THE PECULIAR TYPE OF INSANITY PREVALENT AT FLORENCE--BARRETT’S
WANTONNESS OF CRUELTY--WE LEARN OF SHERMAN’S ADVANCE INTO SOUTH
CAROLINA--THE REBELS BEGIN MOVING THE PRISONERS AWAY--ANDREWS AND I
CHANGE OUR TACTICS, AND STAY BEHIND--ARRIVAL OF FIVE PRISONERS FROM
SHERMAN’S COMMAND--THEIR UNBOUNDED CONFIDENCE IN SHERMAN’S SUCCESS, AND
ITS BENEFICIAL EFFECT UPON US.
One terrible phase of existence at Florence was the vast increase of
insanity. We had many insane men at Andersonville, but the type of the
derangement was different, partaking more of what the doctors term
melancholia. Prisoners coming in from the front were struck aghast by
the horrors they saw everywhere. Men dying of painful and repulsive
diseases lined every step of whatever path they trod; the rations given
them were repugnant to taste and stomach; shelter from the fiery sun
there was none, and scarcely room enough for them to lie down upon.
Under these discouraging circumstances, home-loving, kindly-hearted
men, especially those who had passed out of the first flush of youth,
and had left wife and children behind when they entered the service,
were speedily overcome with despair of surviving until released; their
hopelessness fed on the same germs which gave it birth, until it became
senseless, vacant-eyed, unreasoning, incurable melancholy, when the
victim would lie for hours, without speaking a word, except to babble
of home, or would wander aimlessly about the camp--frequently stark
naked--until he died or was shot for coming too near the Dead Line.
Soldiers must not suppose that this was the same class of weaklings
who usually pine themselves into the Hospital within three months
after their regiment enters the field. They were as a rule, made up of
seasoned soldiery, who had become inured to the dangers and hardships
of active service, and were not likely to sink down under any ordinary
trials.
The insane of Florence were of a different class; they were the boys
who had laughed at such a yielding to adversity in Andersonville,
and felt a lofty pity for the misfortunes of those who succumbed so.
But now the long strain of hardship, privation and exposure had done
for them what discouragement had done for those of less fortitude in
Andersonville. The faculties shrank under disuse and misfortune, until
they forgot their regiments, companies, places and date of capture,
and finally, even their names. I should think that by the middle of
January, at least one in every ten had sunk to this imbecile condition.
It was not insanity so much as mental atrophy--not so much aberration
of the mind, as a paralysis of mental action. The sufferers became
apathetic idiots, with no desire or wish to do or be anything. If they
walked around at all they had to be watched closely, to prevent their
straying over the Dead Line, and giving the young brats of guards the
coveted opportunity of killing them. Very many of such were killed,
and one of my Midwinter memories of Florence was that of seeing one of
these unfortunate imbeciles wandering witlessly up to the Dead Line
from the Swamp, while the guard--a boy of seventeen--stood with gun in
hand, in the attitude of a man expecting a covey to be flushed, waiting
for the poor devil to come so near the Dead Line as to afford an excuse
for killing him. Two sane prisoners, comprehending the situation,
rushed up to the lunatic, at the risk of their own lives, caught him by
the arms, and drew him back to safety.
The brutal Barrett seemed to delight in maltreating these demented
unfortunates. He either could not be made to understand their
condition, or willfully disregarded it, for it was one of the commonest
sights to see him knock down, beat, kick or otherwise abuse them
for not instantly obeying orders which their dazed senses could not
comprehend, or their feeble limbs execute, even if comprehended.
In my life I have seen many wantonly cruel men. I have known numbers
of mates of Mississippi river steamers--a class which seems carefully
selected from ruffians most proficient in profanity, obscenity and
swift-handed violence; I have seen negro-drivers in the slave marts of
St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans, and overseers on the plantations
of Mississippi and Louisiana; as a police reporter in one of the
largest cities in America, I have come in contact with thousands of
the brutalized scoundrels--the thugs of the brothel, bar-room and
alley--who form the dangerous classes of a metropolis. I knew Captain
Wirz. But in all this exceptionally extensive and varied experience, I
never met a man who seemed to love cruelty for its own sake as well as
Lieutenant Barrett. He took such pleasure in inflicting pain as those
Indians who slice off their prisoners’ eyelids, ears, noses and hands,
before burning them at the stake.
That a thing hurt some one else was always ample reason for his doing
it. The starving, freezing prisoners used to collect in considerable
numbers before the gate, and stand there for hours gazing vacantly
at it. There was no special object in doing this, only that it was a
central point, the rations came in there, and occasionally an officer
would enter, and it was the only place where anything was likely to
occur to vary the dreary monotony of the day, and the boys went there
because there was nothing else to offer any occupation to their minds.
It became a favorite practical joke of Barrett’s to slip up to the gate
with an armful of clubs, and suddenly opening the wicket, fling them
one after another, into the crowd, with all the force he possessed.
