Sultana

by Alan Huffman

  Weiser estimated that about $40,000 in U.S. money circulated within the prison. “This money was all the time in circulation, and some of it would get so black and dirty that we could scarcely tell the value of it,” he wrote. The men used the money for transactions with each other, the guards, and Rebel sutlers. Local farmers also sold produce, though only for Confederate money and always outside the prison walls. “If a man had a barrel he started a beer saloon and his fortune was made, all he done was to throw in corn meal and water and dip out sour beer for five cents a pint,” Weiser noted. “There were three of these saloons in the prison.” Keys reported seeing a man “peddling fresh butter” at $15 per pound, and Hitchcock wrote in his diary that amid the malnutrition and starvation, “Water-melons, apples, eggs, doughnuts, berry pies, biscuit, etc., for sale in camp, but no one has any money.”

  “Tobacco was as hard to get as anything else; a quarter of my rations went daily for it,” Henry Harman observed. “Although I never was accustomed to chewing until after entering Andersonville. I am satisfied that but for the use I should not have survived.”

  Trying to make the most of the situation was one thing, but ruthlessly exploiting it was another. Everyone was forced to decide the lengths to which he would go to survive, and the raiders epitomized the dangers of going too far. Many—perhaps the majority—were ruthless criminals and bounty jumpers from northern cities, but their strength metastasized as other prisoners allied themselves with them because they seemed likely to survive. Along the palisade wall stood sentry boxes, or “pigeon roosts” as the prisoners called them, at thirty-yard intervals overlooking the dead zone. Beyond the wall were eight small earthen gun emplacements, where artillery could be trained on the prisoners in case of a disturbance or turned to defend against a Union attack. But as at Cahaba, there was little policing within the stockade itself, and for a while the raiders ruled.

  About a thousand men were associated with what became known as Mosby’s raiders, and they were a malevolent force that preyed especially on the new arrivals, stealing their clothes, food, and few possessions, and sometimes beating or murdering them. Weiser saw one of the raiders steal a dog that belonged to a doctor who was visiting the camp, after which he killed the animal and cooked it in a stew that he peddled to other prisoners. “To counteract this ‘raider force’ the ‘regulators’ were organized, and in a pitched battle the latter came out ahead, and organized a police force to do duty night and day,” Newton wrote. Prisoners who observed someone stealing would alert the regulators by crying out “Raider!” and if the man was caught he received ten to forty lashes on his bare back, often until he bled—something no one wanted to undergo in the fetid environment of Andersonville. Sometimes the perpetrators were tied to posts or forced to carry blocks of wood until they were exhausted, Newton wrote, adding that there were also “other punishments too numerous to mention.” At one point Hitchcock observed several prisoners being paraded by the camp police, their hair and beards shaved on one side and a card attached to their backs bearing the word “thief.”

  As the regulators exerted their authority, outrage over the raiders found expression. Eventually the ringleaders were captured, after which Wirz held them until a tribunal of prisoners was organized. The trial was the highlight of the season in Andersonville. In addition to the prisoners, the guards and crowds of locals gathered to watch. The verdict was predictable: Guilty as charged. Of the twenty-four tried, eighteen received beatings and six were sentenced to death. The prisoners then built a gallows and, with Wirz’s blessing, hanged the six. “The day was cloudy and gloomy and seemed to darken visibly as the time (5 PM) for the execution approached,” William Farrand Keys wrote. “The view of the prison at that hour was one that will long remain pictured in my recollection but no language can describe it.”

  Heightening the drama, one of the doomed men attempted to escape, either before or after the rope was tied around his neck, depending on whose account you believe. He ran through the crowd, sank to his knees in mud, fell down, crawled on his hands and knees to solid ground, clambered to his feet again, and ran until he was brought down. During the resulting stampede, Indiana infantryman Eli Wamsley was shoved headfirst into a deep well and dislocated his shoulder. He later wrote that he missed the actual hangings but was extricated from the well by the same ropes.

