View from the Main Gate. Taken from rebel photographs of the prison
when it contained thirty-five thousand men. Original picture in possession of the author.

MARTYRIA;

OR,

ANDERSONVILLE PRISON.

BY
AUGUSTUS C. HAMLIN.
LATE MEDICAL INSPECTOR U. S. ARMY, ROYAL ANTIQUARIAN, ETC.

Illustrated by the Author.

BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD.
1866.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
A. C. HAMLIN,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Maine.

Cambridge Press
Dakin and Metcalf.

STEREOTYPED AT THE
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.

TO THE

MEMORY OF THE MEN

WHO STEADILY UPHELD THE CAUSE OF CIVIL LIBERTY,

AND

WHO PREFERRED LINGERING DEATH,

IN THE MIDST OF UNPARALLELED PRIVATIONS
AND HORRORS,

RATHER THAN DISHONOR

AND DENIAL OF THEIR BIRTHRIGHTS,

THIS BOOK

IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.

NOTE.

The author presents for review neither style nor language: he offers simply the story of the wrong and the heroism, the cause and effect, as it rises in his mind.

Neither does he, at this late date, seek to rekindle the smouldering embers of hate and conflict, nor, Antony-like, attack persons under the recital of the wrongs. Vengeance does not belong to the human race. There are times in the history of men when human invectives are without force. “There are deeds of which men are no judges, and which mount, without appeal, direct to the tribunal of God.”

Augustus Choate Hamlin.

Bangor, September, 1866.

MARTYRIA.

I.

History weighs the social institutions of men in the scale of Humanity. Time, slowly but surely, accumulates the evidence which relates to their materials. It calmly but firmly unveils the statues which men erect as their principles, and with “that retributive justice which God has implanted in our very acts, as a conscience more sacred than the fatalism of the ancients,” lays bare the secret springs of action which have prompted the deeds of heroism or baseness, of virtue or crime.

Nations are political institutions, and like the system of nature, which is governed by positive and fixed laws, so they likewise are swayed and directed by mysterious forces, and influenced and moulded into form by those external circumstances which are greatly within the control of man. Their rise and decadence is in direct ratio to the nature and integrity of their customs, the structure of their social fabrics, the vigor of the spirit of independence which animates their thoughts, or the strength of the despotism which consumes their vitals. “Liberty brings benedictions in spite of nature, and in defiance of the same nature tyranny brings maledictions. Slavery has always produced only villany, vice, and misery.”

Men cannot perpetuate a creed or a system that is not founded on the eternal principles of justice and virtue, no more than they can control the elements—no more than they can remove or obliterate those geographical boundaries, beyond which the human races cannot pass in pursuit of the forms of wealth or the dreams of ambition.

The Belgian, who has studied so long and so faithfully the laws of metaphysics, exclaims, “All those things which appear to be left to the free will, the passions, or the degree of intelligence of men, are regulated by laws as fixed, immutable, and eternal as those which govern the phenomena of the natural world!”

II.

Along the southern tier of the great States which form the American Republic, whose gigantic structure and almost supernatural vigor already overshadow and animate the older civilizations of the world, we observe vast extents of level and alluvial lands and deltas, or “rather a series of littoral bands of remarkable disposition,” which the ocean left when receding from the mountain shores of the interior to its present limits, or which slowly and gradually emerged from their watery bed in the upheavals during the long intervals of the earth’s ages.

This immense territory, stretching from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, and hardly broken throughout this long distance by undulations of the soil, embraces more than six hundred thousand square miles—an extent greater than that of France and the States of the Germanic Confederation combined. Eight millions of human souls inhabit the one, whilst one hundred millions people the other. Ignorance and brutality darken the one, intelligence and humanity illuminate the other.

III.

The proximity of the sea, the configuration of the soil, the presence or absence of mountains, affect the growth and character of nations, and leave their impress upon their institutions. Climate and purity of blood complete the determination in the problem of life, the progress and degree of development. Upon these external causes also depend, in a great measure, the vigor of the imagination, the sentiment of the grand and the beautiful, the vivacity and purity of the soul.

The cold breezes of the temperate zones conduce men to wisdom, reason, and philosophy. The enervating atmospheres of hot climes incline the mind and body to repose, and often pervert the notions of natural justice. In the one, the mind is ever delighted and refreshed by the varying scenes of nature; in the other, the forms of the mournful and the terrible alone excite the imagination.

IV.

We have seen these lands occupied for more than two centuries by the emigrants from European countries; we have seen the reckless adventurer, the noble exile, the fugitive from justice, the outcast of society, blended together here in the experiment of colonization.

The form is still the same, for form is always more persistent than material in organic life, but the sterling and generous qualities of the primitive stock have greatly changed.

We have seen in these lands Slavery—that relic of barbarism, that leprosy, the foulest that ever preyed upon the vitals of any state—transplanted by that accursed Dutch ship, under the guise of Humanity, flourish, increase, and assume, during this brief period, the proportions of a despotism so powerful, so tenacious, as to defy and resist, almost successfully, the entire strength and resources of the Republic, enriching the slave faction with enormous wealth, but debasing and deteriorating the morals, the blood of the poor and non-slaveholding whites.

This increase of three millions of black men were held in bondage as human cattle by a few thousand white men. To these unfortunate creatures society extended no generosity, no consideration, but what reduced them still lower in the scale of organized beings, and chained them more closely in the sordid and selfish interests of their remorseless masters. To teach the black man to read, even the light of the divine Gospel, was a matter of fine, and imprisonment, and sometimes death.

V.

Seeking to perpetuate this atrocious system, this right of brute force over the helpless black, and establish a despotism with Slavery as its basis, the arrogant faction boldly took up arms against the Republic. “When Fortune,” says the Latin historian, “is determined upon the ruin of a people, she can so blind them as to render them insensible to danger, even of the greatest magnitude.”

Their appeals to arms were in the name of justice and glory, but they were without the echo of liberty and humanity. They summoned the masses of poor whites, whom they had degraded below the level of the slave, to rise and fight for their liberties, which were as empty as the winds of the desert. There were no liberties, no privileges for the poor whites, but to curse poverty and question God’s providence.

The individual desires of the few had usurped and swallowed up the rights of society. There was no society but the relation between the black man and his master. The law, order, and force were all within the control of the rich slaveholder.

The masses were either their tools, or too abject to be considered as dangerous; too ignorant to be feared as seditious, too poor to be regarded as anything more than trash, below the level and the value of the negro. This condition of the poor whites was the result of physical, political, and moral causes, long and silently at work.

VI.

The pretence for strife was resistance to oppression, and the extension and perfection of liberty to the masses; yet they impelled the people to passion, without mingling a single truth with the illusions with which they decorated their standards. Whilst they talked of the independent spirit of the new government, and the glory of resisting the oppressive policy of the invaders, every act and edict gathered closer and stronger the bonds which degraded and burdened the poor white.

The owner of seven slaves was exempt from the hazard of battle, but poverty and starvation of family were no causes of exemption for the non-slaveholder.

The real design, concealed by the strife, was the foundation of an empire of gigantic and seductive form, radiant and glittering with the splendid architecture of aristocratic sovereignty, but without reason or conscience.

The resolve was to control the production of the principal staples of industry and trade, and subject the commercial world to their caprices.

Thus they preferred the intoxications of conquest, the gratifications of lust, to the triumphs of true civilization, to the congratulations of a redeemed race. They cared not for reputation among the nations of the earth, nor immortality, nor renown; and they neglected or despised those happy stars which, now and then, conduct men and races to glory. “Glory belongs to the God in heaven; upon the earth it is the lot of virtue, and not of genius—of that virtue which is useful, grand, beneficent, brilliant, heroic.”

VII.

Revolutions almost always spring from the noble and generous enthusiasm of youth; but seditions arise from the vulgar and ignoble crowd, or from the outcast few, who would, for wealth, sacrifice all that honor and nature hold dear; or for the meaner gratifications of self-aggrandizement, would crumble into dust, and scatter to the winds of the earth, the noblest institutions and laws of mankind. Who will say that this resort to arms was an insurrection of justice in favor of the weak, or that it was a revolt of nature against tyranny?

