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"PRISON LIFE IN ANDERSONVILLE"
This volume,
Number 48
of the Author's Autograph
Edition, limited to five hundred
copies, is presented to
In grateful appreciation
for cordial support and financial
patronage of the work.
"Prison Life in Andersonville"
With Special Reference to the
Opening of Providence Spring
_by_
John L. Maile
A Veteran of Company F, Eighth Regiment Michigan
Volunteer Infantry and afterward assigned as
Lieutenant in the Twenty-eighth U. S. C. T., and
for a time an unwilling guest in the Confederate
Military prisons at Lynchburg and Danville, Va.,
Andersonville, Ga., Florence, S. C., and Salisbury,
N. C.
"One flag, one land, one heart, one hand,
One Nation evermore."
--O. W. Holmes.
GRAFTON PUBLISHING COMPANY
WEST COAST MAGAZINE
LOS ANGELES.
COPYRIGHT 1912
BY JOHN L. MAILE
LOS ANGELES, CAL.
U. S. A.
All Rights Reserved
PRESS OF WEST COAST MAGAZINE
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Commendation
That the following narrative of Southern prison life should be written so
many years after the occurrence of the events described is explained by
the fact that the author has been urged by many friends to put on record
his descriptions that have interested many people in the East, in the
Interior and in the West.
To Members of the Grand Army of the Republic, of the Woman's Relief Corps,
allied organizations, and readers generally, I am glad to commend this
book as giving a more particular account of the opening of Providence
Spring than has before appeared.
Appreciation of the strenuous days of the great Civil War will be revived,
and the memories of Veterans, not a few will be refreshed by this
interesting story.
H. M. Triuble.
Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic.
Princeton, Illinois,
March 2, 1912.
[Illustration]
Four years of war life.
In five Confederate prisons.
[Illustration: The Author in 1860.
The Year Before Enlistment.]
DEDICATION
Dedicated to the Woman's Relief Corps, whose tender,
thoughtful care has preserved the
sacred memorials of the war, and
to the memory of my
COMRADES
in arms
who have answered
the final
call; to the age-worn
remnant who still linger
behind, and to the younger
patriots of the present generation,
to whom it is given, in the happier
days of peace, to fight for their country
the bloodless battles of righteousness and truth.
TABLE _of_ CONTENTS
CHAPTER. PAGE.
I. The Writer's Credentials 19
II. View of a Confederate Prison 27
III. The Prison Commisariat 35
IV. A Dearth of Water 53
V. A Cry to Heaven 61
VI. Unsealing of the Spring 65
VII. Was It a Miracle? 72
VIII. Deliverance 85
IX. An Incident by the Way 93
X. A Sequel 103
APPENDIX. PAGE.
A. Contributory Testimony 116
B. Responsibility for Prison Treatment 119
C. Woman's Relief Corps Memorial 123
D. A Memorial Day Meditation 135
Rev. H. H. Proctor, D. D. of Atlanta.
E. Permanent Honors for Confederate Heroes 141
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Author: As Prospective Soldier. As Present Writer.
Plan of the Prison Pen.
View of Interior and Foreground.
A Dream.
The Broken Stockade.
The Spring and Women of the Relief Corps.
Adventure in Wilmington Hospital.
The Beloved Teacher.
The Michigan Monument in Andersonville.
The Andersonville Cemetery.
A Personal Foreword
The establishment and perpetuity of our Union have been secured by the
sacrifices of war. The Declaration of Independence preceded seven weary
years of conflict, whose culminating sufferings were experienced in the
British prison ships and in the winter camp at Valley Forge. In this
contest the patriotic soldiers of the north and of the south made common
cause, and what they did and what they suffered indicates a measure of the
enduring worth of our national life. The story of revolutionary days finds
an enlarged counterpart in the sufferings of the civil war.
A phase of the great struggle is recalled in the following narrative of
events, which belongs to a rapidly receding past. Soon no survivor will be
left to tell the tale; hence the desirability of putting it into permanent
form before it fades altogether from recollection. To some the story of
the breaking out of Providence Spring may seem to have been given undue
prominence in this record; but it is around that event that these
reminiscences gather, and the circumstances attending were so indelibly
stamped upon the memory of the writer that they call for expression.
Probably he was the youngest of the group of Andersonville prisoners who
participated in the concert of prayer that preceded the unsealing of the
fountain, and on that account he may be the only survivor.
