USA > Michigan > Wayne County > Detroit > History of the Twenty-fourth Michigan of the Iron brigade, known as the Detroit and Wayne county regiment > Part 38
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Sunday, Oct. 9 .- We are in an inclosure of twelve acres. Got two meals to-day. Am shivering with cold. 10th .- Got half a loaf of bread for to-day's ration. Am getting very thin in body. 11th .- Two men died last night from exposure. 12th .- Wish I could hear from home, or get a letter to my friends. 13th .- Got some soup and five hard tack to-day. Flour is $225 a barrel, Confederate money. Pies and
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cakes three dollars each. 14th .- Had a cup of crust coffee and half a cake for breakfast. Hope God in his Providence will deliver us from here. Half a dozen die daily from starvation. 15th .- Drew some bread and molasses to eat to-day.
Sunday, Oct. 16 .- Wish I was at home to go to church at Dearborn. Home, sweet home-will I ever see you again? Shall keep up good cheer and trust in Providence. One of our officers was shot to-day while hanging his clothes on a tree. 17th. - Sold some buttons and bought half a corn dodger. 18th .- How hard to be here starving and suffering cold when one has a home with plenty. Could I only have the crumbs of my own table I would not complain. 19th .- The officers leave to-day for another prison. 20th .- No news yet from home. Eighty a week are dying here. Boys digging and making earth shanties. The hospital is overflowing. Diarrhea and black fever prevail, caused by starvation. 21st .- Grub came at 9 A. M. Have a severe headache. 22nd .- No tents or barracks and many must perish. Think of my dear old home daily.
Sunday, Oct. 23 .- Up and ready for my half loaf. It can't be colder in Michigan. 24th .- Got a cup of flour and molasses to eat to-day. Got one tent for 100 men to-day. 25th .- Sold my hat band for a loaf of bread. Two loads of dead went out. They bury our men without coffins or straw. 26th .- Noon and no rations. Discouraged. Ten died last night. Oh, will our government leave us here to perish. 27th .- Cloudy and rainy. How our men suffer. Will get no provisions till to-morrow. Will not the Almighty punish men for such treatment of prisoners? 28th .- Twenty-two died last night. No rations to-day. Starvation stares us all in the face. 29th .- No food for 36 hours. Will get no bread to-day. Almost famished. The men are about to raise a mob and break out. Twelve died this morning and others dying every hour.
Sunday, Oct. 30 .- Sixty hours and only one quart of rice and two small pieces of meat to eat. Twenty died this morning. Hear we are to be paroled. God grant it. 31st .- Got half a loaf of bread to-day. Eighteen dead hauled out to-day. Nov. I. -Sold my hat for a loaf of bread and $500 Confederate money. 2d .- No rations till dark and then drew flour. Rains and cannot cook it. 3d .- Cloudy and awful cold. Thirty died last night. Drew half a pint of flour to day. 5th .- A few of our men are enlisting in the Confederate army hoping to escape death here. The men are forced to it by starvation. Language nor pen can describe the suffering we undergo. Men die every hour.
Sunday, Nov. 6 .- Drew meal and tripe for rations. 7th .- How I wish I was back to my old Wayne county home. God has kept me thus far, and I will rely on his mercy. Six hundred came from Richmond last night. 8th .- No rations to-day. 9th .- Trade pantaloons and get half a loaf of bread to boot. Traded boots and gave half a loaf of bread worth five dollars. Ioth .- Rainy. Slept only half the night. Ith .- Saw a piece in the Raleigh Standard that the Governor of Georgia favors peace.
Sunday, Nov. 13 .- What a cheerless Sabbath; about eighteen die daily. 14th .- Hear that Lincoln is elected. Bourassas of Company F, Twenty-fourth Michigan, is dead. 16th .- Half a loaf of corn bread for this day. 17th .- Hear that letters will go North. Must write to my friends. 18th .- Corn bread for ration. 19th .-- Lay abed all day to keep warm. Cold and Stormy. Got half a loaf of poor corn bread. Men are dying like sheep with the rot.
Sunday, Nov. 20 .- It still rains. Cold and muddy. In bed to keep warm. Got half a loaf of sour corn bread. 21st .- Rained all night and all day. Mud knee deep. 22d .- Awful cold day, one freezes to stir out long enough to draw rations. Willaird, of Company A, Twenty-fourth Michigan, died last night. 23d .- Too cold to take off our clothes to skirmish for "greybacks." 24th .- Thanksgiving Day at
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home. We only get a quarter loaf of bread. Hardly enough to live on. Forty die daily. 25th .- I write with a sad heart. Only got four ounces of bread to-day. Suffering with cold. Nearly naked. Covered with lice. Oh, what a fate ! Must we die ? Will not God deliver us from this hell ? 26th .- Yesterday the mob secured the guard and rallied to get out. We lost in killed and wounded about ninety.
