Andersonville (31 page)

The Union
must
survive! cried the blond young Corley, with his bruised mouth full of chicken.

And, as a born American, it is your strict duty to aid in that survival!

But I love the South of this country as well as the North.

Do you suppose that General George H. Thomas, for example, does not love Virginia? He was born in Virginia, Virginia is his mother State! Why is General Thomas fighting for the Union? Because he recognizes the necessity of resistance against armed rebellion! The Nation is bigger than any one State or group of States, Friend Nathan.
It is historically demanded that this Nation survive as a single entity.
If you go to the army, as you are
obliged
to go to the army, you will be fighting—not as a renegade American returned to these shores, not as a native Bostonian, not for the State of Massachusetts. You will be fighting for the greatest, noblest commonwealth which ever gave a benefit to mankind: the single, Federal commonwealth of sister States, the United States of America!

Cracky, Tom, cried Salem Stevenson. I can’t wait for this war to be over, so’s you can hang out your shingle and strike for the Albany assembly!

Corley was duly modest. Well, I used to twist a mean verb, as they say, when I was on the debating panel at the Academy.

Stevenson mounted stiffly to a gilt-tasseled chair and, champagne glass in hand, demanded to know of Nathan whether he had ever seen Daniel Webster in the flesh. He, Stevenson, had.

When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once-glorious Nation . . . on a land rent with civil feuds and drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood—

Toby the floor-waiter knocked softly at the door. If the gentlemen could kindly be a mite more quiet. Lady in Number Twelve she feeling poorly. And it’s nigh to four o’clock.

They talked more softly, but still they talked earnestly. Nathan was forced to admit that his grandparents on both sides had been immigrants because they sought the opportunity and safety which America afforded. He was forced to admit that his father had advanced in a fashion impossible in most other countries . . . was this not, then, a debt which he owed to the Federal Union and which he must pay by offering his own body and spirit? Stirred to intimacy, Nathan now told how his grandfather Margolis’s father and mother had been beaten to death and hurled into the flames of their own house, while the baby which was Grandfather Margolis lay covered by straw nearby and thus escaped extermination in that
pogrom.
His new friends (the heedless Jew-baiters of a few hours before) paled at the description and clucked in sympathy.

These memories returned with blinding force during the heartbreak of defeat and surrender, during the pain of being transported as a chattel of war. Because he was accustomed to travel and acutely sensitive to each impression, Nathan did not dwell, however, in a stricken doze. Automatically his mind said, This is new. This I have not seen before. This I will remember. . . . The enemy’s reserve pickets marching us forth. They say this village is Jamesville. The last was Foster’s Mills. . . . Why this desolation, why the white and fire-marked chimneys of houses no longer standing? The damage must have been done by our Union troops when they raided to Whitehall. . . . Our guards say they are from the Thirty-fifth North Carolina. A very decent set of fellows; and civil war becomes increasingly dreadful when I realize that it was they or their brothers-in-arms who killed my friends the two lieutenants, without whose instigation I would not have come to fight in the first place. . . . Suppose my father and I had sailed to New Orleans (and we might have done so, but for the blockade) instead of to New York? Then I might have met some Southerners and been insulted by them, and might have whipped them in the same way; and then, over wine and meat, might have been persuaded that their Cause was the Cause truly just, and so might have found myself wearing their uniform. . . . No, no, impossible! Because a civil war proves in its very waging that it is the nastiest business afoot; and it is to prevent for all time the recurrence of such strife that we thinking Union troops are willing to endure. Corley and Stevenson are now wiped off the slate, along with so many thousands of others. Perhaps the damp sponge of Fate is waiting to rub out my own name. If so, I am willing to let it be rubbed, because I came earnestly into this situation. I am confident that the North will prevail; I am assured that, eventually, the forces of dissolution will crumble; I know in my heart and soul that one day both sections of this Country will again be forged together, never more to be split.

