This order, when interpreted, means that when the officers in the forts which guarded the prison, should hear that any of the Federal troops were approaching within seven miles of the prison, they were to open on us with grape shot. A simple rumor by some scared native would have precipitated that catastrophe.
Just think of it, twenty-four cannons loaded with grape shot opened on sick defenseless men, not for any offense they had committed, but because Winder would rather see us slaughtered than rescued.
Further, the order says, “without reference to the situation beyond these lines of defense.” This simply means that they were to pay no attention to the attacking party, but to slaughter us.
If the records of the Infernal Regions could be procured, I do not believe a more hellish order could be found on file.
We heard of Stoneman’s raid and hoped, and yet feared, that he would come. We knew that the foregoing order had been issued, and yet we hoped the artillerymen would not find time to carry it out.
We would have liked, O so much, to have got hold of Winder and Wirz, and that Georgia Militia, there would have been no need of a stockade to hold them.
O, how weary we became of waiting. It seemed to us that home, and friends, and the comforts, and necessities of life, were getting further, and further away, instead of nearer, that we could not stand this waiting, and sickness, and misery, and living death much longer.
The more we thought of these things, the more discouraged we became, and I believe these sad discouraging thoughts helped to prostrate many a poor fellow, and unfit him to resist the effects of his situation and surroundings, and hastened, if it was not the immediate cause of death.
Chaplain McCabe, who was a prisoner in Libby Prison, has a lecture entitled “The bright side of Prison life.” If there was a bright side to Andersonville, I want some particular funny fellow, who was confined there for five or six months, to come around and tell me where it was, for I never found it, until I found the OUTside of it.
We heard of the fall of Atlanta, which occurred on the 2d of September, and had we known the song then, we would have sang those cheering words written and composed by Lieutenant S. H. M. Byers, while confined in a rebel prison at Columbia, South Carolina.