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Title: Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons

Author: John McElroy

Release date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #3072]
Most recently updated: August 24, 2023

Language: English

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ANDERSONVILLE

A STORY OF REBEL MILITARY PRISONS

FIFTEEN MONTHS A GUEST OF THE SO-CALLED

SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY

A PRIVATE SOLDIERS EXPERIENCE

IN

RICHMOND, ANDERSONVILLE, SAVANNAH, MILLEN

BLACKSHEAR AND FLORENCE

BY JOHN McELROY

Late of Co. L. 16th Ill Cav.

1879

TO THE HONORABLE

NOAH H. SWAYNE.

JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED
STATES,

A JURIST OF DISTINGUISHED TALENTS AND EXALTED
CHARACTER;

ONE OF THE LAST OF THAT

ADMIRABLE ARRAY OF PURE PATRIOTS AND
SAGACIOUS COUNSELORS,

WHO, IN

THE YEARS OF THE NATION'S TRIAL,

FAITHFULLY SURROUNDED THE GREAT PRESIDENT,

AND, WITH HIM, BORE THE BURDEN

OF

THOSE MOMENTOUS DAYS;

AND WHOSE WISDOM AND FAIRNESS HAVE DONE SO
MUCH SINCE

TO

CONSERVE WHAT WAS THEN WON,

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH RESPECT AND
APPRECIATION,

BY THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I.

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

CHAPTER II.

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

CHAPTER III.

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

CHAPTER IV.

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

CHAPTER V.

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

CHAPTER VI.

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

CHAPTER VII.

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

CHAPTER VIII.

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

CHAPTER IX.

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

CHAPTER X.

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

CHAPTER XI.

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

CHAPTER XII.

REMARKS AS TO NOMENCLATURE--VACC1NATION AND ITS
EFFECTS--“N'YAARKER'S,"-- THEIR CHARACTERISTICS AND
THEIR METHODS OF OPERATING.

CHAPTER XIII.

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

CHAPTER XIV.

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

CHAPTER XV.

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

CHAPTER XVI.

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

CHAPTER XVII.

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

CHAPTER XVIII.

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

CHAPTER XIX.

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

CHAPTER XX.

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

CHAPTER XXI.

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

CHAPTER XXII.

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

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.

CHAPTER XXIV.

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

CHAPTER XXV.

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

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.

CHAPTER XXVII.

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

CHAPTER XXVIII.

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

CHAPTER XXIX.

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

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.

CHAPTER XXXI.

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

CHAPTER XXXII.

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

CHAPTER XXXIII.

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

CHAPTER XXXIV.

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

CHAPTER XXXV.

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

CHAPTER XXXVI.

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

CHAPTER XXXVII.

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

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

AFTER THE EXECUTION--FORMATION OF A POLICE FORCE--ITS
FIRST CHIEF-- “SPANKING” AN OFFENDER.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

JULY--THE PRISON BECOMES MORE CROWDED, THE WEATHER
HOTTER, NATIONS POORER, AND MORTALITY GREATER--SOME
OF THE PHENOMENA OF SUFFERING AND DEATH.

CHAPTER XL.

THE BATTLE OF THE 22D OF JULY--THE ARMS OF THE
TENNESSEE ASSAULTED FRONT AND REAR--DEATH OF GENERAL
MCPHERSON--ASSUMPTION OF COMMAND BY GENERAL LOGAN-
-RESULT OF THE BATTLE.

CHAPTER XLI.

CLOTHING: ITS RAPID DETERIORATION, AND DEVICES TO
REPLENISH IT--DESPERATE EFFORTS TO COVER NAKEDNESS-
-“LITTLE RED CAP” AND HIS LETTER.

CHAPTER XLII.

SOME FEATURES OF THE MORTALITY--PERCENTAGE OF
DEATHS TO THOSE LIVING-- AN AVERAGE MEAN ONLY STANDS
THE MISERY THREE MONTHS--DESCRIPTION OF THE PRISON AND
THE CONDITION OF THE MEN THEREIN, BY A LEADING
SCIENTIFIC MAN OF THE SOUTH.

CHAPTER XLIII.

DIFFICULTY OF EXERCISING--EMBARRASSMENTS OF A
MORNING WALK--THE RIALTO OF THE PRISON--CURSING THE
SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY--THE STORY OF THE BATTLE OF
SPOTTSYLVANIA COURTHOUSE.

CHAPTER XLIV.

REBEL MUSIC--SINGULAR LACK OF THE CREATIVE POWER
AMONG THE SOUTHERNERS-- CONTRAST WITH SIMILAR PEOPLE
ELSEWHERE--THEIR FAVORITE MUSIC, AND WHERE IT WAS
BORROWED FROM--A FIFER WITH ONE TUNE.

CHAPTER XLV.

AUGUST--NEEDLES STUCK IN PUMPKIN SEEDS--SOME
PHENOMENA OF STARVATION-- RIOTING IN REMEMBERED

LUXURIES.

CHAPTER XLVI.

SURLY BRITON--THE STOLID COURAGE THAT MAKES THE
ENGLISH FLAG A BANNER OF TRIUMPH--OUR COMPANY
BUGLER, HIS CHARACTERISTICS AND HIS DEATH--URGENT
DEMAND FOR MECHANICS--NONE WANT TO GO--TREATMENT OF
A REBEL SHOEMAKER-- ENLARGEMENT OF THE STOCKADE--IT
IS BROKEN BY A STORM-- THE WONDERFUL SPRING.

CHAPTER XLVII.

“SICK CALL,” AND THE SCENES THAT ACCOMPANIED IT--
MUSTERING THE LAME, HALT AND DISEASED AT THE SOUTH
GATE--AN UNUSUALLY BAD CASE--GOING OUT TO THE
HOSPITAL--ACCOMMODATION AND TREATMENT OF THE
PATIENTS THERE--THE HORRIBLE SUFFERING IN THE GANGRENE
WARD--BUNGLING AMPUTATIONS BY BLUNDERING
PRACTITIONERS--AFFECTION BETWEEN A SAILOR AND HIS
WARD-- DEATH OF MY COMRADE.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

DETERMINATION TO ESCAPE--DIFFERENT PLANS AND THEIR
MERITS--I PREFER THE APPALACHICOLA ROUTE--PREPARATIONS
FOR DEPARTURE--A HOT DAY--THE FENCE PASSED
SUCCESSFULLY PURSUED BY THE HOUNDS--CAUGHT--
RETURNED TO THE STOCKADE.

CHAPTER XLIX.

AUGUST--GOOD LUCK IN NOT MEETING CAPTAIN WIRZ--THAT
WORTHY'S TREATMENT OF RECAPTURED PRISONERS--SECRET
SOCIETIES IN PRISON--SINGULAR MEETING AND ITS RESULT--
DISCOVERY AND REMOVAL OF THE OFFICERS AMONG THE
ENLISTED MEN.

CHAPTER L

FOOD--THE MEAGERNESS, INFERIOR QUALITY, AND TERRIBLE
SAMENESS-- REBEL TESTIMONY ON THE SUBJECT--FUTILITY OF
SUCCESSFUL EXPLANATION.

CHAPTER LI.

SOLICITUDE AS TO THE FATE OF ATLANTA AND SHERMAN'S
ARMY--PAUCITY OF NEWS --HOW WE HEARD THAT ATLANTA
HAD FALLEN--ANNOUNCEMENT OF A GENERAL EXCHANGE--WE
LEAVE ANDERSONVILLE.

CHAPTER LII.

SAVANNAH--DEVICES TO OBTAIN MATERIALS FOR A TENT--
THEIR ULTIMATE SUCCESS --RESUMPTION OF TUNNELING--
ESCAPING BY WHOLESALE AND BEING RECAPTURED EN MASSE-
-THE OBSTACLES THAT LAY BETWEEN US AND OUR LINES.

CHAPTER LIII.

FRANK REVERSTOCK'S ATTEMPT AT ESCAPE--PASSING OFF AS
REBEL BOY HE REACHES GRISWOLDVILLE BY RAIL, AND THEN
STRIKES ACROSS THE COUNTRY FOR SHERMAN, BUT IS CAUGHT
WITHIN TWENTY MILES OF OUR LINES.

CHAPTER LIV.

SAVANNAH PROVES TO BE A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER--
ESCAPE FROM THE BRATS OF GUARDS--COMPARISON BETWEEN
WIRZ AND DAVIS--A BRIEF INTERVAL OF GOOD RATIONS--
WINDER, THE MAN WITH THE EVIL EYE-- THE DISLOYAL WORK
OF A SHYSTER.

CHAPTER LV.

WHY WE WERE HURRIED OUT OF ANDERSONVILLE--THE OF
THE FALL OF ATLANTA-- OUR LONGING TO HEAR THE NEWS--
ARRIVAL OF SOME FRESH FISH--HOW WE KNEW THEY WERE
WESTERN BOYS--DIFFERENCE IN THE APPEARANCE OF THE
SOLDIERS OF THE TWO ARMIES.

CHAPTER LVI.

WHAT CAUSED THE FALL OF ATLANTA--A DISSERTATION UPON
AN IMPORTANT PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM--THE BATTLE OF
JONESBORO--WHY IT WAS FOUGHT-- HOW SHERMAN DECEIVED
HOOD--A DESPERATE BAYONET CHARGE, AND THE ONLY
SUCCESSFUL ONE IN THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN--A GALLANT
COLONEL AND HOW HE DIED--THE HEROISM OF SOME ENLISTED
MEN--GOING CALMLY INTO CERTAIN DEATH.

CHAPTER LVII.

A FAIR SACRIFICE--THE STORY OF ONE BOY WHO WILLINGLY
GAVE HIS YOUNG LIFE FOR HIS COUNTRY.

CHAPTER LVIII.

WE LEAVE SAVANNAH--MORE HOPES OF EXCHANGE--SCENES
AT DEPARTURE-- “FLANKERS"--ON THE BACK TRACK TOWARD
ANDERSONVILLE--ALARM THEREAT-- AT THE PARTING OF TWO
WAYS--WE FINALLY BRING UP AT CAMP LAWTON.

CHAPTER LIX.

OUR NEW QUARTERS AT CAMP LAWTON--BUILDING A HUT--AN
EXCEPTIONAL COMMANDANT--HE IS a GOOD MAN, BUT WILL
TAKE BRIBES--RATIONS.

CHAPTER LX.

THE RAIDERS REAPPEAR ON THE SCENE--THE ATTEMPT TO
ASSASSINATE THOSE WHO WERE CONCERNED IN THE
EXECUTION--A COUPLE OF LIVELY FIGHTS, IN WHICH THE
RAIDERS ARE DEFEATED--HOLDING AN ELECTION.

CHAPTER LXI.

THE REBELS FORMALLY PROPOSE TO US TO DESERT TO THEM-
-CONTUMELIOUS TREATMENT OF THE PROPOSITION--THEIR
RAGE--AN EXCITING TIME--AN OUTBREAK THREATENED--
DIFFICULTIES ATTENDING DESERTION TO THE REBELS.

CHAPTER LXII.

SERGEANT LEROY L. KEY--HIS ADVENTURES SUBSEQUENT TO
THE EXECUTIONS-- HE GOES OUTSIDE AT ANDERSONVILLE ON
PAROLE--LABORS IN THE COOK-HOUSE-- ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE--
IS RECAPTURED AND TAKEN TO MACON--ESCAPES FROM THERE,
BUT IS COMPELLED TO RETURN--IS FINALLY EXCHANGED AT
SAVANNAH.

CHAPTER LXIII.

DREARY WEATHER--THE COLD RAINS DISTRESS ALL AND KILL
HUNDREDS--EXCHANGE OF TEN THOUSAND SICK--CAPTAIN
BOWES TURNS A PRETTY, BUT NOT VERY HONEST, PENNY.

CHAPTER LXIV

ANOTHER REMOVAL--SHERMAN'S ADVANCE SCARES THE
REBELS INTO RUNNING US AWAY FROM MILLEN--WE ARE TAKEN
TO SAVANNAH, AND THENCE DOWN THE ATLANTIC & GULF
ROAD TO BLACKSHEAR

CHAPTER LXV.

BLACKSHEAR AND PIERCE COUNTRY--WE TAKE UP NEW
QUARTERS, BUT ARE CALLED OUT FOR EXCHANGE--
EXCITEMENT OVER SIGNING THE PAROLE--A HAPPY JOURNEY
TO SAVANNAH--GRIEVOUS DISAPPOINTMENT

CHAPTER LXVI.

SPECIMEN CONVERSATION WITH AN AVERAGE NATIVE
GEORGIAN--WE LEARN THAT SHERMAN IS HEADING FOR
SAVANNAH--THE RESERVES GET A LITTLE SETTLING DOWN.

CHAPTER LXVII.

OFF TO CHARLESTON--PASSING THROUGH THE RICE SWAMPS--
TWO EXTREMES OF SOCIETY--ENTRY INTO CHARLESTON--
LEISURELY WARFARE--SHELLING THE CITY AT REGULAR
INTERVALS--WE CAMP IN A MASS OF RUINS--DEPARTURE FOR
FLORENCE.

CHAPTER LXVIII.

FIRST DAYS AT FLORENCE--INTRODUCTION TO LIEUTENANT
BARRETT, THE RED- HEADED KEEPER--A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF
OUR NEW QUARTERS--WINDERS MALIGN INFLUENCE MANIFEST.

CHAPTER LXIX.

BARRETT'S INSANE CRUELTY--HOW HE PUNISHED THOSE
ALLEGED TO BE ENGAGED IN TUNNELING--THE MISERY IN THE
STOCKADE--MEN'S LIMBS ROTTING OFF WITH DRY GANGRENE.

CHAPTER LXX.

HOUSE AND CLOTHES--EFFORTS TO ERECT A SUITABLE
RESIDENCE--DIFFICULTIES ATTENDING THIS--VARIETIES OF
FLORENTINE ARCHITECTURE--WAITING FOR DEAD MEN'S
CLOTHES--CRAVING FOR TOBACCO.

CHAPTER LXXI.

DECEMBER--RATIONS OF WOOD AND FOOD GROW LESS
DAILY--UNCERTAINTY AS TO THE MORTALITY AT FLORENCE--
EVEN THE GOVERNMENT'S STATISTICS ARE VERY DEFICIENT--
CARE FOB THE SICK.

CHAPTER LXXII.

DULL WINTER DAYS--TOO WEAK AND TOO STUPID To AMUSE
OURSELVES--ATTEMPTS OF THE REBELS TO RECRUIT US INTO
THEIR ARMY--THE CLASS OF MEN THEY OBTAINED --
VENGEANCE ON “THE GALVANIZED"--A SINGULAR EXPERIENCE-
-RARE GLIMPSES OF FUN--INABILITY OF THE REBELS TO COUNT.

CHAPTER LXXIII.

CHRISTMAS--AND THE WAY THE WAS PASSED--THE DAILY
ROUTINE OF RATION DRAWING--SOME PECULIARITIES OF
LIVING AND DYING.

CHAPTER LXXIV.

NEW YEAR'S DAY--DEATH OF JOHN H. WINDER--HE DIES ON
HIS WAY TO A DINNER --SOMETHING AS TO CHARACTER AND
CAREER--ONE OF THE WORST MEN THAT EVER LIVED.

CHAPTER LXXV.

ONE INSTANCE OF A SUCCESSFUL ESCAPE--THE ADVENTURES
OF SERGEANT WALTER HARTSOUGH, OF COMPANY K,
SIXTEENTH ILLINOIS CAVALRY--HE GETS AWAY FROM THE
REBELS AT THOMASVILLE, AND AFTER A TOILSOME AND
DANGEROUS JOURNEY OF SEVERAL HUNDRED MILES, REACHES
OUR LINES IN FLORIDA.

CHAPTER LXXVI

THE PECULIAR TYPE OF INSANITY PREVALENT AT FLORENCE--
BARRETT'S WANTONNESS OF CRUELTY--WE LEARN OF
SHERMAN'S ADVANCE INTO SOUTH CAROLINA--THE REBELS
BEGIN MOVING THE PRISONERS AWAY--ANDREWS AND I
CHANGE OUR TACTICS, AND STAY BEHIND--ARRIVAL OF FIVE
PRISONERS FROM SHERMAN'S COMMAND--THEIR UNBOUNDED
CONFIDENCE IN SHERMAN'S SUCCESS, AND ITS BENEFICIAL
EFFECT UPON US.

CHAPTER LXXVII

FRUITLESS WAITING FOR SHERMAN--WE LEAVE FLORENCE--
INTELLIGENCE OF THE FALL OF WILMINGTON COMMUNICATED
TO US BY A SLAVE--THE TURPENTINE REGION OF NORTH
CAROLINA--WE COME UPON A REBEL LINE OF BATTLE--
YANKEES AT BOTH ENDS OF THE ROAD.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

RETURN TO FLORENCE AND A SHORT SOJOURN THERE--OFF
TOWARDS WILMINGTON AGAIN--CRUISING A REBEL OFFICER'S
LUNCH--SIGNS OF APPROACHING OUR LINES --TERROR OF OUR
RASCALLY GUARDS--ENTRANCE INTO GOD'S COUNTRY AT LAST.

CHAPTER LXXIX.

GETTING USED TO FREEDOM--DELIGHTS OF A LAND WHERE
THERE IS ENOUGH OF EVERYTHING--FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE
OLD FLAG--WILMINGTON AND ITS HISTORY --LIEUTENANT
CUSHING--FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE COLORED TROOPS--
LEAVING FOR HOME--DESTRUCTION OF THE “THORN” BY A
TORPEDO--THE MOCK MONITOR'S ACHIEVEMENT.

CHAPTER LXXX

VISIT TO FORT FISHER, AND INSPECTION OF THAT
STRONGHOLD--THE WAY IT WAS CAPTURED--OUT ON THE

OCEAN SAILING--TERRIBLY SEASICK--RAPID RECOVERY--
ARRIVAL AT ANNAPOLIS--WASHED, CLOTHED AND FED--
UNBOUNDED LUXURY, AND DAYS OF UNADULTERATED
HAPPINESS.

CHAPTER LXXXII.

CAPTAIN WIRZ THE ONLY ONE OF THE PRISON-KEEPERS
PUNISHED--HIS ARREST, TRIAL AND EXECUTION.

CHAPTER LXXXIII.

THE RESPONSIBILITY--WHO WAS TO BLAME FOR ALL THE
MISERY--AN EXAMINATION OF THE FLIMSY EXCUSES MADE FOR
THE REBELS--ONE DOCUMENT THAT CONVICTS THEM--WHAT IS
DESIRED.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
(The Skipped Numbers were drawings unsuitable for
copying.)

1. Frontpiece
2. “War"
8. Cumberland Gap, Looking Eastward
4. A Cavalry Squad
5. The 'Rebels Marching Through Jonesville
6. 'Leven Yards Killing the Rebel
7. A Scared Mule Driver
8. Bugler Sounding “Taps"
9. Company L Gathering to Meet the Rebel Attack
10. The Major Refuses to Surrender
11. Ned Johnson Trying to Kill the Rebel Colonel
12. Girls Astonished at the Jacket Tabs
14. An East Tennesseean
15. A Rebel Dandy
17. Turner in Quest of British Gold
18. Barnacle backs Discouraging a Visit from a Soldier
19. Ross Calling the Roll
20. An Evening's Amusement with the Guards
21. Prisoners' Culinary Outfit
23. Skimming, the Bugs From My Soup
23. “Spooning"
24. A Richmond News Boy
25. “Say, Guard: Do You Want to Buy Some Greenbacks?"
26. A “N'Yaarker"
27. Decoying Boisseux's Dog to Its Death
28. The Dead Scotchman
29. Map of Georgia, South Carolina and part of North
Carolina
30. Cooking Rations
31. General John W. Winder

32. A Field hand
33. Scaling the Stockade
34. Captain llenri Wirz
35. The Prize-fight for the Skillet
36. Killing Lice by Singeing
37. Stripping the Dead for Clothes
38. A Plymouth Pilgrim
40. Midnight Attack of the Raiders
41. Ignominious End of a Tunnel Enterprize
42. Tunneling
43. Tattooing the Tunnel Traitor
44. Overpowering a Guard
45. A Master of the Hounds
46. Hounds Tearing a Prisoner
47. Shot at the Creek by the Guard
48. Cooking Mush
49. Seitz on Horseback
50. Finding Seitz Dead
51. A Case of Scurvy
52. Confiscating Soft Soap
63. Religious Services
54. The Priest Anointing the Dying
55. Raider Fight with one of Ellett's Marine Brigade
56. Key Bluffing His Would-be Assassins
67. Rebel Artillerists Training the Cannon on the Prison
58. Overthrow of the Raiders
59. Arrest of Pete Donnelly
60. Death of the Sailor
61. Execution of the Raiders
63. Sergeant A. R, Hill, 100th O. V. I.
63. “Spanking” a Thief
64. The Wounded Illinois Sergeant
65. The Idiotic Flute-Player
66. One of Sherman's “Veterans"
67. “You Hear Me"
68. Logan Taking Command of the Army of the Tennessee
69. Death of M'Pherson
70. The Work of a Shell

71. The Fight for the Flag
72. In the Rifle-pit After the Battle
73. Taken In
74. The Author's Appearance on Entering Prison
75. His Appearance in July, 1864
76. Little Red Cap
77. “Fresh Fish"
78. Interior of the Stockade, Viewed from the Southwest
79. Burying the Dead
80. The Graveyard at Andersonville, as the Rebels Left It
81. Denouncing the Southern Confederacy
82. The Charge
83. “Flagstaff"
84. Nursing a Sick Comrade
65. A Dream
86. The English Bugler
87. The Break in the Stockade
88. At the Spring
89. Morning Assemblage of Sick at the South Gate
91. Old Sailor and Chicken
92. Death of Watts
93. Planning Escape
94. Our Progress was Terribly Slow--Every Step Hurt
Fearfully
95. “Come Ashore, There, Quick"
96. He Shrieked Imprecations and Curses
97. The Chain Gang
98. Interior of the Stockade--The Creek at the East Side
99. A Section from the East Side of the Prison Showing the
Dead Line
100. “Half-past Eight O'clock, and Atlanta's Gone to H--l!”
101. Off for “God's Country"
102. Georgian Development of the “Proud Caucasian"
103. It was Very Unpleasant When a Storm Came Up
104. When We Matched Our Intellects Against a Rebel's
107. His New Idea was to have a Heavily Laden Cart Driven
Around Inside the Dead Line
108. They Stood Around the Gate and Yelled Derisively

110. “See Heah; You Must Stand Back!”
111. He Bade Them Goodbye
112. “Wha-ah-ye!”
114. One of Ferguson's Cavalry
115. Then the Clear Blue Eyes and Well-remembered Smile
117. Millen
118. A House Builded With Our Own Own Hands
119. Our First Meat
120. A Lucky Find
121. Sergeant L. L. Key
124. “Where Are You Going, You D--d Yank?"
127. “Who Mout These Be?"
128. A Roadside View
129. The Charleston & Savannah Railroad
131. A Rice Field Girl
132. A Rice Swamp
133. A Scene in the “Burnt District"
134. The Part Where We Lay Was a Mass of Ruins
135. Ruins of St. Finbar Cathedral
136. The Unlucky Negro Fell, Pierced by a Score of Bullets
137. Recapture of the Runaways
139. “Take These Shears and Cut My Toes Off"
140. Corporal John W. January
142. Andrews Managed to Fish Out the Bag and Pass to Me
Three Roasted Chickens
143. In God's Country at Last
144. Map of Wilmington and Neighborhood
148. The Infantry Assault on Fort Fisher
149. They Removed Every Trace of Prison Grime
152. Trial of Captain Wirz
153. Execution of Captain Wirz
154. “Peace"

INTRODUCTION.
The fifth part of a century almost has sped with the flight of time since the
outbreak of the Slaveholder's Rebellion against the United States. The young
men of to-day were then babes in their cradles, or, if more than that, too
young to be appalled by the terror of the times. Those now graduating from
our schools of learning to be teachers of youth and leaders of public thought,
if they are ever prepared to teach the history of the war for the Union so as to
render adequate honor to its martyrs and heroes, and at the same time
impress the obvious moral to be drawn from it, must derive their knowledge
from authors who can each one say of the thrilling story he is spared to tell:
“All of which I saw, and part of which I was.”
The writer is honored with the privilege of introducing to the reader a
volume written by an author who was an actor and a sufferer in the scenes he
has so vividly and faithfully described, and sent forth to the public by a
publisher whose literary contributions in support of the loyal cause entitle
him to the highest appreciation. Both author and publisher have had an
honorable and efficient part in the great struggle, and are therefore worthy to
hand down to the future a record of the perils encountered and the sufferings
endured by patriotic soldiers in the prisons of the enemy. The publisher, at
the beginning of the war, entered, with zeal and ardor upon the work of
raising a company of men, intending to lead them to the field. Prevented
from carrying out this design, his energies were directed to a more effective
service. His famous “Nasby Letters” exposed the absurd and sophistical
argumentations of rebels and their sympathisers, in such broad, attractive
and admirable burlesque, as to direct against them the “loud, long laughter of
a world!” The unique and telling satire of these papers became a power and
inspiration to our armies in the field and to their anxious friends at home,
more than equal to the might of whole battalions poured in upon the enemy.
An athlete in logic may lay an error writhing at his feet, and after all it may
recover to do great mischief. But the sharp wit of the humorist drives it
before the world's derision into shame and everlasting contempt. These
letters were read and shouted over gleefully at every camp-fire in the Union
Army, and eagerly devoured by crowds of listeners when mails were opened
at country post-offices. Other humorists were content when they simply

amused the reader, but “Nasby's” jests were arguments—they had a meaning
—they were suggested by the necessities and emergencies of the Nation's
peril, and written to support, with all earnestness, a most sacred cause.
The author, when very young, engaged in journalistic work, until the drum
of the recruiting officer called him to join the ranks of his country's
defenders. As the reader is told, he was made a prisoner. He took with him
into the terrible prison enclosure not only a brave, vigorous, youthful spirit,
but invaluable habits of mind and thought for storing up the incidents and
experiences of his prison life. As a journalist he had acquired the habit of
noticing and memorizing every striking or thrilling incident, and the
experiences of his prison life were adapted to enstamp themselves indelibly
on both feeling and memory. He speaks from personal experience and from
the stand-paint of tender and complete sympathy with those of his comrades
who suffered more than he did himself. Of his qualifications, the writer of
these introductory words need not speak. The sketches themselves testify to
his ability with such force that no commendation is required.
This work is needed. A generation is arising who do not know what the
preservation of our free government cost in blood and suffering. Even the
men of the passing generation begin to be forgetful, if we may judge from
the recklessness or carelessness of their political action. The soldier is not
always remembered nor honored as he should be. But, what to the future of
the great Republic is more important, there is great danger of our people
under-estimating the bitter animus and terrible malignity to the Union and its
defenders cherished by those who made war upon it. This is a point we can
not afford to be mistaken about. And yet, right at this point this volume will
meet its severest criticism, and at this point its testimony is most vital and
necessary.
Many will be slow to believe all that is here told most truthfully of the
tyranny and cruelty of the captors of our brave boys in blue. There are no
parallels to the cruelties and malignities here described in Northern society.
The system of slavery, maintained for over two hundred years at the South,
had performed a most perverting, morally desolating, and we might say,
demonizing work on the dominant race, which people bred under our free
civilization can not at once understand, nor scarcely believe when it is
declared unto them. This reluctance to believe unwelcome truths has been
the snare of our national life. We have not been willing to believe how

hardened, despotic, and cruel the wielders of irresponsible power may
become.
When the anti-slavery reformers of thirty years ago set forth the cruelties
of the slave system, they were met with a storm of indignant denial,
villification and rebuke. When Theodore D. Weld issued his “Testimony of a
Thousand Witnesses,” to the cruelty of slavery, he introduced it with a few
words, pregnant with sound philosophy, which can be applied to the work
now introduced, and may help the reader better to accept and appreciate its
statements. Mr. Weld said:
“Suppose I should seize you, rob you of your liberty, drive you into the
field, and make you work without pay as long as you lived. Would that be
justice? Would it be kindness? Or would it be monstrous injustice and
cruelty? Now, is the man who robs you every day too tender-hearted ever to
cuff or kick you? He can empty your pockets without remorse, but if your
stomach is empty, it cuts him to the quick. He can make you work a life-time
without pay, but loves you too well to let you go hungry. He fleeces you of
your rights with a relish, but is shocked if you work bare-headed in summer,
or without warm stockings in winter. He can make you go without your
liberty, but never without a shirt. He can crush in you all hope of bettering
your condition by vowing that you shall die his slave, but though he can thus
cruelly torture your feelings, he will never lacerate your back—he can break
your heart, but is very tender of your skin. He can strip you of all protection
of law, and all comfort in religion, and thus expose you to all outrages, but if
you are exposed to the weather, half-clad and half-sheltered, how yearn his
tender bowels! What! talk of a man treating you well while robbing you of
all you get, and as fast as you get it? And robbing you of yourself, too, your
hands and feet, your muscles, limbs and senses, your body and mind, your
liberty and earnings, your free speech and rights of conscience, your right to
acquire knowledge, property and reputation, and yet you are content to
believe without question that men who do all this by their slaves have soft
hearts oozing out so lovingly toward their human chattles that they always
keep them well housed and well clad, never push them too hard in the field,
never make their dear backs smart, nor let their dear stomachs get empty!”
In like manner we may ask, are not the cruelties and oppressions
described in the following pages what we should legitimately expect from
men who, all their lives, have used whip and thumb-screw, shot-gun and
bloodhound, to keep human beings subservient to their will? Are we to

expect nothing but chivalric tenderness and compassion from men who made
war on a tolerant government to make more secure their barbaric system of
oppression?
These things are written because they are true. Duty to the brave dead, to
the heroic living, who have endured the pangs of a hundred deaths for their
country's sake; duty to the government which depends on the wisdom and
constancy of its good citizens for its support and perpetuity, calls for this
“round, unvarnished tale” of suffering endured for freedom's sake.
The publisher of this work urged his friend and associate in journalism to
write and send forth these sketches because the times demanded just such an
expose of the inner hell of the Southern prisons. The tender mercies of
oppressors are cruel. We must accept the truth and act in view of it. Acting
wisely on the warnings of the past, we shall be able to prevent treason, with
all its fearful concomitants, from being again the scourge and terror of our
beloved land.
ROBERT McCUNE.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Fifteen months ago—and one month before it was begun—I had no more
idea of writing this book than I have now of taking up my residence in
China.
While I have always been deeply impressed with the idea that the public
should know much more of the history of Andersonville and other Southern
prisons than it does, it had never occurred to me that I was in any way
charged with the duty of increasing that enlightenment.
No affected deprecation of my own abilities had any part is this. I
certainly knew enough of the matter, as did every other boy who had even a
month's experience in those terrible places, but the very magnitude of that
knowledge overpowered me, by showing me the vast requirements of the
subject-requirements that seemed to make it presumption for any but the
greatest pens in our literature to attempt the work. One day at Andersonville
or Florence would be task enough for the genius of Carlyle or Hugo; lesser
than they would fail preposterously to rise to the level of the theme. No
writer ever described such a deluge of woes as swept over the unfortunates
confined in Rebel prisons in the last year-and-a-half of the Confederacy's
life. No man was ever called upon to describe the spectacle and the process
of seventy thousand young, strong, able-bodied men, starving and rotting to
death. Such a gigantic tragedy as this stuns the mind and benumbs the
imagination.
I no more felt myself competent to the task than to accomplish one of
Michael Angelo's grand creations in sculpture or painting.
Study of the subject since confirms me in this view, and my only claim for
this book is that it is a contribution—a record of individual observation and
experience—which will add something to the material which the historian of
the future will find available for his work.
The work was begun at the suggestion of Mr. D. R. Locke, (Petroleum V.
Nasby), the eminent political satirist. At first it was only intended to write a
few short serial sketches of prison life for the columns of the TOLEDO
BLADE. The exceeding favor with which the first of the series was received

induced a great widening of their scope, until finally they took the range they
now have.
I know that what is contained herein will be bitterly denied. I am prepared
for this. In my boyhood I witnessed the savagery of the Slavery agitation—
in my youth I felt the fierceness of the hatred directed against all those who
stood by the Nation. I know that hell hath no fury like the vindictiveness of
those who are hurt by the truth being told of them. I apprehend being
assailed by a sirocco of contradiction and calumny. But I solemnly affirm in
advance the entire and absolute truth of every material fact, statement and
description. I assert that, so far from there being any exaggeration in any
particular, that in no instance has the half of the truth been told, nor could it
be, save by an inspired pen. I am ready to demonstrate this by any test that
the deniers of this may require, and I am fortified in my position by
unsolicited letters from over 3,000 surviving prisoners, warmly indorsing the
account as thoroughly accurate in every respect.
It has been charged that hatred of the South is the animus of this work.
Nothing can be farther from the truth. No one has a deeper love for every
part of our common country than I, and no one to-day will make more
efforts and sacrifices to bring the South to the same plane of social and
material development with the rest of the Nation than I will. If I could see
that the sufferings at Andersonville and elsewhere contributed in any
considerable degree to that end, and I should not regret that they had been.
Blood and tears mark every step in the progress of the race, and human
misery seems unavoidable in securing human advancement. But I am
naturally embittered by the fruitlessness, as well as the uselessness of the
misery of Andersonville. There was never the least military or other reason
for inflicting all that wretchedness upon men, and, as far as mortal eye can
discern, no earthly good resulted from the martyrdom of those tens of
thousands. I wish I could see some hope that their wantonly shed blood has
sown seeds that will one day blossom, and bear a rich fruitage of benefit to
mankind, but it saddens me beyond expression that I can not.
The years 1864-5 were a season of desperate battles, but in that time many
more Union soldiers were slain behind the Rebel armies, by starvation and
exposure, than were killed in front of them by cannon and rifle. The country
has heard much of the heroism and sacrifices of those loyal youths who fell
on the field of battle; but it has heard little of the still greater number who
died in prison pen. It knows full well how grandly her sons met death in

front of the serried ranks of treason, and but little of the sublime firmness
with which they endured unto the death, all that the ingenious cruelty of their
foes could inflict upon them while in captivity.
It is to help supply this deficiency that this book is written. It is a mite
contributed to the better remembrance by their countrymen of those who in
this way endured and died that the Nation might live. It is an offering of
testimony to future generations of the measureless cost of the expiation of a
national sin, and of the preservation of our national unity.
This is all. I know I speak for all those still living comrades who went
with me through the scenes that I have attempted to describe, when I say that
we have no revenges to satisfy, no hatreds to appease. We do not ask that
anyone shall be punished. We only desire that the Nation shall recognize and
remember the grand fidelity of our dead comrades, and take abundant care
that they shall not have died in vain.
For the great mass of Southern people we have only the kindliest feeling.
We but hate a vicious social system, the lingering shadow of a darker age, to
which they yield, and which, by elevating bad men to power, has proved
their own and their country's bane.
The following story does not claim to be in any sense a history of
Southern prisons. It is simply a record of the experience of one individual—
one boy—who staid all the time with his comrades inside the prison, and had
no better opportunities for gaining information than any other of his 60,000
companions.
The majority of the illustrations in this work are from the skilled pencil of
Captain O. J. Hopkins, of Toledo, who served through the war in the ranks of
the Forty-second Ohio. His army experience has been of peculiar value to
the work, as it has enabled him to furnish a series of illustrations whose life-
like fidelity of action, pose and detail are admirable.
Some thirty of the pictures, including the frontispiece, and the allegorical
illustrations of War and Peace, are from the atelier of Mr. O. Reich,
Cincinnati, O.
A word as to the spelling: Having always been an ardent believer in the
reformation of our present preposterous system—or rather, no system—of
orthography, I am anxious to do whatever lies in my power to promote it. In
the following pages the spelling is simplified to the last degree allowed by
Webster. I hope that the time is near when even that advanced spelling

reformer will be left far in the rear by the progress of a people thoroughly
weary of longer slavery to the orthographical absurdities handed down to us
from a remote and grossly unlearned ancestry.
Toledo, O., Dec. 10, 1879.
JOHN McELROY.

We wait beneath the furnace blast
The pangs of transformation;
Not painlessly doth God recast
And mold anew the nation.

Hot burns the fire
Where wrongs expire;
Nor spares the hand
That from the land
Uproots the ancient evil.
The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared
Its bloody rain is dropping;
The poison plant the fathers spared
All else is overtopping.
East, West, South, North,
It curses the earth;
All justice dies,
And fraud and lies
Live only in its shadow.
Then let the selfish lip be dumb
And hushed the breath of sighing;
Before the joy of peace must come
The pains of purifying.
God give us grace
Each in his place
To bear his lot,
And, murmuring not,
Endure and wait and labor!
WHITTIER

ANDERSONVILLE
A STORY OF REBEL MILITARY
PRISONS

CHAPTER I.
A STRANGE LAND—THE HEART OF THE APPALACHIANS—THE
GATEWAY OF AN EMPIRE —A SEQUESTERED VALE, AND A
PRIMITIVE, ARCADIAN, NON-PROGRESSIVE PEOPLE.
A low, square, plainly-hewn stone, set near the summit of the eastern
approach to the formidable natural fortress of Cumberland Gap, indicates the
boundaries of—the three great States of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
It is such a place as, remembering the old Greek and Roman myths and
superstitions, one would recognize as fitting to mark the confines of the
territories of great masses of strong, aggressive, and frequently conflicting
peoples. There the god Terminus should have had one of his chief temples,
where his shrine would be shadowed by barriers rising above the clouds, and
his sacred solitude guarded from the rude invasion of armed hosts by range
on range of battlemented rocks, crowning almost inaccessible mountains,
interposed across every approach from the usual haunts of men.
Roundabout the land is full of strangeness and mystery. The throes of
some great convulsion of Nature are written on the face of the four thousand
square miles of territory, of which Cumberland Gap is the central point.
Miles of granite mountains are thrust up like giant walls, hundreds of feet
high, and as smooth and regular as the side of a monument.
Huge, fantastically-shaped rocks abound everywhere—sometimes rising
into pinnacles on lofty summits—sometimes hanging over the verge of
beetling cliffs, as if placed there in waiting for a time when they could be
hurled down upon the path of an advancing army, and sweep it away.
Large streams of water burst out in the most unexpected planes, frequently
far up mountain sides, and fall in silver veils upon stones beaten round by
the ceaseless dash for ages. Caves, rich in quaintly formed stalactites and
stalagmites, and their recesses filled with metallic salts of the most powerful
and diverse natures; break the mountain sides at frequent intervals.
Everywhere one is met by surprises and anomalies. Even the rank vegetation
is eccentric, and as prone to develop into bizarre forms as are the rocks and
mountains.

The dreaded panther ranges through the primeval, rarely trodden forests;
every crevice in the rocks has for tenants rattlesnakes or stealthy
copperheads, while long, wonderfully swift “blue racers” haunt the edges of
the woods, and linger around the fields to chill his blood who catches a
glimpse of their upreared heads, with their great, balefully bright eyes, and
“white-collar” encircled throats.
The human events happening here have been in harmony with the natural
ones. It has always been a land of conflict. In 1540—339 years ago —De
Soto, in that energetic but fruitless search for gold which occupied his later
years, penetrated to this region, and found it the fastness of the Xualans, a
bold, aggressive race, continually warring with its neighbors. When next the
white man reached the country—a century and a half later—he found the
Xualans had been swept away by the conquering Cherokees, and he
witnessed there the most sanguinary contest between Indians of which our
annals give any account—a pitched battle two days in duration, between the
invading Shawnees, who lorded it over what is now Kentucky, Ohio and
Indiana—and the Cherokees, who dominated the country the southeast of the
Cumberland range. Again the Cherokees were victorious, and the
discomfited Shawnees retired north of the Gap.
Then the white man delivered battle for the possession the land, and
bought it with the lives of many gallant adventurers. Half a century later
Boone and his hardy companion followed, and forced their way into
Kentucky.
Another half century saw the Gap the favorite haunt of the greatest of
American bandits—the noted John A. Murrell—and his gang. They infested
the country for years, now waylaying the trader or drover threading his
toilsome way over the lone mountains, now descending upon some little
town, to plunder its stores and houses.
At length Murrell and his band were driven out, and sought a new field of
operations on the Lower Mississippi. They left germs behind them, however,
that developed into horse thieve counterfeiters, and later into guerrillas and
bushwhackers.
When the Rebellion broke out the region at once became the theater of
military operations. Twice Cumberland Gap was seized by the Rebels, and
twice was it wrested away from them. In 1861 it was the point whence
Zollicoffer launched out with his legions to “liberate Kentucky,” and it was

whither they fled, beaten and shattered, after the disasters of Wild Cat and
Mill Springs. In 1862 Kirby Smith led his army through the Gap on his way
to overrun Kentucky and invade the North. Three months later his beaten
forces sought refuge from their pursuers behind its impregnable
fortifications. Another year saw Burnside burst through the Gap with a
conquering force and redeem loyal East Tennessee from its Rebel
oppressors.
Had the South ever been able to separate from the North the boundary
would have been established along this line.
Between the main ridge upon which Cumberland Gap is situated, and the
next range on the southeast which runs parallel with it, is a narrow, long,
very fruitful valley, walled in on either side for a hundred miles by tall
mountains as a City street is by high buildings. It is called Powell's Valley. In
it dwell a simple, primitive people, shut out from the world almost as much
as if they lived in New Zealand, and with the speech, manners and ideas that
their fathers brought into the Valley when they settled it a century ago. There
has been but little change since then. The young men who have annually
driven cattle to the distant markets in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia,
have brought back occasional stray bits of finery for the “women folks,” and
the latest improved fire-arms for themselves, but this is about all the
innovations the progress of the world has been allowed to make. Wheeled
vehicles are almost unknown; men and women travel on horseback as they
did a century ago, the clothing is the product of the farm and the busy looms
of the women, and life is as rural and Arcadian as any ever described in a
pastoral. The people are rich in cattle, hogs, horses, sheep and the products
of the field. The fat soil brings forth the substantials of life in opulent plenty.
Having this there seems to be little care for more. Ambition nor avarice, nor
yet craving after luxury, disturb their contented souls or drag them away
from the non-progressive round of simple life bequeathed them by their
fathers.

CHAPTER II.
SCARCITY OF FOOD FOR THE ARMY—RAID FOR FORAGE—
ENCOUNTER WIT THE REBELS —SHARP CAVALRY FIGHT—
DEFEAT OF THE “JOHNNIES”—POWELL'S VALLEY OPENED UP.
As the Autumn of 1863 advanced towards Winter the difficulty of
supplying the forces concentrated around Cumberland Gap—as well as the
rest of Burnside's army in East Tennessee—became greater and greater. The
base of supplies was at Camp Nelson, near Lexington, Ky., one hundred and
eighty miles from the Gap, and all that the Army used had to be hauled that
distance by mule teams over roads that, in their best state were wretched,
and which the copious rains and heavy traffic had rendered well-nigh
impassable. All the country to our possession had been drained of its stock of
whatever would contribute to the support of man or beast. That portion of
Powell's Valley extending from the Gap into Virginia was still in the hands
of the Rebels; its stock of products was as yet almost exempt from military
contributions. Consequently a raid was projected to reduce the Valley to our
possession, and secure its much needed stores. It was guarded by the Sixty-
fourth Virginia, a mounted regiment, made up of the young men of the
locality, who had then been in the service about two years.
Maj. C. H. Beer's third Battalion, Sixteenth Illinois Cavalry—four
companies, each about 75 strong—was sent on the errand of driving out the
Rebels and opening up the Valley for our foraging teams. The writer was
invited to attend the excursion. As he held the honorable, but not very
lucrative position of “high, private” in Company L, of the Battalion, and the
invitation came from his Captain, he did not feel at liberty to decline. He
went, as private soldiers have been in the habit of doing ever since the days
of the old Centurion, who said with the characteristic boastfulness of one of
the lower grades of commissioned officers when he happens to be a snob:

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

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

Three hundred of us responded to the signal of “boots and saddles,”
buckled on three hundred more or less trusty sabers and revolvers, saddled
three hundred more or less gallant steeds, came into line “as companies”

with the automatic listlessness of the old soldiers, “counted off by fours” in
that queer gamut-running style that makes a company of men “counting
off”—each shouting a number in a different voice from his neighbor—sound
like running the scales on some great organ badly out of tune; something like
this:
One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four.
Then, as the bugle sounded “Right forward! fours right!” we moved off at
a walk through the melancholy mist that soaked through the very fiber of
man and horse, and reduced the minds of both to a condition of limp
indifference as to things past, present and future.
Whither we were going we knew not, nor cared. Such matters had long
since ceased to excite any interest. A cavalryman soon recognizes as the least
astonishing thing in his existence the signal to “Fall in!” and start
somewhere. He feels that he is the “Poor Joe” of the Army—under perpetual
orders to “move on.”
Down we wound over the road that zig-tagged through the forts, batteries
and rifle-pits covering the eastern ascent to the Flap-past the wonderful
Murrell Spring—so-called because the robber chief had killed, as he stooped
to drink of its crystal waters, a rich drover, whom he was pretending to pilot
through the mountains—down to where the “Virginia road” turned off
sharply to the left and entered Powell's Valley. The mist had become a chill,
dreary rain, through, which we plodded silently, until night closed in around
us some ten miles from the Gap. As we halted to go into camp, an indignant
Virginian resented the invasion of the sacred soil by firing at one of the
guards moving out to his place. The guard looked at the fellow
contemptuously, as if he hated to waste powder on a man who had no better
sense than to stay out in such a rain, when he could go in-doors, and the
bushwhacker escaped, without even a return shot.
Fires were built, coffee made, horses rubbed, and we laid down with feet
to the fire to get what sleep we could.
Before morning we were awakened by the bitter cold. It had cleared off
during the night and turned so cold that everything was frozen stiff. This was
better than the rain, at all events. A good fire and a hot cup of coffee would
make the cold quite endurable.
At daylight the bugle sounded “Right forward! fours right!” again, and the
300 of us resumed our onward plod over the rocky, cedar-crowned hills.

