Andersonville | Page 4

step in the
progress of the race, and human misery seems unavoidable in securing
human advancement. But I am naturally embittered by the fruitlessness,
as well as the uselessness of the misery of Andersonville. There was
never the least military or other reason for inflicting all that
wretchedness upon men, and, as far as mortal eye can discern, no
earthly good resulted from the martyrdom of those tens of thousands. I
wish I could see some hope that their wantonly shed blood has sown
seeds that will one day blossom, and bear a rich fruitage of benefit to
mankind, but it saddens me beyond expression that I can not.
The years 1864-5 were a season of desperate battles, but in that time
many more Union soldiers were slain behind the Rebel armies, by
starvation and exposure, than were killed in front of them by cannon
and rifle. The country has heard much of the heroism and sacrifices of
those loyal youths who fell on the field of battle; but it has heard little
of the still greater number who died in prison pen. It knows full well
how grandly her sons met death in front of the serried ranks of treason,
and but little of the sublime firmness with which they endured unto the
death, all that the ingenious cruelty of their foes could inflict upon them
while in captivity.
It is to help supply this deficiency that this book is written. It is a mite
contributed to the better remembrance by their countrymen of those
who in this way endured and died that the Nation might live. It is an
offering of testimony to future generations of the measureless cost of
the expiation of a national sin, and of the preservation of our national

unity.
This is all. I know I speak for all those still living comrades who went
with me through the scenes that I have attempted to describe, when I
say that we have no revenges to satisfy, no hatreds to appease. We do
not ask that anyone shall be punished. We only desire that the Nation
shall recognize and remember the grand fidelity of our dead comrades,
and take abundant care that they shall not have died in vain.
For the great mass of Southern people we have only the kindliest
feeling. We but hate a vicious social system, the lingering shadow of a
darker age, to which they yield, and which, by elevating bad men to
power, has proved their own and their country's bane.
The following story does not claim to be in any sense a history of
Southern prisons. It is simply a record of the experience of one
individual--one boy--who staid all the time with his comrades inside
the prison, and had no better opportunities for gaining information than
any other of his 60,000 companions.
The majority of the illustrations in this work are from the skilled pencil
of Captain O. J. Hopkins, of Toledo, who served through the war in the
ranks of the Forty-second Ohio. His army experience has been of
peculiar value to the work, as it has enabled him to furnish a series of
illustrations whose life-like fidelity of action, pose and detail are
admirable.
Some thirty of the pictures, including the frontispiece, and the
allegorical illustrations of War and Peace, are from the atelier of Mr. O.
Reich, Cincinnati, O.
A word as to the spelling: Having always been an ardent believer in the
reformation of our present preposterous system--or rather, no
system--of orthography, I am anxious to do whatever lies in my power
to promote it. In the following pages the spelling is simplified to the
last degree allowed by Webster. I hope that the time is near when even
that advanced spelling reformer will be left far in the rear by the
progress of a people thoroughly weary of longer slavery to the

orthographical absurdities handed down to us from a remote and
grossly unlearned ancestry.
Toledo, O., Dec. 10, 1879.
JOHN McELROY.

We wait beneath the furnace blast The pangs of transformation; Not
painlessly doth God recast And mold anew the nation. Hot burns the
fire Where wrongs expire; Nor spares the hand That from the land
Uproots the ancient evil.
The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared Its bloody rain is dropping;
The poison plant the fathers spared All else is overtopping. East, West,
South, North, It curses the earth; All justice dies, And fraud and lies
Live only in its shadow.
Then let the selfish lip be dumb And hushed the breath of sighing;
Before the joy of peace must come The pains of purifying. God give us
grace Each in his place To bear his lot, And, murmuring not, Endure
and wait and labor!
WHITTIER

ANDERSONVILLE
A STORY OF REBEL MILITARY