Andersonville (55 page)

I don’t like it, Seneca.

Don’t like it too well myself, but what’s a feller to do? Let’s you and I haste back inside for keeps.

There was not time to marshal the Regulators. They were scattered over the entire stockade, and had it been possible to marshal them, nothing could have resulted except the burden of perpetual guarding and tending. Swarms of the furious came milling as Key and MacBean stepped through the narrow portal.

Make them run the gantlet, said MacBean in inspiration.

This notion was accepted with roaring enthusiasm. To the end of his life Seneca would believe sincerely that he had saved many lives in this way, although what was the purpose in saving lives such as these? It was apparent that when those hated men were shoved individually through the door they would be mobbed as fast as they appeared. . . . A gantlet was something else: it appealed to a sporting instinct however savage. It suggested in its very form an Indian tradition that if a man managed to flee under a lengthy rain of blows, and survived them, he would achieve to some asylum.

Before the first unhappy New Yorker was shoved through the wicket, a vengeful population had formed a lane for the man’s reception. Hundreds of others rushed to extend the course of punishment. The first New Yorker through the gate was an undersized long-armed man called Monk Galloway, ticketed appropriately because of the length of his dangling arms, the flatness of his bald dome, the jut of jaw and scrolling of face. He had trailed with the Roach Guards through a number of street brawls. He knew Willie Collins by sight, if Willie did not know him, before either of them ever heard of Andersonville. Monk was afraid of Willie, and thus had joined the gang captained by Curtis. He was not large, but a dangerous fighter: a man who delighted in cries and blanchings of his victims; then his eyes shone hot, his breath puffed short, spasmodic. Had he come to trial, Monk Galloway might not have been hanged but would have been condemned to a chain gang.

A guard’s weapon prodded him, he stepped across the bottom plank. Immediately someone kicked him in the thigh; a club was swung at his head, the blow missed. Holding arms lifted and bent for protection he was propelled down the line by a succession of swats and punches. He fell beneath howls and punishment, leaped up and closed in a tussle with the nearest men. A club snapped against his right ear, already corrugated with scars of old feuds; when he was torn out of this grip and hammered on to the next, he bled at ears and at the nose, his eyes protruded with gleaming fear of death. Any individual of the herd assailing him, he felt that he could have handled alone—in many cases two or three of them together. But neither were they now fellow prisoners nor a flock of bleating creatures to be snapped at by wolves of his species. They were turned into gesticulating Indians, cannibals. They could have been weaker than cats; still the blows would have fallen, there were too many of them.

A new chorus of shouts rang at the gate, another and larger man was hustled. His name was Myles Crickland, his home had been a lumber camp in Michigan. He’d never stolen so much as a dime, and never whipped a smaller man for gain, until he came to Andersonville. But while being shipped he had fallen in with John Sarsfield. Crickland had not wished to starve any more than Edward Blamey wished to starve: he lent size and ferocity to the Sarsfield cause. The same prisoner who’d aimed the initial cudgel stroke at Galloway now whirled his club at the target of the Michigander’s head; this time the blow did not miss. The dazed lumberman faltered in a blind circle, his weight carried him completely through one pouncing screaming line before he fell. He could have been pounded to death then and there, but another raider was forced into the arena, attention was distracted. Crickland fell to his knees, fell further. His length stretched across the ground, his shoulders shook as he blubbered. Three contorted youths stood above him, alternately kicking with bare feet and jabbing with poles wrenched from some nearby shebang. . . .

The third man was one Ross from Boston; the fourth a stupid longshoreman, middle-aged, who’d supported the banner of Patrick Delaney. A voice yelled, I think he killed one of our boys, and Ross ran away from that voice. He pushed his bulk down the lane with lurching strides until he was tripped and fell to be stomped upon. Old Cleary made rough agonized progress behind him; most of Cleary’s clothes were torn off before he’d gone as far as Ross. . . .

So they came: Murphy, Rae, Billings, Apgar, a dozen more, to receive hackings and thwackings, to be swatted, bloodied . . . beasts of prey turned miraculously into dogs, to accept that cruelty visited upon homeless animals, to know—for the first time, perhaps—what it was to sustain the attack of wretches who gave quarter only when distracted by a new victim.

