Andersonville (95 page)

Why on earth—?

Because many of these prisoners were cared for to some degree by their comrades. The comrades were ordered away and were forbidden to carry the sick along with them. There was a certain amount of subterfuge, naturally; some of the sick did go along with the well. But the greater number were left in what amounted to abandonment. Therefore the increase in the ratio of reported sickness and resulting mortality.

Dr. Jones had produced his Richmond orders, with which Surgeon Isaiah White, in charge of the hospital, was duly impressed. In this way Jones was able to have Elkins transferred from other duties temporarily to serve as his assistant, both in post mortem examinations and the rough draft of his report. The two men drove themselves mercilessly through all hours of daylight in firsthand exploration. At night papers were unrolled upon the Claffey dining table. The plantation’s stock of candles suffered, and Lucy was at her wits’ end to see that more candles were manufactured immediately. The two surgeons correlated their notes. In tired voices suggestions were made, there was mutual criticism of style and content.

I can’t say merely a pile of human excrement, Harry. It does not convey the enormity of the thing; we
must
convey it.

Let us see . . . say, filthy quagmire of human excrements.

Yes, much better.

Alive with working maggots, Elkins added.

More impressive still. And hideously correct!

Lucy tapped at the edge of the open door: would the gentlemen take coffee now? They would indeed. Ninny was sent with the old Bavarian china pot, the chipped delicate cups. Grain coffee was poured, a smidgin of precious cane syrup stirred in.

Where will you go, sir, when you have concluded your investigation here?

Jones said, Doubtless to hospitals connected with the Army of Tennessee, and shall probably be there until November. For the eventual preparation of the final draft, I must await the reception of answers to numerous other inquiries I’ve made. . . .

Diarrhoea, dysentery, scurvy, and hospital gangrene were the diseases which have been the main cause of this extraordinary mortality. The origin and character of the hospital gangrene which prevailed to so remarkable a degree and with such fatal effects amongst the Federal prisoners, engaged my most serious and earnest consideration. More than 30,000 men, crowded upon twenty-seven acres of land, with little or no shelter from the intense heat of a Southern summer, or from the rain and from the dew of night, with coarse corn bread from which the husk had not been removed, with but scant supplies of fresh meat and vegetables, with little or no attention to hygiene, with festering masses of filth at the very doors of their rude dens and tents, with the greater portion of the banks of the stream flowing through the stockade a filthy quagmire of human excrements alive with working maggots, generated by their own filthy exhalations and excretions, an atmosphere that so deteriorated and contaminated their solids and fluids that the slightest scratch and even the bites of small insects were in some cases followed by such rapid and extensive gangrene as to destroy extremities and even life itself. . . .

Let’s see, Harry. Where is August?

August, August. There August lies yonder, under the saucer.

...August: fifty-three cases and fifty-three deaths recorded as marasmus.

That was the terminology.

But surely this large number of deaths must have been due to some other morbid state than slow wasting? If they were due to improper and insufficient food, they should have been classified accordingly.

In our hospital, said Harry Elkins slowly, there have been peculiar notions regarding statement of the causes of death.

But, Harry, if due to diarrhoea, dysentery or scurvy, the classification should in like manner have been explicit!

I suggest, sir, that you incorporate that query in your report.

Elkins hoisted his thinning body into a bent but standing position, and beat his hand on the table in a fashion now grown characteristic. Let us take, for example,
vulnus sclopeticum.
A
great many deaths have been entered as due to that cause. I am referring to prisoners shot by guards. As you are well aware, sir, that is the technical name for a gunshot wound! Even stranger recordings have been made. I found, when ordered to assemble certain previous reports which had been made at best in fragmentary fashion, that on the eleventh of July, six men died of
asphyxia.
I was very curious about this. . . . Had the men smothered in their sleep? They had not. It was merely that they were hanged by the neck until dead. Those were the raiders executed by their fellow prisoners. An amusing circumstance, do you not think? He cackled.

Pray sit down, said Joseph Jones sadly. Where were we? Ah, yes: August again. What was the mortality of mean strength, sick and well, in August?

Nine and nine-hundredths per cent.

What was the first month—February or March?

The first prisoners came in a few days before the end of February. Thus the first figures available for a complete month are for March.

And the rate then?

Three and eleven-hundredths per cent of mean strength for March.

Then the rate of mortality has very nearly tripled, for the prisoners as a whole?