  Each of the ringleaders was given the opportunity to speak before he was hanged, and one claimed that he had felt compelled to join the raiders out of fear of starvation, while another, according to John Ransom, “said he’d have rather been hanged than continue to live in Andersonville as the others did, adding that Delaney was not his actual name,” and “The last man, Rickson, ‘did not care to say anything.’”

  After the executions, Hitchcock wrote in his diary that the prisoners felt a greater sense of security, “but may I never witness another scene like that!”

  The executions proved that the men could triumph over their own chaos, and many took it as a positive sign. Likewise, they were bolstered by a fortuitous event that came during the otherwise torpid month of August: The appearance of what became known as Providence Spring. The spring mysteriously began flowing within the stockade after a rainstorm, providing the only source of pure water within the stockade. Though it surfaced beyond the forbidden deadline, Wirz later allowed a sluice to be built to divert its flow entirely to within the safe zone. A drink of fresh water, after months without it, was a source of quiet ecstasy. “The man is a fool who doubts a kind and benevolent Providence after such a manifestation,” Hitchcock wrote. Yet, the dying not only continued, it accelerated. Among Lucius Wilder’s friends, one named Handy was the first to go. After him went Asa Rowe, then Ed Holt. As Wilder recalled, the men were cooking outside his shebang when he mentioned that his throat was sore. Holt replied, “So is mine.” The next day Holt asked Wilder how his throat was feeling. “It is not any worse,” Wilder said. “I think I am getting better.” Wilder only had a cold, but Holt was not so lucky and came down with diphtheria. “The third day I walked him round the prison to see the boys,” he wrote. “They spoke to him. He was like death, and he could hardly speak. He said he guessed he would go back and lie down. He went back and lay down. He looked up and said, ‘Wilder, I never shall live to see the sun rise.’ I told him I thought he might live to see the sun rise on many an occasion. He spoke to his friend Melvin, who did not give him much encouragement, and he strangled to death. I went outside the tent and I shed tears, the only tears that I shed while I was inside that prison, for it did not do for a man to get despondent.”

  Amid such pathos, men occasionally found moments of succor that helped them survive. Despite his seemingly endless accounts of human travail, Hitchcock at one point was moved to write in his diary: “There is a beautiful harvest moon shining down upon us.”

  Chapter Nine

  GOING OFF ALONE

  PRIVATE SAMUEL MELVIN, WITH THE 1ST MASSACHUSETTS Heavy Artillery, was captured at Harris’s Farm, Virginia, on May 19, 1864, when he was twenty years old. In his struggle to survive captivity at Andersonville, he clung to his abiding love for a fellow soldier, Lieutenant John M. Dow, adjutant of their regiment, with whom he planned to move to London, England, after the war.

  As he prepared to go into battle on May 14, 1864, Melvin wrote in his diary, “Orders for us to move. I am on guard as usual. Everybody is packed up. I got excused and went down to Ft. Craig and packed up my things, marked them for James and left them in charge of Sergt. Hayes. Wrote to Caroline. Page and I read letters. Saw Lieut. Dow in the eve. We are now going into rough usage, I guess, but let it come. But if we go, I should like to return.” On May 18 he wrote that because he did not sleep with Page, he was very cold during the night. During the next day’s fighting he was helping an injured comrade to the rear when, as William Marvel wrote, he “had to abandon his comrade to save himself, but in the smoke and confusion he must have turned the wrong way; soon he could see none but grey uniforms, and he th
rew down his rifle.”

  After his capture, sympathetic Rebels saw Melvin limping on sore feet and gave him a ride on a horse. That night, “I slept rough but was truly thankful for my treatment,” he wrote. “The guards were everlasting kind to me.” He soon grew weary with the hunger and pain. On May 25, en route to Andersonville, he wrote, “Don’t I wish I could see Page and Dow?” He was eager to get to prison, where he assumed he would be well fed and soon released. As often happened, the train they were riding in (in hog cars soiled with manure) derailed on the way to Augusta, Georgia, killing one man and wounding many others. Melvin wrote again how much he wished he could hear from Dow.

