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.
We again began to be exceedingly solicitous over the fate of Atlanta
and Sherman’s Army: we had heard but little directly from that front
for several weeks. Few prisoners had come in since those captured in
the bloody engagements of the 20th, 22d, and 28th of July. In spite
of their confident tones, and our own sanguine hopes, the outlook
admitted of very grave doubts. The battles of the last week of July
had been looked at it in the best light possible--indecisive. Our men
had held their own, it is true, but an invading army can not afford
to simply hold its own. Anything short of an absolute success is to
it disguised defeat. Then we knew that the cavalry column sent out
under Stoneman had been so badly handled by that inefficient commander
that it had failed ridiculously in its object, being beaten in detail,
and suffering the loss of its commander and a considerable portion
of its numbers. This had been followed by a defeat of our infantry
at Etowah Creek, and then came a long interval in which we received
no news save what the Rebel papers contained, and they pretended no
doubt that Sherman’s failure was already demonstrated. Next came
well-authenticated news that Sherman had raised the siege and fallen
back to the Chattahoochee, and we felt something of the bitterness of
despair. For days thereafter we heard nothing, though the hot, close
Summer air seemed surcharged with the premonitions of a war storm about
to burst, even as nature heralds in the same way a concentration of the
mighty force of the elements for the grand crash of the thunderstorm.
We waited in tense expectancy for the decision of the fates whether
final victory or defeat should end the long and arduous campaign.
At night the guards in the perches around the Stockade called out
every half hour, so as to show the officers that they were awake and
attending to their duty. The formula for this ran thus:
“Post numbah 1; half-past eight o’clock, and a-l-l’s w-e-l-l!”
Post No. 2 repeated this cry, and so it went around.
One evening when our anxiety as to Atlanta was wrought to the highest
pitch, one of the guards sang out:
“Post numbah foah--half past eight o’clock--and Atlanta’s--gone--t-o
--hell.”
The heart of every man within hearing leaped to his mouth. We looked
toward each other, almost speechless with glad surprise, and then
gasped out:
“Did you hear THAT?”
The next instant such a ringing cheer burst out as wells spontaneously
from the throats and hearts of men, in the first ecstatic moments of
victory--a cheer to which our saddened hearts and enfeebled lungs
had long been strangers. It was the genuine, honest, manly Northern
cheer, as different from the shrill Rebel yell as the honest mastiff’s
deep-voiced welcome is from the howl of the prowling wolf.
The shout was taken up all over the prison. Even those who had not
heard the guard understood that it meant that “Atlanta was ours and
fairly won,” and they took up the acclamation with as much enthusiasm
as we had begun it. All thoughts of sleep were put to flight: we would
have a season of rejoicing. Little knots gathered together, debated the
news, and indulged in the most sanguine hopes as to the effect upon
the Rebels. In some parts of the Stockade stump speeches were made. I
believe that Boston Corbett and his party organized a prayer and praise
meeting. In our corner we stirred up our tuneful friend “Nosey,” who
sang again the grand old patriotic hymns that set our thin blood to
bounding, and made us remember that we were still Union soldiers, with
higher hopes than that of starving and dying in Andersonville. He sang
the ever-glorious Star Spangled Banner, as he used to sing it around
the camp fire in happier days, when we were in the field. He sang the
rousing “Rally Round the Flag,” with its wealth of patriotic fire and
martial vigor, and we, with throats hoarse from shouting; joined in the
chorus until the welkin rang again.
The Rebels became excited, lest our exaltation of spirits would lead
to an assault upon the Stockade. They got under arms, and remained so
until the enthusiasm became less demonstrative.
A few days later--on the evening of the 6th of September--the Rebel
Sergeants who called the roll entered the Stockade, and each assembling
his squads, addressed them as follows:
“PRISONERS: I am instructed by General Winder to inform you that a
general exchange has been agreed upon. Twenty thousand men will be
exchanged immediately at Savannah, where your vessels are now waiting
for you. Detachments from One to Ten will prepare to leave early
to-morrow morning.”
The excitement that this news produced was simply indescribable. I
have seen men in every possible exigency that can confront men, and a
large proportion viewed that which impended over them with at least
outward composure. The boys around me had endured all that we suffered
with stoical firmness. Groans from pain-racked bodies could not be
repressed, and bitter curses and maledictions against the Rebels leaped
unbidden to the lips at the slightest occasion, but there was no
murmuring or whining. There was not a day--hardly an hour--in which one
did not see such exhibitions of manly fortitude as made him proud of
belonging to a race of which every individual was a hero.
