Andersonville

by MacKinlay Kantor

  He didn’t like Wirz, he didn’t see how anyone could ever like Wirz; but he had grown to admire the sickly man’s zeal. Every frenzied blundering attempt of Wirz at providing better facilities had met with Persons’ approbation. Persons had loaned his best men to aid Wirz in the hospital’s removal, in the shoring of the ugly stream. Lieutenant Wright himself had volunteered to supervise the stockade’s extension. Paroled prisoners and black labor had done the trick, and would have done this trick of barracks-building if allowed to proceed. Alex Persons understood the whole truth at last. Henry Wirz was a frothing little ferret, a martinet of a repulsive sort, but at least his brain was oozing with ideas and some of the ideas were good ones. He was not impelled by humanitarian motives but by a desire for efficiency; had he been provided with the means he might have superintended a cleanly prison if a cruel one. Obviously he wished revenge, but at the same time he was given seriously to stewardship (his own version of stewardship).

  General Winder wished to kill as many of the prisoners as he could. It was as simple as that.

  Now he would kill them in increasing droves. Persons had seen those reports assembled with so much cursing and fussing. Wirz was always brandishing reports under his nose. He could not recall the exact figures, of course, but he did remember round numbers. The mean strength in March was about seventy-five hundred, the deaths about three hundred. Mean strength in April ten thousand, deaths six hundred. Mean strength in May fifteen thousand, deaths seven hundred. Morbidly he had asked Lieutenant Wright to count marked graves in the cemetery (there were believed to be many unmarked, because of the carelessness surrounding burial) and Wright had reported fifteen hundred and eighty-two marked graves. Alex Persons presumed that the mean strength of prisoners might rise as high as twenty-two or twenty-three thousand when figures for all of June were summed up; that would mean an additional twelve or thirteen hundred dead. What would be the value of prisoners’ barracks in summer? Alex Persons was a Georgian; he knew very well what the value of shade would be. Once he had put a thermometer out in the June sun and the temperature was marked at one hundred and twenty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. In winter he had witnessed as much as twenty-two degrees of frost. The hospital would never have been removed from the stockade unless he, Persons, had exceeded his authority—had, in fact, deliberately disobeyed an opinion if not an order. And now he would be whipped away from this command, the barracks would never be built. Winder would toast Yankees throughout the summer as surely as if he held them impaled on a ramrod above a camp blaze. And, next winter— If it were an especially cold winter— And often in Georgia an especially cold winter followed an especially hot summer, as this was growing to be—

  Lieutenant-Colonel Persons thought that his removal from this command would save his life, but it would rob him of an opportunity to save whatever dignity was left to the Confederate States Government insofar as Andersonville was concerned.

  He performed courtesy chores for the general and his party, and then left the post in charge of Major Flournoy. His own head was on the chopping block, he had put it there himself, the blade would come down today, tomorrow, next day, it didn’t matter.

  He rode to the Claffey plantation, he hadn’t the strength to walk there. He found Ira among peach trees, and Ira offered him a green peach.

  That’s all I’d need, Mr. Claffey, sir! Already I’ve been nauseated today. I mean that truly.

  Ira looked at Persons’ face, and picked up his implements promptly. We shall go into the house, Colonel. Why not lie awhile on the sofa in my library?

  I fear I’d take permanent possession of it.

  They did go into the house. Persons sat with a glass of blackberry wine.

  One of my daughter’s many triumphs, Colonel. And most settling to the stomach.

  Persons sat hunched on the sofa. Soon he was pouring out the Winder story. I speak to you, sir, because I must speak to someone. You’re a citizen, and I’d probably be churched if it came out that I was blabbing. But— Oh, devil take us. I’m going to be churched anyway!

  He sipped the wine and said presently in a calmer tone, You have patience and tolerance, Mr. Claffey. And you have been a soldier.

  I did know Mr. Davis, said Ira. It was during the Mexican War.

  Twould mean nothing. That senile wretch has the President’s ear, or so everybody says.

  Will this change in command result in immediate deterioration of the local situation? Ira laughed dryly. You see, I’m trying to speak in military parlance.

