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.
Winder had found in Barrett even a better tool for his cruel purposes
than Wirz. The two resembled each other in many respects. Both were
absolutely destitute of any talent for commanding men, and could no
more handle even one thousand men properly than a cabin boy could
navigate a great ocean steamer. Both were given to the same senseless
fits of insane rage, coming and going without apparent cause, during
which they fired revolvers and guns or threw clubs into crowds of
prisoners, or knocked down such as were within reach of their fists.
These exhibitions were such as an overgrown child might be expected to
make. They did not secure any result except to increase the prisoners’
wonder that such ill-tempered fools could be given any position of
responsibility.
A short time previous to our entry Barrett thought he had reason to
suspect a tunnel. He immediately announced that no more rations should
be issued until its whereabouts was revealed and the ringleaders in the
attempt to escape delivered up to him. The rations at that time were
very scanty, so that the first day they were cut off the sufferings
were fearful. The boys thought he would surely relent the next day, but
they did not know their man. He was not suffering any, why should he
relax his severity? He strolled leisurely out from his dinner table,
picking his teeth with his penknife in the comfortable, self-satisfied
way of a coarse man who has just filled his stomach to his entire
content--an attitude and an air that was simply maddening to the
famishing wretches, of whom he inquired tantalizingly:
“Air ye’re hungry enough to give up them G-d d d s--s of b----s yet?”
That night thirteen thousand men, crazy, fainting with hunger, walked
hither and thither, until exhaustion forced them to become quiet, sat
on the ground and pressed their bowels in by leaning against sticks of
wood laid across their thighs; trooped to the Creek and drank water
until their gorges rose and they could swallow no more--did everything
in fact that imagination could suggest--to assuage the pangs of the
deadly gnawing that was consuming their vitals. All the cruelties of
the terrible Spanish Inquisition, if heaped together, would not sum
up a greater aggregate of anguish than was endured by them. The third
day came, and still no signs of yielding by Barrett. The Sergeants
counseled together. Something must be done. The fellow would starve
the whole camp to death with as little compunction as one drowns blind
puppies. It was necessary to get up a tunnel to show Barrett, and to
get boys who would confess to being leaders in the work. A number of
gallant fellows volunteered to brave his wrath, and save the rest of
their comrades. It required high courage to do this, as there was no
question but that the punishment meted out would be as fearful as the
cruel mind of the fellow could conceive. The Sergeants decided that
four would be sufficient to answer the purpose; they selected these by
lot, marched them to the gate and delivered them over to Barrett, who
thereupon ordered the rations to be sent in. He was considerate enough,
too, to feed the men he was going to torture.
The starving men in the Stockade could not wait after the rations were
issued to cook them, but in many instances mixed the meal up with
water, and swallowed it raw. Frequently their stomachs, irritated by
the long fast, rejected the mess; any very many had reached the stage
where they loathed food; a burning fever was consuming them, and
seething their brains with delirium. Hundreds died within a few days,
and hundreds more were so debilitated by the terrible strain that they
did not linger long afterward.
The boys who had offered themselves as a sacrifice for the rest were
put into a guard house, and kept over night that Barrett might make a
day of the amusement of torturing them. After he had laid in a hearty
breakfast, and doubtless fortified himself with some of the villainous
sorgum whisky, which the Rebels were now reduced to drinking, he set
about his entertainment.
The devoted four were brought out--one by one--and their hands tied
together behind their backs. Then a noose of a slender, strong hemp
rope was slipped over the first one’s thumbs and drawn tight, after
which the rope was thrown over a log projecting from the roof of the
guard house, and two or three Rebels hauled upon it until the miserable
Yankee was lifted from the ground, and hung suspended by the thumbs,
while his weight seemed tearing his limbs from his shoulder blades. The
other three were treated in the same manner.
The agony was simply excruciating. The boys were brave, and had
resolved to stand their punishment without a groan, but this was too
much for human endurance. Their will was strong, but Nature could not
be denied, and they shrieked aloud so pitifully that a young Reserve
standing near fainted. Each one screamed:
“For God’s sake, kill me! kill me! Shoot me if--you want to, but let me
down from here!” The only effect of this upon Barrett was to light up
his brutal face with a leer of fiendish satisfaction. He said to the
guards with a gleeful wink:
“By God, I’ll learn these Yanks to be more afeard of me than of the old
devil himself. They’ll soon understand that I’m not the man to fool
with. I’m old pizen, I am, when I git started. Jest hear ’em squeal,
won’t yer?”
