Andersonville (94 page)

Twas sin of the flesh, lass. You’re fortunate that God let you live, that you weren’t punished by the Deil!

Ma said she’d just have to use that there needle on me, count of I hadn’t come round. It hurt terrible, Ma’am.

Tis not that evil to which I refer. I refer to the carnal deed in the first place.

I didn’t want to do it; he done it to me. And I was scairt to tell Ma for fear she’d take a stick to me.

Ah, I fear you attempted to emulate your wicked mother!

Don’t know what you mean, Ma’am. I wasn’t trying to do nothing to Ma. She weren’t even here in the cottage when’t happened.

I mean you wished to do wicked things, lass. With men, as she does. Which is why she’s scarlet! Who was the man?

Twas Sergeant Sinkfield. He said twas just a game we was a-playing like when he worked— With little pigs— Laurel rolled over and buried her face in the pillow, she wept savagely and would tell no more. The alarmed Effie Dillard soothed her gently, blamed herself, blamed some unknown sergeant, blamed the Widow Tebbs. She lured Laurel into sipping a glass of her best scuppernong wine, and sat to read aloud somewhat incongruously from an old copy of the
Temperance Songster.

Come, all ye merry maidens,

Miss Lucy or Miss Poll,

Come pass around the paper,

You’re sure to sign them all!

...Cate, the lass shall come to dwell with us.

I feared you’d suggest that, Effie.

And why do you say feared?

For we’re old. Punished by age, by the adversities which have befallen our beloved State. Flogged by bereavement. . . .

I’ll no leave her here to suffer and to sin!

Then she shall come as you wish.

Such a help as she’ll be to me, Cate! I’ll teach her to sew, to work my caps. And to read and write: she shall make copies of your sermons before you muddy them up with lead pencil, man. . . .

Laurel’s pinched face brightened and beamed at the prospect. She had never been to Americus, she thought it quite a city. There were said to be great glass spheres of colored liquid at the druggist’s, and a tin roof on the Masonic Hall or some such place. Coral affirmed that there was an entire case in Kinnett’s store filled with nothing but candy, or had been when he last saw the town. Mrs. Roach’s carriage was believed to have red wheels. It was told that Judge Ladshaw had a pet monkey which would eat goobers and throw the shells in your face.

And you’ll be taught to knit, and be taught the Shorter Catechism. And you’re no to greet about it!

Nome.

And I’ll clothe you decently as a God-fearing lass should be clothed; and not one soul in the place knows of your trouble, so you’re no to cast sheep’s eyes at the men.

Nome.

In this way you shall be lifted out of iniquity and in time shall stand Redeemed.

Mag said, Just think on it. My little girl, going clean to Americus and getting new gowns. And maybe a bonnet of her own. Well, I never. Don’t you go a-getting yourself in a family way again, Laurel, hear me? You like to died of it.

Twenty-three days after her arrival at the Tebbs cottage, Effie Dillard set out with Laurel for Americus. Only Mag saw them off; tears ran at the thought of her daughter going far away, and for so long—how long? But there was the winning thought that—perhaps—on this very night— If word got around— She might prevail upon Coral to visit Uncle Arch’s and remark casually that Mrs. Dillard was no longer in residence at the Tebbs place. I hain’t lain with a man for such a while, she thought. I’m nigh dead rusted.

Coral was hunting, Zoral crouched in his hen-coop behind the stable. Mag waved happily if tearfully from the stoop. You get holt of any extra ribbons you save them for your Ma, she called. Or glass buttons, like. Blackie drew the two-seated buggy down the lane; the gig would not have been sufficient for the three of them, since Cato Dillard waited at the Claffeys. As wheels lurched over the railway a detail of shabby gray-and-blue jacketed Reserves trailed into the lane from the left. They had guns and wore equipment, they were bound for sentry duty perhaps, bound somewhere.