That does not approach the rate of hospital mortality, sir.

Ah, I’m well aware of that. But let me have the sum of deaths for September eighteenth. I believe you said that would astound me.

Here it is: one hundred and twenty-seven.

In
one day
?

Correct, sir.

My eyes are swimming, confronted with numerals. Let us put numerals by for a time. . . . Now: have you seen my preliminary description concerning the hospital itself?

They hunted for the papers, found them at last jammed into a worn saddle bag which served as Doctor Jones’s literary kit.

The patients and attendants . . . are crowded into this confined space and are but poorly supplied with old and ragged tents. Large numbers of them are without any bunks in the tents, and lie upon the ground, ofttimes without even a blanket. No beds or straw appeared to have been furnished. The tents extend to within a few yards of the small stream, the eastern portion of which, as we have before said, is used as a privy and is loaded with excrements; and I observed a large pile of corn bread, bones, and filth of all kinds, thirty feet in diameter and several feet in height, swarming with myriads of flies, in a vacant space near the pots used for cooking. Millions of flies swarmed over everything and covered the faces of the sleeping patients, and crawled down their open mouths, and deposited their maggots in the gangrenous wounds of the living, and in the mouths of the dead. Mosquitoes in great numbers also infested the tents, and many of the patients were so stung by these pestiferous insects, that they resembled those suffering with a slight attack of measles.

Harry, lad, you’ve fallen asleep.

Why— So I did, so I did. My apologies—

Ira Claffey wondered without much confidence whether this third effort of a dedicated Confederate would turn the trick. Some people held three to be a lucky number . . . the third time was the charm . . . old saws of that nature. Persons, Chandler, Jones. Would demands of other duties allow Jones to complete his report? Would a sudden onrush of Federals from Atlanta preclude the completion? If the report were completed, what of its reception at Richmond? . . . Harrell Elkins shared Ira’s fears, yet he toiled with angry enthusiasm. Joseph Jones made certain that the statistics which he carried away with him were as accurate as might be, despite slovenly bookkeeping at original sources. He turned to the prose body of his report only when eyes and brain refused to accept another statistic. Thus those at the Claffey house might have little idea as to the shape this report would assume eventually, the damning quality of the utterance. Only an occasional summary relating to a specific fault stood out in something like acceptable form; these Surgeon Jones read to his angrily-impressed small audience the night before his departure. Jones held that there should be nothing secret in his document. He hoped indeed that it would be published in all directions. He felt that he was violating no confidential rule, where his Nation or his superiors were concerned, in including sympathetic citizens in the last candlelit session.

This gigantic mass of human misery calls loudly for relief, not only for the sake of suffering humanity, but also on account of our own brave soldiers now captives in the hands of the Federal government. Strict justice to the gallant men of the Confederate armies, who have been or who may be so unfortunate as to be compelled to surrender in battle, demands that the Confederate government should adopt that course which will best secure their health and comfort in captivity; or at least leave their enemies without a shadow of an excuse for any violation of the rules of civilized warfare in the treatment of prisoners.

It was still October when Dr. Jones went away. As he had foreseen, he was ordered to the hospitals with the Army of Tennessee. Harrell Elkins returned to miscellaneous overwork, the disorganized routine of hospital and stockade gate. He had a special corner of an outbuilding wherein he strove to rid himself of lice and fleas before reentering the Claffey house after each tour of duty. Despite his best intention, vermin did accompany him. Lucy prowled with coal oil, hunting the sly tiny villains.

She observed that her father was growing more and more detached as the autumn lengthened into November. Ira shirked self-appointed garden tasks . . . sometimes the Negroes were left with nothing to do because no work had been laid out for them. Ira went often with his gun to the uplands but brought back few birds. Sometimes he brought no birds at all—the weapon was unsmudged, had not been fired. I wonder if he thinks he sees the boys, as he murmured that once he saw them a year since? cried Lucy to herself. I wonder . . .

Ira routed his daughter from her bed one evening, when Elkins was asleep, when a small fire burned on the library hearth. Ira made Lucy don a comforter and sit before this fire.

I am going. Today I decided that I must go. I cannot dwell in harmony with myself unless I try.

Go where?

To Richmond—where else? Did I not tell you what was my thought?

Poppy, you’ve said nothing. Sakes! Nothing at all. You’ve gone poking sometimes with your gun, sometimes without it. I declare, I’ve tried to think what ailed you, and could never decide. I knew it must have to do with the prison. You’ve changed in such a way since Surgeon Jones was here.