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

perceived. Barring the trifling divergence of yews as to who was to drive and
who be driven, there was perfect accord in our ideas.
Our numbers were about equal. If I were to say that they considerably
outnumbered us, I would be following the universal precedent. No soldier-
high or low-ever admitted engaging an equal or inferior force of the enemy.
About 9 o'clock in the morning—Sunday—they rode through the streets
of Jonesville on their way to give us battle. It was here that most of the
members of the Regiment lived. Every man, woman and child in the town
was related in some way to nearly every one of the soldiers.
The women turned out to wave their fathers, husbands, brothers and
lovers on to victory. The old men gathered to give parting counsel and
encouragement to their sons and kindred. The Sixty-fourth rode away to
what hope told them would be a glorious victory.
At noon we are still straggling along without much attempt at soldierly
order, over the rough, frozen hill-sides. It is yet bitterly cold, and men and
horses draw themselves together, as if to expose as little surface as possible
to the unkind elements. Not a word had been spoken by any one for hours.
The head of the column has just reached the top of the hill, and the rest of
us are strung along for a quarter of a mile or so back.
Suddenly a few shots ring out upon the frosty air from the carbines of the
advance. The general apathy is instantly, replaced by keen attention, and the
boys instinctively range themselves into fours—the cavalry unit of action.
The Major, who is riding about the middle of the first Company—I—dashes
to the front. A glance seems to satisfy him, for he turns in his saddle and his
voice rings out:
“Company I! FOURS LEFT INTO LINE!—MARCH!!”
The Company swings around on the hill-top like a great, jointed toy
snake. As the fours come into line on a trot, we see every man draw his saber
and revolver. The Company raises a mighty cheer and dashes forward.
Company K presses forward to the ground Company I has just left, the
fours sweep around into line, the sabers and revolvers come out
spontaneously, the men cheer and the Company flings itself forward.
All this time we of Company L can see nothing except what the
companies ahead of us are doing. We are wrought up to the highest pitch. As
Company K clears its ground, we press forward eagerly. Now we go into

line just as we raise the hill, and as my four comes around, I catch a hurried
glimpse through a rift in the smoke of a line of butternut and gray clad men a
hundred yards or so away. Their guns are at their faces, and I see the smoke
and fire spurt from the muzzles. At the same instant our sabers and revolvers
are drawn. We shout in a frenzy of excitement, and the horses spring forward
as if shot from a bow.
I see nothing more until I reach the place where the Rebel line stood. Then
I find it is gone. Looking beyond toward the bottom of the hill, I see the
woods filled with Rebels, flying in disorder and our men yelling in pursuit.
This is the portion of the line which Companies I and K struck. Here and
there are men in butternut clothing, prone on the frozen ground, wounded
and dying. I have just time to notice closely one middle-aged man lying
almost under my horse's feet. He has received a carbine bullet through his
head and his blood colors a great space around him.

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

At this instant comes an order for the Company to break up into fours and
press on through the forest in pursuit. My four trots off to the road at the
right. A Rebel bugler, who hag been cut off, leaps his horse into the road in
front of us. We all fire at him on the impulse of the moment. He falls from
his horse with a bullet through his back. Company M, which has remained in
column as a reserve, is now thundering up close behind at a gallop. Its
seventy-five powerful horses are spurning the solid earth with steel-clad
hoofs. The man will be ground into a shapeless mass if left where he has
fallen. We spring from our horses and drag him into a fence corner; then
remount and join in the pursuit.
This happened on the summit of Chestnut Ridge, fifteen miles from
Jonesville.
Late in the afternoon the anxious watchers at Jonesville saw a single
fugitive urging his well-nigh spent horse down the slope of the hill toward
town. In an agony of anxiety they hurried forward to meet him and learn his
news.
The first messenger who rushed into Job's presence to announce the
beginning of the series of misfortunes which were to afflict the upright man
of Uz is a type of all the cowards who, before or since then, have been the
first to speed away from the field of battle to spread the news of disaster. He
said:

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

So this fleeing Virginian shouted to his expectant friends:
“The boys are all cut to pieces; I'm the only one that got away.”
The terrible extent of his words was belied a little later, by the appearance
on the distant summit of the hill of a considerable mob of fugitives, flying at
the utmost speed of their nearly exhausted horses. As they came on down the
hill as almost equally disorganized crowd of pursuers appeared on the
summit, yelling in voices hoarse with continued shouting, and pouring an
incessant fire of carbine and revolver bullets upon the hapless men of the
Sixty-fourth Virginia.

The two masses of men swept on through the town. Beyond it, the road
branched in several directions, the pursued scattered on each of these, and
the worn-out pursuers gave up the chase.
Returning to Jonesville, we took an account of stock, and found that we
were “ahead” one hundred and fifteen prisoners, nearly that many horses,
and a considerable quantity of small arms. How many of the enemy had been
killed and wounded could not be told, as they were scattered over the whole
fifteen miles between where the fight occurred and the pursuit ended. Our
loss was trifling.
Comparing notes around the camp-fires in the evening, we found that our
success had been owing to the Major's instinct, his grasp of the situation, and
the soldierly way in which he took advantage of it. When he reached the
summit of the hill he found the Rebel line nearly formed and ready for
action. A moment's hesitation might have been fatal to us. At his command
Company I went into line with the thought-like celerity of trained cavalry,
and instantly dashed through the right of the Rebel line. Company K
followed and plunged through the Rebel center, and when we of Company L
arrived on the ground, and charged the left, the last vestige of resistance was
swept away. The whole affair did not probably occupy more than fifteen
minutes.
This was the way Powell's Valley was opened to our foragers.

CHAPTER III.
LIVING OFF THE ENEMY—REVELING IN THE FATNESS OF THE
COUNTRY—SOLDIERLY PURVEYING AND CAMP COOKERY—
SUSCEPTIBLE TEAMSTERS AND THEIR TENDENCY TO
FLIGHTINESS—MAKING SOLDIER'S BED.
For weeks we rode up and down—hither and thither—along the length of
the narrow, granite-walled Valley; between mountains so lofty that the sun
labored slowly over them in the morning, occupying half the forenoon in
getting to where his rays would reach the stream that ran through the Valley's
center. Perpetual shadow reigned on the northern and western faces of these
towering Nights—not enough warmth and sunshine reaching them in the
cold months to check the growth of the ever-lengthening icicles hanging
from the jutting cliffs, or melt the arabesque frost-forms with which the
many dashing cascades decorated the adjacent rocks and shrubbery.
Occasionally we would see where some little stream ran down over the face
of the bare, black rocks for many hundred feet, and then its course would be
a long band of sheeny white, like a great rich, spotless scarf of satin,
festooning the war-grimed walls of some old castle.
Our duty now was to break up any nuclei of concentration that the Rebels
might attempt to form, and to guard our foragers—that is, the teamsters and
employee of the Quartermaster's Department—who were loading grain into
wagons and hauling it away.
This last was an arduous task. There is no man in the world that needs as
much protection as an Army teamster. He is worse in this respect than a New
England manufacturer, or an old maid on her travels. He is given to sudden
fears and causeless panics. Very innocent cedars have a fashion of assuming
in his eyes the appearance of desperate Rebels armed with murderous guns,
and there is no telling what moment a rock may take such a form as to freeze
his young blood, and make each particular hair stand on end like quills upon
the fretful porcupine. One has to be particular about snapping caps in his
neighborhood, and give to him careful warning before discharging a carbine
to clean it. His first impulse, when anything occurs to jar upon his delicate
nerves, is to cut his wheel-mule loose and retire with the precipitation of a

man having an appointment to keep and being behind time. There is no man
who can get as much speed out of a mule as a teamster falling back from the
neighborhood of heavy firing.

This nervous tremor was not peculiar to the engineers of our
transportation department. It was noticeable in the gentry who carted the

scanty provisions of the Rebels. One of Wheeler's cavalrymen told me that
the brigade to which he belonged was one evening ordered to move at
daybreak. The night was rainy, and it was thought best to discharge the guns
and reload before starting. Unfortunately, it was neglected to inform the
teamsters of this, and at the first discharge they varnished from the scene
with such energy that it was over a week before the brigade succeeded in
getting them back again.
Why association with the mule should thus demoralize a man, has always
been a puzzle to me, for while the mule, as Col. Ingersoll has remarked, is an
animal without pride of ancestry or hope of posterity, he is still not a coward
by any means. It is beyond dispute that a full-grown and active lioness once
attacked a mule in the grounds of the Cincinnati Zoological Garden, and was
ignominiously beaten, receiving injuries from which she died shortly
afterward.
The apparition of a badly-scared teamster urging one of his wheel mules
at break-neck speed over the rough ground, yelling for protection against
“them Johnnies,” who had appeared on some hilltop in sight of where he was
gathering corn, was an almost hourly occurrence. Of course the squad
dispatched to his assistance found nobody.
Still, there were plenty of Rebels in the country, and they hung around our
front, exchanging shots with us at long taw, and occasionally treating us to a
volley at close range, from some favorable point. But we had the decided
advantage of them at this game. Our Sharpe's carbines were much superior
in every way to their Enfields. They would shoot much farther, and a great
deal more rapidly, so that the Virginians were not long in discovering that
they were losing more than they gained in this useless warfare.
Once they played a sharp practical joke upon us. Copper River is a deep,
exceedingly rapid mountain stream, with a very slippery rocky bottom. The
Rebels blockaded a ford in such a way that it was almost impossible for a
horse to keep his feet. Then they tolled us off in pursuit of a small party to
this ford. When we came to it there was a light line of skirmishers on the
opposite bank, who popped away at us industriously. Our boys formed in
line, gave the customary, cheer, and dashed in to carry the ford at a charge.
As they did so at least one-half of the horses went down as if they were shot,
and rolled over their riders in the swift running, ice-cold waters. The Rebels
yelled a triumphant laugh, as they galloped away, and the laugh was re-
echoed by our fellows, who were as quick to see the joke as the other side.

We tried to get even with them by a sharp chase, but we gave it up after a
few miles, without having taken any prisoners.
But, after all, there was much to make our sojourn in the Valley endurable.
Though we did not wear fine linen, we fared sumptuously—for soldiers—
every day. The cavalryman is always charged by the infantry and artillery
with having a finer and surer scent for the good things in the country than
any other man in the service. He is believed to have an instinct that will
unfailingly lead him, in the dankest night, to the roosting place of the most
desirable poultry, and after he has camped in a neighborhood for awhile it
would require a close chemical analysis to find a trace of ham.
We did our best to sustain the reputation of our arm of the service. We
found the most delicious hams packed away in the ash-houses. They were
small, and had that; exquisite nutty flavor, peculiar to mast-fed bacon. Then
there was an abundance of the delightful little apple known as “romanites.”
There were turnips, pumpkins, cabbages, potatoes, and the usual products of
the field in plenty, even profusion. The corn in the fields furnished an ample
supply of breadstuff. We carried it to and ground it in the quaintest, rudest
little mills that can be imagined outside of the primitive affairs by which the
women of Arabia coarsely powder the grain for the family meal. Sometimes
the mill would consist only of four stout posts thrust into the ground at the
edge of some stream. A line of boulders reaching diagonally across the
stream answered for a dam, by diverting a portion of the volume of water to
a channel at the side, where it moved a clumsily constructed wheel, that
turned two small stones, not larger than good-sized grindstones. Over this
would be a shed made by resting poles in forked posts stuck into the ground,
and covering these with clapboards held in place by large flat stones. They
resembled the mills of the gods—in grinding slowly. It used to seem that a
healthy man could eat the meal faster than they ground it.
But what savory meals we used to concoct around the campfires, out of
the rich materials collected during the day's ride! Such stews, such soups,
such broils, such wonderful commixtures of things diverse in nature and
antagonistic in properties such daring culinary experiments in combining
materials never before attempted to be combined. The French say of
untasteful arrangement of hues in dress “that the colors swear at each other.”
I have often thought the same thing of the heterogeneities that go to make up
a soldier's pot-a feu.

But for all that they never failed to taste deliciously after a long day's ride.
They were washed down by a tincupful of coffee strong enough to tan
leather, then came a brier-wood pipeful of fragrant kinnikinnic, and a seat by
the ruddy, sparkling fire of aromatic cedar logs, that diffused at once
warmth, and spicy, pleasing incense. A chat over the events of the day, and
the prospect of the morrow, the wonderful merits of each man's horse, and
the disgusting irregularities of the mails from home, lasted until the silver-
voiced bugle rang out the sweet, mournful tattoo of the Regulations, to the
flowing cadences of which the boys had arranged the absurdly incongruous
words:
“S-a-y—D-e-u-t-c-h-e-r-will-you fight-mit Sigel!
Zwei-glass of lager-bier, ja! ja! JA!”
Words were fitted to all the calls, which generally bore some relativeness
to the signal, but these were as, destitute of congruity as of sense.
Tattoo always produces an impression of extreme loneliness. As its weird,
half-availing notes ring out and are answered back from the distant rocks
shrouded in night, and perhaps concealing the lurking foe, the soldier
remembers that he is far away from home and friends—deep in the enemy's
country, encompassed on every hand by those in deadly hostility to him, who
are perhaps even then maturing the preparations for his destruction.
As the tattoo sounds, the boys arise from around the fire, visit the horse
line, see that their horses are securely tied, rub off from the fetlocks and legs
such specks of mud as may have escaped the cleaning in the early evening,
and if possible, smuggle their faithful four-footed friends a few ears of corn,
or another bunch of hay.
If not too tired, and everything else is favorable, the cavalryman has
prepared himself a comfortable couch for the night. He always sleeps with a
chum. The two have gathered enough small tufts of pine or cedar to make a
comfortable, springy, mattress-like foundation. On this is laid the poncho or
rubber blanket. Next comes one of their overcoats, and upon this they lie,
covering themselves with the two blankets and the other overcoat, their feet
towards the fire, their boots at the foot, and their belts, with revolver, saber
and carbine, at the sides of the bed. It is surprising what an amount of
comfort a man can get out of such a couch, and how, at an alarm, he springs
from it, almost instantly dressed and armed.

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

CHAPTER IV.
A BITTER COLD MORNING AND A WARM AWAKENING—
TROUBLE ALL ALONG THE LINE—FIERCE CONFLICTS, ASSAULTS
AND DEFENSE—PROLONGED AND DESPERATE STRUGGLE
ENDING WITH A SURRENDER.
The night had been the most intensely cold that the country had known for
many years. Peach and other tender trees had been killed by the frosty rigor,
and sentinels had been frozen to death in our neighborhood. The deep snow
on which we made our beds, the icy covering of the streams near us, the
limbs of the trees above us, had been cracking with loud noises all night,
from the bitter cold.
We were camped around Jonesville, each of the four companies lying on
one of the roads leading from the town. Company L lay about a mile from
the Court House. On a knoll at the end of the village toward us, and at a
point where two roads separated,—one of which led to us,—stood a three-
inch Rodman rifle, belonging to the Twenty-second Ohio Battery. It and its
squad of eighteen men, under command of Lieutenant Alger and Sergeant
Davis, had been sent up to us a few days before from the Gap.
The comfortless gray dawn was crawling sluggishly over the mountain-
tops, as if numb as the animal and vegetable life which had been shrinking
all the long hours under the fierce chill.
The Major's bugler had saluted the morn with the lively, ringing tarr-r-r-a-
ta-ara of the Regulation reveille, and the company buglers, as fast as they
could thaw out their mouth-pieces, were answering him.
I lay on my bed, dreading to get up, and yet not anxious to lie still. It was
a question which would be the more uncomfortable. I turned over, to see if
there was not another position in which it would be warmer, and began
wishing for the thousandth time that the efforts for the amelioration of the
horrors of warfare would progress to such a point as to put a stop to all
Winter soldiering, so that a fellow could go home as soon as cold weather
began, sit around a comfortable stove in a country store; and tell camp
stories until the Spring was far enough advanced to let him go back to the
front wearing a straw hat and a linen duster.

Then I began wondering how much longer I would dare lie there, before
the Orderly Sergeant would draw me out by the heels, and accompany the
operation with numerous unkind and sulphurous remarks.
This cogitation, was abruptly terminated by hearing an excited shout from
the Captain:
“Turn Out!—COMPANY L!! TURNOUT ! ! !”
Almost at the same instant rose that shrill, piercing Rebel yell, which one
who has once heard it rarely forgets, and this was followed by a crashing
volley from apparently a regiment of rifles.
I arose-promptly.
There was evidently something of more interest on hand than the weather.
Cap, overcoat, boots and revolver belt went on, and eyes opened at about
the same instant.
As I snatched up my carbine, I looked out in front, and the whole woods
appeared to be full of Rebels, rushing toward us, all yelling and some firing.
My Captain and First Lieutenant had taken up position on the right front of
the tents, and part of the boys were running up to form a line alongside them.
The Second Lieutenant had stationed himself on a knoll on the left front, and
about a third of the company was rallying around him.
My chum was a silent, sententious sort of a chap, and as we ran forward to
the Captain's line, he remarked earnestly:
“Well: this beats hell!”
I thought he had a clear idea of the situation.

All this occupied an inappreciably short space of time. The Rebels had not
stopped to reload, but were rushing impetuously toward us. We gave them a
hot, rolling volley from our carbines. Many fell, more stopped to load and
reply, but the mass surged straight forward at us. Then our fire grew so
deadly that they showed a disposition to cover themselves behind the rocks
and trees. Again they were urged forward; and a body of them headed by
their Colonel, mounted on a white horse, pushed forward through the gap

between us and the Second Lieutenant. The Rebel Colonel dashed up to the
Second Lieutenant, and ordered him to surrender. The latter-a gallant old
graybeard—cursed the Rebel bitterly and snapped his now empty revolver in
his face. The Colonel fired and killed him, whereupon his squad, with two of
its Sergeants killed and half its numbers on the ground, surrendered.
The Rebels in our front and flank pressed us with equal closeness. It
seemed as if it was absolutely impossible to check their rush for an instant,
and as we saw the fate of our companions the Captain gave the word for
every man to look out for himself. We ran back a little distance, sprang over
the fence into the fields, and rushed toward Town, the Rebels encouraging us
to make good time by a sharp fire into our backs from the fence.
While we were vainly attempting to stem the onset of the column dashed
against us, better success was secured elsewhere. Another column swept
down the other road, upon which there was only an outlying picket. This had
to come back on the run before the overwhelming numbers, and the Rebels
galloped straight for the three-inch Rodman. Company M was the first to get
saddled and mounted, and now came up at a steady, swinging gallop, in two
platoons, saber and revolver in hand, and led by two Sergeants-Key and
McWright,—printer boys from Bloomington, Illinois. They divined the
object of the Rebel dash, and strained every nerve to reach the gun first. The
Rebels were too near, and got the gun and turned it. Before they could fire it,
Company M struck them headlong, but they took the terrible impact without
flinching, and for a few minutes there was fierce hand-to-hand work, with
sword and pistol. The Rebel leader sank under a half-dozen simultaneous
wounds, and fell dead almost under the gun. Men dropped from their horses
each instant, and the riderless steeds fled away. The scale of victory was
turned by the Major dashing against the Rebel left flank at the head of
Company I, and a portion of the artillery squad. The Rebels gave ground
slowly, and were packed into a dense mass in the lane up which they had
charged. After they had been crowded back, say fifty yards, word was passed
through our men to open to the right and left on the sides of the road. The
artillerymen had turned the gun and loaded it with a solid shot. Instantly a
wide lane opened through our ranks; the man with the lanyard drew the fatal
cord, fire burst from the primer and the muzzle, the long gun sprang up and
recoiled, and there seemed to be a demoniac yell in its ear-splitting crash, as
the heavy ball left the mouth, and tore its bloody way through the bodies of
the struggling mass of men and horses.

This ended it. The Rebels gave way in disorder, and our men fell back to
give the gun an opportunity to throw shell and canister.
The Rebels now saw that we were not to be run over like a field of
cornstalks, and they fell back to devise further tactics, giving us a breathing
spell to get ourselves in shape for defense.
The dullest could see that we were in a desperate situation. Critical
positions were no new experience to us, as they never are to a cavalry
command after a few months in the field, but, though the pitcher goes often
to the well, it is broken at last, and our time was evidently at hand. The
narrow throat of the Valley, through which lay the road back to the Gap, was
held by a force of Rebels evidently much superior to our own, and strongly
posted. The road was a slender, tortuous one, winding through rocks and
gorges. Nowhere was there room enough to move with even a platoon front
against the enemy, and this precluded all chances of cutting out. The best we
could do was a slow, difficult movement, in column of fours, and this would
have been suicide. On the other side of the Town the Rebels were massed
stronger, while to the right and left rose the steep mountain sides. We were
caught-trapped as surely as a rat ever was in a wire trap.
As we learned afterwards, a whole division of cavalry, under command of
the noted Rebel, Major General Sam Jones, had been sent to effect our
capture, to offset in a measure Longstreet's repulse at Knoxville. A gross
overestimate of our numbers had caused the sending of so large a force on
this errand, and the rough treatment we gave the two columns that attacked
us first confirmed the Rebel General's ideas of our strength, and led him to
adopt cautious tactics, instead of crushing us out speedily, by a determined
advance of all parts of his encircling lines.
The lull in the fight did not last long. A portion of the Rebel line on the
east rushed forward to gain a more commanding position.
We concentrated in that direction and drove it back, the Rodman assisting
with a couple of well-aimed shells.—This was followed by a similar but
more successful attempt by another part of the Rebel line, and so it went on
all day—the Rebels rushing up first on this side, and then on that, and we,
hastily collecting at the exposed points, seeking to drive them back. We were
frequently successful; we were on the inside, and had the advantage of the
short interior lines, so that our few men and our breech-loaders told to a
good purpose.

There were frequent crises in the struggle, that at some times gave
encouragement, but never hope. Once a determined onset was made from the
East, and was met by the equally determined resistance of nearly our whole
force. Our fire was so galling that a large number of our foes crowded into a
house on a knoll, and making loopholes in its walls, began replying to us
pretty sharply. We sent word to our faithful artillerists, who trained the gun
upon the house. The first shell screamed over the roof, and burst harmlessly
beyond. We suspended fire to watch the next. It crashed through the side; for
an instant all was deathly still; we thought it had gone on through. Then
came a roar and a crash; the clapboards flew off the roof, and smoke poured
out; panic-stricken Rebels rushed from the doors and sprang from the
windows-like bees from a disturbed hive; the shell had burst among the
confined mass of men inside! We afterwards heard that twenty-five were
killed there.
At another time a considerable force of rebels gained the cover of a fence
in easy range of our main force. Companies L and K were ordered to charge
forward on foot and dislodge them. Away we went, under a fire that seemed
to drop a man at every step. A hundred yards in front of the Rebels was a
little cover, and behind this our men lay down as if by one impulse. Then
came a close, desperate duel at short range. It was a question between
Northern pluck and Southern courage, as to which could stand the most
punishment. Lying as flat as possible on the crusted snow, only raising the
head or body enough to load and aim, the men on both sides, with their teeth
set, their glaring eyes fastened on the foe, their nerves as tense as tightly-
drawn steel wires, rained shot on each other as fast as excited hands could
crowd cartridges into the guns and discharge them.
Not a word was said.
The shallower enthusiasm that expresses itself in oaths and shouts had
given way to the deep, voiceless rage of men in a death grapple. The Rebel
line was a rolling torrent of flame, their bullets shrieked angrily as they flew
past, they struck the snow in front of us, and threw its cold flakes in faces
that were white with the fires of consuming hate; they buried themselves
with a dull thud in the quivering bodies of the enraged combatants.
Minutes passed; they seemed hours.
Would the villains, scoundrels, hell-hounds, sons of vipers never go?

At length a few Rebels sprang up and tried to fly. They were shot down
instantly.
Then the whole line rose and ran!
The relief was so great that we jumped to our feet and cheered wildly,
forgetting in our excitement to make use of our victory by shooting down
our flying enemies.
Nor was an element of fun lacking. A Second Lieutenant was ordered to
take a party of skirmishers to the top of a hill and engage those of the Rebels
stationed on another hill-top across a ravine. He had but lately joined us
from the Regular Army, where he was a Drill Sergeant. Naturally, he was
very methodical in his way, and scorned to do otherwise under fire than he
would upon the parade ground. He moved his little command to the hill-top,
in close order, and faced them to the front. The Johnnies received them with
a yell and a volley, whereat the boys winced a little, much to the Lieutenant's
disgust, who swore at them; then had them count off with great deliberation,
and deployed them as coolly as if them was not an enemy within a hundred
miles. After the line deployed, he “dressed” it, commanded “Front!” and
“Begin, firing!” his attention was called another way for an instant, and
when he looked back again, there was not a man of his nicely formed
skirmish line visible. The logs and stones had evidently been put there for
the use of skirmishers, the boys thought, and in an instant they availed
themselves of their shelter.
Never was there an angrier man than that Second Lieutenant; he
brandished his saber and swore; he seemed to feel that all his soldierly
reputation was gone, but the boys stuck to their shelter for all that, informing
him that when the Rebels would stand out in the open field and take their
fire, they would likewise.
Despite all our efforts, the Rebel line crawled up closer an closer to us; we
were driven back from knoll to knoll, and from one fence after another. We
had maintained the unequal struggle for eight hours; over one-fourth of our
number were stretched upon the snow, killed or badly wounded. Our
cartridges were nearly all gone; the cannon had fired its last shot long ago,
and having a blank cartridge left, had shot the rammer at a gathering party of
the enemy.
Just as the Winter sun was going down upon a day of gloom the bugle
called us all up on the hillside. Then the Rebels saw for the first time how

few there were, and began an almost simultaneous charge all along the line.
The Major raised piece of a shelter tent upon a pole. The line halted. An
officer rode out from it, followed by two privates.
Approaching the Major, he said, “Who is in command this force?”
The Major replied: “I am.”
“Then, Sir, I demand your sword.”
“What is your rank, Sir!”
“I am Adjutant of the Sixty-fourth Virginia.”
The punctillious soul of the old “Regular”—for such the Major was
swelled up instantly, and he answered:
“By —-, sir, I will never surrender to my inferior in rank!”

The Adjutant reined his horse back. His two followers leveled their pieces
at the Major and waited orders to fire. They were covered by a dozen
carbines in the hands of our men. The Adjutant ordered his men to “recover
arms,” and rode away with them. He presently returned with a Colonel, and
to him the Major handed his saber.
As the men realized what was being done, the first thought of many of
them was to snatch out the cylinder's of their revolvers, and the slides of
their carbines, and throw them away, so as to make the arms useless.
We were overcome with rage and humiliation at being compelled to yield
to an enemy whom we had hated so bitterly. As we stood there on the bleak
mountain-side, the biting wind soughing through the leafless branches, the
shadows of a gloomy winter night closing around us, the groans and shrieks
of our wounded mingling with the triumphant yells of the Rebels plundering
our tents, it seemed as if Fate could press to man's lips no cup with bitterer
dregs in it than this.

CHAPTER V.
THE REACTION—DEPRESSION—BITTING COLD—SHARP
HUNGER AND SAD REFLEXION. “Of being taken by the Insolent foe.”—
Othello.
The night that followed was inexpressibly dreary: The high-wrought
nervous tension, which had been protracted through the long hours that the
fight lasted, was succeeded by a proportionate mental depression, such as
naturally follows any strain upon the mind. This was intensified in our cases
by the sharp sting of defeat, the humiliation of having to yield ourselves, our
horses and our arms into the possession of the enemy, the uncertainty as to
the future, and the sorrow we felt at the loss of so many of our comrades.
Company L had suffered very severely, but our chief regret was for the
gallant Osgood, our Second Lieutenant. He, above all others, was our trusted
leader. The Captain and First Lieutenant were brave men, and good enough
soldiers, but Osgood was the one “whose adoption tried, we grappled to our
souls with hooks of steel.” There was never any difficulty in getting all the
volunteers he wanted for a scouting party. A quiet, pleasant spoken
gentleman, past middle age, he looked much better fitted for the office of
Justice of the Peace, to which his fellow-citizens of Urbana, Illinois, had
elected and reelected him, than to command a troop of rough riders in a great
civil war. But none more gallant than he ever vaulted into saddle to do battle
for the right. He went into the Army solely as a matter of principle, and did
his duty with the unflagging zeal of an olden Puritan fighting for liberty and
his soul's salvation. He was a superb horseman—as all the older Illinoisans
are and, for all his two-score years and ten, he recognized few superiors for
strength and activity in the Battalion. A radical, uncompromising
Abolitionist, he had frequently asserted that he would rather die than yield to
a Rebel, and he kept his word in this as in everything else.
As for him, it was probably the way he desired to die. No one believed
more ardently than he that
Whether on the scaffold high,
Or in the battle's van;

The fittest place for man to die,
Is where he dies for man.
Among the many who had lost chums and friends was Ned Johnson, of
Company K. Ned was a young Englishman, with much of the suggestiveness
of the bull-dog common to the lower class of that nation. His fist was readier
than his tongue. His chum, Walter Savage was of the same surly type. The
two had come from England twelve years before, and had been together ever
since. Savage was killed in the struggle for the fence described in the
preceding chapter. Ned could not realize for a while that his friend was dead.
It was only when the body rapidly stiffened on its icy bed, and the eyes
which had been gleaming deadly hate when he was stricken down were
glazed over with the dull film of death, that he believed he was gone from
him forever. Then his rage was terrible. For the rest of the day he was at the
head of every assault upon the enemy. His voice could ever be heard above
the firing, cursing the Rebels bitterly, and urging the boys to “Stand up to
'em! Stand right up to 'em! Don't give a inch! Let them have the best you got
in the shop! Shoot low, and don't waste a cartridge!”
When we surrendered, Ned seemed to yield sullenly to the inevitable. He
threw his belt and apparently his revolver with it upon the snow. A guard
was formed around us, and we gathered about the fires that were started.
Ned sat apart, his arms folded, his head upon his breast, brooding bitterly
upon Walter's death. A horseman, evidently a Colonel or General, clattered
up to give some directions concerning us. At the sound of his voice Ned
raised his head and gave him a swift glance; the gold stars upon the Rebel's
collar led him to believe that he was the commander of the enemy. Ned
sprang to his feet, made a long stride forward, snatched from the breast of
his overcoat the revolver he had been hiding there, cocked it and leveled it at
the Rebel's breast. Before he could pull the trigger Orderly Sergeant Charles
Bentley, of his Company, who was watching him, leaped forward, caught his
wrist and threw the revolver up. Others joined in, took the weapon away, and
handed it over to the officer, who then ordered us all to be searched for arms,
and rode away.

All our dejection could not make us forget that we were intensely hungry.
We had eaten nothing all day. The fight began before we had time to get any
breakfast, and of course there was no interval for refreshments during the
engagement. The Rebels were no better off than we, having been marched
rapidly all night in order to come upon us by daylight.
Late in the evening a few sacks of meal were given us, and we took the
first lesson in an art that long and painful practice afterward was to make
very familiar to us. We had nothing to mix the meal in, and it looked as if we
would have to eat it dry, until a happy thought struck some one that our caps
would do for kneading troughs. At once every cap was devoted to this.
Getting water from an adjacent spring, each man made a little wad of dough
—unsalted—and spreading it upon a flat stone or a chip, set it up in front of

the fire to bake. As soon as it was browned on one side, it was pulled off the
stone, and the other side turned to the fire. It was a very primitive way of
cooking and I became thoroughly disgusted with it. It was fortunate for me
that I little dreamed that this was the way I should have to get my meals for
the next fifteen months.
After somewhat of the edge had been taken off our hunger by this food,
we crouched around the fires, talked over the events of the day, speculated as
to what was to be done with us, and snatched such sleep as the biting cold
would permit.

CHAPTER VI.
“ON TO RICHMOND!”—MARCHING ON FOOT OVER THE
MOUNTAINS—MY HORSE HAS A NEW RIDER—
UNSOPHISTICATED MOUNTAIN GIRLS—DISCUSSING THE ISSUES
OF THE WAR—PARTING WITH “HIATOGA.”
At dawn we were gathered together, more meal issued to us, which we
cooked in the same way, and then were started under heavy guard to march
on foot over the mountains to Bristol, a station at the point where the
Virginia and Tennessee Railroad crosses the line between Virginia and
Tennessee.
As we were preparing to set out a Sergeant of the First Virginia cavalry
came galloping up to us on my horse! The sight of my faithful “Hiatoga”
bestrid by a Rebel, wrung my heart. During the action I had forgotten him,
but when it ceased I began to worry about his fate. As he and his rider came
near I called out to him; he stopped and gave a whinny of recognition, which
seemed also a plaintive appeal for an explanation of the changed condition
of affairs.
The Sergeant was a pleasant, gentlemanly boy of about my own age. He
rode up to me and inquired if it was my horse, to which I replied in the
affirmative, and asked permission to take from the saddle pockets some
letters, pictures and other trinkets. He granted this, and we became friends
from thence on until we separated. He rode by my side as we plodded over
the steep, slippery hills, and we beguiled the way by chatting of the thousand
things that soldiers find to talk about, and exchanged reminiscences of the
service on both sides. But the subject he was fondest of was that which I
relished least: my—now his—horse. Into the open ulcer of my heart he
poured the acid of all manner of questions concerning my lost steed's
qualities and capabilities: would he swim? how was he in fording? did he
jump well! how did he stand fire? I smothered my irritation, and answered as
pleasantly as I could.
In the afternoon of the third day after the capture, we came up to where a
party of rustic belles were collected at “quilting.” The “Yankees” were
instantly objects of greater interest than the parade of a menagerie would

have been. The Sergeant told the girls we were going to camp for the night a
mile or so ahead, and if they would be at a certain house, he would have a
Yankee for them for close inspection. After halting, the Sergeant obtained
leave to take me out with a guard, and I was presently ushered into a room in
which the damsels were massed in force, —a carnation-checked, staring,
open-mouthed, linsey-clad crowd, as ignorant of corsets and gloves as of
Hebrew, and with a propensity to giggle that was chronic and irrepressible.
When we entered the room there was a general giggle, and then a shower of
comments upon my appearance,—each sentence punctuated with the chorus
of feminine cachination. A remark was made about my hair and eyes, and
their risibles gave way; judgment was passed on my nose, and then came a
ripple of laughter. I got very red in the face, and uncomfortable generally.
Attention was called to the size of my feet and hands, and the usual chorus
followed. Those useful members of my body seemed to swell up as they do
to a young man at his first party.
Then I saw that in the minds of these bucolic maidens I was scarcely, if at
all, human; they did not understand that I belonged to the race; I was a
“Yankee”—a something of the non-human class, as the gorilla or the
chimpanzee. They felt as free to discuss my points before my face as they
would to talk of a horse or a wild animal in a show. My equanimity was
partially restored by this reflection, but I was still too young to escape
embarrassment and irritation at being thus dissected and giggled at by a
party of girls, even if they were ignorant Virginia mountaineers.
I turned around to speak to the Sergeant, and in so doing showed my back
to the ladies. The hum of comment deepened into surprise, that half stopped
and then intensified the giggle.
I was puzzled for a minute, and then the direction of their glances, and
their remarks explained it all. At the rear of the lower part of the cavalry
jacket, about where the upper ornamental buttons are on the tail of a frock
coat, are two funny tabs, about the size of small pin-cushions. They are
fastened by the edge, and stick out straight behind. Their use is to support
the heavy belt in the rear, as the buttons do in front. When the belt is off it
would puzzle the Seven Wise Men to guess what they are for. The
unsophisticated young ladies, with that swift intuition which is one of lovely
woman's salient mental traits, immediately jumped at the conclusion that the
projections covered some peculiar conformation of the Yankee anatomy—
some incipient, dromedary-like humps, or perchance the horns of which they

had heard so much.

This anatomical phenomena was discussed intently for a few minutes,
during which I heard one of the girls inquire whether “it would hurt him to
cut 'em off?” and another hazarded the opinion that “it would probably bleed
him to death.”
Then a new idea seized them, and they said to the Sergeant “Make him
sing! Make him sing!”
This was too much for the Sergeant, who had been intensely amused at the
girls' wonderment. He turned to me, very red in the face, with:
“Sergeant: the girls want to hear you sing.”
I replied that I could not sing a note. Said he:

“Oh, come now. I know better than that; I never seed or heerd of a Yankee
that couldn't sing.”
I nevertheless assured him that there really were some Yankees that did
not have any musical accomplishments, and that I was one of that
unfortunate number. I asked him to get the ladies to sing for me, and to this
they acceded quite readily. One girl, with a fair soprano, who seemed to be
the leader of the crowd, sang “The Homespun Dress,” a song very popular in
the South, and having the same tune as the “Bonnie Blue Flag.” It began,
I envy not the Northern girl
Their silks and jewels fine,
and proceeded to compare the homespun habiliments of the Southern
women to the finery and frippery of the ladies on the other side of Mason
and Dixon's line in a manner very disadvantageous to the latter.
The rest of the girls made a fine exhibition of the lung-power acquired in
climbing their precipitous mountains, when they came in on the chorus
Hurra! Hurra! for southern rights Hurra!
Hurra for the homespun dress,
The Southern ladies wear.
This ended the entertainment.
On our journey to Bristol we met many Rebel soldiers, of all ranks, and a
small number of citizens. As the conscription had then been enforced pretty
sharply for over a year the only able-bodied men seen in civil life were those
who had some trade which exempted them from being forced into active
service. It greatly astonished us at first to find that nearly all the mechanics
were included among the exempts, or could be if they chose; but a very little
reflection showed us the wisdom of such a policy. The South is as nearly a
purely agricultural country as is Russia or South America. The people have,
little inclination or capacity for anything else than pastoral pursuits.
Consequently mechanics are very scarce, and manufactories much scarcer.
The limited quantity of products of mechanical skill needed by the people
was mostly imported from the North or Europe. Both these sources of supply
were cutoff by the war, and the country was thrown upon its own slender
manufacturing resources. To force its mechanics into the army would
therefore be suicidal. The Army would gain a few thousand men, but its
operations would be embarrassed, if not stopped altogether, by a want of

supplies. This condition of affairs reminded one of the singular paucity of
mechanical skill among the Bedouins of the desert, which renders the life of
a blacksmith sacred. No matter how bitter the feud between tribes, no one
will kill the other's workers of iron, and instances are told of warriors saving
their lives at critical periods by falling on their knees and making with their
garments an imitation of the action of a smith's bellows.
All whom we met were eager to discuss with us the causes, phases and
progress of the war, and whenever opportunity offered or could be made,
those of us who were inclined to talk were speedily involved in an argument
with crowds of soldiers and citizens. But, owing to the polemic poverty of
our opponents, the argument was more in name than in fact. Like all people
of slender or untrained intellectual powers they labored under the
hallucination that asserting was reasoning, and the emphatic reiteration of
bald statements, logic. The narrow round which all from highest to lowest—
traveled was sometimes comical, and sometimes irritating, according to
one's mood! The dispute invariably began by their asking:
“Well, what are you 'uns down here a-fightin' we 'uns for?”
As this was replied to the newt one followed:
“Why are you'uns takin' our niggers away from we 'uns for?”
Then came:
“What do you 'uns put our niggers to fightin' we'uns for?” The windup
always was: “Well, let me tell you, sir, you can never whip people that are
fighting for liberty, sir.”
Even General Giltner, who had achieved considerable military reputation
as commander of a division of Kentucky cavalry, seemed to be as slenderly
furnished with logical ammunition as the balance, for as he halted by us he
opened the conversation with the well-worn formula:
“Well: what are you 'uns down here a-fighting we'uns for?”
The question had become raspingly monotonous to me, whom he
addressed, and I replied with marked acerbity:
“Because we are the Northern mudsills whom you affect to despise, and
we came down here to lick you into respecting us.”
The answer seemed to tickle him, a pleasanter light came into his sinister
gray eyes, he laughed lightly, and bade us a kindly good day.

Four days after our capture we arrived in Bristol. The guards who had
brought us over the mountains were relieved by others, the Sergeant bade me
good by, struck his spurs into “Hiatoga's” sides, and he and my faithful horse
were soon lost to view in the darkness.
A new and keener sense of desolation came over me at the final separation
from my tried and true four-footed friend, who had been my constant
companion through so many perils and hardships. We had endured together
the Winter's cold, the dispiriting drench of the rain, the fatigue of the long
march, the discomforts of the muddy camp, the gripings of hunger, the
weariness of the drill and review, the perils of the vidette post, the courier
service, the scout and the fight. We had shared in common
The whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
which a patient private and his horse of the unworthy take; we had had our
frequently recurring rows with other fellows and their horses, over questions
of precedence at watering places, and grass-plots, had had lively tilts with
guards of forage piles in surreptitious attempts to get additional rations,
sometimes coming off victorious and sometimes being driven off
ingloriously. I had often gone hungry that he might have the only ear of corn
obtainable. I am not skilled enough in horse lore to speak of his points or
pedigree. I only know that his strong limbs never failed me, and that he was
always ready for duty and ever willing.
Now at last our paths diverged. I was retired from actual service to a
prison, and he bore his new master off to battle against his old friends.

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

Packed closely in old, dilapidated stock and box cars, as if cattle in
shipment to market, we pounded along slowly, and apparently interminably,
toward the Rebel capital.
The railroads of the South were already in very bad condition. They were
never more than passably good, even in their best estate, but now, with a
large part of the skilled men engaged upon them escaped back to the North,
with all renewal, improvement, or any but the most necessary repairs
stopped for three years, and with a marked absence of even ordinary skill

and care in their management, they were as nearly ruined as they could well
be and still run.
One of the severe embarrassments under which the roads labored was a
lack of oil. There is very little fatty matter of any kind in the South. The
climate and the food plants do not favor the accumulation of adipose tissue
by animals, and there is no other source of supply. Lard oil and tallow were
very scarce and held at exorbitant prices.
Attempts were made to obtain lubricants from the peanut and the cotton
seed. The first yielded a fine bland oil, resembling the ordinary grade of
olive oil, but it was entirely too expensive for use in the arts. The cotton seed
oil could be produced much cheaper, but it had in it such a quantity of
gummy matter as to render it worse than useless for employment on
machinery.
This scarcity of oleaginous matter produced a corresponding scarcity of
soap and similar detergents, but this was a deprivation which caused the
Rebels, as a whole, as little inconvenience as any that they suffered from. I
have seen many thousands of them who were obviously greatly in need of
soap, but if they were rent with any suffering on that account they concealed
it with marvelous self-control.
There seemed to be a scanty supply of oil provided for the locomotives,
but the cars had to run with unlubricated axles, and the screaking and
groaning of the grinding journals in the dry boxes was sometimes almost
deafening, especially when we were going around a curve.
Our engine went off the wretched track several times, but as she was not
running much faster than a man could walk, the worst consequence to us was
a severe jolting. She was small, and was easily pried back upon the track,
and sent again upon her wheezy, straining way.
The depression which had weighed us down for a night and a day after our
capture had now been succeeded by a more cheerful feeling. We began to
look upon our condition as the fortune of war. We were proud of our
resistance to overwhelming numbers. We knew we had sold ourselves at a
price which, if the Rebels had it to do over again, they would not pay for us.
We believed that we had killed and seriously wounded as many of them as
they had killed, wounded and captured of us. We had nothing to blame
ourselves for. Moreover, we began to be buoyed up with the expectation that
we would be exchanged immediately upon our arrival at Richmond, and the

Rebel officers confidently assured us that this would be so. There was then a
temporary hitch in the exchange, but it would all be straightened out in a few
days, and it might not be a month until we were again marching out of
Cumberland Gap, on an avenging foray against some of the force which had
assisted in our capture.
Fortunately for this delusive hopefulness there was no weird and boding
Cassandra to pierce the veil of the future for us, and reveal the length and the
ghastly horror of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, through which we must
pass for hundreds of sad days, stretching out into long months of suffering
and death. Happily there was no one to tell us that of every five in that party
four would never stand under the Stars and Stripes again, but succumbing to
chronic starvation, long-continued exposure, the bullet of the brutal guard,
the loathsome scurvy, the hideous gangrene, and the heartsickness of hope
deferred, would find respite from pain low in the barren sands of that hungry
Southern soil.
Were every doom foretokened by appropriate omens, the ravens along our
route would have croaked themselves hoarse.
But, far from being oppressed by any presentiment of coming evil, we
began to appreciate and enjoy the picturesque grandeur of the scenery
through which we were moving. The rugged sternness of the Appalachian
mountain range, in whose rock-ribbed heart we had fought our losing fight,
was now softening into less strong, but more graceful outlines as we
approached the pine-clad, sandy plains of the seaboard, upon which
Richmond is built. We were skirting along the eastern base of the great Blue
Ridge, about whose distant and lofty summits hung a perpetual veil of deep,
dark, but translucent blue, which refracted the slanting rays of the morning
and evening sun into masses of color more gorgeous than a dreamer's vision
of an enchanted land. At Lynchburg we saw the famed Peaks of Otter—
twenty miles away—lifting their proud heads far into the clouds, like giant
watch-towers sentineling the gateway that the mighty waters of the James
had forced through the barriers of solid adamant lying across their path to
the far-off sea. What we had seen many miles back start from the mountain
sides as slender rivulets, brawling over the worn boulders, were now great,
rushing, full-tide streams, enough of them in any fifty miles of our journey
to furnish water power for all the factories of New England. Their amazing
opulence of mechanical energy has lain unutilized, almost unnoticed; in the
two and one-half centuries that the white man has dwelt near them, while in

Massachusetts and her near neighbors every rill that can turn a wheel has
been put into harness and forced to do its share of labor for the benefit of the
men who have made themselves its masters.
Here is one of the differences between the two sections: In the North man
was set free, and the elements made to do his work. In the South man was
the degraded slave, and the elements wantoned on in undisturbed freedom.
As we went on, the Valleys of the James and the Appomattox, down
which our way lay, broadened into an expanse of arable acres, and the faces
of those streams were frequently flecked by gem-like little islands.

CHAPTER VII.
ENTERING RICHMOND—DISAPPOINTMENT AT ITS
APPEARANCE—EVERYBODY IN UNIFORM—CURLED DARLINGS
OF THE CAPITAL—THE REBEL FLAG—LIBBY PRISON —DICK
TURNER—SEARCHING THE NEW COMERS.
Early on the tenth morning after our capture we were told that we were
about to enter Richmond. Instantly all were keenly observant of every detail
in the surroundings of a City that was then the object of the hopes and fears
of thirty-five millions of people—a City assailing which seventy-five
thousand brave men had already laid down their lives, defending which an
equal number had died, and which, before it fell, was to cost the life blood of
another one hundred and fifty thousand valiant assailants and defenders.
So much had been said and written about Richmond that our boyish minds
had wrought up the most extravagant expectations of it and its defenses. We
anticipated seeing a City differing widely from anything ever seen before;
some anomaly of nature displayed in its site, itself guarded by imposing and
impregnable fortifications, with powerful forts and heavy guns, perhaps even
walls, castles, postern gates, moats and ditches, and all the other panoply of
defensive warfare, with which romantic history had made us familiar.
We were disappointed—badly disappointed—in seeing nothing of this as
we slowly rolled along. The spires and the tall chimneys of the factories rose
in the distance very much as they had in other Cities we had visited. We
passed a single line of breastworks of bare yellow sand, but the scrubby
pines in front were not cut away, and there were no signs that there had ever
been any immediate expectation of use for the works. A redoubt or two—
without guns—could be made out, and this was all. Grim-visaged war had
few wrinkles on his front in that neighborhood. They were then seaming his
brow on the Rappahannock, seventy miles away, where the Army of
Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac lay confronting each other.
At one of the stopping places I had been separated from my companions
by entering a car in which were a number of East Tennesseeans, captured in
the operations around Knoxville, and whom the Rebels, in accordance with
their usual custom, were treating with studied contumely. I had always had a

very warm side for these simple rustics of the mountains and valleys. I knew
much of their unwavering fidelity to the Union, of the firm steadfastness
with which they endured persecution for their country's sake, and made
sacrifices even unto death; and, as in those days I estimated all men simply
by their devotion to the great cause of National integrity, (a habit that still
clings to me) I rated these men very highly. I had gone into their car to do
my little to encourage them, and when I attempted to return to my own I was
prevented by the guard.

