Part 30

The death-rate increased at an alarming rate, so that from forty to fifty were carried out each day to the dead-house. Nearly all of the workshops had been changed into hospitals, also two floors of the old factory building. The dead-house was one of the lower floors of one of the work-shops where, when the weather was bad and the dead were not readily removed, as many as eighty corpses, stark and cold, could be seen piled one upon the other like corded wood. On the coming of the cart to remove them, they were thrown into the same with the least formality possible and so carried off. As we had no means of bathing, one of the worst features of the yard was the mass of animated insect life. Oh! the horrors of such creatures! Through them it might be said that we suffered a thousand deaths. Never at rest, always vigorous, they inhabited every nook and crevice of that dismal yard. They were worse than death. The terrors of a Spanish Inquisition could not bring to bear a mode of torture so vile as these filthy vermin.

Then the state of the yard! The principal diseases were dysentery and pneumonia, so that disease bred corruption and malaria. Those who were taken sick, if their squad sergeant were attentive, were carried to Hospital No. 3, and if, on examination, it were evident that the ailment was incurable, he was sent to a hospital to die. The good wheat bread of our earlier rations was changed to corn bread, made of the coarsest cob meal and given to us with rancid molasses. Meat was issued, after a time, about once in fifteen days and then at the rate of eight pounds of beef and bones to a hundred men. At such times all parts of the creatures were used; the heads with eyes and horns still attached were often issued and in some way made victuals of. All small bones capable of being chewed were swallowed as a dog gulps his osseous food and the larger and harder ones were crushed with stones and boiled for hours; the soup thus obtained was thought a great luxury. To obtain salt a day's ration would be exchanged for enough of this necessity to last a fortnight or so, of course the exchange meant a fast for the day whose ration was traded.

Occasionally flour or meal was given us in the raw and without salt; this was cooked into paste and gruel and very thankful all were to get it; oftentimes the prisoners were kept on one-half the regular rations, possibly one-quarter of the time, and sometimes we went as many as three days with no bread whatever. It was this starvation process that drove good men to enlist in the southern army. About the 12th of November a thick cup of rice soup was given out; the next and the following day, we got only rice water, then came flour without salt. Wood was now issued regularly, each squad getting four sticks of eight foot timber. This particular afternoon it was green pine. To add to our troubles a mist arose, so that the only way we could cook our food was by piling the logs on top of each other and placing a coal underneath which we took turns in keeping alive with our breath, till all had cooked their meal. It was a hapless sight that we afforded that afternoon, black with dirt and smoke, as we ate our food. We had gone so long without food that we had almost lost the sense of hunger and this little meal only served to wake our appetite. Before eating my ration, I could walk about the yard without resting; afterwards I was so weak that I fainted in going to my tent, for I was failing rapidly; my old pantaloons were worn out and slit from the knee downward; the sleeves of my shirt and blouse were almost gone, my shoes and socks worn through, my hair matted with dirt and filth, my complexion that of a negro, my body truly was more dead than alive.

My condition was that of my associates in misery, and it was then that the rebel authorities opened a recruiting station in our midst, offering a loaf of bread and fifty dollars in gold to each one who would enlist; six hundred went out. With the exception of a few desperate characters, all hearts were softened at the sight of so much misery, the faint hearted had mostly enlisted in the rebel ranks and those who remained were true blue and had determined, live or die, to stand fast to their principles. Without anything being said, oaths began to be dropped and testaments to be read; while cant was never so ridiculous and intolerable, true religion and a pure morality began to be the life of the mass.

About the last of November, a friend with whom I had become acquainted on Belle Isle was appointed wardmaster of Hospital No. 5; hearing of my condition, he sent for me. I went and was received like a brother, the dirt washed from me, there being plenty of water in the hospitals, clothes taken from men who had died were given me and I was nursed, cared for and fed out of his own rations till my life, which was slowly ebbing away, was coaxed back again. This friend, a total stranger before my capture, was a sergeant in a Pennsylvania cavalry regiment and our acquaintance began at a devotional meeting where were laid the foundations of the strongest Christian friendship. He was a veritable ministering angel to all those who came under his care, and from his conduct I learned that Christianity was not merely a sentiment but a life, not an idea but a reality.

As remarked before, few cases were admitted to the hospital that were not considered hopeless; from our ward of two rooms, having forty patients, five or six would be carried to the dead-house every night. Army surgeons are bad enough anywhere, but those provided at Salisbury were worse than the common run. Coming in at the time appointed, they never came at any other, they would go along the line of men lying on the floor, hitting the patient with their feet to attract attention, would contemptuously inquire, "Well, what's the matter with you to-day?" and, without waiting for a reply, would prescribe any one of the medicines that happened to cross their minds. There were, indeed, three honorable exceptions, but they could only express their sympathy by words of encouragement. Our ward doctor, the most of the time, was a medical student of the latter class.