In the socket beside Mrs. Dillard’s right knee sprouted a buggy whip which had never been used. It boasted a long braided lash with a streamer of red silk, though the streamer had now faded through pink nearly to white. This handsome object had been presented to Cato Dillard by its fabricator, who was a member of Cato’s flock. The Reverend Mr. Dillard would never have struck Blackie with the thing, not for all the world, but he disliked to offend one of his congregation and so carried the whip displayed.

Mis Dillard, Ma’am, said Laurel’s limp voice. Would you please to pull up a second?

Even as Effie drew upon the reins, the girl leaned forward and across her lap and, to Effie Dillard’s paralysis, extracted the whip from its socket. Blackie stopped, wheels stopped. A whiny questioning voice requested, Sergeant? A dozen boys turned, and with them turned the bloated pimply face of Sergeant Jester Sinkfield. Laurel shut her eyes tightly and her knuckles turned to white bone; she struck with the force of both arms. She had not much force to muster in her slow-recovering body, yet it seemed she must have been awarded strength from some outer reservoir beyond the reckoning of men. The lash was narrow, limber, tightly braided. It opened up Jester Sinkfield’s face across the right cheek and into the chin, it sliced his lips in half. No wound like that would ever mend except as a scar. The bellow of spurting agony sent Blackie forward with a lunge, though the wild-faced Mrs. Dillard tried to hold him.

It’s all right, Ma’am, said Laurel. Reckon we can drive on.

 LI 

I
ra Claffey received a letter from Lieutenant-Colonel Persons which saddened but did not surprise him.

You may be interested to know, wrote Persons after polite preliminaries, that I am no longer in any position to assist in a reduction of the horror on your doorstep! This came about because of a proceeding to enjoin the authorities from further continuing the prison there at Andersonville. Observe how the legalistic mind seeks to take up the weapons to which it has been trained. In the character of counsel, I drew a bill for an injunction to abate the nuisance. What makes it a nuisance? You should be well aware, and are. The graveyard makes it a nuisance—the military works, fortifications, wretched personnel, etc., make it a nuisance to you property holders there—and the stockade generally is a nuisance, from the intolerable stench, the effluvia, the malaria that it gives out, and things of that sort. After I drew the bill I went to see the judge of the district court. I read my bill to him and asked him for the injunction. He said that he would appoint a day on which he would hear the argument in chambers. This general suggestion of secrecy should have given suspicion and caused me to lose heart, but still I was consumed with fervor. So the judge appointed a day; I made preparations for trial and was about in the act of going to present the argument, when I received an official communication from General Howell Cobb.

Harrell Elkins, to whom Ira was reading this letter, slapped his hands against the table.

General Cobb asked me if that bill was to be charged to me—the bill against my own Government, was the way he termed it. In reply to his communication, I wrote him that indeed I had drawn the bill, and that it could be charged to me. He replied, through his adjutant-general, Major Harrit, that he deemed it inconsistent with my duty as a Confederate officer, to appear in a case like that, presenting, as General Cobb declared, a bill against my Government. The tenor of his communication was unmistakable: it was obvious that I would be treated by court-martial or something of that sort. I said to General Cobb that if he deemed what I had done in the matter unofficerlike, I would leave the case. He said that he did deem it that way, and would be glad if I would retire without being driven.

...The authorities are responsible. I cannot say who. The great blunder has been the concentration of so many men at one place, without proper preparations. Again and again the authorities were notified of the fact, but to no advantage. I think some of the higher officials are responsible; but who they are I cannot say. A stockade with supposed accommodations for not more than ten thousand prisoners, and there were nearly forty thousand prisoners sent to it! Captain Wirz cannot be blamed for that. No man on earth could have abated the rigors of Andersonville, except the man who wielded the power. I do not know that man. General Winder was in advance of me, and several others are in advance of him. Who is responsible I cannot say. . . .

Poor man, said Ira, poor man. He looked across the table at Elkins. Poor Cousin Harry, he said.

Poor prisoners, said Elkins. Poor Nation.

