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After things began to settle into shape at Millen, they seemed to believe that they were in such ascendancy as to numbers and organization that they could put into execution their schemes of vengeance against those of us who had been active participants in the execution of their confederates at Andersonville.
But I must forget Jerry. I pictured Jerry in Andersonville, in my own home. I tried to picture him talking to Father, to Mother. Absurd! What had Jerry to do with learned treatises on stars, or with the humdrum, everyday life of a stupid small town? For that matter, what had Father and Mother to do with dancing and motoring and painting society queens' portraits? Nothing.
While passing through this town, on her return from Andersonville to New Orleans, Clotelle had to encounter the fierce ill-treatment of these chivalrous daughters of the South.
Should the fates ever decide that I shall be flung out upon sands to perish, I beg that the hottest place in the Sahara may be selected, rather than such a spot as the interior of the Andersonville Stockade. It may be said that we had an abundance of water, which made a decided improvement on a desert. Doubtless had that water been pure.
Some months later I folded the sanguine Sergeant's stiffening hands together across his fleshless ribs, and helped carry his body out to the dead-house at Andersonville, in order to get a piece of wood to cook my ration of meal with. On the evening of the 17th of February, 1864, we were ordered to get ready to move at daybreak the next morning.
The second day after leaving Andersonville our train struggled across the swamps into Savannah, and rolled slowly down the live oak shaded streets into the center of the City.
On a grave here and there a tiny flag waved in the indolent June breeze. If Lynde had been standing by the head-stones, he could have read among the inscriptions such unlocal words as Malvern Hill, Andersonville, Ball's Bluff, and Gettysburg, and might have seen the withered Decoration Day wreaths which had been fresh the month before.
We saw slavery enter Kansas, with bowieknife in hand and curses on its lips; we saw the life of the Union struck at by secession and rebellion; we heard of the bones of sons and brothers, fallen in defence of freedom and law, dug up and wrought into ornaments for the wrists and bosoms of slave-holding women; we looked into the open hell of Andersonville, upon the deliberate, systematic starvation of helpless prisoners; we heard of Libby Prison underlaid with gunpowder, for the purpose of destroying thousands of Union prisoners in case of the occupation of Richmond by our army; we saw hundreds of prisoners massacred in cold blood at Fort Pillow, and the midnight sack of Lawrence and the murder of its principal citizens.
With his tiny force it never exceeded 500 men he had compelled the Union army to employ at least one and often as high as three brigades to guard against his depredations, and these men, held in the rear, were as much out of the war proper as though they had been penned up in Andersonville or Libby Prison.
His parents were living, but were very old. There were four sons, and all had enlisted. Two had died of starvation and misery in the prison at Andersonville, and one had been kill'd in the west. He only was left. He was now going home, and by the way he talk'd I inferr'd that his time was nearly out. He made great calculations on being with his parents to comfort them the rest of their days.
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