In the course of the narrative unpleasant things have been referred to in
the interests of truth, but nothing has been set down in malice. The Great
Healer has closed up many wounds of hearts as well as of bodies, and the
grass has grown green over the graves of buried controversies. The boys in
gray and the boys in blue now fraternize around common campfires and under
a common flag. But while the writer has none save the kindliest feelings
toward his brothers of the lost cause, he cannot help rejoicing that
alike in the clash of arms, and in the more peaceful conflict of ideas
which has followed, the principles for which he and others bled and
suffered have gained the victory and are among the things which never
perish from the earth.
"We are coming, Father Abraham--three hundred thousand more,
From Mississippi's winding stream and from New England's shore.
We leave our plows and workshops, our wives and children dear,
With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear;
We dare not look behind us, but steadfastly before--
We are coming, Father Abraham--three hundred thousand more.
"If you look across the hilltops that meet the northern sky,
Long lines of moving dust your vision may descry;
And now the wind, an instant, tears the cloudy veil aside,
And floats aloft our spangled flag in glory and in pride;
And bayonets in the sunlight gleam, and bands brave music pour--
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more.
"If you look up all our valleys, where growing harvests shine,
You may see our sturdy farmer boys fast forming into line;
And children, from their mothers' knees, are pulling at the weeds,
And learning how to reap and sow, against their country's needs;
A farewell group stands weeping at every cottage door--
We are coming, Father Abraham--three hundred thousand more."
CHAPTER I.
THE WRITER'S CREDENTIALS.
The writer of the following narrative feels justified in calling attention
to his military record in order that he may be furnished with a warrant
for inviting the attention of readers to the matters herein described.
Broadly speaking, his record is that he saw nearly four years of active
service, including ten months of confinement in Confederate prisons and
three months in hospitals and parole camps.
Given more in detail it would be as follows: He enlisted at the age of
seventeen, on September 2, 1861, at Hastings in the Eighth Regiment
Michigan Volunteer Infantry; Company F of which N. H. Walbridge was
Captain; Traverse Phillips, First Lieutenant; Jacob Maus, Second
Lieutenant, and John D. Sumner, Orderly Sergeant.
The Eighth was known as the famous "wandering" regiment of
Michigan--ex-Governor Col. William M. Fenton, Commander.
His regiment was mustered in at Grand Rapids and journeyed via Detroit,
Cleveland and Pittsburg to Washington, going into camp on Meridian Hill
overlooking the capitol. On October 19th, with his regiment, he embarked
from Annapolis on the steamship Vanderbilt, taking part in the Dupont
Expedition to the South Carolina coast and occupancy of Beaufort and the
Sea Islands.
He was in engagements on Coosaw river, and at the bombardment of Fort
Paluski off Savannah. While his regiment was in the campaign of James
Island, near Charleston, he was in the Signal Corps service on the
Beaufort river. In April the regiment sailed to Virginia; he was at the
second Bull-Run in July, and with the Maryland campaign of South Mountain,
Antietam; the succeeding Fredericksburg fighting and thence via Kentucky
to Vicksburg and Jackson, Mississippi.
In the autumn of '63 he marched via Cumberland Gap to East Tennessee and
took part in conflicts at Blue Springs, Lenoir Station, Campbell's
Station, the siege of Knoxville, and defense of Fort Saunders. After
re-enlistment with his comrades in January he marched over the mountains
nearly two hundred miles in ten days through deep snow to the railroad at
Crab Orchard, Kentucky. This severe ordeal was followed by a brief respite
of a thirty days' furlough from Cincinnati to Michigan.
In April, 1864, the regiment rejoined the Ninth Army Corps at Annapolis,
and on May 3rd he was, after examination in Washington, confirmed for a
commission as Lieutenant. On the 4th, he overtook his regiment camping
near the Rappahannock river; on the evening of the 5th the vicinity of the
Rapidan river was reached in full view of the smoke of Sedgwick's
artillery opening the great battle of the Wilderness. On the afternoon of
the 6th, his regiment was ordered into action when he with a thousand
others from the division was taken prisoner and marched to Lee's
headquarters, where he saw the famous general, whom he remembers as
sitting with great dignity of bearing upon his horse, calmly viewing the
situation. And it was reported that he kindly remarked to a group of
prisoners that they must make the best of their predicament. On the 9th
the examination papers came for the new Lieutenant, but he was now the
guest of the Confederacy and could not be excused.
