Sunday, February 1, 2026

Diary of Corporal John Worrell Northrop, Wednesday, July 29, 1864

Had Job greater patience? Here are men of true mettle or we might see them knocking at the gate to swear fidelity to foes. To lie down is to submit to be eaten by lice and rot. When strength fails, such is the lot of all. "All that a man hath will he give for his life." But what have we to give? A great deal of money will get a little flour from Rebels, such is their love of money. But their lack of love for humanity feeds us husks and loathsome things. We are in prison and they visit us with torments and reproaches; we are athirst and they give us to drink of water tainted with filth and excrement; sick and afflicted and they torture us; weak and weary and they give us to rest on the sand filthy and full of breeding vermin; shelterless and they give us no roof; lacking raiment and they take much that we have.

A man shot dead, the ball passing directly through his head back of the ears, while kneeling near the dead line innocently looking at something. He had just come in and was unwarned.

I bought an egg for 20 cents, a small biscuit for 25 cents for supper with proceeds from the tin kettle sold.

SOURCE: John Worrell Northrop, Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864, p. 94

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