  On June 3, 1864, after arriving at Andersonville, Melvin and his friends Asa Rowe and George Handy immediately “bought a little lot on the hill for $4.50,” where they slept the first night uncovered in the rain. They paid $5 for a rubber blanket and huddled beneath it in the downpour the next day while they watched a steady parade of prisoners carrying dead men across the ditch to the south gate. Melvin then wrote to his sister asking for any kind of box, “as did most of our boys,” because they were prized possessions in the camp. He also wrote a letter to Dow. Melvin was particularly distressed that had he not been captured he would have fulfilled his service soon and could have put the war behind him. He mentioned this often in his diary. His stomach began to give him trouble right away, and he struggled to remain upbeat, writing, “Still, men have lived through rougher scenes than this, and if I take good care of myself, am very hopeful.”

  On June 6 he wrote: “Asa Rowe is in a bad state, and we are all in a deplorable condition, still I guess that by being prudent we will all get through it.” On June 10, Melvin, Rowe, and Handy entered into a partnership for making money and trading to improve their food supply. “My principal thoughts and hopes and fears are that my friend Dow will get killed or not be able to fulfill his promises with me.”

  June 13 was cold and rainy, which inspired Melvin to record a little ditty: “When the birds cannot show a dry feather, Bring Aunt with her cans & Marm with her pans And we’ll all be unhappy together.”

  June 14: His friend Handy had the shakes.

  June 15: With the arrival of more than a thousand new prisoners came word that fifty-three men had been killed or wounded or were missing from Melvin’s regiment in the May 19 battle in which he was captured. “O how glad I was to learn that Dow and Page were all right up to the 2nd of June. I was painfully grieved when they told me that Dow felt very badly when he learned my fate. He came to the Co. and enquired for me of Joe. There is a TRUE friend, & if he will go home in July and wait until I come, it will be the happiest moment of my life, and I pray to God that such may be the case. How I hope Dow will get my letter, but I am afraid he will not.” He then reported that he had come down with diarrhea.

  June 16: Handy still had the shakes, and his salt and spoon were stolen.

  June 17: “My diarrhea is no better, but it is not very bad, so I am not alarmed about it yet,” he wrote. Then, “Ten thousand times a day do I think of my engagement to go to England. If I can’t enjoy life after this, I am not sentient.”

  June 28: “Had a good shower which made it quite comfortable for a season. A large lot of Yanks came in, about 1000. I am about discouraged. Only think, if we only had staid at the forts, only one short week from today our time would be out and that long wished for period would have come, and I should have been the happiest of men. Now I might say I am quite the reverse. Only one week more, oh how good it sounds! But now the future looks gloomy. Otherwise Dow and I would have been going home together. Now it will be otherwise, and perhaps one of us never will go home. But we will look as well as we can on the dark and gloomy picture.”

  June 30: “Only 5 days more, then I was expecting to enjoy life as hugely as any man could. Got out lots of raiders and tried them by court-martial.”

  July 1: “O dear! Ain’t this a tough life? July has come, & instead of bringing its anticipated joys; woes as intense have followed it. But why keep sighing? Because I can’t help it.”

  July 3: “Only think, tomorrow is the immortal 4th. If I were only in Boston my joy would be unspeakable. I can’t imagine the joy if Dow and I were there, free and accepted, in all things as well as Masonry.”

  July 4: “This has been a curious 4th to me, and it has to us all, I guess. Not a sign of any celebration, but no rations. This is my 4th Fourth of July in the Army. 3 years ago today I was on guard for the first time in the tent at Fort Albany. I came out of the G.H. [guard-house] for seeing Dow 2 yrs [ago] today. I was with Dow at Albany, went off berrying with him. Thus time has passed with me.”

  July 6: “Would not I like to be on my way home now with Dow? I guess yes. It would be the most intense joy I can think of or imagine. But I will be with him soon, I hope.”

  July 7: “I have got a very bad cold and a touch of the dumb ague, making this prison life not very pleasant. I dreamed last night of being paroled and seeing Dow, and the disappointment when I awoke & found myself still in Hell! I have given up all hopes of hearing from home, likewise of their hearing from me. But while there is life there is hope, and that consoles me.”

