Andersonville, Volume 2

J >> John McElroy >> Andersonville, Volume 2

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And laid his body at the South Gate, beside some scores of others that
were awaiting the arrival of the six-mule wagon that hauled them to the
Potter's Field, which was to be their last resting-place.

John Emerson and John Stiggall, of my company, were two Norwegian boys,
and fine specimens of their race--intelligent, faithful, and always ready
for duty. They had an affection for each other that reminded one of the
stories told of the sworn attachment and the unfailing devotion that were
common between two Gothic warrior youths. Coming into Andersonville some
little time after the rest of us, they found all the desirable ground
taken up, and they established their quarters at the base of the hill,
near the Swamp. There they dug a little hole to lie in, and put in a
layer of pine leaves. Between them they had an overcoat and a blanket.
At night they lay upon the coat and covered themselves with the blanket.
By day the blanket served as a tent. The hardships and annoyances that
we endured made everybody else cross and irritable. At times it seemed
impossible to say or listen to pleasant words, and nobody was ever
allowed to go any length of time spoiling for a fight. He could usually
be accommodated upon the spot to any extent he desired, by simply making
his wishes known. Even the best of chums would have sharp quarrels and
brisk fights, and this disposition increased as disease made greater
inroads upon them. I saw in one instance two brothers-both of whom died
the next day of scurvy--and who were so helpless as to be unable to rise,
pull themselves up on their knees by clenching the poles of their tents
--in order to strike each other with clubs, and they kept striking until
the bystanders interfered and took their weapons away from them.

But Stiggall and Emerson never quarreled with each other. Their
tenderness and affection were remarkable to witness. They began to go
the way that so many were going; diarrhea and scurvy set in; they wasted
away till their muscles and tissues almost disappeared, leaving the skin
lying fiat upon the bones; but their principal solicitude was for each
other, and each seemed actually jealous of any person else doing anything
for the other. I met Emerson one day, with one leg drawn clear out of
shape, and rendered almost useless by the scurvy. He was very weak, but
was hobbling down towards the Creek with a bucket made from a boot leg.
I said:

"Johnny, just give me your bucket. I'll fill it for you, and bring it up
to your tent."

"No; much obliged, M ----" he wheezed out; "my pardner wants a cool
drink, and I guess I'd better get it for him."

Stiggall died in June. He was one of the first victims of scurvy, which,
in the succeeding few weeks, carried off so many. All of us who had read
sea-stories had read much of this disease and its horrors, but we had
little conception of the dreadful reality. It usually manifested itself
first in the mouth. The breath became unbearably fetid; the gums swelled
until they protruded, livid and disgusting, beyond the lips. The teeth
became so loose that they frequently fell out, and the sufferer would
pick them up and set them back in their sockets. In attempting to bite
the hard corn bread furnished by the bakery the teeth often stuck fast
and were pulled out. The gums had a fashion of breaking away, in large
chunks, which would be swallowed or spit out. All the time one was
eating his mouth would be filled with blood, fragments of gums and
loosened teeth.

Frightful, malignant ulcers appeared in other parts of the body; the
ever-present maggot flies laid eggs in these, and soon worms swarmed
therein. The sufferer looked and felt as if, though he yet lived and
moved, his body was anticipating the rotting it would undergo a little
later in the grave.

The last change was ushered in by the lower parts of the legs swelling.
When this appeared, we considered the man doomed. We all had scurvy,
more or less, but as long as it kept out of our legs we were hopeful.
First, the ankle joints swelled, then the foot became useless. The
swelling increased until the knees became stiff, and the skin from these
down was distended until it looked pale, colorless and transparent as a
tightly blown bladder. The leg was so much larger at the bottom than at
the thigh, that the sufferers used to make grim jokes about being modeled
like a churn, "with the biggest end down." The man then became utterly
helpless and usually died in a short time.

The official report puts down the number of deaths from scurvy at three
thousand five hundred and seventy-four, but Dr. Jones, the Rebel surgeon,
reported to the Rebel Government his belief that nine-tenths of the great
mortality of the prison was due, either directly or indirectly, to this
cause.

The only effort made by the Rebel doctors to check its ravages was
occasionally to give a handful of sumach berries to some particularly bad
case.

When Stiggall died we thought Emerson would certainly follow him in a day
or two, but, to our surprise, he lingered along until August before
dying.