PRISONERS' RIOT FOR FOOD AT SALISBURY PRISON, NORTH CAROLINA.
Sunday, Nov. 27 .- Drew half a loaf. One hundred colored soldiers came in to-day. 28th .- Got two ounces of meat. There is plenty of bread in the cook house but C. S. A. would rather have us starve fifty a day. 30th .- Saw a man drop dead from starvation. Dec. 5th .- No hope of parole. Half a loaf and a potato for to-day's ration. 8th .- Chapman, of Company K, Twenty-fourth Michigan died this morning. Ioth .- Seventy-five men have died since yesterday.
Sunday, Dec. II .- Men still dying over fifty a day. Hear that Sherman is twenty-five miles of Savannah. Hope something will turn up. 13th .- Slept none last night it was so cold. 15th .- On quarter rations. Hear we are to go to South Carolina. Hope we will get out of this accursed place. Shall I ever see home again ? 17th. - Bought an onion for a dollar .*
Sunday, Dec. 18 .- Had a good cup of soup made from a bone. 20th .- In bed all day. Rain at night run in on our bed. 21st .- Cold and muddy. Still stick to our beds to keep from freezing. Got only half a loaf of bran bread to-day. Disease and death doing their work as usual. 22d .- Drew bread and molasses. 23d .- Nearly frozen. No fire. Only a piece of raw corn bread to eat. How long must we suffer so?
* * The prisoners dickered and traded around among themselves for the money which the new captives brought to the prison.
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HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH MICHIGAN.
Sunday, Dec. 25 .- Had a loaf of bread and rice soup for Christmas dinner. 26th .- The Catholic prisoners, about 200, left for a new camp. 28th .- Clark W. Butler, of Company H, Twenty-fourth Michignn, died to day. 30th .- Half a loaf only. Getting discouraged. Men still dying like sheep. No relief. Our government has forsaken us ! God forgive, but we never can.
Sunday, Jan. 1, 1865 .- Sergeant Nardin of Company I, Twenty-fourth Michigan, died last night. 2d .- Living in bed to keep warm. Oh, how dreary is such a life. Will we ever get out of this place? 3d .- Drew salt meat and bread. 4th .- The men still sicken and die. 5th .- In bed to keep warm. Will it ever be my lot to see home again ? 6th .- Rainy and mud knee deep.
Sunday, Jan. 8 .- Too cold to look over my clothing for lice. Got half a loaf. Burnett of Company H, Twenty-fourth Michigan, is dead. 9th .- Sitting in bed all day shivering with the cold. 10th. - Rained all night, mud too deep to stir outside. John A. Sherwood of Company C, Twenty-fourth Michigan, has also died here. 11th. -Only some molasses to eat to-day. 12th .- Got half a loaf. 13th .- Hunted lice on my shirt all day. Oh, what a life ! 14th .- No rations in camp ; 100 of us go out to work on R. R. Got half a loaf for our day's work. 20th .- Been in bed six days to keep warm.
Sunday, Jan. 22 .- Sick in bed. 23d .- Men dying like sheep every hour. Oh, what a horrid place ! Such a stench and lice. One can hardly live. 24th .- Still in bed to keep warm. 25th .- Hundreds are sick and dying goes on all the time. 26th .- Nearly frozen to death. No fire, no clothing or anything to keep warm. One can lie down and die of despair. Hope is all that is left. 27th .- Still awful cold. One of the boys by my side died last night. 28th .- Still in bed shivering from cold. It breaks the stoutest heart.
Sunday, Jan. 29 .- Still suffer and sick. 30th .- Get less to eat every day. Am poor ; will not weigh ninety pounds. 31st .- Things look dreary, but hope to see home again. Feb. Ist .- Sold my last article, my housewife, for two onions.
Sunday, Feb. 5 .- Bread and molasses for rations to-day. Men dying as usual. 7th .- My diary is kept only weekly now for want of space. Snow and sleet. Lie abed all day. Could not sleep for hunger last night.