Many were knocked down, and many received hurts which resulted in fatal
gangrene. If he had left the clubs lying where thrown, there would have
been some compensation for his meanness, but he always came in and
carefully gathered up such as he could get, as ammunition for another
time.
I have heard men speak of receiving justice--even favors from Wirz. I
never heard any one saying that much of Barrett. Like Winder, if he had
a redeeming quality it was carefully obscured from the view of all that
I ever met who knew him.
Where the fellow came from, what State was entitled to the discredit of
producing and raising him, what he was before the War, what became of
him after he left us, are matters of which I never heard even a rumor,
except a very vague one that he had been killed by our cavalry, some
returned prisoner having recognized and shot him.
Colonel Iverson, of the Fifth Georgia, was the Post Commander. He was a
man of some education, but had a violent, ungovernable temper, during
fits of which he did very brutal things. At other times he would show
a disposition towards fairness and justice. The worst point in my
indictment against him is that he suffered Barrett to do as he did.
Let the reader understand that I have no personal reasons for my
opinion of these men. They never did anything to me, save what they did
to all of my companions. I held myself aloof from them, and shunned
intercourse so effectually that during my whole imprisonment I did not
speak as many words to Rebel officers as are in this and the above
paragraphs, and most of those were spoken to the Surgeon who visited
my hundred. I do not usually seek conversation with people I do not
like, and certainly did not with persons for whom I had so little love
as I had for Turner, Ross, Winder, Wirz, Davis, Iverson, Barrett, et
al. Possibly they felt badly over my distance and reserve, but I must
confess that they never showed it very palpably.
As January dragged slowly away into February, rumors of the astonishing
success of Sherman began to be so definite and well authenticated as to
induce belief. We knew that the Western Chieftain had marched almost
unresisted through Georgia, and captured Savannah with comparatively
little difficulty. We did not understand it, nor did the Rebels around
us, for neither of us comprehended the Confederacy’s near approach to
dissolution, and we could not explain why a desperate attempt was not
made somewhere to arrest the onward sweep of the conquering armies of
the West. It seemed that if there was any vitality left in Rebeldom it
would deal a blow that would at least cause the presumptuous invader
to pause. As we knew nothing of the battles of Franklin and Nashville,
we were ignorant of the destruction of Hood’s army, and were at a loss
to account for its failure to contest Sherman’s progress. The last we
had heard of Hood, he had been flanked out of Atlanta, but we did not
understand that the strength or morale of his force had been seriously
reduced in consequence.
Soon it drifted in to us that Sherman had cut loose from Savannah, as
from Atlanta, and entered South Carolina, to repeat there the march
through her sister State. Our sources of information now were confined
to the gossip which our men--working outside on parole,--could overhear
from the Rebels, and communicate to us as occasion served. These
occasions were not frequent, as the men outside were not allowed to
come in except rarely, or stay long then. Still we managed to know
reasonably, soon that Sherman was sweeping resistlessly across the
State, with Hardee, Dick Taylor, Beauregard, and others, vainly trying
to make head against him. It seemed impossible to us that they should
not stop him soon, for if each of all these leaders had any command
worthy the name the aggregate must make an army that, standing on the
defensive, would give Sherman a great deal of trouble. That he would be
able to penetrate into the State as far as we were never entered into
our minds.
By and by we were astonished at the number of the trains that we
could hear passing north on the Charleston & Cheraw Railroad. Day
and night for two weeks there did not seem to be more than half an
hour’s interval at any time between the rumble and whistles of the
trains as they passed Florence Junction, and sped away towards Cheraw,
thirty-five miles north of us. We at length discovered that Sherman had
reached Branchville, and was singing around toward Columbia, and other
important points to the north; that Charleston was being evacuated,
and its garrison, munitions and stores were being removed to Cheraw,
which the Rebel Generals intended to make their new base. As this news
was so well confirmed as to leave no doubt of it, it began to wake up
and encourage all the more hopeful of us. We thought we could see some
premonitions of the glorious end, and that we were getting vicarious
satisfaction at the hands of our friends under the command of Uncle
Billy.
One morning orders came for one thousand men to get ready to move.
Andrews and I held a council of war on the situation, the question
before the house being whether we would go with that crowd, or stay
behind. The conclusion we came to was thus stated by Andrews:
“Now, Mc., we’ve flanked ahead every time, and see how we’ve come
out. We flanked into the first squad that left Richmond, and we were
consequently in the first that got into Andersonville. May be if
we’d staid back we’d got into that squad that was exchanged. We were
in the first squad that left Andersonville. We were the first to
leave Savannah and enter Millen. May be if we’d staid back, we’d got
exchanged with the ten thousand sick. We were the first to leave Millen
and the first to reach Blackshear. We were again the first to leave
Blackshear. Perhaps those fellows we left behind then are exchanged.
Now, as we’ve played ahead every time, with such infernal luck, let’s
play backward this time, and try what that brings us.”
