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.