Chapter 71 - Page 2

as to permit prisoners to come up
to the hole to trade. The articles for sale were corn meal and bread,
flour and wheat bread, meat, beaus, molasses, honey, sweet potatos, etc.
I went down to the place, carefully inspected the stock, priced
everything there, and studied the relative food value of each. I came
back, reported my observations and conclusions to Andrews, and then staid
at the tent while he went on a similar errand. The consideration of the
matter was continued during the day and night, and the next morning we
determined upon investing our twenty-five cents in sweet potatos, as we
could get nearly a half-bushel of them, which was "more fillin' at the
price," to use the words of Dickens's Fat Boy, than anything else offered
us. We bought the potatos, carried them home in our blanket, buried them
in the bottom of our tent, to keep them from being stolen, and restricted
ourselves to two per day until we had eaten them all.

The Rebels did something more towards properly caring for the sick than
at Andersonville. A hospital was established in the northwestern corner
of the Stockade, and separated from the rest of the camp by a line of
police, composed of our own men. In this space several large sheds were
erected, of that rude architecture common to the coarser sort of
buildings in the South. There was not a nail or a bolt used in their
entire construction. Forked posts at the ends and sides supported poles
upon which were laid the long "shakes," or split shingles, forming the
roofs, and which were held in place by other poles laid upon them.
The sides and ends were enclosed by similar "shakes," and altogether they
formed quite a fair protection against the weather. Beds of pine leaves
were provided for the sick, and some coverlets, which our Sanitary
Commission had been allowed to send through. But nothing was done to
bathe or cleanse them, or to exchange their lice-infested garments for
others less full of torture. The long tangled hair and whiskers were not
cut, nor indeed were any of the commonest suggestions for the improvement
of the condition of the sick put into execution. Men who had laid in
their mud hovels until they had become helpless and hopeless, were
admitted to the hospital, usually only to die.

The diseases were different in character from those which swept off the
prisoners at Andersonville. There they were mostly of the digestive
organs; here of the respiratory. The filthy, putrid, speedily fatal
gangrene of Andersonville became here a dry, slow wasting away of the
parts, which continued for weeks, even months, without being necessarily
fatal. Men's feet and legs, and less frequently their hands and arms,
decayed and sloughed off. The parts became so