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.