Crossing the long bridge, our train came to a halt on the other side of the
river with the usual clamor of bell and whistle, the usual seemingly
purposeless and vacillating, almost dizzying, running backward and forward

on a network of sidetracks and switches, that seemed unavoidably necessary,
a dozen years ago, in getting a train into a City.
Still unable to regain my comrades and share their fortunes, I was
marched off with the Tennesseeans through the City to the office of some
one who had charge of the prisoners of war.
The streets we passed through were lined with retail stores, in which
business was being carried on very much as in peaceful times. Many people
were on the streets, but the greater part of the men wore some sort of a
uniform. Though numbers of these were in active service, yet the wearing of
a military garb did not necessarily imply this. Nearly every able-bodied man
in Richmond was; enrolled in some sort of an organization, and armed, and
drilled regularly. Even the members of the Confederate Congress were
uniformed and attached, in theory at least, to the Home Guards.

It was obvious even to the casual glimpse of a passing prisoner of war,
that the City did not lack its full share of the class which formed so large an
element of the society of Washington and other Northern Cities during the
war—the dainty carpet soldiers, heros of the promenade and the boudoir,
who strutted in uniforms when the enemy was far off, and wore citizen's
clothes when he was close at hand. There were many curled darlings
displaying their fine forms in the nattiest of uniforms, whose gloss had never
suffered from so much as a heavy dew, let alone a rainy day on the march.
The Confederate gray could be made into a very dressy garb. With the
sleeves lavishly embroidered with gold lace, and the collar decorated with
stars indicating the wearer's rank—silver for the field officers, and gold for
the higher grade,—the feet compressed into high-heeled, high-instepped
boots, (no Virginian is himself without a fine pair of skin-tight boots) and the
head covered with a fine, soft, broad-brimmed hat, trimmed with a gold
cord, from which a bullion tassel dangled several inches down the wearer's
back, you had a military swell, caparisoned for conquest—among the fair
sex.
On our way we passed the noted Capitol of Virginia—a handsome marble
building,—of the column-fronted Grecian temple style. It stands in the
center of the City. Upon the grounds is Crawford's famous equestrian statue
of Washington, surrounded by smaller statues of other Revolutionary
patriots.
The Confederate Congress was then in session in the Capitol, and also the
Legislature of Virginia, a fact indicated by the State flag of Virginia floating
from the southern end of the building, and the new flag of the Confederacy
from the northern end. This was the first time I had seen the latter, which had
been recently adopted, and I examined it with some interest. The design was
exceedingly plain. Simply a white banner, with a red field in the corner
where the blue field with stars is in ours. The two blue stripes were drawn
diagonally across this field in the shape of a letter X, and in these were
thirteen white stars, corresponding to the number of States claimed to be in
the Confederacy.
The battle-flag was simply the red field. My examination of all this was
necessarily very brief. The guards felt that I was in Richmond for other
purposes than to study architecture, statuary and heraldry, and besides they

were in a hurry to be relieved of us and get their breakfast, so my art-
education was abbreviated sharply.
We did not excite much attention on the streets. Prisoners had by that time
become too common in Richmond to create any interest. Occasionally
passers by would fling opprobrious epithets at “the East Tennessee traitors,”
but that was all.
The commandant of the prisons directed the Tennesseeans to be taken to
Castle Lightning—a prison used to confine the Rebel deserters, among
whom they also classed the East Tennesseeans, and sometimes the West
Virginians, Kentuckians, Marylanders and Missourians found fighting
against them. Such of our men as deserted to them were also lodged there, as
the Rebels, very properly, did not place a high estimate upon this class of
recruits to their army, and, as we shall see farther along, violated all
obligations of good faith with them, by putting them among the regular
prisoners of war, so as to exchange them for their own men.
Back we were all marched to a street which ran parallel to the river and
canal, and but one square away from them. It was lined on both sides by
plain brick warehouses and tobacco factories, four and five stories high,
which were now used by the Rebel Government as prisons and military
storehouses.
The first we passed was Castle Thunder, of bloody repute. This occupied
the same place in Confederate history, that, the dungeons beneath the level
of the water did in the annals of the Venetian Council of Ten. It was believed
that if the bricks in its somber, dirt-grimed walls could speak, each could tell
a separate story of a life deemed dangerous to the State that had gone down
in night, at the behest of the ruthless Confederate authorities. It was
confidently asserted that among the commoner occurrences within its
confines was the stationing of a doomed prisoner against a certain bit of
blood-stained, bullet-chipped wall, and relieving the Confederacy of all
farther fear of him by the rifles of a firing party. How well this dark
reputation was deserved, no one but those inside the inner circle of the Davis
Government can say. It is safe to believe that more tragedies were enacted
there than the archives of the Rebel civil or military judicature give any
account of. The prison was employed for the detention of spies, and those
charged with the convenient allegation of “treason against the Confederate
States of America.” It is probable that many of these were sent out of the

world with as little respect for the formalities of law as was exhibited with
regard to the 'suspects' during the French Revolution.
Next we came to Castle Lightning, and here I bade adieu to my Tennessee
companions.
A few squares more and we arrived at a warehouse larger than any of the
others. Over the door was a sign
THOMAS LIBBY & SON,
SHIP CHANDLERS AND GROCERS.
This was the notorious “Libby Prison,” whose name was painfully
familiar to every Union man in the land. Under the sign was a broad
entrance way, large enough to admit a dray or a small wagon. On one side of
this was the prison office, in which were a number of dapper, feeble-faced
clerks at work on the prison records.
As I entered this space a squad of newly arrived prisoners were being
searched for valuables, and having their names, rank and regiment recorded
in the books. Presently a clerk addressed as “Majah Tunnah,” the man who
was superintending these operations, and I scanned him with increased
interest, as I knew then that he was the ill-famed Dick Turner, hated all over
the North for his brutality to our prisoners.
He looked as if he deserved his reputation. Seen upon the street he would
be taken for a second or third class gambler, one in whom a certain amount
of cunning is pieced out by a readiness to use brute force. His face, clean-
shaved, except a “Bowery-b'hoy” goatee, was white, fat, and selfishly
sensual. Small, pig-like eyes, set close together, glanced around continually.
His legs were short, his body long, and made to appear longer, by his
wearing no vest—a custom common them with Southerners.
His faculties were at that moment absorbed in seeing that no person
concealed any money from him. His subordinates did not search closely
enough to suit him, and he would run his fat, heavily-ringed fingers through
the prisoner's hair, feel under their arms and elsewhere where he thought a
stray five dollar greenback might be concealed. But with all his greedy care
he was no match for Yankee cunning. The prisoners told me afterward that,
suspecting they would be searched, they had taken off the caps of the large,
hollow brass buttons of their coats, carefully folded a bill into each cavity,
and replaced the cap. In this way they brought in several hundred dollars
safely.

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

It came my turn. I had no desire, in that frigid atmosphere, to strip down
to what Artemus Ward called “the skanderlous costoom of the Greek Slave;”

so I pulled out of my pocket my little store of wealth—ten dollars in
greenbacks, sixty dollars in Confederate graybacks—and displayed it as
Turner came up with, “There's all I have, sir.” Turner pocketed it without a
word, and did not search me. In after months, when I was nearly famished,
my estimation of “Majah Tunnah” was hardly enhanced by the reflection
that what would have purchased me many good meals was probably lost by
him in betting on a pair of queens, when his opponent held a “king full.”
I ventured to step into the office to inquire after my comrades. One of the
whey-faced clerks said with the supercilious asperity characteristic of gnat-
brained headquarters attaches:
“Get out of here!” as if I had been a stray cur wandering in in search of a
bone lunch.
I wanted to feed the fellow to a pile-driver. The utmost I could hope for in
the way of revenge was that the delicate creature might some day make a
mistake in parting his hair, and catch his death of cold.
The guard conducted us across the street, and into the third story of a
building standing on the next corner below. Here I found about four hundred
men, mostly belonging to the Army of the Potomac, who crowded around
me with the usual questions to new prisoners: What was my Regiment,
where and when captured, and:
What were the prospects of exchange?
It makes me shudder now to recall how often, during the dreadful months
that followed, this momentous question was eagerly propounded to every
new comer: put with bated breath by men to whom exchange meant all that
they asked of this world, and possibly of the next; meant life, home, wife or
sweet-heart, friends, restoration to manhood, and self-respect —everything,
everything that makes existence in this world worth having.
I answered as simply and discouragingly as did the tens of thousands that
came after me:
“I did not hear anything about exchange.”
A soldier in the field had many other things of more immediate interest to
think about than the exchange of prisoners. The question only became a
living issue when he or some of his intimate friends fell into the enemy's
hands.

Thus began my first day in prison.

CHAPTER VIII
INTRODUCTION TO PRISON LIFE—THE PEMBERTON BUILDING
AND ITS OCCUPANTS —NEAT SAILORS—ROLL CALL—RATIONS
AND CLOTHING—CHIVALRIC “CONFISCATION.”
I began acquainting myself with my new situation and surroundings. The
building into which I had been conducted was an old tobacco factory, called
the “Pemberton building,” possibly from an owner of that name, and
standing on the corner of what I was told were Fifteenth and Carey streets.
In front it was four stories high; behind but three, owing to the rapid rise of
the hill, against which it was built.
It fronted towards the James River and Kanawha Canal, and the James
River—both lying side by side, and only one hundred yards distant, with no
intervening buildings. The front windows afforded a fine view. To the right
front was Libby, with its guards pacing around it on the sidewalk, watching
the fifteen hundred officers confined within its walls. At intervals during
each day squads of fresh prisoners could be seen entering its dark mouth, to
be registered, and searched, and then marched off to the prison assigned
them. We could see up the James River for a mile or so, to where the long
bridges crossing it bounded the view. Directly in front, across the river, was
a flat, sandy plain, said to be General Winfield Scott's farm, and now used as
a proving ground for the guns cast at the Tredegar Iron Works.
The view down the river was very fine. It extended about twelve miles, to
where a gap in the woods seemed to indicate a fort, which we imagined to be
Fort Darling, at that time the principal fortification defending the passage of
the James.
Between that point and where we were lay the river, in a long, broad
mirror-like expanse, like a pretty little inland lake. Occasionally a busy little
tug would bustle up or down, a gunboat move along with noiseless dignity,
suggestive of a reserved power, or a schooner beat lazily from one side to the
other. But these were so few as to make even more pronounced the
customary idleness that hung over the scene. The tug's activity seemed
spasmodic and forced—a sort of protest against the gradually increasing
lethargy that reigned upon the bosom of the waters —the gunboat floated

along as if performing a perfunctory duty, and the schooners sailed about as
if tired of remaining in one place. That little stretch of water was all that was
left for a cruising ground. Beyond Fort Darling the Union gunboats lay, and
the only vessel that passed the barrier was the occasional flag-of-truce
steamer.
The basement of the building was occupied as a store-house for the taxes-
in-kind which the Confederate Government collected. On the first floor were
about five hundred men. On the second floor—where I was—were about
four hundred men. These were principally from the First Division, First
Corps distinguished by a round red patch on their caps; First Division,
Second Corps, marked by a red clover leaf; and the First Division, Third
Corps, who wore a red diamond. They were mainly captured at Gettysburg
and Mine Run. Besides these there was a considerable number from the
Eighth Corps, captured at Winchester, and a large infusion of Cavalry-First,
Second and Third West Virginia—taken in Averill's desperate raid up the
Virginia Valley, with the Wytheville Salt Works as an objective.
On the third floor were about two hundred sailors and marines, taken in
the gallant but luckless assault upon the ruins of Fort Sumter, in the
September previous. They retained the discipline of the ship in their
quarters, kept themselves trim and clean, and their floor as white as a ship's
deck. They did not court the society of the “sojers” below, whose camp ideas
of neatness differed from theirs. A few old barnacle-backs always sat on
guard around the head of the steps leading from the lower rooms. They
chewed tobacco enormously, and kept their mouths filled with the extracted
juice. Any luckless “sojer” who attempted to ascend the stairs usually
returned in haste, to avoid the deluge of the filthy liquid.

For convenience in issuing rations we were divided into messes of twenty,
each mess electing a Sergeant as its head, and each floor electing a Sergeant-
of-the-Floor, who drew rations and enforced what little discipline was
observed.
Though we were not so neat as the sailors above us, we tried to keep our
quarters reasonably clean, and we washed the floor every morning; getting
down on our knees and rubbing it clean and dry with rags. Each mess
detailed a man each day to wash up the part of the floor it occupied, and he
had to do this properly or no ration would be given him. While the washing
up was going on each man stripped himself and made close examination of
his garments for the body-lice, which otherwise would have increased
beyond control. Blankets were also carefully hunted over for these “small
deer.”
About eight o'clock a spruce little lisping rebel named Ross would appear
with a book, and a body-guard, consisting of a big Irishman, who had the air
of a Policeman, and carried a musket barrel made into a cane. Behind him
were two or three armed guards. The Sergeant-of-the-Floor commanded:

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

We formed along one side of the room; the guards halted at the head of the
stairs; Ross walked down in front and counted the files, closely followed by
his Irish aid, with his gun-barrel cane raised ready for use upon any one who
should arouse his ruffianly ire. Breaking ranks we returned to our places, and

sat around in moody silence for three hours. We had eaten nothing since the
previous noon. Rising hungry, our hunger seemed to increase in arithmetical
ratio with every quarter of an hour.
These times afforded an illustration of the thorough subjection of man to
the tyrant Stomach. A more irritable lot of individuals could scarcely be
found outside of a menagerie than these men during the hours waiting for
rations. “Crosser than, two sticks” utterly failed as a comparison. They were
crosser than the lines of a check apron. Many could have given odds to the
traditional bear with a sore head, and run out of the game fifty points ahead
of him. It was astonishingly easy to get up a fight at these times. There was
no need of going a step out of the way to search for it, as one could have a
full fledged article of overwhelming size on his hands at any instant, by a
trifling indiscretion of speech or manner. All the old irritating flings between
the cavalry, the artillery and the infantry, the older “first-call” men, and the
later or “Three-Hundred-Dollar-men,” as they were derisively dubbed,
between the different corps of the Army of the Potomac, between men of
different States, and lastly between the adherents and opponents of
McClellan, came to the lips and were answered by a blow with the fist, when
a ring would be formed around the combatants by a crowd, which would
encourage them with yells to do their best. In a few minutes one of the
parties to the fistic debate, who found the point raised by him not well taken,
would retire to the sink to wash the blood from his battered face, and the rest
would resume their seats and glower at space until some fresh excitement
roused them. For the last hour or so of these long waits hardly a word would
be spoken. We were too ill-natured to talk for amusement, and there was
nothing else to talk for.
This spell was broken about eleven o'clock by the appearance at the head
of the stairway of the Irishman with the gun-barrel cane, and his singing out:
“Sargint uv the flure: fourtane min and a bread-box!”
Instantly every man sprang to his feet, and pressed forward to be one of
the favored fourteen. One did not get any more gyrations or obtain them any
sooner by this, but it was a relief, and a change to walk the half square
outside the prison to the cookhouse, and help carry the rations back.
For a little while after our arrival in Richmond, the rations were tolerably
good. There had been so much said about the privations of the prisoners that
our Government had, after much quibbling and negotiation, succeeded in

getting the privilege of sending food and clothing through the lines to us. Of
course but a small part of that sent ever reached its destination. There were
too many greedy Rebels along its line of passage to let much of it be
received by those for whom it was intended. We could see from our
windows Rebels strutting about in overcoats, in which the box wrinkles were
still plainly visible, wearing new “U. S.” blankets as cloaks, and walking in
Government shoes, worth fabulous prices in Confederate money.
Fortunately for our Government the rebels decided to out themselves off
from this profitable source of supply. We read one day in the Richmond
papers that “President Davis and his Cabinet had come to the conclusion that
it was incompatible with the dignity of a sovereign power to permit another
power with which it was at war, to feed and clothe prisoners in its hands.”
I will not stop to argue this point of honor, and show its absurdity by
pointing out that it is not an unusual practice with nations at war. It is a
sufficient commentary upon this assumption of punctiliousness that the
paper went on to say that some five tons of clothing and fifteen tons of food,
which had been sent under a flag of truce to City Point, would neither be
returned nor delivered to us, but “converted to the use of the Confederate
Government.”
“And surely they are all honorable men!”
Heaven save the mark.

CHAPTER IX.
BRANS OR PEAS—INSUFFICIENCY OF DARKY TESTIMONY—A
GUARD KILLS A PRISONER—PRISONERS TEAZE THE GUARDS—
DESPERATE OUTBREAK.
But, to return to the rations—a topic which, with escape or exchange,
were to be the absorbing ones for us for the next fifteen months. There was
now issued to every two men a loaf of coarse bread—made of a mixture of
flour and meal—and about the size and shape of an ordinary brick. This half
loaf was accompanied, while our Government was allowed to furnish
rations, with a small piece of corned beef. Occasionally we got a sweet
potato, or a half-pint or such a matter of soup made from a coarse, but
nutritious, bean or pea, called variously “nigger-pea,” “stock-pea,” or “cow-
pea.”
This, by the way, became a fruitful bone of contention during our stay in
the South. One strong party among us maintained that it was a bean, because
it was shaped like one, and brown, which they claimed no pea ever was. The
other party held that it was a pea because its various names all agreed in
describing it as a pea, and because it was so full of bugs —none being
entirely free from insects, and some having as many as twelve by actual
count—within its shell. This, they declared, was a distinctive characteristic
of the pea family. The contention began with our first instalment of the
leguminous ration, and was still raging between the survivors who passed
into our lines in 1865. It waxed hot occasionally, and each side continually
sought evidence to support its view of the case. Once an old darky, sent into
the prison on some errand, was summoned to decide a hot dispute that was
raging in the crowd to which I belonged. The champion of the pea side said,
producing one of the objects of dispute:
“Now, boys, keep still, till I put the question fairly. Now, uncle, what do
they call that there?”
The colored gentleman scrutinized the vegetable closely, and replied,
“Well, dey mos' generally calls 'em stock-peas, round hyar aways.”
“There,” said the pea-champion triumphantly.

“But,” broke in the leader of the bean party, “Uncle, don't they also call
them beans?”
“Well, yes, chile, I spec dat lots of 'em does.”
And this was about the way the matter usually ended.
I will not attempt to bias the reader's judgment by saying which side I
believed to be right. As the historic British showman said, in reply to the
question as to whether an animal in his collection was a rhinoceros or an
elephant, “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”
The rations issued to us, as will be seen above, though they appear scanty,
were still sufficient to support life and health, and months afterward, in
Andersonville, we used to look back to them as sumptuous. We usually had
them divided and eaten by noon, and, with the gnawings of hunger appeased,
we spent the afternoon and evening comfortably. We told stories, paced up
and down, the floor for exercise, played cards, sung, read what few books
were available, stood at the windows and studied the landscape, and watched
the Rebels trying their guns and shells, and so on as long as it was daylight.
Occasionally it was dangerous to be about the windows. This depended
wholly on the temper of the guards. One day a member of a Virginia
regiment, on guard on the pavement in front, deliberately left his beat,
walked out into the center of the street, aimed his gun at a member of the
Ninth West Virginia, who was standing at a window near, and firing, shot
him through the heart, the bullet passing through his body, and through the
floor above. The act was purely malicious, and was done, doubtless, in
revenge for some injury which our men had done the assassin or his family.
We were not altogether blameless, by any means. There were few
opportunities to say bitterly offensive things to the guards, let pass
unimproved.
The prisoners in the third floor of the Smith building, adjoining us, had
their own way of teasing them. Late at night, when everybody would be
lying down, and out of the way of shots, a window in the third story would
open, a broomstick, with a piece nailed across to represent arms, and clothed
with a cap and blouse, would be protruded, and a voice coming from a man
carefully protected by the wall, would inquire:
“S-a-y, g-uarr-d, what time is it?”

If the guard was of the long suffering kind he would answer:
“Take yo' head back in, up dah; you kno hits agin all odahs to do dat?”
Then the voice would say, aggravatingly, “Oh, well, go to —— you ——
Rebel ——, if you can't answer a civil question.”
Before the speech was ended the guard's rifle would be at his shoulder and
he would fire. Back would come the blouse and hat in haste, only to go out
again the next instant, with a derisive laugh, and,

“Thought you were going to hurt somebody, didn't you, you —— ——
—— —— ——. But, Lord, you can't shoot for sour apples; if I couldn't
shoot no better than you, Mr. Johnny Reb, I would ——”
By this time the guard, having his gun loaded again, would cut short the
remarks with another shot, which, followed up with similar remarks, would
provoke still another, when an alarm sounding, the guards at Libby and all
the other buildings around us would turn out. An officer of the guard would
go up with a squad into the third floor, only to find everybody up there
snoring away as if they were the Seven Sleepers. After relieving his mind of
a quantity of vigorous profanity, and threats to “buck and gag” and cut off
the rations of the whole room, the officer would return to his quarters in the
guard house, but before he was fairly ensconced there the cap and blouse
would go out again, and the maddened guard be regaled with a spirited and
vividly profane lecture on the depravity of Rebels in general, and his own
unworthiness in particular.
One night in January things took a more serious turn. The boys on the
lower floor of our building had long considered a plan of escape. There were
then about fifteen thousand prisoners in Richmond—ten thousand on Belle
Isle and five thousand in the buildings. Of these one thousand five hundred
were officers in Libby. Besides there were the prisoners in Castles Thunder
and Lightning. The essential features of the plan were that at a preconcerted
signal we at the second and third floors should appear at the windows with
bricks and irons from the tobacco presses, which a should shower down on
the guards and drive them away, while the men of the first floor would pour
out, chase the guards into the board house in the basement, seize their arms,
drive those away from around Libby and the other prisons, release the
officers, organize into regiments and brigades, seize the armory, set fire to
the public buildings and retreat from the City, by the south side of the James,
where there was but a scanty force of Rebels, and more could be prevented
from coming over by burning the bridges behind us.
It was a magnificent scheme, and might have been carried out, but there
was no one in the building who was generally believed to have the qualities
of a leader.
But while it was being debated a few of the hot heads on the lower floor
undertook to precipitate the crisis. They seized what they thought was a
favorable opportunity, overpowered the guard who stood at the foot of the
stairs, and poured into the street. The other guards fell back and opened fire

on them; other troops hastened up, and soon drove them back into the
building, after killing ten or fifteen. We of the second and third floors did not
anticipate the break at that time, and were taken as much by surprise as were
the Rebels. Nearly all were lying down and many were asleep. Some
hastened to the windows, and dropped missiles out, but before any concerted
action could be taken it was seen that the case was hopeless, and we
remained quiet.
Among those who led in the assault was a drummer-boy of some New
York Regiment, a recklessly brave little rascal. He had somehow smuggled a
small four-shooter in with him, and when they rushed out he fired it off at
the guards.
After the prisoners were driven back, the Rebel officers came in and
vapored around considerably, but confined themselves to big words. They
were particularly anxious to find the revolver, and ordered a general and
rigorous search for it. The prisoners were all ranged on one side of the room
and carefully examined by one party, while another hunted through the
blankets and bundles. It was all in vain; no pistol could be found. The boy
had a loaf of wheat bread, bought from a baker during the day. It was a
round loaf, set together in two pieces like a biscuit. He pulled these apart,
laid the fourshooter between them, pressed the two halves together, and went
on calmly nibbling away at the loaf while the search was progressing.
Two gunboats were brought up the next morning, and anchored in the
canal near us, with their heavy guns trained upon the building. It was
thought that this would intimidate as from a repetition of the attack, but our
sailors conceived that, as they laid against the shore next to us, they could be
easily captured, and their artillery made to assist us. A scheme to accomplish
this was being wrought out, when we received notice to move, and it came to
naught.

CHAPTER X.
THE EXCHANGE AND THE CAUSE OF ITS INTERRUPTION—
BRIEF RESUME OF THE DIFFERENT CARTELS, AND THE
DIFFICULTIES THAT LED TO THEIR SUSPENSION.
Few questions intimately connected with the actual operations of the
Rebellion have been enveloped with such a mass of conflicting statement as
the responsibility for the interruption of the exchange. Southern writers and
politicians, naturally anxious to diminish as much as possible the great
odium resting upon their section for the treatment of prisoners of war during
the last year and a half of the Confederacy's existence, have vehemently
charged that the Government of the United States deliberately and pitilessly
resigned to their fate such of its soldiers as fell into the hands of the enemy,
and repelled all advances from the Rebel Government looking toward a
resumption of exchange. It is alleged on our side, on the other hand, that our
Government did all that was possible, consistent with National dignity and
military prudence, to secure a release of its unfortunate men in the power of
the Rebels.
Over this vexed question there has been waged an acrimonious war of
words, which has apparently led to no decision, nor any convictions—the
disputants, one and all, remaining on the sides of the controversy occupied
by them when the debate began.
I may not be in possession of all the facts bearing upon the case, and may
be warped in judgment by prejudices in favor of my own Government's
wisdom and humanity, but, however this may be, the following is my firm
belief as to the controlling facts in this lamentable affair:
1. For some time after the beginning of hostilities our Government refused
to exchange prisoners with the Rebels, on the ground that this might be held
by the European powers who were seeking a pretext for acknowledging the
Confederacy, to be admission by us that the war was no longer an
insurrection but a revolution, which had resulted in the 'de facto'
establishment of a new nation. This difficulty was finally gotten over by
recognizing the Rebels as belligerents, which, while it placed them on a

somewhat different plane from mere insurgents, did not elevate them to the
position of soldiers of a foreign power.
2. Then the following cartel was agreed upon by Generals Dig on our side
and Hill on that of the Rebels:
HAXALL'S LANDING, ON JAMES RIVER, July 22, 1882.
The undersigned, having been commissioned by the authorities they
respectively represent to make arrangements for a general exchange of
prisoners of war, have agreed to the following articles:
ARTICLE I.—It is hereby agreed and stipulated, that all prisoners of war,
held by either party, including those taken on private armed vessels, known
as privateers, shall be exchanged upon the conditions and terms following:
Prisoners to be exchanged man for man and officer for officer. Privateers
to be placed upon the footing of officers and men of the navy.
Men and officers of lower grades may be exchanged for officers of a
higher grade, and men and officers of different services may be exchanged
according to the following scale of equivalents:
A General-commanding-in-chief, or an Admiral, shall be exchanged for
officers of equal rank, or for sixty privates or common seamen.
A Commodore, carrying a broad pennant, or a Brigadier General, shall be
exchanged for officers of equal rank, or twenty privates or common seamen.
A Captain in the Navy, or a Colonel, shall be exchanged for officers of
equal rank, or for fifteen privates or common seamen.
A Lieutenant Colonel, or Commander in the Navy, shall be exchanged for
officers of equal rank, or for ten privates or common seamen.
A Lieutenant, or a Master in the Navy, or a Captain in the Army or
marines shall be exchanged for officers of equal rank, or six privates or
common seamen.
Master's-mates in the Navy, or Lieutenants or Ensigns in the Army, shall
be exchanged for officers of equal rank, or four privates or common seamen.
Midshipmen, warrant officers in the Navy, masters of merchant vessels and
commanders of privateers, shall be exchanged for officers of equal rank, or
three privates or common seamen; Second Captains, Lieutenants or mates of
merchant vessels or privateers, and all petty officers in the Navy, and all
noncommissioned officers in the Army or marines, shall be severally
exchanged for persons of equal rank, or for two privates or common seamen;

and private soldiers or common seamen shall be exchanged for each other
man for man.
ARTICLE II.—Local, State, civil and militia rank held by persons not in
actual military service will not be recognized; the basis of exchange being
the grade actually held in the naval and military service of the respective
parties.
ARTICLE III.—If citizens held by either party on charges of disloyalty, or
any alleged civil offense, are exchanged, it shall only be for citizens.
Captured sutlers, teamsters, and all civilians in the actual service of either
party, to be exchanged for persons in similar positions.
ARTICLE IV.—All prisoners of war to be discharged on parole in ten
days after their capture; and the prisoners now held, and those hereafter
taken, to be transported to the points mutually agreed upon, at the expense of
the capturing party. The surplus prisoners not exchanged shall not be
permitted to take up arms again, nor to serve as military police or
constabulary force in any fort, garrison or field-work, held by either of the
respective parties, nor as guards of prisoners, deposits or stores, nor to
discharge any duty usually performed by soldiers, until exchanged under the
provisions of this cartel. The exchange is not to be considered complete until
the officer or soldier exchanged for has been actually restored to the lines to
which he belongs.
ARTICLE V.—Each party upon the discharge of prisoners of the other
party is authorized to discharge an equal number of their own officers or
men from parole, furnishing, at the same time, to the other party a list of
their prisoners discharged, and of their own officers and men relieved from
parole; thus enabling each party to relieve from parole such of their officers
and men as the party may choose. The lists thus mutually furnished, will
keep both parties advised of the true condition of the exchange of prisoners.
ARTICLE VI.—The stipulations and provisions above mentioned to be of
binding obligation during the continuance of the war, it matters not which
party may have the surplus of prisoners; the great principles involved being,
First, An equitable exchange of prisoners, man for man, or officer for officer,
or officers of higher grade exchanged for officers of lower grade, or for
privates, according to scale of equivalents. Second, That privates and
officers and men of different services may be exchanged according to the
same scale of equivalents. Third, That all prisoners, of whatever arm of

service, are to be exchanged or paroled in ten days from the time of their
capture, if it be practicable to transfer them to their own lines in that time; if
not, so soon thereafter as practicable. Fourth, That no officer, or soldier,
employed in the service of either party, is to be considered as exchanged and
absolved from his parole until his equivalent has actually reached the lines of
his friends. Fifth, That parole forbids the performance of field, garrison,
police, or guard or constabulary duty.
JOHN A. DIX, Major General.
D. H. HILL, Major General, C. S. A.
SUPPLEMENTARY ARTICLES.
ARTICLE VII.—All prisoners of war now held on either side, and all
prisoners hereafter taken, shall be sent with all reasonable dispatch to A. M.
Aiken's, below Dutch Gap, on the James River, in Virginia, or to Vicksburg,
on the Mississippi River, in the State of Mississippi, and there exchanged of
paroled until such exchange can be effected, notice being previously given
by each party of the number of prisoners it will send, and the time when they
will be delivered at those points respectively; and in case the vicissitudes of
war shall change the military relations of the places designated in this article
to the contending parties, so as to render the same inconvenient for the
delivery and exchange of prisoners, other places bearing as nearly as may be
the present local relations of said places to the lines of said parties, shall be,
by mutual agreement, substituted. But nothing in this article contained shall
prevent the commanders of the two opposing armies from exchanging
prisoners or releasing them on parole, at other points mutually agreed on by
said commanders.
ARTICLE VIII.—For the purpose of carrying into effect the foregoing
articles of agreement, each party will appoint two agents for the exchange of
prisoners of war, whose duty it shall be to communicate with each other by
correspondence and otherwise; to prepare the lists of prisoners; to attend to
the delivery of the prisoners at the places agreed on, and to carry out
promptly, effectually, and in good faith, all the details and provisions of the
said articles of agreement.
ARTICLE IX.—And, in case any misunderstanding shall arise in regard to
any clause or stipulation in the foregoing articles, it is mutually agreed that
such misunderstanding shall not affect the release of prisoners on parole, as
herein provided, but shall be made the subject of friendly explanation, in

order that the object of this agreement may neither be defeated nor
postponed.
JOHN A. DIX, Major General. D. H. HILL, Major General. C. S. A.
This plan did not work well. Men on both sides, who wanted a little rest
from soldiering, could obtain it by so straggling in the vicinity of the enemy.
Their parole—following close upon their capture, frequently upon the spot—
allowed them to visit home, and sojourn awhile where were pleasanter
pastures than at the front. Then the Rebels grew into the habit of paroling
everybody that they could constrain into being a prisoner of war. Peaceable,
unwarlike and decrepit citizens of Kentucky, East Tennessee, West Virginia,
Missouri and Maryland were “captured” and paroled, and setoff against
regular Rebel soldiers taken by us.
3. After some months of trial of this scheme, a modification of the cartel
was agreed upon, the main feature of which was that all prisoners must be
reduced to possession, and delivered to the exchange officers either at City
Point, Va., or Vicksburg, Miss. This worked very well for some months, until
our Government began organizing negro troops. The Rebels then issued an
order that neither these troops nor their officers should be held as amenable
to the laws of war, but that, when captured, the men should be returned to
slavery, and the officers turned over to the Governors of the States in which
they were taken, to be dealt with according to the stringent law punishing the
incitement of servile insurrection. Our Government could not permit this for
a day. It was bound by every consideration of National honor to protect those
who wore its uniform and bore its flag. The Rebel Government was
promptly informed that rebel officers and men would be held as hostages for
the proper treatment of such members of colored regiments as might be
taken.
4. This discussion did not put a stop to the exchange, but while it was
going on Vicksburg was captured, and the battle of Gettysburg was fought.
The first placed one of the exchange points in our hands. At the opening of
the fight at Gettysburg Lee captured some six thousand Pennsylvania militia.
He sent to Meade to have these exchanged on the field of battle. Meade
declined to do so for two reasons: first, because it was against the cartel,
which prescribed that prisoners must be reduced to possession; and second,
because he was anxious to have Lee hampered with such a body of
prisoners, since it was very doubtful if he could get his beaten army back
across the Potomac, let alone his prisoners. Lee then sent a communication

to General Couch, commanding the Pennsylvania militia, asking him to
receive prisoners on parole, and Couch, not knowing what Meade had done,
acceded to the request. Our Government disavowed Couch's action instantly,
and ordered the paroles to be treated as of no force, whereupon the Rebel
Government ordered back into the field twelve thousand of the prisoners
captured by Grant's army at Vicksburg.
5. The paroling now stopped abruptly, leaving in the hands of both sides
the prisoners captured at Gettysburg, except the militia above mentioned.
The Rebels added considerably to those in their hands by their captures at
Chickamauga, while we gained a great many at Mission Ridge, Cumberland
Gap and elsewhere, so that at the time we arrived in Richmond the Rebels
had about fifteen thousand prisoners in their hands and our Government had
about twenty-five thousand.
6. The rebels now began demanding that the prisoners on both sides be
exchanged—man for man—as far as they went, and the remainder paroled.
Our Government offered to exchange man for man, but declined—on
account of the previous bad faith of the Rebels—to release the balance on
parole. The Rebels also refused to make any concessions in regard to the
treatment of officers and men of colored regiments.
7. At this juncture General B. F. Butler was appointed to the command of
the Department of the Blackwater, which made him an ex-officio
Commissioner of Exchange. The Rebels instantly refused to treat with him,
on the ground that he was outlawed by the proclamation of Jefferson Davis.
General Butler very pertinently replied that this only placed him nearer their
level, as Jefferson Davis and all associated with him in the Rebel
Government had been outlawed by the proclamation of President Lincoln.
The Rebels scorned to notice this home thrust by the Union General.
8. On February 12, 1864, General Butler addressed a letter to the Rebel
Commissioner Ould, in which be asked, for the sake of humanity, that the
questions interrupting the exchange be left temporarily in abeyance while an
informal exchange was put in operation. He would send five hundred
prisoners to City Point; let them be met by a similar number of Union
prisoners. This could go on from day to day until all in each other's hands
should be transferred to their respective flags.
The five hundred sent with the General's letter were received, and five
hundred Union prisoners returned for them. Another five hundred, sent the

next day, were refused, and so this reasonable and humane proposition ended
in nothing.
This was the condition of affairs in February, 1864, when the Rebel
authorities concluded to send us to Andersonville. If the reader will fix these
facts in his minds I will explain other phases as they develop.

CHAPTER XI.
PUTTING IN THE TIME—RATIONS—COOKING UTENSILS
—“FIAT” SOUP—“SPOONING” —AFRICAN NEWSPAPER VENDERS
—TRADING GREENBACKS FOR CONFEDERATE MONEY —VISIT
FROM JOHN MORGAN.
The Winter days passed on, one by one, after the manner described in a
former chapter,—the mornings in ill-nature hunger; the afternoons and
evenings in tolerable comfort. The rations kept growing lighter and lighter;
the quantity of bread remained the same, but the meat diminished, and
occasional days would pass without any being issued. Then we receive a pint
or less of soup made from the beans or peas before mentioned, but this, too,
suffered continued change, in the gradually increasing proportion of James
River water, and decreasing of that of the beans.
The water of the James River is doubtless excellent: it looks well—at a
distance—and is said to serve the purposes of ablution and navigation
admirably. There seems to be a limit however, to the extent of its
advantageous combination with the bean (or pea) for nutritive purposes.
This, though, was or view of the case, merely, and not shared in to any
appreciably extent by the gentlemen who were managing our boarding
house. We seemed to view the matter through allopathic spectacles, they
through homoeopathic lenses. We thought that the atomic weight of peas (or
beans) and the James River fluid were about equal, which would indicate
that the proper combining proportions would be, say a bucket of beans (or
peas) to a bucket of water. They held that the nutritive potency was increased
by the dilution, and the best results were obtainable when the symptoms of
hunger were combated by the trituration of a bucketful of the peas-beans
with a barrel of 'aqua jamesiana.'
My first experience with this “flat” soup was very instructive, if not
agreeable. I had come into prison, as did most other prisoners, absolutely
destitute of dishes, or cooking utensils. The well-used, half-canteen frying-
pan, the blackened quart cup, and the spoon, which formed the usual kitchen
outfit of the cavalryman in the field, were in the haversack on my saddle,
and were lost to me when I separated from my horse. Now, when we were

told that we were to draw soup, I was in great danger of losing my ration
from having no vessel in which to receive it. There were but few tin cups in
the prison, and these were, of course, wanted by their owners. By great good
fortune I found an empty fruit can, holding about a quart. I was also lucky
enough to find a piece from which to make a bail. I next manufactured a
spoon and knife combined from a bit of hoop-iron.

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

and, therefore, were persons of consequence and consideration to those
around us who were present or prospective borrowers.
On our side we obeyed another law of political economy: We clung to our
property with unrelaxing tenacity, made the best use of it in our intercourse
with our fellows, and only gave it up after our release and entry into a land
where the plenitude of cooking utensils of superior construction made ours
valueless. Then we flung them into the sea, with little gratitude for the great
benefit they had been to us. We were more anxious to get rid of the many
hateful recollections clustering around them.
But, to return to the alleged soup: As I started to drink my first ration it
seemed to me that there was a superfluity of bugs upon its surface. Much as I
wanted animal food, I did not care for fresh meat in that form. I skimmed
them off carefully, so as to lose as little soup as possible. But the top layer
seemed to be underlaid with another equally dense. This was also skimmed
off as deftly as possible. But beneath this appeared another layer, which,
when removed, showed still another; and so on, until I had scraped to the
bottom of the can, and the last of the bugs went with the last of my soup. I
have before spoken of the remarkable bug fecundity of the beans (or peas).
This was a demonstration of it. Every scouped out pea (or bean) which found
its way into the soup bore inside of its shell from ten to twenty of these hard-
crusted little weevil. Afterward I drank my soup without skimming. It was
not that I hated the weevil less, but that I loved the soup more. It was only
another step toward a closer conformity to that grand rule which I have made
the guiding maxim of my life:
'When I must, I had better.'
I recommend this to other young men starting on their career.

The room in which we were was barely large enough for all of us to lie
down at once. Even then it required pretty close “spooning” together —so
close in fact that all sleeping along one side would have to turn at once. It
was funny to watch this operation. All, for instance, would be lying on their
right sides. They would begin to get tired, and one of the wearied ones
would sing out to the Sergeant who was in command of the row—
“Sergeant: let's spoon the other way.”
That individual would reply:
“All right. Attention! LEFT SPOON!!” and the whole line would at once
flop over on their left sides.

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

author of the famous Maine Liquor Law. We, whose places were near the
front window, used to see him frequently on the street, accompanied by a
guard. He was allowed, we understood, to visit our sick in the hospital. His
long, snowy beard and hair gave him a venerable and commanding
appearance.
Newsboys seemed to be a thing unknown in Richmond. The papers were
sold on the streets by negro men. The one who frequented our section with
the morning journals had a mellow; rich baritone for which we would be
glad to exchange the shrill cries of our street Arabs. We long remembered
him as one of the peculiar features of Richmond. He had one unvarying
formula for proclaiming his wares. It ran in this wise:
“Great Nooze in de papahs!
“Great Nooze from Orange Coaht House, Virginny!
“Great Nooze from Alexandry, Virginny!
“Great Nooze from Washington City!
“Great Nooze from Chattanoogy, Tennessee!
“Great Nooze from Chahlston, Sou' Cahlina!
“Great Nooze in depapahs!”

It did not matter to him that the Rebels had not been at some of these
places for months. He would not change for such mere trifles as the entire
evaporation of all possible interest connected with Chattanooga and
Alexandria. He was a true Bourbon Southerner—he learned nothing and
forgot nothing.
There was a considerable trade driven between the prisoners and the guard
at the door. This was a very lucrative position for the latter, and men of a
commercial turn of mind generally managed to get stationed there. The
blockade had cut off the Confederacy's supplies from the outer world, and
the many trinkets about a man's person were in good demand at high prices.
The men of the Army of the Potomac, who were paid regularly, and were
always near their supplies, had their pockets filled with combs, silk
handkerchiefs, knives, neckties, gold pens, pencils, silver watches, playing
cards, dice, etc. Such of these as escaped appropriation by their captors and
Dick Turner, were eagerly bought by the guards, who paid fair prices in
Confederate money, or traded wheat bread, tobacco, daily papers, etc., for
them.
There was also considerable brokerage in money, and the manner of doing
this was an admirable exemplification of the folly of the “fiat” money idea.
The Rebels exhausted their ingenuity in framing laws to sustain the
purchasing power of their paper money. It was made legal tender for all
debts public and private; it was decreed that the man who refused to take it
was a public enemy; all the considerations of patriotism were rallied to its
support, and the law provided that any citizens found trafficking in the
money of the enemy—i.e., greenbacks, should suffer imprisonment in the
Penitentiary, and any soldier so offending should suffer death.

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

And be sure that the reply would be, after a furtive glance around to see
that no officer was watching:
“Yes; how much do you want for them?”
The reply was then: “Ten for one.”
“All right; how much have you got?”
The Yankee would reply; the Rebel would walk to the farther end of his
beat, count out the necessary amount, and, returning, put up one hand with it,
while with the other he caught hold of one end of the Yankee's greenback. At
the word, both would release their holds simultaneously, the exchange was
complete, and the Rebel would pace industriously up and down his beat with
the air of the school boy who “ain't been a-doin' nothing.”
There was never any risk in approaching any guard with a proposition of
this kind. I never heard of one refusing to trade for greenbacks, and if the
men on guard could not be restrained by these stringent laws, what hope
could there be of restraining anybody else?
One day we were favored with a visit from the redoubtable General John
H. Morgan, next to J. E. B. Stuart the greatest of Rebel cavalry leaders. He
had lately escaped from the Ohio Penitentiary. He was invited to Richmond
to be made a Major General, and was given a grand ovation by the citizens
and civic Government. He came into our building to visit a number of the
First Kentucky Cavalry (loyal)—captured at New Philadelphia, East
Tennessee—whom he was anxious to have exchanged for men of his own
regiment—the First Kentucky Cavalry (Rebel)—who were captured at the
same time he was. I happened to get very close to him while he was standing
there talking to his old acquaintances, and I made a mental photograph of
him, which still retains all its original distinctness. He was a tall, heavy man,
with a full, coarse, and somewhat dull face, and lazy, sluggish gray eyes. His
long black hair was carefully oiled, and turned under at the ends, as was the
custom with the rural beaux some years ago. His face was clean shaved,
except a large, sandy goatee. He wore a high silk hat, a black broadcloth
coat, Kentucky jeans pantaloons, neatly fitting boots, and no vest. There was
nothing remotely suggestive of unusual ability or force of character, and I
thought as I studied him that the sting of George D. Prentice's bon mot about
him was in its acrid truth. Said Mr. Prentice:
“Why don't somebody put a pistol to Basil Duke's head, and blow John
Morgan's brains out!” [Basil Duke was John Morgan's right hand man.]

CHAPTER XII.
REMARKS AS TO NOMENCLATURE—VACCINATION AND ITS
EFFECTS—“N'YAARKER'S” —THEIR CHARACTERISTICS AND
THEIR METHODS OF OPERATING.
Before going any further in this narrative it may be well to state that the
nomenclature employed is not used in any odious or disparaging sense. It is
simply the adoption of the usual terms employed by the soldiers of both
sides in speaking to or of each other. We habitually spoke of them and to
them, as “Rebels,” and “Johnnies ;” they of and to us, as “Yanks,” and
“Yankees.” To have said “Confederates,” “Southerners,” “Secessionists,” or
“Federalists,” “Unionists,” “Northerners” or “Nationalists,” would have
seemed useless euphemism. The plainer terms suited better, and it was a day
when things were more important than names.
For some inscrutable reason the Rebels decided to vaccinate us all. Why
they did this has been one of the unsolved problems of my life. It is true that
there was small pox in the City, and among the prisoners at Danville; but
that any consideration for our safety should have led them to order general
inoculation is not among the reasonable inferences. But, be that as it may,
vaccination was ordered, and performed. By great good luck I was absent
from the building with the squad drawing rations, when our room was
inoculated, so I escaped what was an infliction to all, and fatal to many. The
direst consequences followed the operation. Foul ulcers appeared on various
parts of the bodies of the vaccinated. In many instances the arms literally
rotted off; and death followed from a corruption of the blood. Frequently the
faces, and other parts of those who recovered, were disfigured by the ghastly
cicatrices of healed ulcers. A special friend of mine, Sergeant Frank
Beverstock—then a member of the Third Virginia Cavalry, (loyal), and after
the war a banker in Bowling Green, O.,—bore upon his temple to his dying
day, (which occurred a year ago), a fearful scar, where the flesh had
sloughed off from the effects of the virus that had tainted his blood.
This I do not pretend to account for. We thought at the time that the
Rebels had deliberately poisoned the vaccine matter with syphilitic virus,
and it was so charged upon them. I do not now believe that this was so; I can

hardly think that members of the humane profession of medicine would be
guilty of such subtle diabolism—worse even than poisoning the wells from
which an enemy must drink. The explanation with which I have satisfied
myself is that some careless or stupid practitioner took the vaccinating
lymph from diseased human bodies, and thus infected all with the blood
venom, without any conception of what he was doing. The low standard of
medical education in the South makes this theory quite plausible.
We now formed the acquaintance of a species of human vermin that
united with the Rebels, cold, hunger, lice and the oppression of distraint, to
leave nothing undone that could add to the miseries of our prison life.
These were the fledglings of the slums and dives of New York—graduates
of that metropolitan sink of iniquity where the rogues and criminals of the
whole world meet for mutual instruction in vice.
They were men who, as a rule, had never known, a day of honesty and
cleanliness in their misspent lives; whose fathers, brothers and constant
companions were roughs, malefactors and, felons; whose mothers, wives and
sisters were prostitutes, procuresses and thieves; men who had from infancy
lived in an atmosphere of sin, until it saturated every fiber of their being as a
dweller in a jungle imbibes malaria by every one of his, millions of pores,
until his very marrow is surcharged with it.
They included representatives from all nationalities, and their
descendants, but the English and Irish elements predominated. They had an
argot peculiar to themselves. It was partly made up of the “flash” language
of the London thieves, amplified and enriched by the cant vocabulary and
the jargon of crime of every European tongue. They spoke it with a peculiar
accent and intonation that made them instantly recognizable from the roughs
of all other Cities. They called themselves “N'Yaarkers;” we came to know
them as “Raiders.”

