During the Summer, and up to the last of October, the condition of our clothing had been more a matter of indecency than of actual sufferings. But when the fall rains set in and the cold winds began to blow, then we felt the need of good clothing. About this time a very limited supply of clothing was issued to the more destitute. This was some of the clothing which the United States Government furnished for the benefit of the prisoners, but which was of more benefit to the rebels than to us. It is very clear that our Government was a victim of misplaced confidence in sending supplies of food and clothing through the rebel lines for our benefit. These supplies were mostly used by the rebels for their own benefit, and our Government aided the rebellion by that much.

My clothing was old when I was taken prisoner, having been worn through the Chickamauga campaign, and while I was in the hospital at Danville some one had, without my consent, traded me worse clothing, so that by this time I was a spectacle for men perhaps, but hardly for angels and women. Shirt, I had none, my coat was out at the elbows and was minus buttons, my pants were worn to shreds, fore and aft, and looked like bifurcated dish rags. My drawers had been burned at Andersonville with their rich burden of lice, while my shoes looked like the breaking up of a hard winter, and yet I was too much of a dude to get clothes from Barrett. How the cold winds did play hide and seek through my rags; how my skeleton frame did shiver, and my scurvy loosened teeth rattle and clatter, as “gust followed gust more furiously” through the tattered remains of what was once a splendid uniform. Evidently something had got to be done or I should, like a ship in a storm, be scudding around with bare poles. My first remedy was patching. With all my varied and useful accomplishments, I had become quite expert with a needle, (a small sized darning needle) and I felt perfectly competent to fix up my unmentionables, provided I could find patches and thread. I was in the condition of the Irishman who wanted to “borry tobaccy and a pipe, I have a match of me own, sorr,” but those to whom I applied for patches and thread, were like an Irishman of my company by the name of Mike Callahan. I went to him one day as he sat smoking his “dhudeen.” Said I, “Mike, can you give me a chew of tobacco?” “I cannot sorr,” puff-puff “I don’t use it myself.” “Well have you got any smoking tobacco?” said I. “I have sorr,” puff—puff—puff—“joost phat will do meself,” was his reply. After looking around for a time, I found an old oil cloth knapsack which I cut up into appropriate patches. Ole Gilbert had a piece of home-made cotton cloth, this we raveled and used for thread with which to patch my pants. This shift answered to keep out the wind, but when I sat down, Oh my! it seemed like sitting on an iceberg and holding the North Pole in my lap.

After the prisoners had all arrived at Florence, I changed my quarters to those of five comrades of my own company, Gilbert, Berk, Gaffney, Webster and Best. We had very fair quarters and were provided with two blankets for the six. One day as we were talking over the subject of exchange, we all came to the conclusion that we were in for it during the war, and I was instructed to write to the Wisconsin Sanitary Commission for clothing and other supplies. The letter was duly received and was published in the Milwaukee Sentinel. The following is a copy of the letter:

Secretary of Wis. State Sanitary Commission.

Sir:—There are six members of the 10th Wis. Infantry here together, who were captured at the battle of Chickamauga. We are destitute of clothing, and as defenders of our country, we apply to you for aid, hoping you will be prompt in relieving, in a measure, our necessities. Please send us a box containing blankets, underclothing, shirts and socks in particular, and we stand very much in need of shoes; but I don’t know as they are in your line of business.

“We would also like stationery, combs, knives, forks, spoons, tin cups, plates and a small sized camp kettle, as our rations are issued to us raw; also thread and needles. We all have the scurvy more or less and I think dried fruit would help us very much by the acid it contains,—you cannot send us medicine as that is contraband. We would like some tobacco and reading matter. If there is anything more that you can send, it will be very acceptable.

“We should not apply to you were we not compelled, and did we not know that you are the destitute soldiers’ friend. You will please receive this in the same spirit in which it is sent, and answer accordingly, and you will have the satisfaction of feeling that you have done something to relieve the wants of those who went out at the commencement of the war, to vindicate the rights of our country.

Direct to Wm. W. Day and Joseph Eaton, prisoners of war, Florence, S. C., via. Flag of Truce, Hilton Head.

