Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1901-05-09
WISCONSIN VETERAN RETURNS
TO ANDERsoNvILLE PRISON.
WAS THERE SIX MONTHS
Place Where $4,000 Union Heroes Per.
ished Within Eight Months-A Hor.
rid Reconciliation McGlachlin
Tells of the Terrible Events and
Episodes of Other Days

over the grounds and have stood on
the very spot where l slept for nearly
six months in the spring and summer
OF 1864. The place was not hard to
find for it was next to the dead line
and if by accident Or design l had
moved two feet to the right of where
l lay upon the ground the chances are
that l would now be sleeping in the
beautiful but obscure and lonely Gene
terry the government has prepared and
is carefully guarding as the last rest
ing place of the more than thirteen
thousand who gave up their lives in
that fated enclosure.
The Andersonville prison was estab-
ushed by the confederate govern
ment about February, 1864, and was
designed as general depot for the
prisoners captured from the union
armies east Of the Mississippi 1t
was practically abandoned in Septem-
Der of the same year, soon after Sher-
man captured Atlanta. 1t was there
fore used as prison about eight
months, and today in the cemetery
near by marble head stones mark the
| .,
about 600 of whom died within eight
months at Andersonville. Of this
number Wisconsin contributed 256, or
more than half as many soldiers as
have been killed in the nearly twelve
hundred engagements and skirmishes
that have occurred in the Philippines
since Dewey opened his guns on the
| Spanish fleet in Manila harbor.
Thirty-seven years ago this month l
| passed through Macon, Georgia, with
others in a train of box cars en- route
to Andersonville. l had then been a
| prisoner about seven months In the
following September l again went
| through there. This time we were 60
mig to Charleston. South Carolina, and
| was a guest of the confederacy about
three months more, a total of fourteen
months and twenty days. That was a
| long time ago, but many of the details
are as fresh in my memory as if they
had happened only yesterday and
therefore to me this trip has been a
most interesting one.
These preliminaries having been ar
ranged, open the gates of the stockade
and let in the prisoners as they are re-
ceived from the front-the canopy of
heaven their only covering, the ground
their only resting place. Then keep
these men there gradually increasing
their number as the spring and sum-
mer campaigns progressed in the east
and in the west until in July there are
at least $4,000 men on these fifteen
acres Of ground. Just think of it for
a moment. Nearly three times the
present population of Stevens Point
living on fifteen acres of land under
hot Georgia sun. Absolutely no she
ter of any kind provided by the prison
authorities, no police or sanitary reg
ulations or conveniences, no facilities
for the men to wash themselves or
clothing, the water warm and con-
taminated from the cook house above, |
the meagre rations consisting princi- |
pally of corn meal mush or bread, a |
corn meal diet being something to |
which the men had been wholly unac-
customed, and with very little medical |
attendance and with still less medi- |
cine, the wonder is, not that thirteen |
thousand died, but that any lived |
Many and many a time | have seen
from 40 to Is of the dead lying side by |
side near the gate-bodies that had |
been carried there from different parts |
of the camp and were to be taken out |
and buried, without coffin or shroud, |
in the long trenches that had been pre- |
pared the day before for their recep- |
one had coffin. The bodies, when |
they reached the burying place. were |
laid upon their sides in the long |
trenches and then simply covered over
with earth. At one time the death |
rate reached 100 a day.
However, do not care to attempt a
description of the scenes of privation, |
starvation, sickness and death that |
were witnessed at Andersonville or at |
any of the other five prisons in which |
it was my fate to be confined. AS an |
illustration of the dimensions of An |
Jacksonville prison, just imagine an en-
closure of seventeen acres and sur |
round them with pine posts eighteen |
feet in height. This would be a stock |
seventeen feet from it, set other posts, |
at intervals about four feet high and !
on top Of these fasten a wooden rail |
ing This would be the dead line be- |
yOnd which no man could pass, even |
though the railing had been torn down |
and there was only an imaginary line, |
without being instantly shot down by |
the guards who occupied sentry boxes |
on the stockade and overlooked the |
camp. Have small creek running
across the grounds, with about two |
acres of low, marshy land along it's |
banks, thus reducing the inhabitable |
portion of the enclosure, which con-
tanned a total Of seventeen acres, to |
fifteen acres. On the outside Of the |
stockade, and little distance from !
each corner. build earthworks and in
each of these place two cannon with |
their muzZles bearing directly upon /
the camp. On the creek, above the |
stockade, build cook house, the re-
fuse from which must necessarily flow
down the stream from which the men |
must get the water they drink. Also |
establish outside the stockade, ken
mel in which to keep a large pack of |
blood-hounds with which to pursue |
any prisoner who may attempt to es-
cape.
I have stated that the prison author |
tiles provided no shelter of any kind, |