Robert McCUNE.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Fifteen months ago—­and one month before it was begun—­I had no more idea of writing this book than I have now of taking up my residence in China.

While I have always been deeply impressed with the idea that the public should know much more of the history of Andersonville and other Southern prisons than it does, it had never occurred to me that I was in any way charged with the duty of increasing that enlightenment.

No affected deprecation of my own abilities had any part is this.  I certainly knew enough of the matter, as did every other boy who had even a month’s experience in those terrible places, but the very magnitude of that knowledge overpowered me, by showing me the vast requirements of the subject-requirements that seemed to make it presumption for any but the greatest pens in our literature to attempt the work.  One day at Andersonville or Florence would be task enough for the genius of Carlyle or Hugo; lesser than they would fail preposterously to rise to the level of the theme.  No writer ever described such a deluge of woes as swept over the unfortunates confined in Rebel prisons in the last year-and-a-half of the Confederacy’s life.  No man was ever called upon to describe the spectacle and the process of seventy thousand young, strong, able-bodied men, starving and rotting to death.  Such a gigantic tragedy as this stuns the mind and benumbs the imagination.

I no more felt myself competent to the task than to accomplish one of Michael Angelo’s grand creations in sculpture or painting.

Study of the subject since confirms me in this view, and my only claim for this book is that it is a contribution—­a record of individual observation and experience—­which will add something to the material which the historian of the future will find available for his work.

The work was begun at the suggestion of Mr. D. R. Locke, (Petroleum V. Nasby), the eminent political satirist.  At first it was only intended to write a few short serial sketches of prison life for the columns of the Toledo blade.  The exceeding favor with which the first of the series was received induced a great widening of their scope, until finally they took the range they now have.

I know that what is contained herein will be bitterly denied.  I am prepared for this.  In my boyhood I witnessed the savagery of the Slavery agitation—­in my youth I felt the fierceness of the hatred directed against all those who stood by the Nation.  I know that hell hath no fury like the vindictiveness of those who are hurt by the truth being told of them.  I apprehend being assailed by a sirocco of contradiction and calumny.  But I solemnly affirm in advance the entire and absolute truth of every material fact, statement and description.  I assert that, so far from there being any exaggeration in any particular, that in no instance has the half of the truth been told, nor could it be, save by an inspired pen.  I am ready to demonstrate this by any test that the deniers of this may require, and I am fortified in my position by unsolicited letters from over 3,000 surviving prisoners, warmly indorsing the account as thoroughly accurate in every respect.