Andersonville, Volume 2

J >> John McElroy >> Andersonville, Volume 2

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

ANDERSONVILLE
A STORY OF REBEL MILITARY PRISONS

FIFTEEN MONTHS A GUEST OF THE SO-CALLED
SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY

A PRIVATE SOLDIERS EXPERIENCE
IN
RICHMOND, ANDERSONVILLE, SAVANNAH, MILLEN
BLACKSHEAR AND FLORENCE

BY JOHN McELROY
Late of Co. L. 16th Ill Cav.
1879

VOLUME 2.

CHAPTER XXIII.

A NEW LOT OF PRISONERS--THE BATTLE OF OOLUSTEE--MEN SACRIFICED TO A
GENERAL'S INCOMPETENCY--A HOODLUM REINFORCEMENT--A QUEER CROWD
--MISTREATMENT OF AN OFFICER OF A COLORED REGIMENT--KILLING THE SERGEANT OF
A NEGRO SQUAD.

So far only old prisoners--those taken at Gettysburg, Chicamauga and Mine
Run--had been brought in. The armies had been very quiet during the
Winter, preparing for the death grapple in the Spring. There had been
nothing done, save a few cavalry raids, such as our own, and Averill's
attempt to gain and break up the Rebel salt works at Wytheville, and
Saltville. Consequently none but a few cavalry prisoners were added to
the number already in the hands of the Rebels.

The first lot of new ones came in about the middle of March. There were
about seven hundred of them, who had been captured at the battle of
Oolustee, Fla., on the 20th of February. About five hundred of them were
white, and belonged to the Seventh Connecticut, the Seventh New
Hampshire, Forty Seventh, Forty-Eighth and One Hundred and Fifteenth New
York, and Sherman's regular battery. The rest were colored, and belonged
to the Eighth United States, and Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts. The story
they told of the battle was one which had many shameful reiterations
during the war. It was the story told whenever Banks, Sturgis, Butler,
or one of a host of similar smaller failures were trusted with commands.
It was a senseless waste of the lives of private soldiers, and the
property of the United States by pretentious blunderers, who, in some
inscrutable manner, had attained to responsible commands. In this
instance, a bungling Brigadier named Seymore had marched his forces
across the State of Florida, to do he hardly knew what, and in the
neighborhood of an enemy of whose numbers, disposition, location, and
intentions he was profoundly ignorant. The Rebels, under General
Finnegan, waited till he had strung his command along through swamps
and cane brakes, scores of miles from his supports, and then fell
unexpectedly upon his advance. The regiment was overpowered, and another
regiment that hurried up to its support, suffered the same fate. The
balance of the regiments were sent in in the same manner--each arriving
on the field just after its predecessor had been thoroughly whipped by
the concentrated force of the Rebels. The men fought gallantly, but the
stupidity of a Commanding General is a thing that the gods themselves
strive against in vain. We suffered a humiliating defeat, with a loss of
two thousand men and a fine rifled battery, which was brought to
Andersonville and placed in position to command the prison.

The majority of the Seventh New Hampshire were an unwelcome addition to
our numbers. They were N'Yaarkers--old time colleagues of those already
in with us--veteran bounty jumpers, that had been drawn to New Hampshire
by the size of the bounty offered there, and had been assigned to fill up
the wasted ranks of the veteran Seventh regiment. They had tried to
desert as soon as they received their bounty, but the Government clung to
them literally with hooks of steel, sending many of them to the regiment
in irons. Thus foiled, they deserted to the Rebels during the retreat
from the battlefield. They were quite an accession to the force of our
N'Yaarkers, and helped much to establish the hoodlum reign which was
shortly inaugurated over the whole prison.

