We took up our quarters on the upper floor, with no straw for bedding, nothing between our skeleton like bodies and the floor but a piece of ragged blanket. We suffered terribly for the lack of bedding, our protruding hip bones could not possibly reconcile themselves to the hard floor and we were rolling about continually trying to find some part of our anatomy that would fit a pine board, but we never found it. But we did find a little purer air than we found down by the excrement burdened swamp, the foul gases arising from decomposing human excrements fermenting in a hot sun were not quite so strong and nauseous and besides we had a little more room. Day by day the thinning process went on, there being two strong powers at work to accomplish the task, death and the trains of cars.
I have never been quite satisfied with the tables of mortality published with reference to Andersonville. Dr. Jones in his report, gives the number who died between Feb. 24th and September 21st, 1864, as nine thousand four hundred and seventy-nine. McElroy gives twelve thousand nine hundred and twelve as the whole number that died during the time Andersonville was used as a prison.
I think both statements are far below the truth although I have only parole testimony to prove my position. While on the way from Andersonville to Charleston, I overheard a private conversation between two prisoners upon the subject of the number of deaths at Andersonville. One of them claimed to be the Hospital Steward who kept the records at that place, and he told his companion that he had a copy of the death record and that twelve thousand six hundred and twenty odd had died up to the date of leaving the prison, which was Sept. 11th. and that he intended to carry the copy through the lines with him when he was exchanged. One of the prisoners who was paroled in December following did have a copy of the register and showed it at the office of the War Department in Washington, it was not returned to him and he afterward stole it from the office, was arrested and imprisoned for the theft and was finally liberated through the intercession of Miss Clara Barton, “the soldiers’ friend.” The man was a member of a Connecticut regiment, whose name I cannot recall, but I think was Ingersoll, though I would not pretend to be positive. I think the official records show a total of nearly fourteen thousand deaths in Andersonville. All the evidence attainable both from Federal and Confederate sources prove that about one third of all the men who entered the gates of Andersonville died there, and when we come to add to that number those who died in other prisons, and on the way home, and whose death is directly traceable to that prison, we will find that fully one-half of the forty-five thousand Andersonville prisoners never reached home.
If the king of Denmark could exclaim, “O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven,” what shall we say of the men who are guilty of the barbarities of Andersonville? How far will their offense smell? By a fair computation more than twenty thousand men were,—
“Cut off even in the blossom of their sins,
Unhouseled, disappointed, unanel’d;
No reckoning made, but sent to their account
With all their imperfections on their heads:
O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!”
Rest comrades, rest in your graves on the sandy hillside of Andersonville. The dank and the mould have consumed your bodies and they have returned to the dust from whence they came; but a day of reckoning will surely come. When the last trump shall sound and the dead shall come forth from their graves, and stand before the Great White Throne, where will your murderers be found? Surely they will call upon the rocks and mountains to fall on them and hide them them from the face of Him who sitteth upon the Throne and judgeth the Earth in righteousness.