For nine days I have been prevented from making usual notes.
Little passed I care to recall; I force myself to write today. I know no one
who takes a general note of things; it is with hesitancy as well as difficulty,
that I do. I cannot say that mine is more than meager penciling. They are
samples of the best and some of the worst things that I note. Two of the sick
mentioned the 11th, died the 13th; the others on the 15th. One had turned gray
since I first saw him. He had money but could not save himself. His was the
common complaint. He died within four feet of me suddenly falling; was from
Pennsylvania. Another old prisoner died today of squalor within a few feet of
us. The mortality, notwithstanding the removal of so many of the worst cases,
has increased. The average is over 100 per day this month. On the 15th, 140;
the 17th, 128 died. I am told by a man who is on duty at the hospital. The sick
again admited to the gate for prescription; but three taken to the hospital out
of several hundred applicants. It is the most disagreeable task one ever had to
do, to cary a sick man before the doctor and then it amounts to nothing.
H. D. Merritt of our company was taken out in an awful
condition on the 14th. He is from Sodus, Wayne county, N. Y. Fourteen of
Company F have died; eleven more are in bad condition. (This does not include
myself.) Madison hurt his foot a few days ago; his blood is so weak that it
does not heal. Gangrene set in; it has eaten to the bone. The limbs of others
are so affected as to be unable to walk. Most of them were strong heavy men,
but we have to carry them to sick call. Gangrene is one of the frightful phases
of these diseases. W. M. Townsend of the 111th N. Y. received a slight scratch
on his thigh which has spread to a large and painful sore. It is by great precaution
it is kept from being maggoty. The 12th I accidentally found Hanson, a young
German of our company whom I had not seen for a long time, he belonged to
another detachment. He was helpless but could talk; had fallen in the swamp,
was completely daubed. His gums are rotted with scurvy; the backs of his hands
and feet raw from sunburn; maggots actually crawling in his flesh. I got
Sergeant Burton and went to the gate begging aid. At last got the answer,
"You Yanks do something for your own selves." We returned to Hanson,
lifted and gave him water, cleansed his wounds, found his detachment sergeant,
borrowed a ragged blanket to cover him; could do no more. He died August 16th.
Tunnel was discovered not long since this way: It had been
completed to the point where they wished to come out. The head man was pulling
down the dirt when suddenly it broke away covering him, and down came a gray
jacket with a Rebel in it, gun and all. The relief guards were just being
mounted and one of them stepped upon the exact spot where they were to
escape.
A Rebel paper I saw today spoke of Major Currill,
Commissioner of Exchange, visiting our fleet in Mobile Bay, having reference to
sending packages. Fighting at Richmond and other places, and close work at
Atlanta. They abound in speculations on the Presidential campaign, and in
extracts from the New York World, Herald, News and Albeny Argus and from their
view argue the South's success. The World has an article on "The Failure of
Grant," denouncing his whole course; and claims that "Grant is played
out," though he has punched Lee back into his Richmond ditches and is
still operating. Southern Rebels do not claim Grant is a failure. They keep up
a bold front which they consider a political as well as a military necessity;
but their own admissions, in general tones, are evidences of their strait. To
me it seems they have ceased to hope for that degree of success from their
armies that can save the little prestige they have abroad, much less secure
their recognition, so turning to political bickerings, presenting their armies
in the feigned attitude of triumph and strength but base their hope on the
election. They believe that a party that could expiate their crimes in the
past, would do even more in the future, if raised to power to look down on a
forest of Rebel bayonets instead of threatening, sophistical politicians to
whom they had succumbed. But they are a mere shell full of dead and rotting
strength that has passed its zenith. The Southern heart is burning to ashes;
they would negotiate for a respite to replenish the flame, not for Union. Oh,
let the North be true in this crisis! Rebels would despair of success before
January.
They do not give wood enough to ten men for one. Men go to
extremes to obtain it, stealing dead men from their friends to carry out with
the hope of getting it. Four men are permitted to go and can bring in quite a
jag. Then some will trade half of their scanty rations for a stick to cook the
other half. A few will trade a day's rations for a ten cent bit of tobacco. A
few so far lose their reason as to throw clothing away, becoming disgusted with
lice; add themselves to disgusting sights by going naked. All capable of being
degraded so as to lose self respect, become so. God only knows the wickedness
and woe of such a state!
