After this was kept up for several nights different ideas began I to prevail.  It was felt that if a man wanted to join the Rebels, the best way was to let him go and get rid of him.  He was of no benefit to the Government, and would be of none to the Rebels.  After this no restriction was put upon any one who desired to go outside and take the oath.  But very few did so, however, and these were wholly confined to the Raider crowd.

CHAPTER LXII.

Sergeant Leroy L. Key—­his adventures subsequent to the executions
—­he goes outside at Andersonville on parole—­labors in the cook-house
—­attempts to escape—­is recaptured and taken to Macon—­escapes from there,
but is compelled to return—­is finally exchanged at Savannah.

Leroy L. Key, the heroic Sergeant of Company M, Sixteenth Illinois Cavalry, who organized and led the Regulators at Andersonville in their successful conflict with and defeat of the Raiders, and who presided at the execution of the six condemned men on the 11th of July, furnishes, at the request of the author, the following story of his prison career subsequent to that event: 

On the 12th day of July, 1864, the day after the hanging of the six Raiders, by the urgent request of my many friends (of whom you were one), I sought and obtained from Wirz a parole for myself and the six brave men who assisted as executioners of those desperados.  It seemed that you were all fearful that we might, after what had been done, be assassinated if we remained in the Stockade; and that we might be overpowered, perhaps, by the friends of the Raiders we had hanged, at a time possibly, when you would not be on hand to give us assistance, and thus lose our lives for rendering the help we did in getting rid of the worst pestilence we had to contend with.

On obtaining my parole I was very careful to have it so arranged and mutually understood, between Wirz and myself, that at any time that my squad (meaning the survivors of my comrades, with whom I was originally captured) was sent away from Andersonville, either to be exchanged or to go to another prison, that I should be allowed to go with them.  This was agreed to, and so written in my parole which I carried until it absolutely wore out.  I took a position in the cook-house, and the other boys either went to work there, or at the hospital or grave-yard as occasion required.  I worked here, and did the best I could for the many starving wretches inside, in the way of preparing their food, until the eighth day of September, at which time, if you remember, quite a train load of men were removed, as many of us thought,