The Sentinels of Andersonville

by Tracy Groot

One man held Emery’s arm while the other fastened the iron manacles on his wrists. He seemed too dazed to resist.

  “What a great mess you have made, son,” said the judge, “whatever your intentions.”

  They pulled Emery away.

  Dr. Stiles hurried over to Judge Tate. “Can you not do something, Harlan?” He watched as the group walked away. “That boy is no kidnapper.”

  “Norton, I wish it were a matter of kidnapping. But if they prove it to be other, if it is treason . . . the boy will be hanged.” He looked at Dr. Stiles. “Then things will not look so good for you either, my old friend.” He picked up his picnic chair. “Do you know, some days I hate the law. Wish I had taken up boxing. It is a manly art.”

  Dance ran to the group of men. “If you’re taking him, take me too!”

  Emery yanked from their hold. “Oh, be still, Pickett!” The blue eyes were on fire. “It’s up to you, Dance. Don’t let me down. I’m begging you.” The men seized his arms and dragged him away.

  “Emery!” Posey cried. She scrambled down from the magnolia tree. “Emery, what are they gonna do to you?” She ran for him, but Dance caught the child and picked her up. “Dance, don’t let him go! What are they gonna do?”

  Howard, following the group, paused at Dance’s side. “It’s up to you, is it? What is up to you?”

  “It’s up to me to get him out, of course, for he is unjustly accused.” He patted Posey’s back. “Don’t cry, Posey girl. That is what I mean to do.” He glared at the detective and turned away, Posey clinging fiercely and sobbing her heart out.

  He felt like crying himself, for he knew exactly what Emery meant.

  It was up to Dance to get Lew out.

  PART THREE

  June 20—

  We are sick and faint and all broken down, feverish &c. It is starvation and disease and exposure that is doing it.

  June 21—

  Some one has much to answer for.

  —FROM THE DIARY OF JOHN RANSOM, ANDERSONVILLE SURVIVOR

  Sunday 14.

  Men that are laying around without shelter are dieing off by scores. The most wicked sights that man ever beheld are witnessed here daily.

  Sunday 21.

  Joe Herrin is geting badly cripeled up with the scurvy but there is no salvation for him if he has to stay here. His fate is hard to bear.

  —FROM THE DIARY OF EUGENE SLY, ANDERSONVILLE SURVIVOR

  17th.

  How I do wish I was home tonight, how happy I would be, how would Sister feel if she knew how and where I was. God forbid she should know it, till I get out of this.

  3rd.

  Hot and dry, am very stiff in my neck and arms, so I can scarcely get them to my head. Tis very disagreeable to be in this Bull Pen. Took quite a number out to day.

  —FROM THE DIARY OF ALFRED VOORHEES; DIED IN ANDERSONVILLE, AUGUST 13, 1864

  Friday, July 22, 1864

  Middling Cool and pleasant

  Monday, August 15, 1864

  The most Beautiful Rain Bow I ever saw just at sun down

  —FROM THE DIARY OF CHARLES LEPLEY; DIED IN ANDERSONVILLE, SEPTEMBER 11, 1864

  14

  HARRIS GILL WAS DYING, and there was nothing Lew could do about it.

  Two weeks a prisoner, and Lew was no longer a skipping stone. He could not eat a piece of corn bread, if it happened to come baked that day, without thinking of Carrie’s blueberry jam. And then he thought of Carrie, and the children, and green places, and it was no use packing them away. He tried, but it didn’t work for long.

  A new messmate had taken Artie’s place: Martin Kellerman, 10th Connecticut Infantry. He was a man who had had no shelter for two months, a pitiful creature content to lie and sleep all day in the newfound riches of a shield against the sun. Would Lew become as he? Skeletal, vermin-bit, lost? The only time he roused was for the three r’s—roll call, rations, and relief—and when Lew recounted battles. He seemed to come forward from a shadow corner of his soul then and listened with interest. When the tale was done, he’d shuffle back to that corner and resume a gray survival once more, something a little more than existence, a little less than endurance.