P. S. I forgot to mention soap—a very essential article.”

At the same time I wrote to my wife in Wisconsin and to my brother in New York, for a box but instructed them that if there was any prospect of an immediate exchange, they were not to send them. I believe some of the other boys sent home for boxes also. We knew that the chances were very much against our ever seeing the boxes if sent, as we knew that many boxes sent to Andersonville were kept and their contents used by the rebel guards, yet I hoped that out of the three I might possibly get one. When the letters sent to my wife and brother reached their destination, they commenced the preparation of boxes, but before they were complete news of exchange reached them and the boxes were not sent. But during the spring of 1865, after I had settled in Minnesota, and after the capture of Richmond, I received a letter from the General in command of our forces, at that place, informing me that there was a box there directed to me and asking for instructions as to its disposal. I replied to him that it was a box sent to me by the Wisconsin Sanitary Commission, and was intended for me as a soldier, that I was now a civilian, and had no claim on it, and directed him to turn it over to the hospital.

Right here I wish to express my appreciation of the Sanitary Commission. In all the loyal States they did a grand work of mercy and charity, ably seconding the efforts of the Government in caring for sick and destitute soldiers. In fact they performed a work which the Government could not perform. They furnished lint and bandages, canned and dried fruits, vegetables and luxuries of all descriptions for the wounded and sick soldiers, thus giving them to feel that in all their hardships and sufferings they were not forgotton by the kind loyal women of the North, God bless them. It was the ladies of the Sanitary Commission of Milwaukee who established the first Soldiers’ Home, on West Water street, and which has grown into the National Soldiers’ Home near that city. They were ably seconded by the Christian Commission, which sent not only supplies but men and women to the field of war, to distribute supplies and act in the capacity of nurses in the hospitals. The wife of the Hon. John F. Potter, of the 1st Congressional District, of Wisconsin, worked in the hospitals at Washington until she contracted a fever and died, as much a martyr for her country as any soldier upon the field of battle. Governor Harvey, of Wisconsin, lost his life at Pittsburg Landing, where he had gone to aid the wounded soldiers. His wife took up the work, thus rudely broken by her husband’s death, and carried it on until peace came like a benison upon the land.

All over the North, loyal men and women gave of their time and money for the relief of their Nation’s defenders, and to-day deserve, and receive, the thanks of the “boys who wore the blue.”

Sometime in the month of November, a rumor was circulated that an exchange had been agreed upon, between the two Governments, and that Savannah was the point agreed upon for the exchange. But while we were hopeful that this might be true, we were doubtful. That story had been told so many times that it had become thin and gauzy from wear. In a few days, however, a lot of prisoners came in who reported that an exchange of sick had actually been in progress, but that the near approach of Sherman’s army had discontinued it, until another point could be agreed upon.

Here was news with a vengeance. We had been told that Sherman would be annihilated, that he could never reach the coast, and here came the news that his army was not only all right, but was almost to the coast. And further that our Government was still making efforts for our relief. “Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” and here for the first time, we had reasonable grounds for hope.

On the 25th of September General Hood had got into General Sherman’s rear and started north. But Sherman had anticipated just such a move and had provided for it by sending one division to Chattanooga, and another division to Rome, Ga. On the 29th Sherman sent Thomas back to Chattanooga and afterward to Nashville.

General Sherman then divided his army into two wings. The right wing in command of General O. O. Howard, and the left wing in command of General Slocum. Hood had started out to return a Roland for an Oliver. Forrest was operating in Tennessee and Kentucky, and menacing the States north of the Ohio river. Hood’s plan was to join him and while Sherman was living upon short commons in Georgia, his army would be reveling in the rich spoils of Northern States. The idea was a good one, the point was to carry it out.

On the fifth of October Hood destroyed a considerable length of railroad north of Atlanta. Sherman, from a high point, saw the railroad burning for miles. At Alatoona General Corse had a small force, among his troops was the 4th Minnesota, which earned a record, in the defense of that mountain pass which will go down to the ages yet to come, in the history of the war. From the heights of Kenesaw, Sherman’s signal officer read a dispatch, signaled from a hole in the block-house at Alatoona; “I am short a cheek bone and part of an ear, but we can whip all hell yet.

Tradition says that Sherman signaled “hold the fort, I am coming,” but I believe Sherman denies this. At any rate, the fact that Corse did hold the fort, and that he knew from the signal corps on Kenesaw that Sherman was coming to his aid, gave rise to the thoughts that inspired the writer of the little poem, “Hold the fort, for I am coming.”

