A mother came from New York to the Sanitary Home: after searching all the records without success, she walked through all the hospitals—gazing at every man, and inquiring if they knew her son; at length a man said there was a book here with that name in it, that the man died as they came to the wharf; as soon as she saw it, exclaimed: “It was a Bible she had given him; her writing was in it!” It was a great comfort to her to find out that much certainly.
Miller, belonging to a Massachusetts regiment, was so emaciated when he arrived that, when his father came for him, it was thought he could not reach Baltimore alive; by resting with him frequently, reached home in safety. His weight then was sixty-five pounds, his height six feet: after some weeks’ stay, returned, weighing one hundred and twenty pounds. He walks very well with a cane, but cannot stoop to the ground—as there are still large sores upon his back, from lying on the ground through storms and sun.
Calling at the embalmer’s about the body of a man who had just died, I found a gentleman from Connecticut waiting to have a coffin, that had been disintered, opened. When the lid was thrown off, it proved to be one of the most terribly starved ones. The face had not changed: it was a ghastly green color, with mould upon it, as he came from prison; the fair, light hair was brushed smoothly off the forehead—for some reason it remained uncut, showing that it had been matted and sunburnt. The father’s agony was most painful to those who were present: taking up the skeleton hands, would exclaim: “If he had fallen when with Sheridan, upon the battle-field, or by illness, he could have borne it without a murmur; but this!—he never thought his brave young boy would starve to death!” repeating over and again, “starved, starved to death!” After the embalmer had prepared the body, it was again robed in nice, clean clothing from the Sanitary Commission; but the face remained unchanged, when the father took the wasted remains to his home.
Mr. Brown, a New York man, who enlisted in a Pittsburg regiment, is one of the most suffering cases among the prisoners. Directly after their capture, he was standing quietly with a group of others, when a brutal rebel soldier struck him down with his musket; he was never able to straighten himself afterward. He was taken to one of their hospitals, where, without any care, the wound sloughed and became offensive. When the men were taken from No. 4, Danville, he was left in the room alone—as he says, to die; calling to a rebel nurse, he implored him to carry him out with the others; but all in vain; at length some one came in to hear what he was saying, when, with the desperation of a drowning man, he clung with both arms round his neck, telling him he would not let him go until he was taken to his companions. In that way he was carried and laid upon the platform, to wait for the cars: no blanket, or covering of any kind, to cover his poor suffering body; his moans and cries from pain and the cold were constant, until a rebel, more kind than his fellows, came to him, saying “he had been in our prisons, and knew how well they were treated; and would do all he could for him.” He succeeded in procuring some whisky, which he gave him—that warmed and quieted him; then finding a piece of blanket, wrapped him in it and laid him near the fire. When the cars came, lifted him in, bidding him “good-by,” with “Yank, you will soon be in your lines, while I go to the front to bring over a crowd with me.” That was the last he saw of the man who, at that time, saved his life. During all the time he lingered, his sufferings were intense; his sister, Mrs. Clark, of Alleghany City, waited upon him most devotedly until death released him from all pain.
Two Georgia women, wives of prisoners, came on the boat with them, and were brought to the “Sanitary Commission Home.” While the prisoners were at Macon, these girls worked in a woolen mill near: whenever they could do so unobserved, would take some of the cloth and divide among them. The men assisted in some kind of work outside their prison, and there the girls could take them food; when released, they were married, and marched with them fifty-eight miles—until they were put upon the cars, and sent on by boat. This is the third party of the kind we have seen here.
The “Sanitary Commission Home” at this place, Annapolis, has been to hundreds a place of shelter when the town was crowded to overflowing, and a home at all times to those who were received beneath its roof: here the relatives and friends of those in the hospitals were provided for, meals and lodgings furnished gratuitously, and all made comfortable. Mrs. Hope Sayers, the estimable matron who presided so efficiently and pleasantly over the establishment, will ever be kindly remembered by all who were its inmates.
May 13th. Eleven hundred and fifty men landed at the Barracks: again employed distributing articles among them, which are always received in the same pleasant manner. Those sent to the hospital are very dark with smoke and sun, and skeleton-looking like those who preceded them. They tell the same stories of their prison life, and repeat what others have said—how they dug wells at Andersonville fifty feet deep, their only tools the halves of a canteen and an old table-knife. An arrival of rebel officers and privates with several hundred “galvanized Yanks,”—an expressive term in army parlance, meaning that these men, in their desperation for food, accepted the tempting offers of the rebels,—but they were never trusted or kindly treated by them—and despised by their old comrades.
Among the wounded is Sergeant Black, State color-bearer of the 67th Pennsylvania Vols., who lost a leg while carrying the flag. He was shot by a rebel not a yard from him: as he fell, they caught the colors; it was but a moment ere his company had them back again, and their rebel bars with it. The fight was through a swamp, which varied in depth from four inches to as many feet.
May 29th. Another arrival of prisoners: among them are the blackest white men I have ever seen. These are nearly the last from the South: they are suffering with scurvy and kindred ailments; exposed for months to the sun and storms and the smoke of pitch-pine, they are most thoroughly browned and tanned. Among them is a perfect skeleton—a boy from Ohio: he enlisted in a Kentucky regiment; is now sixteen, and has been in the service two years. Longing and praying to see his mother, inquiring of every one how soon he will be sent home—he died suddenly at the end of two days. There are twenty others in the same arrival almost as bad as he is; the most of them must die, as Ohio did.
The wife of one of these skeletons arrived directly after they landed. She had heard, in her home in Western Pennsylvania, that he was living, and was here. She came, dressed in the deep mourning she had worn for him for two years: for so long was it since she had heard of his death; but—