  Following the arrival of new prisoners, Melvin learned on July 9 that Page, from his regiment, had been slightly wounded but was all right and that Dow had been slightly wounded in the foot. “Dow still keeps in the field,” he wrote. “I wish he would go home!” In closing, he wrote, “I am glad to hear that Page is safe, & I think Dow will now be out of danger.”

  July 10: “Today, sad news indeed I must record.” Word came that his brother Asa had been shot through the heart while charging the breastworks at Petersburg. The man who delivered the news told him that he got to his brother just in time to prevent some officers from pilfering his pockets as he lay dead on the ground. “Corp. Wm. Hills died with the diarrhea. He was a good boy, and a friend to me. It is sad, but I still have faith in my belief, & find relief therein…I am mighty glad to learn that Dow has gone home & knows where I am.”

  July 12: “To have things go right, I shall get out of here this, or early next month, find Dow all right waiting for me, & then, after settling the things at home, I will start on our life’s journey.”

  July 13: “How I would like to meet Dow in the Astor House or in Boston! God grant that things will work for our good & that we may be permitted to spend the life of pleasure and enjoyment together that we have doted on so much!”

  July 14: Melvin’s tempo was beginning to slow. He was weary with dashed hopes of an exchange, annoyed even to hear the subject discussed. He wrote, “O dear, has Dow patience to wait for me? If I have patience to wait in this pen, I think he ought to have.”

  July 17: He visited the doctor for his diarrhea and cough. “I am in a bad condition, nothing but water passes me, & no appetite for anything we see here at all. O God! The man that will take me out of this I will call him ‘Prince of Kings & Lord of Lords.’ He to me will be a true Redeemer, I think, in every sense of the word.”

  July 18: “Lay on my back in the tent all day, pretty sick. This is hard, indeed, but I don’t see why we must stand it. How I wish Dow would come down to see me as he did in Albany when he heard I was sick. But I only live to see it through, I think it will be all right. The weather is quite cool today, with some rain.”

  July 24: He was feeling better, but “Emery is getting worse, and Handy, too.”

  July 26: Prisoners had the option of taking what was known as a parole of honor, by which they would work for the Confederates outside the stockade—a controversial choice. “Emery sent in an application for himself to go out shoemaking, and also for me,” Melvin wrote. “I do hope we shall both be successful and get where we can enjoy life a little.” He added, “If I can get out on parole of honor, I shall do it, & shall think it no harm. I wish I could ask Dow’s opinion of it. I would abide by that.”

  July 29: He awoke with a strange paralysis that went away over the course of the day. He
fetched salt for the ailing Emery. Another man cut his hair, and he “washed all over.”

  July 30: He began to fear that Emery would die. Then he got the shakes again himself. “I thought of Dow, I can assure you, and Page and every friend I ever had.”

  August 1: He was still suffering from chills, and his religious convictions were flagging. “The stories say we are not to stay here long, & if the Devil will get me out of this I will worship him, for I am discouraged.”

  August 7: His diarrhea came back with a vengeance. “I was called up 30 times in 24 hours,” he wrote.

  August 8: “Here I lie and wallow in the dirt from morning till night.”

  August 9: “Emery is very badly off and will not live but a short time, I am afraid. I do wish I could do something for him, but can’t. My feet and face swell some, and what in the world is going to become of us is more than I know. Did not draw my ration. Some of the stockade fell in. How are you Dow, Page, sisters, and my only brother?”

  August 10: His friend Asa Rowe died.

  August 11: Having heard—erroneously—that Emery had also died, he went to check on his friend. Men teetering on the brink of death sometimes became extremely self-centered as their brains focused on preserving their lives, but others, including Melvin, were the opposite. They drew strength from caring for others, which could also be a survival mechanism. “I concluded to try and take care of him,” he wrote of Emery. “Cooked him some rice and it tasted good to him. In the afternoon a shower was coming on, & up he came and asked for shelter, which we gave him. He was in good cheer and I felt encouraged. He stayed here all the time, but did not sleep much. The weather was very hot and oppressive.”