A comrade sent to his home the disquieting message, "missing in action and
probably killed," but happily from Orange Courthouse by the great kindness
of a Virginia Lieutenant a telegram was forwarded by flag of truce to his
parents stating that he still survived. The memorial services announced
for the following week were postponed and are yet to take place.
Introductory experiences as a prisoner of war included many hours of
fasting, followed by a most exhaustive march of twenty-eight miles to
Orange Courthouse under close cavalry guard; thence by rail to
Gordonsville, where the place of detention was a pen frequently used for
the rounding up of cattle. At this point the prisoners were usually
relieved of any superfluous clothing and outfit.
Fortunately the writer had discovered in the crowd five members of his
regiment. He and they drew together as companions in misfortune, and
formed a group in which each one was to have a share and share alike of
all they possessed; and they entered into a solemn pledge to care for one
another in sickness.
Very early in the morning of our night at Gordonville we were aroused by
the sharp command, "Wake up there, wake up there, you Yanks. Fall into two
ranks. Quick there," given by a Confederate sergeant. The occasion was the
arrival of a trainload of beef cattle for the Confederate army, and the
master of transportation saw an opportunity to load the prisoners into
the freight cars just made vacant and which were to return to Lynchburg
immediately.
To be thus unceremoniously aroused from sleep and hustled into filthy cars
made us very indignant, but "There is a divinity that shapes our ends;
rough-hew them how we will," and in the confusion of moving in the
twilight, and the absence of inspection we got off scot free from the
usual ceremony of being stripped of superabundant clothes and
accouterments. Thus our group of six were each left in possession of a
blanket, a section of shelter tent, a haversack, a tin cup and plate, a
knife, a fork, a spoon, and such scanty clothing as we had on. The extras
we possessed were a frying pan, a file, and several pocket knives, two or
three towels, a small mirror, and a thin piece of mottled soap. The latter
was used exclusively for a Sunday morning wash of hands and face until it
melted away.
This unusual amount of equipment was kept as inconspicuous as possible and
was safely carried through the prisons at Lynchburg and Danville, where
we awaited transportation to an unknown destination, which proved to be
the military inferno of Andersonville, in southwestern Georgia, to reach
which we rode more than seven hundred miles from the battlefield packed
fifty and sixty in a freight car, with twenty or thirty of our number on
the top.
The locomotives, which burned pitch pine, emitted clouds of acrid smoke
that, mingled with dust arising from the roadbed, enveloped the train in a
gloomy, suffocating pall. Mile after mile the worn, rattling freight cars
and wheezing engine crept along the right-of-way, which, as a narrow lane,
threaded the interminable pitch-pine forests that admitted no stirring
breeze.
On Sunday morning we arrived in the beautiful city of Augusta, Georgia.
Our train was sidetracked on a principal thoroughfare whose borders were
embowered in luxuriant foliage which screened attractive homes, whence the
church bells were calling the summer-dressed occupants. On the sidewalk
opposite from the train groups of the people loitered to gaze upon the
grimy, famished prisoners who swarmed upon the tops of the freight cars
and formed a sweltering crowd within.
Several ladies deferred their church-going, re-entered their houses,
emerged with baskets filled with sandwiches, crossed the street to the
side of the train and, overcoming the objections of the guards, handed out
the precious food to the grateful men, who responded with their most
courteous thanks.
This little piece of genuine chivalry was the one bright spot in the
torturing journey, and was matched by the sensibilities of some Southern
ladies, who later viewing the interior of Andersonville from the stockade
platform, turned away their faces weeping.
[Illustration: Ground Plan of Andersonville Stockade.
Description: Fig. 1, Keeper's House; 2, "P. Spring"; 3, Nat'l Monument; 4,
Purchased Property; 5, Stockade; 6, Outer Stockade; 7, Deadline; 8, Forts
and Batteries; 9, Main Fort; 10, [1]Gallows; 11, Magazine; 12, Capt.
Wirtz' Headquarters; 13, To Cemetery; 14, Wells and Tunnels; 15, Dead
House; 16, Guard Camp; 17, Road to Station; 18, Creek; 19, North Gate; 20,
South Gate; 21, Flag Pole.]
[Illustration: THE ANDERSONVILLE PRISON PEN
This view looks westward. Providence Spring was located just below the
north gate, close to the stockade X.]