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AS TOLD BY EX-LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR BENJAMIN F. GUE [Published in the Iowa State Register] Early in 1864 when the Union armies under Grant and Sherman were steadily fighting their way into the heart of the Confederacy, the rebel government ordered the removal of all Union prisoners farther south, and southern Georgia seeming to be most remote from the Federal armies, and most secure from invasion, was chosen as the safest place in which to confine the Union Prisoners. No more desolate, out of the way spot could .... at the time have been found on the line of railroad than the dense forests in the midst of swamps that surrounded Andersonville station. Slaves were pressed into the Confederate service to cut down the trees, hew the logs and erect the stockade walls. The inside row of palisades was eighteen feet high above the surface, the timbers of which it was made were firmly planted in a trench five feet deep. Within this inclosure was the dead line, seventeen feet inside of the stockade. It was made by driving posts into the ground projecting about four feet, and upon the top of these were nailed 2 x 4 scantling. Any prisoner stepping or reaching over this line was shot dead by the guards who were stationed in sentry boxes erected thirty yards apart on the inside palisades. This left less than seventeen acres of ground including a wide swamp stretching back on either side of Sweetwater Creek, which runs through the stockade from west to east. On the outside of the main inclosure was a second wall of palisades one hundred feet distant from the first, or inner row. Still beyond and outside of that, seventy feet further, was the outer wall of the stockade, twelve feet in height. These lines were erected for offense and defense. If at any time the prisoners should attack and carry the first line, the second and third would be almost as formidable. The outer line was intended for defense from attacks by the Union army, and would shelter the guards--3,000 in number. On the four angles of the stockade were erected the most formidable earthwork forts that I have seen anywhere in the south. The height from the ditches to the summit, almost perpendicular, must be fully eighteen feet. On these earthworks cannon commanded every part of the stockade, inside and out, so that an attack from either the prisoners or their rescuers would have met with a terrible artillery fire. A line of rifle pits was dug outside of the stockade walls for the use of infantry. The stockade was originally intended to hold 10,000 prisoners, and then enclosed seventeen acres. The creek, with its wide, swampy margin, and the dead line, cut out at least seven acres, leaving not more than ten upon which men could live. On this ground they were crowded until it finally became packed with human begins like a stockyard filled with cattle. When the first five hundred prisoners were incarcerated inside of the stockade walls in February, 1864, they found some poles that had been left, and with these and briars, vines and tufts of pine leaves, they managed to erect rude huts to shelter themselves from the sun, dew and rain. But as more unfortunates were added week by week, not a stick was left for the new arrivals. Early in March the spring rains began. An inmate of the pen says: "For dreary hours that lengthened into weary days and nights and these again into never ending weeks, the driving, drenching floods of rain poured down upon the sodden earth, searching the very marrow of the 5,000 houseless, unsheltered men against whose chilled bodies it beat with pitiless monotony, and soaked the sand banks upon which we lay until they were like huge sponges filled with ice water. An hour of sunshine would be followed by a day of steady pelting rain drops. The condition of most of the soldiers who had no shelter was pitiable beyond description. They sat or lay on the hillsides all day and night and took the pelting of the cold rain with such gloomy composure as soldiers learn to muster. One can brace up against the cold winds, but the pelting of an all day and all night chilling rain seems to penetrate to the very marrow of our bones." No wood was furnished the famishing prisoners by the brutal officials, although there were dense forests in every direction around them, and with it they could have provided fires and huts for shelter............. The lives of the thousands who perished from disease brought on largely by exposure to rain, cold and heat, could have been saved if their brutal prison-keepers had simply permitted the prisoners to go out on parole and bring in wood. The number of prisoners in March was 4,603, of whom 283 died, chiefly from exposure. During the month of April 576 more died, an average of 19 a day. It became a part of the regular routine now to take a walk around past the gates and count the dead of the night before. The clothes of the dead were carefully preserved to cover the living, who were nearly naked. The hands of the dead were crossed upon their breasts, and a slip of paper containing the name, company and regiment pinned to the corpse. The lips and nostrils of the dead were distorted with pain and hunger. Millions of lice swarmed over the wasted