The agitations of revolutions stir up the innermost natures of men, and from the revelations out of the depths appear the extreme qualities of the soul, elevated or debased, according to the inspirations from Heaven or the influence of a vile cause.

What rays of intellectual light, what flashes of genuine eloquence, burst forth during the tempestuous times of this period to illumine their progress or define the glory of their future? When the minds and imaginations of men are moved in civil war, they betray, in spite of themselves, the nobility or meanness of their cause. Even the ignorant, says Quintilian, when moved by the violent passions, do not seek for what they are to say. It is the soul alone that renders them eloquent. Only the hoarse clamors for revenge, or the hollow laugh against the remonstrance of humanity, do we hear from their tribunals and halls of legislation. Fatuity possessed their minds, and rather than not succeed in their designs, the leaders would have preferred a dreary solitude to the best interests of humanity, or, like Erostratus, they would have rather burned down the temple of liberty itself.

“Pejus deteriusque tyrannide sive injusto imperio, bellum civile.”

VIII.

Civil liberty is again triumphant, but at what a sacrifice of human life! What a deluge of blood has been poured over nature’s fields, where the contending armies have struggled together! A half a million of lives have been yielded up in this the nation’s sacrifice.

“The tree of Liberty,” said Barere, “is best watered with the blood of tyrants;” but how few among this immense host of victims were the originators of the sedition! The merciless schemers of bloody and cruel wars rarely expose their precious lives to the chances of combat.

During the existence of the slave system, and the long period of its progress, what has it produced to enrich the heritage of the human mind? Where are the holy and pure traditions, the bright recollections?

Neither wisdom nor philosophy has appeared, nor those arts which serve to form the “happy genius of nations.” There are countries where the march of ideas is accelerated only by the force of selfish passions; and philanthropy, that true index of civilization, only appears when it is required by mercantilism or political ambition. The aims and influences of commercial and political life can debase and destroy the noblest impulses. “It is a grand and beautiful spectacle,” exclaims the eloquent Rousseau, “to see man issue forth out of nothingness, as it were, by his own proper efforts, to dissipate, by the light of his reason, the shadows in which nature had enveloped him, to elevate himself even above himself, to glance with his spirit even into the celestial regions, to pass, with the stride of a giant, even as the sun, through the vast expanse of the universe, and what is still greater and more difficult, to enter one’s self, and study there man, and to understand his nature, his duties, and his end.”

IX.

Civilization claims to introduce the elements of peace, happiness, and prosperity into the structure of society, and to transform the sword and the spear into the harmless implements of husbandry; yet with a swifter pace the engines of war increase, man thirsts as fiercely for the blood of his fellow-man, and the dormant spirit of destruction is as ready to illume the torch, as in the reckless times of past history. Even in this enlightened age we are constantly reminded of the truth and force of the remark of Hannibal: “No great state can long remain at rest. If it has no enemies abroad, it finds them at home; as overgrown bodies seem safe from external injuries, but suffer grievous inconveniences from their own strength.”

The motives of self-aggrandizement by force of arms appear to be innate in human nature. We see men maintaining monstrous ideas. We see great armies singularly swayed by single minds, in defiance of truth and reason. The soldiers of Catiline fought to the last gasp, and perished to a man, embracing the eagle of Marius—“Marius, who sprang from the dust the expiring Gracchi flung towards heaven,” and who first dared attack the aristocratic nobility, and defend the down-trodden rights of the oppressed plebeian. There are mysterious laws, which seem to regulate the expansion and the decay of the human families. There are unseen forces which now and then impel vicious men to their own destruction.

X.

Andersonville—a name which has been stamped so deeply by cruelty into the pages of American history—is one of those miserable little hamlets, of a score of scattered and dilapidated farm-houses, which relieve the monotony of the wide and dreary level of sand plains, which, covered with immense forests, interspersed with fens, marshes, corn and cotton fields, stretch away, in unbroken surface, from Macon down to the Florida shores. The plantations, which were tilled by slave labor, are almost concealed in the recesses of the forests, so thickly wooded is the country. Here and there only, where the savannas are of unusual fertility, do the cleared lands give a wide and extended view of the landscape, but the primeval pines everywhere hide the distant horizon.

J. H. Bufford’s lith. Boston, Mass.

The song of the laborer rarely disturbs the silence, which is oppressive. Song is the impulsive outburst of a heart filled with joy and hope. The slave has neither. His voice is the cry of anguish, of a soul burdened and crushed, and is more like the moan of the winds than the accents of civilized man.

The physical aspect of the white inhabitant indicates the local impressions and inspirations—listless and apathetic in look, lank and haggard in form. There are countries, there are even limited localities, where the moral and mental faculties expand in accordance with external impressions. The laws of beauty and deformity are regulated by the condition and circumstances of the outward world to a remarkable degree.

The landscape, the sunshine, and the luxuriance at Corinth and Athens gave rise to the most beautiful flowers of art and love, and to that wonderful type of human beauty, which the world has since lost; but the rugged and stern defiles of the mountains of Calabria, of Albania, and the dreary marsh fens of the Campagna, or of the Netherlands, still produce characters that rival in ferocity the hyenas of the desert.

Nature appears to have selected for man the sites where are performed the noble acts which charm and enlighten the mind, or the dark deeds which cause men to ponder and regret the frailty of their organization. “It seems that the instincts of war conduct from age to age the armies of successive empires to the same rendezvous of contest, and that geography has laid off in advance certain fields of battle, as a sort of arena for these great immolations of humanity.” “Hungary,” said Sobieski, “is a clump of earth, which, if squeezed, would give out but human blood.” The name and look of Andersonville will always be synonymous with and suggestive of cruelty.

XI.

At the distance of eight hundred paces from the railway which connects the town with Central Georgia on the north and the Gulf of Mexico on the south, appears the Prison Stockade, which was located by the Winders of the Rebel army, at the suggestion of Howell Cobb, in 1863, and occupied for its specific purpose in February, 1864.

It is situated about fifty miles south of Macon, and its position on the geographical map is defined by longitude 7° 30′ west from Washington, latitude 32° 10′ north of the equator, corresponding in the western hemisphere to the central region of Algiers.

A dense forest of primeval trees covered the spot which was selected by the engineers when they marked out the line of the prison. The massive pines were levelled by the strong arms of several hundred negro slaves, and when their branches were cut away, they were placed side by side, standing upright in the deep ditches, which were excavated with regularity, and in parallel lines, north and south, east and west. Thus were formed the boundaries of the palisade, wherein nearly forty thousand human beings were to be herded at one time. The surface of the earth was cleared completely away, so as to give full play to the elements of destruction.

View of the Stockade as the rebels left it.—Page 19.

Neither shade nor shelter was there to protect from the storm, or from the merciless rays of an almost tropical sun. Not a tree nor a shrub was left there to cast a shadow over the arid and calcined earth. There was simply a rampart of logs, rising from fifteen to eighteen feet in height above the surface of the ground. This rampart measured at first ten hundred and ten feet in length by seven hundred and seventy-nine feet in width, and was surrounded, at a distance of sixty paces, by another palisade of rough logs more than twelve feet in height. It was afterwards lengthened, in the autumn of 1864, to sixteen hundred and twenty feet.

This enormous structure still stands there, with its giant walls of trees, undisturbed.

* * * “May none those marks efface,
For they appeal from tyranny to God.”

XII.

A small stream of water, which arose in two branches scarcely a thousand paces distant, in bogs and fens whose bitterness and impurities continued with the current, passed through the central portion of the enclosed space with sufficient volume to supply the wants of many thousand men, if it had been properly received, protected, and economized.

During the summer many springs burst forth from the soil on either bank of the stream within the prison; but the water, neglected by the military guards, soon became defiled by the feet and grime of the prisoners, and then this portion of the enclosure, embracing several acres, was transformed into a deep and horrible mire, quivering with those disgusting forms of organic life which are produced by putrid and decaying matter. The stench would have corroded the surface of adamant.