The great lamentation of the future will be concerned only with the fact that, by and large, the most energetic and high-minded youths of all these States involved were the ones who perished; and most of them were too young to leave their seed behind them. It will be a long weakness for the united Nation of the future. The soul which might have written the compelling opera went winging at Manassas Junction. The hand which might have sculptured a shape fairer than
Moses
was shot off on the Chickahominy. The brain which could have managed the richest agronomy of all time was drilled by a conoidal bullet at Stone’s River. The hearts which might have beat with the rhythm of philanthropist and priest and educator . . . O wicked Gettysburg, O doleful Vicksburg, O thrice lewd Fredericksburg!

Lang wull his lady look

Frae the castle doon,

E’er she see the Earl o’ Murray

Come soonding through the toon.

...Good old Halliburton, and the ballads he sang before the fireplace; and Mother chording on that ancient gilt spinet in the corner, and candle flames bowing in obeisance to the legendry, and the warm sea touched with stars at the foot of our lawn. Will ever I see them again? Will ever I know the future?

O sad maimed Future! Where is your prime inventor? The ocean covered him with barnacles when the
Monitor
went down. Where is the saint whose scalpel or microscope was intended to still the scream of cancer? We Federals spattered his skull at Missionary Ridge. O long discordant Future drowned in tears, as now my soul is drowning! Where is the President whose power and nobility might have led a healed Nation to world-enfolding glory? The fever took him at Rock Island, in Arkansas, in Libby Prison, at Fort Delaware. He wore blue, he wore butternut. He drew a lanyard, he tore the paper of a cartridge with his teeth, he galloped behind John Morgan, he rode to meet the lead on that last charge of Farnsworth’s in a Pennsylvania glen. Minister and explorer, balloonist and poet, botanist and judge, geologist and astronomer and man with songs to sing . . . they are clavicles under leaves at Perryville, ribs and phalanges in the soil of Iuka, they are a bone at Seven Pines, a bone at Antietam, bones in battles yet to be sweated, they are in the soil instead of walking, the moss has them.

So Nathan Dreyfoos had mourned, seeking adjustment to new situation and recent tragedy . . . a town called Williamston, the prisoners resting in a pine grove, guards lounging about and some of them flirting with girls who came tripping fearfully in the crowd scampering to see the Yankees. The village postmaster, fat and old and pink-faced, came trotting up with his leather pouch like an amiable Saint Nick; he promised to mail letters for any of the prisoners who wished to write to the folks at home. Yes, sir, boys, them letters’ll be sent through your lines at the first opportunity. Don’t thank me, boys—glad to do it—my own Andy got took by your fellows up in Maryland and he’s still a prisoner of war; but once’t in a while we get a letter from him. Nathan Dreyfoos blinked away the tears which came suddenly, and smiled down at Saint Nick. I hope he’s keeping well, sir. Oh, yes, Sergeant, tolerable, tolerable.

Nathan wrote hastily on half a sheet of paper, he gave the rest of his paper away to boys who had none. Dear Father and Mother, I trust this will reach you with the assurance that I am unwounded and in fine fettle. But there is sad news: Plymouth has fallen to the enemy and those of us who were not killed were taken prisoner. My friends Stevenson and Corley are among the dead. I do not know where we will be imprisoned; some say at Charleston or Savannah. If all our warders are as gentlemanly as our present guards and as the kind person who has promised to mail this, then shall we be well treated indeed. Please advise Halliburton of my situation; I think he is still at the Embassy in Paris— People in gray began ordering the prisoners into column; there was not time to write more; he scribbled, Y’r Devoted Son Nathan, and Saint Nick took the letters away in his pouch, and girls’ shrill voices began to sing in the grove,
Hurrah, Hurrah, for Southern Rights, Hurrah,
and the marching prisoners answered with a roaring
We’ll hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree,
until they were silenced by the guards. Tramp, march, stride, the long shadows on the dust, the long dusty blue column in rising dust, the dogs coming out to yap, the Negroes staring and laughing.

They had some sickness that night; the Rebels put up a tent for the sick; the prisoners slept in a void something like bliss. At least nobody is a-prosecuting us, said one serious countryman from up the Hudson; and most of the others knew that he meant to say persecuting, and that was a joke, and they made much of the joke. They were filled with crackers and raw pork, and knew that they had nothing to fear from captors who would put up a tent to shield sufferers from the night.