Ira thought with increased bitterness that it was a very poor Nation. He felt as he might have felt had he possessed an affectionate, vigorous, beautiful sweetheart, and seen her take to drink or narcotics, and thus deteriorate. It seemed that there was some one thing which he should do personally; but he was not aware what it might be, no search seemed to give the answer. Once, in a borderland between waking and sleeping, it even occurred to Ira that he might calmly assassinate General Winder—turn his back on religion and morality, take the law into his own hands, cry that he was invoking a higher law. He sat up in bed, shocked yet still playing with the possibility. But who might then follow Winder? A worse Winder, no doubt; if such there could be.

The population of the stockade was diminished greatly; to what extent it was difficult to tell. There was still a capacity load of some twenty-five hundred sick in the hospital. A list of figures came to Elkins’s attention; he copied them down and presented them to Ira without comment. From February twenty-fourth to September twenty-first, there had been recorded nine thousand, four hundred and seventy-nine deaths.

Nearly one-third of the entire number confined, said Harry. My experience leads me to presume that also there were a great many unrecorded deaths.

It was apparent from advices and from observation that Henry Wirz lived in concentrated terror of a prison break, even with the great lessening of the pen’s population. He fussed about at the star fort, the thought of Kilpatrick’s cavalry hung like a saber above. He was continually fetching orders to the battery’s commander regarding ammunition and the alerting of personnel. At any time, if Yankees on the interior gathered in a mob, Wirz demanded that the cannon should open fire. All through September and into October ragged throngs were herded to the station as rapidly as transportation was made available. No longer could they be considered as tractable, because word of Winder’s duplicity had inevitably trickled back to Andersonville. There were more attempts to escape than before. Few people had any desire to be removed to Millen or Florence or Charleston, or to be carried south to Blackshears—any of those places might be worse. Since they had been hoodwinked, and since actually no exchange was in effect, men went plunging off the trains at every trip. Many were shot, or were mutilated in the process of their tumbling. A few got away into lonely underbrush and dragged out starved existence until eventually they were picked up by rustic Home Guards. Only a handful were successful in eluding those armed bands who rode piny forest ways in persistent patrol. The region was filled with straggling refugees from upper counties of the State . . . also there were many runaway slaves . . . every dirty-faced vagabond was suspect as an escaped Yankee prisoner, aching to cut a throat. Wirz bristled beside columns of outgoing Federals, revolver ready in his hand. Sometimes he fired the revolver; it was told that he had killed several prisoners; also it was affirmed that he had killed no one, had shot in the air, or had not even drawn his weapon.

Uncertainties of these cooler drying weeks twisted like stray dust-devils through the countryside. Paroles were sundered right and left; sick boys stumbled in the swamps, vanished there. Hounds of Wes Turner, reinforced by a pack tended by another oaf named Ben Harris, went hollering day and night. Wirz yelled, paid out currency to Harris and Turner, fought with them about price per head and numbers of individuals recaptured. Wirz yelled, his arm yelled back at him, he perspired until his clothing was soaked. Wirz caught cold, went riding again in a fever; he meted out stocks-and-chain-gang penalties for the most minor infractions. Wirz yelled. . . .

In a certain lone glade surrounded by tall trees, shovels sank and turned. The naked bodies were rolled, pushed down. Flimsy records were kept. An effort had been made, on the part of stockade prisoners and hospital attendants alike, to record names and regiments of the dead, dates of their dying; but many scraps of paper were torn from corpses in handling. A slab of split pine grew at the head of each grave. But they were not individual graves, they were populous trenches, they had been filled with cold fruit, each appeared to be lined by a single fence, grave-slabs were the palings of the fence. A marker read: Vork C (that was the name of the thing underneath) 5 Mich (that was the regiment) K (the company) Sept 22 (the date). Slabs said, Unknown, Unknown. A slab said, Waiter G 9 Minn H Sept 9. Scrawled penciling: Brewer J S 6 New York B Oct 2. Rough wood with splinters sticking out on the edges: Lickley P 1 New York Cav E Oct 5. Or Hoagler N C 39 Ind E Oct 8. Or Ballinger Geo 87 Penn D Oct 9. Or Unknown, Unknown, Unknown. There were fourteen Joneses and twelve Johnsons from New York State alone, had anyone cared to go stalking and peering and counting, collecting Joneses and Johnsons. Tossed clay made a wide hummocked quilt from edge of forest to edge of forest. Negroes on duty with the burial detail tried to desert in droves. They were dragged back, tied across stumps or logs; whips popped, the shrieks came up. Wirz trotted fiercely to the scene and said,
Ja,
him I know, that tall one. Three times he has tried for escape! Five hundred lashes he must have! Perhaps the flogger took pity and gave only two hundred lashes after Wirz’s back was turned.

