Andersonville (23 page)

You will see, Cousin Harry, life at the Claffeys’ is not sedentary these days.

(Damn Colonel Persons, remarked Surgeon Elkins honestly.)

...Trains come plunging with a regularity they did not exhibit in the piping times of Peace. Should I be at work on the west side of the house, I salute them through the window or through springtime foliage, and trust (when they bear to the North) that they are well loaded with viands for the armies. I know that I should reverence each sharp-pointed cow-catcher, each set of tall wheels, each funnel-shaped stack like an enormous weight above the cab & boiler and— What call you those round things? I shall go and ask Poppy. He says steam-dome. But they
do
make noise and ugliness, and soot blows far across the fields and (of this I am nearly positive) finds lodgment in the stray tresses of one Miss L. Claffey, and must needs be washed out.

...There is little more to relate, except the vagary of Nature herself, which as we know is a pattern and a repetition; yet each act of Nature seems new. I rise to the colored sunrise before six, and make my sad hymn of approval to the Creator as I dress myself. The field of onion tops is richly green; and above and beyond lie flat broken platters of mist hanging at various levels over the terrain—thin, solid, motionless. Somewhere (could it have been at the Female Institute, where I studied
useful and ornamental branches, including the French language
)
I have witnessed such a beauty. Was it some strange print brought from the Orient? I know not. Friend
Coz,
I must up and be busy; the world’s work is to be done, and I must do my share. These last lines are penned whilst I lie abed in the morning, but I am no lady of leisure. Breakfast odors soar aloft. Uncle Dayto is stopping by again this week; he and my father are soon to view the interior of the prison pen, as invited by Col. P. to do so. I presume they will stand upon one of the sentinels’ platforms. Seven thousand ferocious Yankees? I should not call that a pleasant sight, nor should I desire to join the gentlemen in their junket had I been included in the invitation. Still it is no pastime for a lady, so they say. Will military exigencies prevail upon you to visit this region once again? I pray that they will. I have gathered no violets of late. With all wishes for your health & happiness, I remain, Y’r fond
Cousin,
Lucy C.

This letter lay in Cato Dillard’s pocket, to be put into the mail by him later, when he stood crowded atop the stockade with Ira Claffey and Lieutenant-Colonel Persons. The Reverend Mr. Dillard and the post commander had many acquaintances in common in the Fort Valley region; Dillard had lived in that area where Macon, Houston and Crawford Counties pressed together. In whimsy the minister was constantly inquiring about the fishing in Mossy Creek, Bay Creek, Indian Creek—all the creeks adjacent to Fort Valley which he was sure that Persons should know now as well as he, Cato Dillard, had known them years before.

Ira stared at the prison and was in no mood to consider quiet streams and shiners flickering. He witnessed an ugliness which his worst imagination had balked at contriving. The last occasion when he’d gazed at the area was before those first scrawny columns moved in by firelight. Now he did not know how to term the nastiness. A rabbit warren, a den of rats tangling, chunky snakes upturned by a bottomland plow? The free-piled stumps and brushy tangles were evaporated. A community of huts spread loosely over the slopes like warts, like protruding wounds with corners on them. Rags, brown pine boughs, blankets, sodden overcoats and oilskins: the earth festered with tunneling, cellaring, burrowing; materials were draped on sticks; and all space between was pimpled with moving humanity. Or name it inhumanity—

Shebangs, said Persons. That’s the term the Yanks apply to their shelters.

How many men living in each one?

Any number you wish to name. Some live alone, many by twos or fours. The larger huts hold more.

Why are the men’s faces so black? I thought in the first glimpse that you were holding all niggers.

Fat pine, said Persons. The smoke of their fires has darkened them.

How many thousand prisoners did you say?

Upwards of seven thousand, at the moment.

It appeared to Ira Claffey that there were not enough huts to furnish shelter for all.

You’re correct in that assumption, sir. Many of the prisoners had no coats or blankets in the hour of their capture, or were robbed before entering the stockade, or afterward. They’ve had nothing to build with; thus they didn’t build.

They sleep out, in complete exposure to the elements?

As you can see, no shelter was provided when the stockade was raised.

Ah, yes. I remember when Captain Winder was approached on that topic, and I recall his reply.