dirt-begrimed bodies. The suffering of the sick from these ravenous vermin was pitiable beyond expression. The hot sand in May swarmed with lice that crawled up on the crowded prisoners like troops of ants swarming upon trees. A hospital (in name) was set apart for the sick in the northeast corner of the stockade, ......... there was no change of filthy clothing, no nutritious food, no nursing or suitable remedies for the sick and dying. Here, without shelter of any kind, the poor sick and dying boys and men crouched on the hot sand, with a tropical sun beating down on their blistering heads and bodies, with the mercury often ranging above 110 in the shade. Here, without dishes of any kind to hold their scant supply of unbolted corncake and salt pork, these helpless prisoners were packed day and night with no water but that from the creek which had first received into its death current the filth from a camp of 3,000 Confederate guards stationed higher up on the south bank, near the town. Disease in its most hideous forms preyed upon the crowded thousands, and the stench arising from the accumulating filth, festering in the burning sun, spread pestilence among them on every side. In their grim despair, those who were able, dug holes in the ground and burrowed in them like wild beasts. Others, with a few tin cups and pieces of tin plates, bought of the guards, dug wells in a vain search for pure water. The dirt was drawn up in old boots, and wells were sunk in this manner to the depth of from thirty to seventy feet, but little water was found however, after this toilsome work was done. At this time the official records show that seventy-six per cent of those carried to the hospital died. By the end of May there were 18,454 prisoners in the stockade. The 18,454 men were cooped up on less than thirteen acres of dry ground. The weather grew hotter, and the swamp that ran through the pen became horrible beyond description. In its slimy ooze, which was the drainage of a population larger than that of Cedar Rapids, swarmed billions of maggots. The stench from this sink of corruption was stifling and deadly. All of the water that the prisoners had to use, for drinking or cooking (except a little obtained by those who had dug wells) was taken from this creek which flowed through the low, swampy valley that was the only drainage of the two camps of guards and prisoners, numbering more than 20,000 persons. In their desperation the famishing prisoners would gather at the dead line where it crossed the creek as it entered the stockade on the west side, and reach up stream to get water before it flowed into the filthy swamp below. John McElroy, a private of Co. L, of the Sixteenth Illinois cavalry, who has written a history Andersonville's horrors as he saw and experienced them, says of these days: "I hazard nothing in saying, that for weeks and weeks, at least one man a day was shot here by the murderous guards while reaching near the dead line for purer water. A gun would crack--looking up we would see still smoking the muzzle of the musket in the hands of the guard, while a piercing shriek from the victim floundering in the creek in the agony of death, told the story of his fate." The number of deaths in May had increased to 708. As the summer advanced the heat became intolerable .......... Yet here were cooped up like hogs in a pen, more than 18,000 northern soldiers whose only crime was loyalty to their government, and a patriaotic desire to save it from destruction by armed foes. These men were from the best families in our country, the fortunes of war had made them the prisoners of men who claimed to be civilized, but at whose hands helpless captives were subjected to fiendish, malignant tortures........ The food furnished the prisoners for each man a day was a cake of cornbread half the size of a brick--made of unbolted meal, and part of the time a small slice of salt pork; once in a while a few beans were dealt out, but no vegetables, salt, vinegar or any other kind of green food except on rare occasions. The hulls of the meal being coarse and harsh, brought on every species of bowel complaints, which with scurvy and hospital gangrene, carried off in less than seven months 9, 479 of the prisoners to their graves, or more men than were lost by death from all causes by the British army during the Crimean war. ......General John H. Winders, who was the willing tool of the rebel government in its barbarous policy of disabling by disease and murdering by starvation its helpless captives, was .... from Baltimore, Maryland, who had secured the appointment of commissary general of prisoners through the influence of his friend, Jeff Davis. His pedigree well fitted him for his malignant, cruel work. He was the .... son of .... General W. H. Winder, who fled with his militia from the battlefield at Bladensburg ...... and left defenseless the national capital to be captured and burned by the British army in 1814. It was the son ........, that in August, 1864, boasted that "he could point to more killed and disabled Yankees at Andersonville, than General Lee had destroyed with twenty of his best regiments in the field." For, says he, "look at our 3,081 new graves made in one month over in the cemetery beyond the stockade. Every