death
rate by a half a score or more. At Andersonville I frequently took the
trouble to count the number of dead and living, but all curiosity of
this kind had now died out.

Nor can I find that anybody else is in possession of much more than
my own information on the subject. Inquiry at the War Department has
elicited the following letters:


I.

The prison records of Florence, S. C., have never come to light,
and therefore the number of prisoners confined there could not be
ascertained from the records on file in this office; nor do I think
that any statement purporting to show that number has ever been made.

In the report to Congress of March 1, 1869, it was shown from records
as follows:


Escaped, fifty-eight; paroled, one; died, two thousand seven hundred
and ninety-three. Total, two thousand eight hundred and fifty-two.

Since date of said report there have been added to the records as
follows:

Died, two hundred and twelve; enlisted in Rebel army, three hundred and
twenty-six. Total, five hundred and thirty-eight.

Making a total disposed of from there, as shown by records on file, of
three thousand three hundred and ninety.

This, no doubt, is a small proportion of the number actually confined
there.

The hospital register on file contains that part only of the alphabet
subsequent to, and including part of the letter S, but from this
register, it is shown that the prisoners were arranged in hundreds
and thousands, and the hundred and thousand to which he belonged is
recorded opposite each man’s name on said register. Thus:

“John Jones, 11th thousand, 10th hundred.”

Eleven thousand being the highest number thus recorded, it is fair to
presume that not less than that number were confined there on a certain
date, and that more than that number were confined there during the
time it was continued as a prison.


II

Statement showing the whole number of Federals and Confederates
captured, (less the number paroled on the field), the number who died
while prisoners, and the percentage of deaths, 1861-1865

                                 FEDERALS
Captured .................................................. 187,818
Died, (as shown by prison and hospital records on file).... 30,674
Percentage of deaths ...................................... 16.375

                               CONFEDERATES
Captured .................................................. 227,570
Died ...................................................... 26,774
Percentage of deaths ...................................... 11.768


In the detailed statement prepared for Congress dated March 1, 1869,
the whole number of deaths given as shown by Prisoner of War records
was twenty-six thousand three hundred and twenty-eight, but since that
date evidence of three thousand six hundred and twenty-eight additional
deaths has been obtained from the captured Confederate records, making
a total of twenty-nine thousand nine hundred and fifty-six as above
shown. This is believed to be many thousands less than the actual
number of Federal prisoners who died in Confederate prisons, as we have
no records from those at Montgomery Ala., Mobile, Ala., Millen, Ga.,
Marietta, Ga., Atlanta, Ga., Charleston, S. C., and others. The records
of Florence, S. C., and Salisbury, N. C., are very incomplete. It also
appears from Confederate inspection reports of Confederate prisons,
that large percentage of the deaths occurred in prison quarter without
the care or knowledge of the Surgeon. For the month of December, 1864
alone, the Confederate “burial report”; Salisbury, N. C., show that
out, of eleven hundred and fifty deaths, two hundred and twenty-three,
or twenty per cent., died in prison quarters and are not accounted
for in the report of the Surgeon, and therefore not taken into
consideration in the above report, as the only records of said prisons
on file (with one exception) are the Hospital records. Calculating the
percentage of deaths on this basis would give the number of deaths at
thirty-seven thousand four hundred and forty-five and percentage of
deaths at 20.023.

              [End of the Letters from the War Department.]

If we assume that the Government’s records of Florence as correct, it
will be apparent that one man in every three die there, since, while
there might have been as high as fifty thousand at one time in the
prison, during the last three months of its existence I am quite sure
that the number did not exceed seven thousand. This would make the
mortality much greater than at Andersonville, which it undoubtedly
was, since the physical condition of the prisoners confined there
had been greatly depressed by their long confinement, while the bulk
c the prisoners at Andersonville were those who had been brought
thither directly from the field. I think also that all who experienced
confinement in the two places are united in pronouncing Florence to be,
on the whole, much the worse place and more fatal to life.

The medicines furnished the sick were quite simple in nature and
mainly composed of indigenous substances. For diarrhea red pepper and
decoctions of blackberry root and of pine leave were given. For coughs
and lung diseases, a decoction of wild cherry bark was administered.
Chills and fever were treated with decoctions of dogwood bark, and
fever patients who craved something sour, were given a weak acid drink,
made by fermenting a small quantity of meal in a barrel of water. All
these remedies were quite good in their way, and would have benefitted
the patients had they been accompanied by proper shelter, food and
clothing. But it was idle to attempt to arrest with blackberry root the
diarrhea, or with wild cherry bark the consumption of a man lying in a
cold, damp, mud hovel, devoured by vermin, and struggling to maintain
life upon less than a pint of unsalted corn meal per diem.

Finding that the doctors issued red pepper for diarrhea, and an
imitation of sweet oil made from peanuts, for the gangrenous sores
above described, I reported to them an imaginary comrade in my tent,
whose symptoms indicated those remedies, and succeeded in drawing a
small quantity of each, two or three times a week. The red pepper I
used to warm up our bread and mush, and give some different taste to
the corn meal, which had now become so loathsome to us. The peanut
oil served to give a hint of the animal food we hungered for. It was
greasy, and as we did not have any meat for three months, even this
flimsy substitute was inexpressibly grateful to palate and stomach. But
one morning the Hospital Steward made a mistake, and gave me castor oil
instead, and the consequences were unpleasant.

A more agreeable remembrance is that of two small apples, about the
size of walnuts, given me by a boy named Henry Clay Montague Porter, of
the Sixteenth Connecticut. He had relatives living in North Carolina,
who sent him a small packs of eatables, out of which, in the fulness
of his generous heart he gave me this share--enough to make me always
remember him with kindness.

Speaking of eatables reminds me of an incident. Joe Darling, of the
First Maine, our Chief of Police, had a sister living at Augusta,
Ga., who occasionally came to Florence with basket of food and other
necessaries for her brother. On one of these journeys, while sitting
in Colonel Iverson’s tent, waiting for her brother to be brought out
of prison, she picked out of her basket a nicely browned doughnut and
handed it to the guard pacing in front of the tent, with:

“Here, guard, wouldn’t you like a genuine Yankee doughnut?”

The guard-a lank, loose-jointed Georgia cracker--who in all his life
seen very little more inviting food than the his hominy and molasses,
upon which he had been raised, took the cake, turned it over and
inspected it curiously for some time without apparently getting the
least idea of what it was for, and then handed it back to the donor,
saying:

“Really, mum, I don’t believe I’ve got any use for it”




CHAPTER LXXII.

DULL WINTER DAYS--TOO WEAK AND TOO STUPID To AMUSE OURSELVES--ATTEMPTS
OF THE REBELS TO RECRUIT US INTO THEIR ARMY--THE CLASS OF MEN THEY
OBTAINED --VENGEANCE ON “THE GALVANIZED”--A SINGULAR EXPERIENCE--RARE
GLIMPSES OF FUN--INABILITY OF THE REBELS TO COUNT.

The Rebels continued their efforts to induce prisoners to enlist in
their army, and with much better success than at any previous time.
Many men had become so desperate that they were reckless as to what
they did. Home, relatives, friends, happiness--all they had remembered
or looked forward to, all that had nerved them up to endure the present
and brave the future--now seemed separated from them forever by a
yawning and impassable chasm. For many weeks no new prisoners had come
in to rouse their drooping courage with news of the progress of our
arms towards final victory, or refresh their remembrances of home, and
the gladsomeness of “God’s Country.” Before them they saw nothing but
weeks of slow and painful progress towards bitter death. The other
alternative was enlistment in the Rebel army.

Another class went out and joined, with no other intention than to
escape at the first opportunity. They justified their bad faith to the
Rebels by recalling the numberless instances of the Rebels’ bad faith
to us, and usually closed their arguments in defense of their course
with:

“No oath administered by a Rebel can have any binding obligation. These
men are outlaws who have not only broken their oaths to the Government,
but who have deserted from its service, and turned its arms against
it. They are perjurers and traitors, and in addition, the oath they
administer to us is under compulsion and for that reason is of no
account.”

Still another class, mostly made up from the old Raider crowd, enlisted
from natural depravity. They went out more than for anything else
because their hearts were prone to evil and they did that which was
wrong in preference to what was right. By far the largest portion of
those the Rebels obtained were of this class, and a more worthless
crowd of soldiers has not been seen since Falstaff mustered his famous
recruits.

After all, however, the number who deserted their flag was
astonishingly small, considering all the circumstances. The official
report says three hundred and twenty-six, but I imaging this is
under the truth, since quite a number were turned back in after
their utter uselessness had been demonstrated. I suppose that five
hundred “galvanized,” as we termed it, but this was very few when the
hopelessness of exchange, the despair of life, and the wretchedness of
the condition of the eleven or twelve thousand inside the Stockade is
remembered.

The motives actuating men to desert were not closely analyzed by us,
but we held all who did so as despicable scoundrels, too vile to be
adequately described in words. It was not safe for a man to announce
his intention of “galvanizing,” for he incurred much danger of being
beaten until he was physically unable to reach the gate. Those who went
over to the enemy had to use great discretion in letting the Rebel
officer, know so much of their wishes as would secure their being
taker outside. Men were frequently knocked down and dragged away while
telling the officers they wanted to go out.

On one occasion one hundred or more of the raider crowd who had
galvanized, were stopped for a few hours in some little Town, on
their way to the front. They lost no time in stealing everything they
could lay their hands upon, and the disgusted Rebel commander ordered
them to be returned to the Stockade. They came in in the evening, all
well rigged out in Rebel uniforms, and carrying blankets. We chose to
consider their good clothes and equipments an aggravation of their
offense and an insult to ourselves. We had at that time quite a squad
of negro soldiers inside with us. Among them was a gigantic fellow with
a fist like a wooden beetle. Some of the white boys resolved to use
these to wreak the camp’s displeasure on the Galvanized. The plan was
carried out capitally. The big darky, followed by a crowd of smaller
and nimbler “shades,” would approach one of the leaders among them with:

“Is you a Galvanized?”

The surly reply would be,

“Yes, you ---- black ----. What the business is that of yours?”

At that instant the bony fist of the darky, descending like a
pile-driver, would catch the recreant under the ear, and lift him about
a rod. As he fell, the smaller darkies would pounce upon him, and in an
instant despoil him of his blanket and perhaps the larger portion of
his warm clothing. The operation was repeated with a dozen or more. The
whole camp enjoyed it as rare fun, and it was the only time that I saw
nearly every body at Florence laugh.

A few prisoners were brought in in December, who had been taken
in Foster’s attempt to cut the Charleston & Savannah Railroad at
Pocataligo. Among them we were astonished to find Charley Hirsch,
a member of Company I’s of our battalion. He had had a strange
experience. He was originally a member of a Texas regiment and was
captured at Arkansas Post. He then took the oath of allegiance and
enlisted with us. While we were at Savannah he approached a guard one
day to trade for tobacco. The moment he spoke to the man he recognized
him as a former comrade in the Texas regiment. The latter knew him
also, and sang out,

“I know you; you’re Charley Hirsch, that used to be in my company.”

Charley backed into the crowd as quickly as possible; to elude the
fellow’s eyes, but the latter called for the Corporal of the Guard,
had himself relieved, and in a few minutes came in with an officer
in search of the deserter. He found him with little difficulty, and
took him out. The luckless Charley was tried by court martial, found,
guilty, sentenced to be shot, and while waiting execution was confined
in the jail. Before the sentence could be carried into effect Sherman
came so close to the City that it was thought best to remove the
prisoners. In the confusion Charley managed to make his escape, and
at the moment the battle of Pocataligo opened, was lying concealed
between the two lines of battle, without knowing, of course, that he
was in such a dangerous locality. After the firing opened, he thought
it better to lie still than run the risk from the fire of both sides,
especially as he momentarily expected our folks to advance and drive
the Rebels away. But the reverse happened; the Johnnies drove our
fellows, and, finding Charley in his place of concealment, took him for
one of Foster’s men, and sent him to Florence, where he staid until we
went through to our lines.

Our days went by as stupidly and eventless as can be conceived. We had
grown too spiritless and lethargic to dig tunnels or plan escapes. We
had nothing to read, nothing to make or destroy, nothing to work with,
nothing to play with, and even no desire to contrive anything for
amusement. All the cards in the prison were worn out long ago. Some of
the boys had made dominos from bones, and Andrews and I still had our
chessmen, but we were too listless to play. The mind, enfeebled by the
long disuse of it except in a few limited channels, was unfitted for
even so much effort as was involved in a game for pastime.

Nor were there any physical exercises, such as that crowd of young
men would have delighted in under other circumstances. There was no
running, boxing, jumping, wrestling, leaping, etc. All were too weak
and hungry to make any exertion beyond that absolutely necessary.
On cold days everybody seemed totally benumbed. The camp would be
silent and still. Little groups everywhere hovered for hours, moody
and sullen, over diminutive, flickering fires, made with one poor
handful of splinters. When the sun shone, more activity was visible.
Boys wandered around, hunted up their friends, and saw what gaps
death--always busiest during the cold spells--had made in the ranks
of their acquaintances. During the warmest part of the day everybody
disrobed, and spent an hour or more killing the lice that had waxed and
multiplied to grievous proportions during the few days of comparative
immunity.

Besides the whipping of the Galvanized by the darkies, I remember but
two other bits of amusement we had while at Florence. One of these was
in hearing the colored soldiers sing patriotic songs, which they did
with great gusto when the weather became mild. The other was the antics
of a circus clown--a member, I believe, of a Connecticut or a New York
regiment, who, on the rare occasions when we were feeling not exactly
well so much as simply better than we had been, would give us an hour
or two of recitations of the drolleries with which he was wont to set
the crowded canvas in a roar. One of his happiest efforts, I remember,
was a stilted paraphrase of “Old Uncle Ned” a song very popular a
quarter of a century ago, and which ran something like this:

There was an old darky, an’ his name was Uncle Ned,
But he died long ago, long ago
He had no wool on de top of his head,
De place whar de wool ought to grouw.

          CHORUS
          Den lay down de shubel an’ de hoe,
          Den hang up de fiddle an’ de bow;
          For dere’s no more hard work for poor Uncle Ned
          He’s gone whar de good niggahs go.

His fingers war long, like de cane in de brake,
And his eyes war too dim for to see;
He had no teeth to eat de corn cake,
So he had to let de corn cake be.

          CHORUS.

His legs were so bowed dat he couldn’t lie still.
An’ he had no nails on his toes;

His neck was so crooked dot he couldn’t take a pill,
So he had to take a pill through his nose.

          CHORUS.

One cold frosty morning old Uncle Ned died,
An’ de tears ran down massa’s cheek like rain,
For he knew when Uncle Ned was laid in de groun’,
He would never see poor Uncle Ned again,

          CHORUS.


In the hands of this artist the song became--

There was an aged and indigent African whose cognomen was Uncle Edward,
But he is deceased since a remote period, a very remote period;
He possessed no capillary substance on the summit of his cranium,
The place designated by kind Nature for the capillary substance to
vegetate.

CHORUS.
Then let the agricultural implements rest recumbent upon the ground;
And suspend the musical instruments in peace neon the wall,
For there’s no more physical energy to be displayed by our Indigent
          Uncle Edward
He has departed to that place set apart by a beneficent Providence for
          the reception of the better class of Africans.


And so on. These rare flashes of fun only served to throw the
underlying misery out in greater relief. It was like lightning playing
across the surface of a dreary morass.

I have before alluded several times to the general inability of Rebels
to count accurately, even in low numbers. One continually met phases
of this that seemed simply incomprehensible to us, who had taken in
the multiplication table almost with our mother’s milk, and knew the
Rule of Three as well as a Presbyterian boy does the Shorter Catechism.
A cadet--an undergraduate of the South Carolina Military Institute
--called our roll at Florence, and though an inborn young aristocrat,
who believed himself made of finer clay than most mortals, he was
not a bad fellow at all. He thought South Carolina aristocracy the
finest gentry, and the South Carolina Military Institute the greatest
institution of learning in the world; but that is common with all South
Carolinians.

One day he came in so full of some matter of rare importance that we
became somewhat excited as to its nature. Dismissing our hundred after
roll-call, he unburdened his mind:

“Now you fellers are all so d---d peart on mathematics, and such
things, that you want to snap me up on every opportunity, but I guess
I’ve got something this time that’ll settle you. Its something that a
fellow gave out yesterday, and Colonel Iverson, and all the officers
out there have been figuring on it ever since, and none have got the
right answer, and I’m powerful sure that none of you, smart as you
think you are, can do it.”

“Heavens, and earth, let’s hear this wonderful problem,” said we all.

“Well,” said he, “what is the length of a pole standing in a river,
one-fifth of which is in the mud, two-thirds in the water, and
one-eighth above the water, while one foot and three inches of the top
is broken off?”

In a minute a dozen answered, “One hundred and fifty feet.”

The cadet could only look his amazement at the possession of such an
amount of learning by a crowd of mudsills, and one of our fellows said
contemptuously:

“Why, if you South Carolina Institute fellows couldn’t answer such
questions as that they wouldn’t allow you in the infant class up North.”

Lieutenant Barrett, our red-headed tormentor, could not, for the life
of him, count those inside in hundreds and thousands in such a manner
as to be reasonably certain of correctness. As it would have cankered
his soul to feel that he was being beaten out of a half-dozen rations
by the superior cunning of the Yankees, he adopted a plan which he must
have learned at some period of his life when he was a hog or sheep
drover. Every Sunday morning all in the camp were driven across the
Creek to the East Side, and then made to file slowly back--one at a
time--between two guards stationed on the little bridge that spanned
the Creek. By this means, if he was able to count up to one hundred, he
could get our number correctly.

The first time this was done after our arrival he gave us a display
of his wanton malevolence. We were nearly all assembled on the East
Side, and were standing in ranks, at the edge of the swamp, facing the
west. Barrett was walking along the opposite edge of the swamp, and,
coming to a little gully jumped, it. He was very awkward, and came near
falling into the mud. We all yelled derisively. He turned toward us in
a fury, shook his fist, and shouted curses and imprecations. We yelled
still louder. He snatched out his revolver, and began firing at our
line. The distance was considerable--say four or five hundred feet--and
the bullets struck in the mud in advance of the line. We still yelled.
Then he jerked a gun from a guard and fired, but his aim was still bad,
and the bullet sang over our heads, striking in the bank above us. He
posted of to get another gun, but his fit subsided before he obtained
it.




CHAPTER LXXIII.

CHRISTMAS--AND THE WAY THE WAS PASSED--THE DAILY ROUTINE OF RATION
DRAWING--SOME PECULIARITIES OF LIVING AND DYING.

Christmas, with its swelling flood of happy memories,--memories now
bitter because they marked the high tide whence our fortunes had
receded to this despicable state--came, but brought no change to
mark its coming. It is true that we had expected no change; we had
not looked forward to the day, and hardly knew when it arrived, so
indifferent were we to the lapse of time.

