While we were waiting, and hoping, and starving, and dying at Andersonville our armies were fast solving the problem of the Rebellion. Jeff Davis had tired of the policy of General Joseph E. Johnson, who was in command of the army which confronted Sherman, and about the middle of July relieved him of his command and appointed Hood to his place.

Johnson’s policy during the Atlanta campaign had been that of defense. Davis was in favor of aggressive warfare. He believed in driving the invaders from the sacred soil of the South. A grand idea surely, but then, the invaders had a word to say in that matter; they had come to stay, and Jeff Davis’ manifestoes had no terrifying effect upon them. Hood immediately assumed the aggressive and on the 2lst of July came out from behind his entrenchments and attacked Sherman.

On the 22d the battle of Atlanta was fought, in which General McPherson was killed. The command of the army of the Tennessee then fell upon General John A. Logan for a few days, when he was superseded by General O. O. Howard. There has been much criticism upon this act of General Sherman. Logan had assumed command of the army of the Tennessee upon the death of McPherson, during a hotly contested battle, and he had fought the battle to a successful termination. He had fought his way from colonel of a regiment, to Major General commanding an Army Corps, and temporarily commanding an army. He had shown the highest type of military ability shown by any volunteer officer, and yet he was compelled to give place to a transplanted officer from the army of the Potomac.

Logan and his friends felt this deeply, but with true patriotic instincts he, and they, continued to fight for the cause of Liberty and Union. No satisfactory reason has ever been given for this act of injustice on the part of General Sherman, but it is hinted that it was because Logan was not a graduate of West Point. The action of General Sherman in this matter is all the more inexplicable when we compare the stupendous failure of Howard at Chancellorsville, but little more than a year before, with the signal success of Logan at Atlanta on the 22d of July. But time brings its revenge. Howard has passed into comparative obscurity. We hear of him occasionally as a lecturer before a Chautauqua Society in some small town or city, “only this and nothing more,” while John A. Logan went down to his grave, loved and revered, as the highest representative of the American Volunteer soldier. His name is inscribed on the imperishable roll of fame by the side of the names of Sheridan, Thomas, and Hancock.

But the victory of the Federals at the battle of Atlanta did not include the surrender of the city. Sherman sent a cavalry corps under General Stoneman to capture Macon, Ga. In this he failed, but he destroyed considerable property, including railroad, rolling stock, bridges and supplies and seriously threatened Macon, giving Winder, at Andersonville, a terrible scare, which resulted in the General Order which I have copied in a previous chapter. Sherman finding that Atlanta was not to be captured without a fight more serious than he cared to risk, moved by the flank to Jonesboro south of Atlanta, thus cutting off the supplies for Atlanta. On the 1st of September he moved his army up to within twenty miles of Atlanta, and on the 2d General Slocum moved his forces into that city.

Great was the rejoicing all over the North when the news was flashed over the wires that Sherman had captured the “Gate City” of the South, and a corresponding feeling of gloom settled down upon the Southern people when they found that Hood, with the assistance of the counsels of Beauregard, could not cope with “Uncle Billy” and his veterans.

In the meantime the army under General Grant had not been idle. On May 3d and 4th the army of the Potomac moved from its camp on the north of the Rapidan and commenced a campaign which was destined to result in the downfall of the capital of the Confederacy, and ultimately of the Confederacy itself. In the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna and Cold Harbor, our forces showed the aggressive spirit inspired by their great leader, ably seconded by Meade, Hancock, the lamented Sedgwick, Warren, Wright and Burnside. While the Confederate forces under their favorite leader Lee, with his Lieutenants, Anderson. Early and Hill, resisted the inroads of the Federal forces with a bravery born of a determination to die in the visionary “last ditch.”

But superior numbers, coupled with equal bravery and ability, are bound to win in the end and on the 15th of June 1864 Grant’s army was before Petersburg with a determination to pound the Rebels into submission.

If the battle of Atlanta caused fear and trembling among the rebs at Andersonville, the fall of that city caused a perfect panic among them.

On the 3d of September a train load of one thousand men was shipped away from the prison, and each day after that saw the exodus of a like number, until all who were able to walk to the station had been shipped to more secure points. Some were sent to Millen and Savannah, Ga., and some to Charleston, and Columbia, South Carolina.

During the latter part of August long sheds with an upper and lower floor, and open at the sides, had been built in the northern portion of the stockade. The carpenters who performed the labor of building these sheds or barracks, as they were called, were of our own numbers. They received as compensation for their labor an extra ration of food, and they thought themselves lucky to get a chance to work for their board, as indeed, they were.

