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.
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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.