When reminded that the day was one that in all Christendom was sacred
to good cheer and joyful meetings; that wherever the upraised cross
proclaimed followers of Him who preached “Peace on Earth and good will
to men,” parents and children, brothers and sisters, long-time friends,
and all congenial spirits were gathering around hospitable boards to
delight in each other’s society, and strengthen the bonds of unity
between them, we listened as to a tale told of some foreign land from
which we had parted forever more.

It seemed years since we had known anything of the kind. The experience
we had had of it belonged to the dim and irrevocable past. It could not
come to us again, nor we go to it. Squalor, hunger, cold and wasting
disease had become the ordinary conditions of existence, from which
there was little hope that we would ever be exempt.

Perhaps it was well, to a certain degree, that we felt so. It softened
the poignancy of our reflections over the difference in the condition
of ourselves and our happier comrades who were elsewhere.

The weather was in harmony with our feelings. The dull, gray, leaden
sky was as sharp a contrast with the crisp, bracing sharpness of a
Northern Christmas morning, as our beggarly little ration of saltless
corn meal was to the sumptuous cheer that loaded the dinner-tables of
our Northern homes.

We turned out languidly in the morning to roll-call, endured silently
the raving abuse of the cowardly brute Barrett, hung stupidly over the
flickering little fires, until the gates opened to admit the rations.
For an hour there was bustle and animation. All stood around and
counted each sack of meal, to get an idea of the rations we were likely
to receive.

This was a daily custom. The number intended for the day’s issue were
all brought in and piled up in the street. Then there was a division
of the sacks to the thousands, the Sergeant of each being called up in
turn, and allowed to pick out and carry away one, until all were taken.
When we entered the prison each thousand received, on an average, ten
or eleven sacks a day. Every week saw a reduction in the number, until
by midwinter the daily issue to a thousand averaged four sacks. Let
us say that one of these sacks held two bushels, or the four, eight
bushels. As there are thirty-two quarts in a bushel, one thousand men
received two hundred and fifty-six quarts, or less than a half pint
each.

We thought we had sounded the depths of misery at Andersonville, but
Florence showed us a much lower depth. Bad as was parching under the
burning sun whose fiery rays bred miasma and putrefaction, it was still
not so bad as having one’s life chilled out by exposure in nakedness
upon the frozen ground to biting winds and freezing sleet. Wretched as
the rusty bacon and coarse, maggot-filled bread of Andersonville was,
it would still go much farther towards supporting life than the handful
of saltless meal at Florence.

While I believe it possible for any young man, with the forces of life
strong within him, and healthy in every way, to survive, by taking due
precautions, such treatment as we received in Andersonville, I cannot
understand how anybody could live through a month of Florence. That
many did live is only an astonishing illustration of the tenacity of
life in some individuals.

Let the reader imagine--anywhere he likes--a fifteen-acre field, with
a stream running through the center. Let him imagine this inclosed
by a Stockade eighteen feet high, made by standing logs on end.
Let him conceive of ten thousand feeble men, debilitated by months
of imprisonment, turned inside this inclosure, without a yard of
covering given them, and told to make their homes there. One quarter
of them--two thousand five hundred--pick up brush, pieces of rail,
splits from logs, etc., sufficient to make huts that will turn the rain
tolerably. The huts are in no case as good shelter as an ordinarily
careful farmer provides for his swine. Half of the prisoners--five
thousand--who cannot do so well, work the mud up into rude bricks,
with which they build shelters that wash down at every hard rain.
The remaining two thousand five hundred do not do even this, but lie
around on the ground, on old blankets and overcoats, and in day-time
prop these up on sticks, as shelter from the rain and wind. Let them
be given not to exceed a pint of corn meal a day, and a piece of wood
about the size of an ordinary stick for a cooking stove to cook it
with. Then let such weather prevail as we ordinarily have in the North
in November--freezing cold rains, with frequent days and nights when
the ice forms as thick as a pane of glass. How long does he think men
could live through that? He will probably say that a week, or at most
a fortnight, would see the last and strongest of these ten thousand
lying dead in the frozen mire where he wallowed. He will be astonished
to learn that probably not more than four or five thousand of those who
underwent this in Florence died there. How many died after release--in
Washington, on the vessels coming to Annapolis, in hospital and camp at
Annapolis, or after they reached home, none but the Recording Angel can
tell. All that I know is we left a trail of dead behind us, wherever we
moved, so long as I was with the doleful caravan.

Looking back, after these lapse of years, the most salient
characteristic seems to be the ease with which men died. There, was
little of the violence of dissolution so common at Andersonville. The
machinery of life in all of us, was running slowly and feebly; it would
simply grow still slower and feebler in some, and then stop without a
jar, without a sensation to manifest it. Nightly one of two or three
comrades sleeping together would die. The survivors would not know it
until they tried to get him to “spoon” over, when they would find him
rigid and motionless. As they could not spare even so little heat as
was still contained in his body, they would not remove this, but lie up
the closer to it until morning. Such a thing as a boy making an outcry
when he discovered his comrade dead, or manifesting any, desire to get
away from the corpse, was unknown.

I remember one who, as Charles II. said of himself, was --“an
unconscionable long time in dying.” His name was Bickford; he belonged
to the Twenty-First Ohio Volunteer Infantry, lived, I think, near
Findlay, O., and was in my hundred. His partner and he were both in a
very bad condition, and I was not surprised, on making my rounds, one
morning, to find them apparently quite dead. I called help, and took
his partner away to the gate. When we picked up Bickford we found he
still lived, and had strength enough to gasp out:

“You fellers had better let me alone.” We laid him back to die, as we
supposed, in an hour or so.

When the Rebel Surgeon came in on his rounds, I showed him Bickford,
lying there with his eyes closed, and limbs motionless. The Surgeon
said:

“O, that man’s dead; why don’t you have him taken out?”

I replied: “No, he isn’t. Just see.” Stooping, I shook the boy sharply,
and said:

“Bickford! Bickford!! How do you feel?”

The eyes did not unclose, but the lips opened slowly, and said with a
painful effort:

“F-i-r-s-t R-a-t-e!”

This scene was repeated every morning for over a week. Every day the
Rebel Surgeon would insist that the man should betaken out, and every
morning Bickford would gasp out with troublesome exertion that he felt:

“F-i-r-s-t R-a-t-e!”

It ended one morning by his inability, to make his usual answer, and
then he was carried out to join the two score others being loaded into
the wagon.




CHAPTER LXXIV.

NEW YEAR’S DAY--DEATH OF JOHN H. WINDER--HE DIES ON HIS WAY TO A DINNER
--SOMETHING AS TO CHARACTER AND CAREER--ONE OF THE WORST MEN THAT EVER
LIVED.

On New Year’s Day we were startled by the information that our old-time
enemy--General John H. Winder--was dead. It seemed that the Rebel
Sutler of the Post had prepared in his tent a grand New Year’s dinner
to which all the officers were invited. Just as Winder bent his head
to enter the tent he fell, and expired shortly after. The boys said it
was a clear case of Death by Visitation of the Devil, and it was always
insisted that his last words were:

“My faith is in Christ; I expect to be saved. Be sure and cut down the
prisoners’ rations.”

Thus passed away the chief evil genius of the Prisoners-of-War.
American history has no other character approaching his in vileness.
I doubt if the history of the world can show another man, so
insignificant in abilities and position, at whose door can be laid such
a terrible load of human misery. There have been many great conquerors
and warriors who have

          Waded through slaughter to a throne,
          And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

but they were great men, with great objects, with grand plans to carry
out, whose benefits they thought would be more than an equivalent for
the suffering they caused. The misery they inflicted was not the motive
of their schemes, but an unpleasant incident, and usually the sufferers
were men of other races and religions, for whom sympathy had been
dulled by long antagonism.

But Winder was an obscure, dull old man--the commonplace descendant of
a pseudo-aristocrat whose cowardly incompetence had once cost us the
loss of our National Capital. More prudent than his runaway father, he
held himself aloof from the field; his father had lost reputation and
almost his commission, by coming into contact with the enemy; he would
take no such foolish risks, and he did not. When false expectations
of the ultimate triumph of Secession led him to cast his lot with the
Southern Confederacy, he did not solicit a command in the field, but
took up his quarters in Richmond, to become a sort of Informer-General,
High-Inquisitor and Chief Eavesdropper for his intimate friend,
Jefferson Davis. He pried and spied around into every man’s bedroom and
family circle, to discover traces of Union sentiment. The wildest tales
malice and vindictiveness could concoct found welcome reception in his
ears. He was only too willing to believe, that he might find excuse for
harrying and persecuting. He arrested, insulted, imprisoned, banished,
and shot people, until the patience even of the citizens of Richmond
gave way, and pressure was brought upon Jefferson Davis to secure the
suppression of his satellite. For a long while Davis resisted, but
at last yielded, and transferred Winder to the office of Commissary
General of Prisoners. The delight of the Richmond people was great. One
of the papers expressed it in an article, the key note of which was:

“Thank God that Richmond is at last rid of old Winder. God have mercy
upon those to whom he has been sent.”

Remorseless and cruel as his conduct of the office of Provost Marshal
General was, it gave little hint of the extent to which he would go
in that of Commissary General of Prisoners. Before, he was restrained
somewhat by public opinion and the laws of the land. These no longer
deterred him. From the time he assumed command of all the Prisons east
of the Mississippi--some time in the Fall of 1863--until death removed
him, January 1, 1865--certainly not less than twenty-five thousand
incarcerated men died in the most horrible manner that the mind can
conceive. He cannot be accused of exaggeration, when, surveying the
thousands of new graves at Andersonville, he could say with a quiet
chuckle that he was “doing more to kill off the Yankees than twenty
regiments at the front.” No twenty regiments in the Rebel Army ever
succeeded in slaying anything like thirteen thousand Yankees in six
months, or any other time. His cold blooded cruelty was such as to
disgust even the Rebel officers. Colonel D. T. Chandler, of the Rebel
War Department, sent on a tour of inspection to Andersonville, reported
back, under date of August 5, 1864:

“My duty requires me respectfully to recommend a change in the officer
in command of the post, Brigadier General John H. Winder, and the
substitution in his place of some one who unites both energy and good
judgment with some feelings of humanity and consideration for the
welfare and comfort, as far as is consistent with their safe keeping,
of the vast number of unfortunates placed under his control; some one
who, at least, will not advocate deliberately, and in cold blood, the
propriety of leaving them in their present condition until their number
is sufficiently reduced by death to make the present arrangements
suffice for their accommodation, and who will not consider it a matter
of self-laudation and boasting that he has never been inside of the
Stockade--a place the horrors of which it is difficult to describe, and
which is a disgrace to civilization--the condition of which he might,
by the exercise of a little energy and judgment, even with the limited
means at his command, have considerably improved.”

In his examination touching this report, Colonel Chandler says:

“I noticed that General Winder seemed very indifferent to the welfare
of the prisoners, indisposed to do anything, or to do as much as I
thought he ought to do, to alleviate their sufferings. I remonstrated
with him as well as I could, and he used that language which I
reported to the Department with reference to it--the language stated
in the report. When I spoke of the great mortality existing among the
prisoners, and pointed out to him that the sickly season was coming on,
and that it must necessarily increase unless something was done for
their relief--the swamp, for instance, drained, proper food furnished,
and in better quantity, and other sanitary suggestions which I made to
him--he replied to me that he thought it was better to see half of them
die than to take care of the men.”

It was he who could issue such an order as this, when it was supposed
that General Stoneman was approaching Andersonville:

                                   HEADQUARTERS MILITARY PRISON,
                                   ANDERSONVILLE, Ga., July 27, 1864.
The officers on duty and in charge of the Battery of Florida Artillery
at the time will, upon receiving notice that the enemy has approached
within seven miles of this post, open upon the Stockade with grapeshot,
without reference to the situation beyond these lines of defense.

                                   JOHN H. WINDER,
                              Brigadier General Commanding.


This man was not only unpunished, but the Government is to-day
supporting his children in luxury by the rent it pays for the use of
his property --the well-known Winder building, which is occupied by one
of the Departments at Washington.

I confess that all my attempts to satisfactorily analyze Winder’s
character and discover a sufficient motive for his monstrous conduct
have been futile. Even if we imagine him inspired by a hatred of the
people of the North that rose to fiendishness, we can not understand
him. It seems impossible for the mind of any man to cherish so deep and
insatiable an enmity against his fellow-creatures that it could not be
quenched and turned to pity by the sight of even one day’s misery at
Andersonville or Florence. No one man could possess such a grievous
sense of private or national wrongs as to be proof against the daily
spectacle of thousands of his own fellow citizens, inhabitants of the
same country, associates in the same institutions, educated in the same
principles, speaking the same language--thousands of his brethren in
race, creed, and all that unite men into great communities, starving,
rotting and freezing to death.

There is many a man who has a hatred so intense that nothing but
the death of the detested one will satisfy it. A still fewer number
thirst for a more comprehensive retribution; they would slay perhaps
a half-dozen persons; and there may be such gluttons of revenge as
would not be satisfied with the sacrifice of less than a score or two,
but such would be monsters of whom there have been very few, even in
fiction. How must they all bow their diminished heads before a man who
fed his animosity fat with tens of thousands of lives.

But, what also militates greatly against the presumption that either
revenge or an abnormal predisposition to cruelty could have animated
Winder, is that the possession of any two such mental traits so
strongly marked would presuppose a corresponding activity of other
intellectual faculties, which was not true of him, as from all I can
learn of him his mind was in no respect extraordinary.

It does not seem possible that he had either the brain to conceive, or
the firmness of purpose to carry out so gigantic and long-enduring a
career of cruelty, because that would imply superhuman qualities in a
man who had previously held his own very poorly in the competition with
other men.

The probability is that neither Winder nor his direct superiors--Howell
Cobb and Jefferson Davis--conceived in all its proportions the gigantic
engine of torture and death they were organizing; nor did they
comprehend the enormity of the crime they were committing. But they
were willing to do much wrong to gain their end; and the smaller crimes
of to-day prepared them for greater ones to-morrow, and still greater
ones the day following. Killing ten men a day on Belle Isle in January,
by starvation and hardship, led very easily to killing one hundred men
a day in Andersonville, in July, August and September. Probably at
the beginning of the war they would have felt uneasy at slaying one
man per day by such means, but as retribution came not, and as their
appetite for slaughter grew with feeding, and as their sympathy with
human misery atrophied from long suppression, they ventured upon ever
widening ranges of destructiveness. Had the war lasted another year,
and they lived, five hundred deaths a day would doubtless have been
insufficient to disturb them.

Winder doubtless went about his part of the task of slaughter coolly,
leisurely, almost perfunctorily. His training in the Regular Army
was against the likelihood of his displaying zeal in anything. He
instituted certain measures, and let things take their course. That
course was a rapid transition from bad to worse, but it was still in
the direction of his wishes, and, what little of his own energy was
infused into it was in the direction of impetus,-not of controlling
or improving the course. To have done things better would have
involved soma personal discomfort. He was not likely to incur personal
discomfort to mitigate evils that were only afflicting someone else.
By an effort of one hour a day for two weeks he could have had every
man in Andersonville and Florence given good shelter through his own
exertions. He was not only too indifferent and too lazy to do this,
but he was too malignant; and this neglect to allow--simply allow,
remember--the prisoners to protect their lives by providing their own
shelter, gives the key to his whole disposition, and would stamp his
memory with infamy, even if there were no other charges against him.




CHAPTER LXXV.

ONE INSTANCE OF A SUCCESSFUL ESCAPE--THE ADVENTURES OF SERGEANT WALTER
HARTSOUGH, OF COMPANY K, SIXTEENTH ILLINOIS CAVALRY--HE GETS AWAY FROM
THE REBELS AT THOMASVILLE, AND AFTER A TOILSOME AND DANGEROUS JOURNEY
OF SEVERAL HUNDRED MILES, REACHES OUR LINES IN FLORIDA.

While I was at Savannah I got hold of a primary geography in possession
of one of the prisoners, and securing a fragment of a lead pencil from
one comrade, and a sheet of note paper from another, I made a copy of
the South Carolina and Georgia sea coast, for the use of Andrews and
myself in attempting to escape. The reader remembers the ill success of
all our efforts in that direction. When we were at Blackshear we still
had the map, and intended to make another effort, “as soon as the sign
got right.” One day while we were waiting for this, Walter Hartsough, a
Sergeant of Company g, of our battalion, came to me and said:

“Mc., I wish you’d lend me your map a little while. I want to make a
copy.”

I handed it over to him, and never saw him more, as almost immediately
after we were taken out “on parole” and sent to Florence. I heard from
other comrades of the battalion that he had succeeded in getting past
the guard line and into the Woods, which was the last they ever heard
of him. Whether starved to death in some swamp, whether torn to pieces
by dogs, or killed by the rifles of his pursuers, they knew not. The
reader can judge of my astonishment as well as pleasure, at receiving
among the dozens of letters which came to me every day while this
account was appearing in the BLADE, one signed “Walter Hartsough, late
of Co. K, Sixteenth Illinois Cavalry.” It was like one returned from
the grave, and the next mail took a letter to him, inquiring eagerly
of his adventures after we separated. I take pleasure in presenting
the reader with his reply, which was only intended as a private
communication to myself. The first part of the letter I omit, as it
contains only gossip about our old comrades, which, however interesting
to myself, would hardly be so to the general reader.

                                   GENOA, WAYNE COUNTY, IA.,
                                   May 27, 1879.

Dear Comrade Mc.:
                    .....................
I have been living in this town for ten years, running a general
store, under the firm name of Hartsough & Martin, and have been more
successful than I anticipated.

I made my escape from Thomasville, Ga., Dec. 7, 1864, by running the
guards, in company with Frank Hommat, of Company M, and a man by the
name of Clipson, of the Twenty-First Illinois Infantry. I had heard
the officers in charge of us say that they intended to march us across
to the other road, and take us back to Andersonville. We concluded
we would take a heavy risk on our lives rather than return there. By
stinting ourselves we had got a little meal ahead, which we thought we
would bake up for the journey, but our appetites got the better of us,
and we ate it all up before starting. We were camped in the woods then,
with no Stockade--only a line of guards around us. We thought that by
a little strategy and boldness we could pass these. We determined to
try. Clipson was to go to the right, Hommat in the center, and myself
to the left. We all slipped through, without a shot. Our rendezvous was
to be the center of a small swamp, through which flowed a small stream
that supplied the prisoners with water. Hommat and I got together soon
after passing the guard lines, and we began signaling for Clipson. We
laid down by a large log that lay across the stream, and submerged
our limbs and part of our bodies in the water, the better to screen
ourselves from observation. Pretty soon a Johnny came along with a
bunch of turnip tops, that he was taking up to the camp to trade to the
prisoners. As he passed over the log I could have caught him by the
leg, which I intended to do if he saw us, but he passed along, heedless
of those concealed under his very feet, which saved him a ducking at
least, for we were resolved to drown him if he discovered us. Waiting
here a little longer we left our lurking place and made a circuit of
the edge of the swamp, still signaling for Clipson. But we could find
nothing of him, and at last had to give him up.