Within the two lines of palisades, and on the western side, was erected the single bakery which was to furnish the munition bread for the prisoners. Upon the hill to the northward, at the distance of two hundred paces from the outer line, was strangely placed the building which was known as the kitchen. The reason why this cookery was placed so far from water, and the direct line of communication with the main gate, the projectors alone can tell. Consider the enormous weight of provisions and water which full rations to even ten thousand men would require daily. Consider, then, the distance from the railway depot, the circuitous route to the entrance of the prison, the mode, and inefficient transportation, and you will have an idea of the ignorance, the carelessness, the perversity or wilfulness, or call it what you will, which prevailed here in the prison system, if system it can be termed.

XIII.

To the south, on the high land which overlooked the prison and its appendages, was erected the two-story building which served as quarters and offices for the officers and clerks. Along the same elevated ridge were located the well-built huts of the guards, who were selected from the Confederate Reserves of Georgia, under the command of Howell Cobb, and numbered from three to five thousand men. Farther to the west, along the same airy and commanding ridge, and close to the track of the railway, appears the large two-story wooden buildings, which were built and arranged, carefully and comfortably, for the sick of the rebel guards.

PLAN OF PRISON GROUNDS
ANDERSONVILLE
Measured by Dr. Hamlin
Copy right secured

XIV.

To the south-east, and at the distance of a stone’s throw from the prison, were placed the few miserable and decayed tents which were to serve as hospitals, in mockery of science and humanity.

To-day the traces of this useless philanthropy have passed away, but the results are fearfully shown in the field to the northward, where thirteen thousand soldiers sleep in death,—the harvest of one short year! “Here,” said one of the surgeons to the inquirer, “death might be predicted with almost absolute certainty.”

Here came a medical officer of the highest rank in the Rebel army, and one of the most eminent savans of the South, to study the physiology and philosophy of starvation. The notes of that fearful clinic are preserved, and may some future day startle the scientific world with their clearness, their candor, their positive evidence of the cause of death. Thus the scalpel silences the argument, the reasoning of sophistry.

That there was scarcity of medicines, and all of those delicacies known to the cultivated or luxurious taste, there can be no doubt. Neither the country, nor the desires of the people, produced or favored their production; but let us thank Heaven there is proof that there were some among the medical officers in whom the virtues of the heart were not entirely reversed, who did protest against the needless deficiencies and the system of treatment.

The sufferings here were less poignant than in the pen; for nature always comes to the relief of dying mortals, and tempers the pangs of dissolution.

Food was demanded, but it was wanting. Shelter and the pure air of heaven were prayed for by gasping men; even these, too, were wanting. Yet close by rose the gigantic pines, of the growth of centuries, standing in all the grandeur of the primeval forests, and offering to the disordered vision and senses of the dying wretches grateful shades, cool bowers, or the images of home, and the forms of the well-loved, as the faint and sinking traveller beholds them in the far-off mirage of the desert.

XV.

The dense pine forests on either side still attest the luxuriant growth, which was regarded at the time of its selection as the finest timbered land of all Georgia. These immense pines are even yet so near as to cast their lengthened shadows, at morning and evening, over the accursed area where so many noble men perished for want of shelter from the heat of the noonday sun, the chilling dews of evening, and the frequent rain. The shade temperature of this place sometimes rose to the height of 105°, even 110° Fahrenheit. The sun temperature within the stockade must have risen to 120° and upwards, for the height of the walls prevented the free circulation of the air. The heat of this region during the days of summer is unusually great.

View of Officers’ Stockade, with rebel camps and hospitals in the distance.—Page 21.

Its elevation above the tide level is only about three hundred feet; and the hot blasts from the burning surface of the Gulf of Mexico, which is only about one hundred and fifty miles distant, sweep up over it northward, without being deviated or modified by ranges of mountains. The intervening country is unbroken, from distance to distance, by the undulation of the soil, and resembles more the level of a wide, green sea than the usual configurations of the solid earth. It bears the reputation of being unhealthy, and it is not strange; for there are certain isolated local climates which are absolutely pestilential, as we observe in the detached mountain groups and table lands of India and Southern Europe. Its isothermal line passes through Tunis and Algiers, and the hyetal charts show it to be one of the most humid regions in America.

Fifty-five inches of rain fall here annually, whilst Maine, with her constant fogs, receives but forty-two and England but thirty-two.

Was it possible for human life to endure these extremes of heat, rendered still more positive by exposure to the damp and chilly dews of the nights of southern latitude? It is a well-known fact, that neither men nor animals can labor or expose themselves with impunity to the rays of the noonday sun of tropical climes. Man, of all terrestrial animals, is the least supplied with natural protectives.

XVI.

Around this ill-fated spot were stretched a cordon of connected earthworks, which completely enveloped the palisades, and commanded, with seventeen guns, every nook and corner of the enclosure. The forts were well constructed, and provided against the chances of sudden and desperate assaults. The cannon were well mounted, and placed in barbette and embrasure. Lunettes and redoubts covered all the approaches to the two great gates.

Several regiments of the rebel reserves constantly occupied the forts and trenches, and guarded closely every avenue. Escape was impossible.

XVII.

To preside over this assemblage, with its arranged, premeditated, and atrocious system, were selected men well known for their energy of purpose and their ferocity of soul, and who hoped, like the Parthian, that cruelty might seem to the eye of man a warlike spirit. Winder has already been summoned to his God, without affording to the tribunals of men the opportunity to judge of his justification or his shame. The wretched Wirz, arraigned and convicted by the most overwhelming evidence, has since paid the severest penalty which the majesty of violated law can exact on earth.

The instincts of nature always demand a certain respect for the memory of the dead, no matter how the death may take place. But shall this shield for the executioner obstruct justice, or reverence and admiration for the remembrance of the virtues of the nobler victims? Let us bring to light, and praise the heroism of noble men, even if we violate and break to pieces the sacred mausoleums where a thousand criminals lie buried.

XVIII.

The dispositions of man depend greatly upon the associations of his early life. The youthful and pliant organization is easily impressed by the natural scenes of birthplace and childhood, and the effect of the views of the savage mountain gorges, the dark and gloomy forests, or the distant landscape, smiling in the rays of the sun, and decorated with the most beautiful works of human industry, are felt hereafter in the labors and conceptions of manhood. Men sometimes are but the living reflections of the savage scenes among which they have been reared, and seldom do we see them arise from that immense and world-wide mass of fallen humanity to cherish anew, to maintain the noble principles of this earthly life, and lead the willing world to the true worship of the Creator.

Wirz was born among the glorious mountains of Switzerland, where the lofty and dazzling peaks of eternal snow, pointing upwards into the clear vault of heaven, impress the human mind with sublimity, or where the deeper glens sadden the heart and blast the aspiring imagination.

It seems that the natural impressions made upon this man in this beautiful country were of an earthly and sordid character, for he has always exhibited, in his wanderings in pursuit of fortune, the reckless and degraded soul of a mercenary.

Seeking gain in the New World, he turned up in the Slave States when the revolt was determined upon, and without reluctance, offered his services to the frantic and savage horde. Although a Swiss and republican by birth and inheritance, he does not hesitate between liberty and despotism. The principles of political dogmas do not agitate him; it is the desire for money, and an insatiate thirst for blood, blasting the natural heart with cruel and remorseless passions, that led him blindly and swiftly to ruin. The fatal plunge taken, and there was no return. The compunctions of humanity passed over his seared and unfeeling conscience, with no more effect than when the waves surge over the huge rocks which form the bed of the deepest ocean.

He was selected for the fatal position by the brutal Winder, who first observed him among the unfortunate prisoners of the first disastrous battle of the republic. What should recommend him, then, to the notice of this inhuman officer, can be easily conjectured by the survivors of the prisons of that period. Cruelty then was pastime, it afterwards became a law. It was then that some of the chivalry, after the manner of the tribes of Abyssinia and Eastern Africa, made glorious trophies of the skulls and the bones of their antagonists who had fallen in battle.

