[338]
September 21st.
Deaths yesterday, twenty-nine, and this with pure air, healthy location, good water, no epidemic. The men are being deliberately murdered by the surgeon (Dr. Sanger). Of fourteen men in Dr. Martin's section twelve are dead; of seventeen in Dr. Graham's section fourteen have died and two more are certain to die for want of food and medicines. Both Dr. Martin and Dr. Graham (Confederate surgeons) have refused to send any more patients from their ward to the hospital, as death is almost certain to supervene.‘As I went over to the hospital this morning quite early there were eighteen dead bodies lying naked on the bare earth. Eleven more were added to the list by half past 11 o'clock.’ ‘In October the weather grew bitterly cold, and the men, especially the thousands who were lying on the ground in open tents, began to suffer severely, being mostly quite destitute of necessary clothing.’ At length an order came from Washington that a list of prisoners should be made out for exchange, consisting of ‘those only who, by reason of age, sickness, or wounds, would be unfit for service for sixty days.’ Some fifteen hundred were chosen as ‘unfit for duty for sixty days,’ being one-sixth of the whole; and on the morning of October 19, 1864, these were ordered to assemble for parole.