We were now between Thomasville and the camp, and as Thomasville
was the end of the railroad, the woods were full of Rebels waiting
transportation, and we approached the road carefully, supposing that it
was guarded to keep their own men from going to town. We crawled up to
the road, but seeing no one, started across it. At that moment a guard
about thirty yards to our left, who evidently supposed that we were
Rebels, sang out:

“Whar ye gwine to thar boys?”

I answered:

“Jest a-gwine out here a little ways.”

Frank whispered me to run, but I said, “No; wait till he halts us,
and then run.” He walked up to where we had crossed his beat--looked
after us a few minutes, and then, to our great relief, walked back to
his post. After much trouble we succeeded in getting through all the
troops, and started fairly on our way. We tried to shape our course
toward Florida. The country was very swampy, the night rainy and dark,
no stars were out to guide us, and we made such poor progress that
when daylight came we were only eight miles from our starting place,
and close to a road leading from Thomasville to Monticello. Finding a
large turnip patch, we filled our pockets, and then hunted a place to
lie concealed in during the day. We selected a thicket in the center
of a large pasture. We crawled into this and laid down. Some negros
passed close to us, going to their work in an adjoining field. They had
a bucket of victuals with them for dinner, which they hung on the fence
in such a way that we could have easily stolen it without detection.
The temptation to hungry men was very great, but we concluded that it
was best and safest to let it alone.

As the negros returned from work in the evening they separated, one
old man passing on the opposite side of the thicket from the rest. We
halted him and told him that we were Rebs, who had taken a French leave
of Thomasville; that we were tired of guarding Yanks, and were going
home; and further, that we were hungry, and wanted something to eat.
He told us that he was the boss on the plantation. His master lived in
Thomasville. He, himself, did not have much to eat, but he would show
us where to stay, and when the folks went to bed he would bring us some
food. Passing up close to the negro quarters we got over the fence and
lay down behind it, to wait for our supper.

We had been there but a short time when a young negro came out, and
passing close by us, went into a fence corner a few panels distant
and, kneeling down, began praying aloud, and very, earnestly, and
stranger still, the burden of his supplication was for the success of
our armies. I thought it the best prayer I ever listened to. Finishing
his devotions he returned to the house, and shortly after the old man
came with a good supper of corn bread, molasses and milk. He said that
he had no meat, and that he had done the best he could for us. After
we had eaten, he said that as the young people had gone to bed, we had
better come into his cabin and rest awhile, which we did.

Hommat had a full suit of Rebel clothes, and I had stolen sacks enough
at Andersonville, when they were issuing rations, to make me a shirt
and pantaloons, which a sailor fabricated for me. I wore these over
what was left of my blue clothes. The old negro lady treated us very
coolly. In a few minutes a young negro came in, whom the old gentleman
introduced as his son, and whom I immediately recognized as our friend
of the prayerful proclivities. He said that he had been a body servant
to his young master, who was an officer in the Rebel army.

“Golly!” says he, “if you ’uns had stood a little longer at Stone
River, our men would have run.”

I turned to him sharply with the question of what he meant by calling
us “You ’uns,” and asked him if he believed we were Yankees. He
surveyed us carefully for a few seconds, and then said:

“Yes; I bleav you is Yankees.”

He paused a second, and added:

“Yes, I know you is.”

I asked him how he knew it, and he said that we neither looked nor
talked like their men. I then acknowledged that we were Yankee
prisoners, trying to make our escape to our lines. This announcement
put new life into the old lady, and, after satisfying herself that we
were really Yankees, she got up from her seat, shook hands with us,
and declared we must have a better supper than we had had. She set
immediately about preparing it for us. Taking up a plank in the floor,
she pulled out a nice flitch of bacon, from which she cut as much as
we could eat, and gave us some to carry with us. She got up a real
substantial supper, to which we did full justice, in spite of the meal
we had already eaten.

They gave us a quantity of victuals to take with us, and instructed us
as well as possible as to our road. They warned us to keep away from
the young negros, but trust the old ones implicitly. Thanking them
over and over for their exceeding kindness, we bade them good-by, and
started again on our journey. Our supplies lasted two days, during
which time we made good progress, keeping away from the roads, and
flanking the towns, which were few and insignificant. We occasionally
came across negros, of whom we cautiously inquired as to the route
and towns, and by the assistance of our map and the stars, got along
very well indeed, until we came to the Suwanee River. We had intended
to cross this at Columbus or Alligator. When within six miles of the
river we stopped at some negro huts to get some food. The lady who
owned the negros was a widow, who was born and raised in Massachusetts.
Her husband had died before the war began. An old negro woman told her
mistress that we were at the quarters, and she sent for us to come to
the house. She was a very nice-looking lady, about thirty-five years
of age, and treated us with great kindness. Hommat being barefooted,
she pulled off her own shoes and stockings and gave them to him, saying
that she would go to Town the next day and get herself another pair.
She told us not to try to cross the river near Columbus, as their
troops had been deserting in great numbers, and the river was closely
picketed to catch the runaways. She gave us directions how to go so
as to cross the river about fifty miles below Columbus. We struck the
river again the next night, and I wanted to swim it, but Hommat was
afraid of alligators, and I could not induce him to venture into the
water.

We traveled down the river until we came to Moseley’s Ferry, where we
stole an old boat about a third full of water, and paddled across.
There was quite a little town at that place, but we walked right down
the main street without meeting any one. Six miles from the river we
saw an old negro woman roasting sweet potatos in the back yard of a
house. We were very hungry, and thought we would risk something to get
food. Hommat went around near her, and asked her for something to eat.
She told him to go and ask the white folks. This was the answer she
made to every question. He wound up by asking her how far it was to
Mossley’s Ferry, saying that he wanted to go there, and get something
to eat. She at last ran into the house, and we ran away as fast as
we could. We had gone but a short distance when we heard a horn, and
soon-the-cursed hounds began bellowing. We did our best running, but
the hounds circled around the house a few times and then took our
trail. For a little while it seemed all up with us, as the sound of the
baying came closer and closer. But our inquiry about the distance to
Moseley’s Ferry seems to have saved us. They soon called the hounds in,
and started them on the track we had come, instead of that upon which
we were going. The baying shortly died away in the distance. We did not
waste any time congratulating ourselves over our marvelous escape, but
paced on as fast as we could for about eight miles farther. On the way
we passed over the battle ground of Oolustee, or Ocean Pond.

Coming near to Lake City we fell in with some negros who had been
brought from Maryland. We stopped over one day with them, to rest, and
two of them concluded to go with us. We were furnished with a lot of
cooked provisions, and starting one night made forty-two miles before
morning. We kept the negros in advance. I told Hommat that it was a
poor command that could not afford an advance guard. After traveling
two nights with the negros, we came near Baldwin. Here I was very much
afraid of recapture, and I did not want the negros with us, if we were,
lest we should be shot for slave-stealing. About daylight of the second
morning we gave them the slip.

We had to skirt Baldwin closely, to head the St. Mary’s River, or cross
it where that was easiest. After crossing the river we came to a very
large swamp, in the edge of which we lay all day. Before nightfall we
started to go through it, as there was no fear of detection in these
swamps. We got through before it was very dark, and as we emerged
from it we discovered a dense cloud of smoke to our right and quite
close. We decided this was a camp, and while we were talking the band
began to play. This made us think that probably our forces had come
out from Fernandina, and taken the place. I proposed to Hommat that
we go forward and reconnoiter. He refused, and leaving him alone, I
started forward. I had gone but a short distance when a soldier came
out from the camp with a bucket. He began singing, and the song he
sang convinced me that he was a Rebel. Rejoining Hommat, we held a
consultation and decided to stay where we were until it became darker,
before trying to get out. It was the night of the 22d of December, and
very cold for that country. The camp guard had small fires built, which
we could see quite plainly. After starting we saw that the pickets also
had fires, and that we were between the two lines. This discovery saved
us from capture, and keeping about an equal distance between the two,
we undertook to work our way out.

We first crossed a line of breastworks, then in succession the
Fernandina Railroad, the Jacksonville Railroad, and pike, moving all
the time nearly parallel with the picket line. Here we had to halt.
Hommat was suffering greatly with his feet. The shoes that had been
given him by the widow lady were worn out, and his feet were much torn
and cut by the terribly rough road we had traveled through swamps, etc.
We sat down on a log, and I, pulling off the remains of my army shirt,
tore it into pieces, and Hommat wrapped his feet up in them. A part I
reserved and tore into strips, to tie up the rents in our pantaloons.
Going through the swamps and briers had torn them into tatters, from
waistband to hem, leaving our skins bare to be served in the same way.

We started again, moving slowly and bearing towards the picket fires,
which we could see for a distance on our left. After traveling some
little time the lights on our left ended, which puzzled us for a while,
until we came to a fearful big swamp, that explained it all, as this,
considered impassable, protected the right of the camp. We had an awful
time in getting through. In many places we had to lie down and crawl
long distances through the paths made in the brakes by hogs and other
animals. As we at length came out, Hommat turned to me and whispered
that in the morning we would have some Lincoln coffee. He seemed to
think this must certainly end our troubles.

We were now between the Jacksonville Railroad and the St. John’s River.
We kept about four miles from the railroad, for fear of running into
the Rebel outposts. We had traveled but a few miles when Hommat said he
could go no farther, as his feet and legs were so swelled and numb that
he could not tell when he set them upon the ground. I had some matches
that a negro had given me, and gathering together a few pine knots
we made a fire--the first that we had lighted on the trip--and laid
down with it between us. We had slept but a few minutes when I awoke
and found Hommat’s clothes on fire. Rousing him we put out the flames
before he was badly burned, but the thing had excited him so as to give
him new life, and be proposed to start on again.

By sunrise we were within eight miles of our lines, and concluding that
it would be safe to travel in the daytime, we went ahead, walking along
the railroad. The excitement being over, Hommat began to move very
slowly again. His feet and legs were so swollen that he could scarcely
walk, and it took us a long while to pass over those eight miles.

At last we came in sight of our pickets. They were negros. They halted
us, and Hommat went forward to speak to them. They called for the
Officer of the Guard, who came, passed us inside, and shook hands
cordially with us. His first inquiry was if we knew Charley Marseilles,
whom you remember ran that little bakery at Andersonville.

We were treated very kindly at Jacksonville. General Scammon was in
command of the post, and had only been released but a short time from
prison, so he knew how it was himself. I never expect to enjoy as happy
a moment on earth as I did when I again got under the protection of the
old flag. Hommat went to the hospital a few days, and was then sent
around to New York by sea.

Oh, it was a fearful trip through those Florida swamps. We would very
often have to try a swamp in three or four different places before
we could get through. Some nights we could not travel on account
of its being cloudy and raining. There is not money enough in the
United States to induce me to undertake the trip again under the same
circumstances. Our friend Clipson, that made his escape when we did,
got very nearly through to our lines, but was taken sick, and had to
give himself up. He was taken back to Andersonville and kept until the
next Spring, when he came through all right. There were sixty-one of
Company K captured at Jonesville, and I think there was only seventeen
lived through those horrible prisons.

You have given the best description of prison life that I have ever
seen written. The only trouble is that it cannot be portrayed so that
persons can realize the suffering and abuse that our soldiers endured
in those prison hells. Your statements are all correct in regard to
the treatment that we received, and all those scenes you have depicted
are as vivid in my mind today as if they had only occurred yesterday.
Please let me hear from you again. Wishing you success in all your
undertakings, I remain your friend,

                              WALTER, HARTSOUGH,
          Late of K Company, Sixteenth Illinois Volunteer of Infantry.




CHAPTER LXXVI.

THE PECULIAR TYPE OF INSANITY PREVALENT AT FLORENCE--BARRETT’S
WANTONNESS OF CRUELTY--WE LEARN OF SHERMAN’S ADVANCE INTO SOUTH
CAROLINA--THE REBELS BEGIN MOVING THE PRISONERS AWAY--ANDREWS AND I
CHANGE OUR TACTICS, AND STAY BEHIND--ARRIVAL OF FIVE PRISONERS FROM
SHERMAN’S COMMAND--THEIR UNBOUNDED CONFIDENCE IN SHERMAN’S SUCCESS, AND
ITS BENEFICIAL EFFECT UPON US.

One terrible phase of existence at Florence was the vast increase of
insanity. We had many insane men at Andersonville, but the type of the
derangement was different, partaking more of what the doctors term
melancholia. Prisoners coming in from the front were struck aghast by
the horrors they saw everywhere. Men dying of painful and repulsive
diseases lined every step of whatever path they trod; the rations given
them were repugnant to taste and stomach; shelter from the fiery sun
there was none, and scarcely room enough for them to lie down upon.
Under these discouraging circumstances, home-loving, kindly-hearted
men, especially those who had passed out of the first flush of youth,
and had left wife and children behind when they entered the service,
were speedily overcome with despair of surviving until released; their
hopelessness fed on the same germs which gave it birth, until it became
senseless, vacant-eyed, unreasoning, incurable melancholy, when the
victim would lie for hours, without speaking a word, except to babble
of home, or would wander aimlessly about the camp--frequently stark
naked--until he died or was shot for coming too near the Dead Line.
Soldiers must not suppose that this was the same class of weaklings
who usually pine themselves into the Hospital within three months
after their regiment enters the field. They were as a rule, made up of
seasoned soldiery, who had become inured to the dangers and hardships
of active service, and were not likely to sink down under any ordinary
trials.

The insane of Florence were of a different class; they were the boys
who had laughed at such a yielding to adversity in Andersonville,
and felt a lofty pity for the misfortunes of those who succumbed so.
But now the long strain of hardship, privation and exposure had done
for them what discouragement had done for those of less fortitude in
Andersonville. The faculties shrank under disuse and misfortune, until
they forgot their regiments, companies, places and date of capture,
and finally, even their names. I should think that by the middle of
January, at least one in every ten had sunk to this imbecile condition.
It was not insanity so much as mental atrophy--not so much aberration
of the mind, as a paralysis of mental action. The sufferers became
apathetic idiots, with no desire or wish to do or be anything. If they
walked around at all they had to be watched closely, to prevent their
straying over the Dead Line, and giving the young brats of guards the
coveted opportunity of killing them. Very many of such were killed,
and one of my Midwinter memories of Florence was that of seeing one of
these unfortunate imbeciles wandering witlessly up to the Dead Line
from the Swamp, while the guard--a boy of seventeen--stood with gun in
hand, in the attitude of a man expecting a covey to be flushed, waiting
for the poor devil to come so near the Dead Line as to afford an excuse
for killing him. Two sane prisoners, comprehending the situation,
rushed up to the lunatic, at the risk of their own lives, caught him by
the arms, and drew him back to safety.

The brutal Barrett seemed to delight in maltreating these demented
unfortunates. He either could not be made to understand their
condition, or willfully disregarded it, for it was one of the commonest
sights to see him knock down, beat, kick or otherwise abuse them
for not instantly obeying orders which their dazed senses could not
comprehend, or their feeble limbs execute, even if comprehended.

In my life I have seen many wantonly cruel men. I have known numbers
of mates of Mississippi river steamers--a class which seems carefully
selected from ruffians most proficient in profanity, obscenity and
swift-handed violence; I have seen negro-drivers in the slave marts of
St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans, and overseers on the plantations
of Mississippi and Louisiana; as a police reporter in one of the
largest cities in America, I have come in contact with thousands of
the brutalized scoundrels--the thugs of the brothel, bar-room and
alley--who form the dangerous classes of a metropolis. I knew Captain
Wirz. But in all this exceptionally extensive and varied experience, I
never met a man who seemed to love cruelty for its own sake as well as
Lieutenant Barrett. He took such pleasure in inflicting pain as those
Indians who slice off their prisoners’ eyelids, ears, noses and hands,
before burning them at the stake.

That a thing hurt some one else was always ample reason for his doing
it. The starving, freezing prisoners used to collect in considerable
numbers before the gate, and stand there for hours gazing vacantly
at it. There was no special object in doing this, only that it was a
central point, the rations came in there, and occasionally an officer
would enter, and it was the only place where anything was likely to
occur to vary the dreary monotony of the day, and the boys went there
because there was nothing else to offer any occupation to their minds.
It became a favorite practical joke of Barrett’s to slip up to the gate
with an armful of clubs, and suddenly opening the wicket, fling them
one after another, into the crowd, with all the force he possessed.
Many were knocked down, and many received hurts which resulted in fatal
gangrene. If he had left the clubs lying where thrown, there would have
been some compensation for his meanness, but he always came in and
carefully gathered up such as he could get, as ammunition for another
time.

I have heard men speak of receiving justice--even favors from Wirz. I
never heard any one saying that much of Barrett. Like Winder, if he had
a redeeming quality it was carefully obscured from the view of all that
I ever met who knew him.

Where the fellow came from, what State was entitled to the discredit of
producing and raising him, what he was before the War, what became of
him after he left us, are matters of which I never heard even a rumor,
except a very vague one that he had been killed by our cavalry, some
returned prisoner having recognized and shot him.

Colonel Iverson, of the Fifth Georgia, was the Post Commander. He was a
man of some education, but had a violent, ungovernable temper, during
fits of which he did very brutal things. At other times he would show
a disposition towards fairness and justice. The worst point in my
indictment against him is that he suffered Barrett to do as he did.

Let the reader understand that I have no personal reasons for my
opinion of these men. They never did anything to me, save what they did
to all of my companions. I held myself aloof from them, and shunned
intercourse so effectually that during my whole imprisonment I did not
speak as many words to Rebel officers as are in this and the above
paragraphs, and most of those were spoken to the Surgeon who visited
my hundred. I do not usually seek conversation with people I do not
like, and certainly did not with persons for whom I had so little love
as I had for Turner, Ross, Winder, Wirz, Davis, Iverson, Barrett, et
al. Possibly they felt badly over my distance and reserve, but I must
confess that they never showed it very palpably.

As January dragged slowly away into February, rumors of the astonishing
success of Sherman began to be so definite and well authenticated as to
induce belief. We knew that the Western Chieftain had marched almost
unresisted through Georgia, and captured Savannah with comparatively
little difficulty. We did not understand it, nor did the Rebels around
us, for neither of us comprehended the Confederacy’s near approach to
dissolution, and we could not explain why a desperate attempt was not
made somewhere to arrest the onward sweep of the conquering armies of
the West. It seemed that if there was any vitality left in Rebeldom it
would deal a blow that would at least cause the presumptuous invader
to pause. As we knew nothing of the battles of Franklin and Nashville,
we were ignorant of the destruction of Hood’s army, and were at a loss
to account for its failure to contest Sherman’s progress. The last we
had heard of Hood, he had been flanked out of Atlanta, but we did not
understand that the strength or morale of his force had been seriously
reduced in consequence.