If everything in the animal world has its counterpart among men, then
these were the wolves, jackals and hyenas of the race at once cowardly and
fierce—audaciously bold when the power of numbers was on their side, and
cowardly when confronted with resolution by anything like an equality of
strength.
Like all other roughs and rascals of whatever degree, they were utterly
worthless as soldiers. There may have been in the Army some habitual
corner loafer, some fistic champion of the bar-room and brothel, some Terror
of Plug Uglyville, who was worth the salt in the hard tack he consumed, but
if there were, I did not form his acquaintance, and I never heard of any one
else who did. It was the rule that the man who was the readiest in the use of
fist and slungshot at home had the greatest diffidence about forming a close
acquaintance with cold lead in the neighborhood of the front. Thousands of

the so-called “dangerous classes” were recruited, from whom the
Government did not receive so much service as would pay for the buttons on
their uniforms. People expected that they would make themselves as
troublesome to the Rebels as they were to good citizens and the Police, but
they were only pugnacious to the provost guard, and terrible to the people in
the rear of the Army who had anything that could be stolen.
The highest type of soldier which the world has yet produced is the
intelligent, self-respecting American boy, with home, and father and mother
and friends behind him, and duty in front beckoning him on. In the sixty
centuries that war has been a profession no man has entered its ranks so
calmly resolute in confronting danger, so shrewd and energetic in his
aggressiveness, so tenacious of the defense and the assault, so certain to rise
swiftly to the level of every emergency, as the boy who, in the good old
phrase, had been “well-raised” in a Godfearing home, and went to the field
in obedience to a conviction of duty. His unfailing courage and good sense
won fights that the incompetency or cankering jealousy of commanders had
lost. High officers were occasionally disloyal, or willing to sacrifice their
country to personal pique; still more frequently they were ignorant and
inefficient; but the enlisted man had more than enough innate soldiership to
make amends for these deficiencies, and his superb conduct often brought
honors and promotions to those only who deserved shame and disaster.
Our “N'Yaarkers,” swift to see any opportunity for dishonest gain, had
taken to bounty-jumping, or, as they termed it, “leppin' the bounty,” for a
livelihood. Those who were thrust in upon us had followed this until it had
become dangerous, and then deserted to the Rebels. The latter kept them at
Castle Lightning for awhile, and then, rightly estimating their character, and
considering that it was best to trade them off for a genuine Rebel soldier,
sent them in among us, to be exchanged regularly with us. There was not so
much good faith as good policy shown by this. It was a matter of
indifference to the Rebels how soon our Government shot these deserters
after getting them in its hands again. They were only anxious to use them to
get their own men back.
The moment they came into contact with us our troubles began. They
stole whenever opportunities offered, and they were indefatigable in making
these offer; they robbed by actual force, whenever force would avail; and
more obsequious lick-spittles to power never existed—they were perpetually

on the look-out for a chance to curry favor by betraying some plan or
scheme to those who guarded us.
I saw one day a queer illustration of the audacious side of these fellows'
characters, and it shows at the same time how brazen effrontery will
sometimes get the better of courage. In a room in an adjacent building were
a number of these fellows, and a still greater number of East Tennesseeans.
These latter were simple, ignorant folks, but reasonably courageous. About
fifty of them were sitting in a group in one corner of the room, and near
them a couple or three “N'Yaarkers.” Suddenly one of the latter said with an
oath:
“I was robbed last night; I lost two silver watches, a couple of rings, and
about fifty dollars in greenbacks. I believe some of you fellers went through
me.”
This was all pure invention; he no more had the things mentioned than he
had purity of heart and a Christian spirit, but the unsophisticated
Tennesseeans did not dream of disputing his statement, and answered in
chorus:
“Oh, no, mister; we didn't take your things; we ain't that kind.”
This was like the reply of the lamb to the wolf, in the fable, and the
N'Yaarker retorted with a simulated storm of passion, and a torrent of oaths:
“—— —— I know ye did; I know some uv yez has got them; stand up
agin the wall there till I search yez!”
And that whole fifty men, any one of whom was physically equal to the
N'Yaarker, and his superior in point of real courage, actually stood against
the wall, and submitted to being searched and having taken from them the
few Confederate bills they had, and such trinkets as the searcher took a fancy
to.
I was thoroughly disgusted.

CHAPTER XIII.
BELLE ISLE—TERRIBLE SUFFERING FROM COLD AND HUNGER
—FATE OF LIEUTENANT BOISSEUX'S DOG—OUR COMPANY
MYSTERY—TERMINATION OF ALL HOPES OF ITS SOLUTION.
In February my chum—B. B. Andrews, now a physician in Astoria,
Illinois —was brought into our building, greatly to my delight and
astonishment, and from him I obtained the much desired news as to the fate
of my comrades. He told me they had been sent to Belle Isle, whither he had
gone, but succumbing to the rigors of that dreadful place, he had been taken
to the hospital, and, upon his convalesence, placed in our prison.
Our men were suffering terribly on the island. It was low, damp, and
swept by the bleak, piercing winds that howled up and down the surface of
the James. The first prisoners placed on the island had been given tents that
afforded them some shelter, but these were all occupied when our battalion
came in, so that they were compelled to lie on the snow and frozen ground,
without shelter, covering of any kind, or fire. During this time the cold had
been so intense that the James had frozen over three times.
The rations had been much worse than ours. The so-called soup had been
diluted to a ridiculous thinness, and meat had wholly disappeared. So intense
became the craving for animal food, that one day when Lieutenant Boisseux
—the Commandant—strolled into the camp with his beloved white bull-
terrier, which was as fat as a Cheshire pig, the latter was decoyed into a tent,
a blanket thrown over him, his throat cut within a rod of where his master
was standing, and he was then skinned, cut up, cooked, and furnished a
savory meal to many hungry men.

When Boisseux learned of the fate of his four-footed friend he was, of
course, intensely enraged, but that was all the good it did him. The only
revenge possible was to sentence more prisoners to ride the cruel wooden
horse which he used as a means of punishment.
Four of our company were already dead. Jacob Lowry and John Beach
were standing near the gate one day when some one snatched the guard's
blanket from the post where he had hung it, and ran. The enraged sentry
leveled his gun and fired into the crowd. The balls passed through Lowry's
and Beach's breasts. Then Charley Osgood, son of our Lieutenant, a quiet,
fair-haired, pleasant-spoken boy, but as brave and earnest as his gallant
father, sank under the combination of hunger and cold. One stinging
morning he was found stiff and stark, on the hard ground, his bright, frank
blue eyes glazed over in death.
One of the mysteries of our company was a tall, slender, elderly
Scotchman, who appeared on the rolls as William Bradford. What his past
life had been, where he had lived, what his profession, whether married or

single, no one ever knew. He came to us while in Camp of Instruction near
Springfield, Illinois, and seemed to have left all his past behind him as he
crossed the line of sentries around the camp. He never received any letters,
and never wrote any; never asked for a furlough or pass, and never expressed
a wish to be elsewhere than in camp. He was courteous and pleasant, but
very reserved. He interfered with no one, obeyed orders promptly and
without remark, and was always present for duty. Scrupulously neat in dress,
always as clean-shaved as an old-fashioned gentleman of the world, with
manners and conversation that showed him to have belonged to a refined and
polished circle, he was evidently out of place as a private soldier in a
company of reckless and none-too-refined young Illinois troopers, but he
never availed himself of any of the numerous opportunities offered to
change his associations. His elegant penmanship would have secured him an
easy berth and better society at headquarters, but he declined to accept a
detail. He became an exciting mystery to a knot of us imaginative young
cubs, who sorted up out of the reminiscential rag-bag of high colors and
strong contrasts with which the sensational literature that we most affected
had plentifully stored our minds, a half-dozen intensely emotional careers
for him. We spent much time in mentally trying these on, and discussing
which fitted him best. We were always expecting a denouement that would
come like a lightning flash and reveal his whole mysterious past, showing
him to have been the disinherited scion of some noble house, a man of high
station, who was expiating some fearful crime; an accomplished villain
eluding his pursuers—in short, a Somebody who would be a fitting hero for
Miss Braddon's or Wilkie Collins's literary purposes. We never got but two
clues of his past, and they were faint ones. One day, he left lying near me a
small copy of “Paradise Lost,” that he always carried with him. Turning over
its leaves I found all of Milton's bitter invectives against women heavily
underscored. Another time, while on guard with him, he spent much of his
time in writing some Latin verses in very elegant chirography upon the white
painted boards of a fence along which his beat ran. We pressed in all the
available knowledge of Latin about camp, and found that the tenor of the
verses was very uncomplimentary to that charming sex which does us the
honor of being our mothers and sweethearts. These evidences we accepted as
sufficient demonstration that there was a woman at the bottom of the
mystery, and made us more impatient for further developments. These were
never to come. Bradford pined away an Belle Isle, and grew weaker, but no
less reserved, each day. At length, one bitter cold night ended it all. He was

found in the morning stone dead, with his iron-gray hair frozen fast to the
ground, upon which he lay. Our mystery had to remain unsolved. There was
nothing about his person to give any hint as to his past.

CHAPTER XIV.
HOPING FOR EXCHANGE—AN EXPOSITION OF THE DOCTRINE
OF CHANCES —OFF FOR ANDERSONVILLE—UNCERTAINTY AS
TO OUR DESTINATION—ARRIVAL AT ANDERSONVILLE.
As each lagging day closed, we confidently expected that the next would
bring some news of the eagerly-desired exchange. We hopefully assured
each other that the thing could not be delayed much longer; that the Spring
was near, the campaign would soon open, and each government would make
an effort to get all its men into the field, and this would bring about a
transfer of prisoners. A Sergeant of the Seventh Indiana Infantry stated his
theory to me this way:
“You know I'm just old lightnin' on chuck-a-luck. Now the way I bet is
this: I lay down, say on the ace, an' it don't come up; I just double my bet on
the ace, an' keep on doublin' every time it loses, until at last it comes up an'
then I win a bushel o' money, and mebbe bust the bank. You see the thing's
got to come up some time; an' every time it don't come up makes it more
likely to come up the next time. It's just the same way with this 'ere
exchange. The thing's got to happen some day, an' every day that it don't
happen increases the chances that it will happen the next day.”
Some months later I folded the sanguine Sergeant's stiffening hands
together across his fleshless ribs, and helped carry his body out to the dead-
house at Andersonville, in order to get a piece of wood to cook my ration of
meal with.
On the evening of the 17th of February, 1864, we were ordered to get
ready to move at daybreak the next morning. We were certain this could
mean nothing else than exchange, and our exaltation was such that we did
little sleeping that night. The morning was very cold, but we sang and joked
as we marched over the creaking bridge, on our way to the cars. We were
packed so tightly in these that it was impossible to even sit down, and we
rolled slow ly away after a wheezing engine to Petersburg, whence we
expected to march to the exchange post. We reached Petersburg before noon,
and the cars halted there along time, we momentarily expecting an order to
get out. Then the train started up and moved out of the City toward the

southeast. This was inexplicable, but after we had proceeded this way for
several hours some one conceived the idea that the Rebels, to avoid treating
with Butler, were taking us into the Department of some other commander to
exchange us. This explanation satisfied us, and our spirits rose again.
Night found us at Gaston, N. C., where we received a few crackers for
rations, and changed cars. It was dark, and we resorted to a little strategy to
secure more room. About thirty of us got into a tight box car, and
immediately announced that it was too full to admit any more. When an
officer came along with another squad to stow away, we would yell out to
him to take some of the men out, as we were crowded unbearably. In the
mean time everybody in the car would pack closely around the door, so as to
give the impression that the car was densely crowded. The Rebel would look
convinced, and demand:
“Why, how many men have you got in de cah?”
Then one of us would order the imaginary host in the invisible recesses to
—
“Stand still there, and be counted,” while he would gravely count up to
one hundred or one hundred and twenty, which was the utmost limit of the
car, and the Rebel would hurry off to put his prisoners somewhere else. We
managed to play this successfully during the whole journey, and not only
obtained room to lie down in the car, but also drew three or four times as
many rations as were intended for us, so that while we at no time had
enough, we were farther from starvation than our less strategic companions.
The second afternoon we arrived at Raleigh, the capitol of North Carolina,
and were camped in a piece of timber, and shortly after dark orders were
issued to us all to lie flat on the ground and not rise up till daylight. About
the middle of the night a man belonging to a New Jersey regiment, who had
apparently forgotten the order, stood up, and was immediately shot dead by
the guard.
For four or five days more the decrepit little locomotive strained along,
dragging after it the rattling' old cars. The scenery was intensely
monotonous. It was a flat, almost unending, stretch of pine barrens and the
land so poor that a disgusted Illinoisan, used to the fertility of the great
American Bottom, said rather strongly, that,
“By George, they'd have to manure this ground before they could even
make brick out of it.”

It was a surprise to all of us who had heard so much of the wealth of
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to find the soil a
sterile sand bank, interspersed with swamps.
We had still no idea of where we were going. We only knew that our
general course was southward, and that we had passed through the
Carolinas, and were in Georgia. We furbished up our school knowledge of
geography and endeavored to recall something of the location of Raleigh,
Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta, through which we passed, but the attempt
was not a success.
Late on the afternoon of the 25th of February the Seventh Indiana
Sergeant approached me with the inquiry:
“Do you know where Macon is?”
The place had not then become as well known as it was afterward.
It seemed to me that I had read something of Macon in Revolutionary
history, and that it was a fort on the sea coast. He said that the guard had told
him that we were to be taken to a point near that place, and we agreed that it
was probably a new place of exchange. A little later we passed through the
town of Macon, Ga, and turned upon a road that led almost due south.
About midnight the train stopped, and we were ordered off. We were in
the midst of a forest of tall trees that loaded the air with the heavy balsamic
odor peculiar to pine trees. A few small rude houses were scattered around
near.
Stretching out into the darkness was a double row of great heaps of
burning pitch pine, that smoked and flamed fiercely, and lit up a little space
around in the somber forest with a ruddy glare. Between these two rows lay
a road, which we were ordered to take.
The scene was weird and uncanny. I had recently read the “Iliad,” and the
long lines of huge fires reminded me of that scene in the first book, where
the Greeks burn on the sea shore the bodies of those smitten by Apollo's
pestilential-arrows
For nine long nights, through all the dusky air,
The pyres, thick flaming shot a dismal glare.
Five hundred weary men moved along slowly through double lines of
guards. Five hundred men marched silently towards the gates that were to
shut out life and hope from most of them forever. A quarter of a mile from

the railroad we came to a massive palisade of great squared logs standing
upright in the ground. The fires blazed up and showed us a section of these,
and two massive wooden gates, with heavy iron hinges and bolts. They
swung open as we stood there and we passed through into the space beyond.
We were in Andersonville.

CHAPTER XV.
GEORGIA—A LEAN AND HUNGRY LAND—DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN UPPER AND LOWER GEORGIA—THE PILLAGE OF
ANDERSONVILLE.
As the next nine months of the existence of those of us who survived were
spent in intimate connection with the soil of Georgia, and, as it exercised a
potential influence upon our comfort and well-being, or rather lack of these
—a mention of some of its peculiar characteristics may help the reader to a
fuller comprehension of the conditions surrounding us—our environment, as
Darwin would say.
Georgia, which, next to Texas, is the largest State in the South, and has
nearly twenty-five per cent. more area than the great State of New York, is
divided into two distinct and widely differing sections, by a geological line
extending directly across the State from Augusta, on the Savannah River,
through Macon, on the Ocmulgee, to Columbus, on the Chattahoochie. That
part lying to the north and west of this line is usually spoken of as “Upper
Georgia;” while that lying to the south and east, extending to the Atlantic
Ocean and the Florida line, is called “Lower Georgia.” In this part of the
State—though far removed from each other—were the prisons of
Andersonville, Savannah, Millen and Blackshear, in which we were
incarcerated one after the other.
Upper Georgia—the capital of which is Atlanta—is a fruitful, productive,
metalliferous region, that will in time become quite wealthy. Lower Georgia,
which has an extent about equal to that of Indiana, is not only poorer now
than a worn-out province of Asia Minor, but in all probability will ever
remain so.

It is a starved, sterile land, impressing one as a desert in the first stages of
reclamation into productive soil, or a productive soil in the last steps of
deterioration into a desert. It is a vast expanse of arid, yellow sand, broken at
intervals by foul swamps, with a jungle-life growth of unwholesome
vegetation, and teeming With venomous snakes, and all manner of hideous
crawling thing.
The original forest still stands almost unbroken on this wide stretch of
thirty thousand square miles, but it does not cover it as we say of forests in
more favored lands. The tall, solemn pines, upright and symmetrical as huge
masts, and wholly destitute of limbs, except the little, umbrella-like crest at
the very top, stand far apart from each other in an unfriendly isolation. There
is no fraternal interlacing of branches to form a kindly, umbrageous shadow.
Between them is no genial undergrowth of vines, shrubs, and demi-trees,
generous in fruits, berries and nuts, such as make one of the charms of
Northern forests. On the ground is no rich, springing sod of emerald green,
fragrant with the elusive sweetness of white clover, and dainty flowers, but a

sparse, wiry, famished grass, scattered thinly over the surface in tufts and
patches, like the hair on a mangy cur.
The giant pines seem to have sucked up into their immense boles all the
nutriment in the earth, and starved out every minor growth. So wide and
clean is the space between them, that one can look through the forest in any
direction for miles, with almost as little interference with the view as on a
prairie. In the swampier parts the trees are lower, and their limbs are hung
with heavy festoons of the gloomy Spanish moss, or “death moss,” as it is
more frequently called, because where it grows rankest the malaria is the
deadliest. Everywhere Nature seems sad, subdued and somber.
I have long entertained a peculiar theory to account for the decadence and
ruin of countries. My reading of the world's history seems to teach me that
when a strong people take possession of a fertile land, they reduce it to
cultivation, thrive upon its bountifulness, multiply into millions the mouths
to be fed from it, tax it to the last limit of production of the necessities of
life, take from it continually, and give nothing back, starve and overwork it
as cruel, grasping men do a servant or a beast, and when at last it breaks
down under the strain, it revenges itself by starving many of them with great
famines, while the others go off in search of new countries to put through the
same process of exhaustion. We have seen one country after another undergo
this process as the seat of empire took its westward way, from the cradle of
the race on the banks of the Oxus to the fertile plains in the Valley of the
Euphrates. Impoverishing these, men next sought the Valley of the Nile, then
the Grecian Peninsula; next Syracuse and the Italian Peninsula, then the
Iberian Peninsula, and the African shores of the Mediterranean. Exhausting
all these, they were deserted for the French, German and English portions of
Europe. The turn of the latter is now come; famines are becoming terribly
frequent, and mankind is pouring into the virgin fields of America.
Lower Georgia, the Carolinas and Eastern Virginia have all the
characteristics of these starved and worn-out lands. It would seem as if,
away back in the distance of ages, some numerous and civilized race had
drained from the soil the last atom of food-producing constituents, and that it
is now slowly gathering back, as the centuries pass, the elements that have
been wrung from the land.
Lower Georgia is very thinly settled. Much of the land is still in the hands
of the Government. The three or four railroads which pass through it have
little reference to local traffic. There are no towns along them as a rule;

stations are made every ten miles, and not named, but numbered, as “Station
No. 4”—“No. 10”, etc. The roads were built as through lines, to bring to the
seaboard the rich products of the interior.
Andersonville is one of the few stations dignified with a same, probably
because it contained some half dozen of shabby houses, whereas at the
others there was usually nothing more than a mere open shed, to shelter
goods and travelers. It is on a rudely constructed, rickety railroad, that runs
from Macon to Albany, the head of navigation on the Flint River, which is,
one hundred and six miles from Macon, and two hundred and fifty from the
Gulf of Mexico. Andersonville is about sixty miles from Macon, and,
consequently, about three hundred miles from the Gulf. The camp was
merely a hole cut in the wilderness. It was as remote a point from, our
armies, as they then lay, as the Southern Confederacy could give. The
nearest was Sherman, at Chattanooga, four hundred miles away, and on the
other side of a range of mountains hundreds of miles wide.
To us it seemed beyond the last forlorn limits of civilization. We felt that
we were more completely at the mercy of our foes than ever. While in
Richmond we were in the heart of the Confederacy; we were in the midst of
the Rebel military and, civil force, and were surrounded on every hand by
visible evidences of the great magnitude of that power, but this, while it
enforced our ready submission, did not overawe us depressingly, We knew
that though the Rebels were all about us in great force, our own men were
also near, and in still greater force—that while they were very strong our
army was still stronger, and there was no telling what day this superiority of
strength, might be demonstrated in such a way as to decisively benefit us.
But here we felt as did the Ancient Mariner:
Alone on a wide, wide sea,
So lonely 'twas that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

CHAPTER XVI.
WAKING UP IN ANDERSONVILLE—SOME DESCRIPTION OF THE
PLACE—OUR FIRST MAIL—BUILDING SHELTER—GEN. WINDER
—HIMSELF AND LINEAGE.
We roused up promptly with the dawn to take a survey of our new abiding
place. We found ourselves in an immense pen, about one thousand feet long
by eight hundred wide, as a young surveyor—a member of the Thirty-fourth
Ohio—informed us after he had paced it off. He estimated that it contained
about sixteen acres. The walls were formed by pine logs twenty-five feet
long, from two to three feet in diameter, hewn square, set into the ground to
a depth of five feet, and placed so close together as to leave no crack through
which the country outside could be seen. There being five feet of the logs in
the ground, the wall was, of course, twenty feet high. This manner of
enclosure was in some respects superior to a wall of masonry. It was equally
unscalable, and much more difficult to undermine or batter down.
The pen was longest due north and south. It was divided in the center by a
creek about a yard wide and ten inches deep, running from west to east. On
each side of this was a quaking bog of slimy ooze one hundred and fifty feet
wide, and so yielding that one attempting to walk upon it would sink to the
waist. From this swamp the sand-hills sloped north and south to the
stockade. All the trees inside the stockade, save two, had been cut down and
used in its construction. All the rank vegetation of the swamp had also been
cut off.
There were two entrances to the stockade, one on each side of the creek,
midway between it and the ends, and called respectively the “North Gate”
and the “South Gate.” These were constructed double, by building smaller
stockades around them on the outside, with another set of gates. When
prisoners or wagons with rations were brought in, they were first brought
inside the outer gates, which were carefully secured, before the inner gates
were opened. This was done to prevent the gates being carried by a rush by
those confined inside.
At regular intervals along the palisades were little perches, upon which
stood guards, who overlooked the whole inside of the prison.

The only view we had of the outside was that obtained by looking from
the highest points of the North or South Sides across the depression where
the stockade crossed the swamp. In this way we could see about forty acres
at a time of the adjoining woodland, or say one hundred and sixty acres
altogether, and this meager landscape had to content us for the next half year.
Before our inspection was finished, a wagon drove in with rations, and a
quart of meal, a sweet potato and a few ounces of salt beef were issued to
each one of us.
In a few minutes we were all hard at work preparing our first meal in
Andersonville. The debris of the forest left a temporary abundance of fuel,
and we had already a cheerful fire blazing for every little squad. There were
a number of tobacco presses in the rooms we occupied in Richmond, and to
each of these was a quantity of sheets of tin, evidently used to put between
the layers of tobacco. The deft hands of the mechanics among us bent these
up into square pans, which were real handy cooking utensils, holding about
—a quart. Water was carried in them from the creek; the meal mixed in them
to a dough, or else boiled as mush in the same vessels; the potatoes were
boiled; and their final service was to hold a little meal to be carefully
browned, and then water boiled upon it, so as to form a feeble imitation of
coffee. I found my education at Jonesville in the art of baking a hoe-cake
now came in good play, both for myself and companions. Taking one of the
pieces of tin which had not yet been made into a pan, we spread upon it a
layer of dough about a half-inch thick. Propping this up nearly upright
before the fire, it was soon nicely browned over. This process made it sweat
itself loose from the tin, when it was turned over and the bottom browned
also. Save that it was destitute of salt, it was quite a toothsome bit of
nutriment for a hungry man, and I recommend my readers to try making a
“pone” of this kind once, just to see what it was like.

The supreme indifference with which the Rebels always treated the matter
of cooking utensils for us, excited my wonder. It never seemed to occur to
them that we could have any more need of vessels for our food than cattle or
swine. Never, during my whole prison life, did I see so much as a tin cup or
a bucket issued to a prisoner. Starving men were driven to all sorts of shifts
for want of these. Pantaloons or coats were pulled off and their sleeves or
legs used to draw a mess's meal in. Boots were common vessels for carrying
water, and when the feet of these gave way the legs were ingeniously closed
up with pine pegs, so as to form rude leathern buckets. Men whose pocket
knives had escaped the search at the gates made very ingenious little tubs
and buckets, and these devices enabled us to get along after a fashion.
After our meal was disposed of, we held a council on the situation.
Though we had been sadly disappointed in not being exchanged, it seemed
that on the whole our condition had been bettered. This first ration was a
decided improvement on those of the Pemberton building; we had left the
snow and ice behind at Richmond—or rather at some place between Raleigh,
N. C., and Columbia, S. C.—and the air here, though chill, was not nipping,
but bracing. It looked as if we would have a plenty of wood for shelter and
fuel, it was certainly better to have sixteen acres to roam over than the
stiffing confines of a building; and, still better, it seemed as if there would be

plenty of opportunities to get beyond the stockade, and attempt a journey
through the woods to that blissful land —“Our lines.”
We settled down to make the best of things. A Rebel Sergeant came in
presently and arranged us in hundreds. We subdivided these into messes of
twenty-five, and began devising means for shelter. Nothing showed the
inborn capacity of the Northern soldier to take care of himself better than the
way in which we accomplished this with the rude materials at our command.
No ax, spade nor mattock was allowed us by the Rebels, who treated us in
regard to these the same as in respect to culinary vessels. The only tools
were a few pocket-knives, and perhaps half-a-dozen hatchets which some
infantrymen-principally members of the Third Michigan—were allowed to
retain. Yet, despite all these drawbacks, we had quite a village of huts
erected in a few days,—nearly enough, in fact, to afford tolerable shelter for
the whole five hundred of us first-comers.
The wither and poles that grew in the swamp were bent into the shape of
the semi-circular bows that support the canvas covers of army wagons, and
both ends thrust in the ground. These formed the timbers of our dwellings.
They were held in place by weaving in, basket-wise, a network of briers and
vines. Tufts of the long leaves which are the distinguishing characteristic of
the Georgia pine (popularly known as the “long-leaved pine”) were wrought
into this network until a thatch was formed, that was a fair protection against
the rain—it was like the Irishman's unglazed window-sash, which “kep' out
the coarsest uv the cold.”
The results accomplished were as astonishing to us as to the Rebels, who
would have lain unsheltered upon the sand until bleached out like field-
rotted flax, before thinking to protect themselves in this way. As our village
was approaching completion, the Rebel Sergeant who called the roll entered.
He was very odd-looking. The cervical muscles were distorted in such a way
as to suggest to us the name of “Wry-necked Smith,” by which we always
designated him. Pete Bates, of the Third Michigan, who was the wag of our
squad, accounted for Smith's condition by saying that while on dress parade
once the Colonel of Smith's regiment had commanded “eyes right,” and then
forgot to give the order “front.” Smith, being a good soldier, had kept his
eyes in the position of gazing at the buttons of the third man to the right,
waiting for the order to restore them to their natural direction, until they had
become permanently fixed in their obliquity and he was compelled to go
through life taking a biased view of all things.

Smith walked in, made a diagonal survey of the encampment, which, if he
had ever seen “Mitchell's Geography,” probably reminded him of the picture
of a Kaffir village, in that instructive but awfully dull book, and then
expressed the opinion that usually welled up to every Rebel's lips:
“Well, I'll be durned, if you Yanks don't just beat the devil.”
Of course, we replied with the well-worn prison joke, that we supposed
we did, as we beat the Rebels, who were worse than the devil.
There rode in among us, a few days after our arrival, an old man whose
collar bore the wreathed stars of a Major General. Heavy white locks fell
from beneath his slouched hat, nearly to his shoulders. Sunken gray eyes, too
dull and cold to light up, marked a hard, stony face, the salient feature of
which was a thin-upped, compressed mouth, with corners drawn down
deeply—the mouth which seems the world over to be the index of selfish,
cruel, sulky malignance. It is such a mouth as has the school-boy—the
coward of the play ground, who delights in pulling off the wings of flies. It
is such a mouth as we can imagine some remorseless inquisitor to have had
—that is, not an inquisitor filled with holy zeal for what he mistakenly
thought the cause of Christ demanded, but a spleeny, envious, rancorous
shaveling, who tortured men from hatred of their superiority to him, and
sheer love of inflicting pain.
The rider was John H. Winder, Commissary General of Prisoners,
Baltimorean renegade and the malign genius to whose account should be
charged the deaths of more gallant men than all the inquisitors of the world
ever slew by the less dreadful rack and wheel. It was he who in August could
point to the three thousand and eighty-one new made graves for that month,
and exultingly tell his hearer that he was “doing more for the Confederacy
than twenty regiments.”

His lineage was in accordance with his character. His father was that
General William H. Winder, whose poltroonery at Bladensburg, in 1814,
nullified the resistance of the gallant Commodore Barney, and gave
Washington to the British.
The father was a coward and an incompetent; the son, always cautiously
distant from the scene of hostilities, was the tormentor of those whom the
fortunes of war, and the arms of brave men threw into his hands.
Winder gazed at us stonily for a few minutes without speaking, and,
turning, rode out again.
Our troubles, from that hour, rapidly increased.

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

by house servants, but none were retaken where a field hand could prevent
it.
We were much interested in watching the negro work. They wove in a
great deal of their peculiar, wild, mournful music, whenever the character of
the labor permitted. They seemed to sing the music for the music's sake
alone, and were as heedless of the fitness of the accompanying words, as the
composer of a modern opera is of his libretto. One middle aged man, with a
powerful, mellow baritone, like the round, full notes of a French horn,
played by a virtuoso, was the musical leader of the party. He never seemed
to bother himself about air, notes or words, but improvised all as he went
along, and he sang as the spirit moved him. He would suddenly break out
with—
“Oh, he's gone up dah, nevah to come back agin,”
At this every darkey within hearing would roll out, in admirable
consonance with the pitch, air and time started by the leader—
“O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!”
Then would ring out from the leader as from the throbbing lips of a silver
trumpet,
“Lord bress him soul; I done hope he is happy now!”
And the antiphonal two hundred would chant back
“O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!”
And so on for hours. They never seemed to weary of singing, and we
certainly did not of listening to them. The absolute independence of the
conventionalities of tune and sentiment, gave them freedom to wander
through a kaleideoscopic variety of harmonic effects, as spontaneous and
changeful as the song of a bird.

I sat one evening, long after the shadows of night had fallen upon the
hillside, with one of my chums—a Frank Berkstresser, of the Ninth
Maryland Infantry, who before enlisting was a mathematical tutor in college
at Hancock, Maryland. As we listened to the unwearying flow of melody
from the camp of the laborers, I thought of and repeated to him Longfellow's
fine lines:
THE SLAVE SINGING AT MIDNIGHT.
And the voice of his devotion
Filled my soul with strong emotion;
For its tones by turns were glad
Sweetly solemn, wildly sad.
Paul and Silas, in their prison,

Sang of Christ, the Lord arisen,
And an earthquake's arm of might
Broke their dungeon gates at night.
But, alas, what holy angel
Brings the slave this glad evangel
And what earthquake's arm of might.
Breaks his prison gags at night.
Said I: “Now, isn't that fine, Berkstresser?”
He was a Democrat, of fearfully pro-slavery ideas, and he replied,
sententiously:
“O, the poetry's tolerable, but the sentiment's damnable.”

CHAPTER XVIII.
SCHEMES AND PLANS TO ESCAPE—SCALING THE STOCKADE
—ESTABLISHING THE DEAD LINE—THE FIRST MAN KILLED.
The official designation of our prison was “Camp Sumpter,” but this was
scarcely known outside of the Rebel documents, reports and orders. It was
the same way with the prison five miles from Millen, to which we were
afterward transferred. The Rebels styled it officially “Camp Lawton,” but we
called it always “Millen.”
Having our huts finished, the next solicitude was about escape, and this
was the burden of our thoughts, day and night. We held conferences, at
which every man was required to contribute all the geographical knowledge
of that section of Georgia that he might have left over from his schoolboy
days, and also that gained by persistent questioning of such guards and other
Rebels as he had come in contact with. When first landed in the prison we
were as ignorant of our whereabouts as if we had been dropped into the
center of Africa. But one of the prisoners was found to have a fragment of a
school atlas, in which was an outline map of Georgia, that had Macon,
Atlanta, Milledgeville, and Savannah laid down upon it. As we knew we had
come southward from Macon, we felt pretty certain we were in the
southwestern corner of the State. Conversations with guards and others gave
us the information that the Chattahooche flowed some two score of miles to
the westward, and that the Flint lay a little nearer on the east. Our map
showed that these two united and flowed together into Appalachicola Bay,
where, some of us remembered, a newspaper item had said that we had
gunboats stationed. The creek that ran through the stockade flowed to the
east, and we reasoned that if we followed its course we would be led to the
Flint, down which we could float on a log or raft to the Appalachicola. This
was the favorite scheme of the party with which I sided. Another party
believed the most feasible plan was to go northward, and endeavor to gain
the mountains, and thence get into East Tennessee.
But the main thing was to get away from the stockade; this, as the French
say of all first steps, was what would cost.

Our first attempt was made about a week after our arrival. We found two
logs on the east side that were a couple of feet shorter than the rest, and it
seemed as if they could be successfully scaled. About fifty of us resolved to
make the attempt. We made a rope twenty-five or thirty feet long, and strong
enough to bear a man, out of strings and strips of cloth. A stout stick was
fastened to the end, so that it would catch on the logs on either side of the
gap. On a night dark enough to favor our scheme, we gathered together,

drew cuts to determine each boy's place in the line, fell in single rank,
according to this arrangement, and marched to the place. The line was
thrown skillfully, the stick caught fairly in the notch, and the boy who had
drawn number one climbed up amid a suspense so keen that I could hear my
heart beating. It seemed ages before he reached the top, and that the noise he
made must certainly attract the attention of the guard. It did not. We saw our
comrade's. figure outlined against the sky as he slid, over the top, and then
heard the dull thump as he sprang to the ground on the other side. “Number
two,” was whispered by our leader, and he performed the feat as successfully
as his predecessor. “Number, three,” and he followed noiselessly and
quickly. Thus it went on, until, just as we heard number fifteen drop, we also
heard a Rebel voice say in a vicious undertone:
“Halt! halt, there, d—n you!”
This was enough. The game was up; we were discovered, and the
remaining thirty-five of us left that locality with all the speed in our heels,
getting away just in time to escape a volley which a squad of guards, posted
in the lookouts, poured upon the spot where we had been standing.
The next morning the fifteen who had got over the Stockade were brought
in, each chained to a sixty-four pound ball. Their story was that one of the
N'Yaarkers, who had become cognizant of our scheme, had sought to obtain
favor in the Rebel eyes by betraying us. The Rebels stationed a squad at the
crossing place, and as each man dropped down from the Stockade he was
caught by the shoulder, the muzzle of a revolver thrust into his face, and an
order to surrender whispered into his ear. It was expected that the guards in
the sentry-boxes would do such execution among those of us still inside as
would prove a warning to other would-be escapes. They were defeated in
this benevolent intention by the readiness with which we divined the
meaning of that incautiously loud halt, and our alacrity in leaving the
unhealthy locality.
The traitorous N'Yaarker was rewarded with a detail into the commissary
department, where he fed and fattened like a rat that had secured undisturbed
homestead rights in the center of a cheese. When the miserable remnant of
us were leaving Andersonville months afterward, I saw him, sleek, rotund,
and well-clothed, lounging leisurely in the door of a tent. He regarded us a
moment contemptuously, and then went on conversing with a fellow
N'Yaarker, in the foul slang that none but such as he were low enough to use.

I have always imagined that the fellow returned home, at the close of the
war, and became a prominent member of Tweed's gang.
We protested against the barbarity of compelling men to wear irons for
exercising their natural right of attempting to escape, but no attention was
paid to our protest.
Another result of this abortive effort was the establishment of the
notorious “Dead Line.” A few days later a gang of negros came in and drove
a line of stakes down at a distance of twenty feet from the stockade. They
nailed upon this a strip of stuff four inches wide, and then an order was
issued that if this was crossed, or even touched, the guards would fire upon
the offender without warning.
Our surveyor figured up this new contraction of our space, and came to
the conclusion that the Dead Line and the Swamp took up about three acres,
and we were left now only thirteen acres. This was not of much consequence
then, however, as we still had plenty of room.
The first man was killed the morning after the Dead-Line was put up. The
victim was a German, wearing the white crescent of the Second Division of
the Eleventh Corps, whom we had nicknamed “Sigel.” Hardship and
exposure had crazed him, and brought on a severe attack of St. Vitus's dance.
As he went hobbling around with a vacuous grin upon his face, he spied an
old piece of cloth lying on the ground inside the Dead Line. He stooped
down and reached under for it. At that instant the guard fired. The charge of
ball-and-buck entered the poor old fellow's shoulder and tore through his
body. He fell dead, still clutching the dirty rag that had cost him his Life.

CHAPTER XIX.
CAPT. HENRI WIRZ—SOME DESCRIPTION OF A SMALL-MINDED
PERSONAGE, WHO GAINED GREAT NOTORIETY—FIRST
EXPERIENCE WITH HIS DISCIPLINARY METHOD.
The emptying of the prisons at Danville and Richmond into Andersonville
went on slowly during the month of March. They came in by train loads of
from five hundred to eight hundred, at intervals of two or three days. By the
end of the month there were about five thousand in the stockade. There was
a fair amount of space for this number, and as yet we suffered no
inconvenience from our crowding, though most persons would fancy that
thirteen acres of ground was a rather limited area for five thousand men to
live, move and have their being a upon. Yet a few weeks later we were to see
seven times that many packed into that space.
One morning a new Rebel officer came in to superintend calling the roll.
He was an undersized, fidgety man, with an insignificant face, and a mouth
that protruded like a rabbit's. His bright little eyes, like those of a squirrel or
a rat, assisted in giving his countenance a look of kinship to the family of
rodent animals—a genus which lives by stealth and cunning, subsisting on
that which it can steal away from stronger and braver creatures. He was
dressed in a pair of gray trousers, with the other part of his body covered
with a calico garment, like that which small boys used to wear, called
“waists.” This was fastened to the pantaloons by buttons, precisely as was
the custom with the garments of boys struggling with the orthography of
words in two syllables. Upon his head was perched a little gray cap. Sticking
in his belt, and fastened to his wrist by a strap two or three feet long, was
one of those formidable looking, but harmless English revolvers, that have
ten barrels around the edge of the cylinder, and fire a musket-bullet from the
center. The wearer of this composite costume, and bearer of this amateur
arsenal, stepped nervously about and sputtered volubly in very broken
English. He said to Wry-Necked Smith:
“Py Gott, you don't vatch dem dam Yankees glose enough! Dey are
schlippin' rount, and peatin' you efery dimes.”

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

of a peevish, snarling little temper, united to a mind incapable of conceiving
the results of his acts, or understanding the pain he was Inflicting.
I never heard anything of his profession or vocation before entering the
army. I always believed, however, that he had been a cheap clerk in a small
dry-goods store, a third or fourth rate book-keeper, or something similar.
Imagine, if you please, one such, who never had brains or self-command
sufficient to control himself, placed in command of thirty-five thousand
men. Being a fool he could not help being an infliction to them, even with
the best of intentions, and Wirz was not troubled with good intentions.
I mention the probability of his having been a dry-goods clerk or book-
keeper, not with any disrespect to two honorable vocations, but because Wirz
had had some training as an accountant, and this was what gave him the
place over us. Rebels, as a rule, are astonishingly ignorant of arithmetic and
accounting, generally. They are good shots, fine horsemen, ready speakers
and ardent politicians, but, like all noncommercial people, they flounder
hopelessly in what people of this section would consider simple
mathematical processes. One of our constant amusements was in befogging
and “beating” those charged with calling rolls and issuing rations. It was not
at all difficult at times to make a hundred men count as a hundred and ten,
and so on.
Wirz could count beyond one hundred, and this determined his selection
for the place. His first move was a stupid change. We had been grouped in
the natural way into hundreds and thousands. He re-arranged the men in
“squads” of ninety, and three of these—two hundred and seventy men —into
a “detachment.” The detachments were numbered in order from the North
Gate, and the squads were numbered “one, two, three.” On the rolls this was
stated after the man's name. For instance, a chum of mine, and in the same
squad with me, was Charles L. Soule, of the Third Michigan Infantry. His
name appeared on the rolls:
“Chas. L. Soule, priv. Co. E, 8d Mich. Inf., 1-2.”
That is, he belonged to the Second Squad of the First Detachment.
Where Wirz got his, preposterous idea of organization from has always
been a mystery to me. It was awkward in every way—in drawing rations,
counting, dividing into messes, etc.
Wirz was not long in giving us a taste of his quality. The next morning
after his first appearance he came in when roll-call was sounded, and

ordered all the squads and detachments to form, and remain standing in
ranks until all were counted. Any soldier will say that there is no duty more
annoying and difficult than standing still in ranks for any considerable length
of time, especially when there is nothing to do or to engage the attention. It
took Wirz between two and three hours to count the whole camp, and by that
time we of the first detachments were almost all out of ranks. Thereupon
Wirz announced that no rations would be issued to the camp that day. The
orders to stand in ranks were repeated the next morning, with a warning that
a failure to obey would be punished as that of the previous day had been.
Though we were so hungry, that, to use the words of a Thirty-Fifth
Pennsylvanian standing next to me—his “big intestines were eating his little
ones up,” it was impossible to keep the rank formation during the long
hours. One man after another straggled away, and again we lost our rations.
That afternoon we became desperate. Plots were considered for a daring
assault to force the gates or scale the stockade. The men were crazy enough
to attempt anything rather than sit down and patiently starve. Many offered
themselves as leaders in any attempt that it might be thought best to make.
The hopelessness of any such venture was apparent, even to famished men,
and the propositions went no farther than inflammatory talk.
The third morning the orders were again repeated. This time we succeeded
in remaining in ranks in such a manner as to satisfy Wirz, and we were given
our rations for that day, but those of the other days were permanently
withheld.
That afternoon Wirz ventured into camp alone. He was assailed with a
storm of curses and execrations, and a shower of clubs. He pulled out his
revolver, as if to fire upon his assailants. A yell was raised to take his pistol
away from him and a crowd rushed forward to do this. Without waiting to
fire a shot, he turned and ran to the gate for dear life. He did not come in
again for a long while, and never afterward without a retinue of guards.

CHAPTER XX.
PRIZE-FIGHT AMONG THE N'YAARKERS—A GREAT MANY
FORMALITIES, AND LITTLE BLOOD SPILT—A FUTILE ATTEMPT
TO RECOVER A WATCH—DEFEAT OF THE LAW AND ORDER
PARTY.
One of the train-loads from Richmond was almost wholly made up of our
old acquaintances—the N'Yaarkers. The number of these had swelled to four
hundred or five hundred—all leagued together in the fellowship of crime.
We did not manifest any keen desire for intimate social relations with
them, and they did not seem to hunger for our society, so they moved across
the creek to the unoccupied South Side, and established their camp there, at
a considerable distance from us.
One afternoon a number of us went across to their camp, to witness a fight
according to the rules of the Prize Ring, which was to come off between two
professional pugilists. These were a couple of bounty-jumpers who had
some little reputation in New York sporting circles, under the names of the
“Staleybridge Chicken” and the “Haarlem Infant.”
On the way from Richmond a cast-iron skillet, or spider, had been stolen
by the crowd from the Rebels. It was a small affair, holding a half gallon,
and worth to-day about fifty cents. In Andersonville its worth was literally
above rubies. Two men belonging to different messes each claimed the
ownership of the utensil, on the ground of being most active in securing it.
Their claims were strenuously supported by their respective messes, at the
heads of which were the aforesaid Infant and Chicken. A great deal of strong
talk, and several indecisive knock-downs resulted in an agreement to settle
the matter by wager of battle between the Infant and Chicken.
When we arrived a twenty-four foot ring had been prepared by drawing a
deep mark in the sand. In diagonally opposite corners of these the seconds
were kneeling on one knee and supporting their principals on the other by
their sides they had little vessels of water, and bundles of rags to answer for
sponges. Another corner was occupied by the umpire, a foul-mouthed, loud-
tongued Tombs shyster, named Pete Bradley. A long-bodied, short-legged
hoodlum, nick-named “Heenan,” armed with a club, acted as ring keeper,

and “belted” back, remorselessly, any of the spectators who crowded over
the line. Did he see a foot obtruding itself so much as an inch over the mark
in the sand—and the pressure from the crowd behind was so great that it was
difficult for the front fellows to keep off the line—his heavy club and a
blasting curse would fall upon the offender simultaneously.

