The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1880-04-01
ANDERSONYILLE.
GA Story Of Southern Military PrisOns.''

THE MOST SUCCESSFUL BOOK SINCE
"UNCLE TOMS CABIN - TWENTY
THOUSAND COPIES SOLD BEFORE ONE
WAS PRINTED-A GRAPHIC STORY
OF A PRIVATE SOLDIERS EXPERT
ENCE IN RICHMOND, ANDERSON
VILE, SAVANNAH, MILLEN, BLACK
SHEAR, CHARLESTON AND FLOR
ENCE.
No book since "Uncle Toms Cabinn
has had the unparalleled success that
has attended the publication in the
form of a copiously illustrated volume
of a series of articles that run through
the Toledo Blade last year under the
title of "Andersonville; Story of
Southern Military Prisons" Such
was the interest aroused by the subject
and the facinating manner in which
it was treated than the mere an
nouncement 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 figure will be doubled or
trebled before the year is out. Ger
tainly no book ever sold itself to the
extent that this one has, because the
efforts to introduce it anywhere have
been of the slightest, and in much the
greater part of the country none what
ever have been made.
There is deep facination in the
subject of Andersonville, for that Col
gotha, in which lie the whitened bones
of $4,000 gallant young men, represent
to them very much of the dearest and
costliest sacrifice of the war for the
preservation of our national unity.
1t is type, too, of its class. Its more
than hundred hecatombs of dead re-
present several times that number of
their brethren, for whom the prison
gates of Belle Isle, Danville, Sails
bury, Florence, Columbia and Catawba
opened only in eternity. There are
not at least one dear relative or friend
among these 1000 whose sad Torture
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 loyal
unfaltering steadfastness 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 Ofthose
whose duty it was to observe such mat
ters and report them to the world.
Hidden from the view of their
friends in the North by the impene-
trable vail which the military opera
tions of the Rebels drew around the
so-called Confederacy, the people
knew next to nothing of their career
or their sutferings. Thousands died
there less needed even than the hund-
reds who perished on the battle field.
Grant did not lose as many men,
killed outright, in the terrible cam
paign 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
ln Il lnnt ( (Npnt
dan, till he settled down into the
trenches before Petersburg. More
than four times as many Union dead
lie under the solem, soughing pines
abont that forlorn little Village in
Southern Georgia than mark the
course of Sherman from Chattanooga
to Atlanta. The Nation stands aghast
at the expenditure of life which at
tended the two bloody campaigns OF
1864 which virtually crushed the Con-
| federacy, but no one remembers that
more Union soldiers died in the rear
of the reble lines than were killed in
front of them. The great military
events that stamped out the Rebellion
drew attention away from the sad
drama which Starvation and Disease
played in the gloomy pens in the fal
recesses of somber Southern 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 alter a sharp fight, worst it badly
sending it flying from the field. Fol
a while the Union cavalry live off the
fatness of the land, but at length they
are trapped in narrow valley, anC
after a desperate resistance, are al
captured, and sent to Richmond. Two
months of hardship and exposure OF
Bell Isle, and in the tobacco factories
end by their being sent to Anderson
ville-the author arriving in the frs
squad that entered the pen. Then en-
sues six months of terrible suffering
in which four or five of those arounC
him died. This is ended by the fall o
Atlanta, Immediately upon which tn,
Rebels, fearful of the safety of so grea
mass of prisoners in such proximity
to the National lines as the fall o
that stronghold has brought about
hurry the bulk of them off to anothe