one has a dead Yankee soldier in it." Henri Wirz, a Swiss doctor, was his .....subordinate who had direct charge of the stockade. He had an educated and refined wife, and three daughters, aged at that time respectively thirteen, fifteen and eighteen years. They lived in the house now occupied by Dr. Wm. B. Harrison, in which I am staying, and the room in which I am now writing was Wirz' office for several months. Here, within one hundred and sixty rods of the most cruel tortures--prolonged though ten months--ever inflicted by human beings upon their fellow men, this heartless foreigner lived with his wife and daughters, utterly indifferent to the indescribable horrors daily loading the air within their hearing with cries, groans and supplications of dying soldiers that made a hell on earth more hideous than Milton ever described, or even Dante pictured. Dr. Joseph Jones, a distinguished Confederate surgeon of Augusta, Georgia, made a visit to the stockade in the month of August, and in his report gives the following statements: "In June there were 22,291, in July 29,030 and in August 32,899 prisoners confined in the stockade. No shade tree was left in the entire inclosure. but many of the Federal prisoners had ingeniously constructed huts and caves to shelter themselves from the rain, sun and night damps. The stench arising from this dense population crowded together here, performing all the duties of life--was horrible in the extreme. The accommodations for the sick were so defective, and the condition of the others so pititable that from February 24th to September 21st nine thousand four hundred and seventy nine died, or nearly one-third of the entire number in the stockade. There were nearly 5,000 prisoners seriously ill, and the deaths exceeded one hundred per day. Large numbers were walking about who were not reported sick, who were suffering from severe and incurable diarrhoea and scurvy. I visited 2,000 sick lying under some long sheds--only one medical officer was in attendance--whereas at least twenty should have been employed. From the crowded condition, bad diet, unbearable filth, dejected appearance of the prisoners, their systems had become so disordered that the slightest abrasion of the skin, from heat of the sun or even a mosquito bite, they took on rapid and frightful ulceration and gangrene. The continuous use of salt meats, imperfectly cured, and their total deprivation of vegetables and fruit, caused the scurvy. The sick were lying upon the bare floors of open sheds, without even straw to rest upon. These haggard, dejected, living skeletons, crying for medical aid and food, and the ghastly corpses with glazed eyeballs, staring up into vacant space, with flies swarming down their open mouths and over their rags infested with swarms of lice and maggots, as they lay among the sick and dying--formed a picture of helpless hopeless misery, impossible for words to portray. Millions of flies swarmed over everything and covered the faces of the sick patients, and crowded down their open mouths, depositing their maggots in the gangrenous wounds of the living and in the mouths of the dead. These abuses were due to the total absence of any system or any sanitary regulations. When a patient died he was laid in front of his tent if he had one, and often remained there for hours." But enough of these horrors--........... Of the 42,686 prisoners thrust into this infamous pen, 12,853 were carried out to their graves, within one year; 10,982 died between the 27th day of February, 1864 and the 20th of October of that year, or in less than eight months, being at the rate of over 1,372 a month, or more than an average of 45 per day, or two each hour of the day and night. Reports were made each day by the Confederate surgeons in charge, of the appalling suffering and mortality--but the rebel government never raised a hand or uttered a word to check the horrid work of Winder and Wirz. It seemed to approve of this fiendish method of destroying Union soldiers. The heroic martyrs ..........here displayed a lofty patriotism that has never been surpassed in any age of the world. All through these terrible sufferings, where death would have been a relief, confederate emissaries prowled around the stockade trying to pesuade the thousands of mechanics among the prisoners to accept paroles and go to work at their trades for the benefit of the confederacy that was slowly dying for want of skilled laborers. The machinists among the prisoners alone could have done far more to sustain its crumbling walls by their skill in its shops, than a full company of soldiers could have done to overturn it--and yet their enduring patriotism that never wavered, scorned these tempting offers of release...... A witness to these persistent solicitations says that the common reply of our loyal sufferers was --"No, sir! We will stay in here till we rot, and the maggots carry us out through the cracks of your d--d old stockade before we will raise a finger to help your infernal old confederacy." And thus they lived and died--...... The whole number of graves in the cemetery is 13,701; of these 12, 779 have names on the headstones, while but 922 are unknown graves. Of the dead buried here 12,853 were victims of the Andersonville stockade, while 