Every effort was made to have all things conform as nearly as possible to
the recognized practices of the “London Prize Ring.”
At Bradley's call of “Time!” the principals would rise from their seconds'
knees, advance briskly to the scratch across the center of the ring, and spar
away sharply for a little time, until one got in a blow that sent the other to
the ground, where he would lie until his second picked him up, carried him

back, washed his face off, and gave him a drink. He then rested until the next
call of time.
This sort of performance went on for an hour or more, with the
knockdowns and other casualities pretty evenly divided between the two.
Then it became apparent that the Infant was getting more than he had storage
room for. His interest in the skillet was evidently abating, the leering grin he
wore upon his face during the early part of the engagement had disappeared
long ago, as the successive “hot ones” which the Chicken had succeeded in
planting upon his mouth, put it out of his power to “smile and smile,” “e'en
though he might still be a villain.” He began coming up to the scratch as
sluggishly as a hired man starting out for his day's work, and finally he did
not come up at all. A bunch of blood soaked rags was tossed into the air from
his corner, and Bradley declared the Chicken to be the victor, amid
enthusiastic cheers from the crowd.
We voted the thing rather tame. In the whole hour and a-half there was not
so much savage fighting, not so much damage done, as a couple of earnest,
but unscientific men, who have no time to waste, will frequently crowd into
an impromptu affair not exceeding five minutes in duration.
Our next visit to the N'Yaarkers was on a different errand. The moment
they arrived in camp we began to be annoyed by their depredations. Blankets
—the sole protection of men—would be snatched off as they slept at night.
Articles of clothing and cooking utensils would go the same way, and
occasionally a man would be robbed in open daylight. All these, it was
believed, with good reason, were the work of the N'Yaarkers, and the stolen
things were conveyed to their camp. Occasionally depredators would be
caught and beaten, but they would give a signal which would bring to their
assistance the whole body of N'Yaarkers, and turn the tables on their
assailants.
We had in our squad a little watchmaker named Dan Martin, of the Eighth
New York Infantry. Other boys let him take their watches to tinker up, so as
to make a show of running, and be available for trading to the guards.
One day Martin was at the creek, when a N'Yaarker asked him to let him
look at a watch. Martin incautiously did so, when the N'Yaarker snatched it
and sped away to the camp of his crowd. Martin ran back to us and told his
story. This was the last feather which was to break the camel's back of our
patience. Peter Bates, of the Third Michigan, the Sergeant of our squad, had

considerable confidence in his muscular ability. He flamed up into mighty
wrath, and swore a sulphurous oath that we would get that watch back,
whereupon about two hundred of us avowed our willingness to help reclaim
it.
Each of us providing ourselves with a club, we started on our errand. The
rest of the camp—about four thousand—gathered on the hillside to watch us.
We thought they might have sent us some assistance, as it was about as
much their fight as ours, but they did not, and we were too proud to ask it.
The crossing of the swamp was quite difficult. Only one could go over at a
time, and he very slowly. The N'Yaarkers understood that trouble was
pending, and they began mustering to receive us. From the way they turned
out it was evident that we should have come over with three hundred instead
of two hundred, but it was too late then to alter the program. As we came up
a stalwart Irishman stepped out and asked us what we wanted.
Bates replied: “We have come over to get a watch that one of your fellows
took from one of ours, and by —- we're going to have it.”
The Irishman's reply was equally explicit though not strictly logical in
construction. Said he: “We havn't got your watch, and be ye can't have it.”
This joined the issue just as fairly as if it had been done by all the
documentary formula that passed between Turkey and Russia prior to the
late war. Bates and the Irishman then exchanged very derogatory opinions of
each other, and began striking with their clubs. The rest of us took this as our
cue, and each, selecting as small a N'Yaarker as we could readily find, sailed
in.
There is a very expressive bit of slang coming into general use in the
West, which speaks of a man “biting off more than he can chew.”
That is what we had done. We had taken a contract that we should have
divided, and sub-let the bigger half. Two minutes after the engagement
became general there was no doubt that we would have been much better off
if we had staid on our own side of the creek. The watch was a very poor one,
anyhow. We thought we would just say good day to our N'Yaark friends, and
return home hastily. But they declined to be left so precipitately. They
wanted to stay with us awhile. It was lots of fun for them, and for the four
thousand yelling spectators on the opposite hill, who were greatly enjoying
our discomfiture. There was hardly enough of the amusement to go clear
around, however, and it all fell short just before it reached us. We earnestly

wished that some of the boys would come over and help us let go of the
N'Yaarkers, but they were enjoying the thing too much to interfere.
We were driven down the hill, pell-mell, with the N'Yaarkers pursuing
hotly with yell and blow. At the swamp we tried to make a stand to secure
our passage across, but it was only partially successful. Very few got back
without some severe hurts, and many received blows that greatly hastened
their deaths.
After this the N'Yaarkers became bolder in their robberies, and more
arrogant in their demeanor than ever, and we had the poor revenge upon
those who would not assist us, of seeing a reign of terror inaugurated over
the whole camp.

CHAPTER XXI.
DIMINISHING RATIONS—A DEADLY COLD RAIN—HOVERING
OVER PITCH PINE FIRES —INCREASE ON MORTALITY—A
THEORY OF HEALTH.
The rations diminished perceptibly day by day. When we first entered we
each received something over a quart of tolerably good meal, a sweet potato,
a piece of meat about the size of one's two fingers, and occasionally a
spoonful of salt. First the salt disappeared. Then the sweet potato took unto
itself wings and flew away, never to return. An attempt was ostensibly made
to issue us cow-peas instead, and the first issue was only a quart to a
detachment of two hundred and seventy men. This has two-thirds of a pint to
each squad of ninety, and made but a few spoonfuls for each of the four
messes in the squad. When it came to dividing among the men, the beans
had to be counted. Nobody received enough to pay for cooking, and we were
at a loss what to do until somebody suggested that we play poker for them.
This met general acceptance, and after that, as long as beans were drawn, a
large portion of the day was spent in absorbing games of “bluff” and “draw,”
at a bean “ante,” and no “limit.”
After a number of hours' diligent playing, some lucky or skillful player
would be in possession of all the beans in a mess, a squad, and sometimes a
detachment, and have enough for a good meal.
Next the meal began to diminish in quantity and deteriorate in quality. It
became so exceedingly coarse that the common remark was that the next
step would be to bring us the corn in the shock, and feed it to us like stock.
Then meat followed suit with the rest. The rations decreased in size, and the
number of days that we did not get any, kept constantly increasing in
proportion to the days that we did, until eventually the meat bade us a final
adieu, and joined the sweet potato in that undiscovered country from whose
bourne no ration ever returned.
The fuel and building material in the stockade were speedily exhausted.
The later comers had nothing whatever to build shelter with.
But, after the Spring rains had fairly set in, it seemed that we had not
tasted misery until then. About the middle of March the windows of heaven

opened, and it began a rain like that of the time of Noah. It was tropical in
quantity and persistency, and arctic in temperature. For dreary hours that
lengthened into weary days and nights, and these again into never-ending
weeks, the driving, drenching flood poured down upon the sodden earth,
searching the very marrow of the five thousand hapless men against whose
chilled frames it beat with pitiless monotony, and soaked the sand bank upon
which we lay until it was like a sponge filled with ice-water. It seems to me
now that it must have been two or three weeks that the sun was wholly
hidden behind the dripping clouds, not shining out once in all that time. The
intervals when it did not rain were rare and short. An hour's respite would be
followed by a day of steady, regular pelting of the great rain drops.
I find that the report of the Smithsonian Institute gives the average annual
rainfall in the section around Andersonville, at fifty-six inches —nearly five
feet—while that of foggy England is only thirty-two. Our experience would
lead me to think that we got the five feet all at once.
We first comers, who had huts, were measurably better off than the later
arrivals. It was much drier in our leaf-thatched tents, and we were spared
much of the annoyance that comes from the steady dash of rain against the
body for hours.
The condition of those who had no tents was truly pitiable.
They sat or lay on the hill-side the live-long day and night, and took the
washing flow with such gloomy composure as they could muster.
All soldiers will agree with me that there is no campaigning hardship
comparable to a cold rain. One can brace up against the extremes of heat and
cold, and mitigate their inclemency in various ways. But there is no escaping
a long-continued, chilling rain. It seems to penetrate to the heart, and leach
away the very vital force.
The only relief attainable was found in huddling over little fires kept alive
by small groups with their slender stocks of wood. As this wood was all
pitch-pine, that burned with a very sooty flame, the effect upon the
appearance of the hoverers was, startling. Face, neck and hands became
covered with mixture of lampblack and turpentine, forming a coating as
thick as heavy brown paper, and absolutely irremovable by water alone. The
hair also became of midnight blackness, and gummed up into elflocks of
fantastic shape and effect. Any one of us could have gone on the negro

minstrel stage, without changing a hair, and put to blush the most elaborate
make-up of the grotesque burnt-cork artists.
No wood was issued to us. The only way of getting it was to stand around
the gate for hours until a guard off duty could be coaxed or hired to
accompany a small party to the woods, to bring back a load of such knots
and limbs as could be picked up. Our chief persuaders to the guards to do us
this favor were rings, pencils, knives, combs, and such trifles as we might
have in our pockets, and, more especially, the brass buttons on our uniforms.
Rebel soldiers, like Indians, negros and other imperfectly civilized people,
were passionately fond of bright and gaudy things. A handful of brass
buttons would catch every one of them as swiftly and as surely as a piece of
red flannel will a gudgeon. Our regular fee for an escort for three of us to the
woods was six over-coat or dress-coat buttons, or ten or twelve jacket
buttons. All in the mess contributed to this fund, and the fuel obtained was
carefully guarded and husbanded.
This manner of conducting the wood business is a fair sample of the
management, or rather the lack of it, of every other detail of prison
administration. All the hardships we suffered from lack of fuel and shelter
could have been prevented without the slightest expense or trouble to the
Confederacy. Two hundred men allowed to go out on parole, and supplied
with ages, would have brought in from the adjacent woods, in a week's time,
enough material to make everybody comfortable tents, and to supply all the
fuel needed.
The mortality caused by the storm was, of course, very great. The official
report says the total number in the prison in March was four thousand six
hundred and three, of whom two hundred and eighty-three died.
Among the first to die was the one whom we expected to live longest. He
was by much the largest man in prison, and was called, because of this,
“BIG JOE.” He was a Sergeant in the Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry, and
seemed the picture of health. One morning the news ran through the prison
that “Big Joe is dead,” and a visit to his squad showed his stiff, lifeless form,
occupying as much ground as Goliath's, after his encounter with David.
His early demise was an example of a general law, the workings of which
few in the army failed to notice. It was always the large and strong who first
succumbed to hardship. The stalwart, huge-limbed, toil-inured men sank
down earliest on the march, yielded soonest to malarial influences, and fell

first under the combined effects of home-sickness, exposure and the
privations of army life. The slender, withy boys, as supple and weak as cats,
had apparently the nine lives of those animals. There were few exceptions to
this rule in the army—there were none in Andersonville. I can recall few or
no instances where a large, strong, “hearty” man lived through a few months
of imprisonment. The survivors were invariably youths, at the verge of
manhood,—slender, quick, active, medium-statured fellows, of a cheerful
temperament, in whom one would have expected comparatively little powers
of endurance.
The theory which I constructed for my own private use in accounting for
this phenomenon I offer with proper diffidence to others who may be in
search of a hypothesis to explain facts that they have observed. It is this:
a. The circulation of the blood maintains health, and consequently life by
carrying away from the various parts of the body the particles of worn-out
and poisonous tissue, and replacing them with fresh, structure-building
material.
b. The man is healthiest in whom this process goes on most freely and
continuously.
c. Men of considerable muscular power are disposed to be sluggish; the
exertion of great strength does not favor circulation. It rather retards it, and
disturbs its equilibrium by congesting the blood in quantities in the sets of
muscles called into action.
d. In light, active men, on the other hand, the circulation goes on perfectly
and evenly, because all the parts are put in motion, and kept so in such a
manner as to promote the movement of the blood to every extremity. They
do not strain one set of muscles by long continued effort, as a strong man
does, but call one into play after another.
There is no compulsion on the reader to accept this speculation at any
valuation whatever. There is not even any charge for it. I will lay down this
simple axiom:
No strong man, is a healthy man
from the athlete in the circus who lifts pieces of artillery and catches
cannon balls, to the exhibition swell in a country gymnasium. If my theory is
not a sufficient explanation of this, there is nothing to prevent the reader
from building up one to suit him better.

CHAPTER XXII.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ALABAMIANS AND GEORGIANS—
DEATH OF “POLL PARROTT” —A GOOD JOKE UPON THE GUARD—
A BRUTAL RASCAL.
There were two regiments guarding us—the Twenty-Sixth Alabama and
the Fifty-Fifth Georgia. Never were two regiments of the same army more
different. The Alabamians were the superiors of the Georgians in every way
that one set of men could be superior to another. They were manly, soldierly,
and honorable, where the Georgians were treacherous and brutal. We had
nothing to complain of at the hands of the Alabamians; we suffered from the
Georgians everything that mean-spirited cruelty could devise. The Georgians
were always on the look-out for something that they could torture into such
apparent violation of orders, as would justify them in shooting men down;
the Alabamians never fired until they were satisfied that a deliberate offense
was intended. I can recall of my own seeing at least a dozen instances where
men of the Fifty-Fifth Georgia Killed prisoners under the pretense that they
were across the Dead Line, when the victims were a yard or more from the
Dead Line, and had not the remotest idea of going any nearer.
The only man I ever knew to be killed by one of the Twenty-Sixth
Alabama was named Hubbard, from Chicago, Ills., and a member of the
Thirty-Eighth Illinois. He had lost one leg, and went hobbling about the
camp on crutches, chattering continually in a loud, discordant voice, saying
all manner of hateful and annoying things, wherever he saw an opportunity.
This and his beak-like nose gained for him the name of “Poll Parrot.” His
misfortune caused him to be tolerated where another man would have been
suppressed. By-and-by he gave still greater cause for offense by his
obsequious attempts to curry favor with Captain Wirz, who took him outside
several times for purposes that were not well explained. Finally, some hours
after one of Poll Parrot's visits outside, a Rebel officer came in with a guard,
and, proceeding with suspicious directness to a tent which was the mouth of
a large tunnel that a hundred men or more had been quietly pushing forward,
broke the tunnel in, and took the occupants of the tent outside for
punishment. The question that demanded immediate solution then was:

“Who is the traitor who has informed the Rebels?”
Suspicion pointed very strongly to “Poll Parrot.” By the next morning the
evidence collected seemed to amount to a certainty, and a crowd caught the
Parrot with the intention of lynching him. He succeeded in breaking away
from them and ran under the Dead Line, near where I was sitting in, my tent.
At first it looked as if he had done this to secure the protection of the guard.
The latter—a Twenty-Sixth Alabamian —ordered him out. Poll Parrot rose
up on his one leg, put his back against the Dead Line, faced the guard, and
said in his harsh, cackling voice:
“No; I won't go out. If I've lost the confidence of my comrades I want to
die.”
Part of the crowd were taken back by this move, and felt disposed to
accept it as a demonstration of the Parrot's innocence. The rest thought it was
a piece of bravado, because of his belief that the Rebels would not injure,
him after he had served them. They renewed their yells, the guard again
ordered the Parrot out, but the latter, tearing open his blouse, cackled out:
“No, I won't go; fire at me, guard. There's my heart shoot me right there.”
There was no help for it. The Rebel leveled his gun and fired. The charge
struck the Parrot's lower jaw, and carried it completely away, leaving his
tongue and the roof of his mouth exposed. As he was carried back to die, he
wagged his tongue rigorously, in attempting to speak, but it was of no use.
The guard set his gun down and buried his face in his hands. It was the
only time that I saw a sentinel show anything but exultation at killing a
Yankee.
A ludicrous contrast to this took place a few nights later. The rains had
ceased, the weather had become warmer, and our spirits rising with this
increase in the comfort of our surroundings, a number of us were sitting
around “Nosey”—a boy with a superb tenor voice—who was singing
patriotic songs. We were coming in strong on the chorus, in a way that spoke
vastly more for our enthusiasm for the Union than our musical knowledge.
“Nosey” sang the “Star Spangled Banner,” “The Battle Cry of Freedom,”
“Brave Boys are They,” etc., capitally, and we threw our whole lungs into
the chorus. It was quite dark, and while our noise was going on the guards
changed, new men coming on duty. Suddenly, bang! went the gun of the
guard in the box about fifty feet away from us. We knew it was a Fifty-Fifth
Georgian, and supposed that, irritated at our singing, he was trying to kill

some of us for spite. At the sound of the gun we jumped up and scattered. As
no one gave the usual agonized yell of a prisoner when shot, we supposed
the ball had not taken effect. We could hear the sentinel ramming down
another cartridge, hear him “return rammer,” and cock his rifle. Again the
gun cracked, and again there was no sound of anybody being hit. Again we
could hear the sentry churning down another cartridge. The drums began
beating the long roll in the camps, and officers could be heard turning the
men out. The thing was becoming exciting, and one of us sang out to the
guard:
“S-a-y! What the are you shooting at, any how?”
“I'm a shootin' at that —— —— Yank thar by the Dead Line, and by —-
if you'uns don't take him in I'll blow the whole head offn him.”
“What Yank? Where's any Yank?”
“Why, thar—right thar—a-standin' agin the Ded Line.”
“Why, you Rebel fool, that's a chunk of wood. You can't get any furlough
for shooting that!”
At this there was a general roar from the rest of the camp, which the other
guards took up, and as the Reserves came double-quicking up, and learned
the occasion of the alarm, they gave the rascal who had been so anxious to
kill somebody a torrent of abuse for having disturbed them.
A part of our crowd had been out after wood during the day, and secured a
piece of a log as large as two of them could carry, and bringing it in, stood it
up near the Dead Line. When the guard mounted to his post he was sure he
saw a temerarious Yankee in front of him, and hastened to slay him.
It was an unusual good fortune that nobody was struck. It was very rare
that the guards fired into the prison without hitting at least one person. The
Georgia Reserves, who formed our guards later in the season, were armed
with an old gun called a Queen Anne musket, altered to percussion. It carried
a bullet as big as a large marble, and three or four buckshot. When fired into
a group of men it was sure to bring several down.
I was standing one day in the line at the gate, waiting for a chance to go
out after wood. A Fifty-Fifth Georgian was the gate guard, and he drew a
line in the sand with his bayonet which we should not cross. The crowd
behind pushed one man till he put his foot a few inches over the line, to save
himself from falling; the guard sank a bayonet through the foot as quick as a
flash.

CHAPTER XXIII
A NEW LOT OF PRISONERS—THE BATTLE OF OOLUSTEE—MEN
SACRIFICED TO A GENERAL'S INCOMPETENCY—A HOODLUM
REINFORCEMENT—A QUEER CROWD —MISTREATMENT OF AN
OFFICER OF A COLORED REGIMENT—KILLING THE SERGEANT
OF A NEGRO SQUAD.
So far only old prisoners—those taken at Gettysburg, Chicamauga and
Mine Run—had been brought in. The armies had been very quiet during the
Winter, preparing for the death grapple in the Spring. There had been
nothing done, save a few cavalry raids, such as our own, and Averill's
attempt to gain and break up the Rebel salt works at Wytheville, and
Saltville. Consequently none but a few cavalry prisoners were added to the
number already in the hands of the Rebels.
The first lot of new ones came in about the middle of March. There were
about seven hundred of them, who had been captured at the battle of
Oolustee, Fla., on the 20th of February. About five hundred of them were
white, and belonged to the Seventh Connecticut, the Seventh New
Hampshire, Forty Seventh, Forty-Eighth and One Hundred and Fifteenth
New York, and Sherman's regular battery. The rest were colored, and
belonged to the Eighth United States, and Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts. The
story they told of the battle was one which had many shameful reiterations
during the war. It was the story told whenever Banks, Sturgis, Butler, or one
of a host of similar smaller failures were trusted with commands. It was a
senseless waste of the lives of private soldiers, and the property of the
United States by pretentious blunderers, who, in some inscrutable manner,
had attained to responsible commands. In this instance, a bungling Brigadier
named Seymore had marched his forces across the State of Florida, to do he
hardly knew what, and in the neighborhood of an enemy of whose numbers,
disposition, location, and intentions he was profoundly ignorant. The Rebels,
under General Finnegan, waited till he had strung his command along
through swamps and cane brakes, scores of miles from his supports, and then
fell unexpectedly upon his advance. The regiment was overpowered, and
another regiment that hurried up to its support, suffered the same fate. The

balance of the regiments were sent in in the same manner—each arriving on
the field just after its predecessor had been thoroughly whipped by the
concentrated force of the Rebels. The men fought gallantly, but the stupidity
of a Commanding General is a thing that the gods themselves strive against
in vain. We suffered a humiliating defeat, with a loss of two thousand men
and a fine rifled battery, which was brought to Andersonville and placed in
position to command the prison.
The majority of the Seventh New Hampshire were an unwelcome addition
to our numbers. They were N'Yaarkers—old time colleagues of those already
in with us—veteran bounty jumpers, that had been drawn to New Hampshire
by the size of the bounty offered there, and had been assigned to fill up the
wasted ranks of the veteran Seventh regiment. They had tried to desert as
soon as they received their bounty, but the Government clung to them
literally with hooks of steel, sending many of them to the regiment in irons.
Thus foiled, they deserted to the Rebels during the retreat from the
battlefield. They were quite an accession to the force of our N'Yaarkers, and
helped much to establish the hoodlum reign which was shortly inaugurated
over the whole prison.
The Forty-Eighth New Yorkers who came in were a set of chaps so odd in
every way as to be a source of never-failing interest. The name of their
regiment was 'L'Enfants Perdu' (the Lost Children), which we anglicized into
“The Lost Ducks.” It was believed that every nation in Europe was
represented in their ranks, and it used to be said jocularly, that no two of
them spoke the same language. As near as I could find out they were all or
nearly all South Europeans, Italians, Spaniards; Portuguese, Levantines, with
a predominance of the French element. They wore a little cap with an
upturned brim, and a strap resting on the chin, a coat with funny little tales
about two inches long, and a brass chain across the breast; and for
pantaloons they had a sort of a petticoat reaching to the knees, and sewed
together down the middle. They were just as singular otherwise as in their
looks, speech and uniform. On one occasion the whole mob of us went over
in a mass to their squad to see them cook and eat a large water snake, which
two of them had succeeded in capturing in the swamps, and carried off to
their mess, jabbering in high glee over their treasure trove. Any of us were
ready to eat a piece of dog, cat, horse or mule, if we could get it, but, it was
generally agreed, as Dawson, of my company expressed it, that “Nobody but

one of them darned queer Lost Ducks would eat a varmint like a water
snake.”
Major Albert Bogle, of the Eighth United States, (colored) had fallen into
the hands of the rebels by reason of a severe wound in the leg, which left
him helpless upon the field at Oolustee. The Rebels treated him with studied
indignity. They utterly refused to recognize him as an officer, or even as a
man. Instead of being sent to Macon or Columbia, where the other officers
were, he was sent to Andersonville, the same as an enlisted man. No care
was given his wound, no surgeon would examine it or dress it. He was
thrown into a stock car, without a bed or blanket, and hauled over the rough,
jolting road to Andersonville. Once a Rebel officer rode up and fired several
shots at him, as he lay helpless on the car floor. Fortunately the Rebel's
marksmanship was as bad as his intentions, and none of the shots took
effect. He was placed in a squad near me, and compelled to get up and
hobble into line when the rest were mustered for roll-call. No opportunity to
insult, “the nigger officer,” was neglected, and the N'Yaarkers vied with the
Rebels in heaping abuse upon him. He was a fine, intelligent young man,
and bore it all with dignified self-possession, until after a lapse of some
weeks the Rebels changed their policy and took him from the prison to send
to where the other officers were.
The negro soldiers were also treated as badly as possible. The wounded
were turned into the Stockade without having their hurts attended to. One
stalwart, soldierly Sergeant had received a bullet which had forced its way
under the scalp for some distance, and partially imbedded itself in the skull,
where it still remained. He suffered intense agony, and would pass the whole
night walking up and down the street in front of our tent, moaning
distressingly. The bullet could be felt plainly with the fingers, and we were
sure that it would not be a minute's work, with a sharp knife, to remove it
and give the man relief. But we could not prevail upon the Rebel Surgeons
even to see the man. Finally inflammation set in and he died.
The negros were made into a squad by themselves, and taken out every
day to work around the prison. A white Sergeant was placed over them, who
was the object of the contumely of the guards and other Rebels. One day as
he was standing near the gate, waiting his orders to come out, the gate guard,
without any provocation whatever, dropped his gun until the muzzle rested
against the Sergeant's stomach, and fired, killing him instantly.

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

CHAPTER XXIV.
APRIL—LONGING TO GET OUT—THE DEATH RATE—THE
PLAGUE OF LICE —THE SO-CALLED HOSPITAL.
April brought sunny skies and balmy weather. Existence became much
more tolerable. With freedom it would have been enjoyable, even had we
been no better fed, clothed and sheltered. But imprisonment had never
seemed so hard to bear—even in the first few weeks—as now. It was easier
to submit to confinement to a limited area, when cold and rain were aiding
hunger to benumb the faculties and chill the energies than it was now, when
Nature was rousing her slumbering forces to activity, and earth, and air and
sky were filled with stimulus to man to imitate her example. The yearning to
be up and doing something-to turn these golden hours to good account for
self and country—pressed into heart and brain as the vivifying sap pressed
into tree-duct and plant cell, awaking all vegetation to energetic life.
To be compelled, at such a time, to lie around in vacuous idleness —to
spend days that should be crowded full of action in a monotonous, objectless
routine of hunting lice, gathering at roll-call, and drawing and cooking our
scanty rations, was torturing.
But to many of our number the aspirations for freedom were not, as with
us, the desire for a wider, manlier field of action, so much as an intense
longing to get where care and comforts would arrest their swift progress to
the shadowy hereafter. The cruel rains had sapped away their stamina, and
they could not recover it with the meager and innutritious diet of coarse
meal, and an occasional scrap of salt meat. Quick consumption, bronchitis,
pneumonia, low fever and diarrhea seized upon these ready victims for their
ravages, and bore them off at the rate of nearly a score a day.
It now became a part of, the day's regular routine to take a walk past the
gates in the morning, inspect and count the dead, and see if any friends were
among them. Clothes having by this time become a very important
consideration with the prisoners, it was the custom of the mess in which a
man died to remove from his person all garments that were of any account,
and so many bodies were carried out nearly naked. The hands were crossed
upon the breast, the big toes tied together with a bit of string, and a slip of

paper containing the man's name, rank, company and regiment was pinned
on the breast of his shirt.
The appearance of the dead was indescribably ghastly. The unclosed eyes
shone with a stony glitter—
An orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high:
But, O, more terrible than that,
Is the curse in a dead man's eye.
The lips and nostrils were distorted with pain and hunger, the sallow, dirt-
grimed skin drawn tensely over the facial bones, and the whole framed with
the long, lank, matted hair and beard. Millions of lice swarmed over the
wasted limbs and ridged ribs. These verminous pests had become so
numerous—owing to our lack of changes of clothing, and of facilities for
boiling what we had—that the most a healthy man could do was to keep the
number feeding upon his person down to a reasonable limit—say a few
tablespoonfuls. When a man became so sick as to be unable to help himself,
the parasites speedily increased into millions, or, to speak more
comprehensively, into pints and quarts. It did not even seem exaggeration
when some one declared that he had seen a dead man with more than a
gallon of lice on him.
There is no doubt that the irritation from the biting of these myriads
materially the days of those who died.
Where a sick man had friends or comrades, of course part of their duty, in
taking care of him, was to “louse” his clothing. One of the most effectual
ways of doing this was to turn the garments wrong side out and hold the
seams as close to the fire as possible, without burning the cloth. In a short
time the lice would swell up and burst open, like pop-corn. This method was
a favorite one for another reason than its efficacy: it gave one a keener sense
of revenge upon his rascally little tormentors than he could get in any other
way.

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

And the Lord said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out
thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may become
lice through all the land of Egypt.
And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his
rod, and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in
man and in beast; all the dust of the land became lice
throughout all the land of Egypt.

The total number of deaths in April, according to the official report, was
five hundred and seventy-six, or an average of over nineteen a day. There
was an average of five thousand prisoner's in the pen during all but the last
few days of the month, when the number was increased by the arrival of the
captured garrison of Plymouth. This would make the loss over eleven per
cent., and so worse than decimation. At that rate we should all have died in

about eight months. We could have gone through a sharp campaign lasting
those thirty days and not lost so great a proportion of our forces. The British
had about as many men as were in the Stockade at the battle of New Orleans,
yet their loss in killed fell much short of the deaths in the pen in April.
A makeshift of a hospital was established in the northeastern corner of the
Stockade. A portion of the ground was divided from the rest of the prison by
a railing, a few tent flies were stretched, and in these the long leaves of the
pine were made into apologies for beds of about the goodness of the straw
on which a Northern farmer beds his stock. The sick taken there were no
better off than if they had staid with their comrades.
What they needed to bring about their recovery was clean clothing,
nutritious food, shelter and freedom from the tortures of the lice. They
obtained none of these. Save a few decoctions of roots, there were no
medicines; the sick were fed the same coarse corn meal that brought about
the malignant dysentery from which they all suffered; they wore and slept in
the same vermin-infested clothes, and there could be but one result: the
official records show that seventy-six per cent. of those taken to the hospitals
died there.
The establishment of the hospital was specially unfortunate for my little
squad. The ground required for it compelled a general reduction of the space
we all occupied. We had to tear down our huts and move. By this time the
materials had become so dry that we could not rebuild with them, as the pine
tufts fell to pieces. This reduced the tent and bedding material of our party—
now numbering five—to a cavalry overcoat and a blanket. We scooped a
hole a foot deep in the sand and stuck our tent-poles around it. By day we
spread our blanket over the poles for a tent. At night we lay down upon the
overcoat and covered ourselves with the blanket. It required considerable
stretching to make it go over five; the two out side fellows used to get very
chilly, and squeeze the three inside ones until they felt no thicker than a
wafer. But it had to do, and we took turns sleeping on the outside. In the
course of a few weeks three of my chums died and left myself and B. B.
Andrews (now Dr. Andrews, of Astoria, Ill.) sole heirs to and occupants of,
the overcoat and blanket.

CHAPTER XXV.
THE “PLYMOUTH PILGRIMS”—SAD TRANSITION FROM
COMFORTABLE BARRACKS TO ANDERSONVILLE—A CRAZED
PENNSYLVANIAN—DEVELOPMENT OF THE BUTLER BUSINESS.
We awoke one morning, in the last part of April, to find about two
thousand freshly arrived prisoners lying asleep in the main streets running
from the gates. They were attired in stylish new uniforms, with fancy hats
and shoes; the Sergeants and Corporals wore patent leather or silk chevrons,
and each man had a large, well-filled knapsack, of the kind new recruits
usually carried on coming first to the front, and which the older soldiers
spoke of humorously as “bureaus.” They were the snuggest, nattiest lot of
soldiers we had ever seen, outside of the “paper collar” fellows forming the
headquarter guard of some General in a large City. As one of my
companions surveyed them, he said:
“Hulloa! I'm blanked if the Johnnies haven't caught a regiment of
Brigadier Generals, somewhere.”
By-and-by the “fresh fish,” as all new arrivals were termed, began to wake
up, and then we learned that they belonged to a brigade consisting of the
Eighty-Fifth New York, One Hundred and First and One Hundred and Third
Pennsylvania, Sixteenth Connecticut, Twenty-Fourth New York Battery, two
companies of Massachusetts heavy artillery, and a company of the Twelfth
New York Cavalry.
They had been garrisoning Plymouth, N. C., an important seaport on the
Roanoke River. Three small gunboats assisted them in their duty. The Rebels
constructed a powerful iron clad called the “Albemarle,” at a point further up
the Roanoke, and on the afternoon of the 17th, with her and three brigades of
infantry, made an attack upon the post. The “Albemarle” ran past the forts
unharmed, sank one of the gunboats, and drove the others away. She then
turned her attention to the garrison, which she took in the rear, while the
infantry attacked in front. Our men held out until the 20th, when they
capitulated. They were allowed to retain their personal effects, of all kinds,
and, as is the case with all men in garrison, these were considerable.

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

Their horror at the appearance of their place of incarceration was beyond
expression. At one moment they could not comprehend that we dirty and
haggard tatterdemalions had once been clean, self-respecting, well-fed
soldiers like themselves; at the next they would affirm that they knew they
could not stand it a month, in here we had then endured it from four to nine
months. They took it, in every way, the hardest of any prisoners that came in,
except some of the 'Hundred-Days' men, who were brought in in August,
from the Valley of Virginia. They had served nearly all their time in various
garrisons along the seacoast—from Fortress Monroe to Beaufort—where
they had had comparatively little of the actual hardships of soldiering in the
field. They had nearly always had comfortable quarters, an abundance of
food, few hard marches or other severe service. Consequently they were not
so well hardened for Andersonville as the majority who came in. In other
respects they were better prepared, as they had an abundance of clothing,
blankets and cooking utensils, and each man had some of his veteran bounty
still in possession.
It was painful to see how rapidly many of them sank under the miseries of
the situation. They gave up the moment the gates were closed upon them,
and began pining away. We older prisoners buoyed ourselves up continually
with hopes of escape or exchange. We dug tunnels with the persistence of
beavers, and we watched every possible opportunity to get outside the
accursed walls of the pen. But we could not enlist the interest of these
discouraged ones in any of our schemes, or talk. They resigned themselves
to Death, and waited despondingly till he came.

A middle-aged One Hundred and First Pennsylvanian, who had taken up
his quarters near me, was an object of peculiar interest. Reasonably
intelligent and fairly read, I presume that he was a respectable mechanic
before entering the Army. He was evidently a very domestic man, whose
whole happiness centered in his family.
When he first came in he was thoroughly dazed by the greatness of his
misfortune. He would sit for hours with his face in his hands and his elbows
on his knees, gazing out upon the mass of men and huts, with vacant, lack-
luster eyes. We could not interest him in anything. We tried to show him how

to fix his blanket up to give him some shelter, but he went at the work in a
disheartened way, and finally smiled feebly and stopped. He had some letters
from his family and a melaineotype of a plain-faced woman—his wife—and
her children, and spent much time in looking at them. At first he ate his
rations when he drew them, but finally began to reject, them. In a few days
he was delirious with hunger and homesick ness. He would sit on the sand
for hours imagining that he was at his family table, dispensing his frugal
hospitalities to his wife and children.
Making a motion, as if presenting a dish, he would say:
“Janie, have another biscuit, do!”
Or,
“Eddie, son, won't you have another piece of this nice steak?”
Or,
“Maggie, have some more potatos,” and so on, through a whole family of
six, or more. It was a relief to us when he died in about a month after he
came in.
As stated above, the Plymouth men brought in a large amount of money
—variously estimated at from ten thousand to one hundred thousand dollars.
The presence of this quantity of circulating medium immediately started a
lively commerce. All sorts of devices were resorted to by the other prisoners
to get a little of this wealth. Rude chuck-a-luck boards were constructed out
of such material as was attainable, and put in operation. Dice and cards were
brought out by those skilled in such matters. As those of us already in the
Stockade occupied all the ground, there was no disposition on the part of
many to surrender a portion of their space without exacting a pecuniary
compensation. Messes having ground in a good location would frequently
demand and get ten dollars for permission for two or three to quarter with
them. Then there was a great demand for poles to stretch blankets over to
make tents; the Rebels, with their usual stupid cruelty, would not supply
these, nor allow the prisoners to go out and get them themselves. Many of
the older prisoners had poles to spare which they were saying up for fuel.
They sold these to the Plymouth folks at the rate of ten dollars for three—
enough to put up a blanket.
The most considerable trading was done through the gates. The Rebel
guards were found quite as keen to barter as they had been in Richmond.
Though the laws against their dealing in the money of the enemy were still

as stringent as ever, their thirst for greenbacks was not abated one whit, and
they were ready to sell anything they had for the coveted currency. The rate
of exchange was seven or eight dollars in Confederate money for one dollar
in greenbacks. Wood, tobacco, meat, flour, beans, molasses, onions and a
villainous kind of whisky made from sorghum, were the staple articles of
trade. A whole race of little traffickers in these articles sprang up, and finally
Selden, the Rebel Quartermaster, established a sutler shop in the center of
the North Side, which he put in charge of Ira Beverly, of the One Hundredth
Ohio, and Charlie Huckleby, of the Eighth Tennessee. It was a fine
illustration of the development of the commercial instinct in some men. No
more unlikely place for making money could be imagined, yet starting in
without a cent, they contrived to turn and twist and trade, until they had
transferred to their pockets a portion of the funds which were in some one
else's. The Rebels, of course, got nine out of every ten dollars there was in
the prison, but these middle men contrived to have a little of it stick to their
fingers.
It was only the very few who were able to do this. Nine hundred and
ninety-nine out of every thousand were, like myself, either wholly destitute
of money and unable to get it from anybody else, or they paid out what
money they had to the middlemen, in exorbitant prices for articles of food.
The N'Yaarkers had still another method for getting food, money, blankets
and clothing. They formed little bands called “Raiders,” under the leadership
of a chief villain. One of these bands would select as their victim a man who
had good blankets, clothes, a watch, or greenbacks. Frequently he would be
one of the little traders, with a sack of beans, a piece of meat, or something
of that kind. Pouncing upon him at night they would snatch away his
possessions, knock down his friends who came to his assistance, and scurry
away into the darkness.

CHAPTER XXVI
LONGINGS FOR GOD'S COUNTRY—CONSIDERATIONS OF THE
METHODS OF GETTING THERE—EXCHANGE AND ESCAPE—
DIGGING TUNNELS, AND THE DIFFICULTIES CONNECTED
THEREWITH—PUNISHMENT OF A TRAITOR.
To our minds the world now contained but two grand divisions, as widely
different from each other as happiness and misery. The first—that portion
over which our flag floated was usually spoken of as “God's Country;” the
other—that under the baneful shadow of the banner of rebellion—was
designated by the most opprobrious epithets at the speaker's command.
To get from the latter to the former was to attain, at one bound, the highest
good. Better to be a doorkeeper in the House of the Lord, under the Stars and
Stripes, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness, under the hateful Southern
Cross.
To take even the humblest and hardest of service in the field now would
be a delightsome change. We did not ask to go home—we would be content
with anything, so long as it was in that blest place “within our lines.” Only
let us get back once, and there would be no more grumbling at rations or
guard duty—we would willingly endure all the hardships and privations that
soldier flesh is heir to.
There were two ways of getting back—escape and exchange. Exchange
was like the ever receding mirage of the desert, that lures the thirsty traveler
on over the parched sands, with illusions of refreshing springs, only to leave
his bones at last to whiten by the side of those of his unremembered
predecessors. Every day there came something to build up the hopes that
exchange was near at hand—every day brought something to extinguish the
hopes of the preceding one. We took these varying phases according to our
several temperaments. The sanguine built themselves up on the encouraging
reports; the desponding sank down and died under the discouraging ones.
Escape was a perpetual allurement. To the actively inclined among us it
seemed always possible, and daring, busy brains were indefatigable in
concocting schemes for it. The only bit of Rebel brain work that I ever saw
for which I did not feel contempt was the perfect precautions taken to

prevent our escape. This is shown by the fact that, although, from first to
last, there were nearly fifty thousand prisoners in Andersonville, and three
out of every five of these were ever on the alert to take French leave of their
captors, only three hundred and twenty-eight succeeded in getting so far
away from Andersonville as to leave it to be presumed that they had reached
our lines.
The first, and almost superhuman difficulty was to get outside the
Stockade. It was simply impossible to scale it. The guards were too close
together to allow an instant's hope to the most sanguine, that he could even
pass the Dead Line without being shot by some one of them. This same
closeness prevented any hope of bribing them. To be successful half those on
post would have to be bribed, as every part of the Stockade was clearly
visible from every other part, and there was no night so dark as not to allow
a plain view to a number of guards of the dark figure outlined against the
light colored logs of any Yankee who should essay to clamber towards the
top of the palisades.
The gates were so carefully guarded every time they were opened as to
preclude hope of slipping out through theme. They were only unclosed twice
or thrice a day—once to admit, the men to call the roll, once to let them out
again, once to let the wagons come in with rations, and once, perhaps, to
admit, new prisoners. At all these times every precaution was taken to
prevent any one getting out surreptitiously.
This narrowed down the possibilities of passing the limits of the pen alive,
to tunneling. This was also surrounded by almost insuperable difficulties.
First, it required not less than fifty feet of subterranean excavation to get out,
which was an enormous work with our limited means. Then the logs forming
the Stockade were set in the ground to a depth of five feet, and the tunnel
had to go down beneath them. They had an unpleasant habit of dropping
down into the burrow under them. It added much to the discouragements of
tunneling to think of one of these massive timbers dropping upon a fellow as
he worked his mole-like way under it, and either crushing him to death
outright, or pinning him there to die of suffocation or hunger.

In one instance, in a tunnel near me, but in which I was not interested, the
log slipped down after the digger had got out beyond it. He immediately
began digging for the surface, for life, and was fortunately able to break
through before he suffocated. He got his head above the ground, and then
fainted. The guard outside saw him, pulled him out of the hole, and when he
recovered sensibility hurried him back into the Stockade.
In another tunnel, also near us, a broad-shouldered German, of the Second
Minnesota, went in to take his turn at digging. He was so much larger than
any of his predecessors that he stuck fast in a narrow part, and despite all the
efforts of himself and comrades, it was found impossible to move him one
way or the other. The comrades were at last reduced to the humiliation of
informing the Officer of the Guard of their tunnel and the condition of their
friend, and of asking assistance to release him, which was given.
The great tunneling tool was the indispensable half-canteen. The inventive
genius of our people, stimulated by the war, produced nothing for the
comfort and effectiveness of the soldier equal in usefulness to this humble
and unrecognized utensil. It will be remembered that a canteen was
composed of two pieces of tin struck up into the shape of saucers, and

soldered together at the edges. After a soldier had been in the field a little
while, and thrown away or lost the curious and complicated kitchen furniture
he started out with, he found that by melting the halves of his canteen apart,
he had a vessel much handier in every way than any he had parted with. It
could be used for anything —to make soup or coffee in, bake bread, brown
coffee, stew vegetables, etc., etc. A sufficient handle was made with a split
stick. When the cooking was done, the handle was thrown away, and the half
canteen slipped out of the road into the haversack. There seemed to be no
end of the uses to which this ever-ready disk of blackened sheet iron could
be turned. Several instances are on record where infantry regiments, with no
other tools than this, covered themselves on the field with quite respectable
rifle pits.
The starting point of a tunnel was always some tent close to the Dead
Line, and sufficiently well closed to screen the operations from the sight of
the guards near by. The party engaged in the work organized by giving every
man a number to secure the proper apportionment of the labor. Number One
began digging with his half canteen. After he had worked until tired, he
came out, and Number Two took his place, and so on. The tunnel was simply
a round, rat-like burrow, a little larger than a man's body. The digger lay on
his stomach, dug ahead of him, threw the dirt under him, and worked it back
with his feet till the man behind him, also lying on his stomach, could catch
it and work it back to the next. As the tunnel lengthened the number of men
behind each other in this way had to be increased, so that in a tunnel
seventy-five feet long there would be from eight to ten men lying one behind
the other. When the dirt was pushed back to the mouth of the tunnel it was
taken up in improvised bags, made by tying up the bottoms of pantaloon
legs, carried to the Swamp, and emptied. The work in the tunnel was very
exhausting, and the digger had to be relieved every half-hour.

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

Another trouble connected with tunneling was the number of traitors and
spies among us. There were many—principally among the N'Yaarker crowd
who were always zealous to betray a tunnel, in order to curry favor with the
Rebel officers. Then, again, the Rebels had numbers of their own men in the
pen at night, as spies. It was hardly even necessary to dress these in our
uniform, because a great many of our own men came into the prison in
Rebel clothes, having been compelled to trade garments with their captors.
One day in May, quite an excitement was raised by the detection of one of
these “tunnel traitors” in such a way as left no doubt of his guilt. At first
everybody was in favor of killing him, and they actually started to beat him
to death. This was arrested by a proposition to “have Captain Jack tattoo
him,” and the suggestion was immediately acted upon.
“Captain Jack” was a sailor who had been with us in the Pemberton
building at Richmond. He was a very skilful tattoo artist, but, I am sure,
could make the process nastier than any other that I ever saw attempt it. He
chewed tobacco enormously. After pricking away for a few minutes at the
design on the arm or some portion of the body, he would deluge it with a
flood of tobacco spit, which, he claimed, acted as a kind of mordant. Piping
this off with a filthy rag, he would study the effect for an instant, and then go
ahead with another series of prickings and tobacco juice drenchings.
The tunnel-traitor was taken to Captain Jack. That worthy decided to
brand him with a great “T,” the top part to extend across his forehead and the
stem to run down his nose. Captain Jack got his tattooing kit ready, and the
fellow was thrown upon the ground and held there. The Captain took his
head between his legs, and began operations. After an instant's work with the
needles, he opened his mouth, and filled the wretch's face and eyes full of
the disgusting saliva. The crowd round about yelled with delight at this new
process. For an hour, that was doubtless an eternity to the rascal undergoing
branding, Captain Jack continued his alternate pickings and drenchings. At
the end of that time the traitor's face was disfigured with a hideous mark that
he would bear to his grave. We learned afterwards that he was not one of our
men, but a Rebel spy. This added much to our satisfaction with the manner
of his treatment. He disappeared shortly after the operation was finished,
being, I suppose, taken outside. I hardly think Captain Jack would be pleased
to meet him again.

CHAPTER XXVII.
THE HOUNDS, AND THE DIFFICULTIES THEY PUT IN THE WAY
OF ESCAPE —THE WHOLE SOUTH PATROLLED BY THEM.
Those who succeeded, one way or another, in passing the Stockade limits,
found still more difficulties lying between them and freedom than would
discourage ordinarily resolute men. The first was to get away from the
immediate vicinity of the prison. All around were Rebel patrols, pickets and
guards, watching every avenue of egress. Several packs of hounds formed
efficient coadjutors of these, and were more dreaded by possible “escapes,”
than any other means at the command of our jailors. Guards and patrols
could be evaded, or circumvented, but the hounds could not. Nearly every
man brought back from a futile attempt at escape told the same story: he had
been able to escape the human Rebels, but not their canine colleagues. Three
of our detachment—members of the Twentieth Indiana—had an experience
of this kind that will serve to illustrate hundreds of others. They had been
taken outside to do some work upon the cook-house that was being built. A
guard was sent with the three a little distance into the woods to get a piece of
timber. The boys sauntered, along carelessly with the guard, and managed to
get pretty near him. As soon as they were fairly out of sight of the rest, the
strongest of them—Tom Williams—snatched the Rebel's gun away from
him, and the other two springing upon him as swift as wild cats, throttled
him, so that he could not give the alarm.