They lost their charitable North Carolinians at Hamilton the next day. A new band of Confederates succeeded them, but still there was no brutality; still appeared the nightly ration of black-eyed peas, meal and bacon. . . . The twenty-fourth was a Sunday, and before the prisoners were formed in column for the march to Tarboro a throng of them got together for prayers and Bible reading. They sang, Sweet Hour of Prayer, and Nathan hummed along with the rest for he did not know the words. . . . Should I chant
Kol Nidre
for them? I fear that I do not know that, either. Ah, my poor violin, neglected in its case in New York. Or is it in New York? Father said that he would keep it safe. I wonder where it is.

The train at Tarboro, and striking the main road at Rocky Mount, and rattling on into the South to meet a warmer spring. . . . Now the men were weary of singing; there was a good deal of arguing and one fight in Nathan’s box car, a disturbance which he quelled with haste. Their guards were from the Twenty-eighth Georgia and a very stern officer of the guard—a captain named Johnson—ordered the doors closed at dusk. Then there was mashing and pressing and squeezing and jerking through the long noisy night. A drummer boy wept that he was being smothered.

And I bet you wish you were home with your mother, Tyke.

Yes, God damn it, I do!

Well, so do I. So does every last man of us. So quit bawling, Tyke. It won’t help none.

All right, Corporal Reeves. Sniffle, snuffle. I’ll quih-hit—

Pikeville, Goldsborough, Wilmington with its lean blockade runners lying silver gray by the docks. There was some firing out at sea, the prisoners crowded hopefully against their ferryboat’s rail and soon were rewarded by observing the return of a steamer which had tried to run the blockade. Yeh, yeh, yeh, the men yelled. Try again, Johnny—better luck next time!—but the crew of the steamer could not hear them, and a few sailors waved affably, and shouted jocular insults across the water, or appeared to be shouting them. . . . The new train had platform cars. Various men whispered about jumping off and striking for the woods, but the armed Georgians beside them looked as if they could shoot so no one made the attempt. Younger prisoners waved and hooted at the people, black and white, in every village which the train went smoking through. Cinders came back to sting their eyes, and sometimes glowing flakes were lashed out of the air to sting and burn; but still it was better than being crushed in box cars. . . . In Charleston the ropy beards of Spanish moss swayed dreamily, the flowers were magenta and pink and gold; in Charleston an old Negro came up to the cars with a bucket of hot fried shrimps to sell and his bucket was emptied in a twinkling.

Look at those women. Picking peas in their garden.

Man alive! Wait’ll I write Pa about that. Up home I don’t think he’ll have the peas scarcely planted.

They changed trains again at Savannah and only thirty-five men were put into each box car. There was room to stretch out. It was good to lie down, even though the cars did seem to run on square wheels, even though grit came flying in all night and the sound of hammers deafened a fellow’s ears. The next day they stopped in a wilderness where there was a shack marked Station Number Thirteen, and here the prisoners were marched to an adjacent stream and permitted to wash.

...I’ll be beat, Lewis. You know, my brother Lafe was in a prison pen in Virginia, up until he got exchanged, and he said they never had a chance to wash. So they got lice all over themselves. This is pie. If this keeps up we won’t be doing badly at all.

...And, Sim, look at the rations they’re issuing, up ahead. Looks like soft tack and fresh pork. And beans. By gum, so tis!

...Well, if this be a sample, bring on your hippypotymus. Georgia for me!

That night they were marched into the Andersonville stockade; and so they woke up staring, and they could not believe, they could not believe.

Nathan Dreyfoos said, It was too good to last.

But, Sarge, they can’t mean to
keep
us here.

Look at the other prisoners, Allen.

But they must have made a mistake. Maybe they sent us to the wrong place. Maybe this is a
punishment
camp. Eh, Sarge? Oh, for God’s sake, Sarge, please do ask the guards if there hain’t been a mistake! A man can’t
live
in a place like this.

A great many of them don’t, said one of the blackened hairy creatures who stood watching and listening.

What say?

A great many of them don’t.