As the train pulled out of Danville that morning, our hopes began to rise in proportion to the distance we placed between ourselves and our late prison.

We had now been in the Confederate prisons seven months, and we had high hopes that our guards were telling us the truth, for once.

I am not prepared to say that the people of the South are not as truthful as other people; but I will say, that truth was a commodity, which appeared to be very scarce with our guards.

When we left the Danville prison, we took with us, contrary to orders, a wooden bucket belonging to my mess.

The way we stole it out of prison was this. One of the men cut a number into each stave, then knocked off the hoops and took it down, dividing hoops, staves and bottom among us, these we rolled up in our blankets and keeping together we entered the same car. After the train had started we unrolled our blankets, took out the fragments of bucket, and set it up again. This was a very fortunate thing for us, as it furnished us a vessel in which to procure water on that long and dreary trip.

Nothing of note occurred until we reached Burkeville Junction, near the scene of the collapse of the Confederacy. Here we were switched off from the Richmond road on to the Petersburg road. Some of us who were least hopeful considered this a bad omen; others argued that it was all right, as we could take cars from Petersburg to City Point. Among the latter class were some men who had been prisoners before, and were supposed to know more than the rest of us about the modes of exchange. We therefore said no more and tried hard to believe that all would end well.

We arrived at Petersburg a little before midnight. We were immediately marched across the Appomattox River bridge into Petersburg. As we were marching along I noticed a large building, which I recognized as one I had seen the previous November, while we were marching through this place on our way to Richmond. I told the boys we were going to the Weldon Depot, the right direction for the South. The hopeful ones still insisted that it was all right, but I could not see it that way. But the question was soon settled, for we arrived at the Weldon Depot in a short time. How our hearts sank within us as we came to the low sheds and buildings, which form the Station of the Petersburg and Weldon R. R. Heretofore during the day, “God’s Country,” and home had seemed very near to us, but now all these hopes were suddenly dashed to the ground, and dark despair, like a black pall, enshrouded us. I believe that most of us wished that dark, rainy night, that it had been our fate to have fallen upon the field of battle, and received a soldier’s burial.

Those of us who had read Shakspere could have exclaimed with Hamlet.—

The all-wise Being has placed within us all, an instinctive dread of death; had it not been so, I fear many poor, miserable, hopeless, prisoners would have gone out of their misery by the suicide’s route.

Morning came and we were in North Carolina. We took the same route back as far as Augusta, Ga., that we had taken when on our way to Richmond, the autumn previous.

We suffered extremely on the way. We were not allowed to get off the cars for any purpose whatever, except to change cars. The guards brought us water in the bucket we had purloined from Danville. They were not particular where they procured it. They supplied us from the handiest place whether it was the water tank at a station, or from a stagnant pond or ditch by the side of the R. R. track.

The reader can imagine that such water was rank poison. The water in the ditches of the Carolina swamps was loaded with decayed vegetable matter; slimy snakes and filthy water reptiles crawled and swam in it, and taken all together it was not much better than the fetid waters of the Danville canal.

Our guards, after leaving Petersburg told us we were on our way to a new prison which had been made at Andersonville, Ga. They cheered us somewhat, by saying it was a large stockade, and that we would have plenty of room, wood and water, and more rations. Anything seemed better than Danville to us, and visions of a camp with tents for shelter, good water, more and better food, and opportunity to exercise, floated through our minds, and we thought that our situation would be more tolerable.

From Augusta we went to Macon, thence to Andersonville, where we arrived on the 22d of April 1864.

Andersonville is in Sumter county, Georgia, sixty-four miles southwest of Macon, on the Macon & Albany Railroad. The country through all that region is a sandy barren, interspersed with swamps which were filled with rank growths of timber, vines and semi-tropical shrubbery.

They were the home of serpents, and reptiles of all kinds indigenous to that latitude, and of many kinds of wild animals. The land was rolling but could not be called hilly.

The timber was mostly southern, or pitch pine, with the different varieties of gum. In the swamps, cypress abounded, from the branches of which the grey, or Spanish moss hung like the beard of a Brobdignagian giant, through which the wind sighed and soughed most dismally.

My impression, received at the time I was in prison, was, that it was the most God-forsaken country I ever beheld, with the exception of the rice swamps of South Carolina. South Carolina however, had a history running back to Revolutionary times, while that portion of Georgia had no history, but has acquired one which will last as long as the history of the Spanish Inquisition. And yet at this time, Southern Georgia is redeemed somewhat, by being the location of Thomasville, the winter resort of some of our citizens.

The Prison Pen, or Stockade, was located about three-fourths of a mile east of the station, on the opposing face of two slight hills, with a sluggish swampy, stream running through it from west to east and dividing the prison into two unequal parts, the the northern, being the larger part.

The Stockade was in the form of a parallelogram, being longest from north to south. I estimated that it was fifty rods east and west, by sixty rods north and south and that it contained eighteen acres, but from this must be subtracted the land lying between the Dead-line and Stockade, and the swamp land lying each side of the little stream, known to us as “Deadrun,” leaving, according to my estimate, twelve acres available for the use of the prisoners.

The author of “Andersonville” gives the area of the prison as sixteen acres and the amount available for prisoners twelve acres.

Dr. Jones, in his report, gives the area as seventeen acres, but does not intimate that part of it was not available, so that his estimate of the number of square feet to each prisoner, is nearly one-third too high.

The Stockade was built of hewn timbers, twenty-four feet in length, set in the ground side by side, to a depth of six feet, leaving the walls of the Stockade eighteen feet high. The guards stood upon covered platforms or “pigeon roosts” outside of, and overlooking the Stockade.

