English Diary 2

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14th. One of the guards shot at a man this morning but missed him and struck a prisoner who was sitting smoking his pipe, hitting him in the upper part of the jaw, passing out at the opposite side, cutting his tongue in two. Ten detachments get one load of wood per day for twenty-five hundred men. Oh! only God in heaven known how we are treated.
We suffer much, we suffer long,
Beneath their vile oppression.
Nor could they say we did them wrong,
Theirs was the first aggression.

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15th. Rations, one pint of corn meal and about twenty beans and three or four ounces of bacon, all raw and no way to cook them.

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16th. The rebels are engaged in throwing up breastworks and making rifle pits all around the stockade; we can see them at work. They are evidently afraid of Sherman's raid or Kilpatrick; they would as soon see the devil as the latter general. Deaths average about one hundred and twenty per day, and the rebels say it will take us all away in August, as that is the hottest month in the year in Georgia.

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17th. It it terribly hot here. Another prisoner was shot by the guards this morning; he was taken sick while near the dead-line and was vomiting, and had hold of the railing to support himself when the guard, who was only twenty feet from him, shot him, the ball passing clear through his breast; he belonged to a New York regiment. They say when a guard shoots a prisoner he gets thirty days furlough. I guess that accounts for the shooting of so many prisoners. We are truly in a wretched condition, and the gigantic, the proud, the boasted republic of the world, America is allowing its citizens, its soldiers, its volunteers to remain here to starve, to rot, and to die.

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18th. Captain Wirz drove through the prison today; the men hooted at him, but he paid no attention to them.

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19th. Upwards of seven thousand prisoners have died in the stockade since I came here, not including the number who have died in the hospital.

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20th. One hundred and thirty prisoners died yesterday; it is so hot we are almost roasted. There were 127 of my regiment captured the day I was, and of that number eighty-one have since died, and the rest are more dead than alive; exposure and long confinement is doing its work among us.

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21st. The rebels have erected large forts and breastworks around the camp, to keep us from making a break to get out. There are thirty-seven thousand men crowded into a space of thirty-six acres. There are in this place active young and middle aged men from loving northern homes, clinging to the last spark of life, wallowing in their own filth, many of them reduced to idiocy and some cannot speak, the ground under them giving off the most suffocating stench to mingle with that of bodies decaying in the hot sun. Sometimes we would go and carry them water, of which they would drink, but the stench would drive us away before we could serve all. They would stretch out their wasted hands and implore us by word and signs to give them water, but the glassy stare of their eyes telling us they would soon be out of misery, we leave them to die; we have all the sick comrades we can care for and we must not neglect them for those we cannot save with the means at hand.

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The churches of all denominations except one solitary Catholic Priest, Father Hamilton, ignore us as completely as they would dumb beasts. Father Hamilton was the only religious minister that I ever knew to come into this place, and I certainly believe he is a true Christian. He would minister the Catholic and Protestants alike. Some of the rebel doctors were kind-hearted and shed tears over our distress, but they were powerless to give relief under the Management of "Jeff" Davis and his assistants Winder and Wirz. This starving strain on the weakened constitutions of the prisoners carried them off by the hundreds day after day. Wirz was a low, illborn wretch of the most brutal type. He seemed to delight in, and took pride in showing the guards how he could knock down and kick the poor helpless imbecile prisoners, who were so idiotic that they could not understand him, and would stand and stare vacantly at him when he spoke to them. He practiced the most brutal and barbarous cruelties on this class of helpless prisoners. A large number of those who had been in prison over a year were now insane. They seemed to lose all power of speech and memory; they could not tell their own names, and did not know whether they had been in prison one day or one year. If spoken to, their only answer would be a far-away look, as if they were trying to recall something beyond the reach of their memory. They wondered aimlessly about and kept their comrades constantly watching to keep them from the dead-line. Many were murdered at the dead-line. The gangrene is terrible; prisoners are rotting and falling to pieces from its effect. God save us poor fellows!

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22d. Nothing of any importance to state today; it is comparatively quiet since the raiders were hanged and the police were organized. Jeremiah O. Mahany, of my company, is Chief of Police. A great many men get sun struck, and men who lie out in the sun sick are tortured to death by flies and vermin.

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23d. Excitement in camp over the rumor of an exchange of prisoners; I will not believe it until I am inside our lines — we have been fooled so often.