The eleventh man through the gate was Edward Blamey. Seemingly his legs were more bowed than ever, since he wore a sailor’s clothing. In an instant boys were yelling, Look out! Look out, he’s got a knife! Certainly Edward Blamey had a knife. In looking after Number One he’d kept gold pieces sewn in the collar of his blouse, and with a gold piece had bought a butcher knife from the venal Mackey Nall, unperceived by Regulators who also guarded. How Ed Blamey had concealed that knife: whether in blouse or sleeve, how he had hidden it when his hands were tied, no one might ever know. The blade flashed in Edward Blamey’s freed hand, files of prisoners scattered before him. He went tearing away down the slope; but all The Wrath To Come which had been preached and which he had dreaded, cried at his heels.

Blamey had never been a fast runner. Desperation gave him speed. He fled squarely through one shebang, tried to rush through another and was staggered by the collision. He went to the left . . . no, that way lay the deadline; he held a swift vision of guards lifting their guns above him. He raced back to the east. A small group stood in his path, he yelled, knifed at them, did not strike anyone. The men jumped apart, then joined the pack baying on Ed Blamey’s trail.

A lone man watched his rapid approach. His name was Lynn, a solemn farmer from Indiana who had been in the stockade only since the first of the month; he had not been set upon by raiders on his arrival; his uniform was fairly new and fairly clean. Lynn had bull strength left to him. He’d been busy this day, had helped to carry two dead bodies to the habitat of the dead, and was rewarded with the common premium of being allowed to go Outside with a wood-detail. His own wood was secured in the shape of a long rail of pine; once the rail had been part of a Claffey fence. Lynn returned through the North Gate. He lugged his pine pole all the way to the shebang he shared with friends on the southern slope, and had been wondering what to do with his prize . . . whether to seek help in cutting it up, whether to sell all or only part of this wooden treasure. He must consult with friends, and they were not at home. He stood as if once more armed and with the Union forces, holding his rifle at Present Arms; actually he held the tall rail straight into the air.

Edward Blamey might not have seen this man; again, he might have seen him and decided flashingly to run the risk. His rubber-legged stride carried him directly in front of Farmer Lynn, and when Ed was two leaps distant the rail began to speed in lowering. It came down rapidly. It had been vertical, it went through its portion of an arc. The sound rapped clear as it struck squarely atop Edward Blamey’s bare head. The knife flew. Blamey never thought again, there was no waking mind surviving to reason or repent. The Wrath overtook him. He did not know that Number One was dying, did not know when Number One died.

 XXXIII 

L
ord, have mercy on us.

Christ, have mercy on us.

Lord, have mercy on us.

Death On A Pale Horse: people described Henry Wirz so, because of course he rode the old gray-white mare and wore his one suit of white duck.

More and more was Wirz departing from prescribed military usage in his habit and attire. One might have thought that John Winder would upbraid him for these lapses and bring about a reformation. The fact was that the old general paid little attention; but rarely did awareness of slip-shod deportment penetrate the toughening hide which wrapped that senile brain. The guards were slovens, their officers slovens. Sid Winder wore a plaid shirt and a straw hat; Cousin Dick was neater than he, but still he wore red knit galluses. The general himself had streaks of egg and fat upon his tunic, he belched heavily after eating, he ate prodigiously, you could hear him belch if you were standing in the yard outside his quarters. On a single occasion was it observed that his tantrum rose from recognizing that the Swiss captain was not up-to-snuff. An edict had come from Richmond forbidding anyone to issue an order for transportation except on the orders of chiefs of bureaus, or commanders of Armies and Departments. Wirz complained that this dictate locked up the post decisively and hampered him in discharging his duties. He appeared before John Winder with a request that the general obtain an order which would make him, Wirz, an exception and would allow him to issue transportation at least in Winder’s name if not merely above his own signature. No one else was in the room with the two, but Captain Peschau sat at an improvised desk on the outside stoop, and two sentries lounged near. They heard a familiar bellow, a wail which stemmed apparently from physical anguish. They heard John Winder roaring, God damn it, can’t you grant me the courtesy of appearing
in uniform
?
Henry Wirz emerged trotting, with his face ashy; lips trembled under his beard as he muttered, as he ran. It was believed that old J.H.W. had emphasized criticism by grasping the captain’s arm, his wounded arm. On this day Wirz wore the bright-piped calico waist, pearl buttons and all; but he had worn it many times before in the general’s presence without engendering annoyance. Peschau decided uncomfortably that General Winder had eaten too much pork again. Peschau wondered how soon he himself would stand to endure a verbal thrashing. He watched Henry Wirz retreating on horseback after his usual struggle to hoist that round-shouldered tormented body into the saddle. Peschau thought that he should not wish Wirz’s job—not for a fortune in greenbacks, a fortune in gold; not for all the flimsy banknotes which ever poured from Confederate presses.

