The Portland daily press., 1880-09-16

They rolled into the pen, continuous
stream of captive humanity.
The deadly dews drenched them. The
lightning flashed in their unscreened faces.
Hungry, emaciated and torn with pain,
shelterless tattered, naked, the pitiless storms
beat down upon them and they froZe.
The fierce rays of the tropical sun followed
the storms and they consumed.
Human ingenuity exhausted itself. They
made storm covers of blankets and OF coats.
| The water flowed from the wolves to the
lambs.
1t was morbifc at first
The Confederates camped on it and it be-
came virulently septic.
The soil was saturated with their garbage,
their offal and their filth.
The storm is scavenger and creek is a
sewer.
The scavenger swept the excrement, the
washings of rottenness. of carrion, of compost
down through the stockade
1t was bilgeIwater nastiied
| Hdeous spume!
The creek was a serpent breathing death.
| It's mouth full of corrosive poison.
The earth and the air-boundless creation
was full OF life giving water and 10000 Union
| prisoners were condemned to drink OF Double
Branch.
Double Branch was a confederate execu-
| tionerl
Then came the morass
A morass is infnity of craters ejecting pesti-
| lent vapors.
Slime and green scum are already upon the
morass in the stockade.
The scavengeT-the storm-carried down up
| on it the sewage of the pen.
1t fermented.
1t became a mass of putrefaction.
Out of putridity came loathsome lfe-mag-
| gots.
| And the hot sun was upon it all.
| The earth abhors nastiness.
1t filings it off into the effiuvium
The subtle, noisome exhalations loaded the
/ air.
Then came scurvy.
| That is born out of storm and exposure and
want of proper food.
Faces puffed; syncope from slight exertions
| followed, with weak vision, blindness and in
| ability to sleep; dysentery; old sores opened;
broken bones that had united came apart and
l grated together within the body.
Horrible music!
Mouths and throats and bodies liberated.
Teeth loosened and fell out.
Gums, nostrils, bronchial tubes and intes-
tines poured out streams of offensive blood.
Limbs rotted off.
Worms devoured living bodies.
| The fetid breath of disease aggravated the
noisome exhalation from the creek and the
morass.
Poisoned by the earth; poisoned by the air;
poisoned by the water, tormented with vermin;
irritated by gnats, mosquitoes and winged ants;
devoured by maggots; blackened by smoke;
befOuled by mud; with matted hair; shelter
thirsting for water with limpid streams but
few yards sway, perishing for fuel while
boundless forests nodded to them from the
surrounding hills; rotting for vegetables while
| potatoes blossomed and corn tasseled before
| their eyes; goaded to madness by brutality;
writhing in helpless impotence under taunts
and jeers and murderings; perishing by hun
dreds, by thousands; with death marching by
| their side-a putrid horror; living and dying
| these martyrs stood firm, and to the end the
scattered fragment of the wreck never faltered
| in their devotion to the American Union.
| 1. Testimony of Ambrose Spencer, of Americus,
Ga, in the Wirz trial.
NoTE-The author has produced the statement
as it appears in the published report of the trial,
emitting the oath that accompanied it. If such was
the object in constructing the pen, it fearfully
served the murderous purpose The total number
of enlisted killed in the action on the field OF
battle by the hand of guerrllas during the four
years war, was A, 23S. The deaths, in Anderson
vie into which the first prisoners were taken Feb
ruary Oath, 1864 were 3,412. OF these, 6,479
died in the six months between February gath and
September 21st. If the ''killed in action were
equally distributed the last three and a half
years of the war, then the threat of Winder was
made good. Andersonville did kill more Union
oldiers than there were killed at the flont.
g. Little Sweetwater creek is not located in any
of the narrative of Andersonville prison life, but its
position and character truly described in the fore
going statement of Ambrose Spencer 1t is sweet,
clear, abundant stream of water.-The author.