Sherman strengthened Thomas by sending Stanley with the 4th corps and ordering Schofield with the Army of the Ohio to report to him. On the 2d of November General Grant approved Sherman’s plan of the campaign to the sea, and on the 10th he started back to Atlanta. The real march to the sea commenced on the 15th. Howard with the right wing and cavalry, went to Jonesboro and Milledgeville, then the capital of Georgia. Slocum with the left wing went to Stone Mountain to threaten Augusta.

The people of the South became frantic when they found Sherman had cut loose. They could not divine his movements. He threatened one point and when the enemy had been drawn thither for its protection, he threatened another point. Frantic appeals were made for the people to turn out and drive the invader from the soil. They took the cadets from the Military College and added them to the ranks of the Militia. They went so far as to liberate the convicts from the State Prison, on promise that they would join the army. But Sherman moved along leisurely, at the rate of fifteen miles a day, burning railroad bridges and destroying miles upon miles of track. The Southern papers, from which we had received the news at Florence, pictured the army as in a most deplorable condition. Saying the army was all broken up and disorganized, and was each man for himself, making his way to the sea coast to seek the protection of the navy. Some of these papers reached the North and the news was copied into the Northern papers and spread like wildfire, creating a great deal of uneasiness in the minds of those who had friends in that army.

General Grant, in his Memoirs, speaking of this matter, says: “Mr. Lincoln seeing these accounts, had a letter written asking me if I could give him anything that he could say to the loyal people that would comfort them. I told him there was not the slightest occasion for alarm; that with 60,000 such men as Sherman had with him, such a commanding officer as he, could not be cut off in the open country. He might possibly be prevented from reaching the point he had started out to reach, but he would get through somewhere and would finally get to his chosen destination; and even if worst came to worst he could return north. I heard afterwards of Mr. Lincoln’s saying to those who would inquire of him as to what he thought about the safety of Sherman’s army, that Sherman was all right; ‘Grant says they are safe with such a General, and that if they cannot get out where they want to they can crawl back by the hole they went in at.’”

The right and left wings were to meet at Millen with the hope of liberating the prisoners at that place, but they failed, the prisoners having been previously removed, but Wheeler’s Rebel cavalry had a pretty severe engagement with the Union cavalry at that place which resulted in Wheeler’s being driven toward Augusta, thus convincing the people that Augusta was the objective point. The army reached Savannah on the 9th of December, and on the 10th the siege of that place commenced. On the night of the 21st the rebels evacuated the city and it fell into Sherman’s hands.

The whole march had been a pleasure excursion, when compared with the Atlanta campaign. The rebels could never muster a sufficient force of a quality to retard the march of the army. All their boasting of annihilation was simply wind. The fact was they were completely nonplussed, they did not know where he intended to go until he was within striking distance of Savannah. Every morning a squad of men from each command started out under command of an officer, and at night returned with wagons loaded with the best in the land. Hams, hogs, beeves, turkeys and chickens, sweet potatoes, corn meal and flour, rice and honey were gathered for food, and the bummers usually captured teams to haul the provisions in with.

My friend O. S. Crandall, of the 4th Minnesota, who was on this march, tells a joke on himself which I will repeat. A brother bummer by the name of Ben Sayers, had made a discovery of some honey while the two were on a picket post. Sayers told Crandall that if he would stand guard in his place he would fill his canteen with honey. To this Crandall agreed and when the relief came around told the officer of the guard that he would stand Sayers’ relief. Sayers filled his canteen full of honey as agreed and all was lovely; honey on hard-tack, honey on dough gods, honey on flapjacks, was in Oscar’s dreams that night as he lay peacefully sleeping beneath the bright moon in southern Georgia. But the next day the sun came out hot and the honey granulated and would not come out. Oscar had evidently got a white elephant on his hands; that honey could not be persuaded to come out, and he was choking with thirst. Seeing a comrade with a canteen he thus accosted him: “Say pard, give me a drink.”

Tother Feller.—“Why don’t you drink out of your own canteen?”

Oscar.—“I can’t. I’ve got it full of honey and it’s candied.”

T. F.—“Why, you poor, miserable, innocent, blankety blanked fool, if you don’t know any better than that you may go thirsty. I won’t give you any water.”

Oscar.—“Say pard, how will you trade canteens?”

T. F.—“Even.”

Oscar.—“It’s a whack.”

And Oscar never got his canteen filled with honey again during the remainder of the war.