  Persons told him, biting off his words: It will mean this, sir. No individual of whatever rank will have the right to interfere with General John H. Winder in any shape, form or fashion. This order will give him absolute dominion and control over every Yankee prisoner east of the Mississippi—and of course that’s where most of them are. The extended engagements now being fought above Atlanta and below Richmond— You can understand that, Mr. Claffey. The bulk of all Yanks captured by us during the progress of these campaigns, which campaigns I pray will be terminated by the success of our arms—

  Amen, sir!

  The bulk of the captured Yanks will land here. That old monster has planned it so, else he’d not be sending all these trainloads. I’ve exceeded my authority—he calls it bare-faced mutiny—and I shall be flogged or broken for it. So farewell, Mr. Claffey, and bless you for your hospitality.

  He stood up, and Ira took his arm and walked with Persons to his horse.

  Persons went but Winder stayed. And in his dedication Father Peter Whelan stayed. Peter Whelan dwelt sparely in an unpainted shack nearly a mile from Andersonville. His stove was a charred hollow stump at the door with a half-burned-out grating spread over the top and blackened stones to hold his little kettle in place. There was an open frieze of sky and pines showing around the edges of the roof where shakes had peeled; when rains came there fell steady leakage all along the ridgepole. There was no door, only a gaping doorway and a half of a cedar log for a step. Father Whelan’s army blanket was spread over a compressed mound of pine straw and oak leaves. Rats came to visit him at night but they did not offer to bite; he’d hoped that the persuasion of Saint Francis of Assisi might rule these small creatures away from their natural savagery, and it did rule. Father Whelan wore a coat of faded blue linen, and this jacket was busy with lice throughout its seams. He tried to keep the lice in check, burning them off over a flame as he had seen the Yankees do, but it was only a gesture. There were too many hovels into which he must crawl, too many shivering skeletons beside whom he must crouch or even lie to hear their mutterings. Lice lived in every beard, every squirming tuft of hair. Father Hamilton had warned him about vermin after the Macon priest made his explorative visits during May. Indeed, said Father Hamilton, it’s such a filthy place. The men huddled together, crawling with filth. Ah, hear me—I went in there wearing my white coat, and I’d not been there but one quarter of an hour at the most, when a guard kindly drew my attention to the condition of my coat. It was fairly alive. I had to take my coat off and leave it with the guard, and perform my religious duties in my shirt sleeves, the place was that filthy.

  Och, the poor boys!

  But you’re an old man, Father Whelan. Do you think you can bear with it?

  If Bishop Verot should send me— Ah, no. If Our Lord should send me—

  I fear you’ll but sicken and die.

  Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may I sleep and rest in peace in your holy company.

  Henry Wirz showed not the slightest objection to providing Peter Whelan with a pass to visit stockade or hospital as he chose; perhaps he might have objected had Whelan been a minister of the Protestant faith. (Thus far only one Protestant had evinced a desire to enter Andersonville to preach; and he was a die-hard Secessionist who preached Secession intermingled with Christianity, and came near to being thrown out bodily by the prisoners.) Henry Wirz placed the leaky shack at the priest’s dispo
sal and saw that rations were issued to him by the guards’ commissary. Other than that Wirz did not seek the venerable Father’s company; he felt that Whelan was disgusted if not appalled by boorish profanity, and since Captain Wirz might not conduct his superintendency of the prison without employing boorish and worse than boorish profanity—

  The old priest. You got him a place to sleep, ja?

  Yes sir, Captain. Sergeant Prather fixed him up tolerable in that old shanty over past the sawmill.

  Every day inside among the Yankees he goes?

  Yes sir, Captain. I just seen that old bumbershoot of his a-flapping along the road. Generally he gets inside by nine o’clock, don’t come out till nigh onto dark.