CHAPTER XXXII.

"OLE BOO," AND "OLE SOL, THE HAYMAKER"--A FETID, BURNING DESERT--NOISOME
WATER, AND THE EFFECTS OF DRINKING IT--STEALING SOFT SOAP.

The gradually lengthening Summer days were insufferably long and
wearisome. Each was hotter, longer and more tedious than its
predecessors. In my company was a none-too-bright fellow, named Dawson.
During the chilly rains or the nipping, winds of our first days in
prison, Dawson would, as he rose in, the morning, survey the forbidding
skies with lack-luster eyes and remark, oracularly:

"Well, Ole Boo gits us agin, to-day."

He was so unvarying in this salutation to the morn that his designation
of disagreeable weather as "Ole Boo" became generally adopted by us.
When the hot weather came on, Dawson's remark, upon rising and seeing
excellent prospects for a scorcher, changed to: "Well, Ole Sol, the
Haymaker, is going to git in his work on us agin to-day."

As long as he lived and was able to talk, this was Dawson's invariable
observation at the break of day.

He was quite right. The Ole Haymaker would do some famous work before he
descended in the West, sending his level rays through the wide
interstices between the somber pines.

By nine o'clock in the morning his beams would begin to fairly singe
everything in the crowded pen. The hot sand would glow as one sees it in
the center of the unshaded highway some scorching noon in August. The
high walls of the prison prevented the circulation inside of any breeze
that might be in motion, while the foul stench rising from the putrid
Swamp and the rotting ground seemed to reach the skies.

One can readily comprehend the horrors of death on the burning sands of
a desert. But the desert sand is at least clean; there is nothing worse
about it than heat and intense dryness. It is not, as that was at
Andersonville, poisoned with the excretions of thousands of sick and
dying men, filled with disgusting vermin, and loading the air with the
germs of death. The difference is as that between a brick-kiln and a
sewer. Should the fates ever decide that I shall be flung out upon sands
to perish, I beg that the hottest place in the Sahara may be selected,
rather than such a spot as the interior of the Andersonville Stockade.

It may be said that we had an abundance of water, which made a decided
improvement on a desert. Doubtless--had that water been pure. But every
mouthful of it was a blood poison, and helped promote disease and death.
Even before reaching the Stockade it was so polluted by the drainage of
the Rebel camps as to be utterly unfit for human use. In our part of the
prison we sank several wells--some as deep as forty feet--to procure
water. We had no other tools for this than our ever-faithful half
canteens, and nothing wherewith to wall the wells. But a firm clay was
reached a few feet below the surface, which afforded tolerable strong
sides for the lower part, ana furnished material to make adobe bricks for
curbs to keep out the sand of the upper part. The sides were continually
giving away, however, and fellows were perpetually falling down the
holes, to the great damage of their legs and arms. The water, which was
drawn up in little cans, or boot leg buckets, by strings made of strips
of cloth, was much better than that of the creek, but was still far from
pure, as it contained the seepage from the filthy ground.

The intense heat led men to drink great quantities of water, and this
superinduced malignant dropsical complaints, which, next to diarrhea,
scurvy and gangrene, were the ailments most active in carrying men off.
Those affected in this way swelled up frightfully from day to day. Their
clothes speedily became too small for them, and were ripped off, leaving
them entirely naked, and they suffered intensely until death at last came
to their relief. Among those of my squad who died in this way, was a
young man named Baxter, of the Fifth Indiana Cavalry, taken at
Chicamauga. He was very fine looking--tall, slender, with regular
features and intensely black hair and eyes; he sang nicely, and was
generally liked. A more pitiable object than he, when last I saw him,
just before his death, can not be imagined. His body had swollen until
it seemed marvelous that the human skin could bear so much distention
without disruption, All the old look of bright intelligence had been.
driven from his face by the distortion of his features. His swarthy hair
and beard, grown long and ragged, had that peculiar repulsive look which
the black hair of the sick is prone to assume.