This man appeared at times kind and humane, and his voice had the accents of benevolence; but when excited, natural sentiments recoiled with horror at the depth and extent of his imprecations. This assumed gentleness of disposition is of but little weight among the examples of history.

“I have often said,” writes Montaigne, “that cowardice is the mother of cruelty, and by experience have observed that the spite and asperity of malicious and inhuman courage are accompanied with the mantle of feminine softness.” The ensanguined Sylla wept over the recital of the miseries he himself had caused.

That daily murderer, the tyrant of Pheres, forbade the play of tragedy, lest the citizens should weep over the misfortunes of Hecuba and Andromache.

The beautiful eyes of the Roman maidens glistened with tears at the imaginary sufferings of the inanimate marbles of Niobe and Laocoon, yet how remorselessly they gave the signal of death to the defeated gladiator on the arena of the Colosseum!

The warm, generous, natural impulses of the heart soon become affected, impaired, and even reversed by brutal associations.

Circumstances develop greatly the characters of men, and they sometimes rise to true greatness, or sink into baseness, according to the law of effect, of contact, and example.

BOOK SECOND.

I.

“Plus in carcere spiritus acquirit, quam caro amittit.”—Tertullian.

Within the deadly shadows of this enormous palisade were assembled and confined together at one time during the hot months of 1864, more than thirty-five thousand soldiers, of the various armies of the United States—more men than Alexander led across the Hellespont to the conquest of Asia; more men than followed Napoleon in those glorious campaigns over the bright fields of Northern Italy, where every helmet caught some beam of glory.

Here were men of all conditions, birth, and fortune—some of the best blood and sap of the republic.

The strong-limbed lumbermen from the forests of Maine, the tall, gigantic men from the mountains of Pennsylvania, the hunters of the great prairies of the West,—those men of wonderful courage and endurance,—the artisan from the workshop, the student from his books, the lawyer from the forum, the minister from the pulpit, the child of wealth, and the poor widow’s only son, were collected here in this field of torture.

View of Interior of the Prison, with the quagmire and crowds of huts
and men beyond. From rebel photographs.—Page 29.

They were men in the prime of life—young, vigorous, and active—when they surrendered themselves as prisoners of war. And as prisoners, they were entitled to the care and treatment acknowledged by the general laws and usages of civilized nations, and expected even more from those who boasted of having revived the generosity and chivalric tone of the feudal ages. Besides justice to all men, we owe special grace and benignity to those who come into our power from the hazard of battle. However degraded the suppliant may be, there is always some commerce between them and us, some bond of mutual relation.

Why these men did not receive that respect which true courage always accords to the vanquished brave, why they did not receive even that atom of compassion which belongs to the nature of man, and which is seen even among the lower animals, history, which loves to avenge the weak and oppressed, and which affords to all men, to all nations, the opportunity for their justification, their vengeance, their glory, will surely exhibit in burning characters of horror and shame. There are men even now who would sanctify the acts of cruelty of the rebellion over the very ashes of this the nation’s sepulchre. There are men even now who would outrage virtue, and deify the crime. There are men living, like those of the past, but not forgotten iron age, possessed of that remorseless fury, that implacable hatred, which nothing could arrest, nothing could disarm, and which could no more receive a sentiment of compassion than that sophistry which allowed outrage and death to the tender and guiltless child of Sejanus.

“Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens, tantum spectaturus occidat.”

II.

The intention which directed the formation of this vast camp was Cruelty. The system which governed, or rather the want of system which neglected, each department, whether hospital or commissariat, meant Death. The evidence against the leaders of the Confederacy is not wanting, neither is it obscure. It is true that most of the witnesses have perished, or are fast passing prematurely away; but the chain of circumstantial evidence is so connected, so apparent, that, unless the faith of humanity changes, that voice, which Tacitus calls “the conscience of the human race,” will, until the end of time, overwhelm with withering scorn the memory of these men as the assassins of sedition, rather than the heroes and saints of a just revolution.

We may search history in vain for a parallel in modern times. Civilization, in its known vicissitudes, cannot point out a spectacle so horrible.

The massacre, in hot blood, of the Tartars of the Crimea by Potemkin, will not compare with this slow, merciless, implacable process of murder by starvation, and violation of those hygienic laws upon which the principle of life depends. The fusilades of that saturnalia of blood, the French Revolution, which swept away whole generations, had the pomp of military executions, which threw a gleam of brilliancy over the scene, and gave momentary enthusiasm to the victims. Those great immolations of the Saracens and Persians by the Tartars were as rapid as the cimeters could flash. “The fury of ideas,” says Lamartine, “is more implacable than the fury of men; for men have heart, and opinion none. Systems are brutal forces, which bewail not even that which they crush.”

“See,” said Timour to the learned men of Aleppo, “I am but half a man, and yet I have conquered Irak, Persia, and the Indies.” “Render glory, therefore, to God,” replied the Mufti of Aleppo, “and slay no one.” “God is my witness,” said, with apparent sincerity, the destroyer of so many millions of men, “that I put no one to death by a premeditated will; no, I swear to you I kill no one from cruelty, but it is you who assassinate your own souls.”

III.

The world has never seen such a display of courage and devotion as was exhibited by the intelligent masses of the freemen of the North, when the liberties of the great republic were menaced by the fierce gestures of the slave faction and their misguided supporters.

Men of all classes, forsaking home, kindred, and property, rushed to present a living barrier to the impetuous march of the enraged and misguided horde that pressed on with almost resistless fury, and threatened to overwhelm and destroy the noblest fabric of the enlightened mind. At last the carnage of battle has ceased. Nature smiles again, and rapidly obliterates the marks of the ravages left upon her green fields, where the huge and desperate armies have swayed and struggled in deadly conflict. The emblems of civil liberty are again restored, the fasces replaced; and it now becomes the country to arouse itself from the depths of apathy, and revive those sentiments of tenderness and gratitude which nature everywhere bestows upon the memory of those who upheld the cause of liberty, and fell in its defence.

IV.

To understand fully the determined character, the steadfast loyalty, of these brave and unfortunate men, we must consider at length the details of this enclosure, with its hungry, emaciate, filthy mass of humanity, whence arose a stench of death so powerful as to be perceived at the distance of a league—the burning sky, the array of instruments of torture, the manifest design of cruelty.

The suffering wretch had only to pronounce the magic words, “Allegiance to the Rebel cause,” and his sufferings and misery were at an end. The huge gates flew open, and with grim smiles, the enfeebled and tottering apostate was welcomed as an accession to the southern ranks.

But the republic was safe here, and the sacred fire of its altars burned steadily through all the horrors and noxious vapors of this hell on earth.

Strange to relate, that out of the seventeen thousand registered sick, there is record of only about twenty-five who accepted the offers to save their lives, and took the oath of the rebels. Is it not wonderful that this great number of men should thus, in silence, brave the horrors by which they were surrounded, and remain firm in their convictions of right and wrong? An entire army perished, rather than deny the country which gave them birth! They would no more surrender their principles, than their homes and altars, as ransoms for their lives.

Has the world’s history a parallel to this devotion?

“But these are deeds which should not pass away,
And names that must not wither, though the earth
Forgets her empires with a just decay.”

V.

Heroism in the damp and noxious prisons, where the noble qualities of the mind are shaken and swayed by the sufferings of the body, is far different from that which is displayed upon the battle-field, amid the glittering and inspiring pomp of war.

The men at Thermopylæ fought in the shadows of the soul-inspiring mountains, and beheld, through the charm of distance, their homes and the beautiful valleys they had sworn to defend. The Decii saw the shining swords of their enemies when they rushed into battle, and the dying nobly and the glory made all fear of death but of little weight.