Then walking from one prisoner to another, he said:
“D---n yer skins, ye’ll dig tunnels, will ye? Ye’ll try to git out, and
run through the country stealin’ and carryin’ off niggers, and makin’
more trouble than yer d----d necks are worth. I’ll learn ye all about
that. If I ketch ye at this sort of work again, d----d ef I don’t kill
ye ez soon ez I ketch ye.”
And so on, ad infinitum. How long the boys were kept up there
undergoing this torture can not be said. Perhaps it was an hour or
more. To the locker-on it seemed long hours, to the poor fellows
themselves it was ages. When they were let down at last, all fainted,
and were carried away to the hospital, where they were weeks in
recovering from the effects. Some of them were crippled for life.
When we came into the prison there were about eleven thousand there.
More uniformly wretched creatures I had never before seen. Up to the
time of our departure from Andersonville the constant influx of new
prisoners had prevented the misery and wasting away of life from
becoming fully realized. Though thousands were continually dying,
thousands more of healthy, clean, well-clothed men were as continually
coming in from the front, so that a large portion of those inside
looked in fairly good condition. Put now no new prisoners had come in
for months; the money which made such a show about the sutler shops of
Andersonville had been spent; and there was in every face the same look
of ghastly emaciation, the same shrunken muscles and feeble limbs, the
same lack-luster eyes and hopeless countenances.
One of the commonest of sights was to see men whose hands and feet
were simply rotting off. The nights were frequently so cold that ice
a quarter of an inch thick formed on the water. The naked frames of
starving men were poorly calculated to withstand this frosty rigor, and
thousands had their extremities so badly frozen as to destroy the life
in those parts, and induce a rotting of the tissues by a dry gangrene.
The rotted flesh frequently remained in its place for a long time --a
loathsome but painless mass, that gradually sloughed off, leaving the
sinews that passed through it to stand out like shining, white cords.
While this was in some respects less terrible than the hospital
gangrene at Andersonville, it was more generally diffused, and dreadful
to the last degree. The Rebel Surgeons at Florence did not follow
the habit of those at Andersonville, and try to check the disease by
wholesale amputation, but simply let it run its course, and thousands
finally carried their putrefied limbs through our lines, when the
Confederacy broke up in the Spring, to be treated by our Surgeons.
I had been in prison but a little while when a voice called out from a
hole in the ground, as I was passing:
“S-a-y, Sergeant! Won’t you please take these shears and cut my toes
off?”
“What?” said I, in amazement, stopping in front of the dugout.
“Just take these shears, won’t you, and cut my toes off?” answered the
inmate, an Indiana infantryman--holding up a pair of dull shears in his
hand, and elevating a foot for me to look at.
I examined the latter carefully. All the flesh of the toes, except
little pads at the ends, had rotted off, leaving the bones as clean as
if scraped. The little tendons still remained, and held the bones to
their places, but this seemed to hurt the rest of the feet and annoy
the man.
“You’d better let one of the Rebel doctors see this,” I said, after
finishing my survey, “before you conclude to have them off. May be they
can be saved.”
“No; d----d if I’m going to have any of them Rebel butchers fooling
around me. I’d die first, and then I wouldn’t,” was the reply. “You can
do it better than they can. It’s just a little snip. Just try it.”
“I don’t like to,” I replied. “I might lame you for life, and make you
lots of trouble.”
“O, bother! what business is that of yours? They’re my toes, and I want
’em off. They hurt me so I can’t sleep. Come, now, take the shears and
cut ’em off.”
I yielded, and taking the shears, snipped one tendon after another,
close to the feet, and in a few seconds had the whole ten toes lying in
a heap at the bottom of the dug-out. I picked them up and handed them
to their owner, who gazed at them, complacently, and remarked:
“Well, I’m darned glad they’re off. I won’t be bothered with corns any
more, I flatter myself.”