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“
[600]
going to do!
I will make a pen here for the damned Yankees, where they will rot faster than they can be sent.”
1
Howell Cobb issued orders for six hundred negroes to be impressed for the purpose of constructing a stockade around the designated inclosure.
It received its first prisoners (soldiers of the New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey and Michigan infantry), eight hundred in number, on the 15th of February, 1864, when batteries were planted at four points, bearing upon the inclosure, and a heavy guard was established, numbering at one time, three thousand six hundred men. The pen was a quadrangle, with two rows of stockades, from twelve to eighteen feet in height; and seventeen feet from the inner stockade was the “dead-line,” over which no man could pass and live.
Raised above the stockade, were fifty-two sentry boxes, in each of which was a guardsman perpetually, ready and eager to “kill a Yankee” whenever the infraction of a rule would permit.
The perpetrators of such murders were generally rewarded by the Winders with a furlough.
The fiendish intentions of these men were carried out as far as possible, and the atrocities committed in the great prisoner-pen there established were awful in the extreme.
It is difficult to write with calmness, with the terrible testimony in full volume before us. The details are too shocking even to make it proper to present an abstract here.
Suffice it to say, that Winder, with his son, nephew, Wirz, and others, performed their horrid task, with full license to do as they pleased, with alacrity and awful effect.2 At one time more than thirty thousand human beings — the fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, of anxious, waiting, watching women in desolate homes hundreds of miles away, were confined on that twenty-seven acres of land, reeking with generators of disease and death; sometimes parched with the sun, at
1 Spencer's Narrative of Andersonville.
2 It is with extreme reluctance that the writer puts on record in this work, the coarse and profane language of one of the agents of the Conspirators, in the business of the starving of prisoners. It is only given to show the manner in which efforts to relieve the sufferings of the Union captives were met. It is but one of many instances, at Andersonville and elsewhere, and may account for the fact that no woman was ever seen in the prison camp at Belle Isle. The incident here given is related by Mr. Spencer, in his Narrative of Andersonville. He says a humane physician of Americus, in Georgia (Dr. B. J. Head), and his wife, moved to pity by a knowledge of the sufferings of the prisoners, attempted to furnish them with some food and clothing. Mrs. Head interested other women, and in the face of insults and discouragements, they collected a quantity sufficient to be of real service. A clergyman (Mr. Davies) told General Winder what the women were about, and the latter promised to allow them to give the relief. A little party soon afterward proceeded to Andersonville with supplies, and a permit was asked of the provost-marshal, Lieutenant Reed, for them to be passed in. Reed, with an oath, refused, and when told by Dr. Head that General Winder had authorized it, said that he did not believe it — that he “was not such a damned fool as that.” Some rebel officer sitting there, said the doctor ought to be hung for his Yankee sympathies, and that he was ready to put the rope around his neck. Driven from the office, the doctor went to General Winder, when the following conversation, reported by Mr. Spencer, occurred, in the presence of the benevolent women who accompanied him:--
The doctor requested a pass to take the things to the hospital. “I'll see you in hell first,” returned the general. “You're a damned Yankeee sympathizer, and all those connected with you.” “You are mistaken, general,” said the doctor. “You know that lam no Yankee sympathizer, sir. I do sympathize with suffering humanity, and this is a mission of mercy.” “God damn your mission of mercy!” cried the general. “I wish that you, and every other damned Yankee sympathizer, and every God damned Yankee, too, were all in hell together!” “But, general,” rejoined the doctor, “we are here by your express permission, given to Mr. Davies.” “It's a damned lie!” he replied. “I never gave him or any one else permission to keep the damned---------from starving, and rotting, too, if they choose.” “Well, general, will you allow the provisions to go in this time, now that they are up here?” “No, by God, not the first damned morsel shall go in,” returned the general. At this moment the little provost-marshal, Reed, entered the office hastily, and said, “Give me an order to have these goods confiscated.” “I don't think I've got the power to do that, Reed,” replied he, “but I've got the power to prevent the damned Yankees from having them, and, by God, they sha'n't!” Fearing the women and himself might be subjected to personal violence, if he pressed the matter further, Dr. Head advised the relinquishment of the attempt to do an act of mercy. The load of necessaries which they brought, filled a four-mule wagon, and were seized and used by the Confederates.
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