At the distance of eight hundred paces from the railway which connects the
town with Central Georgia on the north and the Gulf of Mexico on the
south, appears the Prison Stockade, which was located by the Winders of
the Rebel army, at the suggestion of Howell Cobb, in 1863, and occupied
for its specific purpose in February, 1864.
It is situated about fifty miles south of Macon, and its position on the
geographical map is defined by longitude 7 deg. 30' west from Washington,
latitude 32 deg. 10' north of the equator, corresponding in the western
hemisphere to the central region of Algiers.
A dense forest of primeval trees covered the spot which was selected by
the engineers when they marked out the line of the prison. The massive
pines were levelled by the strong arms of several hundred negro slaves,
and when their branches were cut away, they were placed side by side,
standing upright in the deep ditches, which were excavated with
regularity, and in parallel lines, north and south, east and west. Thus
were formed the boundaries of the palisade, wherein nearly forty thousand
human beings were to be herded at one time. The surface of the earth
was cleared completely away, so as to give full play to the elements of
destruction.
[Illustration: VIEW OF THE STOCKADE as the rebels left it.--Page 19.]
Neither shade nor shelter was there to protect from the storm, or from the
merciless rays of an almost tropical sun. Not a tree nor a shrub was left
there to cast a shadow over the arid and calcined earth. There was simply
a rampart of logs, rising from fifteen to eighteen feet in height above
the surface of the ground. This rampart measured at first ten hundred and
ten feet in length by seven hundred and seventy-nine feet in width, and
was surrounded, at a distance of sixty paces, by another palisade of rough
logs more than twelve feet in height. It was afterwards lengthened, in the
autumn of 1864, to sixteen hundred and twenty feet.
This enormous structure still stands there, with its giant walls of trees,
undisturbed.
* * * "May none those marks efface,
For they appeal from tyranny to God."