Andersonville, vol 2 | Page 7

few decoctions of roots, there were no
medicines; the sick were fed the same coarse corn meal that brought
about the malignant dysentery from which they all suffered; they wore
and slept in the same vermin-infested clothes, and there could be but
one result: the official records show that seventy-six per cent. of those
taken to the hospitals died there.
The establishment of the hospital was specially unfortunate for my little
squad. The ground required for it compelled a general reduction of the
space we all occupied. We had to tear down our huts and move. By this
time the materials had become so dry that we could not rebuild with
them, as the pine tufts fell to pieces. This reduced the tent and bedding

material of our party--now numbering five--to a cavalry overcoat and a
blanket. We scooped a hole a foot deep in the sand and stuck our tent-
poles around it. By day we spread our blanket over the poles for a tent.
At night we lay down upon the overcoat and covered ourselves with the
blanket. It required considerable stretching to make it go over five; the
two out side fellows used to get very chilly, and squeeze the three
inside ones until they felt no thicker than a wafer. But it had to do, and
we took turns sleeping on the outside. In the course of a few weeks
three of my chums died and left myself and B. B. Andrews (now Dr.
Andrews, of Astoria, Ill.) sole heirs to and occupants of, the overcoat
and blanket.

CHAPTER XXV
.
THE "PLYMOUTH PILGRIMS"--SAD TRANSITION FROM
COMFORTABLE BARRACKS TO ANDERSONVILLE--A
CRAZED PENNSYLVANIAN--DEVELOPMENT OF THE BUTLER
BUSINESS.
We awoke one morning, in the last part of April, to find about two
thousand freshly arrived prisoners lying asleep in the main streets
running from the gates. They were attired in stylish new uniforms, with
fancy hats and shoes; the Sergeants and Corporals wore patent leather
or silk chevrons, and each man had a large, well-filled knapsack, of the
kind new recruits usually carried on coming first to the front, and
which the older soldiers spoke of humorously as "bureaus." They were
the snuggest, nattiest lot of soldiers we had ever seen, outside of the
"paper collar" fellows forming the headquarter guard of some General
in a large City. As one of my companions surveyed them, he said:
"Hulloa! I'm blanked if the Johnnies haven't caught a regiment of
Brigadier Generals, somewhere."
By-and-by the "fresh fish," as all new arrivals were termed, began to
wake up, and then we learned that they belonged to a brigade consisting
of the Eighty-Fifth New York, One Hundred and First and One
Hundred and Third Pennsylvania, Sixteenth Connecticut,
Twenty-Fourth New York Battery, two companies of Massachusetts
heavy artillery, and a company of the Twelfth New York Cavalry.

They had been garrisoning Plymouth, N. C., an important seaport on
the Roanoke River. Three small gunboats assisted them in their duty.
The Rebels constructed a powerful iron clad called the "Albemarle," at
a point further up the Roanoke, and on the afternoon of the 17th, with
her and three brigades of infantry, made an attack upon the post. The
"Albemarle" ran past the forts unharmed, sank one of the gunboats, and
drove the others away. She then turned her attention to the garrison,
which she took in the rear, while the infantry attacked in front. Our men
held out until the 20th, when they capitulated. They were allowed to
retain their personal effects, of all kinds, and, as is the case with all men
in garrison, these were considerable.
The One Hundred and First and One Hundred and Third Pennsylvania
and Eighty-Fifth New York had just "veteranized," and received their
first instalment of veteran bounty. Had they not been attacked they
would have sailed for home in a day or two, on their veteran furlough,
and this accounted for their fine raiment. They were made up of boys
from good New York and Pennsylvania families, and were, as a rule,
intelligent and fairly educated.
Their horror at the appearance of their place of incarceration was
beyond expression. At one moment they could not comprehend that we
dirty and haggard tatterdemalions had once been clean, self-respecting,
well-fed soldiers like themselves; at the next they would affirm that
they knew they could not stand it a month, in here we had then endured
it from four to nine months. They took it, in every way, the hardest of
any prisoners that came in, except some of the 'Hundred-Days' men,
who were brought in in August, from the Valley of Virginia. They had
served nearly all their time in various garrisons along the
seacoast--from Fortress Monroe to Beaufort--where they had had
comparatively little of the actual hardships of soldiering