Soon it drifted in to us that Sherman had cut loose from Savannah, as
from Atlanta, and entered South Carolina, to repeat there the march
through her sister State. Our sources of information now were confined
to the gossip which our men--working outside on parole,--could overhear
from the Rebels, and communicate to us as occasion served. These
occasions were not frequent, as the men outside were not allowed to
come in except rarely, or stay long then. Still we managed to know
reasonably, soon that Sherman was sweeping resistlessly across the
State, with Hardee, Dick Taylor, Beauregard, and others, vainly trying
to make head against him. It seemed impossible to us that they should
not stop him soon, for if each of all these leaders had any command
worthy the name the aggregate must make an army that, standing on the
defensive, would give Sherman a great deal of trouble. That he would be
able to penetrate into the State as far as we were never entered into
our minds.

By and by we were astonished at the number of the trains that we
could hear passing north on the Charleston & Cheraw Railroad. Day
and night for two weeks there did not seem to be more than half an
hour’s interval at any time between the rumble and whistles of the
trains as they passed Florence Junction, and sped away towards Cheraw,
thirty-five miles north of us. We at length discovered that Sherman had
reached Branchville, and was singing around toward Columbia, and other
important points to the north; that Charleston was being evacuated,
and its garrison, munitions and stores were being removed to Cheraw,
which the Rebel Generals intended to make their new base. As this news
was so well confirmed as to leave no doubt of it, it began to wake up
and encourage all the more hopeful of us. We thought we could see some
premonitions of the glorious end, and that we were getting vicarious
satisfaction at the hands of our friends under the command of Uncle
Billy.

One morning orders came for one thousand men to get ready to move.
Andrews and I held a council of war on the situation, the question
before the house being whether we would go with that crowd, or stay
behind. The conclusion we came to was thus stated by Andrews:

“Now, Mc., we’ve flanked ahead every time, and see how we’ve come
out. We flanked into the first squad that left Richmond, and we were
consequently in the first that got into Andersonville. May be if
we’d staid back we’d got into that squad that was exchanged. We were
in the first squad that left Andersonville. We were the first to
leave Savannah and enter Millen. May be if we’d staid back, we’d got
exchanged with the ten thousand sick. We were the first to leave Millen
and the first to reach Blackshear. We were again the first to leave
Blackshear. Perhaps those fellows we left behind then are exchanged.
Now, as we’ve played ahead every time, with such infernal luck, let’s
play backward this time, and try what that brings us.”

“But, Lale,” (Andrews’s nickname--his proper name being Bezaleel), said
I, “we made something by going ahead every time--that is, if we were
not going to be exchanged. By getting into those places first we picked
out the best spots to stay, and got tent-building stuff that those who
came after us could not. And certainly we can never again get into as
bad a place as this is. The chances are that if this does not mean
exchange, it means transfer to a better prison.”

But we concluded, as I said above, to reverse our usual order of
procedure and flank back, in hopes that something would favor our
escape to Sherman. Accordingly, we let the first squad go off without
us, and the next, and the next, and so on, till there were only eleven
hundred --mostly those sick in the Hospital--remaining behind. Those
who went away--we afterwards learned, were run down on the cars to
Wilmington, and afterwards up to Goldsboro, N. C.

For a week or more we eleven hundred tenanted the Stockade, and by
burning up the tents of those who had gone had the only decent,
comfortable fires we had while in Florence. In hunting around through
the tents for fuel we found many bodies of those who had died as their
comrades were leaving. As the larger portion of us could barely walk,
the Rebels paroled us to remain inside of the Stockade or within a few
hundred yards of the front of it, and took the guards off. While these
were marching down, a dozen or more of us, exulting in even so much
freedom as we had obtained, climbed on the Hospital shed to see what
the outlook was, and perched ourselves on the ridgepole. Lieutenant
Barrett came along, at a distance of two hundred yards, with a squad of
guards. Observing us, he halted his men, faced them toward us, and they
leveled their guns as if to fire. He expected to see us tumble down
in ludicrous alarm, to avoid the bullets. But we hated him and them
so bad, that we could not give them the poor satisfaction of scaring
us. Only one of our party attempted to slide down, but the moment we
swore at him he came back and took his seat with folded arms alongside
of us. Barrett gave the order to fire, and the bullets shrieked aver
our heads, fortunately not hitting anybody. We responded with yells of
derision, and the worst abuse we could think of.

Coming down after awhile, I walked to the now open gate, and looped
through it over the barren fields to the dense woods a mile away, and a
wild desire to run off took possession of me. It seemed as if I could
not resist it. The woods appeared full of enticing shapes, beckoning me
to come to them, and the winds whispered in my ears:

“Run! Run! Run!”

But the words of my parole were still fresh in my mind, and I stilled
my frenzy to escape by turning back into the Stockade and looking away
from the tempting view.

Once five new prisoners, the first we had seen in a long time, were
brought in from Sherman’s army. They were plump, well-conditioned,
well-dressed, healthy, devil-may-care young fellows, whose confidence
in themselves and in Sherman was simply limitless, and their contempt
for all Rebels and especially those who terrorized over us, enormous.

“Come up here to headquarters,” said one of the Rebel officers to them
as they stood talking to us; “and we’ll parole you.”

“O go to h--- with your parole,” said the spokesman of the crowd, with
nonchalant contempt; “we don’t want none of your paroles. Old Billy’ll
parole us before Saturday.”

To us they said:

“Now, you boys want to cheer right up; keep a stiff upper lip. This
thing’s workin’ all right. Their old Confederacy’s goin’ to pieces like
a house afire. Sherman’s promenadin’ through it just as it suits him,
and he’s liable to pay a visit at any hour. We’re expectin’ him all the
time, because it was generally understood all through the Army that we
were to take the prison pen here in on our way.”

I mentioned my distrust of the concentration of Rebels at Cheraw, and
their faces took on a look of supreme disdain.

“Now, don’t let that worry you a minute,” said the confident spokesman.
“All the Rebels between here and Lee’s Army can’t prevent Sherman from
going just where he pleases. Why, we’ve quit fightin’ ’em except with
the Bummers advance. We haven’t had to go into regular line of battle
against them for I don’t know how long. Sherman would like anything
better than to have ’em make a stand somewhere so that he could get a
good fair whack at ’em.”

No one can imagine the effect of all this upon us. It was better than
a carload of medicines and a train load of provisions would have
been. From the depths of despondency we sprang at once to tip-toe on
the mountain-tops of expectation. We did little day and night but
listen for the sound of Sherman’s guns and discuss what we would do
when he came. We planned schemes of terrible vengeance on Barrett and
Iverson, but these worthies had mysteriously disappeared--whither no
one knew. There was hardly an hour of any night passed without some
one of us fancying that he heard the welcome sound of distant firing.
As everybody knows, by listening intently at night, one can hear just
exactly what he is intent upon hearing, and so was with us. In the
middle of the night boys listening awake with strained ears, would say:

“Now, if ever I heard musketry firing in my life, that’s a heavy
skirmish line at work, and sharply too, and not more than three miles
away, neither.”

Then another would say:

“I don’t want to ever get out of here if that don’t sound just as the
skirmishing at Chancellorsville did the first day to us. We were lying
down about four miles off, when it began pattering just as that is
doing now.”

And so on.

One night about nine or ten, there came two short, sharp peals of
thunder, that sounded precisely like the reports of rifled field
pieces. We sprang up in a frenzy of excitement, and shouted as if our
throats would split. But the next peal went off in the usual rumble,
and our excitement had to subside.




CHAPTER LXXVII.

FRUITLESS WAITING FOR SHERMAN--WE LEAVE FLORENCE--INTELLIGENCE OF THE
FALL OF WILMINGTON COMMUNICATED TO US BY A SLAVE--THE TURPENTINE REGION
OF NORTH CAROLINA--WE COME UPON A REBEL LINE OF BATTLE--YANKEES AT BOTH
ENDS OF THE ROAD.

Things had gone on in the way described in the previous chapter until
past the middle of February. For more than a week every waking hour
was spent in anxious expectancy of Sherman--listening for the far-off
rattle of his guns--straining our ears to catch the sullen boom of his
artillery--scanning the distant woods to see the Rebels falling back in
hopeless confusion before the pursuit of his dashing advance. Though we
became as impatient as those ancient sentinels who for ten long years
stood upon the Grecian hills to catch the first glimpse of the flames
of burning Troy, Sherman came not. We afterwards learned that two
expeditions were sent down towards us from Cheraw, but they met with
unexpected resistance, and were turned back.

It was now plain to us that the Confederacy was tottering to its fall,
and we were only troubled by occasional misgivings that we might in
some way be caught and crushed under the toppling ruins. It did not
seem possible that with the cruel tenacity with which the Rebels had
clung to us they would be willing to let us go free at last, but
would be tempted in the rage of their final defeat to commit some
unparalleled atrocity upon us.

One day all of us who were able to walk were made to fall in and march
over to the railroad, where we were loaded into boxcars. The sick
--except those who were manifestly dying--were loaded into wagons and
hauled over. The dying were left to their fate, without any companions
or nurses.

The train started off in a northeasterly direction, and as we went
through Florence the skies were crimson with great fires, burning in
all directions. We were told these were cotton and military stores
being destroyed in anticipation of a visit from, a part of Sherman’s
forces.

When morning came we were still running in the same direction that we
started. In the confusion of loading us upon the cars the previous
evening, I had been allowed to approach too near a Rebel officer’s
stock of rations, and the result was his being the loser and myself
the gainer of a canteen filled with fairly good molasses. Andrews and
I had some corn bread, and we, breakfasted sumptuously upon it and the
molasses, which was certainly none-the-less sweet from having been
stolen.

Our meal over, we began reconnoitering, as much for employment as
anything else. We were in the front end of a box car. With a saw made
on the back of a case-knife we cut a hole through the boards big enough
to permit us to pass out, and perhaps escape. We found that we were
on the foremost box car of the train--the next vehicle to us being a
passenger coach, in which were the Rebel officers. On the rear platform
of this car was seated one of their servants--a trusty old slave, well
dressed, for a negro, and as respectful as his class usually was. Said
I to him:

“Well, uncle, where are they taking us?”

He replied:

“Well, sah, I couldn’t rightly say.”

“But you could guess, if you tried, couldn’t you?”

“Yes sah.”

He gave a quick look around to see if the door behind him was so
securely shut that he could not be overheard by the Rebels inside the
car, his dull, stolid face lighted up as a negro’s always does in the
excitement of doing something cunning, and he said in a loud whisper:

“Dey’s a-gwine to take you to Wilmington--ef dey kin get you dar!”

“Can get us there!” said I in astonishment. “Is there anything to
prevent them taking us there?”

The dark face filled with inexpressible meaning. I asked:

“It isn’t possible that there are any Yankees down there to interfere,
is it?”

The great eyes flamed up with intelligence to tell me that I guessed
aright; again he glanced nervously around to assure himself that no one
was eavesdropping, and then he said in a whisper, just loud enough to
be heard above the noise of the moving train:

“De Yankees took Wilmington yesterday mawning.”

The news startled me, but it was true, our troops having driven out the
Rebel troops, and entered Wilmington, on the preceding day--the 22d of
February, 1865, as I learned afterwards. How this negro came to know
more of what was going on than his masters puzzled me much. That he did
know more was beyond question, since if the Rebels in whose charge we
were had known of Wilmington’s fall, they would not have gone to the
trouble of loading us upon the cars and hauling us one, hundred miles
in the direction of a City which had come into the hands of our men.

It has been asserted by many writers that the negros had some occult
means of diffusing important news among the mass of their people,
probably by relays of swift runners who traveled at night, going
twenty-five or thirty miles and back before morning. Very astonishing
stories are told of things communicated in this way across the length
or breadth of the Confederacy. It is said that our officers in the
blockading fleet in the Gulf heard from the negros in advance of the
publication in the Rebel papers of the issuance of the Proclamation
of Emancipation, and of several of our most important Victories. The
incident given above prepares me to believe all that has been told
of the perfection to which the negros had brought their “grapevine
telegraph,” as it was jocularly termed.

The Rebels believed something of it, too. In spite of their rigorous
patrol, an institution dating long before the war, and the severe
punishments visited upon negros found off their master’s premises
without a pass, none of them entertained a doubt that the young
negro men were in the habit of making long, mysterious journeys at
night, which had other motives than love-making or chicken-stealing.
Occasionally a young man would get caught fifty or seventy-five miles
from his “quarters,” while on some errand of his own, the nature
of which no punishment could make him divulge. His master would be
satisfied that he did not intend running away, because he was likely
going in the wrong direction, but beyond this nothing could be
ascertained. It was a common belief among overseers, when they saw an
active, healthy young “buck” sleepy and languid about his work, that he
had spent the night on one of these excursions.

The country we were running through--if such straining, toilsome
progress as our engine was making could be called running--was a rich
turpentine district. We passed by forests where all the trees were
marked with long scores through the bark, and extended up to a hight
of twenty feet or more. Into these, the turpentine and rosin, running
down, were caught, and conveyed by negros to stills near by, where it
was prepared for market. The stills were as rude as the mills we had
seen in Eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, and were as liable to fiery
destruction as a powder-house. Every few miles a wide space of ground,
burned clean of trees and underbrush, and yet marked by a portion of
the stones which had formed the furnace, showed where a turpentine
still, managed by careless and ignorant blacks, had been licked
up by the breath of flame. They never seemed to re-build on these
spots--whether from superstition or other reasons, I know not.

Occasionally we came to great piles of barrels of turpentine, rosin
and tar, some of which had laid there since the blockade had cut off
communication with the outer world. Many of the barrels of rosin had
burst, and their contents melted in the heat of the sun, had run over
the ground like streams of lava, covering it to a depth of many inches.
At the enormous price rosin, tar and turpentine were commanding in the
markets of the world, each of these piles represented a superb fortune.
Any one of them, if lying upon the docks of New York, would have
yielded enough to make every one of us upon the train comfortable for
life. But a few months after the blockade was raised, and they sank to
one-thirtieth of their present value.

These terebinthine stores were the property of the plantation lords
of the lowlands of North Carolina, who correspond to the pinchbeck
barons of the rice districts of South Carolina. As there, the whites
and negros we saw were of the lowest, most squalid type of humanity.
The people of the middle and upland districts of North Carolina are a
much superior race to the same class in South Carolina. They are mostly
of Scotch-Irish descent, with a strong infusion of English-Quaker
blood, and resemble much the best of the Virginians. They make an
effort to diffuse education, and have many of the virtues of a simple,
non-progressive, tolerably industrious middle class. It was here that
the strong Union sentiment of North Carolina numbered most of its
adherents. The people of the lowlands were as different as if belonging
to another race. The enormous mass of ignorance--the three hundred and
fifty thousand men and women who could not read or write--were mostly
black and white serfs of the great landholders, whose plantations lie
within one hundred miles of the Atlantic coast.

As we approached the coast the country became swampier, and our old
acquaintances, the cypress, with their malformed “knees,” became more
and more numerous.

About the middle of the afternoon our train suddenly stopped. Looking
out to ascertain the cause, we were electrified to see a Rebel line
of battle stretched across the track, about a half mile ahead of the
engine, and with its rear toward us. It was as real a line as was ever
seen on any field. The double ranks of “Butternuts,” with arms gleaming
in the afternoon sun, stretched away out through the open pine woods,
farther than we could see. Close behind the motionless line stood the
company officers, leaning on their drawn swords. Behind these still,
were the regimental officers on their horses. On a slight rise of the
ground, a group of horsemen, to whom other horsemen momentarily dashed
up to or sped away from, showed the station of the General in command.
On another knoll, at a little distance, were several-field pieces,
standing “in battery,” the cannoneers at the guns, the postillions
dismounted and holding their horses by the bits, the caisson men
standing in readiness to serve out ammunition. Our men were evidently
close at hand in strong force, and the engagement was likely to open at
any instant.

For a minute we were speechless with astonishment. Then came a surge
of excitement. What should we do? What could we do? Obviously nothing.
Eleven hundred, sick, enfeebled prisoners could not even overpower
their guards, let alone make such a diversion in the rear of a
line-of-battle as would assist our folks to gain a victory. But while
we debated the engine whistled sharply--a frightened shriek it sounded
to us--and began pushing our train rapidly backward over the rough and
wretched track. Back, back we went, as fast as rosin and pine knots
could force the engine to move us. The cars swayed continually back and
forth, momentarily threatening to fly the crazy roadway, and roll over
the embankment or into one of the adjacent swamps. We would have hailed
such a catastrophe, as it would have probably killed more of the guards
than of us, and the confusion would have given many of the survivors
opportunity to escape. But no such accident happened, and towards
midnight we reached the bridge across the Great Pedee River, where
our train was stopped by a squad of Rebel cavalrymen, who brought the
intelligence that as Kilpatrick was expected into Florence every hour,
it would not do to take us there.

We were ordered off the cars, and laid down on the banks of the Great
Pedee, our guards and the cavalry forming a line around us, and taking
precautions to defend the bridge against Kilpatrick, should he find out
our whereabouts and come after us.

“Well, Mc,” said Andrews, as we adjusted our old overcoat and blanket
on the ground for a bed; “I guess we needn’t care whether school keeps
or not. Our fellows have evidently got both ends of the road, and are
coming towards us from each way. There’s no road--not even a wagon
road --for the Johnnies to run us off on, and I guess all we’ve got to
do is to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. Bad as these
hounds are, I don’t believe they will shoot us down rather than let our
folks retake us. At least they won’t since old Winder’s dead. If he was
alive, he’d order our throats cut--one by one--with the guards’ pocket
knives, rather than give us up. I’m only afraid we’ll be allowed to
starve before our folks reach us.”

I concurred in this view.




CHAPTER LXXVIII.

RETURN TO FLORENCE AND A SHORT SOJOURN THERE--OFF TOWARDS WILMINGTON
AGAIN--CRUISING A REBEL OFFICER’S LUNCH--SIGNS OF APPROACHING OUR LINES
--TERROR OF OUR RASCALLY GUARDS--ENTRANCE INTO GOD’S COUNTRY AT LAST.

But Kilpatrick, like Sherman, came not. Perhaps he knew that all the
prisoners had been removed from the Stockade; perhaps he had other
business of more importance on hand; probably his movement was only
a feint. At all events it was definitely known the next day that he
had withdrawn so far as to render it wholly unlikely that he intended
attacking Florence, so we were brought back and returned to our old
quarters. For a week or more we loitered about the now nearly-abandoned
prison; skulked and crawled around the dismal mud-tents like the
ghostly denizens of some Potter’s Field, who, for some reason had been
allowed to return to earth, and for awhile creep painfully around the
little hillocks beneath which they had been entombed.

A few score, whose vital powers were strained to the last degree of
tension, gave up the ghost, and sank to dreamless rest. It mattered
now little to these when Sherman came, or when Kilpatrick’s guidons
should flutter through the forest of sighing pines, heralds of life,
happiness, and home--

               After life’s fitful fever they slept well
               Treason had done its worst. Nor steel nor poison:
               Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
               Could touch them farther.

One day another order came for us to be loaded on the cars, and over
to the railroad we went again in the same fashion as before. The
comparatively few of us who were still able to walk at all well, loaded
ourselves down with the bundles and blankets of our less fortunate
companions, who hobbled and limped--many even crawling on their hands
and knees--over the hard, frozen ground, by our sides.