At this mention of Sid Winder the glance of Persons and the glance of Claffey met and held. The soldier recognized even more painfully than the citizen that there was a malignant connotation in the name of Winder as applied to individuals associated with this place. Both men had encountered the ruling genius—the father and cousin—and had formed their opinions of his character independently of whatever noisome reputation he possessed in the Confederate capital. Both knew the son. As for Cousin Dick (commonly believed to be General Winder’s nephew because of disparity in age) only Persons was unfortunate enough to hold contact with him. Richard B. Winder was like his cousin a staff officer of the general’s, and now wore the title of quartermaster of this expanding pest-hole. Lieutenant-Colonel Persons had been forced to stand by helplessly while Dick Winder superintended, in bored surly fashion, the construction of a bakery. The sheds stood on a slope above the creek immediately west of the stockade; Persons pointed out that its drainage would flow into the creek before the stream entered the pen; Captain R. B. Winder ignored the field officer as pointedly as the cousin of a commanding general might if he were particularly inept and selfish.

The quartermaster remarked to a subordinate within Persons’ hearing, I have no orders to report to any quartermaster at all, no orders to report to any officer commanding troops in another capacity. I report directly to Richmond. I receive my instructions from Richmond.

In this application of nepotism even the headquarters of the Georgia Reserves at Macon were by-passed. Alexander Persons detested nepotism as any fair-minded man was compelled to detest it; and forced to nibble its rotten fruit in the discharge of his duties he grew particularly incensed. . . . Sidney Winder’s levies of workmen, ignorant and unsupervised, had left lower reaches of the Sweetwater branch choked with felled trees and a mat of brush. The creek pushed sluggishly out from the east stockade, its normal insufficient velocity reduced to a trickle by this careless damming. When and if the bake house were ever completed, equipped and operating, what could be the result of its natural drainage and debris except to pollute to the saturation point a marsh already teeming with fecal matter and the hungrily copulating flies of spring?

I report directly to Richmond. I receive my instructions from Richmond. The weak voice bland and smug.

Sometimes Alex Persons came close to wishing that a bullet had found him at Cumberland Gap. Sometimes he wanted to scream to the dirty mendicants caged by the up-ended logs, I too am a prisoner. You think you know the entire story of restriction, do you? Each of us wears manacles, mine are not apparent, they are heavy, they chafe more than my ankles and my wrists, do you wear irons in your dreams as I am compelled to?

With the platform fairly sagging under their combined weight, the Reverend Mr. Cato Dillard stood as aloof from his friends as the meager plane would permit. But Cato was drained of all trivial talk about the Fort Valley community. Belatedly he saw the enormity of the thing below the fence; he was trying to justify it by poking for texts and muttering them softly.
Egypt is like a very fair heifer, hut destruction cometh; it cometh out of the north.

Did Cato think deeply and sadly about his two grandsons killed not long before? Ira Claffey could not know, but Ira felt for a moment that savage selfish brutality—the hideous latent desire of the bereaved to see other men drink the same juice.

Thus saith the Lord. Behold, a people cometh from the north country . . . they are cruel, and have no mercy . . . I
will cause you to dwell in this place.

But why the devil without shelter, Brother Dillard? Ira put the question so sharply that it came as a rebuke as well as a profane echo to the Biblical murmurings.

Cato Dillard twisted his silky side-whiskers between nervous fingers.
Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation.

Persons cleared his throat. His handsome face had grown darkly intent as always when he stood aloft and examined the stockade and its people. About the question of shelter, Mr. Claffey. I’ve been hard after it since I came here, to no avail. Repeatedly the superintendent of the railroad has promised me a train; each time I thought I’d get eight or ten cars of lumber; thus far none has come through. I still have hopes.

Ira said, There are sawmills in this vicinity.

Certainly. I took that matter up with Macon.

Without result?

Persons said deliberately, It would not be becoming in me, as an officer, to discuss my superior officers, and with citizens. As a former soldier you must know that.

Colonel, you have my sympathy and my respect. But this pen is turning very rapidly into one vast latrine.

Into worse than that, sir.

What could be worse? The Reverend Mr. Dillard wished to know.

This place called Andersonville.

