nheard-of crowding together.
c. Utter lack of shelter.

It is difficult to say which of these three was the most deadly. Let us
admit, for the sake of argument, that it was impossible for the Rebels to
supply sufficient and proper food. This admission, I know, will not
stand for an instant in the face of the revelations made by Sherman's
March to the Sea; and through the Carolinas, but let that pass, that we
may consider more easily demonstrable facts connected with the next two
propositions, the first of which is as to the crowding together. Was
land so scarce in the Southern Confederacy that no more than sixteen
acres could be spared for the use of thirty-five thousand prisoners?
The State of Georgia has a population of less than one-sixth that of New
York, scattered over a territory one-quarter greater than that State's,
and yet a pitiful little tract--less than the corn-patch "clearing" of
the laziest "cracker" in the State--was all that could be allotted to the
use of three-and-a-half times ten thousand young men! The average
population of the State does not exceed sixteen to the square mile, yet
Andersonville was peopled at the rate of one million four hundred
thousand to the square mile. With millions of acres of unsettled,
useless, worthless pine barrens all around them, the prisoners were
wedged together so closely that there was scarcely room to lie down at
night, and a few had space enough to have served as a grave. This, too,
in a country where the land was of so little worth that much of it had
never been entered from the Government.

Then, as to shelter and fire: Each of the prisons was situated in the
heart of a primeval forest, from which the first trees that had ever been
cut were those used in building the pens. Within a gun-shot of the
perishing men was an abundance of lumber and wood to have built every man
in prison a warm, comfortable hut, and enough fuel to supply all his
wants. Supposing even, that the Rebels did not have the labor at hand to
convert these forests into building material and fuel, the prisoners
themselves would have gladly undertaken the work, as a means of promoting
their own comfort, and for occupation and exercise. No tools would have
been too poor and clumsy for them to work with. When logs were
occasionally found or brought into prison, men tore them to pieces almost
with their naked fingers. Every prisoner will bear me out in the
assertion that there was probabl