November 25th came a decided effort to break out; unfortunately the plot had not been worked up so that a sufficient number understood the plan, so that the effort was made at two instead of four o'clock, when only three divisions had been prepared. On the appearance of the relief at that time, someone gave the watchword, "Who's for liberty?" and, as quick as a flash, every one of those sentinels was disarmed and the boys were using their guns against the sentinels on the fence. The noise of the struggle of course soon brought the troops to the scene and forming on the fence began firing. If theirs had been the only resistance, we might have succeeded; unfortunately for us, the Sixty-ninth North Carolina, a newly recruited regiment, was just outside, awaiting transportation, and they were brought to the support of the guards, and many of the Salisbury citizens, afraid of their property if we got away, trotted down with their fowling pieces and old flintlocks. The fence was soon covered with enemies who began a murderous fire on every tent in the yard, though not a third part of the prisoners knew what was up until it was too late and then, recognizing the hopelessness of the effort, everyone tried to hide himself from the terrible fire. The guards having recovered from their fright proceeded to exercise vengeance by discharging the two pieces of artillery loaded with boiler screws amongst us. No one knows how many were killed, but sixty or seventy were wounded, most of them lying in their tents. The wounded were all placed in the same hospital, were all treated with the same surgical tools and gangrene set in with all, and all, save two or three, died.

Of my company (E) twenty-four were captured, the most of them strong healthy men. As the winter advanced and the cold grew more intense, many of them lost hope and dropped away. From my position in the hospital, to which I had been elected after recovering sufficient strength, I was able to be of help to them. I passed out crust-coffee and opium pills whenever I could get them. The stoutest hearted man in the company was the first to die. A native of Maine, a blacksmith by trade, Jones seemed the one best fitted to endure hardship, yet, allowing himself to become disheartened, he quickly fell a prey to disease. On one of my visits to the boys I found one of them, a corporal (Glines), failing fast. I asked permission of the superintendent to admit him to the hospital as a patient and it was granted. Two days later, I heard that another corporal (Horton) of my company, a near neighbor and friend at home, wished to see me. I found him lying in the mud of his tent, and I knew by the look of his face that he could not live. He asked me if I could do anything for him or, at least, give him some opium. I got some of the pills for him and told him I would do what I could towards getting him into the hospital. Knowing that he could not live much longer he said, "Tell the folks at home I died trying to do my duty and thinking of them." Going back to the ward, I besought the privilege of bringing him to the hospital. The superintendent replied that there was no vacancy, but would be on the morrow, but I might go after supper and get him and give him a place under a bunk. I went upstairs and cooked our scanty meal and, while doing so, the night patients were brought in. While eating my supper, one of the nurses, a pompous fellow, came in and said that one of the patients was a young fellow who insisted on seeing me before going under his bunk. On being told that I was busy upstairs the nurse said he whined, "I wish you would call Johnnie, one moment," but he put a stop to his "nonsense," as the nurse said, by showing him his place for the night and said that he had fainted in taking it. Indignant that my friend had been denied so small a favor, I hurried down to the place where he had been put and cried, "Fred," and, as no answer came I supposed him asleep and thought I would not disturb him. After finishing my work at midnight, I went upstairs to retire; shortly afterward the nurse in attendance called that a corporal, under the bunks, was dead. Hurrying down, I found my friend stiff and cold in death in the middle of the floor. A friend and playmate from boyhood, the merriest boy of us all, smart in school, most joyous in sport, he was the life of our youthful circle. We had enlisted together; his parents, brothers and sisters were all well known to me and I must tell the sad story to them--how he had died in a hospital of which I was an attendant, yet had been unable to comfort him in his dying hours. The sight of my grief was a good lesson to the nurses who were more ready to grant favors thereafter. Horton, the other corporal, died the same night.

A great many died from the effects of the cold weather; numbers of them had their feet frost-bitten and, as they were not taken care of, mortification set in, to be followed by death. Many a poor fellow, weak with disease, left his tent at night, and, stumbling in the darkness would fall and being too weak to call for help would be found in the morning a frozen corpse. Finally, without any warning, on the to us ever memorable 20th of February, '65, orders came to have the sick ready for removal. It was with joyful hearts that we obeyed and, when the gate was opened that we might carry them out, we could hardly contain ourselves for joy. Only when the cars had fully started could we realize that Salisbury, with its filth and dirt, its misery and degradation, its dying and dead, was being left for good. With feeble voices we sang "Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow" and many a prayer of thanksgiving was breathed that we had lived to see the glad hour.

