Chapter 76

THE PECULIAR TYPE OF INSANITY PREVALENT AT FLORENCE--BARRETT'S WANTONNESS
OF CRUELTY--WE LEARN OF SHERMAN'S ADVANCE INTO SOUTH CAROLINA--THE REBELS
BEGIN MOVING THE PRISONERS AWAY--ANDREWS AND I CHANGE OUR TACTICS, AND
STAY BEHIND--ARRIVAL OF FIVE PRISONERS FROM SHERMAN'S COMMAND--THEIR
UNBOUNDED CONFIDENCE IN SHERMAN'S SUCCESS, AND ITS BENEFICIAL EFFECT UPON
US.

One terrible phase of existence at Florence was the vast increase of
insanity. We had many insane men at Andersonville, but the type of the
derangement was different, partaking more of what the doctors term
melancholia. Prisoners coming in from the front were struck aghast by
the horrors they saw everywhere. Men dying of painful and repulsive
diseases lined every step of whatever path they trod; the rations given
them were repugnant to taste and stomach; shelter from the fiery sun
there was none, and scarcely room enough for them to lie down upon.
Under these discouraging circumstances, home-loving, kindly-hearted men,
especially those who had passed out of the first flush of youth, and had
left wife and children behind when they entered the service, were
speedily overcome with despair of surviving until released; their
hopelessness fed on the same germs which gave it birth, until it became
senseless, vacant-eyed, unreasoning, incurable melancholy, when the
victim would lie for hours, without speaking a word, except to babble of
home, or would wander aimlessly about the camp--frequently stark
naked--until he died or was shot for coming too near the Dead Line.
Soldiers must not suppose that this was the same class of weaklings who
usually pine themselves into the Hospital within three months after
their regiment enters the field. They were as a rule, made up of
seasoned soldiery, who had become inured to the dangers and hardships of
active service, and were not likely to sink down under any ordinary
trials.

The insane of Florence were of a different class; they were the boys who
had laughed at such a yielding to adversity in Andersonville, and felt a
lofty pity for the misfortunes of those who succumbed so. But now the
long strain of hardship, privation and exposure had done for them what
discouragement had done for those of less fortitude in Andersonville.
The faculties shrank under disuse and misfortune, until they forgot their
regiments, companies, places and date of capture, and finally, even their
names. I should think that by the middle of January, at least one in
every ten had sunk to this imbecile condition. It was not insanity so
much as mental atrophy--not so much aberration of the mind, as a
paralysis of mental action. The sufferers became apathetic idiots, with
no desire or wish to do or be anything. If they walked around at all