Here, instead of bright and glorious banners and the flash of arms, the long array of men eager for the contest, and the songs, the shouts of defiance, there was a vast ditch, crowded with living beings of scarce the human form, haggard and unnatural in appearance—a sea of red and fetid mud, trampled and defiled by the immense throng. Instead of the white tents and canopies of military encampments, there were the ragged blankets vainly stretched over upright sticks; there were the holes in the earth, the burrows in the sand, like the villages of the rats of the great prairies of the West. They were more like the dens of the beasts of the desert than habitations for human beings.

No Christian hand ever penetrated to their depths to aid the sick and suffering inmates, to nourish the hungry and console the dying, save one Romish priest; and in spite of the horrors and dangers of the place, he was faithful to his trust. Noble man! you have proved by these acts that humanity is not a mendacious idol, and that devotion to humanity is not a mere matter of gain and self-aggrandizement.

More than four thousand human beings perished in these excavations!

It seemed as though vengeance was prolonged beyond death itself.

“Where was thine Ægis, Pallas, that appalled
Stern Alaric and Havoc on their way?”

VI.

Life here was brief. The victims, as they entered the gate, were appalled at the horrors that were presented to them in this living sepulchre. Nature seemed to have abandoned the struggle early, and the young men passed, with rapid pace, from youth—that youth so rich in its future—to manhood, from manhood to old age. Neither prudence nor philosophy could protect them from the grievous influences of the morbid conditions to which they were exposed. The delicate and noble faculties were blunted and destroyed. Some perished at once, almost as quickly as though struck by the lightning of heaven, whilst others lingered, according to the strength of the hidden resources, the reserved and superabundant powers of youth.

Among the few survivors of the present day we can learn of the fearful struggle between life and death, by the gray hairs, the impassive features, from which the smile of youth has fled forever, the feeble and tottering steps of the man who has prematurely arrived at his limit of earthly existence.

The integrity and character exhibited by these men, in the midst of these tortures, is unsurpassed.

It was the same morale that immortalized the armies of Italy and Moreau, that covered with splendor the heroes of Sparta and Rome, and proved incontestably the superiority of the volunteer over the mercenary regular. The wretched men died in silence, or with the name of home or the loved ones on their lips, and adjuring their comrades to stand firm in defence of their faith, their country, their God. “My treatment here is killing me, mother; but I die cheerfully for my country.” They died as the wounded French died at Jemappes, with the delirium and exaltation of patriotism, uttering at the last moment some of the strains of the songs of freedom, and the names of country and liberty. “Thus the enthusiasm of the combat prolonged or reproduced itself, and survived even in their agony.”

The sufferings of these men, wasting, putrefying, dying daily by scores, by hundreds, without touching the remorseless hearts of the prison-keepers, recall to mind those monsters which history points out as rising now and then from out the wreck of social order. It was one of the results of Slavery, for Slavery weakens the natural horror of blood.

Cruelty is naturally progressive, for it engenders the fear of a just revenge. New cruelties succeed, until extermination becomes the rule and ends the scene.

“To hate whom we have injured is a propensity of the human mind,” says Tacitus.

VII.

At the distance of about five hundred paces northwestward from the stockade, in a little field which is almost overshadowed by the surrounding pines, appear a multitude of stakes standing upright in the earth, in long and regular lines.

Upon every one of these fragments of boards figures have been carelessly scratched by an iron instrument; and they run up to the appalling number of almost thirteen thousand! Each stick represents a dead man,—a hero,—and this multitude of branchless and leafless trunks reminds us rather of a blasted vineyard than of a cemetery arranged for the human dead.

View of the Graveyard, with its thirteen thousand victims, as the rebels left it.
Taken from rebel photographs in possession of the author.—Page 37.

I have seen many of the rarest sculptures in civilized lands, where art has lavished and exhausted its powers to awaken sympathy for the dead, but have met with none that moved my heart more impressively than the brief, vague inscriptions, the rude memorials of this silent and neglected field, where sleep an entire army of freemen, who preferred lingering death rather than allegiance to a rebel and wicked faction.

Beneath the red clods of this field, thickly as the leaves of autumn, are stretched side by side a number of men more numerous than all of the American soldiers who perished by disease and casualty of battle during the Mexican war—more than all of the British soldiers who were killed, or perished from their wounds, on the bloody fields of the Crimea, the desperate struggles at Waterloo, the four great battles in Spain,—Talavera, Salamanca, Albuera, Vittoria,—and also the sanguinary contest at New Orleans. All these losses of the sons of the British empire do not build up a hecatomb of the human dead so high, so vast, so red, as this one single link of the great chain of wrong that stretched from Virginia to Texas.

There is no battle-field on the face of the globe, known to the antiquary, where so many soldiers are interred in one group as are gathered together in the broad trenches of this neglected field among the pine forests of Georgia. What a gathering is this! What a monument of the incarnation of political lust, of the reckless desperation, the implacability of the depraved human heart, when resolved upon cruelty! The world does not offer, among all of her extant memorials, a more terrible, a more impressive comment upon the ambition, the power, the glory of mankind.

VIII.

Respect to the dead is an instinct of nature; and to leave the remains of a fallen comrade upon the field, unhonored, is repugnant even to the red men of the forest. How much more, then, does a civilized nation, of high degree, owe to the memory of its brave defenders! Will it now forget the noble sacrifice of its sons amid the debasing influences of commerce and manufacture? Shall these sticks, which mark the nation’s sacrifice, moulder into dust, and with their brief inscriptions be swept away by the winds of the world, and all traces of this heroism, this martyrdom, lost?

Here is something required more than brief, hollow, human gratitude, and a sonorous, perishable epitaph.

Whatever rises above the level of this plain to commemorate for future ages the devotion of the men who sleep beneath, should be of lasting material, and as colossal as the gigantic proportions of the republic itself: or the field should be levelled and swept, and every distinguishing sign blended and effaced, and the true altar of memorial erected in the hearts of all men who believe and revere those eternal principles of love, justice, truth.

Liberty has but one inscription to offer, and that is the noble lines which were traced on the dungeon wall in the blood of the noblest and purest of the Girondins: “Potius mori quam fœdari”—Death rather than dishonor.

IX.

Impartial history will give to the memory of these men a place among the records of useless murder.

The law of parole was all-sufficient to prevent their return to service, and their absence from the fields of campaign would have been of no material weight with the prolific North.

But the intent of their captors was cruelty; and they strove to reduce the numbers, and to intimidate the courage, of the Federal soldiers, by acts of savage barbarity, as the relentless Tartar hoped to terrify the Hindoos into the profession of Mohammedanism by sacrificing multitudes, and deluging whole countries in blood.

To deny the criminality is, as Lamartine says of the massacres of September, “to belie the right of feeling of the human race. It is to deny nature, which is the morality of instinct. There is nothing in mankind greater than humanity. It is not more permissible for a government than for a man to commit murder. If a drop of blood stains the hand of a murderer, oceans of gore do not make innocent the Dantons. The magnitude of the crime does not transform it into virtue. Pyramids of dead bodies rise high, it is true, but not so high as the execration of mankind.”

BOOK THIRD.

I.

Let us now examine and consider, with impartial eye, the Stockade in detail—the locality, the hospital, the dietary, and, in fact, all that relates to the condition of life in this region; reviewing at length the laws which regulate the animal economy, and judging of cause and effect with that spirit which Bacon calls the “prudens quæstio.”

In selecting new grounds for the habitations of human families, whether in large or limited numbers, particular care must always be observed, especially in warm climes, or where malarial influences are known to prevail. In the selection of places for the encampment of troops, the problem is still more difficult to treat, on account of the general dyscrasial condition of the soldier; and oftentimes far more skill and prudence are required than in the choosing of a field for battle.

How many a noble regiment have we seen impaired in its effective strength, and robbed of its glorious future, by the injudicious encampment, where vain and ignorant officers have sacrificed the health and morale of their men to please their fanciful ideas as to military etiquette—the form of shelter, the position, and the regularity of the prescribed lines of encampment!

