ENTRANCE INTO ANDERSONVILLE PRISON.--HORRIBLE SIGHTS.--THE BELLE
ISLANDERS.--THE KIND OF TREATMENT FOR FIRST FEW MONTHS.--CONDITION OF
THINGS GENERALLY DURING THAT TIME.--NEW PRISONERS.--INAUGURATION OF
CRUEL TREATMENT.--GOING OUT FOR FUEL AND SHELTER PROHIBITED.--RATIONS
DIMINISHED.--THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOUTHERN PRISON DISCIPLINE.--SEVERITIES
OF CLIMATE AND DREADFUL SUFFERING.
Andersonville! Dread word! Dread name for cruelty, and patriots' graves, I
stand paralyzed before thy horrid gates! Thou grim Leviathan of Death! I
feel heart-sick as I approach thee! I feel how powerless I am to tell thy
horrible story, thou monster monument of Inhumanity in the nation's
history! I feel thy fangs while yet I descry thy hideous form through the
mazy scope of years! I carry thy stings, and the grave alone shall hide
the scars upon the marred and shattered body thou hast sacrificed, as a
tree stripped of its fruit and foliage!
After being counted into detachments and nineties by the commandant, the
notorious Captain Wirz, we were marched into the prison. Heavens! what a
sight met our gaze as we marched into that enclosure of destruction! Lying
between the stockade and the dead-line, was a long line of corpses, which
was necessarily one of the first objects our eyes rested upon as we
entered the prison gates.
There they lay, nearly naked in their rags, but the frames--but the bones
and skin of men--with their upturned, wildly-ghastly, staring faces, and
wide-open eyes.
This was a terrible greeting indeed; and it sent a feeling of dismay to
our very souls, and after that a deep sense of despair seemed to settle
upon us. We had at last met death face to face. On looking around, we saw
the men whose comrades these dead men had been. They all looked alike, and
we could not fail to observe the resemblance between the dead and the
living. These men were from Belle Island, a rebel prison, which stands
unrivalled in the history of the world for cruelty to human beings. I
fervently thank God that it pleased Him that I should not be confined
there. These poor, wretched men, who had been there, and who preceded us
at Andersonville, were the most ghastly-looking living human beings that
the eye of man ever beheld. They were nothing but skin and bone. Living
skeletons. In color perfectly black. They had no shelter, and smoked
themselves black over their pitch-pine fires. The limited time they
survived our arrival they spent in cooking, and sitting haunched up over
their little fires. They died so rapidly that, before we were aware of it,
not one could be seen in the camp. They became ripe for the stroke of the
sickle, all of them about the same time, and their Father gathered them
to His abundant harvest.
From the misfortunes of these men we took some consolation, strange as it
may appear. When witnessing the terrible mortality among them, we said,
"Oh, it is only the Belle Islanders that are dying."
As soon as we had to some extent shaken off the depressing influence
exerted upon us by the knowledge of the horrible condition of the Belle
Islanders, we began to encourage ourselves with the idea that our fate
would not be like theirs; that we had not been on Belle Island, nor
experienced the terrible sufferings from exposure and starvation which
they had been subjected to, and that, therefore, the mortality could not
be so great among us as it had been among them. But we reckoned without
having the least conception of what possibilities there were in the
future. True, we had fared much better than the Belle Island men. We had
not been so exposed to the weather, and had not suffered as much from
insufficient quantity of food; we had been able to keep ourselves in
better sanitary condition. We were much cleaner and better off in every
way, to all appearances. But, as I remarked before, we had not the least
comprehension of the possibilities of the future. We had no intimation
whatever of the monster of destruction that lay sleeping in our systems,
and floating torpidly about in our veins. But the awful knowledge was to
dawn upon us soon, and unmistakably. Scurvy--a disease so awful and so
dread, that its name to a man in such a place was but another name for
death--was destined to break out among us. This disease made its
appearance three months after our arrival at Andersonville. Up to that
time, knowing nothing of this, suspecting nothing of the kind, we enjoyed
our lives better than we had any time since our capture.
During the first few months of our sojourn at Andersonville, the
Confederates allowed us a sufficient quantity of food to support life. We
were also comparatively free and unconfined, were out of doors, had room
to walk about, and could see the shady forest. This was a great relaxation
from, and improvement upon, hard walls. The rebels also--as they issued us
raw rations--allowed us to get wood to cook with, and for the purpose of
making shelter. For a short time, then,--and it was a short time, indeed,
compared to the long term of our imprisonment,--we were happier than we
had been during all of our previous captivity. But no man was ever happy
long in rebel prisons, and the period of our bliss was of but short
duration. Not only did men die of the scurvy as fast as the snow melts in
spring, but other misfortunes befell us. Or rather, these last came in the
shape of Southern barbarities; but although they were barbarities in those
who inflicted them, they were serious misfortunes to the Yankee prisoners.
It seemed, no sooner had the spring campaigns opened, and men came
pouring into the prison as though the Northern army had been captured in
full, than the rebel authorities prohibited going out for wood, so that
those who came in after that date could not get out for material to make
shelter with. Hence, it seemed thereafter a race between the old prisoners
and the new to see who would die the soonest; the new prisoners, having no
shelter, dying from exposure and other severities, and the old prisoners,
having shelter, dying from the scurvy.