I attributed much of my freedom from the diseases to which others
succumbed to abstention from water drinking. Long before I entered the
army, I had constructed a theory--on premises that were doubtless as
insufficient as those that boyish theories are usually based upon--that
drinking water was a habit, and a pernicious one, which sapped away the
energy. I took some trouble to curb my appetite for water, and soon
found that I got along very comfortably without drinking anything beyond
that which was contained in my food. I followed this up after entering
the army, drinking nothing at any time but a little coffee, and finding
no need, even on the dustiest marches, for anything more. I do not
presume that in a year I drank a quart of cold water. Experience seemed
to confirm my views, for I noticed that the first to sink under a
fatigue, or to yield to sickness, were those who were always on the
lookout for drinking water, springing from their horses and struggling
around every well or spring on the line of march for an opportunity to
fill their canteens.

I made liberal use of the Creek for bathing purposes, however, visiting
it four or five times a day during the hot days, to wash myself all
over. This did not cool one off much, for the shallow stream was nearly
as hot as the sand, but it seemed to do some good, and it helped pass
away the tedious hours. The stream was nearly all the time filled as
full of bathers as they could stand, and the water could do little
towards cleansing so many. The occasional rain storms that swept across
the prison were welcomed, not only because they cooled the air
temporarily, but because they gave us a shower-bath. As they came up,
nearly every one stripped naked and got out where he could enjoy the full
benefit of the falling water. Fancy, if possible, the spectacle of
twenty-five thousand or thirty thousand men without a stitch of clothing
upon them. The like has not been seen, I imagine, since the naked
followers of Boadicea gathered in force to do battle to the Roman
invaders.

It was impossible to get really clean. Our bodies seemed covered with a
varnish-like, gummy matter that defied removal by water alone.
I imagined that it came from the rosin or turpentine, arising from the
little pitch pine fires over which we hovered when cooking our rations.
It would yield to nothing except strong soap-and soap, as I have before
stated--was nearly as scarce in the Southern Confederacy as salt. We in
prison saw even less of it, or rather, none at all. The scarcity of it,
and our desire for it, recalls a bit of personal experience.

I had steadfastly refused all offers of positions outside the prison on
parole, as, like the great majority of the prisoners, my hatred of the
Rebels grew more bitter, day by day; I felt as if I would rather die than
accept the smallest favor at their hands, and I shared the common
contempt for those who did. But, when the movement for a grand attack on
the Stockade--mentioned in a previous chapter--was apparently rapidly
coming to a head, I was offered a temporary detail outside to, assist in
making up some rolls. I resolved to accept; first because I thought I
might get some information that would be of use in our enterprise; and,
next, because I foresaw that the rush through the gaps in the Stockade
would be bloody business, and by going out in advance I would avoid that
much of the danger, and still be able to give effective assistance.

I was taken up to Wirz's office. He was writing at a desk at one end of
a large room when the Sergeant brought me in. He turned around, told the
Sergeant to leave me, and ordered me to sit down upon a box at the other
end of the room.

Turning his back and resuming his writing, in a few minutes he had
forgotten me. I sat quietly, taking in the details for a half-hour, and
then, having exhausted everything else in the room, I began wondering
what was in the box I was sitting upon. The lid was loose; I hitched it
forward a little without attracting Wirz's attention, and slipped my left
hand down of a voyage of discovery. It seemed very likely that there was
something there that a loyal Yankee deserved better than a Rebel.
I found that it was a fine article of soft soap. A handful was scooped
up and speedily shoved into my left pantaloon pocket. Expecting every
instant that Wirz would turn around and order me to come to the desk to
show my handwriting, hastily and furtively wiped my hand on the back of
my shirt and watched Wirz with as innocent an expression as a school boy
assumes when he has just flipped a chewed paper wad across the room.
Wirz was still engrossed in his writing, and did not look around. I was
emboldened to reach down for another handful. This was also successfully
transferred, the hand wiped off on the back of the shirt, and the face
wore its expression of infantile ingenuousness. Still Wirz did not look
up. I kept dipping up handful after handful, until I had gotten about a
quart in the left hand pocket. After each handful I rubbed my hand off
on the back of my shirt and waited an instant for a summons to the desk.
Then the process was repeated with the other hand, and a quart of the
saponaceous mush was packed in the right hand pocket.

Shortly after Wirz rose and ordered a guard to take me away and keep me,
until he decided what to do with me. The day was intensely hot, and soon
the soap in my pockets and on the back of my shirt began burning like
double strength Spanish fly blisters. There was nothing to do but grin
and bear it. I set my teeth, squatted down under the shade of the
parapet of the fort, and stood it silently and sullenly. For the first
time in my life I thoroughly appreciated the story of the Spartan boy,
who stole the fox and suffered the animal to tear his bowels out rather
than give a sign which would lead to the exposure of his theft.

