The incident at the
creek, where I nearly drew the fire of two sentries, led me to inquire as to
methods prison authorities have for informing new arrivals, of their rules in
reference to the dead line, especially where no line is visible, which is the
case for 60 yards at the point mentioned, parallel with the crossing from south
to north. I learned they never published their rules, every man learns at his
peril, just as I did, or by hearsay. Old prisoners say there never has been a
visible line at this creek crossing; that no man knows where it is except as he
judges the distance from the stockade, or guesses where it would come by
looking at the line where it stops north and south of the creek. The sentry is
left to guess when a man gets over the line, that is not there and shoots
according to his guess. It involves upon the prisoners to post new men, as much
as possible, but comparatively few think to do so. It is a serious matter as
new arrivals nearly every day are apt to transgress the rule ignorantly and
innocently, and if shot they have been murdered in cold blood. During new
arrivals this happens often, as guards are mostly young fellows whose chief
education is to despise Yankees whom it is a Southern virtue to kill, and to
perform this patriotic duty he has been trained to shoot well, and to watch for
a chance. At this point he finds opportunity. Guards are composed of Alabama
and Georgia youths reared under the fire-eating doctrines of Yancey, Cobb and
Toombs, and to believe in the infallibility of the chivalric South, its
institutions, peculiar rights, as superior to all else, whose leaders have led
the Southern mass to engage in a bad war for a bad cause. Probably these
shooting imps know nothing of this, are ignorant of the crime they every day
commit. Not a single instance, so far, were men who were shot seeking to
escape. They were ignorant of any rule and unhindered in their approach to the
stockade by a visible dead line at this point. Hence the shooting has been
unjustifiable by ordinnary prison discipline prescribed by treaties or laws of
war.
It is one
continuous, irksome every day recurrence of unpleasant scenes. But one event is
looked for with hopeful pleasure, that is the issuing of rations which never
lacks serious, if not total disappointment. After roll call the sick are helped
to the gates; those ready to die are put on stretchers and carried to the
hospital outside near the south end of the stockade. Of all the grim and
ghastly sights imagination ever depicted, those we see at this hour far excel
in horror. Poor, squalid, yellow faces, eyes sunken and glassy, cheeks hollow
or swollen with scurvy, fevered lips drawn tightly across the teeth, the mouth
agape to breathe or let escape fetid breath, some borne by comrades, others
tottering by the help of staffs or supported by friends; some without half a
suit to cover them, some with terribly swollen limbs, putrid sores, dropsical
distensions and bent forms. One holds his breath to look at them, nay turns
away! Men walk about whom we would call bad corpses if seen in coffins anywhere
else. Such a pitiful look as they give I never saw; their voices are as if the
dead speak.
Two rods to the rear
of us I witnessed the death of a Tennesseean, the last of three brothers who
died on the same spot since March. All were Belle Isle victims. He had laid all
day in the heat and will not be carried out till morning. He gradually wasted
and died without a struggle. It is more remarkable than anything I ever read,
how men lose their sense of life; imperceptibly degree by degree, it goes out
leaving only a latent consciousness of what they have been, what they are, and
a vague, unintelligent hope. Even that departs and his mind ranges in the
narrowest sphere the human spirit can. For weeks he is robbed of himself; an
infant is not more childish or weak; age not so whimsical or broken. He is a
mere human worm! Another singular phase of these conditions: We frequently see
men unable to arise from the sand, threatening to knock down strong men for
trivial things they deem insulting. Men of skeleton forms lock in each others
puny arms in a rage, falling on the ground unable to rise, they still boast of
what they can do. So long bereft of comfort, so long have they only hoped for
bread and liberty from day to day at the hands of merciless authorities, that
reason is extinguished in many, and the lowest, blindest, selfish passion
clings to the rotten thread of life. The phases which life assumes in this
degraded condition, is inconceivable. Some retain the tenderest affection and
the broadest faith, as long as consciousness remains.
I saw a man today in
the last stages of starvation having sickened of his scanty food. His cry was
bread, but when offered that given us, his stomach heaved; he turned his face
with expressions of hopeless agony and exclaimed: "They can get me
something else! could I be at home!" There are many cases which doctors
might term chronic innutrition, where they eat with avidity all they get and
still starve, the food doing no good. Doctors have been made acquainted with
many of these cases, but will not admit to the hospital. Bell Isle boys tell me
they have often dreamed of eating and woke up to go through the motions
frothing at the mouth. In one instance they begged the guard to throw over
pieces of a cow that had been delivered of a calf three days before, some of
which they devoured, raw. They exhibit some rings claimed to have been made
from the bones of a dog, eaten at Belle Isle, kept as a memento.
SOURCE: John Worrell
Northrop, Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville
and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864, p. 66-8
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