Sunday Feb. 12 .- Bruskie of Company E, Twenty-fourth Michigan, died last night. This makes the eighth man of our regiment that has died here, who were captured on Aug. 19th last.
Sunday, Feb 19 .- Parole papers are made out and we are to start for our lines. Thank God, the day of deliverance has come. One thousand left last night. There have died in this prison 5,019 prisoners since I came here last October. Feb. 22d .- Left Salisbury prison for the north at noon. (Diary filled.)
Of the twenty-one members of the regiment captured on the Weldon Road, eleven died in this prison and while coming home! Like all the Confederate prisons, Salisbury, North Carolina, was one of the most loathsome. The prisoners suffered terribly from want of food and shelter and it was a place of cruelty and horror. Though the weather was inclement and frequently cold in the winter months, the men sold their coats and shoes for food, and went around in rags, frequently with nothing on but a shirt! Plenty of woods were near from which comfortable huts and fuel might have been obtained, but it was not permitted. The clothing of the men was covered with
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vermin which it was impossible to get rid of, and which tortured the sick who were too weak to kill them. At winter time, shelter tents were furnished for a few only. Full one half had to burrow in the ground for a covering. The dampness brought disease and death. This prison was a large cotton factory flanked by a few tenement houses set up two or three feet from the ground on posts. Under these houses the men crowded like hogs to sleep and formed their beds on the ground. The dead house was frequently so full that the bodies were piled on top of each other. When a man died there was often a quarrel to see who should have his vermin covered garments. His comrades would then carry him to the dead house, leave the body upon the accumulated pile of dead which were buried as naked as when they came into the world.
On November 26, 1864, after having been without rations for three days and nights, the men concluded they might as well die in an attempt to liberate themselves as to starve to death. In this movement Robert E. Bolger of the Twenty-fourth Michigan, still a resident of Detroit, was one of the five leaders. At a certain moment, every prisoner was to seize whatever was nearest to him - brickbat, stone or stick-overpower and disarm the guards and make a break for freedom. The guns were wrested from the fifteen relief guards, as they entered the yard and the combat began. It was an unequal one, for the other guards opened on them and before the prisoners could effect their escape, the field pieces raked the prison with grape and canister, killing sixteen and wounding sixty. Not a tenth of the Union prisoners took part in the riot and a great many knew nothing of it until the garrison cannon swept the prison pen. By looking at the illustration on page 433 the reader will observe the beginning of the riot. The limbs of the wounded were amputated by moonlight under the tree in the foreground.
Below is the statement of ALMON J. HOUSTON of the Twenty- fourth Michigan, now living in Detroit, Michigan :
I was captured at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863, and on July 4, was marched south with several hundred other captives, not halting till we reached Williamsport where the rise of the Potomac detained the crossing for two days. Thence we were marched for Staunton. The first night of this march, we were halted in a field and searched for all valuables and surplus clothing. When I saw this, I cut my new rubber blanket into shreds with my knife, rather than let the enemy have it. For this act I was bucked and gagged for over two hours. This was done by tying my wrists together and drawing my elbows down below the under part of my knees, and putting a stick between the knees and elbows. A stick was put in my mouth and tied behind my head. Circulation stopped in my limbs and I could not stand when cut loose.
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HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH MICHIGAN.
Next morning the march was resumed for Staunton, Virginia, where we were put into old cars and taken to Richmond. I was five weeks in Libby prison and then put on Belle Isle. While here, in November, eight or ten of our soldiers died while sleeping on the outside of the embankment thrown up to separate us from the guard. They had frozen to death. Their bodies were left there for five days until the hogs on the island ate them up, the rebels refusing to have them removed.
At first we had a very small piece of meat and a cup of pea soup, once a day. These peas where infested with black bugs in the shells and often they had eaten the entire pea out. Of such peas was our soup made, bugs and all. Often we had to scrape the bugs off the top of our soup before we ate it. The Union Sanitary Commission sent supplies for us but the rebels confiscated them and they did not reach us. The guards would show us the supplies, saying they were from the Yankees, and eat them before our eyes. Occasionally they threw pieces of food down into the open sinks to see our starved men in their rage for food, reach down into the fecal mass of filth and fish them out to eat !
LIBBY PRISON, RICHMOND, VA.
Often the stomachs of our men could not digest the poor, uncooked food furnished us, and they would vomit it up. I have seen a comrade gather up the whole beans vomited up, wash, re-cook and eat them ! During my stay on Belle Isle, the rebel surgeons vaccinated the prisoners with poisonous vaccine that killed the men off faster than if they had the small pox. The vaccinated limbs would rot and the whole body became infected with the poisonous virus.
