The Highland weekly news. [volume] (Hillsborough [Hillsboro], Highland County, Ohio) 1853-1886, 1864-12-22

been dcptlved OF a sufficient quantity OF
palatable food, and that the little they
have received has been rarely cooked,
because in country abopnding with
fuel, and gloomy with immense pine
forests, their jailors forbade them the
poor privilege Of adequate fires. At
the prison-pen near Millen, Ga, for
some weeks there has been no meal or
four given to the prisoners, and the
sweet potatoes issued in lieu thereof
have been eaten raw, because there was
no opportunity of getting fuel for cook
ing purposes.
Such is the condition Of the men
whom we are now receiving out Of
chivalrous Dixie. These are the'sous,
brothers, husbands and fathers Of the
North.
The Times publishes over three col
umns of transcripts of rebel documents
from A Andersonvile--the records Of the
rebel surgeous-proof of inhumanity
scarcely to be credited among a people
protesting Christianity. The writer in
submitting the damning documents
says:
For the period of month, through
which these reports extend, there is a
constant, monotonous complaint, often
assuming the language of protest,
against the treatment to which the
sick were subjected. Men in the last
stages Of emlciation from chronic
darrhea received no nourishment what.
ever, and starved to death on the coarse
ratons which the stomach of a strong
man would reject Others, suffering
from gangrene and ulcers, were COM
PEELED to tester in putridity without
even sufficient water to cleanse their
loathsome sores. Week after week the
diseased and the dying were kept with.
out shelter, and many of them without
i clothing, on the bare ground, exposed
10 torrid sun by day and to heavy
rains at all times, in total disregard ot
the earnest and almost despairiug ap.
r peals of kind-hearted physicians foI
their relief. 1t is very easy to under
stand how much Of this terrible wretched
ness was unavoidable, particularly tha
. part Of it which proceeded from the
scarcity of medicines, but it requires q
very ingenious mind to palliate in any
degree the heartcssness which allowed
+ the sufferers to remain shelterless in a
country where the materials for shelter
are as abun dant as in the South, and
where thousands of willing hands from
the prisoners in the stockade would have
furnished all the labor.
Of the condition of the prisoners in
the stockade at Andersonville, theiI
mode Of existence, their destitution and
their hopelessness, the correspondent
presents the following summary, the
facts having been obtained, he says
! from at least a hundred witnesses
, The stockade or pen in which the
prisoners at Andcrsonville are confined
7 is an enclosure of fourteen acres, We o
which were a morass. Here the mer
we're without shelter, and in many in
stances almost naked, hudiled together
without room for exercise. During tht
' hot summer months there were scatter
T ed about in this pen an average of a
2 least 5 1000 prisoners, who were suffer- ns
e from disease in almost every form Incl
d dent to man, in a climate to which h.
i is unaccustomod. Five acres of tn
e surface of tho ground were covered will
d human excrement, eXhaling morbi6
" influence which would prove fatal evel
;, to the rice plantation laborer, aecus to m
it ed from infancy to breathing the NAL
d aiious atmosphere Of his native savan
c nahs. Constantly drenched by rains
J. receiving bad food, always poorly pre-
a pared and often raw, in many instance
II naked and lahoring under a mental de
J. preston verging upon m malanchol y, feel
= ing that their days were numbered, tn
n prisoners were kept in their dfeadfu
prison. Under these circumstances tn
J., mortality became frightful, and as
/ matter of defence from an epidemic, tb
II rebel authorities were compelled to thi
Is out the shambles early in September
a by sending several thousand of tb
h prisoners to new stockado cstablisbe
f utSavannah, where their sufferiugs wer
9 considerably alleviated. Subsequent
these men on the breaking out of tn
le yellow fever at Savannah were remove
y to another prison pen at Millen. Be
g fore the change from Andersonville wa
'e made eleven thousand victi@s had bee