"Prison Life in Andersonville"

That the following narrative of Southern prison life should be written so many years after the occurrence of the events described is explained by the fact that the author has been urged by many friends to put on record his descriptions that have interested many people in the East, in the Interior and in the West.

To Members of the Grand Army of the Republic, of the Woman's Relief Corps, allied organizations, and readers generally, I am glad to commend this book as giving a more particular account of the opening of Providence Spring than has before appeared.

Appreciation of the strenuous days of the great Civil War will be revived, and the memories of Veterans, not a few will be refreshed by this interesting story.

H. M. Triuble. Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic.

Princeton, Illinois, March 2, 1912.

[Illustration]

Four years of war life.

In five Confederate prisons.

[Illustration: The Author in 1860.

The Year Before Enlistment.]

DEDICATION

Dedicated to the Woman's Relief Corps, whose tender, thoughtful care has preserved the sacred memorials of the war, and to the memory of my

COMRADES

in arms who have answered the final call; to the age-worn remnant who still linger behind, and to the younger patriots of the present generation, to whom it is given, in the happier days of peace, to fight for their country the bloodless battles of righteousness and truth.

TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER. PAGE.

I. The Writer's Credentials 19

II. View of a Confederate Prison 27

III. The Prison Commisariat 35

IV. A Dearth of Water 53

V. A Cry to Heaven 61

VI. Unsealing of the Spring 65

VII. Was It a Miracle? 72

VIII. Deliverance 85

IX. An Incident by the Way 93

X. A Sequel 103

APPENDIX. PAGE.

A. Contributory Testimony 116

B. Responsibility for Prison Treatment 119

C. Woman's Relief Corps Memorial 123

D. A Memorial Day Meditation 135 Rev. H. H. Proctor, D. D. of Atlanta.

E. Permanent Honors for Confederate Heroes 141

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Author: As Prospective Soldier. As Present Writer.

Plan of the Prison Pen.

View of Interior and Foreground.

A Dream.

The Broken Stockade.

The Spring and Women of the Relief Corps.

Adventure in Wilmington Hospital.

The Beloved Teacher.

The Michigan Monument in Andersonville.

The Andersonville Cemetery.

A Personal Foreword

The establishment and perpetuity of our Union have been secured by the sacrifices of war. The Declaration of Independence preceded seven weary years of conflict, whose culminating sufferings were experienced in the British prison ships and in the winter camp at Valley Forge. In this contest the patriotic soldiers of the north and of the south made common cause, and what they did and what they suffered indicates a measure of the enduring worth of our national life. The story of revolutionary days finds an enlarged counterpart in the sufferings of the civil war.

A phase of the great struggle is recalled in the following narrative of events, which belongs to a rapidly receding past. Soon no survivor will be left to tell the tale; hence the desirability of putting it into permanent form before it fades altogether from recollection. To some the story of the breaking out of Providence Spring may seem to have been given undue prominence in this record; but it is around that event that these reminiscences gather, and the circumstances attending were so indelibly stamped upon the memory of the writer that they call for expression. Probably he was the youngest of the group of Andersonville prisoners who participated in the concert of prayer that preceded the unsealing of the fountain, and on that account he may be the only survivor.