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The terrible mortality at Andersonville and elsewhere was a matter of as much notoriety throughout the Southern Confederacy as the military operations of Lee and Johnson. No intelligent man much less the Rebel leaders was ignorant of it nor of its calamitous proportions.
"There is a deep fascination in the subject of Andersonville for that Golgotha, in which lie the whitening bones of 13,000 gallant young men, represents the dearest and costliest sacrifice of the war for the preservation of our national unity. It is a type, too, of its class.
At Andersonville Hopkins became one of the officers in charge of the Hospital. One day a Rebel Sergeant, who called the roll in the Stockade, after studying Hopkins's pin a minute, said: "I seed a Yank in the Stockade to-day a-wearing a pin egzackly like that ere." This aroused Hopkins's interest, and he went inside in search of the other "feller."
When we came into the prison there were about eleven thousand there. More uniformly wretched creatures I had never before seen. Up to the time of our departure from Andersonville the constant influx of new prisoners had prevented the misery and wasting away of life from becoming fully realized.
Those inside the guard line, understanding what our cheer meant, answered us with a loud shout of congratulation the first real, genuine, hearty cheering that had been done since receiving the announcement of the exchange at Andersonville, three months before. As soon as the excitement had subsided somewhat, the Rebel proceeded to explain that we would all be required to sign a parole.
After the completion of my labors in the military prison hospital, the following communication was addressed to Brigadier General John H. Winder, in consequence of the refusal on the part of the commandant of the interior of the Confederate States Military Prison to admit me within the Stockade upon the order of the Surgeon General: CAMP SUMTER, ANDERSONVILLE GA., September 16, 1864.
The Rebel Surgeons at Florence did not follow the habit of those at Andersonville, and try to check the disease by wholesale amputation, but simply let it run its course, and thousands finally carried their putrefied limbs through our lines, when the Confederacy broke up in the Spring, to be treated by our Surgeons.
Had we been found, we might have been torn and mutilated by the dogs, or, taken back to Andersonville, have suffered for days or perhaps weeks in the stocks or chain gang, as the humor of Wirz might have dictated at the time either of which would have been almost certain death.
In this journey through Georgia, at Andersonville, I passed in sight of a large stockade inclosing prisoners of war. The train stopped for a few moments, and there entered the carriage, to speak to me, a man who said his name was Wirtz, and that he was in charge of the prisoners near by.
There were three exceptions to this rule while we were in Andersonville. The next was after Hood made his desperate attack on Sherman, on the 22d of July, and the third was when Stoneman was captured at Macon. At each of these times about two thousand prisoners were brought in. By the end of May there were eighteen thousand four hundred and fifty-four prisoners in the Stockade.
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