GOOD BYE ANDERSONVILLE.

As related in the preceding chapter the fall of Atlanta, and the fear of rescue had obliged the Confederates to remove the prisoners from Andersonville to a safer place.

On the 11th of September the detachment to which I belonged was ordered out. We gladly left the pen and saw the ponderous gates close behind us. No matter to us where we went, we believed we had nothing to lose and much to gain. If we were to be exchanged, which we doubted, then good bye to all these terrible scenes of want and suffering. If another prison pen was our destination, then we hoped it would not be so foul and disease laden as the one we left, and in any case we had left Winder and Wirz and we knew that though we were to rake the infernal regions with a fine comb, we could not find worse jailors. With thoughts like these running through our minds we dragged our weak and spiritless bodies to the station, where we got into a train of freight cars as best we could. Our train was headed toward Macon and there was much speculation as to our destination. Somehow a rumor had got into circulation that a cartel of exchange had been agreed upon by the commissioners of the two governments and that Savannah was to be the point of exchange. But we had been deceived so many times that we had taken a deep and solemn vow to not believe anything in exchange until we were safely transferred to our own lines; and this vow we kept inviolate.

Soon after passing Macon we entered the territory over which Stoneman’s Cavalry had raided a few weeks before. Burned railroad trains and depots marked the line of his march. At one place where our train stopped for wood and water one of the guards was kind enough to allow some of the men to get off the train and secure a lot of tin sheets which had covered freight cars prior to Stoneman’s visit. These sheets of tin were afterward made into pails and square pans by a tinner who was a member of an Illinois regiment, with no other tools than a railroad spike and a block of wood.

Two brothers, members of an Indiana regiment, and coopers by trade, made a large number of wooden buckets, or “piggins” while in Andersonville, and their kit of tools consisted of a broken pocket knife and a table knife, supplemented by borrowing our saw knife. With a table knife or a railroad spike and a billet of wood, we would work up the toughest sour gum, or knottiest pitch pine stick of wood which could be procured in the Confederacy. Time was of no consequence, we had an overstocked market in that commodity and anything that would serve to help rid ourselves of the surplus was a blessing.

Time solved the question of our destination. We went to Augusta again so that Savannah was out of the question. Then we crossed over into South Carolina, after which the point was raised whether it was to be Columbia or Charleston. Many of us were of the opinion that Charleston was the point and that we were to be placed under fire of our own guns, as many prisoners had been heretofore, the rebels hoping thereby to deter our forces from firing into the city. Time passed and we arrived at Branchville. Here is the junction of the Columbia road with the Augusta and Charleston road, we took the Charleston track and arrived in Charleston about eleven o’clock p. m. having been two days on the road.

After leaving the cars we were formed in line, and, as we were marching away from the depot, a huge shell from one of Gilmore’s guns exploded in an adjoining block. We were getting close to “God’s country,” only a shell’s flight lying between us and the land of the Stars and Stripes. We were marched just out of the city and camped on the old Charleston race track.

In the morning we were allowed to go for water, accompanied by guards. before night all the wells in the vicinity were exhausted, and we were obliged to resort to well digging for a supply. Fortunately we found water at a depth of only four feet. The water was slightly brackish, but as we had been kept on short rations of salt it was rather agreeable than otherwise. Before dark there were more than fifty wells dug in camp and we had water in abundance.

Day after day brought train load after train load of prisoners from Andersonville until there were about seven thousand prisoners in camp at this place. There was no stockade, no fence, nothing but a living wall of guards around us, and that living wall of infantrymen aided and abetted by a healthy, full grown battery of artillery, that was all.

Our rations here were of fair quality but small in quantity, consisting of a pint of corn meal, a little sorghum syrup and a teaspoonful of salt once in two days. Meat of any kind was not issued, from this time on it was relegated to the historic past. The weather was pleasant, the days not too hot and the nights not too cool. About nine o’clock a sea breeze would spring up which felt to us, after having lived in the furnace-like atmosphere of Andersonville, like a breeze from the garden of the Gods. About nine o’clock in the evening a land breeze would set in and would blow until sunrise then die away to give place to the sea breeze. I used to sit up till midnight drinking in the delightful air and watching the track of the great shells thrown by the “Swamp Angel” battery. Gilmore gave Charleston no rest day nor night. The “Hot bed of Secession” got a most unmerciful pounding. The whole of the lower part of the city was a mass of ruins, the upper part was then receiving the attention of our batteries on James Island. It was a grand sight at night to watch the little streak of fire from the fuse of those three hundred pound shells as it rose higher and higher toward the zenith and having reached the highest point of the arc, to watch it as it sped onward and downward until suddenly a loud explosion told that its time was expired and the sharp fragments were hurled with an increased velocity down into the devoted city. Sometimes a shell would not explode until it had made its full journey and landed among the buildings or in the streets and then havoc and destruction ensued. The most of the people lived in bomb proofs, which protected them from the fragments of the shells which exploded in the air, but were not proof against those which exploded after striking.

