Year: 1878

At the time of this unparalleled and helsh order the


manned prisoners who would have been the victims of It's
execution numbered more than thirty thousand men


This officer brought with him to Andersonvie his son.
William 8 who became adjutant of post his nephew
ana Henry Wrz as Superintendent of the prison These
men figure largely, and often mentioned in the details
accompanying this report and require further notice


mere lt was under their administration that the enoIn
ties OF Andersonvie here recorded were perpetraed


The stockade at Andersonve used for the conne-
ment of enlisted ony 1t opened for the recep-
tion its victims in February 1864 and in June follow
ing contained more than twenty thousand prisoners In
July the camp had been enlarged and the Richmond prs
ons poured nto this already crowded theater OF death
nearly twenty thousand additional victims to the hesh
barbarity of the confederate government


They share the doom of their Union comrades.
From the horrors of Libby and Belle Isle they to
meet the horrors of Andersonville. And ensued
period of desoation and suffering which turns the blood
TO Ice and leads man TO the from which he
sprang. Ihirty-hve thousand men, sick and well,
compressed into space which gave them four feet by
six for walking and sleeping for exercise and rest for
cooking and eating for sickness and death


The subsequent history of Andersonvile has startled
and shocked the world with tale of horror woe and
death, before unheard and unknown civilization No
pen describe, painter SKETCH imagination
prehend its fearful and unutteraby nquity 1t would
If the concentrated madness of earth and hell had
found its final lodgment in the breasts of those who nau
guraed the rebellion and controlled policy of the
ederate government and that the prison Andesonve
had been selected for the most terrible human sacrifice
which the world had Into narrow walls
crowded thirty five thousand enlisted men, many of them
the ovest and best the most devoted and heroic of those
grand armies which carried the flag of their country to


final victory For long and weary months here they suf
fered, maddened, murdered, and died Here they


fingered unsheltered from the rays of tropical by
day, and drenchng and deadly dews by night every
stageof mental and physical disease hungered emaciaed
stan wing, maddened fostering with unhealed wounds
gnawed by the ravages of scurvy and gangrene with
swollen limbs and distorted vsage covered with vermn
which they had power TO extirpate; exposed TO the
flooding rains which drove them drowning from the miser
able holes In which, like swine, they burrowed parched
with thirst an mad with hunger; racked with pain
prostated with the weakness of dissolution. with naked
limbs and matted hair; filthy with smoke and mud soiled
with the very from which their weakness would
not permit them TO escape by the gnawing
which their own wounds had engendered, with bed
but the EARTH covering the cloud the sky and
these ~ these heroes born in the image of God thus
crouchng and wrhing in their terrible torture loath
some, horrible sight the mutated murdered victims of
cool and calculating barbary stand forth III history
monument of the surprising horrors of Andersonvle
it shall be and read i'll all future time realizing in the
studied tormens of their pSonh the of Dantes
Inferno and Milton's Hell.