Ira sat staring at the fire, his chin on his fists. Beg pardon for any withdrawal; it was a matter I had to thrash out. But viewing those three men—all doing their best to secure a reformation—our friend Alex Persons; then Chandler; Jones at the last. Indeed we’ve heard nothing from Jones, there’s been no alteration of circumstances. Conditions grow worse steadily at the approach of winter. You’ve heard Coz say so, and his opinion is to be trusted above others. Gad, it seems the others might have offered their reports as Coz offered his: wafted into flame, directed upward to the Almighty!

No, no, he cried, and stood up to wave his fists. It cannot continue like this. I’ll not let it continue!

But, Poppy— All the way to Richmond? And it’s just a trial, traveling these days. Everyone tells that. And such a sight of cash. Poppy, have we—? Do you have sufficient funds?

I shall draw money out of my box, come what may. Daughter, as you know, I was acquainted with President Davis many years ago. But still I knew him, and he knew me. What is a commander? A man with subordinates, many of them appointed directly by that commander. Somewhere along the line of subordinates sits the official who individually might rectify the present, who might benefit the future— I know too well that past months cannot be rectified. Perhaps I was appointed by Fate, because of this acquaintanceship with the Chief Executive! It may be that I have disregarded impassioned summons heretofore. I have been sluggardly, Lucy—weak and sluggardly. A man may not feel he has done everything he can do—not until he has
done
everything he
can
do.

Then God speed you, Poppy.

Lucy. In a tone of equal tenderness. I cannot leave you alone—not with a man in the house to whom in fact we are not related.

She sat in silence.

Early the next morning Ira set out for Americus. There was a fairly good horse left on the Yeoman place, he borrowed that horse. He conferred with Effie Dillard. She came somewhat reluctantly to the plantation on the following day, leaving a long list of admonitions to Laurel Tebbs: tasks which Laurel must perform, comforts and duties essential to the well-being of the Reverend Mr. Cato Dillard.

A grievance, she told her husband.

No grievance, Effie. It’s kindness which you must award to friends.

Aye, we dare risk no scandal where our dear lass Lucy is concerned! Bear with it all, Cate. You shall be in my prayers nightly, husband, and in my thoughts each hour.

At the Claffey place Ira was immersed in his own preparations. Lucy stood behind a curtain and watched the round-shouldered Harry striding off to the hospital. Suddenly her cheeks grew hot, she closed her eyes and spread her hands against her cheeks.

 LII 

F
ire swept Atlanta on the night of November fifteenth, and rumor held that Sherman was driving on Augusta. Because the entire Southwestern railway line had been taken over by the military, Ira Claffey was compelled to apply for a pass before boarding a train. Permission was granted readily: another contingent labored here since the departure of Winder and his flock. Wirz and Colonel Thurlow survived, together with some members of the surgical staff. Commissary and quartermaster’s departments were administered by new people, so was the office of transportation. The transportation officer was a plaintive little grub who had been shot through the throat and could not raise his voice above a whisper. He whispered thanks to Ira. . . . Quantities of yams, cabbages, onions, pumpkins from the Claffey plantation found their way to the officers’ mess. Some people considered it possible that Wirz might have given permission for such fare to be carried into stockade and hospital also, had he not feared the slug of a fist thrusting down from Florence or Camp Lawton.

About four o’clock in the afternoon Ira took leave of Lucy and Mrs. Dillard; Harry Elkins was on duty at the hospital. Ira walked to Anderson Station carrying his own carpetbag; there was no meanness about this nowadays; his hands were at work getting winter wood, he did not wish to take one hand from his task. Ira sat on the tailboard of a collapsed wagon almost until dusk: the train had been long delayed between Albany and Americus.

