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"Tell it not, sir," said he, "to the father whose son was starved at Andersonville, or the widow whose husband was slain at Mission Ridge, or the little boy who leads his sightless father through the streets of your city, of the thousand other mangled heroes to be seen on every side of us to-day, that this Government, in defense of which the son and the husband fell, the father lost his sight and the others were maimed and crippled, had the right to call those persons to its defense, but now has no power to protect the survivors or their friends in any rights whatever in the States.
He might as well question the massacre at Fort Pillow, and the cruelties perpetrated at Andersonville, where eighty-three per cent, of the men who entered the hospitals died Andersonville, where more American soldiers lie buried than fell throughout the Mexican war; where more American soldiers lie buried than were killed in battle of British soldiers in Wellington's four great battles in Spain, and at Waterloo, Alma, Inkermann, and Sebastopol.
Even if we imagine him inspired by a hatred of the people of the North that rose to fiendishness, we can not understand him. It seems impossible for the mind of any man to cherish so deep and insatiable an enmity against his fellow-creatures that it could not be quenched and turned to pity by the sight of even one day's misery at Andersonville or Florence.
But they were willing to do much wrong to gain their end; and the smaller crimes of to-day prepared them for greater ones to-morrow, and still greater ones the day following. Killing ten men a day on Belle Isle in January, by starvation and hardship, led very easily to killing one hundred men a day in Andersonville, in July, August and September.
School is pretty good, and there are two or three girls 'most as nice as the ones at Andersonville. But not quite. Out of school Mother keeps things just as lively as ever, and we have beautiful times. Mother is having a lovely time with her own friends, too. Seems as if there is always some one here when I get home, and lots of times there are teas and parties, and people to dinner.
How shall I ever remember not to run and skip and laugh loud or sing, or ask questions, or do anything that Marie wants to do?" I thought to myself. And I wondered if Aunt Jane would meet me, and what she would be like. She came once when I was a little girl, Mother said; but I didn't remember her. Well, at last we got to Andersonville. John was there with the horses, and Aunt Jane, too.
There are some of the girls well, they act queer. I don't know what is the matter with them. They stop talking some of them when I come up, and they make me feel, sometimes, as if I didn't belong. Maybe it's because I came from a little country town like Andersonville. But they've known that all along, from the very first. And they didn't act at all like that at the beginning.
I had come away from Andersonville with considerable scurvy manifesting itself in my gums and feet. Soon these signs almost wholly disappeared. We also got away from those murderous little brats of Reserves, who guarded us at Andersonville, and shot men down as they would stone apples out of a tree.
Then some of the Andersonville prisoners drew up a petition, and signed and sent it to Washington, praying the government to hasten their release, and if necessary to hold the question of negro prisoners for negotiation, while pressing forward the liberation of its faithful and suffering white soldiers. But promptly by others in the prison-pen a counter petition was started, signed, and sent on.
Nothing appalled and depressed me so much as this silent, uncomplaining misery. It is a fact of great interest, that notwithstanding this defective nutrition in men subjected to crowding and filth, contagious fevers were rare; and typhus fever, which is supposed to be generated in just such a state of things as existed at Andersonville, was unknown.
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