On the 5th Ole Gilbert, Rouse, and myself left our quarters near the swamp, and moved into the sheds. We gave up our well with regret, as it had proved to be a great blessing to us, but September had come, and soon the storms of the autumnal equinox would be upon us, and our little tent, made of a ragged blanket and pine boughs, would but poorly shelter us from the storm.

We took up our quarters on the upper floor, with no straw for bedding, nothing between our skeleton like bodies and the floor but a piece of ragged blanket. We suffered terribly for the lack of bedding, our protruding hip bones could not possibly reconcile themselves to the hard floor and we were rolling about continually trying to find some part of our anatomy that would fit a pine board, but we never found it. But we did find a little purer air than we found down by the excrement burdened swamp, the foul gases arising from decomposing human excrements fermenting in a hot sun were not quite so strong and nauseous and besides we had a little more room. Day by day the thinning process went on, there being two strong powers at work to accomplish the task, death and the trains of cars.

I have never been quite satisfied with the tables of mortality published with reference to Andersonville. Dr. Jones in his report, gives the number who died between Feb. 24th and September 21st, 1864, as nine thousand four hundred and seventy-nine. McElroy gives twelve thousand nine hundred and twelve as the whole number that died during the time Andersonville was used as a prison.

I think both statements are far below the truth although I have only parole testimony to prove my position. While on the way from Andersonville to Charleston, I overheard a private conversation between two prisoners upon the subject of the number of deaths at Andersonville. One of them claimed to be the Hospital Steward who kept the records at that place, and he told his companion that he had a copy of the death record and that twelve thousand six hundred and twenty odd had died up to the date of leaving the prison, which was Sept. 11th. and that he intended to carry the copy through the lines with him when he was exchanged. One of the prisoners who was paroled in December following did have a copy of the register and showed it at the office of the War Department in Washington, it was not returned to him and he afterward stole it from the office, was arrested and imprisoned for the theft and was finally liberated through the intercession of Miss Clara Barton, “the soldiers’ friend.” The man was a member of a Connecticut regiment, whose name I cannot recall, but I think was Ingersoll, though I would not pretend to be positive. I think the official records show a total of nearly fourteen thousand deaths in Andersonville. All the evidence attainable both from Federal and Confederate sources prove that about one third of all the men who entered the gates of Andersonville died there, and when we come to add to that number those who died in other prisons, and on the way home, and whose death is directly traceable to that prison, we will find that fully one-half of the forty-five thousand Andersonville prisoners never reached home.

If the king of Denmark could exclaim, “O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven,” what shall we say of the men who are guilty of the barbarities of Andersonville? How far will their offense smell? By a fair computation more than twenty thousand men were,—

Rest comrades, rest in your graves on the sandy hillside of Andersonville. The dank and the mould have consumed your bodies and they have returned to the dust from whence they came; but a day of reckoning will surely come. When the last trump shall sound and the dead shall come forth from their graves, and stand before the Great White Throne, where will your murderers be found? Surely they will call upon the rocks and mountains to fall on them and hide them them from the face of Him who sitteth upon the Throne and judgeth the Earth in righteousness.

It is impossible for any person endowed with the common feelings and instincts of humanity to understand, much less to explain, the character of Winder and Wirz. How any person in this enlightened age could be guilty of the cruelties and barbarities practiced by those two ghouls surpass all attempts at explanation. I am of the opinion that the majority of the people of the South were ignorant of the full extent of the horrors of the Southern Military Prisons. I am led to this conclusion by the fact, that, except upon the questions of slavery and war, they were a kind and generous hearted people, generally speaking, as much so, at least, as any community of people of like extent. And for the further reason that not many of them had access to the inside of those prisons, and they would naturally believe the report of interested Confederates, sooner than the reports of interested Federals, particularly, as they had no intercourse with prisoners themselves, except in isolated cases. And still further, all escaped prisoners, who were recaptured and returned to prison spoke highly of the kind treatment of the middle and upper classes, only complaining of the treatment of the lower classes or “Clay Eaters.” But somebody knew of these barbarities and cruelties and somebody was responsible for Winder and Wirz holding their positions, and that after a full investigation and report upon the subject by competent men. That SOMEBODY was Jeff Davis and his cabinet.

