Many attempts were made to tunnel out that summer, but so far as I know that was the only successful one. All sorts of ways were resorted to, the favorite way being to start a well and dig down ten or twelve feet, then start a tunnel in it near the surface of the ground. By this means the fresh dirt would be accounted for, as well digging was within the limits of the prison rules. But before the “gopher-hole,” as the tunnels were called by the western boys, was far advanced, a gang of negroes appeared upon the scene and dug it up. We always believed there were spies among us. Some thought the spies were some of our own men who were playing traitor to curry favor with Wirz. Others believed Wirz kept rebel spies among us. I incline to the former opinion.
Among those who were suspected was a one-legged soldier named Hubbard. He hailed from Chicago and was a perfect pest. He was quarrelsome and impudent and would say things that a sound man would have got a broken head for saying. His squawking querulous tones, and hooked nose secured for him the name of “Poll Parrott.” He was a sort of privileged character, being allowed to go outside, which caused many to believe he was in league with Wirz, though I believe there was no direct proof of it. One day he came to where I was cooking my grub and wanted me to take him in. He said all his comrades were down on him and called him a spy, and he could not stand it with them. As a further inducement he said he could go out when he had a mind, and get wood and extra rations, which he would divide with me. I consulted my “pard” and we agreed to take him in. He then asked me to cook him some dinner, and gave me his frying-pan and some meat. While I was cooking his dinner he commenced finding fault with me, upon which I suggested that he had better do his own cooking. He then showered upon my devoted head some of the choicest epithets found in the Billingsgate dialect, he raved and swore like a mad-man. I was pretty good natured naturally, and besides I pitied the poor unfortunate fellow, but this presuming on my good nature a little too much, I fired his frying-pan at his head and told him to “get”; and he “got.”
Two days afterwards he went under the Dead-line and began to abuse the guard, a member of an Alabama regiment, who ordered him to go back, or he would shoot him. “Poll” then opened on the guard in about the same style as he had on me, winding up by daring the guard to fire. This was too much and the guard fired a plunging shot, the ball striking him in the chin and passing down into his body, killing him instantly.
A few days before this, a “fresh fish,” or “tender foot,” as the cow boys would call him nowadays, started to cross the swamp south of my tent. In one place in the softest part of the swamp the railing which composed the Dead-line was gone, this man stepped over where the line should have been, and the guard fired at him but he fired too high and missed his mark, but the bullet struck an Ohio man who was sitting in front of a tent near mine. He was badly, but not fatally wounded, but died in a few days from the effects of gangrene in his wound.
The author of “Andersonville” makes a wide distinction between the members of the 29th Alabama and the 55th Georgia regiments, which guarded us, in relation to treatment of prisoners, claiming that Alabama troops were more humane than the Georgia “crackers.” This was undoubtedly true in this instance, but I am of the opinion that state lines had nothing to do with the matter.
The 29th Alabama was an old regiment and had been to the front and seen war, had fired at Yankees, and had been fired at by Yankees in return; they had no need to shoot defenseless prisoners in order to establish the enviable reputation of having killed a “damned Yank;” while the 55th Georgia was a new regiment, or at least one which had not faced the music of bullets and shells on the field of battle, they had a reputation to make yet, and they made one as guards at Andersonville, but the devil himself would not be proud of it, while the 5th Georgia Home Guards, another regiment of guards, was worse than the 55th.
In making up the 5th Geo. H. G. the officers had “robbed the cradle and the grave,” as one of my comrades facetiously remarked.
Old men with long white locks and beards, with palsied, trembling limbs, vied with boys, who could not look into the muzzles of their guns when they stood on the ground, who were just out of the sugar pap and swaddling clothes period of their existence, in killing a Yank. It was currently reported that they received a thirty days furlough for every prisoner they shot; besides the distinguished “honah.”
In marked contrast with these two Georgia regiments was the 5th Georgia regulars. This regiment guarded us at Charleston, S. C., the following September, and during our three weeks stay at that place I have no recollection of the guards firing on us, although we were camped in an open field with nothing to prevent our escape but sickness, starvation, and a thin line of guards of the 5th Ga. regulars. But this regiment too had seen service at the front. They had been on the Perryville Campaign, had stood opposed to my regiment at the battle of Perryville and had received the concentrated volleys of Simonson’s battery and the 10th Wisconsin Infantry, and in return had placed 146 of my comrades HORS DE COMBAT. They had fought at Murfresboro and Chickamauga, at Lookout and Missionary Ridge and had seen grim visaged war in front of Sherman’s steadily advancing columns in the Atlanta campaign. Surely they had secured a record without needlessly shooting helpless prisoners.
I believe all ex-prisoners will agree with me, that FIGHTING regiments furnished humane guards.