On February 22, 1864, I left that God forsaken island and was taken back to. Richmond, and then further South. None knew where we were destined until, at the end of six days and nights on the cars, we arrived at Andersonville prison. One day on the route we had peanuts only to eat. We were turned into this pen without shelter, like a lot of animals. Here, for rations, we received corn meal, a pint for twenty-four hours, and nothing to cook it with, although forests we could see all around us. The meal often was sour and being eaten uncooked gave the men a diarrhea from which they died by the hundred. Soon our numbers increased to. 35,000 men in the prison.
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At night, pine fires were built all around the prison to light up the pen for the guards to sight any escaping. From the smoke of these pine fires, the men's faces, hands and naked feet became black. Their clothing hung in tatters from their emaciated limbs. Many had no hats. Many had no shirts, or coats or shoes. A swamp ran through the center of this camp, one side of which was used for a sink, which under a broiling sun, became too vile to describe, and maggots covered the surface of the stagnant mass. Our men died off from starvation like sheep with the rot. Every morning corpses were laid out to be hauled away. One day I counted over 200 dead who had died within twenty-four hours ! Negroes would come in with a span of mules hitched to a wagon with the box top spreading outwards, and the
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AM.ENG OST OM
WAGON AT ANDERSONVILLE USED TO CARRY IN THE FOOD AND CARRY OUT THE DEAD.
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stiffened corpses would we tossed into the wagon like so many dead hogs, one top of the other, until the box was filled. This same wagon, uncleaned, was used to haul in, to our men, their daily supply of food !
Every few mornings the deep mouthed bayings of the large blood hounds kept for the purpose, were heard in the neighboring forests, indicating the woeful fate of some escaped prisoner. I have read histories of those Southern prisons, but the fullness of all their hellish enormities has never been told. It never can be. In the fall of 1864, many of us were taken to Millen, Georgia. This was the same as Andersonville in the treatment of the men. A few months later, I was released for exchange along with 1, 100 others. My diary that I had kept was taken from me by the rebels before I got out of their hands. There were thirty-two of our men who died while coming North, too weak to stand the journey.
These accounts by comrades Ladd and Houston are but specimens of a score of others we might publish, did space allow, from our own regiment alone. They all contain the sickening details similar to the naratives of thousands of others. A few only are published ; the rest will go down to the graves of the witnesses of those awful events of southern prison life. They all agree that "ANDERSONVILLE was the vilest place that God ever let the sun shine upon." But Florence, Millen and Salisbury were equally as bad.
There is no doubt but that it was the design of the Confederate government to deplete our army by starving Union prisoners into their graves, or totally unfit them for further duty. Scarcely any of our returned prisoners ever were able to do soldier duties after their return. The rations issued, six ounces of flour, two ounces of bacon, one gill of molasses and a pint of cowpeas, was a composition designed to disorder the bowels and produce marasmus and death.
From the first battle of Bull Run till the surrender of the last Confederate soldier, Union captives were robbed of their clothing, only enough being left to cover them scantily, and frequently the rags of the captor were changed for them. No clothing was ever issued to Union prisoners by the enemy. There was a "dead line" in all the prisons, beyond which, or even near which, it was sure death from the guards, to get. Shelter was furnished to but a small portion of those confined in these prisons. The men had to burrow holesin the ground which often filled with water, driving them out. Many had no shelter at all.
The same story as to diminution and poorness of food runs through all the prisons of the south. Some were known to catch rats cook and eat them. At Belle Isle, the commandant's dog was caught and eaten. Men would even at Florence and Andersonville, eat the offal from the rations of the guard, devouring scraps of stinking meats
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and slops; and they would even search the excrement and vomit of comrades for undigested food! Reader, do you tire of these statements ? Wonder not then of the weariness of the actors of these incidents which bear the stamp of proof from living witnesses in our midst. Hundreds of pages of Congressional testimony, taken at the time, over a quarter of a century ago, from witnesses from every section of the Union corroborate each other as to those prison enormities.
The water supply in all the prisons was bad. At Belle Isle the water frontage of the camp was narrow and the sinks contiguous to where the men must get their water. Frequently the prisoners were compelled first to remove the fecal matter on the surface before dipping up the water! At Andersonville, a pure volume of water was within bowshot of the pen, but not a drop of it was allowed the prisoners. They must go to the swamp that divided the camp for water.