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24th. There are about two thousand sick in the hospital, just outside the stockade; five or six legs and arms are amputated every day, which gives the physicians great practice.

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25th. No change in our bill of fare.

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August 2. 1864. Have been sick nearly a week; I am totally used up with rheumatism, but feel a little better this morning. Nine men went to our lines today with a proposal to our government for the exchange of prisoners; if the exchange does not soon take place, there will be none left to tell the tale of the suffering and horrible treatment in the slaughter pen at Andersonville. One of the guards was accidently shot outside the gate this afternoon and killed.

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3d. I am better today but it makes me tired and stiff to walk much. About one hundred and fifty have died in the last twenty-four hours; I forgot to mention that Culberson of my company died in the hospital; I did not learn when the poor fellow died; that leaves only Webb, Gallagher and myself out of my company who are alive.

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4th. Great excitement here this morning owing to some of the prisoners tunneling out under the stockade last night; it appears they had been working at it for over two weeks. Wirz came in and examined the tunnel this morning; he said the bloodhounds would soon catch them.

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5th. Wirz came in this morning with twenty guards; he said he heard there were two or three more tunnels; but after a diligent search he could not find any signs of them; The Yankees will fool him again, as he passed over two that I know of.

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6th. It is terribly hot; Wirz was in again this morning with his bodyguard; he is afraid to come in alone, as there are many who will kill him upon the first opportunity.
The stern arm of vengeance against them we'll raise,
And around them the flames of our bitterness blaze.
For we swore they should pay for the deeds they have done;
And we never will relent — not a tyrant we'll spare,
But hang them on gibbets to rot in the air,
Till those that survive them confess that they feel,
That our army's resistless, and our hearts are of steel.
I learned this morning that one of my regiment got away with those who tunneled out. I witnessed an amputation this afternoon; a prisoner got a sore on his foot and it was decided to amputate it. He did not want to go to the hospital as his brother is here to take care of him, and that accounts for the amputation being performed in the stockade. We point with pride to the thousands of graves and say, these comrades chose the most cruel death rather than dishonor their country in any way by assisting the enemy to destroy it by taking the oath of allegiance, which they often tried to induce us to do.

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Under the most trying circumstances, naked and starving, and raked with pain and disease, with certain torture and death staring us in the face, did we refuse to repeated offers of relief by enlisting in the Rebel Army or working in their shops. Those young men gave up all their bright hopes and prospects of loving homes and pursuits of happiness and submitted to cruel torture and death, believing that their sacrifices and deeds of heroism would ever be kept fresh in the memory of those who would enjoy the freedom for which this price was paid. There are many ungrateful people who would, no doubt, repress the recital of these comrades sufferings, claiming it would only breed sectional hatred, and that these stories are written and told in a spirit of animosity. To this I will say, I know that the truths written and told of these prison hells are very unwelcome to this class of people; but remember, we do not hold the masses of the people or the soldiers of the South responsible for the cruel murder of our fellow-prisoners. For these misguided people we hold the greatest respect, except for those who admire and applaud those bad bold men who wantonly and premeditately did murder their helpless captives. Again we are told that Jefferson Davis and his officers did not have the provisions to feed their captives. This excuse was removed by our government offering to furnish food, clothing and medicines, which was refused. We know that they had no excuse for denying us pure air, water, room and means of shelter. We begged and pleaded with tears in our eyes that we be permitted to save our lives by ditching and draining the swamps in our prison pen and getting the material from the adjoining pine forest to shelter us from sun and rain.

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To those that say Jefferson Davis and his cabinet did not murder their captives, we ask them to discard all testimony of Union soldiers and take the evidence of Southern people and the Confederate records. Examine the report of the Confederate surgeons appointed to inspect the prisons, and you will see where they hastened back to Davis and reported to him the destruction of life there; see where they recommended the removal of the inhuman keepers and the appointment of humane keepers in their stead. You will see that Davis did nothing of the kind, but he did promote John H. Winder to the command of all the prisoners in the South, with full power to torture and murder as he pleased; and when you have examined all this calmly, if you have one spark of humanity in you, you will never express your admiration for that perjured murderer and his traitorous advisers. All this does not effect us; we have seen nothing but misery for over a year and a half. I do not believe that ten out of every hundred will ever reach the friendly shelter of the Stars and Stripes.