We would have liked, O so much, to have got hold of Winder and Wirz, and that Georgia Militia, there would have been no need of a stockade to hold them.
O, how weary we became of waiting. It seemed to us that home, and friends, and the comforts, and necessities of life, were getting further, and further away, instead of nearer, that we could not stand this waiting, and sickness, and misery, and living death much longer.
The more we thought of these things, the more discouraged we became, and I believe these sad discouraging thoughts helped to prostrate many a poor fellow, and unfit him to resist the effects of his situation and surroundings, and hastened, if it was not the immediate cause of death.
Chaplain McCabe, who was a prisoner in Libby Prison, has a lecture entitled “The bright side of Prison life.” If there was a bright side to Andersonville, I want some particular funny fellow, who was confined there for five or six months, to come around and tell me where it was, for I never found it, until I found the OUTside of it.
We heard of the fall of Atlanta, which occurred on the 2d of September, and had we known the song then, we would have sang those cheering words written and composed by Lieutenant S. H. M. Byers, while confined in a rebel prison at Columbia, South Carolina.
I.
“Our camp-fire shone bright on the mountains
That frowned on the river below,
While we stood by our guns in the morning
And eagerly watched for the foe;