The Forty-Eighth New Yorkers who came in were a set of chaps so odd in
every way as to be a source of never-failing interest. The name of their
regiment was 'L'Enfants Perdu' (the Lost Children), which we anglicized
into "The Lost Ducks." It was believed that every nation in Europe was
represented in their ranks, and it used to be said jocularly, that no two
of them spoke the same language. As near as I could find out they were
all or nearly all South Europeans, Italians, Spaniards; Portuguese,
Levantines, with a predominance of the French element. They wore a
little cap with an upturned brim, and a strap resting on the chin, a coat
with funny little tales about two inches long, and a brass chain across
the breast; and for pantaloons they had a sort of a petticoat reaching to
the knees, and sewed together down the middle. They were just as
singular otherwise as in their looks, speech and uniform. On one
occasion the whole mob of us went over in a mass to their squad to see
them cook and eat a large water snake, which two of them had succeeded in
capturing in the swamps, and carried off to their mess, jabbering in high
glee over their treasure trove. Any of us were ready to eat a piece of
dog, cat, horse or mule, if we could get it, but, it was generally
agreed, as Dawson, of my company expressed it, that "Nobody but one of
them darned queer Lost Ducks would eat a varmint like a water snake."

Major Albert Bogle, of the Eighth United States, (colored) had fallen
into the hands of the rebels by reason of a severe wound in the leg,
which left him helpless upon the field at Oolustee. The Rebels treated
him with studied indignity. They utterly refused to recognize him as an
officer, or even as a man. Instead of being sent to Macon or Columbia,
where the other officers were, he was sent to Andersonville, the same as
an enlisted man. No care was given his wound, no surgeon would examine
it or dress it. He was thrown into a stock car, without a bed or
blanket, and hauled over the rough, jolting road to Andersonville.
Once a Rebel officer rode up and fired several shots at him, as he lay
helpless on the car floor. Fortunately the Rebel's marksmanship was as
bad as his intentions, and none of the shots took effect. He was placed
in a squad near me, and compelled to get up and hobble into line when the
rest were mustered for roll-call. No opportunity to insult, "the nigger
officer," was neglected, and the N'Yaarkers vied with the Rebels in
heaping abuse upon him. He was a fine, intelligent young man, and bore
it all with dignified self-possession, until after a lapse of some weeks
the Rebels changed their policy and took him from the prison to send to
where the other officers were.

The negro soldiers were also treated as badly as possible. The wounded
were turned into the Stockade without having their hurts attended to.
One stalwart, soldierly Sergeant had received a bullet which had forced
its way under the scalp for some distance, and partially imbedded itself
in the skull, where it still remained. He suffered intense agony, and
would pass the whole night walking up and down the street in front of our
tent, moaning distressingly. The bullet could be felt plainly with the
fingers, and we were sure that it would not be a minute's work, with a
sharp knife, to remove it and give the man relief. But we could not
prevail upon the Rebel Surgeons even to see the man. Finally
inflammation set in and he died.

The negros were made into a squad by themselves, and taken out every day
to work around the prison. A white Sergeant was placed over them, who
was the object of the contumely of the guards and other Rebels. One day
as he was standing near the gate, waiting his orders to come out, the
gate guard, without any provocation whatever, dropped his gun until the
muzzle rested against the Sergeant's stomach, and fired, killing him
instantly.

The Sergeantcy was then offered to me, but as I had no accident policy, I
was constrained to decline the honor.

CHAPTER XXIV.

APRIL--LONGING TO GET OUT--THE DEATH RATE--THE PLAGUE OF LICE
--THE SO-CALLED HOSPITAL.

April brought sunny skies and balmy weather. Existence became much more
tolerable. With freedom it would have been enjoyable, even had we been
no better fed, clothed and sheltered. But imprisonment had never seemed
so hard to bear--even in the first few weeks--as now. It was easier to
submit to confinement to a limited area, when cold and rain were aiding
hunger to benumb the faculties and chill the energies than it was now,
when Nature was rousing her slumbering forces to activity, and earth,
and air and sky were filled with stimulus to man to imitate her example.
The yearning to be up and doing something-to turn these golden hours to
good account for self and country--pressed into heart and brain as the
vivifying sap pressed into tree-duct and plant cell, awaking all
vegetation to energetic life.

To be compelled, at such a time, to lie around in vacuous idleness
--to spend days that should be crowded full of action in a monotonous,
objectless routine of hunting lice, gathering at roll-call, and drawing
and cooking our scanty rations, was torturing.

But to many of our number the aspirations for freedom were not, as with
us, the desire for a wider, manlier field of action, so much as an
intense longing to get where care and comforts would arrest their swift
progress to the shadowy hereafter. The cruel rains had sapped away their
stamina, and they could not recover it with the meager and innutritious
diet of coarse meal, and an occasional scrap of salt meat. Quick
consumption, bronchitis, pneumonia, low fever and diarrhea seized upon
these ready victims for their ravages, and bore them off at the rate of
nearly a score a day.

