The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1880-04-23


Millen, Blackshear, Charles.
ton, and Florence.
No book since 'Uncle Toms Cabin"
has had the unparalleled success that has
attended the publication in the form of a
copiously illustrated volume of series
of articles that run through the Toledo
BLADE last year under the title of can
jacksonville; Story of Southern Mill
tary Prisons" Such was the interest
aroused by the subject, and the fascinat-
ing manner in which it was treated
that the mere announcement that the
sketches were to be reproduced in book
form was sufficient to bring in orders for
more than 10000 copies before one was
printed, and though the volume has been
upon the market now less than four
months, the sales have nearly reached
10000, with every prospect that that fig
ure will be doubled or trebled before the
year is out. Certainly no book ever
sold itself to the extent that this one has,
because the efforts to introduce it any
where have been of the slightest, and in
much the greater part of the country
none whatever have been made.
There is deep fascination in the sub
ject of Andersonville, for that Golgotha,
in which lie the whitening bones of 49,
600 gallant young men, represents to
them very much of the dearest and cost.
Hest sacrifice of the war for the preserv:
alton of our national unity. Itisa type
too, of its class. Its more than hundred
hecatombs of dead represent several
times that number of their brethren, for
whom the prison gates of Belle Isle, Dan
vile, Salisbury, Florence, Columbia and
Cahawba opened only in eternity.
There are but few families in the North
who have not at least one dear relative or
friend among these $4,000 whose sad for.
tune it was to end their service for the
Union by lying down and dying for it in
a Southern prison pen. The manner of
their death, the horrors that clustered
thickly around every moment of their
existence, the royal, unfaltering stead
fastness with which they endured all
that fate brought them has never been
adequately told. 1t was not with them
as with their comrades in the field, whose
every act was performed in the presence
of those whose duty it was to observe
such matters and report them to the
world.
Hidden from the view of their friends
in the North by the impenetrable vail
which the military operations of the Reb
els drew around the so-called Confedracy,
the people knew next to nothing of their
career or their sufferings. Thousands
died there less needed even than the
hundreds who persisted on the battle
field. Grant did not lose as many men,
killed outright, in the terrible campaign
from the Wilderness to the James River
-43 days of desperate fghting-as died
in July and August at Andersonville.
Nearly twice as many died in that prison
as fell from the day that Grant crossed
the Rapidan, till he settled down into
the trenches before Petersburg. More
than four times as many Union dead lie
under the solemn, soughing pines about
that forlorn little village in Southern
Georgia than mark the course of Sher-
man from Chattanooga to Atlanta. The
Nation stands aghast at the expenditure
of life which attended the two bloody
campaigns of 1854 which virtually
crushed the Confederacy, but no one re-
members that more Union soldiers died
in the rear of the rebel lines than were
killed in front of them. The great mill
tary events that stamped out the rebel
lion drew attention away from the sad
drama which Starvation and Disease
played in the gloomy pens in the far re-
cesses of somber Sou shern forests.
The author begins with an account of
the raid made into the enemy's country
by the cavalry command in which he
was serving as an enlisted, man. They
meet the rebel cavalry, and after sharp
fight, worst it badly. sending it flying
from the field. For while Che Union