We moved back to the old side, five of us, unbeknown to Rebs, it being
improved by the removal of so many to the new part, and to get near the well we
dug, for we were fifty rods from water. About 3 p. m. the mule teams came to
the north gate; the boys cry "rations," the first issued for over
sixty hours. I know no other reason for this than that the first night after
the new part of the prison was occupied men carried off timbers of the old
north wall for wood or for huts. On July 2nd Capt. Wirz directed that no
rations be issued until every stick was replaced. He was heard to say on the
3rd, at the gate, that he would "learn the G-d d--n Yankees that he was in
command and if the sons of b-----s died like hell, there would be enough
left." I paid ten cents for a small rotting apple; it was good. The 6th,
Sherman's men report Johnston whipped at all points; the 8th, behind the
Chattahoochee, Sherman crossing on his flank; Grant's, Richmond in danger;
Lee's cornbread line troubled. The Southern slave empire must come down. Billy
Decker, prisoner since October, a Belle Islander, "Pinch's" old
playmate, is stopping with us. He belongs to the 1st U. S. dragoons; is from
Steuben county, New York.
SOURCE: John Worrell Northrop, Chronicles from the Diary of a
War Prisoner in Andersonville and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864,
p. 85
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