The Wisconsin tobacco reporter. (Edgerton, Wis.) 1877-1950, 1907-11-08

AndersOnville Prison Pen as 1t Is To-day.
Governor Davidson, the monument
commission and delegations of old-vet-
Grams have returned from recent trip
to dedicate the monument to perpetuate
the memory of the. Boys in Blue who
died at the Andersonville prison pen in
the war of the rebellion. Alex B. Camp
bell of Albion, who was one Of 'thesparty,
was prisoner confined there for more
than year and he brings back many
relics of the trip. The situation as they
found it after forty years is thus de-
scribed by one OF the company:
Arrived at Andersonville soon after
daylight on the morning of the 18th.
We spent most of the day looking thru
the we'll kept National Cemetery and
the ground on which so many of our
compades suffered and died. At one
time there were confined in the pen,
twenty acres in extent, about $4,000.
The old stockade. which consisted Of
pine logs set on end, about twenty feet
high, have been removed long ago, and
part of the GROUND farmed in cotton.
until the National w. R. G. acquired the
ground to hold in remembrance. We
visited the wells, some fifteen or twenty
of them scattered about the grounds,
that the boys dug to obtain water. They
dug them IS to 40 feet deep with an old
spoon to handle the dirt and an old boot
leg and string torn from their clothing
to lift the dirt out of the we'll! You may
wonder why the wells did not cave in
and how the boys got to the bottom and
out again. They tell US that on getting
below the surface few feet they find
thin layer of blue clay almost as hard as
rock, and so on down, as far as they had
to CO. About every two feet on these
layers of clay they made steps for de-
scending and ascending.
The famous so-called Providence
spring is still running, fixed with marble
and granite to endure for all time. At
old citizen was there with us, who helped
prepare the ground for the prison pen,
explained away the miracle in this way:
He told US that there had always been a
spring there. When his father was
boy the hunters had that spring for a
meeting place, and in grubbing and
cleaning the ground they raked the
leaves and dirt down into the spring and
filled it up and sorced the water out into
the branch below, and on a certain day
when the Yankees were confined there a
terrible rain and thunder storm came up
and washed the old spring out and left
it as of old.
The old forts are still there, one at
each corner of the pen, in which canons
were kept to scare the prisoners into
good behavior. The citizen told us that
at that time there was not a sprout nor
a blade of grass on all that ground. Now
we find large trees growing in those forts
and around the wells and other parts of
the grounds, some as large as two feet
in diameter.
We found the stocl,ade, the picture of
which you have over It the other end of
the room, to have disappeared entirely.
Some of it had, suppose, rotted down,
but part of it had been split up into
wood and rails. The line of the stock
ade is marked by AKA posts, about six
feet high, painted white and marked
"Stockade Line" Inside this line of
posts, and 20 feet from it, there is sec
ond row, about three feet high, marked
dead Line" You know, suppose that
it any prisoner ever so much as got his
foot, even by accident an inch over this
so called dead line, he was at once shot
by the guard.
When we got inside these lines real
lied that was standing where, from
first to last, between $4,000 and 10000
men, good and true, loyal to the flag of
our country had suffered untold and
unreliable torture.
The low ground bordering the little
creek running across the enclosure, once
so emirys Shiny and filthy, has given
growth to large treas and thick mass
of underbrush. Some of the pine trees
that have sprung up right where the
prisoners had their "dug outs" have now
come to be two feet in diameter. It is
as il good dame Nature has been seeking
ins her own benifcent manner to cover
up and hide away in mass Of greenery
the ugly scars of those sad days. The
present generation cannot, by looking
upon those grounds, realize what was
taking place there 43 years ago today.