December 8, 1864.
No human tongue or pen can ever describe the horrible suffering we have witnessed this day.
I was early at the landing, eight and a-half o'clock in the morning, before the boat threw out her ropes for security.
The first one brought two hundred bad cases, which the Naval surgeon told me should properly go to the hospital near by, were it not that others were coming, every one of whom was in the most wretched condition imaginable.
They were, therefore, sent in ambulances to Camp Parole hospital, distant two miles, after being washed and fed at the barracks.
In a short time another boat-load drew near, and oh!
such a scene of suffering humanity I desire never to behold again.
The whole deck was a bed of straw for our exhausted, starved, emaciated, dying fellow-creatures.
Of the five hundred and fifty that left
Savannah, the surgeon informed me not over two hundred would survive; fifty had died on the passage; three died while the boat was coming to the land.
I saw five men dying as they were carried on stretchers from the boat to the
Naval Hospital.
The stretcher-bearers were ordered by
Surgeon D. Vanderkieft to pause a moment that the names of the dying men might be obtained.
To the credit of the officers and their assistants it should be known that everything was done in the most systematic and careful manner.
Each stretcher had four attendants, who stood in line and came up promptly, one after the other, to receive the sufferers as they were carried off the boat.
There was no confusion, no noise; all acted with perfect military order.
Ah I it was a solemn funeral service to many a brave soldier, that was thus being performed by kind hearts and hands.
Some had become insane; their wild gaze, and clenched teeth convinced the observer that reason had fled; others were idiotic; a few lying in spasms; perhaps the realization of the hope long cherished, yet oft deferred, or the welcome sound of the music, sent forth by the military band, was more than their exhausted nature could bear.
When blankets were thrown over them, no one would have supposed that a human form lay beneath, save for the small
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prominences which the bony head and feet indicated.
Oh I God of justice, what retribution awaits the perpetrators of such slow and awful murder.
The hair of some was matted together, like beasts of the stall which lie down in their own filth.
Vermin are over them in abundance.
Nearly every man was darkened by scurvy, or black with rough scales, and with scorbutic sores.
One in particular was reduced to the merest skeleton; his face, neck, and feet covered with thick, green mould.
A number who had Government clothes given them on the boat were too feeble to put them on, and were carried ashore partially dressed, hugging their clothing with a death-grasp that they could not be persuaded to yield.
It was not unfrequent to hear a man feebly call, as he was laid on a stretcher, “Don't take my clothes ;” “Oh, save my new shoes;” “Don't let my socks go back to
Andersonville.”
In their wild death-struggle, with bony arms and hands extended, they would hold up their new socks, that could not be put on because of their swollen limbs, saying “Save 'em till I get home.”
In a little while, however, the souls of many were released from their worn-out frames, and borne to that higher home where all things are registered for a great day of account.
Let our friends at home have open purses and willing hands to keep up the supplies for the great demand that must necessarily be made upon them.
Much more must yet be done.
Thousands now languish in Southern prisons, that may yet be brought thus far toward home.
Let every Aid Society be more diligent, that the stores of the Sanitary Commission may not fail in this great work.