But the emotion which pain and suffering and danger could not develop,
joy could, and boys sang, and shouted and cried, and danced as if in
a delirium. “God’s country,” fairer than the sweet promised land of
Canaan appeared to the rapt vision of the Hebrew poet prophet, spread
out in glad vista before the mind’s eye of every one. It had come--at
last it had come that which we had so longed for, wished for, prayed
for, dreamed of; schemed, planned, toiled for, and for which went up
the last earnest, dying wish of the thousands of our comrades who would
now know no exchange save into that eternal “God’s country” where
Sickness and sorrow, pain and death
Are felt and feared no more.
Our “preparations,” for leaving were few and simple. When the morning
came, and shortly after the order to move, Andrews and I picked our
well-worn blanket, our tattered overcoat, our rude chessmen, and no
less rude board, our little black can, and the spoon made of hoop-iron,
and bade farewell to the hole-in-the-ground that had been our home for
nearly seven long months.
My feet were still in miserable condition from the lacerations received
in the attempt to escape, but I took one of our tent poles as a staff
and hobbled away. We re-passed the gates which we had entered on that
February night, ages since, it seemed, and crawled slowly over to the
depot.
I had come to regard the Rebels around us as such measureless liars
that my first impulse was to believe the reverse of anything they said
to us; and even now, while I hoped for the best, my old habit of mind
was so strongly upon me that I had some doubts of our going to be
exchanged, simply because it was a Rebel who had said so. But in the
crowd of Rebels who stood close to the road upon which we were walking
was a young Second Lieutenant, who said to a Colonel as I passed:
“Weil, those fellows can sing ‘Homeward Bound,’ can’t they?”
This set my last misgiving at rest. Now I was certain that we were
going to be exchanged, and my spirits soared to the skies.
Entering the cars we thumped and pounded toilsomely along, after
the manner of Southern railroads, at the rate of six or eight miles
an hour. Savannah was two hundred and forty miles away, and to our
impatient minds it seemed as if we would never get there. The route
lay the whole distance through the cheerless pine barrens which cover
the greater part of Georgia. The only considerable town on the way was
Macon, which had then a population of five thousand or thereabouts. For
scores of miles there would not be a sign of a human habitation, and in
the one hundred and eighty miles between Macon and Savannah there were
only three insignificant villages. There was a station every ten miles,
at which the only building was an open shed, to shelter from sun and
rain a casual passenger, or a bit of goods.
The occasional specimens of the poor white “cracker” population that
we saw, seemed indigenous products of the starved soil. They suited
their poverty-stricken surroundings as well as the gnarled and scrubby
vegetation suited the sterile sand. Thin-chested, round-shouldered,
scraggy-bearded, dull-eyed and open-mouthed, they all looked alike--all
looked as ignorant, as stupid, and as lazy as they were poor and
weak. They were “low-downers” in every respect, and made our rough
and simple. minded East Tennesseans look like models of elegant and
cultured gentlemen in contrast.
We looked on the poverty-stricken land with good-natured contempt, for
we thought we were leaving it forever, and would soon be in one which,
compared to it, was as the fatness at Egypt to the leanness of the
desert of Sinai.
The second day after leaving Andersonville our train struggled across
the swamps into Savannah, and rolled slowly down the live oak shaded
streets into the center of the City. It seemed like another Deserted
Village, so vacant and noiseless the streets, and the buildings
everywhere so overgrown with luxuriant vegetation: The limbs of the
shade trees crashed along and broke, upon the tops of our cars, as if
no train had passed that way for years. Through the interstices between
the trees and clumps of foliage could be seen the gleaming white marble
of the monuments erected to Greene and Pulaski, looking like giant
tombstones in a City of the Dead. The unbroken stillness--so different
from what we expected on entering the metropolis of Georgia, and a City
that was an important port in Revolutionary days--became absolutely
oppressive. We could not understand it, but our thoughts were more
intent upon the coming transfer to our flag than upon any speculation
as to the cause of the remarkable somnolence of Savannah.
Finally some little boys straggled out to where our car was standing,
and we opened up a conversation with them:
“Say, boys, are our vessels down in the harbor yet?”
The reply came in that piercing treble shriek in which a boy of ten or
twelve makes even his most confidential communications:
“I don’t know.”
“Well,” (with our confidence in exchange somewhat dashed,) “they intend
to exchange us here, don’t they?”
Another falsetto scream, “I don’t know.”
“Well,” (with something of a quaver in the questioner’s voice,) “what
are they going to do, with us, any way?”
