) Probably no more appalling sight was ever seen on this
earth. (There are deeds, crimes, that may be forgiven; but this is
not among them. It steeps its perpetrators in blackest, escapeless,
endless damnation. Over 50,000 have been compell' d to die the death
of starvation--reader, did you ever try to realize what _starvation_
actually is?--in those prisons--and in a land of plenty.) An
indescribable meanness, tyranny, aggravating course of insults, almost
incredible--was evidently the rule of treatment through all the
southern military prisons. The dead there are not to be pitied as much
as some of the living that come from there--if they can be call'
d living--many of them are mentally imbecile, and will never
recuperate.[8]
Note:
[8] _From a review of_ "ANDERSONVILLE, A STORY OF SOUTHERN MILTTARY
PRISONS," _published serially in the Toledo "Blade" in 1879, and
afterwards in book form_.
"There is a deep fascination in the subject of Andersonville--for that
Golgotha, in which lie the whitening bones of 13,000 gallant young
men, represents the dearest and costliest sacrifice of the war for the
preservation of our national unity. It is a type, too, of its class.
Its more than hundred hecatombs of dead represent several times that
number of their brethren, for whom the prison gates of Belle Isle,
Danville, Salisbury, Florence, Columbia, and Cahaba open'd only in
eternity. There are few families in the North who have not at least
one dear relative or friend among these 60,000 whose sad fortune it
was to end their service for the Union by lying down and dying for it
in a southern prison pen.
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