Between four and five o'clock-after I had endured the thing for five or
six hours, a guard came with orders from Wirz that I should be returned
to the Stockade. Upon hastily removing my clothes, after coming inside,
I found I had a blister on each thigh, and one down my back, that would
have delighted an old practitioner of the heroic school. But I also had
a half gallon of excellent soft soap. My chums and I took a magnificent
wash, and gave our clothes the same, and we still had soap enough left to
barter for some onions that we had long coveted, and which tasted as
sweet to us as manna to the Israelites.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

"POUR PASSER LE TEMPS"--A SET OF CHESSMEN PROCURED UNDER DIFFICULTIES
--RELIGIOUS SERVICES--THE DEVOTED PRIEST--WAR SONG.

The time moved with leaden feet. Do the best we could, there were very
many tiresome hours for which no occupation whatever could be found.
All that was necessary to be done during the day--attending roll call,
drawing and cooking rations, killing lice and washing--could be disposed
of in an hour's time, and we were left with fifteen or sixteen waking
hours, for which there was absolutely no employment. Very many tried to
escape both the heat and ennui by sleeping as much as possible through
the day, but I noticed that those who did this soon died, and
consequently I did not do it. Card playing had sufficed to pass away the
hours at first, but our cards soon wore out, and deprived us of this
resource. My chum, Andrews, and I constructed a set of chessmen with an
infinite deal of trouble. We found a soft, white root in the swamp which
answered our purpose. A boy near us had a tolerably sharp pocket-knife,
for the use of which a couple of hours each day, we gave a few spoonfuls
of meal. The knife was the only one among a large number of prisoners,
as the Rebel guards had an affection for that style of cutlery, which led
them to search incoming prisoners, very closely. The fortunate owner of
this derived quite a little income of meal by shrewdly loaning it to his
knifeless comrades. The shapes that we made for pieces and pawns were
necessarily very rude, but they were sufficiently distinct for
identification. We blackened one set with pitch pine soot, found a piece
of plank that would answer for a board and purchased it from its
possessor for part of a ration of meal, and so were fitted out with what
served until our release to distract our attention from much of the
surrounding misery.

Every one else procured such amusement as they could. Newcomers, who
still had money and cards, gambled as long as their means lasted. Those
who had books read them until the leaves fell apart. Those who had paper
and pen and ink tried to write descriptions and keep journals, but this
was usually given up after being in prison a few weeks. I was fortunate
enough to know a boy who had brought a copy of "Gray's Anatomy" into
prison with him. I was not specially interested in the subject, but it
was Hobson's choice; I could read anatomy or nothing, and so I tackled it
with such good will that before my friend became sick and was taken
outside, and his book with him, I had obtained a very fair knowledge of
the rudiments of physiology.

There was a little band of devoted Christian workers, among whom were
Orderly Sergeant Thomas J. Sheppard, Ninety-Seventh O. Y. L, now a
leading Baptist minister in Eastern Ohio; Boston Corbett, who afterward
slew John Wilkes Booth, and Frank Smith, now at the head of the Railroad
Bethel work at Toledo. They were indefatigable in trying to evangelize
the prison. A few of them would take their station in some part of the
Stockade (a different one every time), and begin singing some old
familiar hymn like:

"Come, Thou fount of every blessing,"

and in a few minutes they would have an attentive audience of as many
thousand as could get within hearing. The singing would be followed by
regular services, during which Sheppard, Smith, Corbett, and some others
would make short, spirited, practical addresses, which no doubt did much
good to all who heard them, though the grains of leaven were entirely too
small to leaven such an immense measure of meal. They conducted several
funerals, as nearly like the way it was done at home as possible. Their
ministrations were not confined to mere lip service, but they labored
assiduously in caring for the sick, and made many a poor fellow's way to
the grave much smoother for him.