In one of the last campaigns of Europe, when all the resources which modern wealth could afford were lavished with unsparing hand, there was a useless and preventible loss of life, that recalled the most disastrous epidemics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

War is one of the natural laws for the demolition of the human race, and we see the spirit of destruction silently at work among friends as well as foes. The supreme commands seem mysteriously to be placed in the hands of men who can cause the greatest devastation and sacrifice of life; who march their columns steadily to the deadly and murderous assault when there is no occasion for it; who encamp their troops in pestilential lowlands, when the healthy heights offer safer and better accommodations.

“Nobilitas cum plebe perit, lateque vagatur ensis.”

II.

It is a melancholy fact, attested by the distinguished Marshal Saxe, that the military men of modern times are far less informed than the great generals of antiquity in the profound knowledge of public hygiene, and especially of that which relates to the economy of armies. We can admire, but hardly improve, the physical education imposed upon the volunteers of Sparta and the legionaries of Rome; and we have not surpassed their scientific, yet rude alimentation, by which they marched over immense distances with rapidity, and preserved their vigor and morale. From the extant documents of the ancients, from Xenophon or Vegetius, it is shown that their acquaintance with whatever related to clothing, encampment, food, the graduation of exercises, and the employ of forces, was of the highest character.

The effects of high and low lands, of good and bad water, on the diseases, energy, character, and intellect of man, have been sketched in a masterly manner by Hippocrates.

The exposure of a few hours to malignant influences may impair the strength of an army to such a degree as to thwart the most skilful plans, the wisest combinations for vigorous campaigns, as, for instance, the Walcheren expedition of the English, the Neapolitan campaign of France, when her army was reduced from twenty-eight thousand to four thousand effective men, in one hundred hours, from an injudicious encampment at Baie, or when Orloff lost his army in Paros, or, still later, the disaster to the splendid division of the French army under Espinasse, in the fatal Dobrutscha.

Armies have been lost, the fate of empires decided, by the violation or neglect of the simple rules of hygiene; and all through the blood-stained pages of military history do we observe examples, from the time when Scipio lost the battle of Trebbia, or when Bajazet threw away his vast empire on the plains of Angora, down to Kunersdorf, when the impetuosity of Frederick the Great would not allow rest to his men or horses.

III.

In 1863 the depots near Richmond became so crowded by the Federal prisoners that it became a matter of serious consideration to the rebel authorities how to guard them, and attempt to feed them and the regiments guarding them. Then the idea was conceived of forming a Great camp in the Gulf States, in a locality fruitful in grain, and in a position secure from raids from the Federal cavalry. Several locations were examined, but none pleased the selecting officer, until he had examined the site at Andersonville, to which he conceived a particular fancy. There were places in this section of the country where pure water could be obtained in abundance, but these spots were not so readily accessible, and wood was not so plenty and handy as at this. There was another consideration in the public view of its selection, that it was in the heart of the best corn-producing region at that time in Georgia, and easy access could be had with the everglades of Florida, where herds of half wild cattle roamed at will.

It is not the belief of the writer, although there are many facts to warrant such an inference, that the selection was made with the view of deliberately destroying the prisoners openly, and without reserve, for there were other localities far more pestilential than this; and yet, on the other hand, there were also many situations infinitely more salubrious and easy of access. There was in reality not much reflection in the matter. The selectors thought only of the geographical and strategical position; they cared not for its topography or its meteorology.

They consulted only their convenience. The idea of the preservation of the lives of their unfortunate prisoners never troubled their minds, never disturbed their conscience. They would build a safe and secure pen, and if God, in his infinite and mysterious mercy, chose to summon from earth any of the hapless wretches, they would not consider themselves as accountable for the premature deaths. Such was their reasoning. Such was their philosophy. Such was their conscience. The exult of Winder, when asserting that he was doing more for the Confederacy than a dozen regiments at the front, and the exclamation of Howell Cobb, when pointing to the ten thousand graves, “That is the way I would do for them,” were perhaps the bravado of the southern slaveholder. Even at this late date we can find men, of some tenderness, in this vicinity, who have reasoned their weak minds into the idea and belief that no harm was ever done or intended; and even if it can be proved, then the Federals only received what they deserved, and no more than their own sons in the prisons of the North endured.

Such was the conscience of the Pharisee.

Such was the remark made to the writer by a southern gentleman over the graves of the victims.

IV.

The topographical features of the site are not particularly objectionable for an encampment of a few hundred men.

The northern and southern banks incline sufficiently towards the stream in the centre to allow of proper drainage. The stream itself furnished water in sufficient volume to provide for the wants of ten thousand men, if it had been turned from its channel above the stockade, and introduced into the prison by simple sluices. But to this important item there was not the least attention paid.

To preface the analysis of this stockade, &c., we may wisely review the remarks of the late Dr. Jackson, the chief medical officer of the British army.

V.

“A necessity occurs in war, on many occasions, which leaves no option of choice in occupying posts of an unhealthy character: but there is, unfortunately, an authority, derived from example and the sanction of great names, which directs the military officer, when under no military necessity, to fix his encampment on grounds which are unhealthy in themselves, or which are exposed by position to the influence of noxious causes, which are carried from a distance.

“Such advice proceeds from the desire to act on a presumption of knowledge, which cannot be ascertained, rather than to act by the experience of facts, which man is qualified to observe and verify.

“It is consonant with the experience of military people, in all ages and in all countries, that camp diseases most abound near the muddy banks of large rivers, near swamps, and ponds, and on grounds which have been recently stripped of their woods. The fact is precise: but it has been set aside to make way for an opinion.

“It was assumed, about half a century since, by a celebrated army physician, that camp diseases originate from causes of putrefaction, and that putrefaction is connected radically with a stagnant condition of the air. As streams of air usually proceed along rivers, with more certainty and force than in other places, and as there is evidently a more certain movement of air, that is, more winds, on open grounds than among woods and thickets, this sole consideration, without any regard to experience, influenced opinion, and gave currency to the destructive maxim, that the banks of rivers, open grounds, and exposed heights, are the most eligible situations for the encampment of troops. They are the best ventilated: they must, if the theory be true, be the most healthy. The fact is the reverse. But demonstrative as the fact may be, fashion has more influence than multiplied examples of fact, experimentally proved.

“Encampments are still formed in the vicinity of swamps, or on grounds which are newly cleared of their woods, in obedience to theory, and contrary to fact. The savage, who acts by instinct, or who acts directly from the impressions of experience, has in this instance the advantage over the philosopher, who, reasoning concerning causes he cannot know, and acting according to the result of his reasonings, errs and leads others astray by the authority of his name.

“The savage feels, and acting by the impression of what he feels, instead of fixing his habitation on the exposed bank of large rivers, unsheltered heights, or grounds newly cleared of their woods, seeks the cover of the forests, even avoids the streams of air which proceed from rivers, from the surface of ponds, or from lands newly opened to the sun. The rule of the savage is a rule of experience, founded in truth, and applicable to the encampment of troops, even of civilized Europeans.

“In accordance with this principle, it is almost uniformly true, cæteris paribus, that diseases are more common, at least more violent, in broken, irregular, and hilly countries, where the temperature is liable to sudden changes, and where blasts descend with fury from the mountains, than in large and extensive inclined plains, under the action of equal and gentle breezes only. From this fact, it becomes an object of the first consideration, in choosing ground for encampments, to guard against the impression of strong winds, on their own account, independently of their proceeding from swamps, rivers, and noxious soils.

“In countries covered with woods, abundantly supplied with straw, and other materials applicable to the purpose of forming shelter, it is, upon the whole, better to raise huts and construct bowers than to carry canvas. The individual is exercised by labor, and as his mind is employed in contriving and executing something for self-accommodation, he is furnished with a daily opportunity of renewing the pleasure. The mode of hutting, here recommended, effectually precludes the evils arising from those contaminations of air in which contagion is generated—an evil which often arises in tents, and is carried about with an army in all its movements in the field.”

The view of the ancients in regard to the encampment of troops may be understood from the counsel of Vegetius: “Ne aridis et sine opacitate arborum campis, aut collibus ne sine tentoriis æstate milites commorentur.”

VI.

