CHRISTMAS--AND THE WAY THE WAS PASSED--THE DAILY ROUTINE OF RATION
DRAWING--SOME PECULIARITIES OF LIVING AND DYING.
Christmas, with its swelling flood of happy memories,--memories now
bitter because they marked the high tide whence our fortunes had
receded to this despicable state--came, but brought no change to
mark its coming. It is true that we had expected no change; we had
not looked forward to the day, and hardly knew when it arrived, so
indifferent were we to the lapse of time.
When reminded that the day was one that in all Christendom was sacred
to good cheer and joyful meetings; that wherever the upraised cross
proclaimed followers of Him who preached “Peace on Earth and good will
to men,” parents and children, brothers and sisters, long-time friends,
and all congenial spirits were gathering around hospitable boards to
delight in each other’s society, and strengthen the bonds of unity
between them, we listened as to a tale told of some foreign land from
which we had parted forever more.
It seemed years since we had known anything of the kind. The experience
we had had of it belonged to the dim and irrevocable past. It could not
come to us again, nor we go to it. Squalor, hunger, cold and wasting
disease had become the ordinary conditions of existence, from which
there was little hope that we would ever be exempt.
Perhaps it was well, to a certain degree, that we felt so. It softened
the poignancy of our reflections over the difference in the condition
of ourselves and our happier comrades who were elsewhere.
The weather was in harmony with our feelings. The dull, gray, leaden
sky was as sharp a contrast with the crisp, bracing sharpness of a
Northern Christmas morning, as our beggarly little ration of saltless
corn meal was to the sumptuous cheer that loaded the dinner-tables of
our Northern homes.
We turned out languidly in the morning to roll-call, endured silently
the raving abuse of the cowardly brute Barrett, hung stupidly over the
flickering little fires, until the gates opened to admit the rations.
For an hour there was bustle and animation. All stood around and
counted each sack of meal, to get an idea of the rations we were likely
to receive.
This was a daily custom. The number intended for the day’s issue were
all brought in and piled up in the street. Then there was a division
of the sacks to the thousands, the Sergeant of each being called up in
turn, and allowed to pick out and carry away one, until all were taken.
When we entered the prison each thousand received, on an average, ten
or eleven sacks a day. Every week saw a reduction in the number, until
by midwinter the daily issue to a thousand averaged four sacks. Let
us say that one of these sacks held two bushels, or the four, eight
bushels. As there are thirty-two quarts in a bushel, one thousand men
received two hundred and fifty-six quarts, or less than a half pint
each.
We thought we had sounded the depths of misery at Andersonville, but
Florence showed us a much lower depth. Bad as was parching under the
burning sun whose fiery rays bred miasma and putrefaction, it was still
not so bad as having one’s life chilled out by exposure in nakedness
upon the frozen ground to biting winds and freezing sleet. Wretched as
the rusty bacon and coarse, maggot-filled bread of Andersonville was,
it would still go much farther towards supporting life than the handful
of saltless meal at Florence.
While I believe it possible for any young man, with the forces of life
strong within him, and healthy in every way, to survive, by taking due
precautions, such treatment as we received in Andersonville, I cannot
understand how anybody could live through a month of Florence. That
many did live is only an astonishing illustration of the tenacity of
life in some individuals.
Let the reader imagine--anywhere he likes--a fifteen-acre field, with
a stream running through the center. Let him imagine this inclosed
by a Stockade eighteen feet high, made by standing logs on end.
Let him conceive of ten thousand feeble men, debilitated by months
of imprisonment, turned inside this inclosure, without a yard of
covering given them, and told to make their homes there. One quarter
of them--two thousand five hundred--pick up brush, pieces of rail,
splits from logs, etc., sufficient to make huts that will turn the rain
tolerably. The huts are in no case as good shelter as an ordinarily
careful farmer provides for his swine. Half of the prisoners--five
thousand--who cannot do so well, work the mud up into rude bricks,
with which they build shelters that wash down at every hard rain.
The remaining two thousand five hundred do not do even this, but lie
around on the ground, on old blankets and overcoats, and in day-time
prop these up on sticks, as shelter from the rain and wind. Let them
be given not to exceed a pint of corn meal a day, and a piece of wood
about the size of an ordinary stick for a cooking stove to cook it
with. Then let such weather prevail as we ordinarily have in the North
in November--freezing cold rains, with frequent days and nights when
the ice forms as thick as a pane of glass. How long does he think men
could live through that? He will probably say that a week, or at most
a fortnight, would see the last and strongest of these ten thousand
lying dead in the frozen mire where he wallowed. He will be astonished
to learn that probably not more than four or five thousand of those who
underwent this in Florence died there. How many died after release--in
Washington, on the vessels coming to Annapolis, in hospital and camp at
Annapolis, or after they reached home, none but the Recording Angel can
tell. All that I know is we left a trail of dead behind us, wherever we
moved, so long as I was with the doleful caravan.
Looking back, after these lapse of years, the most salient
characteristic seems to be the ease with which men died. There, was
little of the violence of dissolution so common at Andersonville. The
machinery of life in all of us, was running slowly and feebly; it would
simply grow still slower and feebler in some, and then stop without a
jar, without a sensation to manifest it. Nightly one of two or three
comrades sleeping together would die. The survivors would not know it
until they tried to get him to “spoon” over, when they would find him
rigid and motionless. As they could not spare even so little heat as
was still contained in his body, they would not remove this, but lie up
the closer to it until morning. Such a thing as a boy making an outcry
when he discovered his comrade dead, or manifesting any, desire to get
away from the corpse, was unknown.
I remember one who, as Charles II. said of himself, was --“an
unconscionable long time in dying.” His name was Bickford; he belonged
to the Twenty-First Ohio Volunteer Infantry, lived, I think, near
Findlay, O., and was in my hundred. His partner and he were both in a
very bad condition, and I was not surprised, on making my rounds, one
morning, to find them apparently quite dead. I called help, and took
his partner away to the gate. When we picked up Bickford we found he
still lived, and had strength enough to gasp out:
“You fellers had better let me alone.” We laid him back to die, as we
supposed, in an hour or so.
When the Rebel Surgeon came in on his rounds, I showed him Bickford,
lying there with his eyes closed, and limbs motionless. The Surgeon
said:
“O, that man’s dead; why don’t you have him taken out?”
I replied: “No, he isn’t. Just see.” Stooping, I shook the boy sharply,
and said:
“Bickford! Bickford!! How do you feel?”
The eyes did not unclose, but the lips opened slowly, and said with a
painful effort:
“F-i-r-s-t R-a-t-e!”
This scene was repeated every morning for over a week. Every day the
Rebel Surgeon would insist that the man should betaken out, and every
morning Bickford would gasp out with troublesome exertion that he felt:
“F-i-r-s-t R-a-t-e!”
It ended one morning by his inability, to make his usual answer, and
then he was carried out to join the two score others being loaded into
the wagon.