Fifteen Months in Dixie; Or, My Personal Experience in Rebel Prisons

by William W. Day

To my comrades who were prisoners let me say, our present motto is: “FIAT JUSTITIA, RUAT COELUM.”

CHAPTER XIII.

GOOD BYE ANDERSONVILLE.

As related in the preceding chapter the fall of Atlanta, and the fear of rescue had obliged the Confederates to remove the prisoners from Andersonville to a safer place.

On the 11th of September the detachment to which I belonged was ordered out. We gladly left the pen and saw the ponderous gates close behind us. No matter to us where we went, we believed we had nothing to lose and much to gain. If we were to be exchanged, which we doubted, then good bye to all these terrible scenes of want and suffering. If another prison pen was our destination, then we hoped it would not be so foul and disease laden as the one we left, and in any case we had left Winder and Wirz and we knew that though we were to rake the infernal regions with a fine comb, we could not find worse jailors. With thoughts like these running through our minds we dragged our weak and spiritless bodies to the station, where we got into a train of freight cars as best we could. Our train was headed toward Macon and there was much speculation as to our destination. Somehow a rumor had got into circulation that a cartel of exchange had been agreed upon by the commissioners of the two governments and that Savannah was to be the point of exchange. But we had been deceived so many times that we had taken a deep and solemn vow to not believe anything in exchange until we were safely transferred to our own lines; and this vow we kept inviolate.

Soon after passing Macon we entered the territory over which Stoneman’s Cavalry had raided a few weeks before. Burned railroad trains and depots marked the line of his march. At one place where our train stopped for wood and water one of the guards was kind enough to allow some of the men to get off the train and secure a lot of tin sheets which had covered freight cars prior to Stoneman’s visit. These sheets of tin were afterward made into pails and square pans by a tinner who was a member of an Illinois regiment, with no other tools than a railroad spike and a block of wood.

Two brothers, members of an Indiana regiment, and coopers by trade, made a large number of wooden buckets, or “piggins” while in Andersonville, and their kit of tools consisted of a broken pocket knife and a table knife, supplemented by borrowing our saw knife. With a table knife or a railroad spike and a billet of wood, we would work up the toughest sour gum, or knottiest pitch pine stick of wood which could be procured in the Confederacy. Time was of no consequence, we had an overstocked market in that commodity and anything that would serve to help rid ourselves of the surplus was a blessing.

Time solved the question of our destination. We went to Augusta again so that Savannah was out of the question. Then we crossed over into South Carolina, after which the point was raised whether it was to be Columbia or Charleston. Many of us were of the opinion that Charleston was the point and that we were to be placed under fire of our own guns, as many prisoners had been heretofore, the rebels hoping thereby to deter our forces from firing into the city. Time passed and we arrived at Branchville. Here is the junction of the Columbia road with the Augusta and Charleston road, we took the Charleston track and arrived in Charleston about eleven o’clock p. m. having been two days on the road.

After leaving the cars we were formed in line, and, as we were marching away from the depot, a huge shell from one of Gilmore’s guns exploded in an adjoining block. We were getting close to “God’s country,” only a shell’s flight lying between us and the land of the Stars and Stripes. We were marched just out of the city and camped on the old Charleston race track.

In the morning we were allowed to go for water, accompanied by guards. before night all the wells in the vicinity were exhausted, and we were obliged to resort to well digging for a supply. Fortunately we found water at a depth of only four feet. The water was slightly brackish, but as we had been kept on short rations of salt it was rather agreeable than otherwise. Before dark there were more than fifty wells dug in camp and we had water in abundance.