A cold rain
continued during the night. What would the good folks at home say could they
see this camp this cool, wet morning—men lying in the wet sand? Could they have
heard the coughing of thousands as I heard it when I walked the camp to shake
off the cold that chilled wet clothing, would they not say: Now that so much
has been imperiled for the country, let us make it a glory and a blessing to
ages, an honor to ourselves, our institutions the abode of liberty, a beacon
that shall light the world and silence the wrath of treason? There are 20,000
within a space so small that a strangling cough can be heard from one side to
the other.
Report that nine men
tunneled out and one guard escaped with them. The tunnel is found and being
filled. Col. Parsons was inside; he thinks exchange is agreed upon, but
can't be effected
for our forces cover the point in the cartel. Were that all we should soon be
relieved. He is quite familiar with a few of us and expressed a feeling that he
would resign his command were it possible. He was sent for duty here because
the most of his command are prisoners. Earlier in the war he was twice a
prisoner, captured by Burnside's men, and was well treated. He says men are
sent here without any provision made for shelter, and he has no orders or means to
furnish it; that it is not the fault of the local commissary that we are left
to suffer. Wirz is the jailor, a morose, inclement tempered man. It requires
but little to get him in a rage. He is called "the old Dutch Captain";
is generally hated. Men caught in attempting escape are unreasonably punished
by wearing ball and chain, bucking and gagging, putting in stocks, hanging by
thumbs, by lash and close confinement.
Prisoners in today
report the two armies on to Richmond, Lee with his right, Grant with his left;
Kilpatrick 25 miles in the rear of Atlanta tearing up roads.
SOURCE: John Worrell
Northrop, Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville
and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864, p. 71-2
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