Andersonville, Volume 1

hen were started under heavy guard to march on foot over the mountains to Bristol, a station at t

by a Rebel, wrung my heart. During the action I had forgotten him, but when it ceased I began to worry about his fate. As he and his rider came near I ca

on until we separated. He rode by my side as we plodded over the steep, slippery hills, and we beguiled the way by chatting of the thousand things that soldiers find to talk about, and exchanged reminiscences of the service on both sides. But the subject he was fondest of was that which I relished l

Sergeant obtained leave to take me out with a guard, and I was presently ushered into a room in which the damsels were massed in force, -a carnation-checked, staring, open-mouthed, linsey-clad crowd, as ignorant of corsets and gloves as of Hebrew, and with a propensity to giggle that was chronic and irrepressible. When we entered the room there was a general giggle, and then a shower of comments upon my appearance,-each sentenc

s, as the gorilla or the chimpanzee. They felt as free to discuss my points before my face as they would to talk of a horse or a wild animal in a show. My equanimity was partially restored by

owed my back to the ladies. The hum of comment deepened into

-cushions. They are fastened by the edge, and stick out straight behind. Their use is to support the heavy belt in the rear, as the buttons do in front. When the belt is off it would puzzle the Seven Wise Men to guess what they are for. The unsophisticated young ladies, with tha

ch I heard one of the girls inquire whether "it would hurt him to cut 'em off?

nd they said to the Sergeant "

een intensely amused at the girls' wonderment

girls want to

could not sing

an that; I never seed or heerd

te number. I asked him to get the ladies to sing for me, and to this they acceded quite readily. One girl, with a fair soprano, who seemed to be t

t the Nor

ks and je

men to the finery and frippery of the ladies on the other side of Ma

the lung-power acquired in climbing their precip

for southern

the home

hern lad

d the ent

cultural country as is Russia or South America. The people have, little inclination or capacity for anything else than pastoral pursuits. Consequently mechanics are very scarce, and manufactories much scarcer. The limited quantity of products of mechanical skill needed by the people was mostly imported from the North or Europe. Both these sources of supply were cutoff by the war, and the country was thrown upon its own slender manufacturing resources. To force its mechanics into the army would therefore be suicidal. The Army would gain a

ers and citizens. But, owing to the polemic poverty of our opponents, the argument was more in name than in fact. Like all people of slender or untrained intellectual powers they labored under the hallucination that asserting was reasoni

'uns down here a-f

lied to the new

kin' our niggers aw

n c

" The windup always was: "Well, let me tell you, sir, you

ivision of Kentucky cavalry, seemed to be as slenderly furnished with logical ammunition as

'uns down here a-f

onotonous to me, whom he addressed,

om you affect to despise, and we came do

light came into his sinister gray eyes, he l

e mountains were relieved by others, the Sergeant bade me good by, struck his spurs into

y perils and hardships. We had endured together the Winter's cold, the dispiriting drench of the rain, the fatigue of the long march, the discomforts of the muddy cam

and scor

wrong, the proud

of office, a

ively tilts with guards of forage piles in surreptitious attempts to get additional rations, sometimes coming off victorious and sometimes being driven off ingloriously. I had often gone hungry that he might have

om actual service to a prison, and he bore his n

.........

s if cattle in shipment to market, we pounded along slow

part of the skilled men engaged upon them escaped back to the North, with all renewal, improvement, or any but the most necessary repairs stopped for t

er of any kind in the South. The climate and the food plants do not favor the accumulation of adipose tissue by a

he ordinary grade of olive oil, but it was entirely too expensive for use in the arts. The cotton seed oil could be produced

caused the Rebels, as a whole, as little inconvenience as any that they suffered from. I have seen many thousands of them who were obv

o run with unlubricated axles, and the screaking and groaning of the grinding journals in

ter than a man could walk, the worst consequence to us was a severe jolting. She was smal

er again, they would not pay for us. We believed that we had killed and seriously wounded as many of them as they had killed, wounded and captured of us. We had nothing to blame ourselves for. Moreover, we began to be buoyed up with the expectation that we would be exchanged immediately upon our arrival at Richmond, and the

or hundreds of sad days, stretching out into long months of suffering and death. Happily there was no one to tell us that of every five in that party four would never stand under the Stars and Stripes again, but succumbing to chronic

iate omens, the ravens along our route

ual veil of deep, dark, but translucent blue, which refracted the slanting rays of the morning and evening sun into masses of color more gorgeous than a dreamer's vision of an enchanted land. At Lynchburg we saw the famed Peaks of Otter-twenty miles away-lifting their proud heads far into the clouds, like giant watch-towers sentineling the gateway that the mighty waters of the James had forced through the barriers of solid adamant lying across their path to the far-off sea. What we had seen many miles back start from the mountain sides as slender ri

was set free, and the elements made to do his work. In the South man was

h our way lay, broadened into an expanse of arable acres, and the fac