Death on a white horse, Death on a pale horse, Death warmed over, Death cooled off. So the prisoners typified Henry during this forenoon of July eleventh, when he headed a procession into the stockade.

Holy Mary, pray for them.

All ye holy Angels and Archangels, pray for them.

Holy Abel, pray for them.

All ye choirs of the just, pray for them.

Several thousand new prisoners had arrived since the first of the month, and it was rumored that the raider element might thus be heavily reinforced; there were the usual complement of ex–Bowery Boys, ex–Atlantic Guards, ex–Dead Rabbits in all drafts of Northerners who’d served with the Army of the Potomac and had been captured during the campaign against Richmond. Leroy Key was taking no chances with gangs: when it grew light enough to see, in the Monday dawn, he mustered Regulators and sent each detail to its task.

Early came the scream of ungreased wheels. A wagon rocked slowly through the South Gate rather than the North which was the more common portal of ingress. With an eye to drama and emphasis, the southern hill had been selected for a gallows site. The wagon contained beams, posts, planks, together with a keg of tools and a huge coil of precious rope. Volunteer carpenters set to work promptly inside a hollow square of Regulators whose clubs were ready to discourage any attempt at interference. Willie Collins’s castle and the conical tent, which had served as unofficial headquarters for the raider chiefs, were but a few rods distant (beneath the latter shelter one could see disordered heaps of dirt where prisoners had dug, looking for buried treasure—some said that they had dug successfully, some said that they found skeletons of anonymous murdered men—as soon as the ringleaders were bound and hauled away on July third). The frame was of simple construction but would serve to hang six giants, or so its designers believed. They’d drawn a rude sketch the day before, and MacBean relayed the plan to Wirz so that proper materials might be secured. Two posts were set into the ground and a heavy beam secured across their tops. Within this structure, at about the height of a man’s head, two wide planks met in the middle—their outer ends resting on cleats nailed against the side posts, their inner ends supported by braces pierced with holes in which ropes were tied.

Get the idee, Archibald?

Not quite.

See, they’ll put them fellers on top of the planks, make them stand there. See them ropes coming down from the top brace? Each of them ropes will be noosed around a feller’s neck. That’s what them sailors are doing now—making nooses. Then, when they get the condemned all noosed up and ready to go, and when the boss gives the word, some folks will jerk on them other ropes down beneath—

And the braces will be ripped out, and the two planks fall, and them sons of bitches will join the Heavenly Choir!

What choir did you say?

Oh, they’ll be in hell alongside Judas Priest and Captain Kidd and my own father-in-law!

Holy Abraham, pray for them.

St. John the Baptist, pray for them.

St. Joseph, pray for them.

All ye holy Patriarchs and Prophets, pray for them.

Sun rose hotter, people said that this would be the hottest day yet suffered. The great glaring mass of sun seemed concentrated as in a locomotive’s head-lamp, burning against the fresh gallows on the South Hill. The mosaic on the northern slope began to shape and tighten long before carpenters completed their task; boys selected vantage points and sat to watch, but soon they were forced to stand as other vagrants came crowding, there was not space in which to sit. They stood wearily, stared, jostled. For pity sakes quit sticking me with your elbow. Who, me? I ain’t sticking you—blame arm’s too weak to stick anybody, Charley. Yes, and know what your legs look like? So I do: two darning needles with pumpkin seeds stuck on the bottom of them. O laughter, it is food and tonic; the brave have it, the brave drink of it and give it back to those in need. . . . A singing-school teacher from Danbury lay motionless in a shebang beyond Main Street or Broadway or whatever you wished to call the distant sluice; his heart pushed lazily inside his ribs, shuddered, bubbled for a moment, went on beating reluctantly again; the songster from Danbury did not know that anyone was about to be hanged, he did not have an illusion to stimulate or hurt him, he knew nothing, felt nothing. A Delaware oysterman lay motionless near the east deadline, he lay in no shebang but exposed fully to the sun, he had no shebang, not a friend to carry him to thin shelter, soon he would need no shebang, his back was a water blister, his bony arms were blisters; under raw ribs the heart twitched gamely, fluttered—why, in that very moment it stopped, it ceased while we stood observant! A thousand men lay or huddled in a thousand far-flung places and did not care about a hanging; did not care who was hanged or why; but more than twenty thousand others plastered slope and ridge with their staring, their press.