  The Church had a power greater than the power of all armies of all countries and all centuries put together; partly because its equipment and tendons and the valves of its bejeweled heart were disciplined, but mostly because it was the Church. (When Henry Wirz thought of the Church, which was seldom, he thought of a certain dark portal in Bern where columns of midgets and saints and beasts with gargoyle faces marched unendingly toward some sort of doom; medieval craftsmen had made them march that way, and so they frightened a little boy worse than the Bern bears.) Naked Christians stood with bellies exposed to tigers’ claws in Rome, they quailed at a subterranean roar which came up from dens in Italica (then they saw a light shining). A prelate was squeezed into an iron basket, and to and fro he swung above the coals; and so many thousands of fires had cooked other flesh through the ages (yea, there were fires in Smithfield as well). The poisoned wine, the small hidden dagger, the ring with the needle’s prick, the solemn walling-away . . . road of rocks bruised by sandaled feet or multitudes of feet which wore no sandals . . . heavy fall the pikes of Cromwell’s men, down comes the axe. . . .

  Father Whelan lay like that same effigy again in hot darkness, rude-shirted and bitten by bugs; he lay in temporary death; there was no one to see him unless saints peered through split shakes of the shed’s roof. Sometimes he ran as a youth in beech woods again— There was a path which went to old Brigid Shachlin’s house, and she would roll a hot potato from the ashes to thank him for the fish he’d fetched her—

  The Church was greater than sun, moon and stars; because God had made these, but the Church was God’s extension in time.

  Quid petis ab Ecclesia Dei? Fidem. What to ask, indeed, of the Church of God? Faith, nothing but faith. Was begehrst du von der Kirche Gottes? Den Glauben. (As learned by Henry Wirz, as learned by the boy named Ernst Kamphoefner who now lay Exchanged in a ditch to the north— Why, his illusion had been correct; there was Exchange, he was now at the North with a vengeance.) Que demandez-vous à l’Eglise de Dieu? Respond, André Fromentin, and say La foi. Ah, if Father Hosannah came from Spring Hill College—the Jesuit school— He could speak many languages, not merely the Latin and the English and the Gaelic like Father Peter Whelan. He could Baptize any converted soldier of the polyglot Forty-eighth New York, and in the vernacular; he could Baptize a Bohemian. Co od Církve Boží? Viru. He could Baptize a Pole. Czego żadasz od ? Wiary. The Church was taller than MacCillicuddy’s Reeks, taller than the Rocky Mountains were said to be; because God made the mountains, and God founded the Church, and the Church was God’s action extended from eternity into time. . . .

  Pilgrims went barefoot to Lourdes, pilgrims crawled on stairways, they crawled up hard brown rocky hills to pray to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Virgen de la Cabeza. Lame pilgrims crawled the gray-green rocky cone of Puig above Pollensa and planned to leave their crutches at the top. The servant girl wept in the Confessional. The beggar stole silver from the poor box and thus he became a thief instead of a beggar; but he could be forgiven, he could do a penance, not necessarily was he deeded to the flames. The sickly child in Seville—sickly, but with a face like a rock-rose—shivered and danced when pasos went swaying past, when drums rolled hard, when gypsies wailed from the balconies. ¿Qué pides de la Iglesia de Dios? La fe. The Church was more majestic than blue sky or dun sky or black sky, for God had made the sky of whatever color. Che cosa chiedi dalla Chiesa di Dio? La Fede. The old Italian was trodden to death by a crowd pressing forward to see the Pope.

  Through endless dusty muddy decades nuns went walking to beg, nuns lifted the heavy stinking sick, nuns put gruel into sagging mouths of the idiots they tended, nuns unwound the swelling abraiding bandage and put on the newer sweeter kinder bandage, nuns sponged the soiled buttocks, nuns changed the bed. The monsignor stole the orphans’ money, the cardinal employed the assassin, the priest seduced the sniveling young lunatic put into his care. The Church was greater than any force or inhuman beauty dreamed or named by man or men because the Church was above these wickednesses. The knife of perfidy could not disembowel the Church, worms of jealousy could not gnaw its structure, the powder of hypocrisy could not explode to shatter its columns. What doth faith bring thee to? Life everlasting.

  In the morning Father Peter Whelan arose again. He prayed. He washed himself at a wooden bucket, and shaved in cold water, and cooked a bowl of mush and another of peas; then he was fed sufficiently until night. He rid himself of as many lice as he could. He walked the long hard hot distance to Andersonville, walking in broken shoes which he himself had tried to sew together, walking under the ruin of his umbrella. Salvum fac servum tuum. Sun hurled itself against him, against the prisoners; the thick stench came to meet and claim. He would not come dragging out through that gate until dusk; another day would have passed, he would be a year older. Still he would serve.