It now became a part of, the day's regular routine to take a walk past
the gates in the morning, inspect and count the dead, and see if any
friends were among them. Clothes having by this time become a very
important consideration with the prisoners, it was the custom of the mess
in which a man died to remove from his person all garments that were of
any account, and so many bodies were carried out nearly naked. The hands
were crossed upon the breast, the big toes tied together with a bit of
string, and a slip of paper containing the man's name, rank, company and
regiment was pinned on the breast of his shirt.

The appearance of the dead was indescribably ghastly. The unclosed eyes
shone with a stony glitter--

An orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high:
But, O, more terrible than that,
Is the curse in a dead man's eye.

The lips and nostrils were distorted with pain and hunger, the sallow,
dirt-grimed skin drawn tensely over the facial bones, and the whole
framed with the long, lank, matted hair and beard. Millions of lice
swarmed over the wasted limbs and ridged ribs. These verminous pests had
become so numerous--owing to our lack of changes of clothing, and of
facilities for boiling what we had--that the most a healthy man could
do was to keep the number feeding upon his person down to a reasonable
limit--say a few tablespoonfuls. When a man became so sick as to be
unable to help himself, the parasites speedily increased into millions,
or, to speak more comprehensively, into pints and quarts. It did not
even seem exaggeration when some one declared that he had seen a dead
man with more than a gallon of lice on him.

There is no doubt that the irritation from the biting of these myriads
materially the days of those who died.

Where a sick man had friends or comrades, of course part of their duty,
in taking care of him, was to "louse" his clothing. One of the most
effectual ways of doing this was to turn the garments wrong side out and
hold the seams as close to the fire as possible, without burning the
cloth. In a short time the lice would swell up and burst open, like
pop-corn. This method was a favorite one for another reason than its
efficacy: it gave one a keener sense of revenge upon his rascally little
tormentors than he could get in any other way.

As the weather grew warmer and the number in the prison increased, the
lice became more unendurable. They even filled the hot sand under our
feet, and voracious troops would climb up on one like streams of ants
swarming up a tree. We began to have a full comprehension of the third
plague with which the Lord visited the Egyptians:

And the Lord said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod,
and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice through all
the land of Egypt.

And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and
smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man and in beast;
all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of
Egypt.

The total number of deaths in April, according to the official report,
was five hundred and seventy-six, or an average of over nineteen a day.
There was an average of five thousand prisoner's in the pen during all
but the last few days of the month, when the number was increased by the
arrival of the captured garrison of Plymouth. This would make the loss
over eleven per cent., and so worse than decimation. At that rate we
should all have died in about eight months. We could have gone through a
sharp campaign lasting those thirty days and not lost so great a
proportion of our forces. The British had about as many men as were in
the Stockade at the battle of New Orleans, yet their loss in killed fell
much short of the deaths in the pen in April.

A makeshift of a hospital was established in the northeastern corner of
the Stockade. A portion of the ground was divided from the rest of the
prison by a railing, a few tent flies were stretched, and in these the
long leaves of the pine were made into apologies for beds of about the
goodness of the straw on which a Northern farmer beds his stock. The
sick taken there were no better off than if they had staid with their
comrades.

What they needed to bring about their recovery was clean clothing,
nutritious food, shelter and freedom from the tortures of the lice.
They obtained none of these. Save a few decoctions of roots, there were
no medicines; the sick were fed the same coarse corn meal that brought
about the malignant dysentery from which they all suffered; they wore and
slept in the same vermin-infested clothes, and there could be but one
result: the official records show that seventy-six per cent. of those
taken to the hospitals died there.

