Good order has prevailed since the hanging. The men have
settled right down to the business of dying, with no interruption. I keep
thinking our situation can get no worse, but it does get worse every day and
not less than one hundred and sixty die each twenty-four hours. Probably one-fourth
or one-third of these die inside the stockade, the balance in the hospital
outside. All day and up to four o'clock P. M., the dead are being gathered up
and carried to the south gate and placed in a row inside the dead line. As the
bodies are stripped of their clothing in most cases as soon as the breath
leaves, and in some cases before, the row of dead presents a sickening
appearance. Legs drawn up and in all shapes. They are black from pitch pine
smoke and laying in the sun Some of them lay there for twenty hours or more,
and by that time are in a horrible condition. At four o'clock a four or six-
mule wagon comes up to the gate and twenty or thirty bodies are loaded on to
the wagon and they are carted off to be put in trenches, one hundred in each trench,
in the cemetery, which is eighty or a hundred rods away. There must necessarily
be a great many whose names are not taken. It is the orders to attach the name,
company and regiment to each body, but it is not always done. I was invited
today to dig in a tunnel, but had to decline. My digging days are over. Must
dig now to keep out of the ground, I guess. It is with difficulty now that I
can walk, and only with the help of two canes.
SOURCE: John L. Ransom, Andersonville Diary, p.
85
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