March 25th and 26th
I find myself much improved, my fevers being slight and rare and hoarseness disappearing.
Smallpox, that most loathsome of diseases, has made its appearance in our ward.
Colonel Montgomery, of
Georgia, was sick with it for several days, with high fever, his face and body being broken out with pimples, but was not removed until several officers, fearing infection, urged his removal from their vicinity to the pest-house.
Lieutenant Birkhead, of
North Carolina, who lay next to me, showed me his hands, neck and face covered with pimples, yesterday, and asked me what was the matter.
I took his hand and wrist in mine, and laughingly pronounced it “smallpox,” little dreaming that I was correct.
Today our young doctor decided it was a genuine case of smallpox, and ordered his removal to the smallpox hospital.
I never saw nor heard of poor
Birkhead again.
Deaths from smallpox, pneumonia, scurvy, fevers, dysentery, and various other diseases, are alarmingly frequent.
There is honor and glory in death on the field of battle, amid the whistling of bullets, the shrieks of shells, the fierce roar of cannon, and the defiant shouts of the brave combatants, but the saddest, most solemn and painful of deaths is that within prison walls, far from home and loved ones.
The picture of his loved home flits across the dying soldier's mind; dear faces seem to look down upon him, but no gentle hands ease his pain, no loving lips whisper words of peace and comfort,--the suffering forms of his sick and wounded comrades are all the friends he sees, their groans all the prayers he hears.
As he fights his last fight with the grim monster, no doubt he sees floating aloft the flag he has so often followed — he hears his commander's cheering words urging
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his men on to the fray; but they will urge him on no more, and never again will he behold the proud banner he has loved so well.
With the roar of the cannon and rattling of musketry falling upon his ear, or with a fair vision of his dear childhood's home before his mind, and a prayer he lisped in days gone by at his mother's knee, his eyes close, his breath ceases, and the brave prisoner's life is ended.
Horrid war has given another noble heart to death, and taken the sunshine from another happy home.
The dead prisoner is carried to the “dead-house,” stripped of his clothing, placed by strangers and enemies in a rough, unpainted pine coffin; hoisted in an old cart, and hurried to the burial ground, like the carcass of some dumb brute, without the presence or ministrations of a single friend.
They are carried across the bay, when not sunk within it, and buried on the
Jersey shore.
The graves are seldomed marked, or it is done in a very careless manner, easily erased in a short time by the action of the elements.
