Fresh calls for
shoemakers. A few weak ones give their names but are not accepted. Negroes have
begun additional fortifications working all night and Sundays, falling trees
and making the night air ring. Last night my mind was filled with thoughts of
the misery of this place; I could not sleep. One poor boy near cried all night
and wished to die and suffer no longer; he is an awful object; his clothing is
gone but a rag of a shirt; his body is a mere frame, his hair has fallen from
his head; his scurvy ankles and feet are as large as his waist. I never saw a
sight more appalling. Then the awful thought that he is a man, somebody's
darling boy, dead and yet breathing. And he is but a sample of many. To think
of it blunts one's faith in men as brothers.
This forenoon a
priest came in saying he had great news; we are to be exchanged. He read his
news; it stated nothing definite, a mere if-so-to-be-perhaps, and yet he tried
to make us believe it did. Then he preached about the blessed apostles and
dealt out hell-fire in big rations unless we accepted certain theories. It was
not consoling. It is true Fremont and Lincoln are both nominated. I [visited]
an Ohio 100-day man taken in Maryland since the nomination. He thinks the Fremont
ticket will be withdrawn.
SOURCE: John Worrell
Northrop, Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville
and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864, pp. 94-5
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