The matter of fuel was no better. Within sight of forests, they were allowed no wood. Occasionally at Salisbury, a few sticks were brought in and divided, not an eighth of a cord to one hundred men. At Andersonville the men dug roots from the earth with which to cook their food. When a comrade died they contested for the privilege of carrying him to the dead pen outside, to enable them to obtain a few chips or sticks by way of barter with outsiders.
Dying comrades were everywhere present, in their rude huts, often alone. Three men were known to bid each other good bye at night, and all were dead by morning. Frequently, the first evidence of a death was the stench that came from some burrow in the ground. Often they dragged themselves into the swamp to quench their burning thirst and died there. Again, they were found dead in the sink, amid the festering mass of maggots. Others threw themselves purposely over the dead line and were shot by the guards. It is said their passing away was without pain; as if angels had come to welcome and pilot them from that Confederate hell to Paradise.
The starvation and exposure to which the Confederate Government purposely and needlessly subjected them, produced their quick results. A healthy boy or man in his prime would be captured and frequently but ninety days would be necessary thus to kill him. Scurvy was very prevalent. It was quite as fatal as leprosy. Often sores would form on their swollen limbs and bodies, in which vermin festered. Gangrene ate the flesh from their cheeks, exposing the bones and teeth, and reducing them to a skeleton, with lusterless eyes, wild looking and hollow. Fever and diarrhea wasted others away and
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many wandered about in a half naked condition, reason gone and death certain.
To add to these enormities, a band of Raiders appeared amongst them. These were cut-throats, thieves and scoundrels in shape of bounty-jumpers who had been captured and here plied their profession. Men were robbed and murdered by them. A vigilance committee was organized among the prisoners for their capture which was successful. The prison authorities preserved no order in the pen and left disipline all to the men. Their sole attention seemed to be given to the slow starvation process, and training the cannon upon the Stockade. They allowed the vigilants to take the raiders into a seperate enclosure that surrounded the stockade. There they were tried by a select jury and defended in manner as if they had been at home. Six of them were convicted and hanged. They believed it all a joke as they approached the gallows, but the grim task went on in sight of the whole Andersonville stockade and many who came from the surrounding country to witness the event. The rope broke as one fell and he ran to the swamp to escape. He was hunted down and swung into eternity too. This had a beneficial effect upon the evil disposed in the camp.
At Andersonville, Georgia, in less than fourteen months, 13,412 prisoners died ! In five months at Salisbury, North Carolina, 4,728 prisoners died. In all the Confederate prisons the number of deaths as ascertained by the number of known Union graves was 36,401, or a mortality per cent of 38.7 of the captures. The mortality per cent of the Confederate captives was but 13.25. In addition to the terrible mortality among the Union prisoners, 11,599 died before reaching their homes, and of those who did reach home, 12,000 died not long after, making an army of 60,000 unarmed Union prisoners of war who were thus destroyed by the barbarous effects of prison ill-treatment. At Andersonville, in September, 1864, one in every three died ! In October, one in every two died !
Two monsters who were the tools of the Rebel Confederacy in causing the above enormity of worse than murdered lives, were John H. Winder and Henry Wirz. When the former left the Richmond prisons to assume charge of Andersonville, the "Examiner " said : "God have mercy upon those to whom he has been sent." His infamy may be judged by his issue of the following :
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HEADQUARTERS, ANDERSONVILLE PRISON, GA., July 27, 1864.
Order No. 13 .- The officers on duty and in charge of the Battery at the time will, upon receiving notice that the enemy has approached within seven miles of this post, open upon the stockade with grapeshot, without reference to the situation beyond these lines of defense.
JOHN H. WINDER, Brig. Gen. Commanding.
Thus twenty-five cannon were to be opened upon the 35,000 sick and dying Union prisoners, rather than suffer them to be rescued ! It was like savages who tomahawk their captives when re-capture is probable .. And now come forward the apologists of such murderers and declare that these facts had better never been written. Then expurgate the account of the crucifixion from the testament, burn all history and leave but oblivion. Let these truths stand prominently out as beacon lights to the civilized world what demons the system of human slavery will make. They show pointedly, also, the sacrifices and cost to preserve this nation.
Confederate testimony is ample in substantiating the universal narratives of the Union survivors of those prison pens. The archives of the Confederate War Department furnish conclusive confirmations
A SECTION OF ANDERSONVILLE PRISON. FROM A REBEL PHOTOORAPH.
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