Another misfortune to us, and barbarity in the rebels, was a decrease in
the quantity of food as our numbers increased. The result of this act of
cruelty was, of course, to make all weaker, old and new prisoners
irrespectively. But to the new prisoners I have no doubt it came the
hardest. Their stomachs were not shrunken, dried, and hardened to
starvation as were those of the old prisoners. Their stomachs and systems
generally being in better condition, they felt the demand for food more
keenly than did the half-sick-at-the-stomach and scurvy-infected veterans
of the prison-pen. Being without shelter also made in them a greater
demand for food. The ravages of exposure had to be repaired. Scurvy in the
systems of the old prisoners had begun to make their stomachs qualmish and
less desirous of food. Besides this,--and it adds yet another barbarity to
the endless list,--although we were prohibited going out for wood to cook
with, raw rations were in part still issued. The prison authorities
undertook to issue cooked rations, and did for the most part, but part raw
rations were always issued with those that were cooked. For instance, the
rebels baked our bread and cooked our meat, but always issued peas raw. As
a man needed every particle of food allowed him by the rebels, this went
hard enough. But it went hardest with the new prisoners. We old ones, who
had arrived there prior to the stoppage of going out for wood, had in some
cases laid in a supply, or in others built our shelter near a stump,
which, when the wood famine came on, had to pay tribute with its roots. As
the wood was generally rich with pitch, being pine, and frequently
pitch-pine, a little went a great way.
Furthermore, necessity ruling the times, we cooked in our little quart
cups, laying under a little sliver at a time. We also built a wall of clay
around our little fire, to save and concentrate the heat as much as
possible. But, as the new prisoners had no wood and could get none, they
were forced either to trade, if possible, their raw for cooked rations or
eat them as they got them--raw,--as they did frequently enough. The reason
given for prohibiting going out for wood was, that some prisoners had
attempted making their escape while outside. This was a correct specimen
of Southern philosophy regarding the government of Yankee prisoners. To
punish all for the offence of a few, where they could conveniently, was
the invariable rule. Offence! as if nature as well as reason did not teach
a man to make his escape from such a place, if possible. It is his right;
and it is expected that he will attempt to do so at the first opportunity,
in less barbarous countries. To prevent this, guards are detailed, and
they have a right to shoot a man down in the attempt if they observe him,
and on command he will not surrender himself; but men, like birds, are
born free, and if, being imprisoned under such circumstances, an
opportunity to escape presents itself, it is not only natural for a man to
avail himself of it, but it is also his duty to do so. Such was the usual
custom of the rebels--to punish all for the offence of a part. Having
stripped the prisoners upon the battle-field, to their very shirt and
pants in many cases, they sent them into their "cattle-pen," as they
termed it, to perish from exposure and starvation; their hands and feet
and all exposed parts blistering in the hot sun, as though roasted in
fire; scorching by day in the unbearable heat, and by night chilled to the
very bone with cold.
Those who have not dwelt or sojourned in the South, have no idea of the
peculiarities of the climate there. In the North, during the summer, we
have steady warm weather both day and night, but it is not so down South.
There the days are excessively hot and the nights exceedingly chilly. I
admit that this is delightful, if one has a roof over his head and
bed-covering, but to a man lying upon the bare ground, without either
shelter or covering of any kind, and with but scanty wearing apparel, it
is a great hardship. In addition to this, it rained twenty-one days in
succession during our stay at Andersonville; and the new prisoners, having
no shelter, had to bear it the best they could.
Now, if the reader can realize the scene I have attempted to describe, I
shall be satisfied. If he can, in his mind's eye, see hundreds of
emaciated, haggard, and half-naked men lying about on the bare ground of
an inclosed field (which is divided into two sections by a swamp, in the
middle of which runs a little ditch of water), the largest number lying
around the swamp and at the edge of the rising ground; if he can see these
poor fellows in the morning, after a rainy night, almost buried beneath
the sand and dirt which the rain has washed down from the hillside upon
them, too exhausted and weak to arise,--many that never will arise again
in this life, and are now breathing their last; not a soul near to give
them a drink or speak to them--I say, if the reader realizes this scene in
his own mind, he will catch a faint glimpse of the actual fact as it
existed. Those that are still able to get up, and remain upon their feet
long enough to be counted for rations, do so when the time comes, and then
lie down again in the burning sun, or, if able, pass the day in wandering
wearily about the camp; the only interruption being the drawing of
rations. These, when drawn, are devoured with the voraciousness of a
tiger. The constant exposure to the fierce rays of a Southern sun has
burned their hands and feet in great scars and blisters. Covered with sand
and dirt from head to foot, their poor, shrunken bodies and cadaverous,
horror-striking faces are enough to soften the heart of a Caligula or a
Nero; but no pity or relief comes. Day after day they must scorch in the
sun; night after night must their starved bodies shiver with cold, while
the pitiless rain must chill and drench with its unceasing torrents the
last spark of vitality out of them. The only relief that comes is in a
speedy and inevitable death. No one can last long under these conditions,
and the time required to kill a man was well ascertained and wonderfully
short. To endure three such terrible hardships as gradual starvation,
intolerable heat, and shivering cold, day after day and night after night
in unremitting succession, man was never made. How I wish every man and
woman in the North could understand, and realize in their minds and
hearts, the awful condition of our men at Andersonville, as in the case of
the shelterless, new, and scurvy-infected old prisoners.
"It _might_ frae monie a blunder free 'em,
And foolish notion."
It might soften their hearts to the suffering they now see around them.