The members of the Confederate Congress were aware of the treatment of Federal prisoners and some of the members of that congress cried out against it, in their places. But Jeff Davis ruled the South with a rod of iron. He was the head and front, the great representative of the doctrine of States Rights, which, interpreted by Southern Statesmen, meant the right of a state to separate itself from the General Government, peaceably if possible, by force of arms if need be. And yet when Governor Brown, of Georgia, carried this doctrine to its logical conclusion by withdrawing the Georgia troops from the Confederate armies, to repel the invasion of Sherman and harvest a crop for the use of his army, Davis, in public speeches, intimated that Governor Brown was a traitor.

President Davis and his cabinet knew of the atrocities of Winder and Wirz, and their ilk, and connived at them by keeping the perpetrators in place and power. Winder was a renegade Baltimorean who had received a military education at the expense of the United States government, but being too cowardly to accept a position in the field where his precious carcass would be exposed to danger, he accepted from his intimate friend, Jeff Davis, the office of Provost Marshal General, in which position he was a scourge and a curse to the rebels themselves. Becoming too obnoxious to the people of Richmond, Davis, at last, appointed him Commissary General of prisoners, in which capacity he had charge of all the Federal prisoners east of the Mississippi river.

The antecedents of Wirz are not known. McElroy, who has investigated the subject of Southern Prisons deeper than any man of my knowledge, has arrived at the conclusion that he was probably a clerk in a store before the war of the Rebellion. He arrives at his conclusion logically, for he asserts that Wirz could count more than one hundred.

That Davis and his cabinet knew of the terrible treatment bestowed upon the Federal prisoners at Andersonville, we have abundant proof. The following extract from the report of Colonel D. T. Chandler, of the Rebel War Department, who was sent to inspect Andersonville, was copied from “Andersonville.” The report is of date August 5th, 1864, and is as follows: “My duty requires me respectfully to recommend a change in the officer in command of the post, Brigadier General John H. Winder, and the substitution in his place of some one who unites both energy and good judgment with some feelings of humanity and consideration for the welfare and comfort as far as is consistent with their safe keeping of the vast number of unfortunates placed under his control; some one who, at least, will not advocate DELIBERATELY and in cold blood, the propriety of leaving them in their present condition until their number is sufficiently reduced by death to make the present arrangements suffice for their accomodation, and who will not consider it a matter of self laudation and boasting that he has never been inside of the stockade—a place the horrors of which it is difficult to describe, and which is a DISGRACE TO CIVILIZATION—the condition of which he might by the exercise of a little energy and judgment, even with the limited means at his command, have considerably improved.”

In his examination touching this report, Colonel Chandler says:

“I noticed that General Winder seemed very indifferent to the welfare of the prisoners, indisposed to do anything, or to do as much as I thought he ought to do, to alleviate their sufferings. I remonstrated with him as well as I could, and he used that language which I reported to the Department with reference to it—the language stated in the report. When I spoke of the mortality existing among the prisoners, and pointed out to him that the sickly season was coming on, and that it must necessarily increase unless something was done for their relief—the swamp, for instance, drained, proper food furnished, and in better quality, and other sanitary suggestions which I made to him—he replied to me that he thought it was better to see half of them die than to take care of the men.”

This report proves two points. First that we had been living in Andersonville during the HEALTHY season, God save the mark, and second that Jeff Davis knew of the situation through his War Minister. But Davis was in favor of having the prisoners receive the terrible treatment to which they were subjected. He had, through his Commissary General of Prisoners, made demands upon the Federal Government in the matter of the exchange of prisoners, which no government possessing any self respect could entertain. He demanded an exchange of prisoners in bulk, that is, the Federal Government to give all the Confederate prisoners it held in exchange for all the Federal prisoners the Confederate Government held. The unfairness of such a proposition will be readily seen when the reader is informed that at that time the Federals held about twice as many prisoners as did the Confederates.

The Federal proposition was to exchange man for man and rank for rank. To this the Davis Government would not accede. Then followed the terrors of Andersonville and Florence of which hell itself in its palmiest days could not furnish a duplicate.

I am well aware that I have not expressed the same opinion as other authors, ex-prisoners, upon the subject of the complicity of the whole people of the South in these prison horrors, but the most of these authors wrote a short time subsequent to the close of the war, and while their blood was still hot upon the subject; and I confess that it has taken nearly a quarter of a century for my blood to cool sufficiently to arrive at the conclusions I have expressed in this chapter and which I candidly believe are correct.

To my comrades who were prisoners let me say, our present motto is: “FIAT JUSTITIA, RUAT COELUM.”