into the highest alarm as to
outrages and excesses that these flying desperados might be expected to
commit. One would think that another Grecian horse, introduced into the
heart of the Confederate Troy, had let out its fatal band of armed men.
All good citizens were enjoined to turn out and assist in arresting the
runaways. The vigilance of all patrolling was redoubled, and such was
the effectiveness of the measures taken that before a month nearly every
one of the fugitives had been retaken and sent back to Florence. Few of
these complained of any special ill-treatment by their captors, while
many reported frequent acts of kindness, especially when their captors
belonged to the middle and upper classes. The low-down class--the
clay-eaters--on the other hand, almost always abused their prisoners,
and sometimes, it is pretty certain, murdered them in cold blood.

About this time Winder came on from Andersonville, and then everything
changed immediately to the complexion of that place. He began the
erection of the Stockade, and made it very strong. The Dead Line was
established, but instead of being a strip of plank upon the top of low
posts, as at Andersonville, it was simply a shallow trench, which was
sometimes plainly visible, and sometimes not. The guards always resolved
matters of doubt against the prisoners, and fired on them when they
supposed them too near where the Dead Line ought to be. Fifteen acres of
ground were enclosed by the palisades, of which five were taken up by the
creek and swamp, and three or four more by the Dead Line; main streets,
etc., leaving about seven or eight for the actual use of the prisoners,
whose number swelled to fifteen thousand by the arrivals from
Andersonville. This made the crowding together nearly as bad as at the
latter place, and for awhile the same fatal results followed. The
mortality, and the sending away of several thousand on the sick exchange,
reduced the aggregate number at the time of our arrival to about eleven
thousand, which gave more room to all, but was still not one-twentieth of
the space which that number of men should have had.

No shelter, nor material for constructing any, was furnished. The ground
was rather thickly wooded, and covered with undergrowth, when the
Stockade was built, and certainly no bit of soil was ever so thoroughly
cleared as this was. The trees and brush were cut down and worked up
into hut building materials by the same slow