Within the stockade Wirz had achieved an autumnal triumph: several long open sheds, built again on the North Side near where the first flimsy hospital had existed. Beneath these sheds many of the stockade’s sick might be placed; at least they were out of the rain. There were not beds enough, room enough for the sick in the main hospital. Wirz thought that he should be praised for this accomplishment . . . no one praised him. General Winder grunted, growled, departed in a northerly direction. . . . There was space enough now: people reconstructed more commodious shebangs, using rags and twigs, the very louse-ridden earth which had been yielded by comparatively stronger departing throngs. Those were detachments newly told off, containing again only men able to walk.

Inner acres were studded with slow-moving bent figures, no longer a press, but creeping loosely, widely, wandering hunched, wandering forever in a search for scraps of abandoned valuables . . . half-canteen here, a button there, a belt buckle which might be rubbed up and traded to a guard for a collard stalk. It was a poorhouse half denuded, but still the smell rose festering. Winter was on the way, soon the air would be colder, thinner, rarer in a hint of sleet to come.

Another visitor appeared at the Claffey house, escorted one afternoon by Cousin Harry, whose lined face beamed at satisfaction in again meeting with an admired friend. Dr. Joseph Jones had become medical chemist at Augusta while the young civilian Harrell Elkins studied there; Harry was privileged to work as his assistant for a time. During the previous spring exigencies of war had pushed them into contact again, when Cousin Harry toiled in exploration of hospital gangrene. Jones was a brilliant and observing man, some years Harry’s elder, but essentially much more the scientist than the soldier. Nevertheless he had served for six months as a private in the ranks during the earlier part of the war. Now belatedly the Confederacy exhibited a tendency to make use of his erudition. . . . Jones declared that he was flabbergasted by Andersonville. He had heard merely of unusual mortality among the Federal prisoners; he had never dreamed of the nature of drainage, water supply and food supply. He had never dreamed that no shelter whatsoever was afforded. He said, I am so appalled by what I see here that I find myself at a loss for words.

This was at an evening meal shared by the three men. (Lucy had withdrawn in order to give them full scope in discussion.)

Another report? asked Ira. Reports have been made to every section of command in the past, and were met with identical silence.

In my innocence I had thought in terms of fevers, said Dr. Jones. In August I had an opportunity to visit Richmond and suggested to Surgeon-General S. P. Moore that conditions at Andersonville might be worth a minute investigation. Indeed! Little did I think that—I was told nothing, nothing! Believe me, sir, not a word was breathed of this horror. I considered only that a large body of men from the Northern portion of the United States, suddenly transported to a warmer Southern climate, and confined upon a small portion of land, would furnish an excellent field for the investigation of the relations of typhus, typhoid and malarial fevers. I received my orders, proceeded here, and walked into—this.

You should have seen the stockade during that same August, Elkins told him. Since then a great many of the Federals have been removed elsewhere.

How many are now confined, Harry?

Perhaps fifteen thousand, all told, stockade and hospital. However, numerous detachments are still being sent forth. It is hoped that the total may be reduced to at least eight thousand or thereabouts by the first of next month.

Have conditions at the hospital been in any way ameliorated by these withdrawals?

Not in the slightest, sir. We are tight run—never tighter than now. There’s not an inch of space remaining within the hospital itself. In fact our task has been increased and intensified by these outgoing detachments.