About this time Mrs. Wirz took a great liking to one of our little drummer boys. She took him out and dressed him in a nice fitting suit of gray. The boy was only eleven years old, and very handsome. The little fellow put on his suit of gray, and Mrs. Wirz said, "How do you like your clothes?" "I do not like them at all," replied the boy. "Why, what is the matter?" "I do not like the color." Mrs. Wirz liked him all the better for the bold spirit he manifested. She then made him a suit of blue, and also a nice red cap, and thenceforth he went by the name of Red Cap.
Red Cap would come in every day or two and tell us what was going on outside. He told us Mrs. Wirz quarreled with Wirz every day because he did not try to prepare some kind of a shelter for the prisoners. She wished him to let a few of us out at a time to cut timber to make our own shelter with. No, he would not do that. Finally Mrs. Wirz told him if he didn't do something for the relief of the prisoners, she would poison him; "For," said she, "I cannot sleep nights; my dreams are one continued nightmare, and I will stand it no longer." Mrs. Wirz was a true southerner, of the kind called creole; but for all that she had a great deal of humanity about her. She continued her threats and pleadings, but they were of no avail. She finally did give him a dose of poison. He had been threatened so much that when he did get it he knew what was the matter, and took something to counteract it. After that "Old Wirz" let us out oftener for wood.
Dr. John C. Bates, who was a kind-hearted and humane rebel surgeon, testified as follows:
"When I went there, there were twenty-five hundred sick in the hospital. I judge twenty-five thousand prisoners were crowded together in the stockade. Some had made holes and burrows in the earth. Those under the sheds in the hospital were doing comparatively well. I saw but little shelter excepting what the prisoners' ingenuity had devised. I found them suffering with scurvy, dropsy, diarrhœa, gangrene, pneumonia, and other diseases. When prisoners died they were laid in wagons head foremost to be carried off. Effluvia from the hospital was very offensive. If by accident my hands were affected, I would not go into the hospital without putting a plaster over the affected part. If persons whose systems were reduced by inanition should purchance stump a toe or scratch a hand, the next report to me was gangrene, so potent was the hospital gangrene. The prisoners were more thickly confined in the stockade than ants and bees. Dogs were kept for hunting the prisoners who escaped.
Fifty per cent of those who died might have been saved. I feel safe in saying seventy-five per cent might have been saved, if the patients had been properly cared for. The effect of the treatment of prisoners was morally as well as physically injurious. Each lived but for himself, which I suppose was entirely superinduced by their starving condition. Seeing the condition of some of them, I remarked to my student, "I cannot resurrect them." I found persons lying dead among the living. Thinking they merely slept, I went to wake them up but found they were taking their everlasting sleep. This was in the hospital, and I judge it was worse in the stockade. There being no deadhouse I erected a tent for that purpose. But I soon found that a blanket or quilt had been cut off from the canvas, and as the material readily served for repairs, the deadhouse had to be abandoned. The daily ration was much less in September, October, November and December than it was from the first of January till the twenty-sixth of March, 1865. The men had never had ten ounces of food every twenty-four hours. The scurvy was next to rottenness. Some of the patients could not eat on account of the scurvy; their teeth were loose; they frequently asked me to give them something to eat which would not cause pain. While Doctor Stevenson was medical director he did not manifest any interest in the relief of their necessities; the rations were less than ten ounces in twenty-four hours; some men did actually starve to death on it. There was plenty of wood in the neighborhood, which might have been cut to answer all demands for shelter and fuel."
This concluded the testimony of Dr. Bates, and considering that he lives in Georgia it need not be said that he testified reluctantly to the truth.
Charles W. Reynolds, of Company B, Ninth Illinois Cavalry, writes his experience: "We reached Andersonville about 2 o'clock P. M. on the first day of April, 1864. We got off the cars in a timbered country with a dry sandy soil. About three quarters of a mile off we could see a large enclosure composed of timber set on end in the ground, with sentry boxes set along the top, and that was the Andersonville prison pen. The old Dutchman, as he was called, Captain Wirz, riding a white horse, came along and escorted us to the prison gate. Here he left us with the guards and himself went inside to learn what part of the prison to assign us to. While we were waiting outside of the prison gates a lot of Yankee prisoners came from the woods with arms full of fagots that they had been gathering for fuel. At first we thought they were a lot of negroes; but as they came nearer we saw that they were Yankee prisoners. They were as black as negroes, and such downcast, hopeless, haggard and woe-begone looking human beings I never saw before. They said they were glad to see us, but would to God it was under better circumstances.
"After a while the prison gates were opened for us to pass through. As we entered a sight of horror met our eyes that almost froze our blood and made our hearts stop beating. Before us were skeleton forms that once had been stalwart men, covered with rags and filth and vermin, with hollow cheeks and glowing eyes. Some of the men in the heat and intensity of their feelings exclaimed, 'Is this hell?' Well might Wirz, the old fiend who presided over that rebel slaughtering pen, have written over its gates, 'Let him that enters here leave all hope behind.' It may be that some of the readers of this little book think there is a good deal of exaggeration, but I want to say right here that it is impossible to write or tell the horrors of Andersonville prison so that anybody can understand or realize them."
It was getting along toward fall and the rebels told us there was going to be an exchange. Oh, how my heart did jump. Could it be possible that I was to get back to see my kind old mother, and my wife and little ones who had mourned for me as dead? If I could only write the feelings that overcame me I know you would feel happy for me. It, however, turned out to be false. We also heard that General Sherman was getting close to us and the rebels began to move us out of the way.