A little episode occurred one day that created quite a panic among both prisoners and guards. Suddenly and without warning, a large solid shot came rolling and tumbling through camp, from the north; this was followed by another, and then another. This was getting serious. What the Dickens was the matter? Where did these shots come from? were questions that any and all of us, could and did ask, but none could answer. But in this case, the rebel guard and officers, were in danger as well as Yanks, and a courier was dispatched in hot haste to inquire into the why and wherefore. It turned out that a rebel gunboat, on the Cooper River, was practicing at a target and we were getting the benefit of it.

Here at Charleston we were on historic ground. Just a few miles to the east of us Colonel Moultrie defended a palmetto fort manned by five hundred brave and loyal South Carolinans, against the combined land and naval forces of Sir Henry Clinton, and Sir Peter Parker, on the 28th of June 1776, and with his twenty-six cannons compelled the fleet to retire. There upon the palmetto bastion of old Fort Moultrie, the brave young Sergeant Jasper supported the Stars and Stripes under a terrible fire, and earned for himself an undying fame. Here and in this vicinity, Moultrie, Pickens, Pinckney, Lee, Green, Lincoln and Marion earned a reputation which will last as long as American history shall endure. But, alas, here too, is material for a history which does not reflect much credit on the descendants of those brave and loyal men. South Carolina was the first State to adopt an ordinance of Secession, Nov 20th, 1860.

Here in Charleston Harbor, on the 9th of January 1861, the descendants of those revolutionary heroes, from the embrazures of fort Moultrie, and Castle Pinckney, fired upon the Star of the West, a United States vessel sent with supplies for the brave Anderson, who was cooped up within the walls of Fort Sumter. From these same forts, on the 12th of April, was fired the guns which compelled the surrender of Fort Sumter, and was the beginning of hostilities in the War of the Rebellion. And all this trouble had grown out of a political doctrine promulgated by an eminent South Carolinan, John C. Calhoun.

But with all their bad reputation as Secessionists, the South Carolinans treated us with more kindness than did the citizens of any other States. I never heard a tantalizing or insulting word given by a South Carolina citizen or soldier to a prisoner. In the matter of low meanness, the Georgia Crackers and Clay Eaters earned the blue ribbon.

On the 1st of October the detachment to which I belonged, was marched to the cars, and we were sent to Florence, one hundred miles north of Charleston on the road to Columbia. On our route, we had passed over ground made sacred by Revolutionary struggles. At Monk’s Corners, the 14th of April 1780, a British force defeated an American force. In the swamps of the Santee and Pedee Rivers General Francis Marion hid his men, and from them he made his fierce raids upon tories and British. Marion is called a “partisan leader,” in the old histories, but I suspect that in this year of grace, he would be called a “Bushwacker,” or “Guerrilla” leader. It makes a good deal of difference which side men are fighting on, about the name they are called. We arrived at the Florence Stockade in the afternoon and were marched in and assigned our position in the northeast corner, the entrance being on the west side.

The Florence Stockade was about two or three miles below Florence, and half or three-quarters of a mile east of the railroad. It was built upon two sides of a small stream which ran through it from north to south, was nearly square in shape, and contained ten or twelve acres of land. It was built of rough logs set in the ground and was sixteen or eighteen feet high. There was no such dead line as at Andersonville, a shallow ditch marking the limits. The greatest number of prisoners confined here during the time of my imprisonment, was eleven thousand. In some respects our situation was better than at Andersonville. We had new ground upon which to live. We were rid of the terrible filth and stench, we were not so badly crowded, and we had more wood with which to cook our food.