848 were brought here from adjacent localities and laid in the national cemetery. the first victim of Andersonville was Jacob Swarner, of New York, who died Feb. 27, 1864. His headstone is marked No. 1 and his grave is the first of the long row which begins in the southeast corner of the cemetery. The last victim lingered here until November 30, 1865, and his headstone is numbered 12,853 and is the last of the long rows of graves of the stockade martyrs. His name was John King and he, too, was from New York.................. Outside of these gates on the road towards Andersonville are ruins of Wirz' old bakery, where the unbolted cornmeal and fat bacon were cooked for the prisoners. Leading from the store-house at the railroad station to the stockade is the old corduroy road along which the teams transported the meal and bacon to the bakery. The ground was so swampy that logs had to be cut and laid side by side for a quarter of a mile to make a road that would bear up a team and wagon. ........On the west side of the stockade near the north gate is the noted "providential spring," that broke out one August morning when the water in the creek had become so filthy as to be no longer endurable. The story as told is that one day there came a terrific storm of thunder, lightning, wind and rain, which suddenly raised the water in the creek so high as to sweep down the walls of the stockade on the west side where the creek enters the enclosure. That when the flood subsided it was discovered that a spring of clear, pure water had gushed out of the hillside near the "dead line," which flowed from that time in such abundance as to supply the entire army of more than 30,000 inmates with pure water. Many of the famishing soldiers looked upon this as a direct interposition of the Almighty to save them from the horrors of the polluted creek............. On the 27th of July, 1864, when Sherman's army was thought to be approaching to release the dying prisoners, General Winder coolly issued an order to the commander of the artillery on guard--that "when the Federals approached within seven miles of the stockade--to open on the prisoners with grapeshot." ........... He (Winder) died in a sutler's tent January 1, 1865, just as he had bowed his head to ask a blessing over his New Year's dinner................. Wirz,.........,was the only one who was punished for his share in the murders. When the Confederacy collapsed in April, 1865, Wirz was still living in his old quarters at Andersonville. Captain Noyes, of the Fourth cavalry, was sent to bring him into General Wilson's camp at Macon. When the squad rode into town they surrounded Dr. Harrson's house--where I am staying--and mistook the Doctor for Wirz, and was about to drag him off, when he pointed into the next lot west and told them "there is the man you are after." Wirz was quickly hustled away from his family, the Andersonville damning records captured with him, and was started to Washington. The ex-prisoners who were stationed all along his route made desperate efforts to kill him as he passed through, but ..........he was tried, convicted and decently hung on the tenth of November, 1865, and appropriately buried in the old capital prison grounds beside Atserodt, one of the assassinators of Abraham Lincoln. His wife and daughters have disappeared and I was unable to learn from their friends at Andersonville where they moved to....... In a semi-circle southeast of the flagstaff are the graves of six desperadoes who were hung by the prisoners in the stockade on the eleventh of July, 1864, for robbery and murder of their comrades. They were the leaders of a gang of bounty jumpers from the slums of eastern cities who had enlisted for large bounties or as substitutes for men of wealth who had been drafted. They were skulkers on the battlefield, and always on the lookout for a chance to rob their fellow soldiers. In the stockade they led gangs or roughs called "Raiders" in midnight excursions among the sick and defenseless prisoners, robbing them of blankets, clothing, money or food, and often murdered them while asleep for the scanty possession to be thus obtained. These six men, viz.: Pat Delaney, of Pennsylvania; Chas. Curtis, of Rhode Island; Wm. Collins, of Pennsylvania; John Sarsfield, of New York; Wm. Rickson, of United States Navy, and A. Munn, United States Navy, were tried as leaders of the "raiders," convicted, and hung in the stockade, and buried separate from the other prisoners................... We are voting millions to aid commerce and navigation, to errect offices with liberal salaries, and aiding various schemes for public improvements, and yet congress hesitates to enroll on the pension lists the 10,000 or 12,000 surviving inmates of rebel prison barbarities. There is neither justice, honor, or common gratitude in this long continued neglect by our prosperous government to recognize by suitable testimonial the survivors of the prison pens of the south. I have found that Andersonville was not the only inhumane treatment inflicted upon man, by man, in this war. And neither was it confined to the South. There were equally unimaginable atrocities by the Union in the North. And unfortunately it is also not confined to just this war............................... |