Carpenters built a rough stair at the south end of the gallows; there were several cleats nailed across runners; they built their ladder stoutly, the condemned were heavy men.

St. Peter, pray for them.

St. Paul, pray for them.

St. Andrew, pray for them.

St. John, pray for them.

All ye holy Apostles and Evangelists, pray for them.

Where ground tilted upward beyond the southwest corner of the stockade, where guns of the star fort threatened the stockade’s interior, citizens and slaves of the county stood waiting. Women white and brown held their children up, they told their children to watch. Long before sunrise carts had been a-rumble on the road from Americus, mules stalked piny ways from the high region to the west, old men trudged out of damp lonely settlements along the Flint River. To begin with, a cordon of Reserves had lined with their bayonets, ordered to keep the populace in check, to hold them back from space directly in front of the cannon. There was room, it was pointed out, for all to see.

Just stand over there past the end of them rifle pits. You can see tolerable well.

Few people will assemble to watch a man living, most will congregate to watch him die.

The region immediately under the muzzles was higher, the view broader there, you could grasp a wider panorama of the interior. Bit by bit, moment after moment, the throng of ragged farmers, blacks and children came edging. Reserves were not trained to this task, their officers had ascended to sentry stations; they began to disperse and mingle with the very crowd they’d been set to restrain.

On the hill to the immediate north, across the Sweetwater branch, there was an area below the guards’ camps where more than a glimpse of the fascinating interior might be obtained across the stockade’s dip through the ravine. Here also humanity clustered—hangers-on of the Reserves, homeless servants who’d wandered from raided plantations in Alabama and northwest Georgia, who’d starved their way along the railroad line and here were impressed to serve as wood-choppers or grave-diggers. They massed, wondering, giggling.

They going put Yankees on that thing.

Yes, boy, sometime you hang a man—he fall down—old rope just pull he head square off—smick, smack—clean off he body.

Yi!

Ma, what’s they a-doing yonder?

Them Yankees are going to
kill
each other.

Why, Ma?

Cause Yankees is bad.

How they going to kill each other, Ma?

Now you just shut your trap, and watch.

All ye holy Disciples of our Lord, pray for them.

All ye holy Innocents, pray for them.

St. Stephen, pray for them.

St. Lawrence, pray for them.

All ye holy Martyrs, pray for them.

Six assistant hangmen had been selected by lot from the ranks of Regulators and stood close together, watched with round eyes by prisoners nearest them; they were ready for their task with meal sacks and cords, the two youngest sought to minimize the strain of the hour by clowning. They tussled, wrestling, they did not fall to the ground, it was a sham battle, each was trying to force his meal sack over the other boy’s head. Key said testily, Come along, come along, you’ll get plenty of action in a few minutes; and they permitted the rebuke to turn them more sedate, as if deliberately they had sought rebuke.

An audible murmur drifted from outside the stockade, it spread in a quiet but distinguishable wave, born in throats and on the lips of the hundreds who grouped in two galleries on God’s side of the fence, not on the Devil’s; and it fell across the jagged parapet and rolled slowly through and over observant thousands within the pen.

Must be coming. Must be fetching them now.

Can’t fetch them too soon to suit me.

That God damn bruiser of a Curtis like to killed me when he took my watch.

Well, he did kill one of our Twenty-second Connecticut boys.

You see him do it?

Don’t you wherrit yourself: he done it.

The South Gate squawked open and crunched against posts set to receive its weight, the parade came in. Death On A Pale Horse rode ahead, and close behind the mare walked Father Peter Whelan wearing his soiled violet stole. The six condemned giants swaggered together, moving between double files of Rebel guards; Willie Collins’s laugh echoed booming, he was laughing at something Delaney had said. There were no wan Floral Tebbses and Irby Flinchers bearing arms alongside the raiders; ranks of the Reserves had been combed to select a handful of veterans available for this chore. The guards had been ordered to shoot at the first sign of a break. These shaggy gray- and blue-clad men walked ready to fire, their hands lay across the locks of their guns.