Persons continued, but still in the manner of changing a subject. The stockade . . . he pointed out where the last breach had been closed. Yes, those were new guns being put into position on the high southwest fort nearest the Claffey place. Captured from the Yankees in Florida, Persons declared with satisfaction. And fetched here to use in turn against the Yankees when and if an emergency arises. . . . The two box gates on the west; they worked efficiently; observe the rectangular stockade enclosing an area outside the actual stockade fence in each case; the outer gate could be opened, wagons driven inside, the outer gate closed, the inner gate opened. Thus the prisoners never had a possible access to the outer world at any given moment, thus they could never carry the gate in a rush by sheer mass of numbers. . . . Yes, the North Gate was used mainly for ingress, the South Gate for egress. Yes, those were more or less streets extending through the stockade’s interior from each gate; it was essential that there be some cleared space for the distribution of rations, for the assembling of prisoners in formation. Therefore no prisoners were permitted to construct their shebangs within the area contained by those more or less streets . . . it was odd: the Yanks referred to the street opposite the South Gate as South Street, but the street opposite the North Gate was called by some Broadway and by others Main Street. Very odd indeed; you would think that they’d say North Street, but they didn’t. Very odd lot, these Yankees . . . yes, many foreigners. Many roughs from the New York streets. Had the gentlemen witnessed any fist-fights since they stood atop the stockade? Well, watch . . . bound to see a fight sooner or later.

I’ve no wish to witness their wicked brawling, said Mr. Dillard in high disgust.

Persons touched his lips with a clean but frayed handkerchief. There was no way in which he might make these civilians appreciate the problems besetting him, so he would not try. Persons was accustomed to the stern indelible procedures essential to service in the field; he believed the things which were told to him—at first.

...A telegram came ticking: three hundred prisoners were due to arrive the next afternoon, and thus Persons arranged for their reception, and notified the quartermaster. . . . The train would not appear. It would not appear on the stated afternoon, nor during the next morning, nor the next afternoon. Rain would fall to soak the meal on carts where rations waited with no covering because no covering was available. Then, perhaps at eleven o’clock of the second night, and with more rain sweeping and with cold wind deadening the heaps of burning knots, not one train but three would arrive in the space of half an hour. Eleven hundred prisoners instead of three hundred (one engine had snapped a driving-rod above Macon, another train had been shunted to the Southwestern from the Savannah line; no one was expecting it, no telegram had been received).

Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Persons grew pearly of face, his stomach hurt him, he wanted to belch but there seemed to be an obstruction. The pain went higher in his chest. His meticulous legal mind began to jerk from this subject to that; he thought he heard the snap of a leather whip lash, a thin whip lash like the tongue of a blue racer, curling and popping inside his skull.

Lieutenant, how soon can you procure rations for this new contingent?

Well, sir, reckon I got rations for six-seven hundred over to the tent, but I ain’t got no transportation. Got two mules down sick, and a wheel just come off that old wagon. If Captain Winder—

Get your men out of bed, prepare five hundred more rations, I’ll see that you have transportation. Mr. Ussery, fetch those two wagons that were hauling logs for the artillery revetments this afternoon.

Sir, I haven’t got any drivers.

By God, Mr. Ussery,
find
some drivers! Drive a wagon down here yourself if necessary, then go and fetch the other.

...Colonel Persons, did you hear them whistles? Another train’s halted down the track behind that one there; the sentry done tolt me.

Department of Georgia, Department of Georgia, and who was commanding the Georgia Reserves? Brigadier-General Howell Cobb. Or was Cobb now become a major-general? The Nation knew him better as a politician. Inspector-General of Prisons, and who was that? Brigadier-General John H. Winder. Secretary of War, and who was he? Mr. James A. Seddon. Have you rations for these prisoners, Colonel? No. Why not? No one informed me that they were coming. How many wagons have you at the post? Four—no, I think five. Have you tools? No. Lumber? No. Is it night? Yes. Is it raining? Indeed, yes. Is there adequate drainage inside the stockade? Hold on a minute, old fellow, drainage for whom, drainage for what? Have the prisoners any shelter? No, no, no! But I didn’t build the prison, I didn’t lay it out, I didn’t plan it, I didn’t construct it, Sid Winder did that.
Directly after my command was captured at Cumberland Gap, I went to Richmond and reported directly to the Secretary of War for duty. He gave me instructions to report to General Winder. General Winder instructed me to report to Andersonville.