  Lew switched aside the tent flap and crawled out. It was a Hotel Ford policy to delouse oneself upon waking. This morning he picked off fifty-seven of the little demons. He scraped them together, ground the squirming pile under his boot heel with glorious vengeance, and set out.

  He took three steps before he had to stop and readjust the packing in the hole in his boot. It was a gummy thatch of burlap bookbinding torn from the spine of a book Andy had found. Andy preserved the pages of the book with devout fanaticism, fearful to lose any sort of entertainment, even if it was written in a foreign language.

  “What do you think, Carrie? Bit of a foreign-language book from a foreign-language place stuck in the boot of a Pennsylvania boy in Georgia.”

  Lew observed his new life situation in a never-ending monologue to Carrie, sure to make others think he’d boarded the train to crazy if his low mutters were overheard. But talking to her made him feel better.

  “I’d like a chair, Carrie. My body aches to conform itself to that civilized structure.

  “Remember the camp beef I told of, so pickled in brine you couldn’t eat it without several soaks? What I wouldn’t do for a taste of salt now. Never knew what a real pleasure it was.

  “Carrie, you mustn’t think the whole South bad. On the way here our train stopped in Forsyth, and there a woman waited to do us a kindness. ‘You boys must be hungry,’ said she, and passed out fresh biscuits to us prisoners. ‘I had boys, too. They were always hungry.’

  “Carrie, I didn’t know the word exposure until this place. I see its effects on a man called Martin, and now I know the word.”

  It helped Lew to tell her these things, but it did not take from the fact that Harris Gill was dying, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  Every day he left the tent early and spent the day rambling. He made a full circuit of the stockade five times a day, and each time he stopped to see how Harris was doing. Sometimes he fetched water, if the crease-faced boy was on duty, and brought it to Harris. Often he stayed long enough to tell Martin about a new battle he had thought of.

  He stopped to watch a trade between a guard and a prisoner. The prisoner handed over two brass eagle buttons. The guard held them to the sun, and then handed over sweet potatoes. He thought of the skulker who had killed Charley Reed and Colonel Ford for buttons. He stood long enough for Harris Gill to say in his mind, “Pack ’em away, Lew,” and when he came to himself realized the two traders were long gone. He ambled on.

  He stopped and listened to a Confederate guard speak from the seat of the rations wagon to an interested group of four new prisoners. “Things is hard for us, too, Billy boys. We ben taken away and our women left to pull in crops. How they gonna do that with all else they got to do? Some of us have cut and run, and you tell me where the shame is. You jes try and stay put when your fam’ly is starvin’.”

  “I tell you what I’d do,” said a prisoner hotly. “I’d cut out right quick. Family first.”

  The guard nodded. “That’s my thinkin’.”

  “Say, where you from, secesh?”

  “Bowlin’ Green, down in Florida. You?”

  “Kilbourn City, Wisconsin.”

  “Nice up there?”

  “I’ll say. Good fishin’.”

  “What kinda fish you all catch in Billy land?”

  Lew moved on, not because the conversation got any more or less interesting; he could just about time the restlessness in his feet. He had set some sort of schedule with his circumvention of the stockade and needed to keep to it. He walked all day, and at night when he lay down, he couldn’t sleep until his legs stopped jerking.

  In a place teeming with men, usually so thick you could not stretch out your arm without touching someone, the only place he could be alone was in his mind. There, he plucked a dried milkweed pod and br
oke it open, sifted its silkiness and sent it on the wind. He ate a pint of blackberries as he walked his orchards. He pulled tearful little Helen out of a pricker bush, set her on a stump, and patiently picked the prickers from her hair and dress.

  Lew came to the sinks on the southeast side of the stockade.

  “Well, Carrie, here is what you do. Take a potful of foulness. Thin it with greasy water. Add men. And there you have Stockade Creek from which we bathe and some, from cruel thirst, drink.”

  “Demoralizin’ hot.”

  A man stood next to Lew, hands in his pockets. Lew had seen him before on his ambles, for he was an ambling man too.

  “It is surely that. Not used to this heat. Where you from?”

  “New York—9th Volunteers. I think this place lacks initiative.”

  Lew laughed.

