Andersonville (34 page)

Well, Eldridge’s accompanying report would make good reading for someone, sometime, somewhere, if anyone should bother to read it, if it should not be awarded the mere cursory scratch of those three initials.
I found the prisoners, in my opinion, too much crowded for the promotion or even continuance of their present health, particularly during the approaching summer months. . . . At present their shelters consist of such as they can make of the boughs of trees, poles, &c., covered with dirt. The few tents they have are occupied as a hospital . . . very many of them suffering from chronic diarrhoea combined with the scorbutic disposition, with extreme emaciation as the consequence.

Extreme emaciation. Howell Cobb looked down at his own fist, clenched like a solid creased pillow upon his desk. Might not many of those skeletal creatures have once worn the flesh which now dressed his bones? Might they not, like he, have worn even too much flesh? Likely.

The hospital being within the enclosure, it has been found impracticable to administer such diet and give them such attention as they require, as unless constantly watched, such diet as is prepared for them is stolen and eaten by the other prisoners.

Thieves, said Howell Cobb in response to his surgeon’s elucidation. Roughs. Hooligans. Why, Captain Wirz had told him—

Enemies of my Country. Brutes to be restrained. Monsters to suffer durance, fiends to be boarded in their cell. Pray to Almighty God that the necessity for grapeshot should not arise, but once it does arise let the lanyard be quick, the cap in instantaneous flash, let the powder be dry as toast, let the mass of balls go flying.

He sighed, he put thought of his and Eldridge’s reports as far away from him as his thick mental arm could reach. Let him now go back to the dread task of building bricks without— Without anything.

By long lamplight, until very late at night that same week, Henry Wirz worked at preparing his own report. This was directed not to General Cooper, the adjutant-general, but to Major Thomas Turner in Richmond. Wirz had been instructed by Winder’s office that Turner was next superior in the echelon of that command. A direct appeal to General Winder would have suited Wirz much better, but he feared that any attempt on his part to skip echelons would defeat its own purpose promptly.

By this time he had acquired a more tolerable military family, being rid of both the ailing Charles and the light-fingered Viggo. He hoped with all his heart that the report would be free from grammatical errors, and the necessity for this he enjoined constantly upon his clerks. The clerks went to bed at eleven o’clock that night, but Henry Wirz stayed awake until nearly twelve; and continually he peeked at the final copy.

...I am here in a very unpleasant position, growing out of the rank which I now hold, and suggest the propriety of being promoted. Having the full control of the prison, and consequently of the daily prison guard, the orders which I have to give are very often not obeyed with the promptness the occasion requires, and I am of opinion that it emanates from the reluctance of obeying an officer who holds the same rank as they do. My duties are manifold, and require all my time in daytime, and very often part of the night. . . .

H. Wirz,

Captain Commanding Prison.

His small harried heart would have shivered with anticipation could it have known how favorable would be the endorsements to come. Wirz was open to just damnation on almost any charge conceivable but the sorest prisoner within the stockade could never call him lazy. He owned a virtue commonly respected: its name was diligence.

Strangely enough another man named Turner was now active in the life of Henry Wirz. Argument raked persistently between them as to whether a stipulated price amounted to thirty dollars or to thirty-five. The stipulated price was the standard amount on the head of a runaway Yankee. Wesley Turner was a master of hounds; previously he had worn gray, but now he operated in civilian capacity as a professional Yankee hunter. The dogs were most of them ordinary foxhounds or coon dogs with good noses; also the hunter mustered three vicious snapping creatures of mixed breed: perhaps they were a cross between the mastiff and the bull terrier—no one could tell for a certainty. These were known as catch-dogs; they were worthless at a scent, but would race along with the hounds. They served splendidly for scaring, treeing and sometimes tearing escapees (runaway Yankees were not called Escapees but Escapes, in prison slang).

Armed with pistol and horn, Turner rode his mule on a circuit outside the stockade early each morning; dogs sniffed and snorted ahead and behind. Often they trailed a guard or a Negro instead of a Yankee, and brought up yelling among tents of the Georgia regiment, among the Alabamans. Their master tried to beat sense into their heads with a long pole; soldiers stood jeering to watch him. Many of these youths had heard guns fired in anger, some had been wounded, a few had even been captured early in the war, to be exchanged later (fortunate prisoners, in a day when the process of exchange existed still). They had little respect for the man on muleback and no respect at all for Wirz; all who served at the stockade stations were disgruntled at coming under Henry’s command during their tour of duty. As soldiers they recognized the obligation of any man to escape if he could manage it. The more depraved of the lot were trigger-happy, and boasted of Yankees they had shot at the deadline; however they saw nothing outlandish in the effort of a Northerner to tunnel out, flank out, or even to leap on the back of a guard while scratching through the forest with a wood-detail. In all justice they knew that they would have tried the same trick were the situation reversed. Dogs were an ignominy, a bullet was more to the point. The very baying of trail-dogs suggested that a black man had fled rather than a white.

My Daddy used to keep a catch-dog. Big brindled bastard.

Whereabouts was this, Nucky?

Wayne County. If a nigger walked off, man who owned the nigger might have hounds, but mostly they never owned no catch-dogs. Use to hire Buster from my Daddy, and Daddy’d have to go along to handle Buster, and times he’d take me along with him. Old Bus he trailed a damn nigger in the brush along Goose Creek— What I mean to say, them hounds did the trailing, but Bus was right in there with them, and when he come up to that nigger he just gave that nigger sut! Like to tore all the hide off one of his legs. God, you ought to heard that nigger holler.

Leastways he was a nigger.

Nigger ain’t got no damn right to put for freedom!

But these here greasy mechanics ain’t no niggers.

God damn, boy, some of them is!