Those not able to crawl even, were taken in wagons, for the orders were
imperative not to leave a living prisoner behind.

At the railroad we found two trains awaiting us. On the front of each
engine were two rude white flags, made by fastening the halves of meal
sacks to short sticks. The sight of these gave us some hope, but our
belief that Rebels were constitutional liars and deceivers was so firm
and fixed, that we persuaded ourselves that the flags meant nothing
more than some wilful delusion for us.

Again we started off in the direction of Wilmington, and traversed the
same country described in the previous chapter. Again Andrews and I
found ourselves in the next box car to the passenger coach containing
the Rebel officers. Again we cut a hole through the end, with our saw,
and again found a darky servant sitting on the rear platform. Andrews
went out and sat down alongside of him, and found that he was seated
upon a large gunny-bag sack containing the cooked rations of the Rebel
officers.

The intelligence that there was something there worth taking Andrews
communicated to me by an expressive signal, of which soldiers
campaigning together as long as he and I had, always have an extensive
and well understood code.

I took a seat in the hole we had made in the end of the car, in reach
of Andrews. Andrews called the attention of the negro to some feature
of the country near by, and asked him a question in regard to it. As he
looked in the direction indicated, Andrews slipped his hand into the
mouth of the bag, and pulled out a small sack of wheat biscuits, which
he passed to me and I concealed. The darky turned and told Andrews all
about the matter in regard to which the interrogation had been made.
Andrews became so much interested in what was being told him, that he
sat up closer and closer to the darky, who in turn moved farther away
from the sack.

Next we ran through a turpentine plantation, and as the darky was
pointing out where the still, the master’s place, the “quarters,” etc.,
were, Andrews managed to fish out of that bag and pass to me three
roasted chickens. Then a great swamp called for description, and before
we were through with it, I had about a peck of boiled sweet potatos.

Andrews emptied the bag as the darky was showing him a great peanut
plantation, taking from it a small frying-pan, a canteen of molasses,
and a half-gallon tin bucket, which had been used to make coffee in. We
divided up our wealth of eatables with the rest of the boys in the car,
not forgetting to keep enough to give ourselves a magnificent meal.

As we ran along we searched carefully for the place where we had seen
the line-of-battle, expecting that it would now be marked with signs of
a terrible conflict, but we could see nothing. We could not even fix
the locality where the line stood.

As it became apparent that we were going directly toward Wilmington,
as fast as our engines could pull us, the excitement rose. We had
many misgivings as to whether our folks still retained possession of
Wilmington, and whether, if they did, the Rebels could not stop at a
point outside of our lines, and transfer us to some other road.

For hours we had seen nobody in the country through which we were
passing. What few houses were visible were apparently deserted,
and there were no Towns or stations anywhere. We were very anxious
to see some one, in hopes of getting a hint of what the state of
affairs was in the direction we were going. At length we saw a young
man--apparently a scout--on horseback, but his clothes were equally
divided between the blue and the butternut, as to give no clue to which
side he belonged.

An hour later we saw two infantrymen, who were evidently out foraging.
They had sacks of something on their backs, and wore blue clothes. This
was a very hopeful sign of a near approach to our lines, but bitter
experience in the past warned us against being too sanguine.

About 4 o’clock P. M., the trains stopped and whistled long and loud.
Looking out I could see--perhaps half-a-mile away--a line of rifle pits
running at right angles with the track. Guards, whose guns flashed as
they turned, were pacing up and down, but they were too far away for me
to distinguish their uniforms.

The suspense became fearful.

But I received much encouragement from the singular conduct of our
guards. First I noticed a Captain, who had been especially mean to us
while at Florence.

He was walking on the ground by the train. His face was pale, his teeth
set, and his eyes shone with excitement. He called out in a strange,
forced voice to his men and boys on the roof of the cars:

“Here, you fellers git down off’en thar and form a line.”

The fellows did so, in a slow, constrained, frightened ways and huddled
together, in the most unsoldierly manner.

The whole thing reminded me of a scene I once saw in our line,
where a weak-kneed Captain was ordered to take a party of rather
chicken-hearted recruits out on the skirmish-line.

We immediately divined what was the matter. The lines in front of us
were really those of our people, and the idiots of guards, not knowing
of their entire safety when protected by a flag of truce, were scared
half out of their small wits at approaching so near to armed Yankees.

We showered taunts and jeers upon them. An Irishman in my car yelled
out:

“Och, ye dirty spalpeens; it’s not shootin’ prisoners ye are now; it’s
cumin’ where the Yankee b’ys hev the gun; and the minnit ye say thim
yer white livers show themselves in yer pale faces. Bad luck to the
blatherin’ bastards that yez are, and to the mothers that bore ye.”

At length our train moved up so near to the line that I could see it
was the grand, old loyal blue that clothed the forms of the men who
were pacing up and down.

And certainly the world does not hold as superb looking men as these
appeared to me. Finely formed, stalwart, full-fed and well clothed,
they formed the most delightful contrast with the scrawny, shambling,
villain-visaged little clay-eaters and white trash who had looked down
upon us from the sentry boxes for many long months.

I sprang out of the cars and began washing my face and hands in the
ditch at the side of the road. The Rebel Captain, noticing me, said, in
the old, hateful, brutal, imperious tone:

“Git back in dat cah, dah.”

An hour before I would have scrambled back as quickly as possible,
knowing that an instant’s hesitation would be followed by a bullet.
Now, I looked him in the face, and said as irritatingly as possible:

“O, you go to ----, you Rebel. I’m going into Uncle Sam’s lines with as
little Rebel filth on me as possible.”

He passed me without replying.

His day of shooting was past.

Descending from the cars, we passed through the guards into our lines,
a Rebel and a Union clerk checking us off as we passed. By the time it
was dark we were all under our flag again.

The place where we came through was several miles west of Wilmington,
where the railroad crossed a branch of the Cape Fear River. The point
was held by a brigade of Schofield’s army--the Twenty-Third Army Corps.

The boys lavished unstinted kindness upon us. All of the brigade off
duty crowded around, offering us blankets, shirts shoes, pantaloons and
other articles of clothing and similar things that we were obviously
in the greatest need of. The sick were carried, by hundreds of willing
hands, to a sheltered spot, and laid upon good, comfortable beds
improvised with leaves and blankets. A great line of huge, generous
fires was built, that every one of us could have plenty of place around
them.

By and by a line of wagons came over from Wilmington laden with
rations, and they were dispensed to us with what seemed reckless
prodigality. The lid of a box of hard tack would be knocked off, and
the contents handed to us as we filed past, with absolute disregard as
to quantity. If a prisoner looked wistful after receiving one handful
of crackers, another was handed to him; if his long-famished eyes still
lingered as if enchained by the rare display of food, the men who were
issuing said:

“Here, old fellow, there’s plenty of it: take just as much as you can
carry in your arms.”

So it was also with the pickled pork, the coffee, the sugar, etc. We
had been stinted and starved so long that we could not comprehend that
there was anywhere actually enough of anything.

The kind-hearted boys who were acting as our hosts began preparing
food for the sick, but the Surgeons, who had arrived in the meanwhile,
were compelled to repress them, as it was plain that while it was a
dangerous experiment to give any of us all we could or would eat, it
would never do to give the sick such a temptation to kill themselves,
and only a limited amount of food was allowed to be given those who
were unable to walk.

Andrews and I hungered for coffee, the delightful fumes of which filled
the air and intoxicated our senses. We procured enough to make our
half-gallon bucket full and very strong.

We drank so much of this that Andrews became positively drunk, and fell
helplessly into some brush. I pulled him out and dragged him away to a
place where we had made our rude bed.

I was dazed. I could not comprehend that the long-looked for,
often-despaired-of event had actually happened. I feared that it was
one of those tantalizing dreams that had so often haunted my sleep,
only to be followed by a wretched awakening. Then I became seized with
a sudden fear lest the Rebel attempt to retake me. The line of guards
around us seemed very slight. It might be forced in the night, and all
of us recaptured. Shivering at this thought, absurd though it was, I
arose from our bed, and taking Andrews with me, crawled two or three
hundred yards into a dense undergrowth, where in the event of our lines
being forced, we would be overlooked.




CHAPTER LXXIX.

GETTING USED TO FREEDOM--DELIGHTS OF A LAND WHERE THERE IS ENOUGH
OF EVERYTHING--FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE OLD FLAG--WILMINGTON AND ITS
HISTORY --LIEUTENANT CUSHING--FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE COLORED
TROOPS--LEAVING FOR HOME--DESTRUCTION OF THE “THORN” BY A TORPEDO--THE
MOCK MONITOR’S ACHIEVEMENT.

After a sound sleep, Andrews and I awoke to the enjoyment of our first
day of freedom and existence in God’s country. The sun had already
risen, bright and warm, consonant with the happiness of the new life
now opening up for us.

But to nearly a score of our party his beams brought no awakening
gladness. They fell upon stony, staring eyes, from out of which the
light of life had now faded, as the light of hope had done long ago.
The dead lay there upon the rude beds of fallen leaves, scraped
together by thoughtful comrades the night before, their clenched teeth
showing through parted lips, faces fleshless and pinched, long, unkempt
and ragged hair and whiskers just stirred by the lazy breeze, the
rotting feet and limbs drawn up, and skinny hands clenched in the last
agonies.

Their fate seemed harder than that of any who had died before them. It
was doubtful if many of them knew that they were at last inside of our
own lines.

Again the kind-hearted boys of the brigade crowded around us with
proffers of service. Of an Ohio boy who directed his kind tenders to
Andrews and me, we procured a chunk of coarse rosin soap about as big
as a pack of cards, and a towel. Never was there as great a quantity
of solid comfort got out of that much soap as we obtained. It was the
first that we had since that which I stole in Wirz’s headquarters, in
June --nine months before. We felt that the dirt which had accumulated
upon us since then would subject us to assessment as real estate if we
were in the North.

Hurrying off to a little creek we began our ablutions, and it was not
long until Andrews declared that there was a perceptible sand-bar
forming in the stream, from what we washed off. Dirt deposits of the
Pliocene era rolled off feet and legs. Eocene incrustations let loose
reluctantly from neck and ears; the hair was a mass of tangled locks
matted with nine months’ accumulation of pitch pine tar, rosin soot,
and South Carolina sand, that we did not think we had better start in
upon it until we either had the shock cut off, or had a whole ocean and
a vat of soap to wash it out with.

After scrubbing until we were exhausted we got off the first few outer
layers--the post tertiary formation, a geologist would term it--and the
smell of many breakfasts cooking, coming down over the hill, set our
stomachs in a mutiny against any longer fasting.

We went back, rosy, panting, glowing, but happy, to get our selves some
breakfast.

Should Providence, for some inscrutable reason, vouchsafe me the years
of Methuselah, one of the pleasantest recollections that will abide
with me to the close of the nine hundredth and sixty-ninth year, will
be of that delightful odor of cooking food which regaled our senses as
we came back. From the boiling coffee and the meat frying in the pan
rose an incense sweeter to the senses a thousand times than all the
perfumes of far Arabia. It differed from the loathsome odor of cooking
corn meal as much as it did from the effluvia of a sewer.

Our noses were the first of our senses to bear testimony that we had
passed from the land of starvation to that of plenty. Andrews and I
hastened off to get our own breakfast, and soon had a half-gallon
of strong coffee, and a frying-pan full, of meat cooking over the
fire--not one of the beggarly skimped little fires we had crouched over
during our months of imprisonment, but a royal, generous fire, fed with
logs instead of shavings and splinters, and giving out heat enough to
warm a regiment.

Having eaten positively all that we could swallow, those of us who
could walk were ordered to fall in and march over to Wilmington. We
crossed the branch of the river on a pontoon bridge, and took the road
that led across the narrow sandy island between the two branches,
Wilmington being situated on the opposite bank of the farther one.

When about half way a shout from some one in advance caused us to look
up, and then we saw, flying from a tall steeple in Wilmington, the
glorious old Stars and Stripes, resplendent in the morning sun, and
more beautiful than the most gorgeous web from Tyrian looms. We stopped
with one accord, and shouted and cheered and cried until every throat
was sore and every eye red and blood-shot. It seemed as if our cup of
happiness would certainly run over if any more additions were made to
it.

When we arrived at the bank of the river opposite Wilmington, a whole
world of new and interesting sights opened up before us. Wilmington,
during the last year-and-a-half of the war, was, next to Richmond, the
most important place in the Southern Confederacy. It was the only port
to which blockade running was at all safe enough to be lucrative. The
Rebels held the strong forts of Caswell and Fisher, at the mouth of
Cape Fear River, and outside, the Frying Pan Shoals, which extended
along the coast forty or fifty miles, kept our blockading fleet so
far off, and made the line so weak and scattered, that there was
comparatively little risk to the small, swift-sailing vessels employed
by the blockade runners in running through it. The only way that
blockade running could be stopped was by the reduction of Forts Caswell
and Fisher, and it was not stopped until this was done.

Before the war Wilmington was a dull, sleepy North Carolina Town, with
as little animation of any kind as a Breton Pillage. The only business
was the handling of the tar, turpentine, rosin, and peanuts produced
in the surrounding country, a business never lively enough to excite
more than a lazy ripple in the sluggish lagoons of trade. But very
new wine was put into this old bottle when blockade running began to
develop in importance. Then this Sleepy hollow of a place took on
the appearance of San Francisco in the hight of the gold fever. The
English houses engaged in blockade running established branches there
conducted by young men who lived like princes. All the best houses in
the City were leased by them and fitted up in the most gorgeous style.
They literally clothed themselves in purple and fine linen and fared
sumptuously every day, with their fine wines and imported delicacies
and retinue of servants to wait upon them. Fast young Rebel officers,
eager for a season of dissipation, could imagine nothing better than
a leave of absence to go to Wilmington. Money flowed like water. The
common sailors--the scum of all foreign ports--who manned the blockade
runners, received as high as one hundred dollars in gold per month,
and a bounty of fifty dollars for every successful trip, which from
Nassau could be easily made in seven days. Other people were paid in
proportion, and as the old proverb says, “What comes over the Devil’s
back is spent under his breast,” the money so obtained was squandered
recklessly, and all sorts of debauchery ran riot.

On the ground where we were standing had been erected several large
steam cotton presses, built to compress cotton for the blockade
runners. Around them were stored immense quantities of cotton, and
near by were nearly as great stores of turpentine, rosin and tar. A
little farther down the river was navy yard with docks, etc., for the
accommodation, building and repair of blockade runners. At the time our
folks took Fort Fisher and advanced on Wilmington the docks were filled
with vessels. The retreating Rebels set fire to everything--cotton,
cotton presses, turpentine, rosin, tar, navy yard, naval stores,
timber, docks, and vessels, and the fire made clean work. Our people
arrived too late to save anything, and when we came in the smoke from
the burned cotton, turpentine, etc., still filled the woods. It was a
signal illustration of the ravages of war. Here had been destroyed, in
a few hours, more property than a half-million industrious men would
accumulate in their lives.

Almost as gratifying as the sight of the old flag flying in triumph,
was the exhibition of our naval power in the river before us. The
larger part of the great North Atlantic squadron, which had done such
excellent service in the reduction of the defenses of Wilmington, was
lying at anchor, with their hundreds of huge guns yawning as if ardent
for more great forts to beat down, more vessels to sink, more heavy
artillery to crush, more Rebels to conquer. It seemed as if there were
cannon enough there to blow the whole Confederacy into kingdom-come.
All was life and animation around the fleet. On the decks the officers
were pacing up and down. One on each vessel carried a long telescope,
with which he almost constantly swept the horizon. Numberless small
boats, each rowed by neatly-uniformed men, and carrying a flag in the
stern, darted hither and thither, carrying officers on errands of duty
or pleasure. It was such a scene as enabled me to realize in a measure,
the descriptions I had read of the pomp and circumstance of naval
warfare.

While we were standing, contemplating all the interesting sights within
view, a small steamer, about the size of a canal-boat, and carrying
several bright brass guns, ran swiftly and noiselessly up to the dock
near by, and a young, pale-faced officer, slender in build and nervous
in manner, stepped ashore. Some of the blue jackets who were talking
to us looked at him and the vessel with the greatest expression of
interest, and said:

“Hello! there’s the ‘Monticello’ and Lieutenant Cushing.”

This, then, was the naval boy hero, with whose exploits the whole
country was ringing. Our sailor friends proceeded to tell us of his
achievements, of which they were justly proud. They told us of his
perilous scouts and his hairbreadth escapes, of his wonderful audacity
and still more wonderful success--of his capture of Towns with a
handful of sailors, and the destruction of valuable stores, etc. I felt
very sorry that the man was not a cavalry commander. There he would
have had full scope for his peculiar genius. He had come prominently
into notice in the preceding Autumn, when he had, by one of the most
daring performances narrated in naval history, destroyed the formidable
ram “Albermarle.” This vessel had been constructed by the Rebels on the
Roanoke River, and had done them very good service, first by assisting
to reduce the forts and capture the garrison at Plymouth, N. C., and
afterward in some minor engagements. In October, 1864, she was lying at
Plymouth. Around her was a boom of logs to prevent sudden approaches
of boats or vessels from our fleet. Cushing, who was then barely
twenty-one, resolved to attempt her destruction. He fitted up a steam
launch with a long spar to which he attached a torpedo. On the night of
October 27th, with thirteen companions, he ran quietly up the Sound and
was not discovered until his boat struck the boom, when a terrific fire
was opened upon him. Backing a short distance, he ran at the boom with
such velocity that his boat leaped across it into the water beyond.
In an instant more his torpedo struck the side of the “Albemarle” and
exploded, tearing a great hole in her hull, which sank her in a few
minutes. At the moment the torpedo went off the “Albermarle” fired one
of her great guns directly into the launch, tearing it completely to
pieces. Lieutenant Cushing and one comrade rose to the surface of the
seething water and, swimming ashore, escaped. What became of the rest
is not known, but their fate can hardly be a matter of doubt.

We were ferried across the river into Wilmington, and marched up the
streets to some vacant ground near the railroad depot, where we found
most of our old Florence comrades already assembled. When they left us
in the middle of February they were taken to Wilmington, and thence to
Goldsboro, N. C., where they were kept until the rapid closing in of
our Armies made it impracticable to hold them any longer, when they
were sent back to Wilmington and given up to our forces as we had been.

It was now nearly noon, and we were ordered to fall in and draw
rations, a bewildering order to us, who had been so long in the
habit of drawing food but once a day. We fell in in single rank, and
marched up, one at a time, past where a group of employees of the
Commissary Department dealt out the food. One handed each prisoner as
he passed a large slice of meat; another gave him a handful of ground
coffee; a third a handful of sugar; a fourth gave him a pickle, while
a fifth and sixth handed him an onion and a loaf of fresh bread.
This filled the horn of our plenty full. To have all these in one
day--meat, coffee, sugar, onions and soft bread--was simply to riot
in undreamed-of luxury. Many of the boys--poor fellows--could not yet
realize that there was enough for all, or they could not give up their
old “flanking” tricks, and they stole around, and falling into the
rear, came up again for’ another share. We laughed at them, as did
the Commissary men, who, nevertheless, duplicated the rations already
received, and sent them away happy and content.

