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[170] a man normally fed would refuse can hardly be explained by their innate perversity. The inspectors' reports show several cases of collusion between commissary and contractor, or else lax supervision which allowed the contractor to do his own weighing and to furnish inferior qualities. Large prison funds continued to accumulate, and the attitude of some of the commandants seems to have been influenced by the idea of retaliation.

The site, the organization, and the history of Andersonville have already been described, and the story of that ‘gigantic mass of human misery’ need not be retold. To many, Andersonville connotes all of prison life in the South. Yet only about twenty per cent. of the total number of prisoners taken by the Confederate forces was sent there. A large proportion of these had been previously confined elsewhere, and later were transferred to other prisons. The mortality rate in some other Confederate stockades was quite as heavy, perhaps heavier, though the records of the others are very incomplete. In several prisons, North and South, the percentage of mortality was higher for short periods, but in none was it so uniformly high for its whole existence.

The charge often made that the site of Andersonville was essentially unhealthful seems to be met by the report of Doctor Jones, who, after analyses of the soil and water of the immediate vicinity, claims that there was nothing in either to have caused excessive mortality. The fearful crowding, insufficient and improper food, lack of clothing, shelter, and fuel, lack of medicines and medical attendance, and the effects of the hot Southern sun, together with the depressed condition of the spirits of the inmates of all prisons, are enough. The hospital arrangements were insufficient, medicines were lacking, the country was thinly populated, and proper food for the sick was unobtainable. Milk and eggs could not be had.

The officers of Andersonville were charged with not providing a sufficient quantity of wood, since raw rations were issued

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