This was Saturday night. Monday morning we are on the good ship United States as she turns her prow out of Charleston harbor. We pass out over the bars and we are upon the broad Atlantic. Wednesday morning about 4 o’clock we heave to under the guns of the Rip Raps, at the entrance of Chespeake Bay, and reported to the commandant. The vessel is pronounced all right, and away we go up the bay. We reach Annapolis at 10 p. m. and are marched to Cottage Grove Barracks. Here we get a good bath, well rubbed in by a muscular fellow, detailed for the purpose. I began to think he would take the grime and dirt off from me if he had to take the cuticle with it. We exchanged clothing here and were then marched to Camp Parole, four miles from Annapolis. Here we were paid one month’s pay together with the commutation money for clothing and rations which we had not drawn during the period of our imprisonment. On the 24th I received a furlough and started for the home of my brother in western New York, where I arrived on the 26th, and here ends my story.
CONCLUSION.
Of all the men who had charge of of prisoners and who are responsible for their barbarous treatment, only one was ever brought to punishment. “Majah” Ross was burned in a hotel at Lynchburg, Va., in the spring of 1866. General Winder dropped dead while entering his tent at Florence, S. C., on the 1st of January, 1865.
“Majah” Dick Turner, Lieutenant Colonel Iverson and Lieutenant Barret have passed into obscurity, while Wirz was hanged for his crimes. That Wirz richly deserved his fate, no man who knows the full extent of his barbarities, has any doubt, and yet it seems hard that the vengeance of our Government should have been visited upon him alone. The quality of his guilt was not much different from that of many of prison commandants but the fact that he had a greater number of men under his charge brought him more into notice. Why should Wirz, the tool, be punished more severely than Jeff Davis and Howell Cobb? They were responsible, and yet Wirz hung while they went scot free.
I have frequently noticed that if a man wanted to escape punishment for murder he must needs be a wholesale murderer, your retail fellows fare hard when they get into the clutches of the law. If a man steals a sack of flour to keep his family from starvation, he goes to jail; but if he robs a bank of thousands of dollars in money and spends it in riotous living, or in an aggressive war against what is known as the “Tiger,” whether that Tiger reclines upon the green cloth, or roams at will among the members of Boards of Trade or Stock Exchange, or is denominated a “Bull” or a “Bear” in the wheat ring, why he simply goes to Canada.
Surely Justice is appropriately represented as being blindfolded, and I would suggest that she be represented as carrying an ear trumpet, for if she is not both blind and deaf she must be extremely partial.
Reader, if I have succeeded in amusing or instructing you, I have partly accomplished my purpose in writing this story. Partly I say, for I have still another object in view.
The description I have given of the prisons in which I was confined is but a poor picture of the actual condition of things. It is impossible for the most talented writer to give an adequate description. But I have told the truth as best I could. I defy any man to disprove one material statement, and I fall back upon the testimony of the rebels themselves, to prove that I have not exaggerated. These men suffered in those prisons through no fault of their own. The fortunes of war threw them into the hands of their enemies, and they were treated as no civilized nation ever treated prisoners before. They were left by their Government to suffer because that Government believed they would best subserve its interests by remaining there, rather than to agree to such terms as the enemy insisted upon.
General Grant said that one of us was keeping two fat rebels out of the field. Now if this is true why are not the ex-prisoners recognized by proper legislation? All other classes of men who went to the war and many men and women who did not go, are recognized and I believe that justice demands the recognition of the ex-prisoners. I make no special plea in my own behalf. I suffered no more than any other of the thousands who were with me, and not as much as some, but I make the plea in behalf of my comrades who I know suffered untold miseries for the cause of the Union, and yet who amidst all this suffering and privation, spurned with contempt the offers made by the enemy of food, clothing and life itself almost, at the cost of loyalty. Their motto then was, “Death but not dishonor.” But their motto now is, “Fiat justicia, ruat coelum.” Let justice be done though the heavens fall.
Since writing a description of the prison life in Andersonville, I came across the following account of a late visit to the old pen, by a member of the 2d Ohio, of my brigade. It is copied from the National Tribune, and I take the liberty to use it to show the readers of these articles how much the place has changed in twenty-five years.