What a glorious dinner Andrews and I had, with our half gallon of
strong coffee, our soft bread, and a pan full of fried pork and onions!
Such an enjoyable feast will never be, eaten again by us.

Here we saw negro troops under arms for the first time--the most of the
organization of colored soldiers having been, done since our capture.
It was startling at first to see a stalwart, coal-black negro stalking
along with a Sergeant’s chevrons on his arm, or to gaze on a regimental
line of dusky faces on dress parade, but we soon got used to it. The
first strong peculiarity of the negro soldier that impressed itself,
upon us was his literal obedience of orders. A white soldier usually
allows himself considerable discretion in obeying orders--he aims more
at the spirit, while the negro adheres to the strict letter of the
command.

For instance, the second day after our arrival a line of guards were
placed around us, with orders not to allow any of us to go up town
without a pass. The reason of this was that many weak--even dying-men
would persist in wandering about, and would be found exhausted,
frequently dead, in various parts of the City. Andrews and I concluded
to go up town. Approaching a negro sentinel he warned us back with,

“Stand back, dah; don’t come any furder; it’s agin de awdahs; you can’t
pass.”

He would not allow us to argue the case, but brought his gun to such a
threatening position that we fell back. Going down the line a little
farther, we came to a white sentinel, to whom I said:

“Comrade, what are your orders:”

He replied:

“My orders are not to let any of you fellows pass, but my beat only
extends to that out-house there.”

Acting on this plain hint, we walked around the house and went up-town.
The guard simply construed his orders in a liberal spirit. He reasoned
that they hardly applied to us, since we were evidently able to take
care of ourselves.

Later we had another illustration of this dog like fidelity of the
colored sentinel. A number of us were quartered in a large and empty
warehouse. On the same floor, and close to us, were a couple of very
fine horses belonging to some officer. We had not been in the warehouse
very long until we concluded that the straw with which the horses were
bedded would be better used in making couches for ourselves, and this
suggestion was instantly acted upon, and so thoroughly that there was
not a straw left between the animals and the bare boards. Presently the
owner of the horses came in, and he was greatly incensed at what had
been done. He relieved his mind of a few sulphurous oaths, and going
out, came back soon with a man with more straw, and a colored soldier
whom he stationed by the horses, saying:

“Now, look here. You musn’t let anybody take anything sway from these
stalls; d’you understand me?--not a thing.”

He then went out. Andrews and I had just finished cooking dinner, and
were sitting down to eat it. Wishing to lend our frying-pan to another
mess, I looked around for something to lay our meat upon. Near the
horses I saw a book cover, which would answer the purpose admirably.
Springing up, I skipped across to where it was, snatched it up, and
ran back to my place. As I reached it a yell from the boys made me
look around. The darky was coming at me “full tilt,” with his gun at a
“charge bayonets.” As I turned he said:

“Put dat right back dah!”

I said:

“Why, this don’t amount to anything, this is only an old book cover. It
hasn’t anything in the world to do with the horses.”

He only replied:

“Put dat right back dah!”

I tried another appeal:

“Now, you woolly-headed son of thunder, haven’t you got sense enough to
know that the officer who posted you didn’t mean such a thing as this!
He only meant that we should not be allowed to take any of the horses’
bedding or equipments; don’t you see?”

I might as well have reasoned with a cigar store Indian. He set his
teeth, his eyes showed a dangerous amount of white, and foreshortening
his musket for a lunge, he hissed out again “Put dat right back dah, I
tell you!”

I looked at the bayonet; it was very long, very bright, and very sharp.
It gleamed cold and chilly like, as if it had not run through a man
for a long time, and yearned for another opportunity. Nothing but the
whites of the darky’s eyes could now be seen. I did not want to perish
there in the fresh bloom of my youth and loveliness; it seemed to me as
if it was my duty to reserve myself for fields of future usefulness, so
I walked back and laid the book cover precisely on the spot whence I
had obtained it, while the thousand boys in the house set up a yell of
sarcastic laughter.

We staid in Wilmington a few days, days of almost purely animal
enjoyment--the joy of having just as much to eat as we could possibly
swallow, and no one to molest or make us afraid in any way. How we
did eat and fill up. The wrinkles in our skin smoothed out under the
stretching, and we began to feel as if we were returning to our old
plumpness, though so far the plumpness was wholly abdominal.

One morning we were told that the transports would begin going back
with us that afternoon, the first that left taking the sick. Andrews
and I, true to our old prison practices, resolved to be among those
on the first boat. We slipped through the guards and going up town,
went straight to Major General Schofield’s headquarters and solicited
a pass to go on the first boat--the steamer “Thorn.” General Schofield
treated us very kindly; but declined to let anybody but the helplessly
sick go on the “Thorn.” Defeated here we went down to where the vessel
was lying at the dock, and tried to smuggle ourselves aboard, but the
guard was too strong and too vigilant, and we were driven away. Going
along the dock, angry and discouraged by our failure, we saw a Surgeon,
at a little distance, who was examining and sending the sick who could
walk aboard another vessel--the “General Lyon.” We took our cue, and a
little shamming secured from him tickets which permitted us to take our
passage in her. The larger portion of those on board were in the hold,
and a few were on deck. Andrews and I found a snug place under the
forecastle, by the anchor chains.

Both vessels speedily received their complement, and leaving their
docks, started down the river. The “Thorn” steamed ahead of us, and
disappeared. Shortly after we got under way, the Colonel who was put in
command of the boat--himself a released prisoner--came around on a tour
of inspection. He found about one thousand of us aboard, and singling
me out made me the non-commissioned officer in command. I was put in
charge, of issuing the rations and of a barrel of milk punch which the
Sanitary Commission had sent down to be dealt out on the voyage to such
as needed it. I went to work and arranged the boys in the best way I
could, and returned to the deck to view the scenery.

Wilmington is thirty-four miles from the sea, and the river for that
distance is a calm, broad estuary. At this time the resources of Rebel
engineering were exhausted in defense against its passage by a hostile
fleet, and undoubtedly the best work of the kind in the Southern
Confederacy was done upon it. At its mouth were Forts Fisher and
Caswell, the strongest sea coast forts in the Confederacy. Fort Caswell
was an old United States fort, much enlarged and strengthened. Fort
Fisher was a new work, begun immediately after the beginning of the
war, and labored at incessantly until captured. Behind these every one
of the thirty-four miles to Wilmington was covered with the fire of the
best guns the English arsenals could produce, mounted on forts built
at every advantageous spot. Lines of piles running out into the water,
forced incoming vessels to wind back and forth across the stream under
the point-blank range of massive Armstrong rifles. As if this were not
sufficient, the channel was thickly studded with torpedoes that would
explode at the touch of the keel of a passing vessel. These abundant
precautions, and the telegram from General Lee, found in Fort Fisher,
stating that unless that stronghold and Fort Caswell were held he could
not hold Richmond, give some idea of the importance of the place to the
Rebels.

We passed groups of hundreds of sailors fishing for torpedos, and saw
many of these dangerous monsters, which they had hauled up out of the
water. We caught up with the “Thorn,” when about half way to the sea,
passed her, to our great delight, and soon left a gap between us of
nearly half-a-mile. We ran through an opening in the piling, holding up
close to the left side, and she apparently followed our course exactly.
Suddenly there was a dull roar; a column of water, bearing with it
fragments of timbers, planking and human bodies, rose up through one
side of the vessel, and, as it fell, she lurched forward and sank. She
had struck a torpedo. I never learned the number lost, but it must have
been very great.

Some little time after this happened we approached Fort Anderson, the
most powerful of the works between Wilmington and the forts at the
mouth of the sea. It was built on the ruins of the little Town of
Brunswick, destroyed by Cornwallis during the Revolutionary War. We
saw a monitor lying near it, and sought good positions to view this
specimen of the redoubtable ironclads of which we had heard and read
so much. It looked precisely as it did in pictures, as black, as grim,
and as uncompromising as the impregnable floating fortress which had
brought the “Merrimac” to terms.

But as we approached closely we noticed a limpness about the smoke
stack that seemed very inconsistent with the customary rigidity of
cylindrical iron. Then the escape pipe seemed scarcely able to maintain
itself upright. A few minutes later we discovered that our terrible
Cyclops of the sea was a flimsy humbug, a theatrical imitation, made by
stretching blackened canvas over a wooden frame.

One of the officers on board told us its story. After the fall of Fort
Fisher the Rebels retired to Fort Anderson, and offered a desperate
resistance to our army and fleet. Owing to the shallowness of the water
the latter could not come into close enough range to do effective work.
Then the happy idea of this sham monitor suggested itself to some one.
It was prepared, and one morning before daybreak it was sent floating
in on the tide. The other monitors opened up a heavy fire from their
position. The Rebels manned their guns and replied vigorously, by
concentrating a terrible cannonade on the sham monitor, which sailed
grandly on, undisturbed by the heavy rifled bolts tearing through her
canvas turret. Almost frantic with apprehension of the result if she
could not be checked, every gun that would bear was turned upon her,
and torpedos were exploded in her pathway by electricity. All these she
treated with the silent contempt they merited from so invulnerable a
monster. At length, as she reached a good easy range of the fort, her
bow struck something, and she swung around as if to open fire. That was
enough for the Rebels. With Schofield’s army reaching out to cut off
their retreat, and this dreadful thing about to tear the insides out of
their fort with four-hundred-pound shot at quarter-mile range, there
was nothing for them to do but consult their own safety, which they did
with such haste that they did not spike a gun, or destroy a pound of
stores.




CHAPTER LXXX.

VISIT TO FORT FISHER, AND INSPECTION OF THAT STRONGHOLD--THE WAY IT WAS
CAPTURED--OUT ON THE OCEAN SAILING--TERRIBLY SEASICK--RAPID RECOVERY
--ARRIVAL AT ANNAPOLIS--WASHED, CLOTHED AND FED--UNBOUNDED LUXURY, AND
DAYS OF UNADULTERATED HAPPINESS.

When we reached the mouth of Cape Fear River the wind was blowing so
hard that our Captain did not think it best to venture out, so he cast
anchor. The cabin of the vessel was filled with officers who had been
released from prison about the same time we were. I was also given a
berth in the cabin, in consideration of my being the non-commissioned
officer in charge of the men, and I found the associations quite
pleasant. A party was made up, which included me, to visit Fort Fisher,
and we spent the larger part of a day very agreeably in wandering over
that great stronghold. We found it wonderful in its strength, and
were prepared to accept the statement of those who had seen foreign
defensive works, that it was much more powerful than the famous
Malakoff, which so long defied the besiegers of Sebastopol.

The situation of the fort was on a narrow and low spit of ground
between Cape Fear River and the ocean. On this the Rebels had erected,
with prodigious labor, an embankment over a mile in length, twenty-five
feet thick and twenty feet high. About two-thirds of this bank faced
the sea; the other third ran across the spit of land to protect the
fort against an attack from the land side. Still stronger than the bank
forming the front of the fort were the traverses, which prevented an
enfilading fire These were regular hills, twenty-five to forty feet
high, and broad and long in proportion. There were fifteen or twenty
of them along the face of the fort. Inside of them were capacious
bomb proofs, sufficiently large to shelter the whole garrison. It
seemed as if a whole Township had been dug up, carted down there and
set on edge. In front of the works was a strong palisade. Between
each pair of traverses were one or two enormous guns, none less than
one-hundred-and-fifty pounders. Among these we saw a great Armstrong
gun, which had been presented to the Southern Confederacy by its
manufacturer, Sir William Armstrong, who, like the majority of the
English nobility, was a warm admirer of the Jeff. Davis crowd. It was
the finest piece of ordnance ever seen in this country. The carriage
was rosewood, and the mountings gilt brass. The breech of the gun had
five reinforcements.

To attack this place our Government assembled the most powerful
fleet ever sent on such an expedition. Over seventy-five men-of-war,
including six monitors, and carrying six hundred guns, assailed it
with a storm of shot and shell that averaged four projectiles per
second for several hours; the parapet was battered, and the large guns
crushed as one smashes a bottle with a stone. The garrison fled into
the bomb-proofs for protection. The troops, who had landed above the
fort, moved up to assail the land face, while a brigade of sailors and
marines attacked the sea face.

As the fleet had to cease firing to allow the charge, the Rebels ran
out of their casemates and, manning the parapet, opened such a fire
of musketry that the brigade from the fleet was driven back, but the
soldiers made a lodgment on the land face. Then began some beautiful
cooperative tactics between the Army and Navy, communication being kept
up with signal flags. Our men were on one side of the parapets and the
Rebels on the other, with the fighting almost hand-to-hand. The vessels
ranged out to where their guns would rake the Rebel line, and as their
shot tore down its length, the Rebels gave way, and falling back to the
next traverse, renewed the conflict there. Guided by the signals our
vessels changed their positions, so as to rake this line also, and so
the fight went on until twelve traverses had been carried, one after
the other, when the rebels surrendered.

The next day the Rebels abandoned Fort Caswell and other fortifications
in the immediate neighborhood, surrendered two gunboats, and fell
back to the lines at Fort Anderson. After Fort Fisher fell, several
blockade-runners were lured inside and captured.

Never before had there been such a demonstration of the power of
heavy artillery. Huge cannon were pounded into fragments, hills of
sand ripped open, deep crevasses blown in the ground by exploding
shells, wooden buildings reduced to kindling-wood, etc. The ground
was literally paved with fragments of shot and shell, which, now red
with rust from the corroding salt air, made the interior of the fort
resemble what one of our party likened it to “an old brickyard.”

Whichever way we looked along the shores we saw abundant evidence of
the greatness of the business which gave the place its importance. In
all directions, as far as the eye could reach, the beach was dotted
with the bleaching skeletons of blockade-runners--some run ashore by
their mistaking the channel, more beached to escape the hot pursuit of
our blockaders.

Directly in front of the sea face of the fort, and not four hundred
yards from the savage mouths of the huge guns, the blackened timbers of
a burned blockade-runner showed above the water at low tide. Coming in
from Nassau with a cargo of priceless value to the gasping Confederacy,
she was observed and chased by one of our vessels, a swifter sailer,
even, than herself. The war ship closed rapidly upon her. She sought
the protection of the guns of Fort Fisher, which opened venomously on
the chaser. They did not stop her, though they were less than half a
mile away. In another minute she would have sent the Rebel vessel to
the bottom of the sea, by a broadside from her heavy guns, but the
Captain of the latter turned her suddenly, and ran her high up on the
beach, wrecking his vessel, but saving the much more valuable cargo.
Our vessel then hauled off, and as night fell, quiet was restored. At
midnight two boat-loads of determined men, rowing with muffled oars
moved silently out from the blockader towards the beached vessel.
In their boats they had some cans of turpentine, and several large
shells. When they reached the blockade-runner they found all her crew
gone ashore, save one watchman, whom they overpowered before he could
give the alarm. They cautiously felt their way around, with the aid of
a dark lantern, secured the ship’s chronometer, her papers and some
other desired objects. They then saturated with the turpentine piles of
combustible material, placed about the vessel to the best advantage,
and finished by depositing the shells where their explosion would ruin
the machinery. All this was done so near to the fort that the sentinels
on the parapets could be heard with the greatest distinctness as they
repeated their half-hourly cry of “All’s well.” Their preparations
completed, the daring fellows touched matches to the doomed vessel in a
dozen places at once, and sprang into their boats. The flames instantly
enveloped the ship, and showed the gunners the incendiaries rowing
rapidly away. A hail of shot beat the water into a foam around the
boats, but their good fortune still attended them, and they got back
without losing a man.

The wind at length calmed sufficiently to encourage our Captain to
venture out, and we were soon battling with the rolling waves, far out
of sight of land. For awhile the novelty of the scene fascinated me.
I was at last on the ocean, of which I had heard, read and imagined
so much. The creaking cordage, the straining engine, the plunging
ship, the wild waste of tumbling billows, everyone apparently racing
to where our tossing bark was struggling to maintain herself, all had
an entrancing interest for me, and I tried to recall Byron’s sublime
apostrophe to the ocean:

          Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form
          Classes itself in tempest: in all time,
          Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
          Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
          Dark-heaving--boundless, endless, and sublime--
          The image of eternity--the throne
          Of the invisible; even from out thy slime
          The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
          Obey thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone,

Just then, my reverie was broken by the strong hand of the gruff
Captain of, the vessel descending upon my shoulder, and he said:

“See, here, youngster! Ain’t you the fellow that was put in command of
these men?”

I acknowledged such to be the case.

“Well,” said the Captain; “I want you to ’tend to your business and
straighten them around, so that we can clean off the decks.”

I turned from the bulwark over which I had been contemplating the vasty
deep, and saw the sorriest, most woe-begone lot that the imagination
can conceive. Every mother’s son was wretchedly sea-sick. They were
paying the penalty of their overfeeding in Wilmington; and every face
looked as if its owner was discovering for the first time what the real
lower depths of human misery was. They all seemed afraid they would not
die; as if they were praying for death, but feeling certain that he was
going back on them in a most shameful way.

We straightened them around a little, washed them and the decks off
with a hose, and then I started down in the hold to see how matters
were with the six hundred down there. The boys there were much sicker
than those on deck. As I lifted the hatch there rose an odor which
appeared strong enough to raise the plank itself. Every onion that
had been issued to us in Wilmington seemed to lie down there in the
last stages of decomposition. All of the seventy distinct smells which
Coleridge counted at Cologne might have been counted in any given
cubic foot of atmosphere, while the next foot would have an entirely
different and equally demonstrative “bouquet.”

I recoiled, and leaned against the bulwark, but soon summoned up
courage enough to go half-way down the ladder, and shout out in as
stern a tone as I could command:

“Here, now! I want you fellows to straighten around there, right off,
and help clean up!”

They were as angry and cross as they were sick. They wanted nothing in
the world so much as the opportunity I had given them to swear at and
abuse somebody. Every one of them raised on his elbow, and shaking his
fist at me yelled out:

“O, you go to ----, you ---- ---- ----. Just come down another step,
and I’ll knock the whole head off ’en you.”

I did not go down any farther.

Coming back on the deck my stomach began to feel qualmish. Some
wretched idiot, whose grandfather’s grave I hope the jackasses have
defiled, as the Turks would say, told me that the best preventive of
sea-sickness was to drink as much of the milk punch as I could swallow.

Like another idiot, I did so.

I went again to the side of the vessel, but now the fascination of the
scene had all faded out. The restless billows were dreary, savage,
hungry and dizzying; they seemed to claw at, and tear, and wrench
the struggling ship as a group of huge lions would tease and worry a
captive dog. They distressed her and all on board by dealing a blow
which would send her reeling in one direction, but before she had swung
the full length that impulse would have sent her, catching her on the
opposite side with a stunning shock that sent her another way, only to
meet another rude buffet from still another side.

