Chapter 73 - Page 2

one of these sacks held two bushels, or the four, eight bushels.
As there are thirty-two quarts in a bushel, one thousand men received two
hundred and fifty-six quarts, or less than a half pint each.

We thought we had sounded the depths of misery at Andersonville, but
Florence showed us a much lower depth. Bad as was parching under the
burning sun whose fiery rays bred miasma and putrefaction, it was still
not so bad as having one's life chilled out by exposure in nakedness upon
the frozen ground to biting winds and freezing sleet. Wretched as the
rusty bacon and coarse, maggot-filled bread of Andersonville was, it
would still go much farther towards supporting life than the handful of
saltless meal at Florence.

While I believe it possible for any young man, with the forces of life
strong within him, and healthy in every way, to survive, by taking due
precautions, such treatment as we received in Andersonville, I cannot
understand how anybody could live through a month of Florence. That many
did live is only an astonishing illustration of the tenacity of life in
some individuals.

Let the reader imagine--anywhere he likes--a fifteen-acre field, with a
stream running through the center. Let him imagine this inclosed by a
Stockade eighteen feet high, made by standing logs on end. Let him
conceive of ten thousand feeble men, debilitated by months of
imprisonment, turned inside this inclosure, without a yard of covering
given them, and told to make their homes there. One quarter of them--two
thousand five hundred--pick up brush, pieces of rail, splits from logs,
etc., sufficient to make huts that will turn the rain tolerably. The
huts are in no case as good shelter as an ordinarily careful farmer
provides for his swine. Half of the prisoners--five thousand--who cannot
do so well, work the mud up into rude bricks, with which they build
shelters that wash down at every hard rain. The remaining two thousand
five hundred do not do even this, but lie around on the ground, on old
blankets and overcoats, and in day-time prop these up on sticks, as
shelter from the rain and wind. Let them be given not to exceed a pint
of corn meal a day, and a piece of wood about the size of an ordinary
stick for a cooking stove to cook it with. Then let such weather prevail
as we ordinarily have in the North in November--freezing cold rains, with
frequent days and nights when the ice forms as thick as a pane of glass.
How long does he think men could live through that? He will probably say
that a week, or at most a fortnight, would see the last and strongest of
these ten thousand lying dead in the frozen mire where he wallowed. He
will be astonished to learn that probably not more than four or five
thousand of those who