Corn bread, as served here, is to me what a single feather was to
Paddy's head on a rock and what he thought more would be if supplied.
Irrepressible conflict is brewing between hunger and filling up. Putting plenty
of water in the mush is common with some who want something to fill up. We get
nothing but rice tonight.
I find Harriman and tent mate Phillips bad off with scurvy, it having
assumed malignant form and the flesh of their limbs has become lifeless.
Harriman was looking at photographs of home friends and spoke of them with
tenderness and a tone keyed to despair. He has ever before been cheerful and
quickly responded to expressions of hope and cheer. We find a word of cheer
comes not amiss. I trust that "each does well in his degree." But time
comes when condolence takes its place and when that cannot remove the fact. How
little of either have we now! The downcast soul is robbed of the blessings of
consolation from kindred when wafted from this den of sin to the realm beyond.
Are its celestial features tainted with this morbid air; is it enfeebled by
this languor? God's unbounded provision is the universal remedy for every woe.
This we must feel as never before, or be insensible to ourselves. Harriman then
related his strange dream which, to him, was extraordinary, in which he beheld
immediate conditions, and the blackness and terror of the supposed "river
of death" which soon brightened into a bordering stream, before which all
misery, terror and darkness vanished, and he beheld the mystic world. He regarded
this as a prophecy of a change soon to come to him and said he had no terror of
what might come; it had given him strength ineffable. He then briefly sketched
his life, his aspirations and disappointments, which are of so much interest to
me that I carefully noted them for future writing.
Saw a paper of July 1st; most notable item: Democrats postpone their
convention to be held in Chicago, August 29th. Made the acquaintance of a
namesake, John H. Northrop, a nephew of the celebrated lawyer, Henry Northrop,
of New York; a prisoner nine months, clothes nearly gone, is lively though he
has symptoms of scurvy. The evenings are beautiful; religious meetings are
being held in various parts. There are some remarkable singers who attract the
attention of outsiders.
SOURCE: John Worrell Northrop, Chronicles from the Diary of a
War Prisoner in Andersonville and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864,
p. 91
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