As we have remarked before, the site of the prison was covered with trees when its outlines were traced and surveyed by the rebel engineers. These trees, felled to the ground, were hewn, and matched so well on the inner line of the palisades as to give no glimpse of the outer world across the space of the dead line, which averaged nineteen feet in width, and which was defined by a frail wooden railing about three feet in height, from fifteen to twenty-five feet distant from the palisades.

This line of stockade rose from fifteen to eighteen feet above the surface of the ground, while the outer line of logs, which was erected about sixty paces distant from the inner line, was formed of the rough trunks of pines, and projected twelve feet above the earth. The original stockade measured but ten hundred and ten feet in length, and seven hundred and eighty-three feet in width; and within this space were jammed together, for several months, from twenty-two thousand to thirty-five thousand men, thus giving a superficial area to each man, when the prison contained thirty thousand prisoners, but seventeen square feet, after deducting the nineteen feet average for the dead line, and the quagmire, three hundred feet in width. This measurement would allow for thirty-five thousand men but fifteen square feet of area, or less than two square yards to each person, or more than twenty times the density of Liverpool. This was all the space that was afforded before the enlargement, and this reckoning does not include roads or by-paths for communication among the prisoners.

Seventeen and a half square feet of earth are allowed for the coffin’s length in the field of sepulchres. There were here to be seen twelve acres of living men, packed together like the immense shoals of fish in the ocean, but like nothing that has life on the earth, not even the ant-fields. The ratio of density was equivalent to more than sixteen hundred thousand people to the square mile. The densest portion of East London has the great number of one hundred and sixty thousand to the square mile.

VII.

In the month of August the stockade was lengthened six hundred and ten feet, by what influence or from what cause it is unknown; but nevertheless it was enlarged to the length of sixteen hundred and twenty feet,—thus making the entire area sixteen hundred and twenty by seven hundred and eighty-three feet. This enlargement was a salutary movement on a small scale, but it only prolonged the sufferings of the victims. The thirty thousand men had now twenty-two acres, minus the dead line and marsh, or thirty square feet per man, or three and a half square yards. There were actually, during this month, thirty-five thousand men within the prison, and some authorities give me as high as thirty-six thousand. This density is enormous, and cannot be tolerated by animal life in any climate, in any latitude, of the world. There must be space for organic life to develop and maintain itself, otherwise it perishes. To give a correct idea of the crowded condition of this pen, we do not know where to turn for example. The great cities of civilized lands do not even approximate in their ratio of populations.

The relation of density, in the three great divisions of London, give thirty-five, one hundred and nineteen, and one hundred and eighty square yards to each inhabitant. The densest portion of Liverpool, with its lofty and immense brick ranges of buildings, swarming with industrial life, gives more than eighty square feet to each person. The early Roman camps, which are a marvel to military men, and the closest known to military science, gave to the ordinary legion three hundred and sixty-seven square feet of area to each man. The plans of Polybius give two hundred and thirty square feet to each soldier of the consular army of two legions, numbering nearly eighteen thousand men, and the descriptions of Hyginus give similar ratios.

PLAN OF PRISON GROUNDS
ANDERSONVILLE
Measured by Dr. Hamlin
Copy right secured
J. H. BUFFORD’S LITH BOSTON.

The encampments of the United States infantry afford, in the most restricted portion (between stacks of arms and kitchens), two hundred and forty-four square feet per man, or seventeen hundred and thirty-one square feet per man for the whole camp.

The space allowed by law for barracks alone is fifty-four square feet for each soldier, reckoned on the basis of a full complement of men. The rules of the rebel army concerning camps are the same as those of the regulations of the United States army.

The United States prison at Elmira contained six thousand men, and extended over forty acres. The other prisons, at Chicago, Johnson’s Island, Point Lookout, and Fort Delaware, were provided with spacious exercise grounds, and furnished with covered barracks, built of proper form, and fitted up with the required conveniences of life. Belle Isle, which held ten thousand prisoners, had but six acres, and no shelter, no conveniences whatever.

Andersonville, which contained over thirty thousand prisoners, had in the stockade, before enlargement, but eighteen acres in all, and but twelve acres for the use of the prisoners, minus the dead line and the marsh.

The prison at Dartmoor, in England (which was a paradise in comparison with Andersonville), where our prisoners were held in captivity by the English during the last war, furnished two hundred to three hundred square feet to every prisoner in the barracks, besides allowing spacious yards, where the prisoners were permitted to exercise daily. There were there seven large two-story stone buildings, each one hundred and eighty feet in length. Five thousand prisoners enclosed within twenty acres of land at Dartmoor, thirty thousand in twelve acres, or thirty-five thousand in twenty-two acres, at Andersonville.

VIII.

The timbers composing the stockade were of entire trunks of pines, massive and solid, and measuring from one to three feet in diameter. They were sunk into the earth for about five or six feet, and held in position at the top by long, slender pines, nailed on the outer side by large iron spikes. There were but two gates for this vast prison, and but two corresponding apertures in the outer palisade. These gates were constructed of massive timbers, and protected by a strong porch, occupying a base of about thirty feet square. These were always strongly guarded, to prevent the sudden rush of masses of men. At intervals of about one hundred feet, were erected detached and covered platforms, upon the outer side of the palisades, which, overlooking the summit of the wall, and the enclosure beyond, served as sentry boxes. The sentries, perched buzzard-like on the wall, could observe, from their high positions, at all times, the actions, the motions of the uncovered prisoners, and with their rifles shoot down the offending prisoner, whether he stood talking with his comrades, in the centre of the space, or whether he approached the sacred precincts of the dead line.

Sometimes they threw down their unconsumed fragments of bread to the hungry men. Sometimes they were hurled with curses; rarely were they thrown from feelings of compassion. Yet there were some kind-hearted men here, in the degrading position of the sentry box, who viewed the scene with affright, and who wept bitterly over the awful torture and sacrifice of life.

The author, travelling on foot among the mountains and forests of Northern Georgia, after peace was declared, found these evidences of humane feeling among the letters preserved in the humble cabins of the poor whites. That unoffending men were shot down without warning, there is no doubt whatever; that men, weary of torture, staggered to the dead line, and calmly, joyfully received the fatal shot, there is positive evidence.

IX.

The trees were all removed from the enclosure, and with the specific intent of cruelty, as was openly stated by the brutal builders. They should have no shade, it was said, and no shade had the wretched men but what was cast by the few ragged and rotten blankets and shelter tents that the prison examiners passed by as utterly worthless in their examination and search for articles of value, whether watches, bank notes, hats, shirts, and even shoes. There were men who, robbed at the outer gates, entered the prison almost naked. This system of robbery was open and audacious, and it is said that the only prisoners who escaped spoliation were those who were taken from Sherman when Atlanta fell, and when consternation prevailed at the prison in consequence. It is positively stated that it was sanctioned by Wirz and Winder. At all events, two men, by the names of Hume and Duncan, robbed the prisoners systematically, and appropriated the packages sent to the prisoners, from the United States, to such an extent that few if any articles ever reached the poor men to whom the boxes of food and clothing were sent.

These blankets and rags were vainly stretched over sticks, to form the semblance of a habitation, wherever the earth gave firm foothold, even along the borders of the pestilential marsh. Those who were destitute of even these shreds of cloth, dug with their hands holes in the earth, after the example of wild beasts, or with the slimy water from the brook they built up, with handfuls of mud, little cabins over hollows scooped out from below the surface of the ground, and as rude as the clumps of earth, which that lowest degree of the human form—the Digger Indian—inhabits.

These may be seen at the present day, looking like the lodges of the beaver, or the mounds of the marmots of the prairies, and half concealed by those wild, useless, and noxious weeds which linger in, and cling to the footsteps of man, as he wanders in his migrations over the uncultivated lands of the globe.