Not far from the northwest, and southwest corners, on the west side, were the north and south gates. These were made double, by building a small stockade outside of each gate, which was entered by another gate, so that when prisoners or wagons entered the stockade they were first admitted to small stockade, then the gate was closed, after which they were admitted to the main stockade.

These small stockades were anterooms to the main prison, and were for the purpose of preventing a rush by the prisoners.

Outside of the main stockade the rebels built another stockade, at a distance of about ten rods. This was for the double purpose of preventing a “break” of the prisoners and to prevent tunnelling.

This second stockade was built of round timbers set in the ground six feet and stood twelve feet above the ground.

Outside of this second stockade a third one was started, but was not completed when I left. This was for protection against “Uncle Billy Sherman’s Bummers.”

Commanding each corner of the stockade was a fort, built a sufficient distance to give the guns a good range. These four forts mounted all told eighteen guns of light artillery, as I was informed, and had a general rush been made, they would have slaughtered us as though we were a flock of pigeons.

The cook-house was built on low ground on the border of a small stream which ran through the stockade, and west from it.

The guards camp was west and southwest, from the southern portion of the stockade.

West from the south gate Gen. Winder had his head-quarters, also the guard house and Wirz’ quarters.

About a quarter of a mile north of the stockade was the cemetery, then a sandy barren, with occasional jack pine growing.

I have now given the reader a general description of the Prison Pen, or Stockade, of Andersonville, as seen from the outside.

I will now attempt to give a view of the inside, as seen during five months confinement.

Upon our arrival at Andersonville on the 22d of April, we were halted at Gen. Winder’s quarters and registered by name, rank, company, and regiment. I will give the reader the form as written, in the case of one of my tent mates who died at Charleston, S. C. the following October.

George W. Rouse, Co. D. 10th Wisconsin Inf.—16-3.

Which meant that he was assigned to the 3d company and 16 detachment.

Wirz had originated a very clumsy and unmilitary organization of the prisoners. He had organized them into companies of ninety men and assigned three companies to a detachment. At the head of these companies and detachments was a sergeant. For convenience in dividing rations, we subdivided these companies into squads, or messes, each mess electing their own sergeant. As at Richmond and Danville I was elected sergeant of my mess at Andersonville.

We were marched into the north gate and assigned grounds on the east side of the prison, next to the Dead-line, and near the swamp on the north side.

We were not subjected to the searching process at Winder’s head-quarters, as most of the prisoners were. I suppose we were not a promising looking crowd. Had we been searched, the rebs would have found nothing but rags and graybacks.

Thus we were turned into the Prison Pen of Andersonville, like a herd of swine, with the chance to “root hog or die.” No shelter was furnished us; no cooking utensils provided; no wood, nothing but a strip of barren yellow sand, under a hot sun.

The situation did not look inviting. Our dream was not realized. We had fresh air it is true, for the air had not become contaminated then. We had room for exercise, for 5,000 men do not look very much crowded on twelve acres, it takes 33,000 men to cover that amount of space in good shape according to the views of Winder and Wirz; but somehow it did not seem homelike. There was a wonderful paucity of the conveniencies, the necessities, to say nothing of the luxuries of life.

About 4,000 men had been sent here during the months of February and March, from Libby and Belle Isle, and 1,000 from Danville, about two weeks before us. First come, first served, was the rule here. The first settlers who “squatted” in Andersonville found plenty of wood and brush and with these had, with true Yankee ingenuity and industry, constructed very fair houses, or hovels rather. But they had used up all the building material, had not left a brush large enough for a riding whip, they had left us nothing but sand and a miserable poor article of that.

But the gods were propitious, and the next day we had the privilege of going out under guard, and picking up material for a house. Rouse and myself brought in material enough to fix us up in good shape. We secured a number of green poles about an inch thick, some of these we bent like the hoops of a wagon cover, sticking the ends in the ground. Then we fastened other poles transversely on them fastening them with strips of bark. We used a U. S. blanket for a roof or cover. The sides we thatched with branches of the long leaved pitch pine. In a few hours we had a very fair shelter.

I think the settlers in western Minnesota and Dakota must be indebted to Andersonville prisoners for the idea of “dugouts.” When we arrived here, we found many of the unfortunate prisoners from Belle Isle who had no “pup tent” or blanket to spare, had provided themselves warm quarters by burrowing into the ground. They had dug holes about the size of the head of a barrel at the surface of the ground and gradually enlarged as they dug down, until they were something the shape of the inside of a large bell. These dugouts were four or five feet deep and usually had two occupants. These gophers were hard looking specimens of humanity. They had built fires in their holes, out of pitch pine; over this they had done their cooking, and over this they had crooned during the cold storms of March; they had had some bacon, but no soap, and the mixture of lamp black from the pine, and grease from the bacon, had disfigured them beyond the recognition of their own mothers. Their hair was long and unkempt, and filled with lamp black until it was so stiff that it stuck out like “quills of the fretful porcupine.” Their clothes were in rags, yes in tatters. They were shoeless, hatless, and usually coatless. They looked more like the terrible fancies of Gustave Dore than like human beings. And yet these poor boys were originally fair-haired, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, loyal, brave sons of fathers and mothers who were in easy circumstances, and in many cases wealthy; who would have shed their hearts’ last drop of blood, for that poor boy, if it would have been of any avail. Or they were husbands to fair women, and fathers to sweet blue-eyed children, who were waiting for husband and papa, to come home.

Alas! those fathers and mothers, those wives and children are waiting yet, yea and shall wait until the sea, and the graves at Andersonville, give up their dead.