John G. B. Adams, Reminiscences of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment

[118] no shelter. Around the place was a low fence, twenty feet from the stockade, called the dead line, and it meant all that its name implies, for to touch or step over it brought a shot from the guard, which was the only warning. Our rations were corn-meal, issued uncooked, and as no extra cooking utensils were provided for the additional men, we often had to wait until midnight for a chance to cook our dinner. If we could borrow a kettle we made mush, if a skillet, made bread, and if neither, made a cake by making a dough and throwing it into the hot ashes; this was called an ash cake. We drew very little salt, so I exchanged my ten dollar greenback, receiving five for one, Confederate money, and paid two dollars a pound for salt and fifteen for soda. The price of everything was so high that my fifty dollars soon vanished.

The only time I heard music of any kind inside the rebel lines was at Macon. Outside the stockade, where the guards were quartered, were two negroes who played the fife and drum. They could play but one tune, “Bonnie blue flag.” At reveille, guard mounting, dinner call, retreat and tattoo the fifer shrieked and the drummer pounded out this same old tune. I do not think that the southerners are a musical people, for I never heard their soldiers sing around the camp-fires, and believe they left this, like everything else, to the negroes. There was a chaplain confined with us who was a very earnest Christian. Every night he held services on the steps of the main buildings, and, with a voice that could be heard throughout the prison, would pray for our country and flag, and for damnation and disaster to all rebels. The commanding officer came in one day and ordered him to stop, but he said they put Paul in prison, yet he prayed, and while he had a voice he should pray to his God, and use