  “Name’s Vance Edward,” the fellow said, smiling.

  “Lew Gann, 12th Pennsylvania.”

  “Where you mess?”

  “Up a ways, middle of the northeast quadrant. Me and three other fellas. One from Connecticut, one from Delaware, and a man from my own regiment. You?”

  “Got a fine little put-together up on the northwest side. Two other fellas. What battle you taken in?”

  “Kennesaw.”

  “Spotsylvania. I’ve seen your limp. You get that at Kennesaw?”

  Lew nodded. “It’s mending, but slow. How long you been here?”

  “Two months, going into three.”

  “You look pretty good for that,” Lew said. “I appreciate any trade secrets. I’ve been here only two weeks and must have lost ten pounds. The lice are just about making off with my hide.”

  “Well, you look all right, and if you’re careful you’ll keep that way. The sand at the northwest corner is the cleanest. I scrub with it every day. I’ve also accustomed myself to getting by with little water, even clean. There are a lot of little things I can tell you, but the most important is to keep your spirits up. When those go, the body will follow. I’ve seen it happen to the most disciplined.”

  “It is a relief to see anyone who does not lose his head,” Lew admitted.

  Vance observed a man sifting through the brown water. “It’s a wonder we live at all.”

  “What’s he looking for?” Lew asked, repelled.

  “Roots. We used to get roots from there to dry out and use to cook our rations. The roots are all gone. But he doesn’t have anything better to do.”

  “I’d sure find another place to do nothing better. What are some things you do for your spirits?”

  “I keep moving. Like I’ve seen you done. And I think about my wife and three boys.”

  “I was told that’s the last thing I should do.”

  Vance shook his head. “That’s crazy. ‘Whatsoever things are true and honorable’ and all that, ‘think on these things.’ They are that. They give me hope. Hope awakens courage.”

  “Carrie does keep cropping up. I can’t keep her out.”

  “Keep her in. Well, I better move on. About this time I meet with a fellow and play checkers. I’ll see you around, Lew.”

  “Yeah, see you around, Vance.”

  He ambled off, and Lew watched him go.

  Almost back to Hotel Ford, he stopped at the well. The crease-faced boy was on duty. He untied Emery’s tin cup from a belt loop and held it out.

  “They’re on to me,” said the boy. “Make as if to give me something. I’ll put it in my pocket.”

  “I’ll give you something real.” He pulled out a few folded pages of the foreign book and handed them over.

  “What language is this?” the boy said.

  “Don’t know.”

  The boy took a moment to examine the pages. He folded them carefully and tucked them down the front band of his trousers. Then he lowered a bucket and brought up fresh water. It was a little muddy, to be sure, but it was far cleaner mud, and of the genuine kind, than over in Stockade Creek. He poured some into the tin cup, waited until Lew drank it, and refilled it.

  “Where did you get that scar?” Lew asked.

  “Gaines Mill. Thought I’d die. Here I am.”

  “How old were you then?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “You are sixteen now?”

  “Yep.”

  “If you told Captain Wirz, I bet he’d get you out.”

  “Would you leave your men?”

  “No, I would not. Say, we’ve wondered—why do you give the water for free?”

  “Seems right.”

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Carl Wolfgang.”

  “Much obliged, Wolf.” Lew turned to go.

  “Say,” Wolf called. “How’s the Irish doin’?”

  “Not so good.”

  “He called a reg off me once. I wish for the best.”

  —

  “Fill the line, boy-o! Run to it!”

  Martin Kellerman sat in the corner, arms about his thin knobby knees, watching Harris. Andy Rogers was gone.

  “How is he?”

  It took a moment for Martin to realize that Lew was in the tent, let alone that he had spoken.

  “Fine.” Then he said, rousing fully, “No. Not so good. Andy’s gone to see about a stretcher for the hospital line.”

  “I don’t want him there,” Lew said, sitting beside Harris. “Got some water for you, Harris.” He helped him drink. Then he dipped the edge of his shirt cuff in what was left in the cup and tried to wipe some pus from Harris’s lip.

  Harris weakly pushed his hand away. “Get your bonny arse back on the line.”

