Thursday, August 3, 2017

Diary of 1st Sergeant John L. Ransom: June 14, 1864

Mike Hoare stalks around, cheerful, black and hungry. We have long talks about our school days when little boys together. Mike is a mason by trade, and was solicited to go out and work for the rebels. Told them he would work on nothing but vaults to bury them in. Is a loyal soldier and had rather die here than help them, as, indeed, would a majority of the prisoners. To tell the truth, we are so near death and see so much of it, that it is not dreaded as much as a person would suppose. We stay here day after day, week after week, and month after month, seemingly forgotten by all our friends at the North, and then our sufferings are such that death is a relief in the view of a great many, and not dreaded to any extent. By four o'clock each day the row of dead at the gate would scare the life out of me before coming here, while now it is nothing at all, but the same thing over and over.

SOURCE: John L. Ransom, Andersonville Diary, p. 67

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