I thought we could all have stood it if the motion had been like that
of a swing-backward and forward--or even if the to and fro motion had
been complicated with a side-wise swing, but to be put through every
possible bewildering motion in the briefest space of time was more than
heads of iron and stomachs of brass could stand.

Mine were not made of such perdurable stuff.

They commenced mutinous demonstrations in regard to the milk punch.

I began wondering whether the milk was not the horrible beer swill,
stump-tail kind of which I had heard so much.

And the whisky in it; to use a vigorous Westernism, descriptive of mean
whisky, it seemed to me that I could smell the boy’s feet who plowed
the corn from which it was distilled.

Then the onions I had eaten in Wilmington began to rebel, and incite
the bread, meat and coffee to gastric insurrection, and I became so
utterly wretched that life had no farther attractions.

While I was leaning over the bulwark, musing on the complete hollowness
of all earthly things, the Captain of the vessel caught hold of me
roughly, and said:

“Look here, you’re just playin’ the very devil a-commandin’ these here
men. Why in ---- don’t you stiffen up, and hump yourself around, and
make these men mind, or else belt them over the head with a capstan
bar! Now I want you to ’tend to your business. D’you understand me?”

I turned a pair of weary and hopeless eyes upon him, and started to say
that a man who would talk to one in my forlorn condition of “stiffening
up,” and “belting other fellows over the head with a capstan bar,”
would insult a woman dying with consumption, but I suddenly became too
full for utterance.

The milk punch, the onions, the bread, and meat and coffee tired of
fighting it out in the narrow quarters where I had stowed them, had
started upwards tumultuously.

I turned my head again to the sea, and looking down into its smaragdine
depths, let go of the victualistic store which I had been industriously
accumulating ever since I had come through the lines.

I vomited until I felt as empty and hollow as a stove pipe. There
was a vacuum that extended clear to my toe-nails. I feared that
every retching struggle would dent me in, all over, as one sees tin
preserving cans crushed in by outside pressure, and I apprehended that
if I kept on much longer my shoe-soles would come up after the rest.

I will mention, parenthetically, that, to this day I abhor milk punch,
and also onions.

Unutterably miserable as I was I could not refrain from a ghost of a
smile, when a poor country boy near me sang out in an interval between
vomiting spells:

“O, Captain, for God’s sake, stop the boat and lem’me go ashore, and I
swear I’ll walk every step of the way home.”

He was like old Gonzalo in the ‘Tempest:’

     Now world I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren
     ground; long heath; brown furze; anything. The wills above be done!
     but I would fain die a dry death.

After this misery had lasted about two days we got past Cape Hatteras,
and out of reach of its malign influence, and recovered as rapidly as
we had been prostrated.

We regained spirits and appetites with amazing swiftness; the sun came
out warm and cheerful, we cleaned up our quarters and ourselves as best
we could, and during the remainder of the voyage were as blithe and
cheerful as so many crickets.

The fun in the cabin was rollicking. The officers had been as sick as
the men, but were wonderfully vivacious when the ‘mal du mer’ passed
off. In the party was a fine glee club, which had been organized at
“Camp Sorgum,” the officers’ prison at Columbia. Its leader was a Major
of the Fifth Iowa Cavalry, who possessed a marvelously sweet tenor
voice, and well developed musical powers. While we were at Wilmington
he sang “When Sherman Marched Down to the Sea,” to an audience of
soldiers that packed the Opera House densely.

The enthusiasm he aroused was simply indescribable; men shouted, and
the tears ran down their faces. He was recalled time and again, each
time with an increase in the furore. The audience would have staid
there all night to listen to him sing that one song. Poor fellow, he
only went home to die. An attack of pneumonia carried him off within a
fortnight after we separated at Annapolis.

The Glee Club had several songs which they rendered in regular negro
minstrel style, and in a way that was irresistibly ludicrous. One of
their favorites was “Billy Patterson.” All standing up in a ring, the
tenors would lead off:

          “I saw an old man go riding by,”

and the baritones, flinging themselves around with the looseness of
Christy’s Minstrels, in a “break down,” would reply:

          “Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me!”

Then the tenors would resume:

          “Says I, Ole man, your horse’ll die.”

Then the baritones, with an air of exaggerated interest;

          “A-ha-a-a, Billy Patterson!”

Tenors:

          “For. It he dies, I’ll tan his skin;
          An’ if he lives I’ll ride him agin,”

All-together, with a furious “break down” at the close:

          “Then I’ll lay five dollars down,
          And count them one by one;
          Then I’ll lay five dollars down,
          If anybody will show me the man
          That struck Billy Patterson.”


And so on. It used to upset my gravity entirely to see a crowd of
grave and dignified Captains, Majors and Colonels going through this
nonsensical drollery with all the abandon of professional burnt-cork
artists.

As we were nearing the entrance to Chesapeake Bay we passed a great
monitor, who was exercising her crew at the guns. She fired directly
across our course, the huge four hundred pound balls shipping along
the water, about a mile ahead of us, as we boys used to make the flat
stones skip in the play of “Ducks and Drakes.” One or two of the shots
came so. close that I feared she might be mistaking us for a Rebel ship
intent on some raid up the Bay, and I looked up anxiously to see that
the flag should float out so conspicuously that she could not help
seeing it.

The next day our vessel ran alongside of the dock at the Naval Academy
at Annapolis, that institution now being used as a hospital for paroled
prisoners. The musicians of the Post band came down with stretchers
to carry the sick to the Hospital, while those of us who were able
to walk were ordered to fall in and march up. The distance was but a
few hundred yards. On reaching the building we marched up on a little
balcony, and as we did so each one of us was seized by a hospital
attendant, who, with the quick dexterity attained by long practice,
snatched every one of our filthy, lousy rags off in the twinkling of an
eye, and flung them over the railing to the ground, where a man loaded
them into a wagon with a pitchfork.

With them went our faithful little black can, our hoop-iron spoon, and
our chessboard and men.

Thus entirely denuded, each boy was given a shove which sent him into a
little room, where a barber pressed him down upon a stool, and almost
before he understood what was being done, had his hair and beard cut
off as close as shears would do it. Another tap on the back sent the
shorn lamb into a room furnished with great tubs of water and with
about six inches of soap suds on the zinc-covered floor.

In another minute two men with sponges had removed every trace of
prison grime from his body, and passed him on to two more men, who
wiped him dry, and moved him on to where a man handed him a new shirt,
a pair of drawers, pair of socks, pair of pantaloons, pair of slippers,
and a hospital gown, and motioned him to go on into the large room,
and array himself in his new garments. Like everything else about the
Hospital this performance was reduced to a perfect system. Not a word
was spoken by anybody, not a moment’s time lost, and it seemed to me
that it was not ten minutes after I marched up on the balcony, covered
with dirt, rags, vermin, and a matted shock of hair, until I marched
out of the room, clean and well clothed. Now I began to feel as if I
was really a man again.

The next thing done was to register our names, rank, regiment, when
and where captured, when and where released. After this we were shown
to our rooms. And such rooms as they were. All the old maids in the
country could not have improved their spick-span neatness. The floors
were as white as pine plank could be scoured; the sheets and bedding
as clean as cotton and linen and woolen could be washed. Nothing in
any home in the land was any more daintily, wholesomely, unqualifiedly
clean than were these little chambers, each containing two beds, one
for each man assigned to their occupancy.

Andrews doubted if we could stand all this radical change in our
habits. He feared that it was rushing things too fast. We might have
had our hair cut one week, and taken a bath all over a week later, and
so progress down to sleeping between white sheets in the course of six
months, but to do it all in one day seemed like tempting fate.

Every turn showed us some new feature of the marvelous order of this
wonderful institution. Shortly after we were sent to our rooms, a
Surgeon entered with a Clerk. After answering the usual questions as
to name, rank, company and regiment, the Surgeon examined our tongues,
eyes, limbs and general appearance, and communicated his conclusions
to the Clerk, who filled out a blank card. This card was stuck into
a little tin holder at the head of my bed. Andrews’s card was the
same, except the name. The Surgeon was followed by a Sergeant, who
was Chief of the Dining-Room, and the Clerk, who made a minute of the
diet ordered for us, and moved off. Andrews and I immediately became
very solicitous to know what species of diet No. 1 was. After the
seasickness left us our appetites became as ravenous as a buzz-saw,
and unless Diet No. 1 was more than No. 1 in name, it would not fill
the bill. We had not long to remain in suspense, for soon another
non-commissioned officer passed through at the head of a train of
attendants, bearing trays. Consulting the list in his hand, he said to
one of his followers, “Two No. 1’s,” and that satellite set down two
large plates, upon each of which were a cup of coffee, a shred of meat,
two boiled eggs and a couple of rolls.

“Well,” said Andrews, as the procession moved away, “I want to know
where this thing’s going to stop. I am trying hard to get used to
wearing a shirt without any lice in it, and to sitting down on a chair,
and to sleeping in a clean bed, but when it comes to having my meals
sent to my room, I’m afraid I’ll degenerate into a pampered child of
luxury. They are really piling it on too strong. Let us see, Mc.; how
long’s it been since we were sitting on the sand there in Florence,
boiling our pint of meal in that old can?”

“It seems many years, Lale,” I said; “but for heaven’s sake let us try
to forget it as soon as possible. We will always remember too much of
it.”

And we did try hard to make the miserable recollections fade out of our
minds. When we were stripped on the balcony we threw away every visible
token that could remind us of the hateful experience we had passed
through. We did not retain a scrap of paper or a relic to recall the
unhappy past. We loathed everything connected with it.

The days that followed were very happy ones. The Paymaster came around
and paid us each two months’ pay and twenty-five cents a day “ration
money” for every day we had been in prison. This gave Andrews and
I about one hundred and sixty-five dollars apiece--an abundance of
spending money. Uncle Sam was very kind and considerate to his soldier
nephews, and the Hospital authorities neglected nothing that would add
to our comfort. The superbly-kept grounds of the Naval Academy were
renewing the freshness of their loveliness under the tender wooing
of the advancing Spring, and every step one sauntered through them
was a new delight. A magnificent band gave us sweet music morning and
evening. Every dispatch from the South told of the victorious progress
of our arms, and the rapid approach of the close of the struggle. All
we had to do was to enjoy the goods the gods were showering upon us,
and we did so with appreciative, thankful hearts. After awhile all
able to travel were given furloughs of thirty days to visit their
homes, with instructions to report at the expiration of their leaves
of absence to the camps of rendezvous nearest their homes, and we
separated, nearly every man going in a different direction.




CHAPTER LXXXI.

CAPTAIN WIRZ THE ONLY ONE OF THE PRISON-KEEPERS PUNISHED--HIS ARREST,
TRIAL AND EXECUTION.

Of all those more or less concerned in the barbarities practiced
upon our prisoners, but one--Captain Henry Wirz--was punished. The
Turners, at Richmond; Lieutenant Boisseux, of Belle Isle; Major Gee,
of Salisbury; Colonel Iverson and Lieutenant Barrett, of Florence; and
the many brutal miscreants about Andersonville, escaped scot free. What
became of them no one knows; they were never heard of after the close
of the war. They had sense enough to retire into obscurity, and stay
there, and this saved their lives, for each one of them had made deadly
enemies among those whom they had maltreated, who, had they known where
they were, would have walked every step of the way thither to kill them.

When the Confederacy went to pieces in April, 1865, Wirz was still
at Andersonville. General Wilson, commanding our cavalry forces, and
who had established his headquarters at Macon, Ga., learned of this,
and sent one of his staff--Captain H. E. Noyes, of the Fourth Regular
Cavalry --with a squad. of men, to arrest him. This was done on the
7th of May. Wirz protested against his arrest, claiming that he was
protected by the terms of Johnson’s surrender, and, addressed the
following letter to General Wilson:

                              ANDERSONVILLE, GA., May 7, 1865.

GENERAL:--It is with great reluctance that I address you these lines,
being fully aware how little time is left you to attend to such matters
as I now have the honor to lay before you, and if I could see any other
way to accomplish my object I would not intrude upon you. I am a native
of Switzerland, and was before the war a citizen of Louisiana, and by
profession a physician. Like hundreds and thousands of others, I was
carried away by the maelstrom of excitement and joined the Southern
army. I was very severely wounded at the battle of “Seven Pines,” near
Richmond, Va., and have nearly lost the use of my right arm. Unfit for
field duty, I was ordered to report to Brevet Major General John H.
Winder, in charge of the Federal prisoners of war, who ordered me to
take charge of a prison in Tuscaloosa, Ala. My health failing me, I
applied for a furlough and went to Europe, from whence I returned in
February, 1864. I was then ordered to report to the commandant of the
military prison at Andersonville, Ga., who assigned me to the command
of the interior of the prison. The duties I had to perform were arduous
and unpleasant, and I am satisfied that no man can or will justly
blame me for things that happened here, and which were beyond my power
to control. I do not think that I ought to be held responsible for
the shortness of rations, for the overcrowded state of the prison,
(which was of itself a prolific source of fearful mortality), for the
inadequate supply of clothing, want of shelter, etc., etc. Still I
now bear the odium, and men who were prisoners have seemed disposed
to wreak their vengeance upon me for what they have suffered--I, who
was only the medium, or, I may better say, the tool in the hands of my
superiors. This is my condition. I am a man with a family. I lost all
my property when the Federal army besieged Vicksburg. I have no money
at present to go to any place, and, even if I had, I know of no place
where I can go. My life is in danger, and I most respectfully ask of
you help and relief. If you will be so generous as to give me some sort
of a safe conduct, or, what I should greatly prefer, a guard to protect
myself and family against violence, I should be thankful to you, and
you may rest assured that your protection will not be given to one who
is unworthy of it. My intention is to return with my family to Europe,
as soon as I can make the arrangements. In the meantime I have the
honor General, to remain, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

                                        Hy. WIRZ, Captain C. S. A.
Major General T. H. WILSON,
Commanding, Macon. Ga.


He was kept at Macon, under guard, until May 20, when Captain Noyes
was ordered to take him, and the hospital records of Andersonville,
to Washington. Between Macon and Cincinnati the journey was a perfect
gauntlet.

Our men were stationed all along the road, and among them everywhere
were ex-prisoners, who recognized Wirz, and made such determined
efforts to kill him that it was all that Captain Noyes, backed by a
strong guard, could do to frustrate them. At Chattanooga and Nashville
the struggle between his guards and his would-be slayers, was quite
sharp.

At Louisville, Noyes had Wirz clean-shaved, and dressed in a complete
suit of black, with a beaver hat, which so altered his appearance that
no one recognized him after that, and the rest of the journey was made
unmolested.

The authorities at Washington ordered that he be tried immediately,
by a court martial composed of Generals Lewis Wallace, Mott, Geary,
L. Thomas, Fessenden, Bragg and Baller, Colonel Allcock, and
Lieutenant-Colonel Stibbs. Colonel Chipman was Judge Advocate, and the
trial began August 23.

The prisoner was arraigned on a formidable list of charges and
specifications, which accused him of “combining, confederating, and
conspiring together with John H. Winder, Richard B. Winder, Isaiah
II. White, W. S. Winder, R. R. Stevenson and others unknown, to
injure the health and destroy the lives of soldiers in the military
service of the United States, there held, and being prisoners of war
within the lines of the so-called Confederate States, and in the
military prisons thereof, to the end that the armies of the United
States might be weakened and impaired, in violation of the laws and
customs of war.” The main facts of the dense over-crowding, the lack
of sufficient shelter, the hideous mortality were cited, and to these
added a long list of specific acts of brutality, such as hunting men
down with hounds, tearing them with dogs, robbing them, confining them
in the stocks, cruelly beating and murdering them, of which Wirz was
personally guilty.

When the defendant was called upon to plead he claimed that his case
was covered by the terms of Johnston’s surrender, and furthermore, that
the country now being at peace, he could not be lawfully tried by a
court-martial. These objections being overruled, he entered a plea of
not guilty to all the charges and specifications. He had two lawyers
for counsel.

The prosecution called Captain Noyes first, who detailed the
circumstances of Wirz’s arrest, and denied that he had given any
promises of protection.

The next witness was Colonel George C. Gibbs, who commanded the
troops of the post at Andersonville. He testified that Wirz was the
commandant of the prison, and had sole authority under Winder over all
the prisoners; that there was a Dead Line there, and orders to shoot
any one who crossed it; that dogs were kept to hunt down escaping
prisoners; the dogs were the ordinary plantation dogs, mixture of hound
and cur.

Dr. J. C. Bates, who was a Surgeon of the Prison Hospital, (a Rebel),
testified that the condition of things in his division was horrible.
Nearly naked men, covered with lice, were dying on all sides. Many were
lying in the filthy sand and mud.

He went on and described the terrible condition of men--dying from
scurvy, diarrhea, gangrenous sores, and lice. He wanted to carry in
fresh vegetables for the sick, but did not dare, the orders being very
strict against such thing. He thought the prison authorities might
easily have sent in enough green corn to have stopped the scurvy;
the miasmatic effluvia from the prison was exceedingly offensive and
poisonous, so much so that when the surgeons received a slight scratch
on their persons, they carefully covered it up with court plaster,
before venturing near the prison.

A number of other Rebel Surgeons testified to substantially the same
facts. Several residents of that section of the State testified to the
plentifulness of the crops there in 1864.

In addition to these, about one hundred and fifty Union prisoners were
examined, who testified to all manner of barbarities which had come
under their personal observation. They had all seen Wirz shoot men, had
seen him knock sick and crippled men down and stamp upon them, had been
run down by him with hounds, etc. Their testimony occupies about two
thousand pages of manuscript, and is, without doubt, the most, terrible
record of crime ever laid to the account of any man.

The taking of this testimony occupied until October 18, when the
Government decided to close the case, as any further evidence would be
simply cumulative.

The prisoner presented a statement in which he denied that there had
been an accomplice in a conspiracy of John H. Winder and others, to
destroy the lives of United States soldiers; he also denied that there
had been such a conspiracy, but made the pertinent inquiry why he
alone, of all those who were charged with the conspiracy, was brought
to trial. He said that Winder has gone to the great judgment seat, to
answer for all his thoughts, words and deeds, “and surely I am not to
be held culpable for them. General Howell Cobb has received the pardon
of the President of the United States.” He further claimed that there
was no principle of law which would sanction the holding of him--a mere
subordinate --guilty, for simply obeying, as literally as possible, the
orders of his superiors.

He denied all the specific acts of cruelty alleged against him, such
as maltreating and killing prisoners with his own hands. The prisoners
killed for crossing the Dead Line, he claimed, should not be charged
against him, since they were simply punished for the violation of a
known order which formed part of the discipline, he believed, of all
military prisons. The statement that soldiers were given a furlough
for killing a Yankee prisoner, was declared to be “a mere idle, absurd
camp rumor.” As to the lack of shelter, room and rations for so many
prisoners, he claimed that the sole responsibility rested upon the
Confederate Government. There never were but two prisoners whipped by
his order, and these were for sufficient cause. He asked the Court to
consider favorably two important items in his defense: first, that he
had of his own accord taken the drummer boys from the Stockade, and
placed them where they could get purer air and better food. Second,
that no property taken from prisoners was retained by him, but was
turned over to the Prison Quartermaster.