  XXXII

  Johnny Ransom, the twenty-one-year-old from the Ninth Michigan Cavalry, scrawled his scrawl. The farther advanced the summer, the death rate increases, until they die off by scores. I walk around to see friends of a few days ago and am told, Dead. Men stand it nobly and are apparently ordinarily well, when all at once they go. Like a horse, that will stand up until he drops dead. . . . Was ever before in this world anything so terrible happening? Many entirely naked. . . . Sores afflict us now, and the Lord only knows what next. Scurvy and scurvy sores, dropsy, not the least thing to eat that can be called fit for any one, much less a sick man, water that to drink is poison, no shelter. . . .

  He knew whereof he wrote when it came to scurvy. Johnny Ransom was barely able to walk; he had been unable to participate in the raider fight however much he applauded the Regulators.

  He wrote: A new prisoner fainted away on his entrance to Andersonville and is now crazy, a raving maniac. That is how our condition affected him. My pants are the worse for wear from repeated washings, my shirt sleeveless and feet stockingless; have a red cap without any front piece; shoes by some hocus-pocus are not mates, one considerable larger than the other. Wonder what they would think if I should suddenly appear on the streets in Jackson in this garb. Would be a circus; side show and all. The Glorious Fourth of July. How shall we celebrate? Know of no way except to pound on the bake tin, which I shall do.

  In fact it was the Glorious Fourth of July, and raiders knelt in subjugation. Solemnly the bent scurvy-racked Johnny Ransom beat upon his bake tin.

  He wrote: The men taken outside yesterday are under rebel guard and will be punished. The men are thoroughly aroused, and now that the matter has been taken in hand, it will be followed up to the letter. Other arrests are being made today, and occasionally a big fight. Little Terry, whom they could not find yesterday, was today taken. Fought like a little tiger, but had to go. Limber Jim is a brick, and should be made a Major General if he ever reaches our lines. . . . The writer hereof does no fighting, being on the sick list. The excitement of looking on is almost too much for me. Can hardly arrest the big graybacks crawling around.

  John Ransom was loved and tended by a mighty Indian from Minnesota named Baptiste, called Bateese by all. You get well soon, said Bateese. He brought to Johnny the potato parings which his industry had purchased. Like Seneca MacBean the Indian conducted a laundry of sorts, and s
aid that he had no time to fight, must wash. But he would grunt his approval when he saw the worst of the raiders suspended by ropes.

  The young diarist traced his words with slow devotion: Have taken to rubbing my limbs . . . badly swollen. One of my teeth came out a few days ago, and all are loose. Mouth very sore. Bateese says, We get away yet. Works around and is always busy. If any news, he merely listens and doesn’t say a word. Even he is in poor health, but never mentions it. An acquaintance of his says he own a good farm in Minnesota. Asked him if he was married—says: Oh, yes. Any children? Oh, yes. . . . Is very different from Indians in general. Some of them here are despisable cowards—worse than the negro. Probably one hundred negroes are here. Not so tough as the whites.

  Stub pencil fell from weakened fingers, the hurting head came forward and lay on Johnny Ransom’s arm; Johnny dreamed of the Pepys whom he had read avidly and strove to emulate. He dreamed that he would survive agonies to come, and in some fine fair future hour would journey through that gate. His diary, his precious stained scrubby notebooks saying Ledger and Day Book and Cash Receipts and Pickell & Co.— These would accompany him.

  He stood in the office of a publisher, the publisher was portly and sagacious. What cash down payment would it be necessary for us to put forth, Mr. Ransom, in order to secure the highly estimable privilege of printing your remarkable diary? By Heaven, young man, what a ghastly experience you have passed through—and yet, memorable, memorable indeed. And to think that you are one of the few survivors! Yet the vast American public should no longer be denied the cultural advantage which will redound and we are prepared to lay a goodly sum on the line, Mr. Ransom, a goodly sum.

  The publisher toyed with his thick gold watch chain, the fraternal emblem dangling there was diamond-encrusted. So if you would venture to suggest an appropriate sum, to serve as binder for our agreement—?