Andersonville, entire
by
John McElroy

Part 3 out of 10



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 lie 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 be 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 vas 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 bog 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


 


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