The Court, after due deliberation, declared the prisoner guilty on all
the charges and specifications save two unimportant ones, and sentenced
him to be hanged by the neck until dead, at such time and place as the
President of the United States should direct.

November 3 President Johnson approved of the sentence, and ordered
Major General C. C. Augur to carry the same into effect on Friday,
November 10, which was done. The prisoner made frantic appeals against
the sentence; he wrote imploring letters to President Johnson, and
lying ones to the New York News, a Rebel paper. It is said that his
wife attempted to convey poison to him, that he might commit suicide
and avoid the ignomy of being hanged. When all hope was gone he nerved
himself up to meet his fate, and died, as thousands of other scoundrels
have, with calmness. His body was buried in the grounds of the Old
Capitol Prison, alongside of that of Azterodt, one of the accomplices
in the assassination of President Lincoln.




CHAPTER LXXXII.

THE RESPONSIBILITY--WHO WAS TO BLAME FOR ALL THE MISERY--AN EXAMINATION
OF THE FLIMSY EXCUSES MADE FOR THE REBELS--ONE DOCUMENT THAT CONVICTS
THEM--WHAT IS DESIRED.

I have endeavored to tell the foregoing story as calmly, as
dispassionately, as free from vituperation and prejudice as possible.
How well I have succeeded the reader must judge. How difficult this
moderation has been at times only those know who, like myself, have
seen, from day to day, the treason-sharpened fangs of Starvation and
Disease gnaw nearer and nearer to the hearts of well-beloved friends
and comrades. Of the sixty-three of my company comrades who entered
prison with me, but eleven, or at most thirteen, emerged alive,
and several of these have since died from the effects of what they
suffered. The mortality in the other companies of our battalion was
equally great, as it was also with the prisoners generally. Not less
than twenty-five thousand gallant, noble-hearted boys died around me
between the dates of my capture and release. Nobler men than they
never died for any cause. For the most part they were simple-minded,
honest-hearted boys; the sterling products of our Northern home-life,
and Northern Common Schools, and that grand stalwart Northern blood,
the yeoman blood of sturdy middle class freemen--the blood of the
race which has conquered on every field since the Roman Empire went
down under its sinewy blows. They prated little of honor, and knew
nothing of “chivalry” except in its repulsive travesty in the South.
As citizens at home, no honest labor had been regarded by them as too
humble to be followed with manly pride in its success; as soldiers
in the field, they did their duty with a calm defiance of danger and
death, that the world has not seen equaled in the six thousand years
that men have followed the trade of war. In the prison their conduct
was marked by the same unostentatious but unflinching heroism. Death
stared them in the face constantly. They could read their own fate in
that of the loathsome, unburied dead all around them. Insolent enemies
mocked their sufferings, and sneered at their devotion to a Government
which they asserted had abandoned them, but the simple faith, the
ingrained honesty of these plain-mannered, plain-spoken boys rose
superior to every trial. Brutus, the noblest Roman of them all, says in
his grandest flight:

          Set honor in one eye and death in the other,
          And I will look on both indifferently.

They did not say this: they did it. They never questioned their duty; no
repinings, no murmurings against their Government escaped their lips,
they took the dread fortunes brought to them as calmly, as unshrinkingly
as they had those in the field; they quailed not, nor wavered in their
faith before the worst the Rebels could do. The finest epitaph ever
inscribed above a soldier’s grave was that graven on the stone which
marked the resting-place of the deathless three hundred who fell at
Thermopylae:

          Go, stranger, to Lacedaemon,--
          And tell Sparta that we lie here in obedience to her laws.

They who lie in the shallow graves of Andersonville, Belle Isle,
Florence and Salisbury, lie there in obedience to the precepts
and maxims inculcated into their minds in the churches and Common
Schools of the North; precepts which impressed upon them the duty of
manliness and honor in all the relations and exigencies of life; not
the “chivalric” prate of their enemies, but the calm steadfastness
which endureth to the end. The highest tribute that can be paid them
is to say they did full credit to their teachings, and they died as
every American should when duty bids him. No richer heritage was ever
bequeathed to posterity.

It was in the year 1864, and the first three months of 1865 that these
twenty-five thousand youths mere cruelly and needlessly done to death.
In these fatal fifteen months more young men than to-day form the
pride, the hope, and the vigor of any one of our leading Cities, more
than at the beginning of the war were found in either of several States
in the Nation, were sent to their graves, “unknelled, uncoffined,
and unknown,” victims of the most barbarous and unnecessary cruelty
recorded since the Dark Ages. Barbarous, because the wit of man has not
yet devised a more savage method of destroying fellow-beings than by
exposure and starvation; unnecessary, because the destruction of these
had not, and could not have the slightest effect upon the result of the
struggle. The Rebel leaders have acknowledged that they knew the fate
of the Confederacy was sealed when the campaign of 1864 opened with the
North displaying an unflinching determination to prosecute the war to
a successful conclusion. All that they could hope for after that was
some fortuitous accident, or unexpected foreign recognition that would
give them peace with victory. The prisoners were non-important factors
in the military problem. Had they all been turned loose as soon as
captured, their efforts would not have hastened the Confederacy’s fate
a single day.

As to the responsibility for this monstrous cataclysm of human misery
and death: That the great mass of the Southern people approved of these
outrages, or even knew of them, I do not, for an instant, believe.
They are as little capable of countenancing such a thing as any people
in the world. But the crowning blemish of Southern society has ever
been the dumb acquiescence of the many respectable, well-disposed,
right-thinking people in the acts of the turbulent and unscrupulous
few. From this direful spring has flowed an Iliad of unnumbered woes,
not only to that section but to our common country. It was this that
kept the South vibrating between patriotism and treason during the
revolution, so that it cost more lives and treasure to maintain the
struggle there than in all the rest of the country. It was this that
threatened the dismemberment of the Union in 1832. It was this that
aggravated and envenomed every wrong growing out of Slavery; that
outraged liberty, debauched citizenship, plundered the mails, gagged
the press, stiffled speech, made opinion a crime, polluted the free
soil of God with the unwilling step of the bondman, and at last crowned
three-quarters of a century of this unparalleled iniquity by dragging
eleven millions of people into a war from which their souls revolted,
and against which they had declared by overwhelming majorities in
every State except South Carolina, where the people had no voice. It
may puzzle some to understand how a relatively small band of political
desperados in each State could accomplish such a momentous wrong;
that they did do it, no one conversant with our history will deny,
and that they--insignificant as they were in numbers, in abilities,
in character, in everything save capacity and indomitable energy in
mischief--could achieve such gigantic wrongs in direct opposition to
the better sense of their communities is a fearful demonstration of the
defects of the constitution of Southern society.

Men capable of doing all that the Secession leaders were guilty
of--both before and during the war--were quite capable of revengefully
destroying twenty-five thousand of their enemies by the most hideous
means at their command. That they did so set about destroying
their enemies, wilfully, maliciously, and with malice prepense and
aforethought, is susceptible of proof as conclusive as that which in a
criminal court sends murderers to the gallows.

Let us examine some of these proofs:

1. The terrible mortality at Andersonville and elsewhere was a matter
of as much notoriety throughout the Southern Confederacy as the
military operations of Lee and Johnson. No intelligent man--much less
the Rebel leaders--was ignorant of it nor of its calamitous proportions.

2. Had the Rebel leaders within a reasonable time after this matter
became notorious made some show of inquiring into and alleviating
the deadly misery, there might be some excuse for them on the
ground of lack of information, and the plea that they did as well
as they could would have some validity. But this state of affairs
was allowed to continue over a year--in fact until the downfall of
the Confederacy--without a hand being raised to mitigate the horrors
of those places--without even an inquiry being made as to whether
they were mitigable or not. Still worse: every month saw the horrors
thicken, and the condition of the prisoners become more wretched.

The suffering in May, 1864, was more terrible than in April; June
showed a frightful increase over May, while words fail to paint the
horrors of July and August, and so the wretchedness waxed until the
end, in April, 1865.

3. The main causes of suffering and death were so obviously preventible
that the Rebel leaders could not have been ignorant of the ease with
which a remedy could be applied. These main causes were three in number:

a. Improper and insufficient food. b. Unheard-of crowding together. c.
Utter lack of shelter.

It is difficult to say which of these three was the most deadly. Let us
admit, for the sake of argument, that it was impossible for the Rebels
to supply sufficient and proper food. This admission, I know, will not
stand for an instant in the face of the revelations made by Sherman’s
March to the Sea; and through the Carolinas, but let that pass, that we
may consider more easily demonstrable facts connected with the next two
propositions, the first of which is as to the crowding together. Was
land so scarce in the Southern Confederacy that no more than sixteen
acres could be spared for the use of thirty-five thousand prisoners?
The State of Georgia has a population of less than one-sixth that of
New York, scattered over a territory one-quarter greater than that
State’s, and yet a pitiful little tract--less than the corn-patch
“clearing” of the laziest “cracker” in the State--was all that could
be allotted to the use of three-and-a-half times ten thousand young
men! The average population of the State does not exceed sixteen to
the square mile, yet Andersonville was peopled at the rate of one
million four hundred thousand to the square mile. With millions of
acres of unsettled, useless, worthless pine barrens all around them,
the prisoners were wedged together so closely that there was scarcely
room to lie down at night, and a few had space enough to have served as
a grave. This, too, in a country where the land was of so little worth
that much of it had never been entered from the Government.

Then, as to shelter and fire: Each of the prisons was situated in the
heart of a primeval forest, from which the first trees that had ever
been cut were those used in building the pens. Within a gun-shot of
the perishing men was an abundance of lumber and wood to have built
every man in prison a warm, comfortable hut, and enough fuel to supply
all his wants. Supposing even, that the Rebels did not have the labor
at hand to convert these forests into building material and fuel, the
prisoners themselves would have gladly undertaken the work, as a means
of promoting their own comfort, and for occupation and exercise. No
tools would have been too poor and clumsy for them to work with. When
logs were occasionally found or brought into prison, men tore them to
pieces almost with their naked fingers. Every prisoner will bear me out
in the assertion that there was probably not a root as large as a bit
of clothes-line in all the ground covered by the prisons, that eluded
the faithfully eager search of freezing men for fuel. What else than
deliberate design can account for this systematic withholding from the
prisoners of that which was so essential to their existence, and which
it was so easy to give them?

This much for the circumstantial evidence connecting the Rebel
authorities with the premeditated plan for destroying the prisoners.
Let us examine the direct evidence:

The first feature is the assignment to the command of the prisons of
“General” John H. Winder, the confidential friend of Mr. Jefferson
Davis, and a man so unscrupulous, cruel and bloody-thirsty that at
the time of his appointment he was the most hated and feared man in
the Southern Confederacy. His odious administration of the odious
office of Provost Marshal General showed him to be fittest of tools
for their purpose. Their selection--considering the end in view, was
eminently wise. Baron Haynau was made eternally infamous by a fraction
of the wanton cruelties which load the memory of Winder. But it can be
said in extenuation of Haynau’s offenses that he was a brave, skilful
and energetic soldier, who overthrew on the field the enemies he
maltreated. If Winder, at any time during the war, was nearer the front
than Richmond, history does not mention it. Haynau was the bastard son
of a German Elector and of the daughter of a village, druggist. Winder
was the son of a sham aristocrat, whose cowardice and incompetence in
the war of 1812 gave Washington into the hands of the British ravagers.

It is sufficient indication of this man’s character that he could look
unmoved upon the terrible suffering that prevailed in Andersonville in
June, July, and August; that he could see three thousand men die each
month in the most horrible manner, without lifting a finger in any way
to assist them; that he could call attention in a self-boastful way
to the fact that “I am killing off more Yankees than twenty regiments
in Lee’s Army,” and that he could respond to the suggestions of the
horror-struck visiting Inspector that the prisoners be given at least
more room, with the assertion that he intended to leave matters just
as they were--the operations of death would soon thin out the crowd so
that the survivors would have sufficient room.

It was Winder who issued this order to the Commander of the Artillery:

ORDER No. 13.

                                   HEADQUARTERS MILITARY PRISON,
                                   ANDERSONVILLE, Ga., July 27, 1864.

The officers on duty and in charge of the Battery of Florida Artillery
at the time will, upon receiving notice that the enemy has approached
within seven miles of this post, open upon the Stockade with grapeshot,
without reference to the situation beyond these lines of defense.

                                   JOHN H. WINDER,
                              Brigadier General Commanding.


Diabolical is the only word that will come at all near fitly
characterizing such an infamous order. What must have been the nature
of a man who would calmly order twenty-five guns to be opened with
grape and canister at two hundred yards range, upon a mass of thirty
thousand prisoners, mostly sick and dying! All this, rather than
suffer them to be rescued by their friends. Can there be any terms of
reprobation sufficiently strong to properly denounce so malignant a
monster? History has no parallel to him, save among the blood-reveling
kings of Dahomey, or those sanguinary Asiatic chieftains who built
pyramids of human skulls, and paved roads with men’s bones. How a man
bred an American came to display such a Timour-like thirst for human
life, such an Oriental contempt for the sufferings of others, is one of
the mysteries that perplexes me the more I study it.

If the Rebel leaders who appointed this man, to whom he reported
direct, without intervention of superior officers, and who were fully
informed of all his acts through other sources than himself, were not
responsible for him, who in Heaven’s name was? How can there be a
possibility that they were not cognizant and approving of his acts?

The Rebels have attempted but one defense to the terrible charges
against them, and that is, that our Government persistently refused
to exchange, preferring to let its men rot in prison, to yielding up
the Rebels it held. This is so utterly false as to be absurd. Our
Government made overture after overture for exchange to the Rebels,
and offered to yield many of the points of difference. But it could
not, with the least consideration for its own honor, yield up the
negro soldiers and their officers to the unrestrained brutality of the
Rebel authorities, nor could it, consistent with military prudence,
parole the one hundred thousand well-fed, well-clothed, able-bodied
Rebels held by it as prisoners, and let them appear inside of a week in
front of Grant or Sherman. Until it would agree to do this the Rebels
would not agree to exchange, and the only motive--save revenge--which
could have inspired the Rebel maltreatment of the prisoners, was the
expectation of raising such a clamor in the North as would force the
Government to consent to a disadvantageous exchange, and to give back
to the Confederacy, at its most critical period one hundred thousand
fresh, able-bodied soldiers. It was for this purpose, probably, that
our Government and the Sanitary Commission were refused all permission
to send us food and clothing. For my part, and I know I echo the
feelings of ninety-nine out of every hundred of my comrades, I would
rather have staid in prison till I rotted, than that our Government
should have yielded to the degrading demands of insolent Rebels.

There is one document in the possession of the Government which seems
to me to be unanswerable proof, both of the settled policy of the
Richmond Government towards the Union prisoners, and of the relative
merits of Northern and Southern treatment of captives. The document is
a letter reading as follows:

                              CITY POINT, Va., March 17, 1863.

SIR:--A flag-of-truce boat has arrived with three hundred and fifty
political prisoners, General Barrow and several other prominent men
among them.

I wish you to send me on four o’clock Wednesday morning, all the
military prisoners (except officers), and all the political prisoners
you have. If any of the political prisoners have on hand proof enough
to convict them of being spies, or of having committed other offenses
which should subject them to punishment, so state opposite their names.
Also, state whether you think, under all the circumstances, they should
be released. The arrangement I have made works largely in our favor. WE
GET RID OF A SET OF MISERABLE WRETCHES, AND RECEIVE SOME OF THE BEST
MATERIAL I EVER SAW.

Tell Captain Turner to put down on the list of political prisoners the
names of Edward P. Eggling, and Eugenia Hammermister. The President is
anxious that they should get off. They are here now. This, of course,
is between ourselves. If you have any political prisoners whom you can
send off safely to keep her company, I would like you to send her.

Two hundred and odd more political prisoners are on their way.

I would be more full in my communication if I had time. Yours truly,

                         ROBERT OULD, Commissioner of Exchange.

To Brigadier general John H. Winder.


But, supposing that our Government, for good military reasons, or for
no reason at all, declined to exchange prisoners, what possible excuse
is that for slaughtering them by exquisite tortures? Every Government
has ap unquestioned right to decline exchanging when its military
policy suggests such a course; and such declination conveys no right
whatever to the enemy to slay those prisoners, either outright with the
edge of the sword, or more slowly by inhuman treatment. The Rebels’
attempts to justify their conduct, by the claim that our Government
refused to accede to their wishes in a certain respect, is too
preposterous to be made or listened to by intelligent men.

The whole affair is simply inexcusable, and stands out a foul blot on
the memory of every Rebel in high place in the Confederate Government.

“Vengeance is mine,” saith the Lord, and by Him must this great crime
be avenged, if it ever is avenged. It certainly transcends all human
power. I have seen little indication of any Divine interposition
to mete out, at least on this earth, adequate punishment to those
who were the principal agents in that iniquity. Howell Cobb died as
peacefully in his bed as any Christian in the land, and with as few
apparent twinges of remorse as if he had spent his life in good deeds
and prayer. The arch-fiend Winder died in equal tranquility, murmuring
some cheerful hope as to his soul’s future. Not one of the ghosts of
his hunger-slain hovered around to embitter his dying moments, as he
had theirs. Jefferson Davis “still lives, a prosperous gentleman,”
the idol of a large circle of adherents, the recipient of real estate
favors from elderly females of morbid sympathies, and a man whose mouth
is full of plaints of his wrongs, and misappreciation. The rest of the
leading conspirators have either departed this life in the odor of
sanctity, surrounded by sorrowing friends, or are gliding serenely down
the mellow autumnal vale of a benign old age.

Only Wirz--small, insignificant, miserable Wirz, the underling, the
tool, the servile, brainless, little fetcher-and-carrier of these men,
was punished--was hanged, and upon the narrow shoulders of this pitiful
scapegoat was packed the entire sin of Jefferson Davis and his crew.
What a farce!

A petty little Captain made to expiate the crimes of Generals, Cabinet
Officers, and a President. How absurd!

But I do not ask for vengeance. I do not ask for retribution for one
of those thousands of dead comrades, the glitter of whose sightless
eyes will follow me through life. I do not desire even justice on the
still living authors and accomplices in the deep damnation of their
taking off. I simply ask that the great sacrifices of my dead comrades
shall not be suffered to pass unregarded to irrevocable oblivion;
that the example of their heroic self-abnegation shall not be lost,
but the lesson it teaches be preserved and inculcated into the minds
of their fellow-countrymen, that future generations may profit by it,
and others be as ready to die for right and honor and good government
as they were. And it seems to me that if we are to appreciate their
virtues, we must loathe and hold up to opprobrium those evil men whose
malignity made all their sacrifices necessary. I cannot understand what
good self-sacrifice and heroic example are to serve in this world, if
they are to be followed by such a maudlin confusion of ideas as now
threatens to obliterate all distinction between the men who fought and
died for the Right and those who resisted them for the Wrong.




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