Still keeping a hand on his throat, they led him off some distance, and tied
him to a sapling with strings made by tearing up one of their blouses. He was
also securely gagged, and the boys, bidding him a hasty, but not specially
tender, farewell, struck out, as they fondly hoped, for freedom. It was not
long until they were missed, and the parties sent in search found and released
the guard, who gave all the information he possessed as to what had become
of his charges. All the packs of hounds, the squads of cavalry, and the foot
patrols were sent out to scour the adjacent country. The Yankees kept in the
swamps and creeks, and no trace of them was found that afternoon or
evening. By this time they were ten or fifteen miles away, and thought that

they could safely leave the creeks for better walking on the solid ground.
They had gone but a few miles, when the pack of hounds Captain Wirz was
with took their trail, and came after them in full cry. The boys tried to ran,
but, exhausted as they were, they could make no headway. Two of them
were soon caught, but Tom Williams, who was so desperate that he preferred
death to recapture, jumped into a mill-pond near by. When he came up, it
was in a lot of saw logs and drift wood that hid him from being seen from
the shore. The dogs stopped at the shore, and bayed after the disappearing
prey. The Rebels with them, who had seen Tom spring in, came up and made
a pretty thorough search for him. As they did not think to probe around the
drift wood this was unsuccessful, and they came to the conclusion that Tom
had been drowned. Wirz marched the other two back and, for a wonder, did
not punish them, probably because he was so rejoiced at his success in
capturing them. He was beaming with delight when he returned them to our
squad, and said, with a chuckle:
“Brisoners, I pring you pack two of dem tam Yankees wat got away
yesterday, unt I run de oder raskal into a mill-pont and trowntet him.”
What was our astonishment, about three weeks later, to see Tom, fat and
healthy, and dressed in a full suit of butternut, come stalking into the pen. He
had nearly reached the mountains, when a pack of hounds, patrolling for
deserters or negros, took his trail, where he had crossed the road from one
field to another, and speedily ran him down. He had been put in a little
country jail, and well fed till an opportunity occurred to send him back. This
patrolling for negros and deserters was another of the great obstacles to a
successful passage through the country. The rebels had put, every able-
bodied white man in the ranks, and were bending every energy to keep him
there. The whole country was carefully policed by Provost Marshals to bring
out those who were shirking military duty, or had deserted their colors, and
to check any movement by the negros. One could not go anywhere without a
pass, as every road was continually watched by men and hounds. It was the
policy of our men, when escaping, to avoid roads as much as possible by
traveling through the woods and fields.
From what I saw of the hounds, and what I could learn from others, I
believe that each pack was made up of two bloodhounds and from twenty-
five to fifty other dogs. The bloodhounds were debased descendants of the
strong and fierce hounds imported from Cuba—many of them by the United
States Government—for hunting Indians, during the Seminole war. The

other dogs were the mongrels that are found in such plentifulness about
every Southern house—increasing, as a rule, in numbers as the inhabitant of
the house is lower down and poorer. They are like wolves, sneaking and
cowardly when alone, fierce and bold when in packs. Each pack was
managed by a well-armed man, who rode a mule; and carried, slung over his
shoulders by a cord, a cow horn, scraped very thin, with which he controlled
the band by signals.

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

The use of hounds furnished us a crushing reply to the ever recurring
Rebel question:
“Why are you-uns puttin' niggers in the field to fight we-uns for?”
The questioner was always silenced by the return interrogatory:
“Is that as bad as running white men down with blood hounds?”

CHAPTER XXVIII
MAY—INFLUX OF NEW PRISONERS—DISPARITY IN NUMBERS
BETWEEN THE EASTERN AND WESTERN ARMIES—TERRIBLE
CROWDING—SLAUGHTER OF MEN AT THE CREEK.
In May the long gathering storm of war burst with angry violence all
along the line held by the contending armies. The campaign began which
was to terminate eleven months later in the obliteration of the Southern
Confederacy. May 1, Sigel moved up the Shenandoah Valley with thirty
thousand men; May 3, Butler began his blundering movement against
Petersburg; May 3, the Army of the Potomac left Culpeper, and on the 5th
began its deadly grapple with Lee, in the Wilderness; May 6, Sherman
moved from Chattanooga, and engaged Joe Johnston at Rocky Face Ridge
and Tunnel Hill.
Each of these columns lost heavily in prisoners. It could not be otherwise;
it was a consequence of the aggressive movements. An army acting
offensively usually suffers more from capture than one on the defensive. Our
armies were penetrating the enemy's country in close proximity to a
determined and vigilant foe. Every scout, every skirmish line, every picket,
every foraging party ran the risk of falling into a Rebel trap. This was in
addition to the risk of capture in action.
The bulk of the prisoners were taken from the Army of the Potomac. For
this there were two reasons: First, that there were many more men in that
Army than in any other; and second, that the entanglement in the dense
thickets and shrubbery of the Wilderness enabled both sides to capture great
numbers of the other's men. Grant lost in prisoners from May 5 to May 31,
seven thousand four hundred and fifty; he probably captured two-thirds of
that number from the Johnnies.
Wirz's headquarters were established in a large log house which had been
built in the fort a little distant from the southeast corner of the prison. Every
day—and sometimes twice or thrice a day—we would see great squads of
prisoners marched up to these headquarters, where they would be searched,
their names entered upon the prison records, by clerks (detailed prisoners;
few Rebels had the requisite clerical skill) and then be marched into the

prison. As they entered, the Rebel guards would stand to arms. The infantry
would be in line of battle, the cavalry mounted, and the artillerymen standing
by their guns, ready to open at the instant with grape and canister.
The disparity between the number coming in from the Army of the
Potomac and Western armies was so great, that we Westerners began to take
some advantage of it. If we saw a squad of one hundred and fifty or
thereabouts at the headquarters, we felt pretty certain they were from
Sherman, and gathered to meet them, and learn the news from our friends. If
there were from five hundred to two thousand we knew they were from the
Army of the Potomac, and there were none of our comrades among them.
There were three exceptions to this rule while we were in Andersonville. The
first was in June, when the drunken and incompetent Sturgis (now Colonel
of the Seventh United States Cavalry) shamefully sacrificed a superb
division at Guntown, Miss. The next was after Hood made his desperate
attack on Sherman, on the 22d of July, and the third was when Stoneman
was captured at Macon. At each of these times about two thousand prisoners
were brought in.
By the end of May there were eighteen thousand four hundred and fifty-
four prisoners in the Stockade. Before the reader dismisses this statement
from his mind let him reflect how great a number this is. It is more active,
able-bodied young men than there are in any of our leading Cities, save New
York and Philadelphia. It is more than the average population of an Ohio
County. It is four times as many troops as Taylor won the victory of Buena
Vista with, and about twice as many as Scott went into battle with at any
time in his march to the City of Mexico.
These eighteen thousand four hundred and fifty-four men were cooped up
on less than thirteen acres of ground, making about fifteen hundred to the
acre. No room could be given up for streets, or for the usual arrangements of
a camp, and most kinds of exercise were wholly precluded. The men
crowded together like pigs nesting in the woods on cold nights. The ground,
despite all our efforts, became indescribably filthy, and this condition grew
rapidly worse as the season advanced and the sun's rays gained fervency. As
it is impossible to describe this adequately, I must again ask the reader to
assist with a few comparisons. He has an idea of how much filth is produced,
on an ordinary City lot, in a week, by its occupation by a family say of six
persons. Now let him imagine what would be the result if that lot, instead of
having upon it six persons, with every appliance for keeping themselves

clean, and for removing and concealing filth, was the home of one hundred
and eight men, with none of these appliances.
That he may figure out these proportions for himself, I will repeat some of
the elements of the problem: We will say that an average City lot is thirty
feet front by one hundred deep. This is more front than most of them have,
but we will be liberal. This gives us a surface of three thousand square feet.
An acre contains forty-three thousand five hundred and sixty square feet.
Upon thirteen of these acres, we had eighteen thousand four hundred and
fifty-four men. After he has found the number of square feet that each man
had for sleeping apartment, dining room, kitchen, exercise grounds and
outhouses, and decided that nobody could live for any length of time in such
contracted space, I will tell him that a few weeks later double that many men
were crowded upon that space that over thirty-five thousand were packed
upon those twelve and a-half or thirteen acres.
But I will not anticipate. With the warm weather the condition of the
swamp in the center of the prison became simply horrible. We hear so much
now-a-days of blood poisoning from the effluvia of sinks and sewers, that
reading it, I wonder how a man inside the Stockade, and into whose nostrils
came a breath of that noisomeness, escaped being carried off by a malignant
typhus. In the slimy ooze were billions of white maggots. They would crawl
out by thousands on the warm sand, and, lying there a few minutes, sprout a
wing or a pair of them. With these they would essay a clumsy flight, ending
by dropping down upon some exposed portion of a man's body, and stinging
him like a gad-fly. Still worse, they would drop into what he was cooking,
and the utmost care could not prevent a mess of food from being
contaminated with them.
All the water that we had to use was that in the creek which flowed
through this seething mass of corruption, and received its sewerage. How
pure the water was when it came into the Stockade was a question. We
always believed that it received the drainage from the camps of the guards, a
half-a-mile away.
A road was made across the swamp, along the Dead Line at the west side,
where the creek entered the pen. Those getting water would go to this spot,
and reach as far up the stream as possible, to get the water that was least
filthy. As they could reach nearly to the Dead Line this furnished an excuse
to such of the guards as were murderously inclined to fire upon them. I think
I hazard nothing in saying that for weeks at least one man a day was killed at

this place. The murders became monotonous; there was a dreadful sameness
to them. A gun would crack; looking up we would see, still smoking, the
muzzle of the musket of one of the guards on either side of the creek. At the
same instant would rise a piercing shriek from the man struck, now
floundering in the creek in his death agony. Then thousands of throats would
yell out curses and denunciations, and—
“O, give the Rebel —— —— —— —— a furlough!”

It was our belief that every guard who killed a Yankee was rewarded with
a thirty-day furlough. Mr. Frederick Holliger, now of Toledo, formerly a
member of the Seventy-Second Ohio, and captured at Guntown, tells me, as
his introduction to Andersonville life, that a few hours after his entry he went
to the brook to get a drink, reached out too far, and was fired upon by the
guard, who missed him, but killed another man and wounded a second. The
other prisoners standing near then attacked him, and beat him nearly to
death, for having drawn the fire of the guard.
Nothing could be more inexcusable than these murders. Whatever defense
there might be for firing on men who touched the Dead Line in other parts of
the prison, there could be none here. The men had no intention of escaping;
they had no designs upon the Stockade; they were not leading any party to
assail it. They were in every instance killed in the act of reaching out with
their cups to dip up a little water.

CHAPTER XXIX
SOME DISTINCTION BETWEEN SOLDIERLY DUTY AND
MURDER—A PLOT TO ESCAPE —IT IS REVEALED AND
FRUSTRATED.
Let the reader understand that in any strictures I make I do not complain
of the necessary hardships of war. I understood fully and accepted the
conditions of a soldier's career. My going into the field uniformed and armed
implied an intention, at least, of killing, wounding, or capturing, some of the
enemy. There was consequently no ground of complaint if I was, myself
killed, wounded, or captured. If I did not want to take these chances I ought
to stay at home. In the same way, I recognized the right of our captors or
guards to take proper precautions to prevent our escape. I never questioned
for an instant the right of a guard to fire upon those attempting to escape, and
to kill them. Had I been posted over prisoners I should have had no
compunction about shooting at those trying to get away, and consequently I
could not blame the Rebels for doing the same thing. It was a matter of
soldierly duty.
But not one of the men assassinated by the guards at Andersonville were
trying to escape, nor could they have got away if not arrested by a bullet. In
a majority of instances there was not even a transgression of a prison rule,
and when there was such a transgression it was a mere harmless
inadvertence. The slaying of every man there was a foul crime.
The most of this was done by very young boys; some of it by old men.
The Twenty-Sixth Alabama and Fifty-Fifth Georgia, had guarded us since
the opening of the prison, but now they were ordered to the field, and their
places filled by the Georgia “Reserves,” an organization of boys under, and
men over the military age. As General Grant aptly-phrased it, “They had
robbed the cradle and the grave,” in forming these regiments. The boys, who
had grown up from children since the war began, could not comprehend that
a Yankee was a human being, or that it was any more wrongful to shoot one
than to kill a mad dog. Their young imaginations had been inflamed with
stories of the total depravity of the Unionists until they believed it was a
meritorious thing to seize every opportunity to exterminate them.

Early one morning I overheard a conversation between two of these
youthful guards:
“Say, Bill, I heerd that you shot a Yank last night?”
“Now, you just bet I did. God! you jest ought to've heerd him holler.”
Evidently the juvenile murderer had no more conception that he had
committed crime than if he had killed a rattlesnake.
Among those who came in about the last of the month were two thousand
men from Butler's command, lost in the disastrous action of May 15, by
which Butler was “bottled up” at Bermuda Hundreds. At that time the Rebel
hatred for Butler verged on insanity, and they vented this upon these men
who were so luckless—in every sense—as to be in his command. Every
pains was taken to mistreat them. Stripped of every article of clothing,
equipment, and cooking utensils—everything, except a shirt and a pair of
pantaloons, they were turned bareheaded and barefooted into the prison, and
the worst possible place in the pen hunted out to locate them upon. This was
under the bank, at the edge of the Swamp and at the eastern side of the
prison, where the sinks were, and all filth from the upper part of the camp
flowed down to them. The sand upon which they lay was dry and burning as
that of a tropical desert; they were without the slightest shelter of any kind,
the maggot flies swarmed over them, and the stench was frightful. If one of
them survived the germ theory of disease is a hallucination.
The increasing number of prisoners made it necessary for the Rebels to
improve their means of guarding and holding us in check. They threw up a
line of rifle pits around the Stockade for the infantry guards. At intervals
along this were piles of hand grenades, which could be used with fearful
effect in case of an outbreak. A strong star fort was thrown up at a little
distance from the southwest corner. Eleven field pieces were mounted in this
in such a way as to rake the Stockade diagonally. A smaller fort, mounting
five guns, was built at the northwest corner, and at the northeast and
southeast corners were small lunettes, with a couple of howitzers each.
Packed as we were we had reason to dread a single round from any of these
works, which could not fail to produce fearful havoc.
Still a plot was concocted for a break, and it seemed to the sanguine
portions of us that it must prove successful. First a secret society was
organized, bound by the most stringent oaths that could be devised. The
members of this were divided into companies of fifty men each; under

officers regularly elected. The secrecy was assumed in order to shut out
Rebel spies and the traitors from a knowledge of the contemplated outbreak.
A man named Baker—belonging, I think, to some New York regiment—was
the grand organizer of the scheme. We were careful in each of our companies
to admit none to membership except such as long acquaintance gave us
entire confidence in.
The plan was to dig large tunnels to the Stockade at various places, and
then hollow out the ground at the foot of the timbers, so that a half dozen or
so could be pushed over with a little effort, and make a gap ten or twelve
feet wide. All these were to be thrown down at a preconcerted signal, the
companies were to rush out and seize the eleven guns of the headquarters
fort. The Plymouth Brigade was then to man these and turn them on the
camp of the Reserves who, it was imagined, would drop their arms and take
to their heels after receiving a round or so of shell. We would gather what
arms we could, and place them in the hands of the most active and
determined. This would give us frown eight to ten thousand fairly armed,
resolute men, with which we thought we could march to Appalachicola Bay,
or to Sherman.
We worked energetically at our tunnels, which soon began to assume such
shape as to give assurance that they would answer our expectations in
opening the prison walls.
Then came the usual blight to all such enterprises: a spy or a traitor
revealed everything to Wirz. One day a guard came in, seized Baker and
took him out. What was done with him I know not; we never heard of him
after he passed the inner gate.
Immediately afterward all the Sergeants of detachments were summoned
outside. There they met Wirz, who made a speech informing them that he
knew all the details of the plot, and had made sufficient preparations to
defeat it. The guard had been strongly reinforced, and disposed in such a
manner as to protect the guns from capture. The Stockade had been secured
to prevent its falling, even if undermined. He said, in addition, that Sherman
had been badly defeated by Johnston, and driven back across the river, so
that any hopes of co-operation by him would be ill-founded.
When the Sergeants returned, he caused the following notice to be posted
on the gates:
NOTICE.

Not wishing to shed the blood of hundreds, not connected
with those who concocted a mad plan to force the Stockade,
and make in this way their escape, I hereby warn the leaders
and those who formed themselves into a band to carry out
this, that I am in possession of all the facts, and have made
my dispositions accordingly, so as to frustrate it. No choice
would be left me but to open with grape and canister on the
Stockade, and what effect this would have, in this densely
crowded place, need not be told.
May 25,1864.
H. Wirz.

The next day a line of tall poles, bearing white flags, were put up at some
little distance from the Dead Line, and a notice was read to us at roll call that
if, except at roll call, any gathering exceeding one hundred was observed,
closer the Stockade than these poles, the guns would open with grape and
canister without warning.
The number of deaths in the Stockade in May was seven hundred and
eight, about as many as had been killed in Sherman's army during the same
time.

CHAPTER XXX.
JUNE—POSSIBILITIES OF A MURDEROUS CANNONADE—WHAT
WAS PROPOSED TO BE DONE IN THAT EVENT—A FALSE ALARM—
DETERIORATION OF THE RATIONS —FEARFUL INCREASE OF
MORTALITY.
After Wirz's threat of grape and canister upon the slightest provocation,
we lived in daily apprehension of some pretext being found for opening the
guns upon us for a general massacre. Bitter experience had long since taught
us that the Rebels rarely threatened in vain. Wirz, especially, was much more
likely to kill without warning, than to warn without killing. This was because
of the essential weakness of his nature. He knew no art of government, no
method of discipline save “kill them!” His petty little mind's scope reached
no further. He could conceive of no other way of managing men than the
punishment of every offense, or seeming offense, with death. Men who have
any talent for governing find little occasion for the death penalty. The
stronger they are in themselves—the more fitted for controlling others—the
less their need of enforcing their authority by harsh measures.
There was a general expression of determination among the prisoners to
answer any cannonade with a desperate attempt to force the Stockade. It was
agreed that anything was better than dying like rats in a pit or wild animals
in a battue. It was believed that if anything would occur which would rouse
half those in the pen to make a headlong effort in concert, the palisade could
be scaled, and the gates carried, and, though it would be at a fearful loss of
life, the majority of those making the attempt would get out. If the Rebels
would discharge grape and canister, or throw a shell into the prison, it would
lash everybody to such a pitch that they would see that the sole forlorn hope
of safety lay in wresting the arms away from our tormentors. The great
element in our favor was the shortness of the distance between us and the
cannon. We could hope to traverse this before the guns could be reloaded
more than once.
Whether it would have been possible to succeed I am unable to say. It
would have depended wholly upon the spirit and unanimity with which the
effort was made. Had ten thousand rushed forward at once, each with a

determination to do or die, I think it would have been successful without a
loss of a tenth of the number. But the insuperable trouble—in our
disorganized state—was want of concert of action. I am quite sure, however,
that the attempt would have been made had the guns opened.
One day, while the agitation of this matter was feverish, I was cooking my
dinner—that is, boiling my pitiful little ration of unsalted meal, in my fruit
can, with the aid of a handful of splinters that I had been able to pick up by a
half day's diligent search. Suddenly the long rifle in the headquarters fort
rang out angrily. A fuse shell shrieked across the prison—close to the tops of
the logs, and burst in the woods beyond. It was answered with a yell of
defiance from ten thousand throats.
I sprang up-my heart in my mouth. The long dreaded time had arrived; the
Rebels had opened the massacre in which they must exterminate us, or we
them.
I looked across to the opposite bank, on which were standing twelve
thousand men—erect, excited, defiant. I was sure that at the next shot they
would surge straight against the Stockade like a mighty human billow, and
then a carnage would begin the like of which modern times had never seen.
The excitement and suspense were terrible. We waited for what seemed
ages for the next gun. It was not fired. Old Winder was merely showing the
prisoners how he could rally the guards to oppose an outbreak. Though the
gun had a shell in it, it was merely a signal, and the guards came double-
quicking up by regiments, going into position in the rifle pits and the hand-
grenade piles.
As we realized what the whole affair meant, we relieved our surcharged
feelings with a few general yells of execration upon Rebels generally, and
upon those around us particularly, and resumed our occupation of cooking
rations, killing lice, and discussing the prospects of exchange and escape.
The rations, like everything else about us, had steadily grown worse. A
bakery was built outside of the Stockade in May and our meal was baked
there into loaves about the size of brick. Each of us got a half of one of these
for a day's ration. This, and occasionally a small slice of salt pork, was call
that I received. I wish the reader would prepare himself an object lesson as
to how little life can be supported on for any length of time, by procuring a
piece of corn bread the size of an ordinary brickbat, and a thin slice of pork,
and then imagine how he would fare, with that as his sole daily ration, for

long hungry weeks and months. Dio Lewis satisfied himself that he could
sustain life on sixty cents, a week. I am sure that the food furnished us by the
Rebels would not, at present prices cost one-third that. They pretended to
give us one-third of pound of bacon and one and one-fourth pounds of corn
meal. A week's rations then would be two and one-third pounds of bacon—
worth ten cents, and eight and three-fourths pounds of meal, worth, say, ten
cents more. As a matter of fact, I do not presume that at any time we got this
full ration. It would surprise me to learn that we averaged two-thirds of it.
The meal was ground very coarse and produced great irrition in the
bowels. We used to have the most frightful cramps that men ever suffered
from. Those who were predisposed intestinal affections were speedily
carried off by incurable diarrhea and dysentery. Of the twelve thousand and
twelve men who died, four thousand died of chronic diarrhea; eight hundred
and seventeen died of acute diarrhea, and one thousand three hundred and
eighty-four died of dysenteria, making total of six thousand two hundred and
one victims to enteric disorders.
Let the reader reflect a moment upon this number, till comprehends fully
how many six thousand two hundred and men are, and how much force,
energy, training, and rich possibilities for the good of the community and
country died with those six thousand two hundred and one young, active
men. It may help his perception of the magnitude of this number to
remember that the total loss of the British, during the Crimean war, by death
in all shapes, was four thousand five hundred and ninety-five, or one
thousand seven hundred and six less than the deaths in Andersonville from
dysenteric diseases alone.
The loathsome maggot flies swarmed about the bakery, and dropped into
the trough where the dough was being mixed, so that it was rare to get a
ration of bread not contaminated with a few of them.
It was not long until the bakery became inadequate to supply bread for all
the prisoners. Then great iron kettles were set, and mush was issued to a
number of detachments, instead of bread. There was not so much cleanliness
and care in preparing this as a farmer shows in cooking food for stock. A
deep wagon-bed would be shoveled full of the smoking paste, which was
then hailed inside and issued out to the detachments, the latter receiving it on
blankets, pieces of shelter tents, or, lacking even these, upon the bare sand.

As still more prisoners came in, neither bread nor mush could be
furnished them, and a part of the detachments received their rations in meal.
Earnest solicitation at length resulted in having occasional scanty issues of
wood to cook this with. My detachment was allowed to choose which it
would take—bread, mush or meal. It took the latter.
Cooking the meal was the topic of daily interest. There were three ways of
doing it: Bread, mush and “dumplings.” In the latter the meal was dampened
until it would hold together, and was rolled into little balls, the size of
marbles, which were then boiled. The bread was the most satisfactory and
nourishing; the mush the bulkiest—it made a bigger show, but did not stay
with one so long. The dumplings held an intermediate position—the water in
which they were boiled becoming a sort of a broth that helped to stay the
stomach. We received no salt, as a rule. No one knows the intense longing
for this, when one goes without it for a while. When, after a privation of
weeks we would get a teaspoonful of salt apiece, it seemed as if every
muscle in our bodies was invigorated. We traded buttons to the guards for
red peppers, and made our mush, or bread, or dumplings, hot with the fiery-
pods, in hopes that this would make up for the lack of salt, but it was a
failure. One pinch of salt was worth all the pepper pods in the Southern
Confederacy. My little squad—now diminished by death from five to three
—cooked our rations together to economize wood and waste of meal, and
quarreled among ourselves daily as to whether the joint stock should be
converted into bread, mush or dumplings. The decision depended upon the
state of the stomach. If very hungry, we made mush; if less famished,
dumplings; if disposed to weigh matters, bread.

This may seem a trifling matter, but it was far from it. We all remember
the man who was very fond of white beans, but after having fifty or sixty
meals of them in succession, began to find a suspicion of monotony in the
provender. We had now six months of unvarying diet of corn meal and water,
and even so slight a change as a variation in the way of combining the two
was an agreeable novelty.
At the end of June there were twenty-six thousand three hundred and
sixty-seven prisoners in the Stockade, and one thousand two hundred—just
forty per day—had died during the month.

CHAPTER XXXI
DYING BY INCHES—SEITZ, THE SLOW, AND HIS DEATH—
STIGGALL AND EMERSON —RAVAGES ON THE SCURVY.
May and June made sad havoc in the already thin ranks of our battalion.
Nearly a score died in my company—L—and the other companies suffered
proportionately. Among the first to die of my company comrades, was a
genial little Corporal, “Billy” Phillips—who was a favorite with us all.
Everything was done for him that kindness could suggest, but it was of little
avail. Then “Bruno” Weeks—a young boy, the son of a preacher, who had
run away from his home in Fulton County, Ohio, to join us, succumbed to
hardship and privation.
The next to go was good-natured, harmless Victor Seitz, a Detroit cigar
maker, a German, and one of the slowest of created mortals. How he ever
came to go into the cavalry was beyond the wildest surmises of his
comrades. Why his supernatural slowness and clumsiness did not result in
his being killed at least once a day, while in the service, was even still farther
beyond the power of conjecture. No accident ever happened in the company
that Seitz did not have some share in. Did a horse fall on a slippery road, it
was almost sure to be Seitz's, and that imported son of the Fatherland was
equally sure to be caught under him. Did somebody tumble over a bank of a
dark night, it was Seitz that we soon heard making his way back, swearing in
deep German gutterals, with frequent allusion to 'tausend teuflin.' Did a
shanty blow down, we ran over and pulled Seitz out of the debris, when he
would exclaim:
“Zo! dot vos pretty vunny now, ain't it?”
And as he surveyed the scene of his trouble with true German phlegm, he
would fish a brier-wood pipe from the recesses of his pockets, fill it with
tobacco, and go plodding off in a cloud of smoke in search of some fresh
way to narrowly escape destruction. He did not know enough about horses to
put a snaffle-bit in one's mouth, and yet he would draw the friskiest, most
mettlesome animal in the corral, upon whose back he was scarcely more at
home than he would be upon a slack rope. It was no uncommon thing to see
a horse break out of ranks, and go past the battalion like the wind, with poor

Seitz clinging to his mane like the traditional grim Death to a deceased
African. We then knew that Seitz had thoughtlessly sunk the keen spurs he
would persist in wearing; deep into the flanks of his high-mettled animal.

These accidents became so much a matter-of-course that when anything
unusual occurred in the company our first impulse was to go and help Seitz
out.
When the bugle sounded “boots and saddles,” the rest of us would pack
up, mount, “count off by fours from the right,” and be ready to move out

before the last notes of the call had fairly died away. Just then we would
notice an unsaddled horse still tied to the hitching place. It was Seitz's, and
that worthy would be seen approaching, pipe in mouth, and bridle in hand,
with calm, equable steps, as if any time before the expiration of his
enlistment would be soon enough to accomplish the saddling of his steed. A
chorus of impatient and derisive remarks would go up from his impatient
comrades:
“For heaven's sake, Seitz, hurry up!”
“Seitz! you are like a cow's tail—always behind!”
“Seitz, you are slower than the second coming of the Savior!”
“Christmas is a railroad train alongside of you, Seitz!”
“If you ain't on that horse in half a second, Seitz, we'll go off and leave
you, and the Johnnies will skin you alive!” etc., etc.
Not a ripple of emotion would roll over Seitz's placid features under the
sharpest of these objurgations. At last, losing all patience, two or three boys
would dismount, run to Seitz's horse, pack, saddle and bridle him, as if he
were struck with a whirlwind. Then Seitz would mount, and we would move
'off.
For all this, we liked him. His good nature was boundless, and his
disposition to oblige equal to the severest test. He did not lack a grain of his
full share of the calm, steadfast courage of his race, and would stay where he
was put, though Erebus yawned and bade him fly. He was very useful,
despite his unfitness for many of the duties of a cavalryman. He was a good
guard, and always ready to take charge of prisoners, or be sentry around
wagons or a forage pile-duties that most of the boys cordially hated.
But he came into the last trouble at Andersonville. He stood up pretty well
under the hardships of Belle Isle, but lost his cheerfulness—his unrepining
calmness—after a few weeks in the Stockade. One day we remembered that
none of us had seen him for several days, and we started in search of him.
We found him in a distant part of the camp, lying near the Dead Line. His
long fair hair was matted together, his blue eyes had the flush of fever. Every
part of his clothing was gray with the lice that were hastening his death with
their torments. He uttered the first complaint I ever heard him make, as I
came up to him:
“My Gott, M ——, dis is worse dun a dog's det!”

In a few days we gave him all the funeral in our power; tied his big toes
together, folded his hands across his breast, pinned to his shirt a slip of
paper, upon which was written:
VICTOR E. SEITZ,
Co. L, Sixteenth Illinois Cavalry.
And laid his body at the South Gate, beside some scores of others that
were awaiting the arrival of the six-mule wagon that hauled them to the

Potter's Field, which was to be their last resting-place.
John Emerson and John Stiggall, of my company, were two Norwegian
boys, and fine specimens of their race—intelligent, faithful, and always
ready for duty. They had an affection for each other that reminded one of the
stories told of the sworn attachment and the unfailing devotion that were
common between two Gothic warrior youths. Coming into Andersonville
some little time after the rest of us, they found all the desirable ground taken
up, and they established their quarters at the base of the hill, near the
Swamp. There they dug a little hole to lie in, and put in a layer of pine
leaves. Between them they had an overcoat and a blanket. At night they lay
upon the coat and covered themselves with the blanket. By day the blanket
served as a tent. The hardships and annoyances that we endured made
everybody else cross and irritable. At times it seemed impossible to say or
listen to pleasant words, and nobody was ever allowed to go any length of
time spoiling for a fight. He could usually be accommodated upon the spot
to any extent he desired, by simply making his wishes known. Even the best
of chums would have sharp quarrels and brisk fights, and this disposition
increased as disease made greater inroads upon them. I saw in one instance
two brothers-both of whom died the next day of scurvy—and who were so
helpless as to be unable to rise, pull themselves up on their knees by
clenching the poles of their tents —in order to strike each other with clubs,
and they kept striking until the bystanders interfered and took their weapons
away from them.
But Stiggall and Emerson never quarreled with each other. Their
tenderness and affection were remarkable to witness. They began to go the
way that so many were going; diarrhea and scurvy set in; they wasted away
till their muscles and tissues almost disappeared, leaving the skin lying fiat
upon the bones; but their principal solicitude was for each other, and each
seemed actually jealous of any person else doing anything for the other. I
met Emerson one day, with one leg drawn clear out of shape, and rendered
almost useless by the scurvy. He was very weak, but was hobbling down
towards the Creek with a bucket made from a boot leg. I said:
“Johnny, just give me your bucket. I'll fill it for you, and bring it up to
your tent.”
“No; much obliged, M ——” he wheezed out; “my pardner wants a cool
drink, and I guess I'd better get it for him.”

Stiggall died in June. He was one of the first victims of scurvy, which, in
the succeeding few weeks, carried off so many. All of us who had read sea-
stories had read much of this disease and its horrors, but we had little
conception of the dreadful reality. It usually manifested itself first in the
mouth. The breath became unbearably fetid; the gums swelled until they
protruded, livid and disgusting, beyond the lips. The teeth became so loose
that they frequently fell out, and the sufferer would pick them up and set
them back in their sockets. In attempting to bite the hard corn bread
furnished by the bakery the teeth often stuck fast and were pulled out. The
gums had a fashion of breaking away, in large chunks, which would be
swallowed or spit out. All the time one was eating his mouth would be filled
with blood, fragments of gums and loosened teeth.
Frightful, malignant ulcers appeared in other parts of the body; the ever-
present maggot flies laid eggs in these, and soon worms swarmed therein.
The sufferer looked and felt as if, though he yet lived and moved, his body
was anticipating the rotting it would undergo a little later in the grave.
The last change was ushered in by the lower parts of the legs swelling.
When this appeared, we considered the man doomed. We all had scurvy,
more or less, but as long as it kept out of our legs we were hopeful. First, the
ankle joints swelled, then the foot became useless. The swelling increased
until the knees became stiff, and the skin from these down was distended
until it looked pale, colorless and transparent as a tightly blown bladder. The
leg was so much larger at the bottom than at the thigh, that the sufferers used
to make grim jokes about being modeled like a churn, “with the biggest end
down.” The man then became utterly helpless and usually died in a short
time.

The official report puts down the number of deaths from scurvy at three
thousand five hundred and seventy-four, but Dr. Jones, the Rebel surgeon,
reported to the Rebel Government his belief that nine-tenths of the great
mortality of the prison was due, either directly or indirectly, to this cause.
The only effort made by the Rebel doctors to check its ravages was
occasionally to give a handful of sumach berries to some particularly bad
case.
When Stiggall died we thought Emerson would certainly follow him in a
day or two, but, to our surprise, he lingered along until August before dying.

CHAPTER XXXII
“OLE BOO,” AND “OLE SOL, THE HAYMAKER”—A FETID,
BURNING DESERT—NOISOME WATER, AND THE EFFECTS OF
DRINKING IT—STEALING SOFT SOAP.
The gradually lengthening Summer days were insufferably long and
wearisome. Each was hotter, longer and more tedious than its predecessors.
In my company was a none-too-bright fellow, named Dawson. During the
chilly rains or the nipping, winds of our first days in prison, Dawson would,
as he rose in, the morning, survey the forbidding skies with lack-luster eyes
and remark, oracularly:
“Well, Ole Boo gits us agin, to-day.”
He was so unvarying in this salutation to the morn that his designation of
disagreeable weather as “Ole Boo” became generally adopted by us. When
the hot weather came on, Dawson's remark, upon rising and seeing excellent
prospects for a scorcher, changed to: “Well, Ole Sol, the Haymaker, is going
to git in his work on us agin to-day.”
As long as he lived and was able to talk, this was Dawson's invariable
observation at the break of day.
He was quite right. The Ole Haymaker would do some famous work
before he descended in the West, sending his level rays through the wide
interstices between the somber pines.
By nine o'clock in the morning his beams would begin to fairly singe
everything in the crowded pen. The hot sand would glow as one sees it in the
center of the unshaded highway some scorching noon in August. The high
walls of the prison prevented the circulation inside of any breeze that might
be in motion, while the foul stench rising from the putrid Swamp and the
rotting ground seemed to reach the skies.
One can readily comprehend the horrors of death on the burning sands of
a desert. But the desert sand is at least clean; there is nothing worse about it
than heat and intense dryness. It is not, as that was at Andersonville,
poisoned with the excretions of thousands of sick and dying men, filled with
disgusting vermin, and loading the air with the germs of death. The

difference is as that between a brick-kiln and a sewer. Should the fates ever
decide that I shall be flung out upon sands to perish, I beg that the hottest
place in the Sahara may be selected, rather than such a spot as the interior of
the Andersonville Stockade.
It may be said that we had an abundance of water, which made a decided
improvement on a desert. Doubtless—had that water been pure. But every
mouthful of it was a blood poison, and helped promote disease and death.
Even before reaching the Stockade it was so polluted by the drainage of the
Rebel camps as to be utterly unfit for human use. In our part of the prison we
sank several wells—some as deep as forty feet—to procure water. We had no
other tools for this than our ever-faithful half canteens, and nothing
wherewith to wall the wells. But a firm clay was reached a few feet below
the surface, which afforded tolerable strong sides for the lower part, ana
furnished material to make adobe bricks for curbs to keep out the sand of the
upper part. The sides were continually giving away, however, and fellows
were perpetually falling down the holes, to the great damage of their legs
and arms. The water, which was drawn up in little cans, or boot leg buckets,
by strings made of strips of cloth, was much better than that of the creek, but
was still far from pure, as it contained the seepage from the filthy ground.
The intense heat led men to drink great quantities of water, and this
superinduced malignant dropsical complaints, which, next to diarrhea,
scurvy and gangrene, were the ailments most active in carrying men off.
Those affected in this way swelled up frightfully from day to day. Their
clothes speedily became too small for them, and were ripped off, leaving
them entirely naked, and they suffered intensely until death at last came to
their relief. Among those of my squad who died in this way, was a young
man named Baxter, of the Fifth Indiana Cavalry, taken at Chicamauga. He
was very fine looking—tall, slender, with regular features and intensely
black hair and eyes; he sang nicely, and was generally liked. A more pitiable
object than he, when last I saw him, just before his death, can not be
imagined. His body had swollen until it seemed marvelous that the human
skin could bear so much distention without disruption, All the old look of
bright intelligence had been. driven from his face by the distortion of his
features. His swarthy hair and beard, grown long and ragged, had that
peculiar repulsive look which the black hair of the sick is prone to assume.
I attributed much of my freedom from the diseases to which others
succumbed to abstention from water drinking. Long before I entered the

army, I had constructed a theory—on premises that were doubtless as
insufficient as those that boyish theories are usually based upon—that
drinking water was a habit, and a pernicious one, which sapped away the
energy. I took some trouble to curb my appetite for water, and soon found
that I got along very comfortably without drinking anything beyond that
which was contained in my food. I followed this up after entering the army,
drinking nothing at any time but a little coffee, and finding no need, even on
the dustiest marches, for anything more. I do not presume that in a year I
drank a quart of cold water. Experience seemed to confirm my views, for I
noticed that the first to sink under a fatigue, or to yield to sickness, were
those who were always on the lookout for drinking water, springing from
their horses and struggling around every well or spring on the line of march
for an opportunity to fill their canteens.
I made liberal use of the Creek for bathing purposes, however, visiting it
four or five times a day during the hot days, to wash myself all over. This did
not cool one off much, for the shallow stream was nearly as hot as the sand,
but it seemed to do some good, and it helped pass away the tedious hours.
The stream was nearly all the time filled as full of bathers as they could
stand, and the water could do little towards cleansing so many. The
occasional rain storms that swept across the prison were welcomed, not only
because they cooled the air temporarily, but because they gave us a shower-
bath. As they came up, nearly every one stripped naked and got out where he
could enjoy the full benefit of the falling water. Fancy, if possible, the
spectacle of twenty-five thousand or thirty thousand men without a stitch of
clothing upon them. The like has not been seen, I imagine, since the naked
followers of Boadicea gathered in force to do battle to the Roman invaders.
It was impossible to get really clean. Our bodies seemed covered with a
varnish-like, gummy matter that defied removal by water alone. I imagined
that it came from the rosin or turpentine, arising from the little pitch pine
fires over which we hovered when cooking our rations. It would yield to
nothing except strong soap-and soap, as I have before stated—was nearly as
scarce in the Southern Confederacy as salt. We in prison saw even less of it,
or rather, none at all. The scarcity of it, and our desire for it, recalls a bit of
personal experience.
I had steadfastly refused all offers of positions outside the prison on
parole, as, like the great majority of the prisoners, my hatred of the Rebels
grew more bitter, day by day; I felt as if I would rather die than accept the

smallest favor at their hands, and I shared the common contempt for those
who did. But, when the movement for a grand attack on the Stockade—
mentioned in a previous chapter—was apparently rapidly coming to a head, I
was offered a temporary detail outside to, assist in making up some rolls. I
resolved to accept; first because I thought I might get some information that
would be of use in our enterprise; and, next, because I foresaw that the rush
through the gaps in the Stockade would be bloody business, and by going
out in advance I would avoid that much of the danger, and still be able to
give effective assistance.
I was taken up to Wirz's office. He was writing at a desk at one end of a
large room when the Sergeant brought me in. He turned around, told the
Sergeant to leave me, and ordered me to sit down upon a box at the other
end of the room.
Turning his back and resuming his writing, in a few minutes he had
forgotten me. I sat quietly, taking in the details for a half-hour, and then,
having exhausted everything else in the room, I began wondering what was
in the box I was sitting upon. The lid was loose; I hitched it forward a little
without attracting Wirz's attention, and slipped my left hand down of a
voyage of discovery. It seemed very likely that there was something there
that a loyal Yankee deserved better than a Rebel. I found that it was a fine
article of soft soap. A handful was scooped up and speedily shoved into my
left pantaloon pocket. Expecting every instant that Wirz would turn around
and order me to come to the desk to show my handwriting, hastily and
furtively wiped my hand on the back of my shirt and watched Wirz with as
innocent an expression as a school boy assumes when he has just flipped a
chewed paper wad across the room. Wirz was still engrossed in his writing,
and did not look around. I was emboldened to reach down for another
handful. This was also successfully transferred, the hand wiped off on the
back of the shirt, and the face wore its expression of infantile ingenuousness.
Still Wirz did not look up. I kept dipping up handful after handful, until I had
gotten about a quart in the left hand pocket. After each handful I rubbed my
hand off on the back of my shirt and waited an instant for a summons to the
desk. Then the process was repeated with the other hand, and a quart of the
saponaceous mush was packed in the right hand pocket.

Shortly after Wirz rose and ordered a guard to take me away and keep me,
until he decided what to do with me. The day was intensely hot, and soon the
soap in my pockets and on the back of my shirt began burning like double
strength Spanish fly blisters. There was nothing to do but grin and bear it. I
set my teeth, squatted down under the shade of the parapet of the fort, and
stood it silently and sullenly. For the first time in my life I thoroughly
appreciated the story of the Spartan boy, who stole the fox and suffered the
animal to tear his bowels out rather than give a sign which would lead to the
exposure of his theft.
Between four and five o'clock-after I had endured the thing for five or six
hours, a guard came with orders from Wirz that I should be returned to the
Stockade. Upon hastily removing my clothes, after coming inside, I found I
had a blister on each thigh, and one down my back, that would have
delighted an old practitioner of the heroic school. But I also had a half gallon
of excellent soft soap. My chums and I took a magnificent wash, and gave

our clothes the same, and we still had soap enough left to barter for some
onions that we had long coveted, and which tasted as sweet to us as manna
to the Israelites.

CHAPTER XXXIII
“POUR PASSER LE TEMPS”—A SET OF CHESSMEN PROCURED
UNDER DIFFICULTIES —RELIGIOUS SERVICES—THE DEVOTED
PRIEST—WAR SONG.
The time moved with leaden feet. Do the best we could, there were very
many tiresome hours for which no occupation whatever could be found. All
that was necessary to be done during the day—attending roll call, drawing
and cooking rations, killing lice and washing—could be disposed of in an
hour's time, and we were left with fifteen or sixteen waking hours, for which
there was absolutely no employment. Very many tried to escape both the
heat and ennui by sleeping as much as possible through the day, but I noticed
that those who did this soon died, and consequently I did not do it. Card
playing had sufficed to pass away the hours at first, but our cards soon wore
out, and deprived us of this resource. My chum, Andrews, and I constructed
a set of chessmen with an infinite deal of trouble. We found a soft, white root
in the swamp which answered our purpose. A boy near us had a tolerably
sharp pocket-knife, for the use of which a couple of hours each day, we gave
a few spoonfuls of meal. The knife was the only one among a large number
of prisoners, as the Rebel guards had an affection for that style of cutlery,
which led them to search incoming prisoners, very closely. The fortunate
owner of this derived quite a little income of meal by shrewdly loaning it to
his knifeless comrades. The shapes that we made for pieces and pawns were
necessarily very rude, but they were sufficiently distinct for identification.
We blackened one set with pitch pine soot, found a piece of plank that would
answer for a board and purchased it from its possessor for part of a ration of
meal, and so were fitted out with what served until our release to distract our
attention from much of the surrounding misery.
Every one else procured such amusement as they could. Newcomers, who
still had money and cards, gambled as long as their means lasted. Those who
had books read them until the leaves fell apart. Those who had paper and
pen and ink tried to write descriptions and keep journals, but this was usually
given up after being in prison a few weeks. I was fortunate enough to know a
boy who had brought a copy of “Gray's Anatomy” into prison with him. I

was not specially interested in the subject, but it was Hobson's choice; I
could read anatomy or nothing, and so I tackled it with such good will that
before my friend became sick and was taken outside, and his book with him,
I had obtained a very fair knowledge of the rudiments of physiology.
There was a little band of devoted Christian workers, among whom were
Orderly Sergeant Thomas J. Sheppard, Ninety-Seventh O. Y. L, now a
leading Baptist minister in Eastern Ohio; Boston Corbett, who afterward
slew John Wilkes Booth, and Frank Smith, now at the head of the Railroad
Bethel work at Toledo. They were indefatigable in trying to evangelize the
prison. A few of them would take their station in some part of the Stockade
(a different one every time), and begin singing some old familiar hymn like:
“Come, Thou fount of every blessing,”
and in a few minutes they would have an attentive audience of as many
thousand as could get within hearing. The singing would be followed by
regular services, during which Sheppard, Smith, Corbett, and some others
would make short, spirited, practical addresses, which no doubt did much
good to all who heard them, though the grains of leaven were entirely too
small to leaven such an immense measure of meal. They conducted several
funerals, as nearly like the way it was done at home as possible. Their
ministrations were not confined to mere lip service, but they labored
assiduously in caring for the sick, and made many a poor fellow's way to the
grave much smoother for him.

This was about all the religious services that we were favored with. The
Rebel preachers did not make that effort to save our misguided souls which
one would have imagined they would having us where we could not choose
but hear they might have taken advantage of our situation to rake us fore and
aft with their theological artillery. They only attempted it in one instance.
While in Richmond a preacher came into our room and announced in an
authoritative way that he would address us on religious subjects. We
uncovered respectfully, and gathered around him. He was a loud-tongued,
brawling Boanerges, who addressed the Lord as if drilling a brigade.
He spoke but a few moments before making apparent his belief that the
worst of crimes was that of being a Yankee, and that a man must not only be
saved through Christ's blood, but also serve in the Rebel army before he
could attain to heaven.

