Most important
reports are from Virginia. Grant's movements a mystery. Sheridan met Early in the
Shenandoah with a heavy force, but whipped him to pieces. Flag of truce boat
off Charleston. The boys talk this news over with satisfaction. Once in awhile
there is one who says, "I don't care how they do if I can get home."
We draw rations of rice and molasses only, tonight. It is a change and
"change of pasture makes fat calves."
Capt. Wirz has not
appeared for two weeks. It turns out he is sick; the boys hope he will die.
Lieut. Davis commands the prison; we ascribe improvements to him. We could not
account for how "Old Dutch" had become so enterprising. It is his
custom to ride about like a pompous chief; to devise ways to punish offenders,
as he calls men who attempt escape; watch them groaning in the stocks where he
has kept them all day and all night with hands and feet outstretched to their
utmost, and grinned as he saw them hanging by the thumbs. While suffering this
punishment, two have died we know. If more have not, it is not to his credit.
Neither has every little pretext to deprive us of rations from 24 to 60 hours,
been so readily caught up. Nevertheless our principal ration has been bad, sour
bread and hungry as we might be, some has been thrown away.
SOURCE: John Worrell
Northrop, Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville
and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864, pp. 115-6