“O,” (the treble shriek became almost demoniac) “they are fixing up a
place over by the old jail for you.”
What a sinking of hearts was there then! Andrews and I would not give
up hope so speedily as some others did, and resolved to believe, for
awhile at least, that we were going to be exchanged.
Ordered out of the cars, we were marched along the street. A crowd
of small boys, full of the curiosity of the animal, gathered around
us as we marched. Suddenly a door in a rather nice house opened; an
angry-faced woman appeared on the steps and shouted out:
“Boys! BOYS! What are you doin’ there! Come up on the steps immejitely!
Come away from them n-a-s-t-y things!”
I will admit that we were not prepossessing in appearance; nor were
we as cleanly as young gentlemen should habitually be; in fact, I may
as well confess that I would not now, if I could help it, allow a
tramp, as dilapidated in raiment, as unwashed, unshorn, uncombed, and
populous with insects as we were, to come within several rods of me.
Nevertheless, it was not pleasant to hear so accurate a description
of our personal appearance sent forth on the wings of the wind by a
shrill-voiced Rebel female.
A short march brought us to the place “they were fixing for us by the
old jail.” It was another pen, with high walls of thick pine plank,
which told us only too plainly how vain were our expectations of
exchange.
When we were turned inside, and I realized that the gates of another
prison had closed upon me, hope forsook me. I flung our odious little
possessions-our can, chess-board, overcoat, and blanket-upon the
ground, and, sitting down beside them, gave way to the bitterest
despair. I wanted to die, O, so badly. Never in all my life had I
desired anything in the world so much as I did now to get out of it.
Had I had pistol, knife, rope, or poison, I would have ended my prison
life then and there, and departed with the unceremoniousness of a
French leave. I remembered that I could get a quietus from a guard with
very little trouble, but I would not give one of the bitterly hated
Rebels the triumph of shooting me. I longed to be another Samson, with
the whole Southern Confederacy gathered in another Temple of Dagon,
that I might pull down the supporting pillars, and die happy in slaying
thousands of my enemies.
While I was thus sinking deeper and deeper in the Slough of Despond,
the firing of a musket, and the shriek of the man who was struck,
attracted my attention. Looking towards the opposite end of the pen
I saw a guard bringing his still smoking musket to a “recover arms,”
and, not fifteen feet from him, a prisoner lying on the ground in the
agonies of death. The latter had a pipe in his mouth when he was shot,
and his teeth still clenched its stem. His legs and arms were drawn up
convulsively, and he was rocking backward and forward on his back. The
charge had struck him just above the hip-bone.
The Rebel officer in command of the guard was sitting on his horse
inside the pen at the time, and rode forward to see what the matter
was. Lieutenant Davis, who had come with us from Andersonville, was
also sitting on a horse inside the prison, and he called out in his
usual harsh, disagreeable voice:
“That’s all right, Cunnel; the man’s done just as I awdahed him to.”
I found that lying around inside were a number of bits of plank--each
about five feet long, which had been sawed off by the carpenters
engaged in building the prison. The ground being a bare common, was
destitute of all shelter, and the pieces looked as if they would be
quite useful in building a tent. There may have been an order issued
forbidding the prisoners to touch them, but if so, I had not heard it,
and I imagine the first intimation to the prisoner just killed that the
boards were not to be taken was the bullet which penetrated his vitals.
Twenty-five cents would be a liberal appraisement of the value of the
lumber for which the boy lost his life.
Half an hour afterward we thought we saw all the guards march out of
the front gate. There was still another pile of these same kind of
pieces of board lying at the further side of the prison. The crowd
around me noticed it, and we all made a rush for it. In spite of my
lame feet I outstripped the rest, and was just in the act of stooping
down to pick the boards up when a loud yell from those behind startled
me. Glancing to my left I saw a guard cocking his gun and bringing
it up to shoot me. With one frightened spring, as quick as a flash,
and before he could cover me, I landed fully a rod back in the crowd,
and mixed with it. The fellow tried hard to draw a bead on me, but I
was too quick for him, and he finally lowered his gun with an oath
expressive of disappointment in not being able to kill a Yankee.
Walking back to my place the full ludicrousness of the thing dawned
upon me so forcibly that I forgot all about my excitement and scare,
and laughed aloud. Here, not an hour age I was murmuring because I
could find no way to die; I sighed for death as a bridegroom for the
coming of his bride, an yet, when a Rebel had pointed his gun at me, it
had nearly scared me out of a year’s growth, and made me jump farther
than I could possibly do when my feet were well, and I was in good
condition otherwise.