The establishment of the hospital was specially unfortunate for my little
squad. The ground required for it compelled a general reduction of the
space we all occupied. We had to tear down our huts and move. By this
time the materials had become so dry that we could not rebuild with them,
as the pine tufts fell to pieces. This reduced the tent and bedding
material of our party--now numbering five--to a cavalry overcoat and a
blanket. We scooped a hole a foot deep in the sand and stuck our
tent-poles around it. By day we spread our blanket over the poles for a
tent. At night we lay down upon the overcoat and covered ourselves with
the blanket. It required considerable stretching to make it go over
five; the two out side fellows used to get very chilly, and squeeze the
three inside ones until they felt no thicker than a wafer. But it had
to do, and we took turns sleeping on the outside. In the course of a
few weeks three of my chums died and left myself and B. B. Andrews (now
Dr. Andrews, of Astoria, Ill.) sole heirs to and occupants of, the
overcoat and blanket.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE "PLYMOUTH PILGRIMS"--SAD TRANSITION FROM COMFORTABLE BARRACKS TO
ANDERSONVILLE--A CRAZED PENNSYLVANIAN--DEVELOPMENT OF THE BUTLER
BUSINESS.

We awoke one morning, in the last part of April, to find about two
thousand freshly arrived prisoners lying asleep in the main streets
running from the gates. They were attired in stylish new uniforms,
with fancy hats and shoes; the Sergeants and Corporals wore patent
leather or silk chevrons, and each man had a large, well-filled knapsack,
of the kind new recruits usually carried on coming first to the front,
and which the older soldiers spoke of humorously as "bureaus." They were
the snuggest, nattiest lot of soldiers we had ever seen, outside of the
"paper collar" fellows forming the headquarter guard of some General in a
large City. As one of my companions surveyed them, he said:

"Hulloa! I'm blanked if the Johnnies haven't caught a regiment of
Brigadier Generals, somewhere."

By-and-by the "fresh fish," as all new arrivals were termed, began to
wake up, and then we learned that they belonged to a brigade consisting
of the Eighty-Fifth New York, One Hundred and First and One Hundred and
Third Pennsylvania, Sixteenth Connecticut, Twenty-Fourth New York
Battery, two companies of Massachusetts heavy artillery, and a company of
the Twelfth New York Cavalry.

They had been garrisoning Plymouth, N. C., an important seaport on the
Roanoke River. Three small gunboats assisted them in their duty. The
Rebels constructed a powerful iron clad called the "Albemarle," at a
point further up the Roanoke, and on the afternoon of the 17th, with her
and three brigades of infantry, made an attack upon the post.
The "Albemarle" ran past the forts unharmed, sank one of the gunboats,
and drove the others away. She then turned her attention to the
garrison, which she took in the rear, while the infantry attacked in
front. Our men held out until the 20th, when they capitulated.
They were allowed to retain their personal effects, of all kinds,
and, as is the case with all men in garrison, these were considerable.

The One Hundred and First and One Hundred and Third Pennsylvania and
Eighty-Fifth New York had just "veteranized," and received their first
instalment of veteran bounty. Had they not been attacked they would have
sailed for home in a day or two, on their veteran furlough, and this
accounted for their fine raiment. They were made up of boys from good
New York and Pennsylvania families, and were, as a rule, intelligent and
fairly educated.

Their horror at the appearance of their place of incarceration was beyond
expression. At one moment they could not comprehend that we dirty and
haggard tatterdemalions had once been clean, self-respecting, well-fed
soldiers like themselves; at the next they would affirm that they knew
they could not stand it a month, in here we had then endured it from four
to nine months. They took it, in every way, the hardest of any prisoners
that came in, except some of the 'Hundred-Days' men, who were brought in
in August, from the Valley of Virginia. They had served nearly all their
time in various garrisons along the seacoast--from Fortress Monroe to
Beaufort--where they had had comparatively little of the actual hardships
of soldiering in the field. They had nearly always had comfortable
quarters, an abundance of food, few hard marches or other severe service.
Consequently they were not so well hardened for Andersonville as the
majority who came in. In other respects they were better prepared,
as they had an abundance of clothing, blankets and cooking utensils,
and each man had some of his veteran bounty still in possession.

It was painful to see how rapidly many of them sank under the miseries of
the situation. They gave up the moment the gates were closed upon them,
and began pining away. We older prisoners buoyed ourselves up
continually with hopes of escape or exchange. We dug tunnels with the
persistence of beavers, and we watched every possible opportunity to get
outside the accursed walls of the pen. But we could not enlist the
interest of these discouraged ones in any of our schemes, or talk.
They resigned themselves to Death, and waited despondingly till he came.

A middle-aged One Hundred and First Pennsylvanian, who had taken up his
quarters near me, was an object of peculiar interest. Reasonably
intelligent and fairly read, I presume that he was a respectable mechanic
before entering the Army. He was evidently a very domestic man, whose
whole happiness centered in his family.