Sometimes the heavy rains washed away the roofs of mud, inundating the occupants beneath. Some of the poor wretches had not the strength to lift up the incumbent mass of earth, and perished miserably in their dens. There are now in these demolished excavations the bones of some of our fellow-citizens, unknown and unhonored. The cry of distress was so constant that few heeded the smothered moan. The stumps of the fallen trees were grubbed up by the knives and fingers of the prisoners for firewood to warm themselves with, or to cook their scanty food; even the roots were followed down deep into the earth, for the purpose of obtaining the means of warmth which were almost entirely denied them by the prison keepers.

X.

There is no excuse for this wanton exposure to the vicissitudes of the climate, for the forests adjoining were immense in their extent, and thousands of the suffering men offered, begged to go and obtain material to build sheds or huts to protect them from the inclemency of the weather. Neither parole was allowed for this purpose, nor real attempts made to obtain the building tools. To show the force of the argument that the rebels had not sufficient aid, and that it would have been dangerous to have paroled any of these prisoners, there is the fact that there were several large steam saw-mills in the vicinity, and they could have easily afforded, in few weeks, all the lumber required for the purpose of shelter.

Was it recklessness, was it perversity, or was it malice aforethought, that withheld from the prisoners the means of shelter? The few sheds that were erected were not commenced until late in the term of its occupation, too late to render much service. They were merely roofs of boards, placed upon posts, at the distance of seven feet from the ground. There were neither sides nor partitions to these sheds, and they were not required during the hot months.

View of the manner in which the Dead were Interred.

The bodies were laid in rows of one hundred to three hundred, and after the earth was thrown over them a stake was thrust down to mark the place of burial. This view is taken from a rebel photograph.—Page 57.

Pity was not a virtue that was recognized here: the noble impulses of the heart were reversed, and the natural instincts perverted.

The dead bodies of the thousands who perished within the stockade, without medical attendance, were dragged forth, without care, and thrown promiscuously into the common field-carts, which, with their carelessly heaped-up burdens, proceeded to the trenches, where the dead heroes were laid in long lines, side by side, two or three hundred in a trench, and then a stick was thrust into the ground, at the head of each man, to indicate the place of burial. For the care observed in the burial of the dead after the carts arrived at the cemetery, and the preserving of the records of the victims, and the place, we are indebted to our own men, who were paroled especially for the purpose.

The only solicitude observed by the rebels during or after interment of their victims, was shown by the civil engineer or surveyor of the town. He thought that so much animal matter should not go entirely to waste, and so commenced to plant grape vines over the mounds of the decomposing dead.

To show the utter want of decency which ruled all things connected with the prison, it is stated by positive eye-witnesses that the same carts that transported the dead, went forth (without being cleansed of their reeking and disgusting filth), to the shambles and the depots for the meat and corn for the living prisoners.

XI.

An eminent statistician has stated that mortality is in direct ratio to the density of population, and that superficial area is as essential to health as cubic space. To the writer’s mind, the overcrowding of the men, and their exposure to the variations of heat and cold, the influence of moisture, and the foul emanations of the infected soil, were sufficient to cause great destruction of human life; and when combined with the deficient dietary, the imagination can hardly conceive of a better field for disease and death than the condition of this swarming pen. All the elements and combinations of physical destructiveness were here in full play. “Losses by battle,” says Sir Charles Napier, “sink to nothing, compared with those inflicted by improperly constructed barracks, and the jamming of soldiers—no other word is sufficiently expressive.” “Diseases,” states the French Inspector Baudens, “slay more men than steel or powder, and it is often easy to prevent them by a few simple hygienic precautions.”

In all campaigns where the care of the soldier is left to the military man,—who is educated for destruction, and has not been taught in the economy of life,—we see in the mortuary and non-efficient lists a disgraceful and culpable array of thoughtless routine, vulgar prejudices, and systems. In our Military Academies the elements and the means of destruction are taught, but not a law unfolded that relates to the principles of health, strength, and life. To alleviate the burden of the military list by sanitary measures is an idea unheard of, or at least unnoticed. “For these works,” writes Chadwick, in his papers on “Economy,” “a special training is needed for our military engineers, whose present peculiar training is only for old works for war, and for those imperfectly,—works for the maintenance of the health of an army being necessary means to the maintenance of its military strength.

“The one-sided character of the common training of our military engineers was displayed in the Crimea, in the proved need of a sanitary commission to give instruction for the selection and the practical drainage of proper sites for healthy encampments, for the choice collection and the proper distribution of wholesome water, for the construction of wholesome huts, and the proper shelter and treatment of horses as well as men.”

XII.

In this enclosure, during a period of twelve months, from five thousand to thirty-six thousand human beings ate, slept, and drank, whilst the piles of filth were constantly accumulating, and the germs of infection silently at work. There was no regularity in the arrangement of the interior. Men collected in groups in the day time, and they lay in rows, like swine, at night.

The stream, which with little ingenuity could have been turned to a blessing for the prison, was allowed to be obstructed by the heaps of grime; and enlarging its area, it assisted in forming the extensive quagmires, which were several acres in extent. So little care was observed for the comfort or the health of the prisoners, that all the washings of the bakery, all the filth of the out-houses of the workmen, were allowed to pass down and mingle with the current of the stream only thirty feet above the point of entrance into the stockade. The traveller can observe to-day that this malicious act of refined cruelty, or fatal error in hygiene, was really perpetrated.

Besides this, the drains of the camp and the town above emptied themselves into this stream which supplied the prison with water.

XIII.

The bakery was located on the west side of the stockade, about equidistant from either line of palisade. It was of rough boards, and but one story in height. Its interior disclosed two rooms, one of which communicated with the two ovens, which were built of common brick. These two ovens—fourteen feet in length by seven feet in width, and with one kneading-trough fifteen feet long, and less than three feet in width—supplied the prisoners with all the bread they obtained; and so far the writer has not learned that there was any other source of supply.

These same ovens, kept red hot, and worked night and day, to the fullest capacity, by the commissary bakers of the United States service, could not have produced but eight thousand rations of white bread, and but nine thousand six hundred rations of corn bread. This is the extreme limit; and regarded by the workmen, who have made the calculations, as almost an impossibility. The ordinary capacity of this establishment was probably about four or five thousand rations of corn bread. This quantity, divided daily among thirty thousand men, would give but a small morsel to each one; and this gives the appearance of truth to the statement, that from two to six ounces of corn bread were furnished as rations to the prisoners.

Ask a survivor of this prison treatment, if perchance you can find one, how he preserved his life, and he will tell you, “By eating the rations of the dying.” Ten thousand men were sick or dying in this enclosure at one time.

After the carts, with their scanty burdens of food, had passed into the prison, and distributed their contents, ten or fifteen thousand of the haggard and starving men might be seen collected together in the central portion of the prison trading with each other. Some of the poor wretches would be offering a handful of peas for a knot of wood no larger than the human fist, in order that they might cook their allowance; others offering, in barter, their remnants of clothing—a cap, or a shoe, or anything they possessed—for a morsel of food.

PLAN OF PRISON BAKERY
ANDERSONVILLE Ga.

The little knots of wood above mentioned had a standard value of fifty cents; yet there were immense forests all around, and within sight on every side.

XIV.

There appears to have been but one kitchen for this vast assemblage, and that strangely situated—far in rear of the outer palisade, away from water-course or spring. The soil to-day does not present traces of a much-travelled road from its doorway to the main gate, distant about one third of a mile by the route taken. Consider the enormous weight of provisions which should have passed over this road when the prison contained more than twenty thousand men. This kitchen was a plain one-story shed, built of rough boards, one hundred feet in length, and less than fifty feet in width. It contained in the interior two medium-sized ranges, and four boilers of fifty gallons’ capacity each. The capacity indicated does not by far equal the cooking apparatus which is required and furnished to the Lincoln and Harewood Hospitals, of Washington, for twelve hundred men.

It is the opinion of the writer, who is familiar with the amount of cooking apparatus required by large hospitals and camps, that this kitchen, with its implements, could not, in the course of twenty-four hours, by constant relays of industrious workmen, have furnished cooked rations to more than five thousand men. There may have been other arrangements for cooking in the open air; but there are no longer any traces of such operations, nor has the writer any evidence that such was the case.