  “Will do.” He finished wiping away the pus, then scrubbed his shirt cuff against his leg until it felt hot. “How goes the battle?”

  “Well, they gave us the wrong caliber bullet. I can throw ’em better than shoot ’em.”

  “We’re out of percussion caps,” Lew said. “Might as well throw ’em.”

  “Oh. All right then.” His eyes closed.

  “That’ll be a better way to go,” said Martin, watching Harris, “than out there.”

  “You planning on dying anytime soon? You’ve made it this far. Don’t give up the ship.”

  “You never know. Only now I got some pride back. Glad for someone to yell at me to pick off lice.”

  It was the longest conversation he’d had with Martin. “How long have you been here?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “What battle were you taken in?”

  “Don’t remember that either. I’m with the 10th Connecticut. That’s all I know. I was in a tent with some fellas, once, but they weren’t as nice as you boys. Kicked me out when they found someone better. Rebs ain’t the only mean ones.”

  “We won’t do that, Martin.”

  “I know it. Even a wreck like me knows it.” Exhausted by the talk, he lay down and was instantly asleep. Martin Kellerman was taller than Lew’s five-ten, and maybe weighed a hundred and twenty pounds. His skin looked like frost on scrub grass. Somewhere a woman wondered where her boy was. He is here, Mrs. Kellerman, though you will not know him.

  Lew’s chest cage held one thing: powerlessness.

  “Carrie, I am glad you are not here to see this. I don’t know what you would do. Harris Gill and Martin Kellerman are dying, and there is nothing I can do about it.”

  He crawled out of the tent and started walking.

  15

  LACK OF EVIDENCE and personal recognizance cleared Reverend William Gillette of all suspicion of treasonous activities. Lack of evidence cleared Corporal Emery Jones of the same, but before kidnapping even made it to the table, the convened assembly at the Americus courthouse, consisting of both military and civil counsel owing to the involved nature of the charges for both men, found Corporal Jones guilty of something else.

  A representative for the prosecution cited Article 41 of the Articles of War for the Government of the Army of the Confederate States: “All non-commissioned officers and soldiers who shall be found one mile
from the camp without leave, in writing, from their commanding officer, shall suffer such punishment as shall be inflicted upon them by the sentence of a court-martial.”

  The morning the reverend was kidnapped, Emery Jones had gone to Americus without leave. Americus was ten miles from the military barracks at Andersonville. Corporal Emery Jones of the 22nd Alabama Volunteers, Company C, was court-martialed for desertion.

  With Atlanta threatened, affairs of every nature were put in order as quickly as they could be, and the affair of Corporal Jones was settled by the minimal amount of commissioned officers required for a court-martial. Because Corporal Jones had not only deserted but had given cause for suspicion of Union fidelities, the court-martial handed down the full measure of punishment as directed by the General Orders of the War Department regarding deserters: that those convicted were “to be shot to death with musketry, at such time and place as the commanding General may direct.”

  Shot or hanged.

  Corporal Emery Jones, incarcerated in the camp barracks at Andersonville Prison, was sentenced to hang by the neck until dead on Saturday, August 6, 1864. He had four days to live.

  The court-martial adjourned, leaving behind a stunned Stiles family, a stricken young sentinel, and a pale Corporal Jones.

  —

  Sherman harried Atlanta, Americus prepared for invasion, and Dr. Stiles took to his office.

  The Home Guard drilled daily with freshly pressed men from all over the county. Overage volunteers from Americus were assigned to guard duty at Macon or at Andersonville. A hospital began to set up wards in a series of buildings on the west side of the public square. Newspapers could not keep up with battles and troop movements. Military personnel hurried about with hateful telegrams and posted some of them on the bulletin board where many citizens took to hanging about.

  If Atlanta fell, where would Sherman go next? Would he head east for the other major cities, Augusta and Savannah? Or would he continue south, for Macon and then for Americus?

  “He ain’t gonna head south. That’ll stretch his supply line too thin.”

  “What of that? They are amply supplied and live bountiful off our land. They gonna blow right through to the tiptoes of Florida. The South is finished.”