When he first came in he was thoroughly dazed by the greatness of his
misfortune. He would sit for hours with his face in his hands and his
elbows on his knees, gazing out upon the mass of men and huts, with
vacant, lack-luster eyes. We could not interest him in anything.
We tried to show him how to fix his blanket up to give him some shelter,
but he went at the work in a disheartened way, and finally smiled feebly
and stopped. He had some letters from his family and a melaineotype of a
plain-faced woman--his wife--and her children, and spent much time in
looking at them. At first he ate his rations when he drew them, but
finally began to reject, them. In a few days he was delirious with
hunger and homesick ness. He would sit on the sand for hours imagining
that he was at his family table, dispensing his frugal hospitalities to
his wife and children.

Making a motion, as if presenting a dish, he would say:

"Janie, have another biscuit, do!"

Or,

"Eddie, son, won't you have another piece of this nice steak?"

Or,

"Maggie, have some more potatos," and so on, through a whole family of
six, or more. It was a relief to us when he died in about a month after
he came in.

As stated above, the Plymouth men brought in a large amount of money
--variously estimated at from ten thousand to one hundred thousand dollars.
The presence of this quantity of circulating medium immediately started a
lively commerce. All sorts of devices were resorted to by the other
prisoners to get a little of this wealth. Rude chuck-a-luck boards were
constructed out of such material as was attainable, and put in operation.
Dice and cards were brought out by those skilled in such matters.
As those of us already in the Stockade occupied all the ground, there was
no disposition on the part of many to surrender a portion of their space
without exacting a pecuniary compensation. Messes having ground in a
good location would frequently demand and get ten dollars for permission
for two or three to quarter with them. Then there was a great demand for
poles to stretch blankets over to make tents; the Rebels, with their
usual stupid cruelty, would not supply these, nor allow the prisoners to
go out and get them themselves. Many of the older prisoners had poles to
spare which they were saying up for fuel. They sold these to the
Plymouth folks at the rate of ten dollars for three--enough to put up a
blanket.

The most considerable trading was done through the gates. The Rebel
guards were found quite as keen to barter as they had been in Richmond.
Though the laws against their dealing in the money of the enemy were
still as stringent as ever, their thirst for greenbacks was not abated
one whit, and they were ready to sell anything they had for the coveted
currency. The rate of exchange was seven or eight dollars in Confederate
money for one dollar in greenbacks. Wood, tobacco, meat, flour, beans,
molasses, onions and a villainous kind of whisky made from sorghum, were
the staple articles of trade. A whole race of little traffickers in
these articles sprang up, and finally Selden, the Rebel Quartermaster,
established a sutler shop in the center of the North Side, which he put
in charge of Ira Beverly, of the One Hundredth Ohio, and Charlie
Huckleby, of the Eighth Tennessee. It was a fine illustration of the
development of the commercial instinct in some men. No more unlikely
place for making money could be imagined, yet starting in without a cent,
they contrived to turn and twist and trade, until they had transferred to
their pockets a portion of the funds which were in some one else's.
The Rebels, of course, got nine out of every ten dollars there was in the
prison, but these middle men contrived to have a little of it stick to
their fingers.

It was only the very few who were able to do this. Nine hundred and
ninety-nine out of every thousand were, like myself, either wholly
destitute of money and unable to get it from anybody else, or they paid
out what money they had to the middlemen, in exorbitant prices for
articles of food.

The N'Yaarkers had still another method for getting food, money, blankets
and clothing. They formed little bands called "Raiders," under the
leadership of a chief villain. One of these bands would select as their
victim a man who had good blankets, clothes, a watch, or greenbacks.
Frequently he would be one of the little traders, with a sack of beans,
a piece of meat, or something of that kind. Pouncing upon him at night
they would snatch away his possessions, knock down his friends who came
to his assistance, and scurry away into the darkness.

CHAPTER XXVI.

LONGINGS FOR GOD'S COUNTRY--CONSIDERATIONS OF THE METHODS OF GETTING
THERE--EXCHANGE AND ESCAPE--DIGGING TUNNELS, AND THE DIFFICULTIES
CONNECTED THEREWITH--PUNISHMENT OF A TRAITOR.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11