I wandered to a locality new to me, a few days ago. I came
to a quartet of Tennesseeans who told their war experiences; of persecutions
their people suffered for being Unionists; how they fled from home to escape
Rebels who were savage against all who refused to support secession. Their
madness knew neither law nor friendship; their frenzy neither justice nor
mercy. They, with a hundred others, armed themselves and one day cut their way
through an armed mob claimed to have been sent by Governor Isham Harris, who
designed to massacre or capture them. They marched many miles to join Buell's
army, and had several fights with gorillas. They were captured in Rosecrans'
operations near Chattanooga, in 1863; wintered at Danville, Va.; came here in
March, seven stopping together. Three have died. Prison hardships affect them
severely. The character of these sturdy mountain people, their honest,
intelligent patriotism in connection with this crisis, also their general
history, inspire these lines:
THE MEN OF TENNESSEE.
God save from woes of Anderson
The men who bravely stayed
By Lincoln's flag, for country one,
Where slavery's power had swayed;
Eschewed the leaders of the South,
Of low and high degree,
And deemed the flag ensign of truth,
Brave men of Tennessee.
They lived upon their native soil;
They loved it well and true;
They lived by faithful, honest toil;
They loved the peace they knew.
But they were those who weighed events
As they should pondered be;
They saw conflicting sentiments
Distracting Tennessee.
And when the Union of the States
Was threatened by its foes,
With the Union they allied their fates
Secession to oppose.
When driven from their homes away,
By the
powers of slavery,
They joined the Union's armed array,
Grand men of Tennessee.
They spurned the rule that would
disrupt
The Nation's life they loved;
They spurned the rule, wrong and
corrupt,
As patriots true behooved,
And leaving homes they loved behind,
Engulfed in war's red sea,
They showed great strength of heart
and mind,
These men of Tenneessee,
They nobly tendered strength and life,
If human blood must shed,
Against secession's valorous strife
By Southrons madly led,
And side by side with Northern men
They fought most valiantly-
Here brook the ills of prison pen
Brave men of Tennessee.
Behold them suffer here and die
Within dark Sumter's walls!
The earth their bed, the roof the sky,
Where woes their hearts appal!
And yet all offers they resent
That promise them to free;
By loyalty invite torment-
True men of Tennessee.
O, hail the men who know the right
And for it stand and fall;
Who will not swerve at Treason's might
Though death may claim them all;
And here in prison pine and rot,
Though today they could be free!
No truer men have ever fought,
Than men of Tennessee.
The valor of some Spartan band
From ancient time men laud;
But the acts of these, of Jackson's
land,
Who will their deeds applaud?
I see them dying day by day
'Mid scenes of misery;
No voice to praise, where death has
sway,
These men of Tennessee.
HOSPITALS, THEIR
HISTORY.
Noting the indisposition or inability of doctors to clear
the stockade of sick—victims conspicuous for their wretchedness—I have applied
my mind to learn facts regarding so-called hospitals. It is no mystery that men
sicken in the stockade. Coarse, unpalatable food, a mixture of meal containing
cob and bran doctors call it meal and husk—often musty and bitter, stirred in
filthy water in large batches, often souring before baking or while baking with
green wood, no salt, no yeast, no soda, often partially raw, often over-roasted
with a crust hard and tasteless. If changed to rice, that is colored with the
dirty water and often uncooked. Exposed to all weather and until some wells
were dug, all drank and washed in the same small stream, always roiled and more
and more, night and day, being poisoned by drainage from without and within.
Thirst becomes feverish, unbearable; to drink is to pollute our bodies with the
offal, intermixed, made more stenchful and rotten by heat and rain. Nothing
could be more unsanitary, more conducive to disease. What are the hospital
facilities to cope with rapidly developing conditions absolutely adverse to health
in strongest men? I find these facts, attested by appearances and results. No
Confederate doctor or officer pretends to dispute.