The Post Commandant, Lieutenant Colonel Iverson, of the 5th Georgia, was an easy going, but not altogether bad man, except that he was possessed of an ungovernable temper, and when irritated, would commit acts of which he was, no doubt, ashamed when his pulse assumed a normal condition. Lieutenant Barrett, Adjutant of the 5th Georgia, was to Florence what Wirz was to Andersonville. He was a red headed fiery tempered, cruel, and vindictive specimen of the better educated class of Southerners. It seemed to be his delight to to torture and maltreat the prisoners. If there was a single redeeming trait in his character, the unfortunate men who were under his care, never by any chance stumbled onto it. His favorite punishment was to tie the offender up by the thumbs so tightly that his toes barely touched the ground, and have him in this condition for an hour or two at a time. The tortures of such a punishment were indescribable. The victim would suffer the tortures of the damned, and when let down would have to be carried to his quarters by his comrades.

The prisoners were organized into squads of twenty, these into companies of a hundred, and these into detachments of a thousand. As stated before my detachment was assigned a position in the northeast corner of the Stockade. When we arrived there was plenty of wood, small poles, and brush in the Stockade, and our first work after selecting our ground, was to secure an abundant supply.

My old “pard” Rouse, had died at Charleston, Ole Gilbert belonged to another detachment and did not come in the same train load with me, so I joined Joe Eaton, Wash. Hays and Roselle Hull, of my regiment, in constructing a shelter, or house, if you please. We first set crotches in the ground and laid a strong pole on them, then we leaned other poles on each side against this pole in the form of a letter A. This was the frame work of our house, which, as will be seen, consisted entirely of roof. On this frame work we placed brush, covering the brush with leaves, and the whole with a heavy layer of dirt. This was an exceedingly laborious job on account of the lack of suitable tools. Our poles were cut with a very dull hatchet and our digging done with tin plates. After we had constructed a shelter, our next work was to wall up the gables. This was done with clay made up into adobes. We could not build more than a foot in a day as we were obliged to wait for our walls to dry sufficiently to bear their own weight. We had taken great pains to make a warm rain proof hut, as we had arrived at the conclusion that we were destined to remain in prison until the close of the war.

Those prisoners who arrived later were not so fortunate in the matter of wood. The early settlers had taken possession of all of that commodity leaving others to look out for themselves. But the later arrivals made haste to secure poles for the purpose of erecting their tents and huts, that is, those who had blankets to spare for roofs; but many were compelled to dig diminutive caves in the banks which marked the boundary of the narrow valley through which ran the little stream of water.

Wood was procured from the immense pine forests in the vicinity. Details of our own numbers, chopped the wood, and others carried it on their shoulders a distance of half to three quarters of a mile, receiving as compensation an extra ration of food. In the matter of wood Iverson was more humane than was Winder, but in the matter of rations it was the same old story, just enough to keep soul and body together, provided a pint of corn meal, two spoonfuls of sorghum syrup and a half teaspoonful of salt daily would furnish sufficient adhesive power to accomplish that result.

There was rather better hospital accommodations here for the sick, than at Andersonville, but at the best it was miserably poor and insufficient. The worst cases had been left behind, but the stockade was soon full of men so sick as to be unable to care for themselves. The terrible treatment at Andersonville was telling on the men after they had changed to a more healthy location, and into less filthy surroundings.

Soon the fall rains set in and the cold winds, which penetrated to our very marrow through the rags with which we were but partly covered, warned us that winter was approaching. We tried hard to keep up our courage amidst all these discouraging circumstances, but it was a sickly, weakly sort of courage. Cheerful, we could not be, even the most religiously inclined were sad and despondent. I am convinced that cheerfulness depends and must depend on outward circumstances as well as on an inward state of mind. Why not? We were men not angels, material beings, not spirits; we were subject to the same appetites and passions to which we, and others are subject, under better circumstances. Starvation, privation, misery and torture had not purged from us the longings, the hungerings and thirstings after the necessaries, the conveniences, yes, the luxuries of life, but on the contrary, had increased them ten fold. How was this to terminate? Would our Government set aside the military policy of the Commander of the army, and take a more humane view of the question? Would the Confederates, already driven to extremes to furnish supplies for their own men, at length yield and give us up, to save expense? or, must we still remain to satisfy the insatiate greed of the Moloch of war? were questions we could and did ask ourselves and each other, but there was found no man so wise as to be able to answer them. Time, swift-footed and fleeting, to the fortunate, but laggard, and slow, to us, could alone solve these questions, and after hours of discussion, to Time we referred them.