There were other delays to be incurred north of Anderson. A rail sprang from ties, it had to be spiked into place. An engine crew was become a track maintenance crew in these times. . . . In darkness the head-lamp would not operate, it was burned out. For such emergencies an old-fashioned dolly was carried aboard the wood tender; but it lay buried under pine lengths, so there must ensue unloading before the flat little car could be dragged out and secured in front of the engine. Knots were set aflame, the engine sparked mournfully at a mule’s pace as if it shoved a gay bonfire unwillingly. Pine flames leaned back against the shield, red glow stole ahead, cars grated, creaked, shoved together in couplings, pulled apart in couplings. The train crept, its ruddy fingers of light closing slowly on the rope of track. Interiors thickened with the smell of woodsmoke and deep-dyed sweat, together with smell of the place where some passenger had been sick. The door of a corner privy banged back and forth; it could not be secured and kept from banging; the wooden privy box shifted and smelled. A bench was built along each side of the car and across the ends, another bench ran down the middle. On this slept, end to end, several youthful soldiers dragged from some port farther south. They were being sent up-State to serve as reinforcements . . . from a hundred other posts such elements were drawn. Reinforcements, reinforcements, said slow rough wheels chewing the rails. Sherman’s left Atlanta . . . Sherman’s out of Atlanta. . . .

Ira Claffey rested in a front corner of the car, as far from the privy smell as possible. But the bench was narrow, he could not stretch safely upon it as thin boys did. He tried to pillow his head on his bag, tried to secure himself against the tenacious hammering of patched equipment. It was gray sunrise before they reached Macon, and they did not leave Macon on the Georgia Central for many hours. Lucy had prepared a basket of corn sticks, pickled pork, and biscuit sandwiches spread with sorghum, along with an old brandy bottle filled with grain coffee. The five freckled mossy-necked boys in the car had no food. They explained to Ira Claffey that they had been told to draw rations; but rations were refused because of some technicality. Ira divided his store of meat and bread into six portions as equally as possible. Also during the eternity of waiting outside Macon, a stout Negress came along the track offering fish for sale. Ira treated the soldiers to fried catfish.

He thought that he had seen refugees before . . . truly he had not seen them. Oh, there had been visible evidence of distant battles, wickedness of distant campaigns. Stupid frightened black people inched along the railway, along the road past the Claffey plantation. Some of the Negro men had been impressed—captured, as it were—and set to menial tasks in the Andersonville cemetery or around the camps. It was whispered through the neighborhood that some of the more comely Negresses were persuaded to linger for a time, to afford pleasure for men in a tent outside the picket lines. Ira’s own pickaninnies had come from play along a weedy fence, fetching a stray child in verminous rags. Scarcely could you tell the sex of the critter. The hair was kinked, the body neglected, eyes rolled frantically. Only children of its own size could have lured it to the plantation. Lucy gave orders that the thing should be scrubbed and fed. It turned out to be a little girl. Lucy named her Dryad, since she was found in the woods, and for nearly a week the black children enjoyed their new playmate; until Dryad quarreled with little Gracious and ran off, declaring that she was going home to her Mammy. Ira ordered the hands to go searching. They never found her, nor did she return to the plantation again. They heard nothing more of the child. It was feared that she might have been drowned in Little Sweetwater, or perhaps went down into a bog. . . . Yes, he had seen black people drifting, and some whites. He was accustomed to ragged nomads who glared suspiciously, whose lean yellow faces gave forth little except suspicion and colder resentment. He had seen them in their camps, had watched against their thefts, had given them food in every case when they came to beg. Their starved dogs skulked along with them, forever it seemed that the dogs traveled on three legs.

But here in the Macon region tumbled hordes who had been shunted out of Atlanta and smaller towns in the northwest region where Union brigades came growling and firing. Along the side track sentries were disposed solely for the purpose of restraining these confused tribes. Ira stood in the car door, observing with pity, and hearing reiteration of the guards: no citizen dared board this train without displaying a pass for self and family. This rule was honored in the breach, and Ira surmised that there had been some bribes as well. Benches and floors filled up with strident women, squalling babies, madcap older children who wrestled and ran, making holiday and war dance out of the whole miserable matter.

There came the tall judge with face like dry paper. His eyes were pink-rimmed, he twisted his skinny beard, said that he had had two sons and three grandsons in the army. But all were dead, sir. All were dead . . . and the Yankees had taken over his house, sir, and flung him out to wander and starve, sir. There came a spinster seamstress dragging her mother along. The fat old lady scolded and palpitated; she said that her head was spinning, and where were those aromatic salts, Letty John—where were those salts? There came the small shy pretty woman, large with child, trying to manage two covered baskets and two little boys who owned their mother’s cool brown eyes and soft voice and fuzzy brown hair. The woman said that her husband was serving under General Hampton, and wasn’t this just the beat? . . . A slobbery fat man, drunk and threatening; he claimed that the Yankees had killed his hogs. He swore that he had escaped barely with his life, and was confident that his wife was ravished by invaders. But he had run off without her; it appeared that he had not waited to see what had befallen her; perhaps he could not bear to witness her ravished condition. . . .