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

His unwearying devotion gained the admiration of all, no matter how little
inclined one might be to view priestliness generally with favor. He was
evidently of such stuff as Christian heros have ever been made of, and would
have faced stake and fagot, at the call of duty, with unquailing eye. His name
was Father Hamilton, and he was stationed at Macon. The world should
know more of a man whose services were so creditable to humanity and his
Church:
The good father had the wisdom of the serpent, with the harmlessness of
the dove. Though full of commiseration for the unhappy lot of the prisoners,
nothing could betray him into the slightest expression of opinion regarding
the war or those who were the authors of all this misery. In our impatience at
our treatment, and hunger for news, we forgot his sacerdotal character, and
importuned him for tidings of the exchange. His invariable reply was that he
lived apart from these things and kept himself ignorant of them.
“But, father,” said I one day, with an impatience that I could not wholly
repress, “you must certainly hear or read something of this, while you are
outside among the Rebel officers.” Like many other people, I supposed that
the whole world was excited over that in which I felt a deep interest.
“No, my son,” replied he, in his usual calm, measured tones. “I go not
among them, nor do I hear anything from them. When I leave the prison in
the evening, full of sorrow at what I have seen here, I find that the best use I
can make of my time is in studying the Word of God, and especially the
Psalms of David.”
We were not any longer good company for each other. We had heard over
and over again all each other's stories and jokes, and each knew as much
about the other's previous history as we chose to communicate. The story of
every individual's past life, relations, friends, regiment, and soldier
experience had been told again and again, until the repetition was
wearisome. The cool nights following the hot days were favorable to little
gossiping seances like the yarn-spinning watches of sailors on pleasant
nights. Our squad, though its stock of stories was worn threadbare, was
fortunate enough to have a sweet singer in Israel “Nosey” Payne—of whose
tunefulness we never tired. He had a large repertoire of patriotic songs,
which he sang with feeling and correctness, and which helped much to make
the calm Summer nights pass agreeably. Among the best of these was “Brave
Boys are They,” which I always thought was the finest ballad, both in poetry
and music, produced by the War.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
MAGGOTS, LICE AND RAIDERS—PRACTICES OF THESE HUMAN
VERMIN—PLUNDERING THE SICK AND DYING—NIGHT ATTACKS,
AND BATTLES BY DAY—HARD TIMES FOR THE SMALL TRADERS.
With each long, hot Summer hour the lice, the maggot-flies and the
N'Yaarkers increased in numbers and venomous activity. They were ever-
present annoyances and troubles; no time was free from them. The lice
worried us by day and tormented us by night; the maggot-flies fouled our
food, and laid in sores and wounds larvae that speedily became masses of
wriggling worms. The N'Yaarkers were human vermin that preyed upon and
harried us unceasingly.
They formed themselves into bands numbering from five to twenty-five,
each led by a bold, unscrupulous, energetic scoundrel. We now called them
“Raiders,” and the most prominent and best known of the bands were called
by the names of their ruffian leaders, as “Mosby's Raiders,” “Curtis's
Raiders,” “Delaney's Raiders,” “Sarsfield's Raiders,” “Collins's Raiders,”
etc.
As long as we old prisoners formed the bulk of those inside the Stockade,
the Raiders had slender picking. They would occasionally snatch a blanket
from the tent poles, or knock a boy down at the Creek and take his silver
watch from him; but this was all. Abundant opportunities for securing richer
swag came to them with the advent of the Plymouth Pilgrims. As had been
before stated, these boys brought in with them a large portion of their first
instalment of veteran bounty—aggregating in amount, according to varying
estimates, between twenty-five thousand and one hundred thousand dollars.
The Pilgrims were likewise well clothed, had an abundance of blankets and
camp equipage, and a plentiful supply of personal trinkets, that could be
readily traded off to the Rebels. An average one of them—even if his money
were all gone—was a bonanza to any band which could succeed in
plundering him. His watch and chain, shoes, knife, ring, handkerchief,
combs and similar trifles, would net several hundred dollars in Confederate
money. The blockade, which cut off the Rebel communication with the outer
world, made these in great demand. Many of the prisoners that came in from

the Army of the Potomac repaid robbing equally well. As a rule those from
that Army were not searched so closely as those from the West, and not
unfrequently they came in with all their belongings untouched, where
Sherman's men, arriving the same day, would be stripped nearly to the buff.
The methods of the Raiders were various, ranging all the way from sneak
thievery to highway robbery. All the arts learned in the prisons and purlieus
of New York were put into exercise. Decoys, “bunko-steerers” at home,
would be on the look-out for promising subjects as each crowd of fresh
prisoners entered the gate, and by kindly offers to find them a sleeping place,
lure them to where they could be easily despoiled during the night. If the
victim resisted there was always sufficient force at hand to conquer him, and
not seldom his life paid the penalty of his contumacy. I have known as many
as three of these to be killed in a night, and their bodies—with throats cut, or
skulls crushed in—be found in the morning among the dead at the gates.
All men having money or valuables were under continual espionage, and
when found in places convenient for attack, a rush was made for them. They
were knocked down and their persons rifled with such swift dexterity that it
was done before they realized what had happened.
At first these depredations were only perpetrated at night. The quarry was
selected during the day, and arrangements made for a descent. After the
victim was asleep the band dashed down upon him, and sheared him of his
goods with incredible swiftness. Those near would raise the cry of
“Raiders!” and attack the robbers. If the latter had secured their booty they
retreated with all possible speed, and were soon lost in the crowd. If not,
they would offer battle, and signal for assistance from the other bands.
Severe engagements of this kind were of continual occurrence, in which men
were so badly beaten as to die from the effects. The weapons used were fists,
clubs, axes, tent-poles, etc. The Raiders were plentifully provided with the
usual weapons of their class—slung-shots and brass-knuckles. Several of
them had succeeded in smuggling bowie-knives into prison.
They had the great advantage in these rows of being well acquainted with
each other, while, except the Plymouth Pilgrims, the rest of the prisoners
were made up of small squads of men from each regiment in the service, and
total strangers to all outside of their own little band. The Raiders could
concentrate, if necessary, four hundred or five hundred men upon any point
of attack, and each member of the gangs had become so familiarized with all
the rest by long association in New York, and elsewhere, that he never dealt

a blow amiss, while their opponents were nearly as likely to attack friends as
enemies.
By the middle of June the continual success of the Raiders emboldened
them so that they no longer confined their depredations to the night, but
made their forays in broad daylight, and there was hardly an hour in the
twenty-four that the cry of “Raiders! Raiders!” did, not go up from some part
of the pen, and on looking in the direction of the cry, one would see a
surging commotion, men struggling, and clubs being plied vigorously. This
was even more common than the guards shooting men at the Creek crossing.
One day I saw “Dick Allen's Raiders,” eleven in number, attack a man
wearing the uniform of Ellett's Marine Brigade. He was a recent comer, and
alone, but he was brave. He had come into possession of a spade, by some
means or another, and he used this with delightful vigor and effect. Two or
three times he struck one of his assailants so fairly on the head and with such
good will that I congratulated myself that he had killed him. Finally, Dick
Allen managed to slip around behind him unnoticed, and striking him on the
head with a slung-shot, knocked him down, when the whole crowd pounced
upon him to kill him, but were driven off by others rallying to his assistance.

The proceeds of these forays enabled the Raiders to wax fat and lusty,
while others were dying from starvation. They all had good tents,
constructed of stolen blankets, and their headquarters was a large, roomy
tent, with a circular top, situated on the street leading to the South Gate, and
capable of accommodating from seventy-five to one hundred men. All the

material for this had been wrested away from others. While hundreds were
dying of scurvy and diarrhea, from the miserable, insufficient food, and lack
of vegetables, these fellows had flour, fresh meat, onions, potatoes, green
beans, and other things, the very looks of which were a torture to hungry,
scorbutic, dysenteric men. They were on the best possible terms with the
Rebels, whom they fawned upon and groveled before, and were in return
allowed many favors, in the way of trading, going out upon detail, and
making purchases.
Among their special objects of attack were the small traders in the prison.
We had quite a number of these whose genius for barter was so strong that it
took root and flourished even in that unpropitious soil, and during the time
when new prisoners were constantly coming in with money, they managed to
accumulate small sums—from ten dollars upward, by trading between the
guards and the prisoners. In the period immediately following a prisoner's
entrance he was likely to spend all his money and trade off all his
possessions for food, trusting to fortune to get him out of there when these
were gone. Then was when he was profitable to these go-betweens, who
managed to make him pay handsomely for what he got. The Raiders kept
watch of these traders, and plundered them whenever occasion served. It
reminded one of the habits of the fishing eagle, which hovers around until
some other bird catches a fish, and then takes it away.

CHAPTER XXXV
A COMMUNITY WITHOUT GOVERNMENT—FORMATION OF THE
REGULATORS—RAIDERS ATTACK KEY BUT ARE BLUFFED OFF—
ASSAULT OF THE REGULATORS ON THE RAIDERS —DESPERATE
BATTLE—OVERTHROW OF THE RAIDERS.
To fully appreciate the condition of affairs let it be remembered that we
were a community of twenty-five thousand boys and young men—none too
regardful of control at best—and now wholly destitute of government. The
Rebels never made the slightest attempt to maintain order in the prison.
Their whole energies were concentrated in preventing our escape. So long as
we staid inside the Stockade, they cared as little what we did there as for the
performances of savages in the interior of Africa. I doubt if they would have
interfered had one-half of us killed and eaten the other half. They rather took
a delight in such atrocities as came to their notice. It was an ocular
demonstration of the total depravity of the Yankees.
Among ourselves there was no one in position to lay down law and
enforce it. Being all enlisted men we were on a dead level as far as rank was
concerned—the highest being only Sergeants, whose stripes carried no
weight of authority. The time of our stay was—it was hoped—too transient
to make it worth while bothering about organizing any form of government.
The great bulk of the boys were recent comers, who hoped that in another
week or so they would be out again. There were no fat salaries to tempt any
one to take upon himself the duty of ruling the masses, and all were left to
their own devices, to do good or evil, according to their several bents, and as
fear of consequences swayed them. Each little squad of men was a law unto
themselves, and made and enforced their own regulations on their own
territory. The administration of justice was reduced to its simplest terms. If a
fellow did wrong he was pounded—if there was anybody capable of doing
it. If not he went free.
The almost unvarying success of the Raiders in—their forays gave the
general impression that they were invincible—that is, that not enough men
could be concentrated against them to whip them. Our ill-success in the
attack we made on them in April helped us to the same belief. If we could

not beat them then, we could not now, after we had been enfeebled by
months of starvation and disease. It seemed to us that the Plymouth Pilgrims,
whose organization was yet very strong, should undertake the task; but, as is
usually the case in this world, where we think somebody else ought to
undertake the performance of a disagreeable public duty, they did not see it
in the light that we wished them to. They established guards around their
squads, and helped beat off the Raiders when their own territory was
invaded, but this was all they would do. The rest of us formed similar
guards. In the southwest corner of the Stockade—where I was—we formed
ourselves into a company of fifty active boys—mostly belonging to my own
battalion and to other Illinois regiments—of which I was elected Captain.
My First Lieutenant was a tall, taciturn, long-armed member of the One
Hundred and Eleventh Illinois, whom we called “Egypt,” as he came from
that section of the State. He was wonderfully handy with his fists. I think he
could knock a fellow down so that he would fall-harder, and lie longer than
any person I ever saw. We made a tacit division of duties: I did the talking,
and “Egypt” went through the manual labor of knocking our opponents
down. In the numerous little encounters in which our company was engaged,
“Egypt” would stand by my side, silent, grim and patient, while I pursued
the dialogue with the leader of the other crowd. As soon as he thought the
conversation had reached the proper point, his long left arm stretched out
like a flash, and the other fellow dropped as if he had suddenly come in
range of a mule that was feeling well. That unexpected left-hander never
failed. It would have made Charles Reade's heart leap for joy to see it.
In spite of our company and our watchfulness, the Raiders beat us badly
on one occasion. Marion Friend, of Company I of our battalion, was one of
the small traders, and had accumulated forty dollars by his bartering. One
evening at dusk Delaney's Raiders, about twenty-five strong, took advantage
of the absence of most of us drawing rations, to make a rush for Marion.
They knocked him down, cut him across the wrist and neck with a razor, and
robbed him of his forty dollars. By the time we could rally Delaney and his
attendant scoundrels were safe from pursuit in the midst of their friends.
This state of things had become unendurable. Sergeant Leroy L. Key, of
Company M, our battalion, resolved to make an effort to crush the Raiders.
He was a printer, from Bloomington, Illinois, tall, dark, intelligent and
strong-willed, and one of the bravest men I ever knew. He was ably
seconded by “Limber Jim,” of the Sixty-Seventh Illinois, whose lithe,

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

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

complaisant humor, approved of the design, and allowed him the use of the
enclosure of the North Gate to confine his prisoners in.
In spite of Key's efforts at secrecy, information as to his scheme reached
the Raiders. It was debated at their headquarters, and decided there that Key
must be killed. Three men were selected to do this work. They called on
Key, a dusk, on the evening of the 2d of July. In response to their inquiries,
he came out of the blanket-covered hole on the hillside that he called his
tent. They told him what they had heard, and asked if it was true. He said it
was. One of them then drew a knife, and the other two, “billies” to attack
him. But, anticipating trouble, Key had procured a revolver which one of the
Pilgrims had brought in in his knapsack and drawing this he drove them off,
but without firing a shot.
The occurrence caused the greatest excitement. To us of the Regulators it
showed that the Raiders had penetrated our designs, and were prepared for
them. To the great majority of the prisoners it was the first intimation that
such a thing was contemplated; the news spread from squad to squad with
the greatest rapidity, and soon everybody was discussing the chances of the
movement. For awhile men ceased their interminable discussion of escape
and exchange—let those over worked words and themes have a rare spell of
repose—and debated whether the Raiders would whip the regulators, or the
Regulators conquer the Raiders. The reasons which I have previously
enumerated, induced a general disbelief in the probability of our success.
The Raiders were in good health well fed, used to operating together, and
had the confidence begotten by a long series of successes. The Regulators
lacked in all these respects.
Whether Key had originally fixed on the next day for making the attack,
or whether this affair precipitated the crisis, I know not, but later in the
evening he sent us all order: to be on our guard all night, and ready for
action the next morning.
There was very little sleep anywhere that night. The Rebels learned
through their spies that something unusual was going on inside, and as their
only interpretation of anything unusual there was a design upon the
Stockade, they strengthened the guards, took additional precautions in every
way, and spent the hours in anxious anticipation.
We, fearing that the Raiders might attempt to frustrate the scheme by an
attack in overpowering force on Key's squad, which would be accompanied

by the assassination of him and Limber Jim, held ourselves in readiness to
offer any assistance that might be needed.
The Raiders, though confident of success, were no less exercised. They
threw out pickets to all the approaches to their headquarters, and provided
otherwise against surprise. They had smuggled in some canteens of a cheap,
vile whisky made from sorghum—and they grew quite hilarious in their Big
Tent over their potations. Two songs had long ago been accepted by us as
peculiarly the Raiders' own—as some one in their crowd sang them nearly
every evening, and we never heard them anywhere else. The first began:
In Athol lived a man named Jerry Lanagan;
He battered away till he hadn't a pound.
His father he died, and he made him a man agin;
Left him a farm of ten acres of ground.
The other related the exploits of an Irish highwayman named Brennan,
whose chief virtue was that What he rob-bed from the rich he gave unto the
poor.
And this was the villainous chorus in which they all joined, and sang in
such a way as suggested highway robbery, murder, mayhem and arson:
Brennan on the moor!
Brennan on the moor!
Proud and undaunted stood
John Brennan on the moor.
They howled these two nearly the live-long night. They became
eventually quite monotonous to us, who were waiting and watching. It
would have been quite a relief if they had thrown in a new one every hour or
so, by way of variety.
Morning at last came. Our companies mustered on their grounds, and then
marched to the space on the South Side where the rations were issued. Each
man was armed with a small club, secured to his wrist by a string.
The Rebels—with their chronic fear of an outbreak animating them—had
all the infantry in line of battle with loaded guns. The cannon in the works
were shotted, the fuses thrust into the touch-holes and the men stood with
lanyards in hand ready to mow down everybody, at any instant.
The sun rose rapidly through the clear sky, which soon glowed down on
us like a brazen oven. The whole camp gathered where it could best view the

encounter. This was upon the North Side. As I have before explained the two
sides sloped toward each other like those of a great trough. The Raiders'
headquarters stood upon the center of the southern slope, and consequently
those standing on the northern slope saw everything as if upon the stage of a
theater.
While standing in ranks waiting the orders to move, one of my comrades
touched me on the arm, and said:
“My God! just look over there!”

I turned from watching the Rebel artillerists, whose intentions gave me
more uneasiness than anything else, and looked in the direction indicated by
the speaker. The sight was the strangest one my eyes ever encountered.
There were at least fifteen thousand perhaps twenty thousand—men packed
together on the bank, and every eye was turned on us. The slope was such
that each man's face showed over the shoulders of the one in front of him,
making acres on acres of faces. It was as if the whole broad hillside was
paved or thatched with human countenances.
When all was ready we moved down upon the Big Tent, in as good order
as we could preserve while passing through the narrow tortuous paths
between the tents. Key, Limber Jim, Ned Carigan, Goody, Tom Larkin, and
Ned Johnson led the advance with their companies. The prison was as silent
as a graveyard. As we approached, the Raiders massed themselves in a
strong, heavy line, with the center, against which our advance was moving,
held by the most redoubtable of their leaders. How many there were of them
could not be told, as it was impossible to say where their line ended and the
mass of spectators began. They could not themselves tell, as the attitude of a
large portion of the spectators would be determined by which way the battle
went.
Not a blow was struck until the lines came close together. Then the Raider
center launched itself forward against ours, and grappled savagely with the
leading Regulators. For an instant—it seemed an hour—the struggle was
desperate.
Strong, fierce men clenched and strove to throttle each other; great
muscles strained almost to bursting, and blows with fist and club-dealt with
all the energy of mortal hate—fell like hail. One—perhaps two—endless
minutes the lines surged—throbbed—backward and forward a step or two,
and then, as if by a concentration of mighty effort, our men flung the Raider
line back from it—broken—shattered. The next instant our leaders were
striding through the mass like raging lions. Carrigan, Limber Jim, Larkin,
Johnson and Goody each smote down a swath of men before them, as they
moved resistlessly forward.

We light weights had been sent around on the flanks to separate the
spectators from the combatants, strike the Raiders 'en revers,' and, as far as
possible, keep the crowd from reinforcing them.
In five minutes after the first blow—was struck the overthrow of the
Raiders was complete. Resistance ceased, and they sought safety in flight.
As the result became apparent to the—watchers on the opposite hillside,
they vented their pent-up excitement in a yell that made the very ground
tremble, and we answered them with a shout that expressed not only our
exultation over our victory, but our great relief from the intense strain we
had long borne.

We picked up a few prisoners on the battle field, and retired without
making any special effort to get any more then, as we knew, that they could
not escape us.
We were very tired, and very hungry. The time for drawing rations had
arrived. Wagons containing bread and mush had driven to the gates, but Wirz
would not allow these to be opened, lest in the excited condition of the men
an attempt might be made to carry them. Key ordered operations to cease,
that Wirz might be re-assured and let the rations enter. It was in vain. Wirz
was thoroughly scared. The wagons stood out in the hot sun until the mush
fermented and soured, and had to be thrown away, while we event rationless
to bed, and rose the next day with more than usually empty stomachs to goad
us on to our work.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
WHY THE REGULATORS WERE NOT ASSISTED BY THE ENTIRE
CAMP—PECULIARITIES OF BOYS FROM DIFFERENT SECTIONS—
HUNTING THE RAIDERS DOWN—EXPLOITS OF MY LEFT-HANDED
LIEUTENANT—RUNNING THE GAUNTLET.
I may not have made it wholly clear to the reader why we did not have the
active assistance of the whole prison in the struggle with the Raiders. There
were many reasons for this. First, the great bulk of the prisoners were new
comers, having been, at the farthest, but three or four weeks in the Stockade.
They did not comprehend the situation of affairs as we older prisoners did.
They did not understand that all the outrages—or very nearly all—were the
work of—a relatively small crowd of graduates from the metropolitan school
of vice. The activity and audacity of the Raiders gave them the impression
that at least half the able-bodied men in the Stockade were engaged in these
depredations. This is always the case. A half dozen burglars or other active
criminals in a town will produce the impression that a large portion of the
population are law breakers. We never estimated that the raiding N'Yaarkers,
with their spies and other accomplices, exceeded five hundred, but it would
have been difficult to convince a new prisoner that there were not thousands
of them. Secondly, the prisoners were made up of small squads from every
regiment at the front along the whole line from the Mississippi to the
Atlantic. These were strangers to and distrustful of all out side their own
little circles. The Eastern men were especially so. The Pennsylvanians and
New Yorkers each formed groups, and did not fraternize readily with those
outside their State lines. The New Jerseyans held aloof from all the rest,
while the Massachusetts soldiers had very little in Common with anybody—
even their fellow New Englanders. The Michigan men were modified New
Englanders. They had the same tricks of speech; they said “I be” for “I am,”
and “haag” for “hog;” “Let me look at your knife half a second,” or “Give
me just a sup of that water,” where we said simply “Lend me your knife,” or
“hand me a drink.” They were less reserved than the true Yankees, more
disposed to be social, and, with all their eccentricities, were as manly,
honorable a set of fellows as it was my fortune to meet with in the army. I
could ask no better comrades than the boys of the Third Michigan Infantry,

who belonged to the same “Ninety” with me. The boys from Minnesota and
Wisconsin were very much like those from Michigan. Those from Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and Kansas all seemed cut off the same piece. To all
intents and purposes they might have come from the same County. They
spoke the same dialect, read the same newspapers, had studied McGuffey's
Readers, Mitchell's Geography, and Ray's Arithmetics at school, admired the
same great men, and held generally the same opinions on any given subject.
It was never difficult to get them to act in unison—they did it spontaneously;
while it required an effort to bring about harmony of action with those from
other sections. Had the Western boys in prison been thoroughly advised of
the nature of our enterprise, we could, doubtless, have commanded their
cordial assistance, but they were not, and there was no way in which it could
be done readily, until after the decisive blow was struck.
The work of arresting the leading Raiders went on actively all day on the
Fourth of July. They made occasional shows of fierce resistance, but the
events of the day before had destroyed their prestige, broken their
confidence, and driven away from their support very many who followed
their lead when they were considered all-powerful. They scattered from their
former haunts, and mingled with the crowds in other parts of the prison, but
were recognized, and reported to Key, who sent parties to arrest them.
Several times they managed to collect enough adherents to drive off the
squads sent after them, but this only gave them a short respite, for the squad
would return reinforced, and make short work of them. Besides, the
prisoners generally were beginning to understand and approve of the
Regulators' movement, and were disposed to give all the assistance needed.
Myself and “Egypt,” my taciturn Lieutenant of the sinewy left arm, were
sent with our company to arrest Pete Donnelly, a notorious character, and
leader of, a bad crowd. He was more “knocker” than Raider, however. He
was an old Pemberton building acquaintance, and as we marched up to
where he was standing at the head of his gathering clan, he recognized me
and said:
“Hello, Illinoy,” (the name by which I was generally known in prison)
“what do you want here?”
I replied, “Pete, Key has sent me for you. I want you to go to
headquarters.”
“What the —— does Key want with me?”

“I don't know, I'm sure; he only said to bring you.”
“But I haven't had anything to do with them other snoozers you have been
a-having trouble with.”
“I don't know anything about that; you can talk to Key as to that. I only
know that we are sent for you.”
“Well, you don't think you can take me unless I choose to go? You haint
got anybody in that crowd big enough to make it worth while for him to
waste his time trying it.”
I replied diffidently that one never knew what—he could do till he tried;
that while none of us were very big, we were as willing a lot of little fellows
as he ever saw, and if it were all the same to him, we would undertake to
waste a little time getting him to headquarters.
The conversation seemed unnecessarily long to “Egypt,” who stood by my
side; about a half step in advance. Pete was becoming angrier and more
defiant every minute. His followers were crowding up to us, club in hand.
Finally Pete thrust his fist in my face, and roared out:
“By —-, I ain't a going with ye, and ye can't take me, you —— —— ——
”
This was “Egypt's” cue. His long left arm uncoupled like the loosening of
the weight of a pile-driver. It caught Mr. Donnelly under the chin, fairly
lifted him from his feet, and dropped him on his back among his followers. It
seemed to me that the predominating expression in his face as he went, over
was that of profound wonder as to where that blow could have come from,
and why he did not see it in time to dodge or ward it off.
As Pete dropped, the rest of us stepped forward with our clubs, to engage
his followers, while “Egypt” and one or two others tied his hands and
otherwise secured him. But his henchmen made no effort to rescue him, and
we carried him over to headquarters without molestation.

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

By evening Key had perhaps one hundred and twenty-five of the most
noted Raiders in his hands. Wirz had allowed him the use of the small
stockade forming the entrance to the North Gate to confine them in.
The next thing was the judgment and punishment of the arrested ones. For
this purpose Key organized a court martial composed of thirteen Sergeants,
chosen from the latest arrivals of prisoners, that they might have no
prejudice against the Raiders. I believe that a man named Dick McCullough,
belonging to the Third Missouri Cavalry, was the President of the Court. The
trial was carefully conducted, with all the formality of a legal procedure that
the Court and those managing the matter could remember as applicable to
the crimes with which the accused were charged. Each of these confronted
by the witnesses who testified against him, and allowed to cross-examine
them to any extent he desired. The defense was managed by one of their
crowd, the foul-tongued Tombs shyster, Pete Bradley, of whom I have before
spoken. Such was the fear of the vengeance of the Raiders and their friends
that many who had been badly abused dared not testify against them,
dreading midnight assassination if they did. Others would not go before the
Court except at night. But for all this there was no lack of evidence; there
were thousands who had been robbed and maltreated, or who had seen these
outrages committed on others, and the boldness of the leaders in their bight
of power rendered their identification a matter of no difficulty whatever.
The trial lasted several days, and concluded with sentencing quite a large
number to run the gauntlet, a smaller number to wear balls and chains, and
the following six to be hanged:
John Sarsfield, One Hundred and Forty-Fourth New York.
William Collins, alias “Mosby,” Company D, Eighty-Eighth
Pennsylvania,
Charles Curtis, Company A, Fifth Rhode Island Artillery.
Patrick Delaney, Company E, Eighty-Third Pennsylvania.
A. Muir, United States Navy.
Terence Sullivan, Seventy-Second New York.
These names and regiments are of little consequence, however, as I
believe all the rascals were professional bounty-jumpers, and did not belong
to any regiment longer than they could find an opportunity to desert and join
another.

Those sentenced to ball-and-chain were brought in immediately, and had
the irons fitted to them that had been worn by some of our men as a
punishment for trying to escape.
It was not yet determined how punishment should be meted out to the
remainder, but circumstances themselves decided the matter. Wirz became
tired of guarding so large a number as Key had arrested, and he informed
Key that he should turn them back into the Stockade immediately. Key
begged for little farther time to consider the disposition of the cases, but
Wirz refused it, and ordered the Officer of the Guard to return all arrested,
save those sentenced to death, to the Stockade. In the meantime the news
had spread through the prison that the Raiders were to be sent in again
unpunished, and an angry mob, numbering some thousands, and mostly
composed of men who had suffered injuries at the hands of the marauders,
gathered at the South Gate, clubs in hand, to get such satisfaction as they
could out of the rascals. They formed in two long, parallel lines, facing
inward, and grimly awaited the incoming of the objects of their vengeance.
The Officer of the Guard opened the wicket in the gate, and began forcing
the Raiders through it—one at a time—at the point of the bayonet, and each
as he entered was told what he already realized well—that he must run for
his life. They did this with all the energy that they possessed, and as they ran
blows rained on their heads, arms and backs. If they could succeed in
breaking through the line at any place they were generally let go without any
further punishment. Three of the number were beaten to death. I saw one of
these killed. I had no liking for the gauntlet performance, and refused to
have anything to do with it, as did most, if not all, of my crowd.

While the gauntlet was in operation, I was standing by my tent at the head
of a little street, about two hundred feet from the line, watching what was
being done. A sailor was let in. He had a large bowie knife concealed about
his person somewhere, which he drew, and struck savagely with at his
tormentors on either side. They fell back from before him, but closed in
behind and pounded him terribly. He broke through the line, and ran up the
street towards me. About midway of the distance stood a boy who had
helped carry a dead man out during the day, and while out had secured a
large pine rail which he had brought in with him. He was holding this
straight up in the air, as if at a “present arms.” He seemed to have known
from the first that the Raider would run that way. Just as he came squarely
under it, the boy dropped the rail like the bar of a toll gate. It struck the
Raider across the head, felled him as if by a shot, and his pursuers then beat
him to death.

CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE EXECUTION—BUILDING THE SCAFFOLD—DOUBTS OF
THE CAMP-CAPTAIN WIRZ THINKS IT IS PROBABLY A RUSE TO
FORCE THE STOCKADE—HIS PREPARATIONS AGAINST SUCH AN
ATTEMPT—ENTRANCE OF THE DOOMED ONES—THEY REALIZE
THEIR FATE—ONE MAKES A DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE—
HIS RECAPTURE—INTENSE EXCITEMENT—WIRZ ORDERS THE
GUNS TO OPEN—FORTUNATELY THEY DO NOT—THE SIX ARE
HANGED—ONE BREAKS HIS ROPE—SCENE WHEN THE RAIDERS
ARE CUT DOWN.
It began to be pretty generally understood through the prison that six men
had been sentenced to be hanged, though no authoritative announcement of
the fact had been made. There was much canvassing as to where they should
be executed, and whether an attempt to hang them inside of the Stockade
would not rouse their friends to make a desperate effort to rescue them,
which would precipitate a general engagement of even larger proportions
than that of the 3d. Despite the result of the affairs of that and the succeeding
days, the camp was not yet convinced that the Raiders were really
conquered, and the Regulators themselves were not thoroughly at ease on
that score. Some five thousand or six thousand new prisoners had come in
since the first of the month, and it was claimed that the Raiders had received
large reinforcements from those,—a claim rendered probable by most of the
new-comers being from the Army of the Potomac.
Key and those immediately about him kept their own counsel in the
matter, and suffered no secret of their intentions to leak out, until on the
morning of the 11th, when it became generally known that the sentences
were too be carried into effect that day, and inside the prison.
My first direct information as to this was by a messenger from Key with
an order to assemble my company and stand guard over the carpenters who
were to erect the scaffold. He informed me that all the Regulators would be
held in readiness to come to our relief if we were attacked in force. I had
hoped that if the men were to be hanged I would be spared the unpleasant
duty of assisting, for, though I believed they richly deserved that

punishment, I had much rather some one else administered it upon them.
There was no way out of it, however, that I could see, and so “Egypt” and I
got the boys together, and marched down to the designated place, which was
an open space near the end of the street running from the South Gate, and
kept vacant for the purpose of issuing rations. It was quite near the spot
where the Raiders' Big Tent had stood, and afforded as good a view to the
rest of the camp as could be found.
Key had secured the loan of a few beams and rough planks, sufficient to
build a rude scaffold with. Our first duty was to care for these as they came
in, for such was the need of wood, and plank for tent purposes, that they
would scarcely have fallen to the ground before they were spirited away, had
we not stood over them all the time with clubs.
The carpenters sent by Key came over and set to work. The N'Yaarkers
gathered around in considerable numbers, sullen and abusive. They cursed
us with all their rich vocabulary of foul epithets, vowed that we should never
carry out the execution, and swore that they had marked each one for
vengeance. We returned the compliments in kind, and occasionally it seemed
as if a general collision was imminent; but we succeeded in avoiding this,
and by noon the scaffold was finished. It was a very simple affair. A stout
beam was fastened on the top of two posts, about fifteen feet high. At about
the height of a man's head a couple of boards stretched across the space
between the posts, and met in the center. The ends at the posts laid on cleats;
the ends in the center rested upon a couple of boards, standing upright, and
each having a piece of rope fastened through a hole in it in such a manner,
that a man could snatch it from under the planks serving as the floor of the
scaffold, and let the whole thing drop. A rude ladder to ascend by completed
the preparations.
As the arrangements neared completion the excitement in and around the
prison grew intense. Key came over with the balance of the Regulators, and
we formed a hollow square around the scaffold, our company marking the
line on the East Side. There were now thirty thousand in the prison. Of these
about one-third packed themselves as tightly about our square as they could
stand. The remaining twenty thousand were wedged together in a solid mass
on the North Side. Again I contemplated the wonderful, startling, spectacle
of a mosaic pavement of human faces covering the whole broad hillside.
Outside, the Rebel, infantry was standing in the rifle pits, the artillerymen
were in place about their loaded and trained pieces, the No. 4 of each gun

holding the lanyard cord in his hand, ready to fire the piece at the instant of
command. The small squad of cavalry was drawn up on the hill near the Star
Fort, and near it were the masters of the hounds, with their yelping packs.
All the hangers-on of the Rebel camp—clerks, teamsters, employer,
negros, hundreds of white and colored women, in all forming a motley
crowd of between one and two thousand, were gathered together in a group
between the end of the rifle pits and the Star Fort. They had a good view
from there, but a still better one could be had, a little farther to the right, and
in front of the guns. They kept edging up in that direction, as crowds will,
though they knew the danger they would incur if the artillery opened.
The day was broiling hot. The sun shot his perpendicular rays down with
blistering fierceness, and the densely packed, motionless crowds made the
heat almost insupportable.
Key took up his position inside the square to direct matters. With him
were Limber Jim, Dick McCullough, and one or two others. Also, Ned
Johnson, Tom Larkin, Sergeant Goody, and three others who were to act as
hangmen. Each of these six was provided with a white sack, such as the
Rebels brought in meal in. Two Corporals of my company—“Stag” Harris
and Wat Payne—were appointed to pull the stays from under the platform at
the signal.
A little after noon the South Gate opened, and Wirz rode in, dressed in a
suit of white duck, and mounted on his white horse—a conjunction which
had gained for him the appellation of “Death on a Pale Horse.” Behind him
walked the faithful old priest, wearing his Church's purple insignia of the
deepest sorrow, and reading the service for the condemned. The six doomed
men followed, walking between double ranks of Rebel guards.
All came inside the hollow square and halted. Wirz then said:
“Brizners, I return to you dose men so Boot as I got dem. You haf tried
dem yourselves, and found dem guilty—I haf had notting to do wit it. I vash
my hands of eferyting connected wit dem. Do wit dem as you like, and may
Gott haf mercy on you and on dem. Garts, about face! Voryvarts, march!”
With this he marched out and left us.
For a moment the condemned looked stunned. They seemed to
comprehend for the first time that it was really the determination of the
Regulators to hang them. Before that they had evidently thought that the talk
of hanging was merely bluff. One of them gasped out:

“My God, men, you don't really mean to hang us up there!”
Key answered grimly and laconically:
“That seems to be about the size of it.”
At this they burst out in a passionate storm of intercessions and
imprecations, which lasted for a minute or so, when it was stopped by one of
them saying imperatively:
“All of you stop now, and let the priest talk for us.”
At this the priest closed the book upon which he had kept his eyes bent
since his entrance, and facing the multitude on the North Side began a plea
for mercy.
The condemned faced in the same direction, to read their fate in the
countenances of those whom he was addressing. This movement brought
Curtis—a low-statured, massively built man—on the right of their line, and
about ten or fifteen steps from my company.
The whole camp had been as still as death since Wirz's exit. The silence
seemed to become even more profound as the priest began his appeal. For a
minute every ear was strained to catch what he said. Then, as the nearest of
the thousands comprehended what he was saying they raised a shout of “No!
no!! NO!!” “Hang them! hang them!” “Don't let them go! Never!”
“Hang the rascals! hang the villains!”
“Hang,'em! hang 'em! hang 'em!”
This was taken up all over the prison, and tens of thousands throats yelled
it in a fearful chorus.
Curtis turned from the crowd with desperation convulsing his features.
Tearing off the broad-brimmed hat which he wore, he flung it on the ground
with the exclamation!
“By God, I'll die this way first!” and, drawing his head down and folding
his arms about it, he dashed forward for the center of my company, like a
great stone hurled from a catapult.
“Egypt” and I saw where he was going to strike, and ran down the line to
help stop him. As he came up we rained blows on his head with our clubs,
but so many of us struck at him at once that we broke each other's clubs to
pieces, and only knocked him on his knees. He rose with an almost
superhuman effort, and plunged into the mass beyond.

The excitement almost became delirium. For an instant I feared that
everything was gone to ruin. “Egypt” and I strained every energy to restore
our lines, before the break could be taken advantage of by the others. Our
boys behaved splendidly, standing firm, and in a few seconds the line was
restored.
As Curtis broke through, Delaney, a brawny Irishman standing next to
him, started to follow. He took one step. At the same instant Limber Jim's
long legs took three great strides, and placed him directly in front of
Delaney. Jim's right hand held an enormous bowie-knife, and as he raised it
above Delaney he hissed out:
“If you dare move another step, I'll open you —— —— ——, I'll open
you from one end to the other.
Delaney stopped. This checked the others till our lines reformed.
When Wirz saw the commotion he was panic-stricken with fear that the
long-dreaded assault on the Stockade had begun. He ran down from the
headquarter steps to the Captain of the battery, shrieking:
“Fire! fire! fire!”
The Captain, not being a fool, could see that the rush was not towards the
Stockade, but away from it, and he refrained from giving the order.
But the spectators who had gotten before the guns, heard Wirz's excited
yell, and remembering the consequences to themselves should the artillery
be discharged, became frenzied with fear, and screamed, and fell down over
and trampled upon each other in endeavoring to get away. The guards on that
side of the Stockade ran down in a panic, and the ten thousand prisoners
immediately around us, expecting no less than that the next instant we would
be swept with grape and canister, stampeded tumultuously. There were quite
a number of wells right around us, and all of these were filled full of men
that fell into them as the crowd rushed away. Many had legs and arms
broken, and I have no doubt that several were killed.
It was the stormiest five minutes that I ever saw.
While this was going on two of my company, belonging to the Fifth Iowa
Cavalry, were in hot pursuit of Curtis. I had seen them start and shouted to
them to come back, as I feared they would be set upon by the Raiders and
murdered. But the din was so overpowering that they could not hear me, and
doubtless would not have come back if they had heard.

Curtis ran diagonally down the hill, jumping over the tents and knocking
down the men who happened in his way. Arriving at the swamp he plunged
in, sinking nearly to his hips in the fetid, filthy ooze. He forged his way
through with terrible effort. His pursuers followed his example, and caught
up to him just as he emerged on the other side. They struck him on the back
of the head with their clubs, and knocked him down.
By this time order had been restored about us. The guns remained silent,
and the crowd massed around us again. From where we were we could see
the successful end of the chase after Curtis, and could see his captors start
back with him. Their success was announced with a roar of applause from
the North Side. Both captors and captured were greatly exhausted, and they
were coming back very slowly. Key ordered the balance up on to the
scaffold. They obeyed promptly. The priest resumed his reading of the
service for the condemned. The excitement seemed to make the doomed
ones exceedingly thirsty. I never saw men drink such inordinate quantities of
water. They called for it continually, gulped down a quart or more at a time,
and kept two men going nearly all the time carrying it to them.
When Curtis finally arrived, he sat on the ground for a minute or so, to
rest, and then, reeking with filth, slowly and painfully climbed the steps.
Delaney seemed to think he was suffering as much from fright as anything
else, and said to him:
“Come on up, now, show yourself a man, and die game.”

Again the priest resumed his reading, but it had no interest to Delaney,
who kept calling out directions to Pete Donelly, who was standing in the
crowd, as to dispositions to be made of certain bits of stolen property: to
give a watch to this one, a ring to another, and so on. Once the priest stopped
and said:
“My son, let the things of this earth go, and turn your attention toward
those of heaven.”
Delaney paid no attention to this admonition. The whole six then began
delivering farewell messages to those in the crowd. Key pulled a watch from
his pocket and said:
“Two minutes more to talk.”
Delaney said cheerfully:
“Well, good by, b'ys; if I've hurted any of y ez, I hope ye'll forgive me.
Shpake up, now, any of yez that I've hurted, and say yell forgive me.”

We called upon Marion Friend, whose throat Delaney had tried to cut
three weeks before while robbing him of forty dollars, to come forward, but
Friend was not in a forgiving mood, and refused with an oath.
Key said:
“Time's up!” put the watch back in his pocket and raised his hand like an
officer commanding a gun. Harris and Payne laid hold of the ropes to the
supports of the planks. Each of the six hangmen tied a condemned man's
hands, pulled a meal sack down over his head, placed the noose around his
neck, drew it up tolerably close, and sprang to the ground. The priest began
praying aloud.
Key dropped his hand. Payne and Harris snatched the supports out with a
single jerk. The planks fell with a clatter. Five of the bodies swung around
dizzily in the air. The sixth that of “Mosby,” a large, powerful, raw-boned
man, one of the worst in the lot, and who, among other crimes, had killed
Limber Jim's brother-broke the rope, and fell with a thud to the ground.
Some of the men ran forward, examined the body, and decided that he still
lived. The rope was cut off his neck, the meal sack removed, and water
thrown in his face until consciousness returned. At the first instant he
thought he was in eternity. He gasped out:
“Where am I? Am I in the other world?”
Limber Jim muttered that they would soon show him where he was, and
went on grimly fixing up the scaffold anew. “Mosby” soon realized what had
happened, and the unrelenting purpose of the Regulator Chiefs. Then he
began to beg piteously for his life, saying:
“O for God's sake, do not put me up there again! God has spared my life
once. He meant that you should be merciful to me.”
Limber Jim deigned him no reply. When the scaffold was rearranged, and
a stout rope had replaced the broken one, he pulled the meal sack once more
over “Mosby's” head, who never ceased his pleadings. Then picking up the
large man as if he were a baby, he carried him to the scaffold and handed
him up to Tom Larkin, who fitted the noose around his neck and sprang
down. The supports had not been set with the same delicacy as at first, and
Limber Jim had to set his heel and wrench desperately at them before he
could force them out. Then “Mosby” passed away without a struggle.
After hanging till life was extinct, the bodies were cut down, the meal-
sacks pulled off their faces, and the Regulators formal two parallel lines,

through which all the prisoners passed and took a look at the bodies. Pete
Donnelly and Dick Allen knelt down and wiped the froth off Delaney's lips,
and swore vengeance against those who had done him to death.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
AFTER THE EXECUTION—FORMATION OF A POLICE FORCE—
ITS FIRST CHIEF —“SPANKING” AN OFFENDER.
After the executions Key, knowing that he, and all those prominently
connected with the hanging, would be in hourly danger of assassination if
they remained inside, secured details as nurses and ward-masters in the
hospital, and went outside. In this crowd were Key, Ned Carrigan, Limber
Jim, Dick McCullough, the six hangmen, the two Corporals who pulled the
props from under the scaffold, and perhaps some others whom I do not now
remember.
In the meanwhile provision had been made for the future maintenance of
order in the prison by the organization of a regular police force, which in
time came to number twelve hundred men. These were divided into
companies, under appropriate officers. Guards were detailed for certain
locations, patrols passed through the camp in all directions continually, and
signals with whistles could summon sufficient assistance to suppress any
disturbance, or carry out any orders from the chief.
The chieftainship was first held by Key, but when he went outside he
appointed Sergeant A. R. Hill, of the One Hundredth O. V. I.—now a
resident of Wauseon, Ohio,—his successor. Hill was one of the notabilities
of that immense throng. A great, broad-shouldered, giant, in the prime of his
manhood—the beginning of his thirtieth year—he was as good-natured as
big, and as mild-mannered as brave. He spoke slowly, softly, and with a
slightly rustic twang, that was very tempting to a certain class of sharps to
take him up for a “luberly greeny.” The man who did so usually repented his
error in sack-cloth and ashes.
Hill first came into prominence as the victor in the most stubbornly
contested fight in the prison history of Belle Isle. When the squad of the One
Hundredth Ohio—captured at Limestone Station, East Tennessee, in
September,1863—arrived on Belle Isle, a certain Jack Oliver, of the
Nineteenth Indiana, was the undisputed fistic monarch of the Island. He did
not bear his blushing honors modestly; few of a right arm that indefinite
locality known as “the middle of next week,” is something that the possessor

can as little resist showing as can a girl her first solitaire ring. To know that
one can certainly strike a disagreeable fellow out of time is pretty sure to
breed a desire to do that thing whenever occasion serves. Jack Oliver was
one who did not let his biceps rust in inaction, but thrashed everybody on the
Island whom he thought needed it, and his ideas as to those who should be
included in this class widened daily, until it began to appear that he would
soon feel it his duty to let no unwhipped man escape, but pound everybody
on the Island.

