ircumstances, home-loving, kindly-hearted men,
especially those who had passed out of the first flush of youth, and had
left wife and children behind when they entered the service, were
speedily overcome with despair of surviving until released; their
hopelessness fed on the same germs which gave it birth, until it became
senseless, vacant-eyed, unreasoning, incurable melancholy, when the
victim would lie for hours, without speaking a word, except to babble of
home, or would wander aimlessly about the camp--frequently stark
naked--until he died or was shot for coming too near the Dead Line.
Soldiers must not suppose that this was the same class of weaklings who
usually pine themselves into the Hospital within three months after
their regiment enters the field. They were as a rule, made up of
seasoned soldiery, who had become inured to the dangers and hardships of
active service, and were not likely to sink down under any ordinary
trials.

The insane of Florence were of a different class; they were the boys who
had laughed at such a yielding to adversity in Andersonville, and felt a
lofty pity for the misfortunes of those who succumbed so. But now the
long strain of hardship, privation and exposure had done for them what
discouragement had done for those of less fortitude in Andersonville.
The faculties shrank under disuse and misfortune, until they forgot their
regiments, companies, places and date of capture, and finally, even their
names. I should think that by the middle of January, at least one in
every ten had sunk to this imbecile condition. It was not insanity so
much as mental atrophy--not so much aberration of the mind, as a
paralysis of mental action. The sufferers became apathetic idiots, with
no desire or wish to do or be anything. If they walked around at all
they had to be watched closely, to prevent their straying over the Dead
Line, and giving the young brats of guards the coveted opportunity of
killing them. Very many of such were killed, and one of my Midwinter
memories of Florence was that of seeing one of these unfortunate
imbeciles wandering witlessly up to the Dead Line from the Swamp, while
the guard--a boy of seventeen--stood with gun in hand, in the attitude of
a man expecting a covey to be flushed, waiting for the poor devil to come
so near the Dead Line as to afford an excuse for killing him. Two sane
prisoners, comprehending the situation, rushed up to the lunatic, at the
risk of thei