risoners in the Stockade. Before the reader dismisses this
statement from his mind let him reflect how great a number this is.
It is more active, able-bodied young men than there are in any of our
leading Cities, save New York and Philadelphia. It is more than the
average population of an Ohio County. It is four times as many troops as
Taylor won the victory of Buena Vista with, and about twice as many as
Scott went into battle with at any time in his march to the City of
Mexico.

These eighteen thousand four hundred and fifty-four men were cooped up on
less than thirteen acres of ground, making about fifteen hundred to the
acre. No room could be given up for streets, or for the usual
arrangements of a camp, and most kinds of exercise were wholly precluded.
The men crowded together like pigs nesting in the woods on cold nights.
The ground, despite all our efforts, became indescribably filthy, and
this condition grew rapidly worse as the season advanced and the sun's
rays gained fervency. As it is impossible to describe this adequately,
I must again ask the reader to assist with a few comparisons. He has an
idea of how much filth is produced, on an ordinary City lot, in a week,
by its occupation by a family say of six persons. Now let him imagine
what would be the result if that lot, instead of having upon it six
persons, with every appliance for keeping themselves clean, and for
removing and concealing filth, was the home of one hundred and eight men,
with none of these appliances.

That he may figure out these proportions for himself, I will repeat some
of the elements of the problem: We will say that an average City lot is
thirty feet front by one hundred deep. This is more front than most of
them have, but we will be liberal. This gives us a surface of three
thousand square feet. An acre contains forty-three thousand five hundred
and sixty square feet. Upon thirteen of these acres, we had eighteen
thousand four hundred and fifty-four men. After he has found the number
of square feet that each man had for sleeping apartment, dining room,
kitchen, exercise grounds and outhouses, and decided that nobody could
live for any length of time in such contracted space, I will tell him
that a few weeks later double that many men were crowded upon that space
that over thirty-five thousand were packed upon those twelve and a-half
or thirteen acres.

But I will not anticipate. With the warm weather the condition of