But not the white ones. What I mean, a soldier is a soldier, I mean a white soldier. How’d you feel to have a catch-dog coming for you, like you was black? Nucky, I’d sure enough taste piss in my mouth fore I’d like to be niggerfied in such fashion.

That fucking Dutch captain! He’s white-livered for sure.

Liver so white that chalk’d make a black mark on it.

God damn, sure enough.

Nevertheless Wesley Turner’s pack of hounds was feared with reason by every prisoner who possessed the boldness and energy to attempt flight. If Roll Call disclosed that new Escapes were loose, or if a tunnel was discovered, or if the guards noted any peculiar activity among Outsiders— In any situations such as these Wirz shrieked for Wes Turner; the horn tooted, hound voices soared, catch-dogs growled and galloped. Through springtime only thirteen men managed to avoid being overhauled, as noted in the superintendent’s report; and four of these were among the seven picked up by patrols in farther regions and fetched back to Andersonville. (The other three unfortunates had fled from a railroad train near Savannah and were brought to Andersonville because it was the prison nearest their point of recapture. Out of the frying pan into the fire, they said when once they stood inside the gate. None of them would survive the summer.)

Wes Turner was richer by nearly one thousand dollars Secesh before the first week of May. He increased his pack in consequence, and traded for a Colt’s revolver to replace his old smooth-bore pistol.

Look a here, Captain. I never got no pay for them last two.

Ja, ja, ja,
you was paid!

I never was paid, and I lost old Trip out of it. One of them damn Yankees had a knife, and he cut old Trip bad when Trip come up to him. I had to shoot him, by God.

The Yankee you should shoot instead!

Well, I did beat the poop out of him. But you never paid me for him, nor for the one I took over behind Widow Tebbs’ place.

Ja,
I show you on the book. You are bad, you Wes Turner, come always to bleed me for money. You think maybe the army is made from money,
nein
?
Maybe I am made from money? Benny, it is you show this bad Turner in the book. . . . Here you see it,
mit
your own eyes!

Look a here, Captain Wirz, you know I can’t read.

Benny can read, and now you he will show. Benny, you God damn Yankee, you show him!

First May, 1864. Paid to W. Turner sixty dollars, two prisoners recaptured.

So what you say to that, hah?

Well, it should a been seventy dollars. First off you promised me thirty-five dollars apiece, and then when I come to claim my rightful money you said thirty dollars—

Get from my office out, you Wes! Son of a bitch—

Don’t you dare call me no son of a bitch, you little Dutch bastard!

Ja,
I call you son of a bitch. Never do you call me one bastard!

Ahh—

Ahhhh, also! Now get out once!

Thus they contended with the meaningless futile insult of the weak and surly and suspicious.

A brilliant idea for the discouraging of tunnels had occurred to Wirz. He planned to put it into effect as soon as enough spades could be secured. His notion of a second, outer stockade must remain in abeyance for the time being, since the labor would be monumental; but he thought that a deep ditch might be dug without too much trouble. Prisoners (Negroes taken at Olustee) could do the excavating, since all his offers of double rations and other blandishments were refused scornfully by the bulk of the whites. But Negroes were an element apart. Neither he nor his superiors countenanced the assumption that they were bona fide military prisoners. He thought of them as wicked slaves who not only planned that nightmare, a slave insurrection, but who had actually participated in such an attempt. Most of the black captives from the Florida campaign had been preëmpted for outside duty as wagon-drivers, grave-diggers and the like. These creatures he would set to digging as soon as he could put spades in their hands. Whenever an engine squawked at the Anderson station he set a youth flying to see whether the long-desired shovels might have arrived along with a new batch of prisoners. Sid Winder told him scornfully that he had experienced little difficulty in requisitioning necessary tools when the stockade was built, but there was a sudden paucity of spades when Wirz sent a detail abroad to seek such necessaries from nearby plantations and smaller farms. His status was understood throughout the neighborhood. People told the would-be requisitioners that Wirz was merely in command of the pen and had no authority to levy on the countryside for anything; only military engineers had such authority. Since this was uncomfortably the truth, Henry Wirz was forced to content himself with the hope of coöperation from headquarters at Macon; General Cobb had promised to do what he could. . . . A ditch, a very deep ditch. Guards should patrol it day and night. How deep would Yankees have to dig in order to avoid projecting their tunnels into that ditch? Very deep; and this they could not do, they were not all coal-miners.

Wirz worked zealously, feverishly at devising punishments for the insubordinate, and once the strap of punishment was prepared he wielded it with gusto. He arranged a row of foot stocks and another of spread-eagle stocks wherein men were locked to stand with their arms extended. (This latter colony caused him private discomfort, since when fastened therein a Yankee bore an unpleasant resemblance to Christ on the Cross. Henry considered himself a good Catholic, although he was not a good Catholic; in secret he felt that he had been guilty of profaning a symbolic sacredness; yet like an Oriental he would lose face if his orders were rescinded and the spread-eagle stocks taken down.) He conferred lengthily with smiths at the camp, and the result was a complicated series of chains and balls among which sinners could be manacled in a double rank and soon were. Trying to escape was a crime, so was complaining about the rations, so was the act of insulting a Confederate soldier or even remonstrating with him. The application of these tortures depended upon the superintendent’s mood. Thus prisoners were puzzled and terrified by his capriciousness since Henry was a slave to moods. Sometimes a Yankee amused him in the manner of his attempt to break loose or in the manner of his recapture; then Wirz might greet him tolerantly, almost affectionately, and turn him back Inside with barely a slap on the wrist. Sometimes (mornings after his right arm had kept him awake were especially evil) a prisoner might offend him merely by way of address, solely by the earnestness of supplication. Then chains were fastened on, then the divided stock-arms were locked firmly.