ANDERSONVILLE--a name which has been stamped so deeply by cruelty into the
pages of American history--is one of those miserable little hamlets, of a
score of scattered and dilapidated farm-houses, which relieve the monotony
of the wide and dreary level of sand plains, which, covered with immense
forests, interspersed with fens, marshes, corn and cotton fields, stretch
away, in unbroken surface, from Macon down to the Florida shores. The
plantations, which were tilled by slave labor, are almost concealed in the
recesses of the forests, so thickly wooded is the country. Here and there
only, where the savannas are of unusual fertility, do the cleared lands
give a wide and extended view of the landscape, but the primeval pines
everywhere hide the distant horizon.
[Illustration: J. H. Bufford's lith. Boston, Mass.]
The song of the laborer rarely disturbs the silence, which is oppressive.
Song is the impulsive outburst of a heart filled with joy and hope. The
slave has neither. His voice is the cry of anguish, of a soul burdened and
crushed, and is more like the moan of the winds than the accents of
civilized man.
The physical aspect of the white inhabitant indicates the local
impressions and inspirations--listless and apathetic in look, lank and
haggard in form. There are countries, there are even limited localities,
where the moral and mental faculties expand in accordance with external
impressions. The laws of beauty and deformity are regulated by the
condition and circumstances of the outward world to a remarkable degree.
The landscape, the sunshine, and the luxuriance at Corinth and Athens gave
rise to the most beautiful flowers of art and love, and to that wonderful
type of human beauty, which the world has since lost; but the rugged and
stern defiles of the mountains of Calabria, of Albania, and the dreary
marsh fens of the Campagna, or of the Netherlands, still produce
characters that rival in ferocity the hyenas of the desert.
* * * * *
Nature appears to have selected for man the sites where are performed the
noble acts which charm and enlighten the mind, or the dark deeds which
cause men to ponder and regret the frailty of their organization. "It
seems that the instincts of war conduct from age to age the armies of
successive empires to the same rendezvous of contest, and that geography
has laid off in advance certain fields of battle, as a sort of arena for
these great immolations of humanity." "Hungary," said Sobieski, "is a
clump of earth, which, if squeezed, would give out but human blood." The
name and look of Andersonville will always be synonymous with and
suggestive of cruelty.