We were reluctantly driven to the belief that the Richmond authorities deliberately adopted this plan to reduce the strength of our armies. The Medusa head of Slavery had turned their hearts to stone. At this time, they held nearly forty thousand prisoners. In our garrison the inmates were dying at the rate of thirteen per cent. a month upon the aggregate. About as many more were enlisting in the Rebel army. Thus our soldiers were destroyed at the rate of more than twenty-five per cent. a month, with no corresponding loss to the enemy.
Terrible Scenes in the Hospitals.
Frequently, for two or three days, Dr. Currey would refrain from entering the garrison, reluctant to look upon the revolting scenes from which we could find no escape. I am glad to be able to throw one ray of light into so dark a picture. Nearly all the surgeons evinced that humanity which ought to characterize their profession. They were much the best class of Rebels we encountered. They denounced unsparingly the manner in which prisoners were treated, and endeavored to mitigate their sufferings.
To call the foul pens, where the patients were confined, "hospitals," was a perversion of the English tongue. We could not obtain brooms to keep them clean; we could not get cold water to wash the hands and faces of those sick and dying men. In that region, where every farmer's barn-yard contained grain-stacks, we could not procure clean straw enough to place under them. More than half the time they were compelled to lie huddled upon the cold, naked, filthy floors, without even that degree of warmth and cleanliness usually afforded to brutes. The wasted forms and sad, pleading eyes of those sufferers, waiting wearily for the tide of life to ebb away—without the commonest comforts, without one word of sympathy, or one tear of affection—will never cease to haunt me.
At all hours of the day and night, on every side, we heard the terrible hack! hack! hack! in whose pneumonic tones every prisoner seemed to be coughing his life away. It was the most fearful sound in that fearful place.
The Rattling Dead-Cart.
The last scene of all was the dead-cart, with its rigid forms piled upon each other like logs—the arms swaying, the white ghastly faces staring, with dropped jaws and stony eyes—while it rattled along, bearing its precious freight just outside the walls, to be thrown in a mass into trenches and covered with a little earth.
When received, there were no sick or wounded men among the prisoners. But before they had been in Salisbury six weeks, "Junius," with better facilities for knowing than any one else, insisted that among eight thousand there were not five hundred well men. The Rebel surgeons coincided in this belief.
The rations, issued very irregularly, were insufficient to support life. Men grew feeble before living upon them a single week; but could not buy food from the town; and were not permitted to receive even a meal sent by friends from the outside. Our positions in the hospitals enabled us to purchase supplies and fare better. Prisoners eagerly devoured the potato-skins from our table. They ate rats, dogs, and cats. Many searched the yard for bones and scraps among the most revolting substances.
They constantly besieged us for admission to the hospitals, or for shelter and food, which we were unable to give. It seemed almost sinful for us to enjoy protection from the weather and food enough to support life in the midst of all this distress.