This was about all the religious services that we were favored with.
The Rebel preachers did not make that effort to save our misguided souls
which one would have imagined they would having us where we could not
choose but hear they might have taken advantage of our situation to rake
us fore and aft with their theological artillery. They only attempted it
in one instance. While in Richmond a preacher came into our room and
announced in an authoritative way that he would address us on religious
subjects. We uncovered respectfully, and gathered around him. He was a
loud-tongued, brawling Boanerges, who addressed the Lord as if drilling a
brigade.

He spoke but a few moments before making apparent his belief that the
worst of crimes was that of being a Yankee, and that a man must not only
be saved through Christ's blood, but also serve in the Rebel army before
he could attain to heaven.

Of course we raised such a yell of derision that the sermon was brought
to an abrupt conclusion.

The only minister who came into the Stockade was a Catholic priest,
middle-aged, tall, slender, and unmistakably devout. He was unwearied in
his attention to the sick, and the whole day could be seen moving around
through the prison, attending to those who needed spiritual consolation.
It was interesting to see him administer the extreme unction to a dying
man. Placing a long purple scarf about his own neck and a small brazen
crucifix in the hands of the dying one, he would kneel by the latter's
side and anoint him upon the eyes, ears, nostrils; lips, hands, feet and
breast, with sacred oil; from a little brass vessel, repeating the while,
in an impressive voice, the solemn offices of the Church.

His unwearying devotion gained the admiration of all, no matter how
little inclined one might be to view priestliness generally with favor.
He was evidently of such stuff as Christian heros have ever been made of,
and would have faced stake and fagot, at the call of duty, with
unquailing eye. His name was Father Hamilton, and he was stationed at
Macon. The world should know more of a man whose services were so
creditable to humanity and his Church:

The good father had the wisdom of the serpent, with the harmlessness of
the dove. Though full of commiseration for the unhappy lot of the
prisoners, nothing could betray him into the slightest expression of
opinion regarding the war or those who were the authors of all this
misery. In our impatience at our treatment, and hunger for news, we
forgot his sacerdotal character, and importuned him for tidings of the
exchange. His invariable reply was that he lived apart from these things
and kept himself ignorant of them.

"But, father," said I one day, with an impatience that I could not wholly
repress, "you must certainly hear or read something of this, while you
are outside among the Rebel officers." Like many other people, I
supposed that the whole world was excited over that in which I felt a
deep interest.

"No, my son," replied he, in his usual calm, measured tones. "I go not
among them, nor do I hear anything from them. When I leave the prison in
the evening, full of sorrow at what I have seen here, I find that the
best use I can make of my time is in studying the Word of God, and
especially the Psalms of David."

We were not any longer good company for each other. We had heard over
and over again all each other's stories and jokes, and each knew as much
about the other's previous history as we chose to communicate. The story
of every individual's past life, relations, friends, regiment, and
soldier experience had been told again and again, until the repetition
was wearisome. The cool nights following the hot days were favorable to
little gossiping seances like the yarn-spinning watches of sailors on
pleasant nights. Our squad, though its stock of stories was worn
threadbare, was fortunate enough to have a sweet singer in Israel "Nosey"
Payne--of whose tunefulness we never tired. He had a large repertoire of
patriotic songs, which he sang with feeling and correctness, and which
helped much to make the calm Summer nights pass agreeably. Among the
best of these was "Brave Boys are They," which I always thought was the
finest ballad, both in poetry and music, produced by the War.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

MAGGOTS, LICE AND RAIDERS--PRACTICES OF THESE HUMAN VERMIN--PLUNDERING
THE SICK AND DYING--NIGHT ATTACKS, AND BATTLES BY DAY--HARD TIMES FOR THE
SMALL TRADERS.

With each long, hot Summer hour the lice, the maggot-flies and the
N'Yaarkers increased in numbers and venomous activity. They were
ever-present annoyances and troubles; no time was free from them.
The lice worried us by day and tormented us by night; the maggot-flies
fouled our food, and laid in sores and wounds larvae that speedily
became masses of wriggling worms. The N'Yaarkers were human vermin
that preyed upon and harried us unceasingly.

They formed themselves into bands numbering from five to twenty-five,
each led by a bold, unscrupulous, energetic scoundrel. We now called
them "Raiders," and the most prominent and best known of the bands were
called by the names of their ruffian leaders, as "Mosby's Raiders,"
"Curtis's Raiders," "Delaney's Raiders," "Sarsfield's Raiders,"
"Collins's Raiders," etc.

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