Author: Anonymous

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 30

ISBN-13: 9781230421148

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1867 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. First Visit to Annapolis.--Stories of Starved Men.--Burial at Andersonville.--Neely's Life in the Dungeon of Castle Thunder.--Sergeant Kerker.--Captains Wilson and Shelton in the "Iron Cage," in Buncombe County, Tenn.--The Boy and the Flag. -- Gould's returning Consciousness. -- Mr. Brown in Danville Prison. In this closing period of the war, and of our labor in the hospitals, comes the darkest, saddest page of all-- too terrible to be lightly spoken, and too painful in its remembrances to be dwelt upon any longer than is needful for the connected continuance of the narrative. The inhuman, fiendish treatment of our soldiers in Southern prisons has now become a matter of history, the truthfulness of which cannot be doubted. Would that it could be! By the bedsides of dying skeletons, as they shudderingly recalled their prison life, I have written their sad stories, which often ended with: "We can never tell the half of all we have endured; it would not be credited, if we did." All of horrors that I had seen and known during these memorable years, faded into insignificance when contrasted with this heinous crime-- a systematic course of starvation to brave men made captives by the chances of war! Our first visit to Annapolis was with the object of seeing and knowing more of them; that by a recital of their condition, I might interest still more those who were devoting themselves to the preparation of hospital comforts. The little we saw of the starved men, at that time, enlisted all my sympathies. In one of the wards of the hospital at Camp Parole, a man belonging to the 5th Indiana Cavalry was reclining in a large rockingchair near the stove; his features sharpened by suffering, the eyes sunken, skin tightly drawn over the...