This is the history of so-called hospitals here to date and
they must continually grow worse. When the prison was built most of its early
prisoners were from prisons farther north, Danville and about Richmond, where
they were under roofs. Coming here in February and March they readily chilled
through. Some refuse of the timber from which the stockade was built was
appropriated by prisoners for fuel and shelter, and before hot weather and an
increase of prisoners, both air and water might have been an improvement on
their former abode. But old prisoners broke down and the first hospital was
erected inside of poles and brush. This was the best hospital the place has
ever had. The poles or logs were left several inches apart, and as sickly men
were put in them the place became as odious and no more commodious than a
backwoods hog-pen. A portion had a lose floor, no beds, no bunks, no blankets,
no straw. The storm and wind beat through the space between the logs and
rendered patients that retained sensitiveness or desire to live, uncomfortable.
A few prisoners had threadbare blankets, or remnants, with the U. S. brand, but
no other was provided whether prisoners had a U. S. rag or not.
This was the original provision and remained the only
hospital until the middle of May, or a few days later, when prisoners began to
come from the spring campaigns and were so packed about this hospital pen that
the air was infected and it was removed to its present locality to make room.
We arrived here from the Wilderness fields in Virginia just two days after this
change; but even then the place where it had been, was covered with men fresh
from our armies little heeding that the very earth which they had been forced
to accept as their abode, was soaked with the filth of the lately removed wards
of death, for, then as now, there was no means of disposal of excreta of men
who were slowly wasting and unable to seek the swamp or stream, except in illy
provided open excavations within the 'hospital" or death-pen. The
hospitals now simply consist of old canvas appropriated from other use,
ragged or patched, open at the sides, without floors, beds, bunks, stoves or
straw. Men lay on the earth in ghastly rows. The ground where they lay is
saturated with offal of wasting bodies. The sickening exhalation is constant.
Patients have no clothing except that worn during their imprisonment and in
active service, never but a single suit, in many cases not much of that, no
blankets, except where prisoners happened to retain them on coming to prison.
Patients are sickly visages of squalor, decaying bodies, while yet their minds
retain dreary existences. There are fleshless skeletons with skin drawn over
them; on some bones have broken or worn through the skin. Limbs of others whose
flesh has not vanished, are swollen with dropsy and scurvy, discolored, yellow
and brown. In many cases ulcers appear—sores from wounds that never heal, and
gangrene is having an unchecked if not undisputed reign. Myriads of lice and
flies swarm over helpless men; maggots infest gangrenous sores that may have
originated from a scratch, a sunburn or from ulcerous eruption caused by
corrupted blood.
These matters, seemingly, have reached an uncontrollable
stage. There is scarcity of medicine, scarcity of physicians. Nurses are
dumbfounded; if they have any sense of the situation they are in despair; can
do little to comfort and it seems that those detailed have no adaptation for
the work. Except now and then one, would they be retained and for just that
reason, in a hospital well ordered for work. From first to last there is
nothing provided, nothing arranged, nothing expected but death, and the quicker
the better. If doctors had ordinary skill, and nurses had any idea of
sanitation, some police regulations would be visible. If this were so and the
Richmond government had meant to do anything but murder, better facilities
would be provided. I have met a doctor or two apparently of skill, good sense,
and humane intent; but they seemed to have despaired of doing justice to their
profession or to patients, lacking means and having to contend against
conditions which no skill and no medical supplies can meet until conditions
change. They have no hope of that. There are some bunglers in charge with a
slight knowledge of surgery ready to improve their quack skill by revolting
practice. Amputation has been performed where no hope was possible or expected,
and in cases where there was a lingering hope, yet the bodily condition of
patients did not justify amputation. In no case as I can hear, has gangrene
been cured by amputation. Slight wounds are not healable owing to weak blood.
Some of these fellows are perfectly brutal, and enlisted in this capacity
rather than be conscripted and carry a musket. These conditions are known at
Richmond. The prison has been inspected by military and civil officials of high
rank. Reports of surgeons, Drs. Reeves, Pelot and Thomburg in preceding months
expressly stated not only general conditions but that there were men that were
living masses of putrifaction; hospitals without bunks, beds or straw; as above
stated, speaking of corn bread raw and sour and the effects of such diet on
sick and well that they could not practice successfully, that sickness could
not be prevented nor patients cured until made comfortable; appealing for
"beds if any in Dixie." All was unanswered. Confidentially these
facts are told me by a doctor.
SOURCE: John Worrell Northrop, Chronicles
from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville and Other Military Prisons of
the South in 1864, pp. 107-13