There was the nine-year-old boy who had been separated from grandparents with whom he traveled. He wore a miniature gray uniform with ragged braid on it. He was naughty, he stamped and screeched, slapped at smaller children, yelled that he was hungry. Ira offered him some biscuit and sorghum, but the boy snarled that he didn’t want any of that old nigger food: he wanted spice cake. . . . Two meek maidens of teen age; they were not twins, but were dressed in similar shawls and gowns, almost identical bonnets. One of them was doubled with abdominal cramps. She cried quietly, could not refrain from holding her hand against her middle, she buried her face against her sister as she cried. . . .

A grinning servant with a face like crumpled black tin. He said that he was taking care of The Doctor. Yes, sir, he was taking care of The Doctor. And the doctor was every day of eighty, and carried an ear trumpet, and stared hopelessly out of eyes on which the film of cataracts showed. The servant said his own name was Jack and he had belonged to the doctor for forty-four years. He said that he knew his numbers, he could cipher well. It was in 1820
that the doctor bought him, bought him in North Carolina. That was before they moved down here, and—he lowered his voice mysteriously—the doctor wasn’t deaf then; but he was very deaf now. No sir, old Jack wasn’t going to stay to home. He knew what would happen if he fell into hands of the Yankees: he would be worked to death on fortifications, or else would be put out right smack in front of all those soldiers; right in front of the line of battle he would be put, to absorb shot directed at the Yankees. Or else he would be sent to Cuba and sold. And he knew well enough what the Yankees did to old women and young children: they would be drowned like blind puppies or cats. No, sir, he was getting out of there. The Doctor didn’t want to come, but he had done persuaded The Doctor. Yes sir, he had done persuaded him. They were going to Savannah, that’s where they were going.

Wounded soldiers in the throng . . . boys with bandages. . . . A loud-voiced young woman with brilliantly red cheeks and coils of brassy hair straggling. She made much of rustling her patched silk gown, she giggled when the young soldiers talked to her. She laughed as the ignorant and light-brained laugh. Her laughter went up in a shriek, she could not laugh without shrieking. The shriek would start on a high note, it sounded like ungreased axles of the train itself, it held a protracted
eeeh
at high pitch, it died down only to spout again when something else was said. . . . A very new baby wailed ceaselessly. It said
lah
at regular intervals. Ira began to count the
lahs.
He counted to two hundred with scarce a break, then wearied of counting and became insensitive to the sound . . . heard no more of it, though the hungry mite wailed on, was silenced briefly at its mother’s breast, refused the breast, continued
lah
ing
.

There sat a small Jewish tailor with fat small wife. The woman cried a little, touching her eyes with a folded cambric handkerchief, but she made no sound. At last she opened a willow basket, brought out lunch: some strange crackery compound, and homemade cheese. The old couple munched stoically. They said that their son and his wife had elected to remain at home. The son had lost his arm in the war. He said that he had no fear of the Yankees, had often traded tobacco for coffee. Actually he had traded with the Yankees when they were fighting at the North! But Mamma here— She would not wait. She thinks the Yankees would kill her. I do not believe it so, but that is what she thinks. But this is not so bad. It is bad, but it is not so bad. When I was a lad— That was many years ago—it was in the Old Country. I remember I fled with my parents, for soldiers were to kill us, and it was cold, much colder than now. . . .

Eventually the car was crammed to suffocation, though some of these runaways grew restless because the train did not move. They pushed their way out, left the car, went perhaps into some other car or back into the town. Once a woman shrieked, Yankee cavalry! There they are! and there was a great pushing and punching as everyone struggled to see. But no Yankee cavalry could be found on the landscape—only some Negro boys leading several head of mules.

Once again in afternoon the rusty splintery worm crawled its course. Engine puffed and shuddered, greaseless axles screamed like caged demons above tortured boxes, loose metal banged and thudded, steam and smoke went coughing. May we get to Savannah, Sherman is loose, Sherman is loose, Sherman is coming. Sherman has left Atlanta, gulp, Sherman has left Atlanta, gulp, Sherman is loose, gasp, Sherman’s coming, gasp. In its soiled pink shawl the baby cried. Rustling in soiled silken skirts, the girl with brassy locks still squealed, boy soldiers said funny things to her.