The trees were all removed from the enclosure, and with the specific
intent of cruelty, as was openly stated by the brutal builders. They
should have no shade, it was said, and no shade had the wretched men but
what was cast by the few ragged and rotten blankets and shelter tents that
the prison examiners passed by as utterly worthless in their examination
and search for articles of value, whether watches, bank notes, hats,
shirts, and even shoes. There were men who, robbed at the outer gates,
entered the prison almost naked. This system of robbery was open and
audacious, and it is said that the only prisoners who escaped spoliation
were those who were taken from Sherman when Atlanta fell, and when
consternation prevailed at the prison in consequence. It is positively
stated that it was sanctioned by Wirz and Winder. At all events, two men,
by the names of Hume and Duncan, robbed the prisoners systematically, and
appropriated the packages sent to the prisoners, from the United States,
to such an extent that few if any articles ever reached the poor men to
whom the boxes of food and clothing were sent.
These blankets and rags were vainly stretched over sticks, to form the
semblance of a habitation, wherever the earth gave firm foothold, even
along the borders of the pestilential marsh. Those who were destitute of
even these shreds of cloth, dug with their hands holes in the earth,
after the example of wild beasts, or with the slimy water from the brook
they built up, with handfuls of mud, little cabins over hollows scooped
out from below the surface of the ground, and as rude as the clumps of
earth, which that lowest degree of the human form--the Digger
Indian--inhabits.
[Illustration]
These may be seen at the present day, looking like the lodges of the
beaver, or the mounds of the marmots of the prairies, and half concealed
by those wild, useless, and noxious weeds which linger in, and cling to
the footsteps of man, as he wanders in his migrations over the
uncultivated lands of the globe.
Sometimes the heavy rains washed away the roofs of mud, inundating the
occupants beneath. Some of the poor wretches had not the strength to lift
up the incumbent mass of earth, and perished miserably in their dens.
There are now in these demolished excavations the bones of some of our
fellow-citizens, unknown and unhonored. The cry of distress was so
constant that few heeded the smothered moan. The stumps of the fallen
trees were grubbed up by the knives and fingers of the prisoners for
firewood to warm themselves with, or to cook their scanty food; even the
roots were followed down deep into the earth, for the purpose of obtaining
the means of warmth which were almost entirely denied them by the prison
keepers.