One day his evil genius led him to abuse a rather elderly man belonging to
Hill's mess. As he fired off his tirade of contumely, Hill said with more than
his usual “soft” rusticity:
“Mister—I—don't—think—it—just—right—for—a—young—man—to
—call—an—old—one—such—bad names.”
Jack Oliver turned on him savagely.
“Well! may be you want to take it up?”
The grin on Hill's face looked still more verdant, as he answered with
gentle deliberation:
“Well—mister—I—don't—go—around—a—hunting—things—but—I —
ginerally—take—care—of—all—that's—sent—me!”
Jack foamed, but his fiercest bluster could not drive that infantile smile
from Hill's face, nor provoke a change in the calm slowness of his speech.
It was evident that nothing would do but a battle-royal, and Jack had sense
enough to see that the imperturbable rustic was likely to give him a job of
some difficulty. He went off and came back with his clan, while Hill's
comrades of the One Hundredth gathered around to insure him fair play.
Jack pulled off his coat and vest, rolled up his sleeves, and made other
elaborate preparations for the affray. Hill, without removing a garment, said,
as he surveyed him with a mocking smile:
“Mister—you—seem—to—be—one—of—them—partick-e-ler—fellers.”
Jack roared out,
“By —-, I'll make you partickeler before I get through with you. Now,
how shall we settle this? Regular stand-up-and knock-down, or rough and
tumble?”
If anything Hill's face was more vacantly serene, and his tones blander
than ever, as he answered:
“Strike—any—gait—that—suits—you,—Mister;—I guess—I—will—be
—able—to—keep—up—with—you.”
They closed. Hill feinted with his left, and as Jack uncovered to guard, he
caught him fairly on the lower left ribs, by a blow from his mighty right fist,

that sounded—as one of the by-standers expressed it—“like striking a
hollow log with a maul.”
The color in Jack's face paled. He did not seem to understand how he had
laid himself open to such a pass, and made the same mistake, receiving again
a sounding blow in the short ribs. This taught him nothing, either, for again
he opened his guard in response to a feint, and again caught a blow on his
luckless left, ribs, that drove the blood from his face and the breath from his
body. He reeled back among his supporters for an instant to breathe.
Recovering his wind, be dashed at Hill feinted strongly with his right, but
delivered a terrible kick against the lower part of the latter's abdomen. Both
closed and fought savagely at half-arm's length for an instant; during which
Hill struck Jack so fairly in the mouth as to break out three front teeth, which
the latter swallowed. Then they clenched and struggled to throw each other.
Hill's superior strength and skill crushed his opponent to the ground, and he
fell upon him. As they grappled there, one of Jack's followers sought to aid
his leader by catching Hill by the hair, intending to kick him in the face. In
an instant he was knocked down by a stalwart member of the One
Hundredth, and then literally lifted out of the ring by kicks.
Jack was soon so badly beaten as to be unable to cry “enough!” One of his
friends did that service for him, the fight ceased, and thenceforth Mr. Oliver
resigned his pugilistic crown, and retired to the shades of private life. He
died of scurvy and diarrhea, some months afterward, in Andersonville.
The almost hourly scenes of violence and crime that marked the days and
nights before the Regulators began operations were now succeeded by the
greatest order. The prison was freer from crime than the best governed City.
There were frequent squabbles and fights, of course, and many petty
larcenies. Rations of bread and of wood, articles of clothing, and the
wretched little cans and half canteens that formed our cooking utensils, were
still stolen, but all these were in a sneak-thief way. There was an entire
absence of the audacious open-day robbery and murder —the “raiding” of
the previous few weeks. The summary punishment inflicted on the
condemned was sufficient to cow even bolder men than the Raiders, and
they were frightened into at least quiescence.
Sergeant Hill's administration was vigorous, and secured the best results.
He became a judge of all infractions of morals and law, and sat at the door of
his tent to dispense justice to all comers, like the Cadi of a Mahometan
Village. His judicial methods and punishments also reminded one strongly of

the primitive judicature of Oriental lands. The wronged one came before him
and told his tale: he had his blouse, or his quart cup, or his shoes, or his
watch, or his money stolen during the night. The suspected one was also
summoned, confronted with his accuser, and sharply interrogated. Hill
would revolve the stories in his mind, decide the innocence or guilt of the
accused, and if he thought the accusation sustained, order the culprit to
punishment. He did not imitate his Mussulman prototypes to the extent of
bowstringing or decapitating the condemned, nor did he cut any thief's hands
off, nor yet nail his ears to a doorpost, but he introduced a modification of
the bastinado that made those who were punished by it even wish they were
dead. The instrument used was what is called in the South a “shake” —a
split shingle, a yard or more long, and with one end whittled down to form a
handle. The culprit was made to bend down until he could catch around his
ankles with his hands. The part of the body thus brought into most
prominence was denuded of clothing and “spanked” from one to twenty
times, as Hill ordered, by the “shake” in same strong and willing hand. It
was very amusing—to the bystanders. The “spankee” never seemed to enter
very heartily into the mirth of the occasion. As a rule he slept on his face for
a week or so after, and took his meals standing.
The fear of the spanking, and Hill's skill in detecting the guilty ones, had a
very salutary effect upon the smaller criminals.

The Raiders who had been put into irons were very restive under the
infliction, and begged Hill daily to release them. They professed the greatest
penitence, and promised the most exemplary behavior for the future. Hill
refused to release them, declaring that they should wear the irons until
delivered up to our Government.
One of the Raiders—named Heffron—had, shortly after his arrest, turned
State's evidence, and given testimony that assisted materially in the
conviction of his companions. One morning, a week or so after the hanging,
his body was found lying among the other dead at the South Gate. The
impression made by the fingers of the hand that had strangled him, were still
plainly visible about the throat. There was no doubt as to why he had been

killed, or that the Raiders were his murderers, but the actual perpetrators
were never discovered.

CHAPTER XXXIX.
JULY—THE PRISON BECOMES MORE CROWDED, THE
WEATHER HOTTER, NATIONS POORER, AND MORTALITY
GREATER—SOME OF THE PHENOMENA OF SUFFERING AND
DEATH.
All during July the prisoners came streaming in by hundreds and
thousands from every portion of the long line of battle, stretching from the
Eastern bank of the Mississippi to the shores of the Atlantic. Over one
thousand squandered by Sturgis at Guntown came in; two thousand of those
captured in the desperate blow dealt by Hood against the Army of the
Tennessee on the 22d of the month before Atlanta; hundreds from Hunter's
luckless column in the Shenandoah Valley, thousands from Grant's lines in
front of Petersburg. In all, seven thousand one hundred and twenty-eight
were, during the month, turned into that seething mass of corrupting
humanity to be polluted and tainted by it, and to assist in turn to make it
fouler and deadlier. Over seventy hecatombs of chosen victims —of fair
youths in the first flush of hopeful manhood, at the threshold of a life of
honor to themselves and of usefulness to the community; beardless boys,
rich in the priceless affections of homes, fathers, mothers, sisters and
sweethearts, with minds thrilling with high aspirations for the bright future,
were sent in as the monthly sacrifice to this Minotaur of the Rebellion, who,
couched in his foul lair, slew them, not with the merciful delivery of speedy
death, as his Cretan prototype did the annual tribute of Athenian youths and
maidens, but, gloating over his prey, doomed them to lingering destruction.
He rotted their flesh with the scurvy, racked their minds with intolerable
suspense, burned their bodies with the slow fire of famine, and delighted in
each separate pang, until they sank beneath the fearful accumulation.
Theseus [Sherman. D.W.]—the deliverer—was coming. His terrible sword
could be seen gleaming as it rose and fell on the banks of the James, and in
the mountains beyond Atlanta, where he was hewing his way towards them
and the heart of the Southern Confederacy. But he came too late to save
them. Strike as swiftly and as heavily as he would, he could not strike so
hard nor so sure at his foes with saber blow and musket shot, as they could at
the hapless youths with the dreadful armament of starvation and disease.

Though the deaths were one thousand eight hundred and seventeen more
than were killed at the battle of Shiloh—this left the number in the prison at
the end of the month thirty-one thousand six hundred and seventy-eight. Let
me assist the reader's comprehension of the magnitude of this number by
giving the population of a few important Cities, according to the census of
1870:

Cambridge, Mass 89,639
Charleston, S. C. 48,958
Columbus, O. 31,274
Dayton, O. 30,473
Fall River, Mass 26,766
Kansas City, Mo 32,260

The number of prisoners exceeded the whole number of men between the
ages of eighteen and forty-five in several of the States and Territories in the
Union. Here, for instance, are the returns for 1870, of men of military age in
some portions of the country:

Arizona 5,157
Colorado 15,166
Dakota 5,301
Idaho 9,431
Montana 12,418
Nebraska 35,677
Nevada 24,762
New Hampshire 60,684
Oregon 23,959
Rhode Island 44,377
Vermont 62,450
West Virginia 6,832

It was more soldiers than could be raised to-day, under strong pressure, in
either Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut,
Dakota, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine,
Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Medico,
Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont or West Virginia.
These thirty-one thousand six hundred and seventy-eight active young
men, who were likely to find the confines of a State too narrow for them,
were cooped up on thirteen acres of ground—less than a farmer gives for
play-ground for a half dozen colts or a small flock of sheep. There was
hardly room for all to lie down at night, and to walk a few hundred feet in
any direction would require an hour's patient threading of the mass of men
and tents.
The weather became hotter and hotter; at midday the sand would burn the
hand. The thin skins of fair and auburn-haired men blistered under the sun's
rays, and swelled up in great watery puffs, which soon became the breeding
grounds of the hideous maggots, or the still more deadly gangrene. The
loathsome swamp grew in rank offensiveness with every burning hour. The
pestilence literally stalked at noon-day, and struck his victims down on every
hand. One could not look a rod in any direction without seeing at least a
dozen men in the last frightful stages of rotting Death.
Let me describe the scene immediately around my own tent during the last
two weeks of July, as a sample of the condition of the whole prison: I will
take a space not larger than a good sized parlor or sitting room. On this were
at least fifty of us. Directly in front of me lay two brothers—named
Sherwood—belonging to Company I, of my battalion, who came originally
from Missouri. They were now in the last stages of scurvy and diarrhea.
Every particle of muscle and fat about their limbs and bodies had apparently
wasted away, leaving the skin clinging close to the bone of the face, arms,
hands, ribs and thighs—everywhere except the feet and legs, where it was
swollen tense and transparent, distended with gallons of purulent matter.
Their livid gums, from which most of their teeth had already fallen,
protruded far beyond their lips. To their left lay a Sergeant and two others of
their company, all three slowly dying from diarrhea, and beyond was a fair-
haired German, young and intelligent looking, whose life was ebbing
tediously away. To my right was a handsome young Sergeant of an Illinois

Infantry Regiment, captured at Kenesaw. His left arm had been amputated
between the shoulder and elbow, and he was turned into the Stockade with
the stump all undressed, save the ligating of the arteries. Of course, he had
not been inside an hour until the maggot flies had laid eggs in the open
wound, and before the day was gone the worms were hatched out, and
rioting amid the inflamed and super-sensitive nerves, where their every
motion was agony. Accustomed as we were to misery, we found a still lower
depth in his misfortune, and I would be happier could I forget his pale,
drawn face, as he wandered uncomplainingly to and fro, holding his maimed
limb with his right hand, occasionally stopping to squeeze it, as one does a
boil, and press from it a stream of maggots and pus. I do not think he ate or
slept for a week before he died. Next to him staid an Irish Sergeant of a New
York Regiment, a fine soldierly man, who, with pardonable pride, wore,
conspicuously on his left breast, a medal gained by gallantry while a British
soldier in the Crimea. He was wasting away with diarrhea, and died before
the month was out.

This was what one could see on every square rod of the prison. Where I
was was not only no worse than the rest of the prison, but was probably
much better and healthier, as it was the highest ground inside, farthest from
the Swamp, and having the dead line on two sides, had a ventilation that
those nearer the center could not possibly have. Yet, with all these conditions
in our favor, the mortality was as I have described.
Near us an exasperating idiot, who played the flute, had established
himself. Like all poor players, he affected the low, mournful notes, as
plaintive as the distant cooing of the dove in lowering, weather. He played or
rather tooted away in his “blues”-inducing strain hour after hour, despite our
energetic protests, and occasionally flinging a club at him. There was no

more stop to him than to a man with a hand-organ, and to this day the low,
sad notes of a flute are the swiftest reminder to me of those sorrowful, death-
laden days.

I had an illustration one morning of how far decomposition would
progress in a man's body before he died. My chum and I found a treasure-
trove in the streets, in the shape of the body of a man who died during the
night. The value of this “find” was that if we took it to the gate, we would be
allowed to carry it outside to the deadhouse, and on our way back have an
opportunity to pick up a chunk of wood, to use in cooking. While discussing
our good luck another party came up and claimed the body. A verbal dispute
led to one of blows, in which we came off victorious, and I hastily caught
hold of the arm near the elbow to help bear the body away. The skin gave
way under my hand, and slipped with it down to the wrist, like a torn sleeve.

It was sickening, but I clung to my prize, and secured a very good chunk of
wood while outside with it. The wood was very much needed by my mess,
as our squad had then had none for more than a week.

CHAPTER XL.
THE BATTLE OF THE 22D OF JULY—THE ARMS OF THE
TENNESSEE ASSAULTED FRONT AND REAR—DEATH OF
GENERAL MCPHERSON—ASSUMPTION OF COMMAND BY
GENERAL LOGAN—RESULT OF THE BATTLE.
Naturally, we had a consuming hunger for news of what was being
accomplished by our armies toward crushing the Rebellion. Now, more than
ever, had we reason to ardently wish for the destruction of the Rebel power.
Before capture we had love of country and a natural desire for the triumph of
her flag to animate us. Now we had a hatred of the Rebels that passed
expression, and a fierce longing to see those who daily tortured and insulted
us trampled down in the dust of humiliation.
The daily arrival of prisoners kept us tolerably well informed as to the
general progress of the campaign, and we added to the information thus
obtained by getting—almost daily—in some manner or another—a copy of a
Rebel paper. Most frequently these were Atlanta papers, or an issue of the
“Memphis-Corinth-Jackson-Grenada-Chattanooga-Resacca-Marietta-Atlanta
Appeal,” as they used to facetiously term a Memphis paper that left that City
when it was taken in 1862, and for two years fell back from place to place,
as Sherman's Army advanced, until at last it gave up the struggle in
September, 1864, in a little Town south of Atlanta, after about two thousand
miles of weary retreat from an indefatigable pursuer. The papers were
brought in by “fresh fish,” purchased from the guards at from fifty cents to
one dollar apiece, or occasionally thrown in to us when they had some
specially disagreeable intelligence, like the defeat of Banks, or Sturgis, or
Bunter, to exult over. I was particularly fortunate in getting hold of these.
Becoming installed as general reader for a neighborhood of several thousand
men, everything of this kind was immediately brought to me, to be read
aloud for the benefit of everybody. All the older prisoners knew me by the
nick-name of “Illinoy” —a designation arising from my wearing on my cap,
when I entered prison, a neat little white metal badge of “ILLS.” When any
reading matter was brought into our neighborhood, there would be a general
cry of:

“Take it up to 'Illinoy,'” and then hundreds would mass around my
quarters to bear the news read.
The Rebel papers usually had very meager reports of the operations of the
armies, and these were greatly distorted, but they were still very interesting,
and as we always started in to read with the expectation that the whole
statement was a mass of perversions and lies, where truth was an infrequent
accident, we were not likely to be much impressed with it.
There was a marled difference in the tone of the reports brought in from
the different armies. Sherman's men were always sanguine. They had no
doubt that they were pushing the enemy straight to the wall, and that every
day brought the Southern Confederacy much nearer its downfall. Those from
the Army of the Potomac were never so hopeful. They would admit that
Grant was pounding Lee terribly, but the shadow of the frequent defeats of
the Army of the Potomac seemed to hang depressingly over them.
There came a day, however, when our sanguine hopes as to Sherman were
checked by a possibility that he had failed; that his long campaign towards
Atlanta had culminated in such a reverse under the very walls of the City as
would compel an abandonment of the enterprise, and possibly a humiliating
retreat. We knew that Jeff. Davis and his Government were strongly
dissatisfied with the Fabian policy of Joe Johnston. The papers had told us of
the Rebel President's visit to Atlanta, of his bitter comments on Johnston's
tactics; of his going so far as to sneer about the necessity of providing
pontoons at Key West, so that Johnston might continue his retreat even to
Cuba. Then came the news of Johnston's Supersession by Hood, and the
papers were full of the exulting predictions of what would now be
accomplished “when that gallant young soldier is once fairly in the saddle.”
All this meant one supreme effort to arrest the onward course of Sherman.
It indicated a resolve to stake the fate of Atlanta, and the fortunes of the
Confederacy in the West, upon the hazard of one desperate fight. We
watched the summoning up of every Rebel energy for the blow with
apprehension. We dreaded another Chickamauga.
The blow fell on the 22d of July. It was well planned. The Army of the
Tennessee, the left of Sherman's forces, was the part struck. On the night of
the 21st Hood marched a heavy force around its left flank and gained its rear.
On the 22d this force fell on the rear with the impetuous violence of a

cyclone, while the Rebels in the works immediately around Atlanta attacked
furiously in front.
It was an ordeal that no other army ever passed through successfully. The
steadiest troops in Europe would think it foolhardiness to attempt to
withstand an assault in force in front and rear at the same time. The finest
legions that follow any flag to-day must almost inevitably succumb to such a
mode of attack. But the seasoned veterans of the Army of the Tennessee
encountered the shock with an obstinacy which showed that the finest
material for soldiery this planet holds was that in which undaunted hearts
beat beneath blue blouses. Springing over the front of their breastworks, they
drove back with a withering fire the force assailing them in the rear. This
beaten off, they jumped back to their proper places, and repulsed the assault
in front. This was the way the battle was waged until night compelled a
cessation of operations. Our boys were alternately behind the breastworks
firing at Rebels advancing upon the front, and in front of the works firing
upon those coming up in the rear. Sometimes part of our line would be on
one side of the works, and part on the other.
In the prison we were greatly excited over the result of the engagement, of
which we were uncertain for many days. A host of new prisoners perhaps
two thousand—was brought in from there, but as they were captured during
the progress of the fight, they could not speak definitely as to its issue. The
Rebel papers exulted without stint over what they termed “a glorious
victory.” They were particularly jubilant over the death of McPherson, who,
they claimed, was the brain and guiding hand of Sherman's army. One paper
likened him to the pilot-fish, which guides the shark to his prey. Now that he
was gone, said the paper, Sherman's army becomes a great lumbering hulk,
with no one in it capable of directing it, and it must soon fall to utter ruin
under the skilfully delivered strokes of the gallant Hood.
We also knew that great numbers of wounded had been brought to the
prison hospital, and this seemed to confirm the Rebel claim of a victory, as it
showed they retained possession of the battle field.

About the 1st of August a large squad of Sherman's men, captured in one
of the engagements subsequent to the 22d, came in. We gathered around
them eagerly. Among them I noticed a bright, curly-haired, blue-eyed
infantryman—or boy, rather, as he was yet beardless. His cap was marked
“68th O. Y. Y. L,” his sleeves were garnished with re-enlistment stripes, and
on the breast of his blouse was a silver arrow. To the eye of the soldier this
said that he was a veteran member of the Sixty-Eighth Regiment of Ohio

Infantry (that is, having already served three years, he had re-enlisted for the
war), and that he belonged to the Third Division of the Seventeenth Army
Corps. He was so young and fresh looking that one could hardly believe him
to be a veteran, but if his stripes had not said this, the soldierly arrangement
of clothing and accouterments, and the graceful, self-possessed pose of limbs
and body would have told the observer that he was one of those “Old
Reliables” with whom Sherman and Grant had already subdued a third of the
Confederacy. His blanket, which, for a wonder, the Rebels had neglected to
take from him, was tightly rolled, its ends tied together, and thrown over his
shoulder scarf-fashion. His pantaloons were tucked inside his stocking tops,
that were pulled up as far as possible, and tied tightly around his ankle with a
string. A none-too-clean haversack, containing the inevitable sooty quart
cup, and even blacker half-canteen, waft slung easily from the shoulder
opposite to that on which the blanket rested. Hand him his faithful
Springfield rifle, put three days' rations in his haversack, and forty rounds in
his cartridge bog, and he would be ready, without an instant's demur or
question, to march to the ends of the earth, and fight anything that crossed
his path. He was a type of the honest, honorable, self respecting American
boy, who, as a soldier, the world has not equaled in the sixty centuries that
war has been a profession. I suggested to him that he was rather a youngster
to be wearing veteran chevrons. “Yes,” said he, “I am not so old as some of
the rest of the boys, but I have seen about as much service and been in the
business about as long as any of them. They call me 'Old Dad,' I suppose
because I was the youngest boy in the Regiment, when we first entered the
service, though our whole Company, officers and all, were only a lot of boys,
and the Regiment to day, what's left of 'em, are about as young a lot of
officers and men as there are in the service. Why, our old Colonel ain't only
twenty-four years old now, and he has been in command ever since we went
into Vicksburg. I have heard it said by our boys that since we veteranized the
whole Regiment, officers, and men, average less than twenty-four years old.
But they are gray-hounds to march and stayers in a fight, you bet. Why, the
rest of the troops over in West Tennessee used to call our Brigade 'Leggett's
Cavalry,' for they always had us chasing Old Forrest, and we kept him
skedaddling, too, pretty lively. But I tell you we did get into a red hot
scrimmage on the 22d. It just laid over Champion Hills, or any of the big
fights around Vicksburg, and they were lively enough to amuse any one.”

“So you were in the affair on the 22d, were you! We are awful anxious to
hear all about it. Come over here to my quarters and tell us all you know. All
we know is that there has been a big fight, with McPherson killed, and a
heavy loss of life besides, and the Rebels claim a great victory.”
“O, they be ——-. It was the sickest victory they ever got. About one
more victory of that kind would make their infernal old Confederacy ready
for a coroner's inquest. Well, I can tell you pretty much all about that fight,
for I reckon if the truth was known, our regiment fired about the first and last
shot that opened and closed the fighting on that day. Well, you see the whole
Army got across the river, and were closing in around the City of Atlanta.
Our Corps, the Seventeenth, was the extreme left of the army, and were
moving up toward the City from the East. The Fifteenth (Logan's) Corps
joined us on the right, then the Army of the Cumberland further to the right.
We run onto the Rebs about sundown the 21st. They had some breastworks
on a ridge in front of us, and we had a pretty sharp fight before we drove
them off. We went right to work, and kept at it all night in changing and
strengthening the old Rebel barricades, fronting them towards Atlanta, and
by morning had some good solid works along our whole line. During the
night we fancied we could hear wagons or artillery moving away in front of
us, apparently going South, or towards our left. About three or four o'clock
in the morning, while I was shoveling dirt like a beaver out on the works, the
Lieutenant came to me and said the Colonel wanted to see me, pointing to a
large tree in the rear, where I could find him. I reported and found him with
General Leggett, who commanded our Division, talking mighty serious, and
Bob Wheeler, of F Company, standing there with his Springfield at a parade
rest. As soon as I came up, the Colonel says:
“Boys, the General wants two level-headed chaps to go out beyond the
pickets to the front and toward the left. I have selected you for the duty. Go
as quietly as possible and as fast as you can; keep your eyes and ears open;
don't fire a shot if you can help it, and come back and tell us exactly what
you have seen and heard, and not what you imagine or suspect. I have
selected you for the duty.'
“He gave us the countersign, and off we started over the breastworks and
through the thick woods. We soon came to our skirmish or pickets, only a
few rods in front of our works, and cautioned them not to fire on us in going
or returning. We went out as much as half a mile or more, until we could
plainly hear the sound of wagons and artillery. We then cautiously crept

forward until we could see the main road leading south from the City filled
with marching men, artillery and teams. We could hear the commands of the
officers and see the flags and banners of regiment after regiment as they
passed us. We got back quietly and quickly, passed through our picket line
all right, and found the General and our Colonel sitting on a log where we
had left them, waiting for us. We reported what we had seen and heard, and
gave it as our opinion that the Johnnies were evacuating Atlanta. The
General shook his head, and the Colonel says: 'You may return to your
company.' Bob says to me:
“'The old General shakes his head as though he thought them d—-d Rebs
ain't evacuating Atlanta so mighty sudden, but are up to some devilment
again. I ain't sure but he's right. They ain't going to keep falling back and
falling back to all eternity, but are just agoin' to give us a rip-roaring great
big fight one o' these days—when they get a good ready. You hear me!'

“Saying which we both went to our companies, and laid down to get a
little sleep. It was about daylight then, and I must have snoozed away until
near noon, when I heard the order 'fall in!' and found the regiment getting
into line, and the boys all tallying about going right into Atlanta; that the
Rebels had evacuated the City during the night, and that we were going to
have a race with the Fifteenth Corps as to which would get into the City first.
We could look away out across a large field in front of our works, and see
the skirmish line advancing steadily towards the main works around the City.
Not a shot was being, fired on either side.
“To our surprise, instead of marching to the front and toward the City, we
filed off into a small road cut through the woods and marched rapidly to the
rear. We could not understand what it meant. We marched at quick time,
feeling pretty mad that we had to go to the rear, when the rest of our
Division were going into Atlanta.
“We passed the Sixteenth Corps lying on their arms, back in some open
fields, and the wagon trains of our Corps all comfortably corralled, and
finally found ourselves out by the Seventeenth Corps headquarters. Two or
three companies were sent out to picket several roads that seemed to cross at
that point, as it was reported 'Rebel Cavalry' had been seen on these roads
but a short time before, and this accounted for our being rushed out in such a
great hurry.
“We had just stacked arms and were going to take a little rest after our
rapid march, when several Rebel prisoners were brought in by some of the
boys who had straggled a little. They found the Rebels on the road we had
just marched out on. Up to this time not a shot had been fired. All was quiet
back at the main works we had just left, when suddenly we saw several staff
officers come tearing up to the Colonel, who ordered us to 'fall in!' 'Take
aims!' 'about, face!' The Lieutenant Colonel dashed down one of the roads
where one of the companies had gone out on picket. The Major and Adjutant
galloped down the others. We did not wait for them to come back, though,
but moved right back on the road we had just come out, in line of battle, our
colors in the road, and our flanks in open timber. We soon reached a fence
enclosing a large field, and there could see a line of Rebels moving by the

flank, and forming, facing toward Atlanta, but to the left and in the rear of
the position occupied by our Corps. As soon as we reached the fence we
fired a round or two into the backs of these gray coats, who broke into
confusion.
“Just then the other companies joined us, and we moved off on 'double
quick by the right flank,' for you see we were completely cut off from the
troops up at the front, and we had to get well over to the right to get around
the flank of the Rebels. Just about the time we fired on the rebels the
Sixteenth Corps opened up a hot fire of musketry and artillery on them,
some of their shot coming over mighty close to where we were. We marched
pretty fast, and finally turned in through some open fields to the left, and
came out just in the rear of the Sixteenth Corps, who were fighting like
devils along their whole line.
“Just as we came out into the open field we saw General R. K. Scott, who
used to be our Colonel, and who commanded our brigade, come tearing
toward us with one or two aids or orderlies. He was on his big clay-bank
horse, 'Old Hatchie,' as we called him, as we captured him on the battlefield
at the battle of 'Matamora,' or 'Hell on the Hatchie,' as our boys always
called it. He rode up to the Colonel, said something hastily, when all at once
we heard the all-firedest crash of musketry and artillery way up at the front
where we had built the works the night before and left the rest of our brigade
and Division getting ready to prance into Atlanta when we were sent off to
the rear. Scott put spurs to his old horse, who was one of the fastest runners
in our Division, and away he went back towards the position where his
brigade and the troops immediately to their left were now hotly engaged. He
rode right along in rear of the Sixteenth Corps, paying no attention
apparently to the shot and shell and bullets that were tearing up the earth and
exploding and striking all around him. His aids and orderlies vainly tried to
keep up with him. We could plainly see the Rebel lines as they came out of
the woods into the open grounds to attack the Sixteenth Corps, which had
hastily formed in the open field, without any signs of works, and were
standing up like men, having a hand-to-hand fight. We were just far enough
in the rear so that every blasted shot or shell that was fired too high to hit the
ranks of the Sixteenth Corps came rattling over amongst us. All this time we
were marching fast, following in the direction General Scott had taken, who
evidently had ordered the Colonel to join his brigade up at the front. We
were down under the crest of a little hill, following along the bank of a little

creek, keeping under cover of the bank as much as possible to protect us
from the shots of the enemy. We suddenly saw General Logan and one or
two of his staff upon the right bank of the ravine riding rapidly toward us. As
he neared the head of the regiment he shouted:
“'Halt! What regiment is that, and where are you going?'” The Colonel, in
a loud voice, that all could hear, told him: “The Sixty-Eighth Ohio; going to
join our brigade of the Third Division—your old Division, General, of the
Seventeenth Corps.”
“Logan says, 'you had better go right in here on the left of Dodge. The
Third Division have hardly ground enough left now to bury their dead. God
knows they need you. But try it on, if you think you can get to them.'
“Just at this moment a staff officer came riding up on the opposite side of
the ravine from where Logan was and interrupted Logan, who was about
telling the Colonel not to try to go to the position held by the Third Division
by the road cut through the woods whence we had come out, but to keep off
to the right towards the Fifteenth Corps, as the woods referred to were full of
Rebels. The officer saluted Logan, and shouted across:
“General Sherman directs me to inform you of the death of General
McPherson, and orders you to take command of the Army of the Tennessee;
have Dodge close well up to the Seventeenth Corps, and Sherman will
reinforce you to the extent of the whole army.'

“Logan, standing in his stirrups, on his beautiful black horse, formed a
picture against the blue sky as we looked up the ravine at him, his black eyes
fairly blazing and his long black hair waving in the wind. He replied in a
ringing, clear tone that we all could hear:
“Say to General Sherman I have heard of McPherson's death, and have
assumed the command of the Army of the Tennessee, and have already
anticipated his orders in regard to closing the gap between Dodge and the
Seventeenth Corps.'
“This, of course, all happened in one quarter of the time I have been
telling you. Logan put spurs to his horse and rode in one direction, the staff
officer of General Sherman in another, and we started on a rapid step toward

the front. This was the first we had heard of McPherson's death, and it made
us feel very bad. Some of the officers and men cried as though they had lost
a brother; others pressed their lips, gritted their teeth, and swore to avenge
his death. He was a great favorite with all his Army, particularly of our
Corps, which he commanded for a long while. Our company, especially,
knew him well, and loved him dearly, for we had been his Headquarters
Guard for over a year. As we marched along, toward the front, we could see
brigades, and regiments, and batteries of artillery; coming over from the
right of the Army, and taking position in new lines in rear of the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Corps. Major Generals and their staffs, Brigadier Generals
and their staffs, were mighty thick along the banks of the little ravine we
were following; stragglers and wounded men by the hundred were pouring
in to the safe shelter formed by the broken ground along which we were
rapidly marching; stories were heard of divisions, brigades and regiments
that these wounded or stragglers belonged, having been all cut to pieces;
officers all killed; and the speaker, the only one of his command not killed,
wounded or captured. But you boys have heard and seen the same cowardly
sneaks, probably, in fights that you were in. The battle raged furiously all
this time; part of the time the Sixteenth Corps seemed to be in the worst;
then it would let up on them and the Seventeenth Corps would be hotly
engaged along their whole front.
“We had probably marched half an hour since leaving Logan, and were
getting pretty near back to our main line of works, when the Colonel ordered
a halt and knapsacks to be unslung and piled up. I tell you it was a relief to
get them off, for it was a fearful hot day, and we had been marching almost
double quick. We knew that this meant business though, and that we were
stripping for the fight, which we would soon be in. Just at this moment we
saw an ambulance, with the horses on a dead run, followed by two or three
mounted officers and men, coming right towards us out of the very woods
Logan had cautioned the Colonel to avoid. When the ambulance got to
where we were it halted. It was pretty well out of danger from the bullets and
shell of the enemy. They stopped, and we recognized Major Strong, of
McPherson's Staff, whom the all knew, as he was the Chief Inspector of our
Corps, and in the ambulance he had the body of General McPherson. Major
Strong, it appears, during a slight lull in the fighting at that part of the line,
having taken an ambulance and driven into the very jaws of death to recover
the remains of his loved commander. It seems he found the body right by the

side of the little road that we had gone out on when we went to the rear. He
was dead when he found him, having been shot off his horse, the bullet
striking him in the back, just below his heart, probably killing him instantly.
There was a young fellow with him who was wounded also, when Strong
found them. He belonged to our First Division, and recognized General
McPherson, and stood by him until Major Strong came up. He was in the
ambulance with the body of McPherson when they stopped by us.
“It seems that when the fight opened away back in the rear where we had
been, and at the left of the Sixteenth Corps which was almost directly in the
rear of the Seventeenth Corps, McPherson sent his staff and orderlies with
various orders to different parts of the line, and started himself to ride over
from the Seventeenth Corps to the Sixteenth Corps, taking exactly the same
course our Regiment had, perhaps an hour before, but the Rebels had
discovered there was a gap between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Corps,
and meeting no opposition to their advances in this strip of woods, where
they were hidden from view, they had marched right along down in the rear,
and with their line at right angles with the line of works occupied by the left
of the Seventeenth Corps; they were thus parallel and close to the little road
McPherson had taken, and probably he rode right into them and was killed
before he realized the true situation.

“Having piled our knapsacks, and left a couple of our older men, who
were played out with the heat and most ready to drop with sunstroke, to
guard them, we started on again. The ambulance with the corpse of Gen.
McPherson moved off towards the right of the Army, which was the last we
ever saw of that brave and handsome soldier.
“We bore off a little to the right of a large open field on top of a high hill
where one of our batteries was pounding away at a tremendous rate. We
came up to the main line of works just about at the left of the Fifteenth
Corps. They seemed to be having an easy time of it just then —no fighting

going on in their front, except occasional shots from some heavy guns on the
main line of Rebel works around the City. We crossed right over the
Fifteenth Corps' works and filed to the left, keeping along on the outside of
our works. We had not gone far before the Rebel gunners in the main works
around the City discovered us; and the way they did tear loose at us was a
caution. Their aim was rather bad, however, and most of their shots went
over us. We saw one of them—I think it was a shell—strike an artillery
caisson belonging to one of our-batteries. It exploded as it struck, and then
the caisson, which was full of ammunition, exploded with an awful noise,
throwing pieces of wood and iron and its own load of shot and shell high
into the air, scattering death and destruction to the men and horses attached
to it. We thought we saw arms and legs and parts of bodies of men flying in
every direction; but we were glad to learn afterwards that it was the contents
of the knapsacks of the Battery boys, who had strapped them on the caissons
for transportation.
“Just after passing the hill where our battery was making things so lively,
they stopped firing to let us pass. We saw General Leggett, our Division
Commander, come riding toward us. He was outside of our line of works,
too. You know how we build breastworks—sort of zigzag like, you know, so
they cannot be enfiladed. Well, that's just the way the works were along
there, and you never saw such a curious shape as we formed our Division in.
Why, part of them were on one side of the works, and go along a little
further and here was a regiment, or part of a regiment on the other side, both
sets firing in opposite directions.
“No sir'ee, they were not demoralized or in confusion, they were cool and
as steady as on parade. But the old Division had, you know, never been
driven from any position they had once taken, in all their long service, and
they did not propose to leave that ridge until they got orders from some one
beside the Rebs.
“There were times when a fellow did not know which side of the works
was the safest, for the Johnnies were in front of us and in rear of us. You see,
our Fourth Division, which had been to the left of us, had been forced to quit
their works, when the Rebs got into the works in their rear, so that our
Division was now at the point where our line turned sharply to the left, and
rear—in the direction of the Sixteenth Corps.

“We got into business before we had been there over three minutes. A line
of the Rebs tried to charge across the open fields in front of us, but by the
help of the old twenty-four pounders (which proved to be part of Cooper's
Illinois Battery, that we had been alongside of in many a hard fight before),
we drove them back a-flying, only to have to jump over on the outside of our
works the next minute to tackle a heavy force that came for our rear through
that blasted strip of woods. We soon drove them off, and the firing on both
sides seemed to have pretty much stopped.
“'Our Brigade,' which we discovered, was now commanded by 'Old
Whiskers' (Colonel Piles, of the Seventy-Eighth Ohio. I'll bet he's got the
longest whiskers of any man in the Army.) You see General Scott had not
been seen or heard of since he had started to the rear after our regiment when
the fighting first commenced. We all believed that he was either killed or
captured, or he would have been with his command. He was a splendid
soldier, and a bull-dog of a fighter. His absence was a great loss, but we had
not much time to think of such things, for our brigade was then ordered to

leave the works and to move to the right about twenty or thirty rods across a
large ravine, where we were placed in position in an open corn-field,
forming a new line at quite an angle from the line of works we had just left,
extending to the left, and getting us back nearer onto a line with the
Sixteenth Corps. The battery of howitzers, now reinforced by a part of the
Third Ohio heavy guns, still occupied the old works on the highest part of
the hill, just to the right of our new line. We took our position just on the
brow of a hill, and were ordered to lie down, and the rear rank to go for rails,
which we discovered a few rods behind us in the shape of a good ten-rail
fence. Every rear-rank chap came back with all the rails he could lug, and we
barely had time to lay them down in front of us, forming a little barricade of
six to eight or ten inches high, when we heard the most unearthly Rebel yell
directly in front of us. It grew louder and came nearer and nearer, until we
could see a solid line of the gray coats coming out of the woods and down
the opposite slope, their battle flags flying, officers in front with drawn
swords, arms at right shoulder, and every one of them yelling like so many
Sioux Indians. The line seemed to be massed six or eight ranks deep,
followed closely by the second line, and that by the third, each, if possible,
yelling louder and appearing more desperately reckless than the one ahead.
At their first appearance we opened on them, and so did the bully old
twenty-four-pounders, with canister.
“On they came; the first line staggered and wavered back on to the
second, which was coming on the double quick. Such a raking as we did
give them. Oh, Lordy, how we did wish that we had the breech loading
Spencers or Winchesters. But we had the old reliable Springfields, and we
poured it in hot and heavy. By the time the charging column got down the
opposite slope, and were struggling through the thicket of undergrowth in
the ravine, they were one confused mass of officers and men, the three lines
now forming one solid column, which made several desperate efforts to rush
up to the top of the hill where we were punishing them so. One of their first
surges came mighty near going right over the left of our Regiment, as they
were lying down behind their little rail piles. But the boys clubbed their guns
and the officers used their revolvers and swords and drove them back down
the hill.
“The Seventy-Eighth and Twentieth Ohio, our right and left bowers, who
had been brigaded with us ever since 'Shiloh,' were into it as hot and heavy
as we had been, and had lost numbers of their officers and men, but were

hanging on to their little rail piles when the fight was over. At one time the
Rebs were right in on top of the Seventy-Eighth. One big Reb grabbed their
colors, and tried to pull them out of the hands of the color-bearer. But old
Captain Orr, a little, short, dried-up fellow, about sixty years old, struck him
with his sword across the back of the neck, and killed him deader than a
mackerel, right in his tracks.

“It was now getting dark, and the Johnnies concluded they had taken a
bigger contract in trying to drive us off that hill in one day than they had
counted on, so they quit charging on us, but drew back under cover of the

woods and along the old line of works that we had left, and kept up a
pecking away and sharp-shooting at us all night long. They opened fire on us
from a number of pieces of artillery from the front, from the left, and from
some heavy guns away over to the right of us, in the main works around
Atlanta.
“We did not fool away much time that night, either. We got our shovels
and picks, and while part of us were sharpshooting and trying to keep the
Rebels from working up too close to us, the rest of the boys were putting up
some good solid earthworks right where our rail piles had been, and by
morning we were in splendid shape to have received our friends, no matter
which way they had come at us, for they kept up such an all-fired shelling of
us from so many different directions; that the boys had built traverses and
bomb-proofs at all sorts of angles and in all directions.
“There was one point off to our right, a few rods up along our old line of
works where there was a crowd of Rebel sharpshooters that annoyed us more
than all the rest, by their constant firing at us through the night. They killed
one of Company H's boys, and wounded several others. Finally Captain
Williams, of D Company, came along and said he wanted a couple of good
shots out of our company to go with him, so I went for one. He took about
ten of us, and we crawled down into the ravine in front of where we were
building the works, and got behind a large fallen tree, and we laid there and
could just fire right up into the rear of those fellows as they lay behind a
traverse extending back from our old line of works. It was so dark we could
only see where to fire by the flash of guns, but every time they would shoot,
some of us would let them have one. They staid there until almost daylight,
when they, concluded as things looked, since we were going to stay, they had
better be going.
“It was an awful night. Down in the ravine below us lay hundreds of
killed and wounded Rebels, groaning and crying aloud for water and for
help. We did do what we could for those right around us—but it was so dark,
and so many shell bursting and bullets flying around that a fellow could not
get about much. I tell you it was pretty tough next morning to go along to the
different companies of our regiment and hear who were among the killed
and wounded, and to see the long row of graves that were being dug to bury
our comrades and our officers. There was the Captain of Company E, Nelson
Skeeles, of Fulton County, O., one of—the bravest and best officers in the
regiment. By his side lay First Sergeant Lesnit, and next were the two great,

powerful Shepherds—cousins but more like brothers. One, it seems, was
killed while supporting the head of the other, who had just received a death
wound, thus dying in each other's arms.

“But I can't begin to think or tell you the names of all the poor boys that
we laid away to rest in their last, long sleep on that gloomy day. Our Major
was severely wounded, and several other officers had been hit more or less
badly.
“It was a frightful sight, though, to go over the field in front of our works
on that morning. The Rebel dead and badly wounded laid where they had
fallen. The bottom and opposite side of the ravine showed how destructive

our fire and that of the canister from the howitzers had been. The underbrush
was cut, slashed, and torn into shreds, and the larger trees were scarred,
bruised and broken by the thousands of bullets and other missiles that had
been poured into them from almost every conceivable direction during the
day before.
“A lot of us boys went way over to the left into Fuller's Division of the
Sixteenth Corps, to see how some of our boys over there had got through the
scrimmage, for they had about as nasty a fight as any part of the Army, and if
it had not been for their being just where they were, I am not sure but what
the old Seventeenth Corps would have had a different story to tell now. We
found our friends had been way out by Decatur, where their brigade had got
into a pretty lively fight on their own hook.
“We got back to camp, and the first thing I knew I was detailed for picket
duty, and we were posted over a few rods across the ravine in our front. We
had not been out but a short time when we saw a flag of truce, borne by an
officer, coming towards us. We halted him, and made him wait until a report
was sent back to Corps headquarters. The Rebel officer was quite chatty and
talkative with our picket officer, while waiting. He said he was on General
Cleburne's staff, and that the troops that charged us so fiercely the evening
before was Cleburne's whole Division, and that after their last repulse,
knowing the hill where we were posted was the most important position
along our line, he felt that if they would keep close to us during the night,
and keep up a show of fight, that we would pull out and abandon the hill
before morning. He said that he, with about fifty of their best men, had
volunteered to keep up the demonstration, and it was his party that had
occupied the traverse in our old works the night before and had annoyed us
and the Battery men by their constant sharpshooting, which we fellows
behind the old tree had finally tired out. He said they staid until almost
daylight, and that he lost more than half his men before he left. He also told
us that General Scott was captured by their Division, at about the time and
almost the same spot as where General McPherson was killed, and that he
was not hurt or wounded, and was now a prisoner in their hands.
“Quite a lot of our staff officers soon came out, and as near as we could
learn the Rebels wanted a truce to bury their dead. Our folks tried to get up
an exchange of prisoners that had been taken by both sides the day before,
but for some reason they could not bring it about. But the truce for burying
the dead was agreed to. Along about dusk some of the boys on my post got

to telling about a lot of silver and brass instruments that belonged to one of
the bands of the Fourth Division, which had been hung up in some small
trees a little way over in front of where we were when the fight was going on
the day before, and that when, a bullet would strike one of the horns they
could hear it go 'pin-g' and in a few minutes 'pan-g' would go another bullet
through one of them.
“A new picket was just coming' on, and I had picked up my blanket and
haversack, and was about ready to start back to camp, when, thinks I, 'I'll
just go out there and see about them horns.' I told the boys what I was going
to do. They all seemed to think it was safe enough, so out I started. I had not
gone more than a hundred yards, I should think, when here I found the horns
all hanging around on the trees just as the boys had described. Some of them
had lots of bullet holes in them. But I saw a beautiful, nice looking silver
bugle hanging off to one side a little. 'I Thinks,' says I, 'I'll just take that little
toot horn in out of the wet, and take it back to camp.' I was just reaching up
after it when I heard some one say,
“'Halt!' and I'll be dog-Boned if there wasn't two of the meanest looking
Rebels, standing not ten feet from me, with their guns cocked and pointed at
me, and, of course, I knew I was a goner; they walked me back about one
hundred and fifty yards, where their picket line was. From there I was kept
going for an hour or two until we got over to a place on the railroad called
East Point. There I got in with a big crowd of our prisoners, who were taken
the day before, and we have been fooling along in a lot of old cattle cars
getting down here ever since.
“So this is 'Andersonville,' is it! Well, by—!”

CHAPTER XLI.
CLOTHING: ITS RAPID DETERIORATION, AND DEVICES TO
REPLENISH IT—DESPERATE EFFORTS TO COVER NAKEDNESS
—“LITTLE RED CAP” AND HIS LETTER.
Clothing had now become an object of real solicitude to us older
prisoners. The veterans of our crowd—the surviving remnant of those
captured at Gettysburg—had been prisoners over a year. The next in
seniority—the Chickamauga boys—had been in ten months. The Mine Run
fellows were eight months old, and my battalion had had seven months'
incarceration. None of us were models of well-dressed gentlemen when
captured. Our garments told the whole story of the hard campaigning we had
undergone. Now, with months of the wear and tear of prison life, sleeping on
the sand, working in tunnels, digging wells, etc., we were tattered and torn to
an extent that a second-class tramp would have considered disgraceful.
This is no reflection upon the quality of the clothes furnished by the
Government. We simply reached the limit of the wear of textile fabrics. I am
particular to say this, because I want to contribute my little mite towards
doing justice to a badly abused part of our Army organization —the
Quartermaster's Department. It is fashionable to speak of “shoddy,” and utter
some stereotyped sneers about “brown paper shoes,” and “musketo-netting
overcoats,” when any discussion of the Quartermaster service is the subject
of conversation, but I have no hesitation in asking the indorsement of my
comrades to the statement that we have never found anywhere else as
durable garments as those furnished us by the Government during our
service in the Army. The clothes were not as fine in texture, nor so stylish in
cut as those we wore before or since, but when it came to wear they could be
relied on to the last thread. It was always marvelous to me that they lasted so
well, with the rough usage a soldier in the field must necessarily give them.

But to return to my subject. I can best illustrate the way our clothes
dropped off us, piece by piece, like the petals from the last rose of Summer,
by taking my own case as an example: When I entered prison I was clad in
the ordinary garb of an enlisted man of the cavalry—stout, comfortable
boots, woolen pocks, drawers, pantaloons, with a “reenforcement,” or
“ready-made patches,” as the infantry called them; vest, warm, snug-fitting
jacket, under and over shirts, heavy overcoat, and a forage-cap. First my
boots fell into cureless ruin, but this was no special hardship, as the weather
had become quite warm, and it was more pleasant than otherwise to go
barefooted. Then part of the underclothing retired from service. The jacket
and vest followed, their end being hastened by having their best portions
taken to patch up the pantaloons, which kept giving out at the most
embarrassing places. Then the cape of the overcoat was called upon to assist
in repairing these continually-recurring breaches in the nether garments. The

same insatiate demand finally consumed the whole coat, in a vain attempt to
prevent an exposure of person greater than consistent with the usages of
society. The pantaloons—or what, by courtesy, I called such, were a
monument of careful and ingenious, but hopeless, patching, that should have
called forth the admiration of a Florentine artist in mosaic. I have been
shown—in later years—many table tops, ornamented in marquetry, inlaid
with thousands of little bits of wood, cunningly arranged, and patiently
joined together. I always look at them with interest, for I know the work
spent upon them: I remember my Andersonville pantaloons.
The clothing upon the upper part of my body had been reduced to the
remains of a knit undershirt. It had fallen into so many holes that it looked
like the coarse “riddles” through which ashes and gravel are sifted.
Wherever these holes were the sun had burned my back, breast and
shoulders deeply black. The parts covered by the threads and fragments
forming the boundaries of the holes, were still white. When I pulled my
alleged shirt off, to wash or to free it from some of its teeming population,
my skin showed a fine lace pattern in black and white, that was very
interesting to my comrades, and the subject of countless jokes by them.
They used to descant loudly on the chaste elegance of the design, the
richness of the tracing, etc., and beg me to furnish them with a copy of it
when I got home, for their sisters to work window curtains or tidies by. They
were sure that so striking a novelty in patterns would be very acceptable. I
would reply to their witticisms in the language of Portia's Prince of
Morocco:
Mislike me not for my complexion—
The shadowed livery of the burning sun.