SERGT. MAJOR C. K. CONN

Sergt. Major Chas. K. Conn, originally of Company K, was wounded May 8, '64, captured and carried to Richmond. After recovering from his wounds he was retained as a clerk, one of his duties being to make out the lists of those who were to be paroled. Having a happy thought one day while preparing a roll of names, he wrote his own among those of men about to start for God's country, and when the party in charge called for those thus enumerated, Conn stepped forth with the invalids to whom parole privileges were confined in 1864. One of the Confederate officers, noticing him among the sick men, asked him what he was doing there. To the query the quick witted Yankee replied, "I heard my name called and so responded." The facts in the case were not discovered till after Conn had gone too far to be called back, though he felt extremely shaky until he was safely aboard the Union vessel.

J. F. LESLIE'S RUSE

This Company K man thought his liberty worth risking something for; captured Aug. 19, '64, he too had been taken to Richmond, "Libby" and Belle Isle, where he informed his comrades he purposed trying the sick dodge by way of the hospital, for he had discerned that the sick and wounded would go first. His friends tried to dissuade him, saying that he would surely be found out and might be made to suffer all the more on account of his attempted cheat. He tried the rebel doctor every morning with his complaints, but was careful to take none of the latter's medicine, throwing all of it away. At last the surgeon, suspecting shamming on the Yankee's part, prepared a Spanish-fly plaster, 4 x 8 inches in size, which could not be disposed of as his medicine had been. Leslie put it on his body, keeping it on all night, and when he visited the doctor in the morning and was asked if it had had any effect he was able to show a blister the full size of the plaster. This convinced the officer that our man was not shamming, for as he said, "Any man who could stand that could not be 'playing it'," so he was sent to the hospital in Richmond, "Yankee, 21," as it was called. On getting there he hardly dared move for fear of being sent back. One morning the hospital doctor, saying that he would give him something to make him sleep, left a potion with the injunction to make sure that it was taken; there was no way open but to take it, but it was spat out the moment the steward passed to the next patient. The look of astonishment on the doctor's face the next morning convinced the patient that it was a dose for final sleep that the surgeon had prepared; at any rate he never came near Leslie's cot again. In a few days the "artful dodger" was paroled, while his comrades were sent to Salisbury and Andersonville where the most of them died.

CORPORAL CHARLES H. BARNES' STORY.

A picture of Andersonville, as it appeared in the summer and fall of 1864 and the following winter, is drawn by Corporal Charles H. Barnes of Co. I, who was wounded the 8th of May and, two weeks later, while going from Fredericksburg to Belle Plain Landing, on his way with others to Washington and Convalescent Camp, was captured, carried to Richmond and shut up in Libby Prison, where he passed through the usual experience of being searched, etc. Three weeks later in company with more than a thousand fellow prisoners, he was started for Andersonville, Georgia; having ninety of them in an ordinary box car was pretty close work, since they could neither sit nor lie down, so had to stand. At Goldsboro they were unloaded and like cattle turned into a pasture without supper or shelter, but unlike cattle they could not eat the grass about them; rain was falling hard and, wet to the skin, they had to stand closely together for the sake of warmth. Starting again in the morning they reached Andersonville, just a week after leaving Richmond, the cars running only about three miles an hour, any greater speed being provocative of accident:--

I was wearing a pair of boots that came to me from home the day I was taken prisoner and I hated to part with them, but I got so hungry when on the cars that I traded them with one of the guards for a dozen biscuits and a pair of old shoes full of holes. I ate the biscuits pretty quick, and still was as famished as before, and I wished I had the boots back to trade again. We were told that it was a lovely place inside of the stockade, but we found it quite the reverse. There were 39,000 men within the enclosure living in holes and tents made of pieces of old shirts, blankets and anything they could get that would hold together. When we marched in, we had to stand a while before assignment to some place in which to stay, when some of the men, already initiated, said that we had better be looking for places to camp in, we having thought that some sort of shelter would be given us. So we hunted around and found a soft bit of earth which some fifteen of us occupied; ere long some of the old timers came round to see if we had anything they might wish. On waking, the next morning, each man found his pocket cut, but the thieves got nothing, since every man was dead broke.

