(385) We were taken from here to Andersonville by rail. We got along very slowly, being detained on the way by the enemy's use of the road in carrying their own soldiers and etc. We were perhaps a week or ten days on the way. At one time, we were two days without food. During one of our delays on the route the Rebel women brought food for their own men, but none for us. They had a little darkey boy with them, who waved a Rebel flag at us. Both he, and the women seemed to enjoy the demonstration very much, he grinning and they laughing as he waved.
(386) The prison camp at Andersonville was enclosed by a stockade about 16 feet high of heavy timbers set on end, and so closely fitted together that you could scarcely see between them. Inside of this was the "dead line," 40 feet distant perhaps. It was marked by a row of posts and stringers of timber extending along on top of them from post to post. On top of the stockade of intervals there were sentry boxes placed, in which the sentries or guards stood. Outside this stockade, at a suitable distance there was another stockade, commanding the first with loop holes in it through which to fire at the prisoners, in case they should try to scale the inner one.
(387) The prisoners were formed into companies of 90 men each. Three of these companies were formed into a division, and the companies were subdivided in squads of 30 each. At first I believe it was not the case that they were thus formed; but the necessity of having a divide of the scant rations, approaching somewhere near fairness, demanded some sort of organization among the prisoners.
(388) It was necessary for a prisoner to know to what company and the number of the squad to which he belonged in order that he might get his rations, or even get out to be exchanged. When a lot of prisoners was to be sent out of camp to be exchanged or supposedly so, if a prisoner were not present to answer his name, someone else would answer for him and get out, and the prisoner named would be left. Getting out in this way was called "flanking out."
(389) Whenever a lot of prisoners arrived they would right away be organized as above, each division company and squad having a chief chosen. When the rations were to be divided the chief of a division would divide them into three lots, one lot for each of his companies. He would then have the chiefs of the latter turn their backs to the ration; when he would ask each: "Will you take this lot?" and they would choose without seeing which lot was indicated. The companies and squads divided in the same way, the latter dividing among the individuals. The squad chiefs were frequently changed, because they would often inform a friend before hand which ration to choose.
(390) We got raw rations (corn meal) and cooked week about. The flies here were very bad, and when the Rebel cooks would make up a batch of dough and lay it down, the flies would gather thickly on it, then they would slap another batch on the first to kill the flies. In this way our bread got full of flies and looked like bread with currants or raisins in it. The same wagons that were used to haul our dead were used to haul our bread.
(391) The trading instinct was not altogether devoid of exercise here. Enterprising soldiers would trade bread for meal and get more meal than made the bread. Sometimes a soldier would be heard asking "Who will trade a bone for meat?" Those who wanted bones claimed that by breaking, boiling and making soup of them they got more nourishment from them than they could get from the meat. Some of our men would even make bargains with a sentry, although, of course, it was not allowed. They would give him money to buy something which he would perhaps do and give it to the prisoner furnishing the money, the next time he, the guard was on duty. Sweet potatoes got in this way would sell for 25 cents each.
(392) There was a stream of water which ran through the camp, and as a matter of course it got very dirty, there being so many thousands of men in the camp. The prisoners would therefore sometimes reach under the dead line where the stream crossed it for water. One would reach under one foot, another two, someone else a little farther in order that they might get less filthy water. Perhaps the sentry on duty nearest the stream would permit this crossing of the dead line; but when another came on duty there he might fire upon the prisoner over the dead line without a word of warning. Many were killed in that way.
(393) Everybody knows something of the many deaths daily occurring in prison here. Our men used to be anxious to get to carry the dead out of camp, in order that they might thus get some fire wood. This privilege was permitted for awhile, but when the Yankees began to play the trick of carrying out late in the evening a comrade assuming death, and the Rebels would go out in the morning to bury him and find him gone, this privilege was stopped, commandant Wirtz declaring that he would have to get to putting ball-and-chains on the d—d dead Yankees, as some of them would run off after they were dead. Another scheme of the prisoners in order to draw the rations of a dead comrade, and thus add to the aggregate, of the scanty supply of their squads, was to not report his death. The Rebels learning of this practice of the prisoners in order to prevent it, resorted to frequent counting of them.
(394) One of the prisoners with whom I became acquainted was a member of the Ringgold cavalry, which was from Washington County, Pennsylvania. He was of a jovial disposition and was called "Happy Jack." He used to stand at the gate where the dead were taken out, count their numbers for a day—the great mortality seems to have suggested this idea—and from the total he would calculate when his chances for being taken out a corpse would come.