The southern side, or, Andersonville Prison / compiled from official documents by R. Randolph Stevenson, M.D. / Together with an examination of the Wirz trial, a comparison of the mortality in northern and southern prisons; remarks on the exchange bureau, etc.

  • Stevenson, R. Randolph.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The southern side, or, Andersonville Prison / compiled from official documents by R. Randolph Stevenson, M.D. / Together with an examination of the Wirz trial, a comparison of the mortality in northern and southern prisons; remarks on the exchange bureau, etc. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ‘ reb ’ they can clutch, lest he may again enter the Southern army. The negro question, which they plead as their excuse, is all bosh of the first water. The Northern people—and I speak from long acquaintance with them—care much less for negroes than we. ... It is not, therefore, black love, but white fear, which is intei’posing difficulties in the way of a general exchange of prisoners; and so' controlling is this latter motive, that the prisoners at Andersonville might forever have sung their sorrows to deaf ears, but for the advent of that crucible of parties and policies—election-day. The McClellan men have proclaimed a general exchange as a plank in their platform. ... So the ingenious Yankees make a compromise between justice and expediency, by excharging only those who will not be fit for fighting until the present campaign is over, and thus take the wind out of the democratic sails, without sending a man to that army which the veracious Grant affirms is deserting to him at the rate of a regiment a day. ... At last, on the 8th, the lists were completed, some fifteen hundred were found ‘unfit for duty for sixty days’—one-sixth of the whole — and, on the morning of the 9th, notice was giv^eu that the ‘ paroles ’ would be taken that day. ... As soon as the announcement was made in the various hospitals, that the parole lists were ready, those who had been notified that they had been entered for exchange began to crawl from their cots, and turn their faces toward the door. On they came, a ghastly tide — with skeleton bodies and lustreless eyes, and brains bereft of but one thought, and hearts purged of all feelings but one—the thought of freedom, the love of home j and they came on their crutches, on their cots, borne in the arras of their friends; creeping, some of them, on hands and knees, pale, gaunt, emaciated; some with the seal of death stamped on their wasted cheeks and shrivelled limbs, yet fearing less death than the added agony of death in the hands of enemies, where no kindred hand should give them reassuring grasp as they tottered forth into the dark valley, and their bones should lie in