“But, Lale,” (Andrews’s nickname--his proper name being Bezaleel), said
I, “we made something by going ahead every time--that is, if we were
not going to be exchanged. By getting into those places first we picked
out the best spots to stay, and got tent-building stuff that those who
came after us could not. And certainly we can never again get into as
bad a place as this is. The chances are that if this does not mean
exchange, it means transfer to a better prison.”
But we concluded, as I said above, to reverse our usual order of
procedure and flank back, in hopes that something would favor our
escape to Sherman. Accordingly, we let the first squad go off without
us, and the next, and the next, and so on, till there were only eleven
hundred --mostly those sick in the Hospital--remaining behind. Those
who went away--we afterwards learned, were run down on the cars to
Wilmington, and afterwards up to Goldsboro, N. C.
For a week or more we eleven hundred tenanted the Stockade, and by
burning up the tents of those who had gone had the only decent,
comfortable fires we had while in Florence. In hunting around through
the tents for fuel we found many bodies of those who had died as their
comrades were leaving. As the larger portion of us could barely walk,
the Rebels paroled us to remain inside of the Stockade or within a few
hundred yards of the front of it, and took the guards off. While these
were marching down, a dozen or more of us, exulting in even so much
freedom as we had obtained, climbed on the Hospital shed to see what
the outlook was, and perched ourselves on the ridgepole. Lieutenant
Barrett came along, at a distance of two hundred yards, with a squad of
guards. Observing us, he halted his men, faced them toward us, and they
leveled their guns as if to fire. He expected to see us tumble down
in ludicrous alarm, to avoid the bullets. But we hated him and them
so bad, that we could not give them the poor satisfaction of scaring
us. Only one of our party attempted to slide down, but the moment we
swore at him he came back and took his seat with folded arms alongside
of us. Barrett gave the order to fire, and the bullets shrieked aver
our heads, fortunately not hitting anybody. We responded with yells of
derision, and the worst abuse we could think of.
Coming down after awhile, I walked to the now open gate, and looped
through it over the barren fields to the dense woods a mile away, and a
wild desire to run off took possession of me. It seemed as if I could
not resist it. The woods appeared full of enticing shapes, beckoning me
to come to them, and the winds whispered in my ears:
“Run! Run! Run!”
But the words of my parole were still fresh in my mind, and I stilled
my frenzy to escape by turning back into the Stockade and looking away
from the tempting view.
Once five new prisoners, the first we had seen in a long time, were
brought in from Sherman’s army. They were plump, well-conditioned,
well-dressed, healthy, devil-may-care young fellows, whose confidence
in themselves and in Sherman was simply limitless, and their contempt
for all Rebels and especially those who terrorized over us, enormous.
“Come up here to headquarters,” said one of the Rebel officers to them
as they stood talking to us; “and we’ll parole you.”
“O go to h--- with your parole,” said the spokesman of the crowd, with
nonchalant contempt; “we don’t want none of your paroles. Old Billy’ll
parole us before Saturday.”
To us they said:
“Now, you boys want to cheer right up; keep a stiff upper lip. This
thing’s workin’ all right. Their old Confederacy’s goin’ to pieces like
a house afire. Sherman’s promenadin’ through it just as it suits him,
and he’s liable to pay a visit at any hour. We’re expectin’ him all the
time, because it was generally understood all through the Army that we
were to take the prison pen here in on our way.”
I mentioned my distrust of the concentration of Rebels at Cheraw, and
their faces took on a look of supreme disdain.
“Now, don’t let that worry you a minute,” said the confident spokesman.
“All the Rebels between here and Lee’s Army can’t prevent Sherman from
going just where he pleases. Why, we’ve quit fightin’ ’em except with
the Bummers advance. We haven’t had to go into regular line of battle
against them for I don’t know how long. Sherman would like anything
better than to have ’em make a stand somewhere so that he could get a
good fair whack at ’em.”
No one can imagine the effect of all this upon us. It was better than
a carload of medicines and a train load of provisions would have
been. From the depths of despondency we sprang at once to tip-toe on
the mountain-tops of expectation. We did little day and night but
listen for the sound of Sherman’s guns and discuss what we would do
when he came. We planned schemes of terrible vengeance on Barrett and
Iverson, but these worthies had mysteriously disappeared--whither no
one knew. There was hardly an hour of any night passed without some
one of us fancying that he heard the welcome sound of distant firing.
As everybody knows, by listening intently at night, one can hear just
exactly what he is intent upon hearing, and so was with us. In the
middle of the night boys listening awake with strained ears, would say:
“Now, if ever I heard musketry firing in my life, that’s a heavy
skirmish line at work, and sharply too, and not more than three miles
away, neither.”
Then another would say:
“I don’t want to ever get out of here if that don’t sound just as the
skirmishing at Chancellorsville did the first day to us. We were lying
down about four miles off, when it began pattering just as that is
doing now.”
And so on.
One night about nine or ten, there came two short, sharp peals of
thunder, that sounded precisely like the reports of rifled field
pieces. We sprang up in a frenzy of excitement, and shouted as if our
throats would split. But the next peal went off in the usual rumble,
and our excitement had to subside.