There were two stockades, one inside the other, about twenty feet apart and as many feet high in most places; along the top were shelters for the guard and about twelve feet from the inner wall was the dead line. It was made of scantling nailed on the top of posts, about four feet in height and if a prisoner touched it, which he was quite likely to do, the guards would shoot him if they could. A small brook ran through the middle of the yard; sluggish generally, it became a raging torrent after severe rains. One day some of the stockade fell over into the water and some of the prisoners swam out to the floating logs and so raced out to freedom, for they were going too rapidly to be recaptured. For our first twenty days it rained nearly all the time and the only cover our party had was a piece of an old blanket, which as many as possible would put over their heads while the rest ran around trying to keep warm until the time came to exchange, an all day and all night series.

After some searching I found four members of my own regiment, they having a tent made of old shirts and parts of old blankets which they had pinned together with broken sticks. Three of the boys could scarcely move on account of the scurvy, but one of them asked me to come in and stay with them, which I was glad to do, though I had to lie at their feet until one of them passed on, only a few days later. Shortly afterwards the other ones died and two of the Thirty-ninth had what was left which, while it did not keep out the rain, did keep off the direct sun, a no small comfort in that terribly hot place. We had two half pieces of blankets, nearly used up and almost covered with what Robert Burns called "crawlin' ferlies," the fearful pests of our lives. I undertook one day to wash my shirt, trying first one corner of it which went to pieces, so I dried the garment carefully and without further effort at washing wore it almost nine months.

First and last many tunnels were dug, in several of which I bore a hand; I don't know how many succeeded in getting out but there must have been several hundred; bloodhounds were put on their track and those who were brought back were put in the chain-gang. Among so many men there must be some bad ones, a few very bad; they even resorted to murder in their efforts to secure what some of the prisoners possessed. To rid themselves of this terrible set of evil men a vigilance committee of the well disposed was organized and by sheer force of numbers, overpowered and sentenced to death six of them. The rebels, to their credit, furnished material for the gibbet and the execution took place, much to the relief of those who had to continue there.

Our drinking water came from holes in the ground four or five feet deep; while it was pretty clear, there were many dead maggots in the bottom, though we did not mind them, thinking the water so much better than that in the brook. One day in August a stream of water broke out just inside of the inner stockade; it ran all of the time, but the dead line was between us and the water; we procured boards and made a trough and then got permission to put it up, so that we had fine water all the rest of the time we were there. To this day it is known as the Providence Spring. Aside from scurvy, severe enough to loosen my teeth, I was not sick a day while in the prison. Our rations for the most part were a pint of boiled rice without any salt for twenty-four hours and oftener it would be forty-eight, for every time Captain Wirz discovered a new tunnel he would punish all of us by skipping our rations. Occasionally we would get some small black beans, such as the planters raised for their hogs; these we would try to cook with green pitch-pine with results that can be imagined. I have blown myself black in the face many a time trying to cook them and then had to eat them raw.

There was a sick call every day and when a man answered the same, all he got for his pains was a dose of sumach berries. No matter what the complaint might be the remedy was always the same, for it was all they had to give. Sometimes a man could be seen buried up to his chin; he had the rheumatism and if he could endure the antidote two or three days, he would come out cured. One boy, to get some extra food, told the captain one day where a new tunnel was in progress, and after the officer had gone out, the men shaved one side of his head and on his breast and back put big placards, bearing in big black letters the word "Traitor." He was then marched all over the camp and tormented almost to death; the enemy finally took him outside, which was just what he wanted.

After Stoneman's raid, the rebels thinking Andersonville no longer safe began to distribute us elsewhere and I sampled the bull-pen of Savannah, Ga.; the stockade of Millen, also in Georgia; and then was sent back to Savannah where I was paroled and sent down the River, to go on board a Union steamer; the sight of the Stars and Stripes brought tears to every eye. On board, our heads were shaved, we were bathed, clad anew and were judiciously fed; our old clothes went overboard. After reaching Annapolis I tipped the scales at seventy-five pounds, less than half my weight when I enlisted. After a brief stay in Parole Camp, I was paid off and sent home on a thirty days' furlough, where I was sick all of the time, but I returned to the camp at the end of the time to be furloughed again, this time for sixty days. On getting back to camp the second time, and wearying of it, I put my name down among those to be returned to their regiments and I reached mine the day after Lee surrendered.

REGIMENTAL VETERAN ASSOCIATION

The beginnings of the Association seem to have been lost in the interval between 1867 and the present; it is agreed, however, that the first four meetings were held in Boston hotels and that they were not very largely attended. The time was too near the date of getting home and the pleasures of that supreme event far outweighed any rehearsal of common dangers in war-experiences. Of the 5th gathering, the first basket picnic of the veterans of the Thirty-ninth and their lady friends, there is in substance the following account: