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.