Andersonville eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 689 pages of information about Andersonville.

Andersonville eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 689 pages of information about Andersonville.

At one of the stopping places I had been separated from my companions by entering a car in which were a number of East Tennesseeans, captured in the operations around Knoxville, and whom the Rebels, in accordance with their usual custom, were treating with studied contumely.  I had always had a very warm side for these simple rustics of the mountains and valleys.  I knew much of their unwavering fidelity to the Union, of the firm steadfastness with which they endured persecution for their country’s sake, and made sacrifices even unto death; and, as in those days I estimated all men simply by their devotion to the great cause of National integrity, (a habit that still clings to me) I rated these men very highly.  I had gone into their car to do my little to encourage them, and when I attempted to return to my own I was prevented by the guard.

Crossing the long bridge, our train came to a halt on the other side of the river with the usual clamor of bell and whistle, the usual seemingly purposeless and vacillating, almost dizzying, running backward and forward on a network of sidetracks and switches, that seemed unavoidably necessary, a dozen years ago, in getting a train into a City.

Still unable to regain my comrades and share their fortunes, I was marched off with the Tennesseeans through the City to the office of some one who had charge of the prisoners of war.

The streets we passed through were lined with retail stores, in which business was being carried on very much as in peaceful times.  Many people were on the streets, but the greater part of the men wore some sort of a uniform.  Though numbers of these were in active service, yet the wearing of a military garb did not necessarily imply this.  Nearly every able-bodied man in Richmond was; enrolled in some sort of an organization, and armed, and drilled regularly.  Even the members of the Confederate Congress were uniformed and attached, in theory at least, to the Home Guards.

It was obvious even to the casual glimpse of a passing prisoner of war, that the City did not lack its full share of the class which formed so large an element of the society of Washington and other Northern Cities during the war—­the dainty carpet soldiers, heros of the promenade and the boudoir, who strutted in uniforms when the enemy was far off, and wore citizen’s clothes when he was close at hand.  There were many curled darlings displaying their fine forms in the nattiest of uniforms, whose gloss had never suffered from so much as a heavy dew, let alone a rainy day on the march.  The Confederate gray could be made into a very dressy garb.  With the sleeves lavishly embroidered with gold lace, and the collar decorated with stars indicating the wearer’s rank—­silver for the field officers, and gold for the higher grade,—­the feet compressed into high-heeled, high-instepped boots, (no Virginian is himself without a fine pair of skin-tight boots) and the head covered with a fine, soft, broad-brimmed hat, trimmed with a gold cord, from which a bullion tassel dangled several inches down the wearer’s back, you had a military swell, caparisoned for conquest—­among the fair sex.

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Project Gutenberg
Andersonville from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.