portraying the horrors they had endured
there, it would still remain for the fifteen thousands, whose emaciated
forms passed through its gates to their final rest, to write up the
history of the torments through which THEY passed during so many days of
agony and wretchedness, of suffering, despair and death, before the
history would be complete and the "finis" affixed. Thank God I was not
doomed to be a resident of this charnal house, where out of eighty-five
of my brave comrades who belonged to our detachment of cavalry, and who
were destined to suffer its blood-curdling horrors, only eighteen ever
lived to relate the tales of fiendish cruelty to which they were obliged
to submit.

On the plateau in front of the pen the officers and enlisted men were
separated, as no officers were held in Andersonville, except a few who
commanded colored troops, whose rank would not be recognized by such
GENTLEMEN (?) as Wirz and his aids. Though I had heard much of the
hardships of Andersonville, I then had no idea what the real horrors were,
and after being separated I called Sergeant Cunningham towards me, was
talking to him about caring for them, and endeavoring to maintain
discipline as far as he could, when a Dutchman, mounted on a white horse,
rode up with a cocked revolver in his hand and ordered him, with a
terrible oath, to "Git back dere in de ranks, and if you come oud again I
blow your tam head off."

Having up to this time been treated with the respect supposed to be due an
officer, I must say that I was not quite prepared for such a bombastic
display of authority. The ludicrous gestures and evident bravado of the
man (for I believed then, and do now, that he was a craven coward) only
caused me to laugh as I told him that the place for men who were fond of
shooting was at the front; that I called my Sergeant out of the ranks and
was alone to blame for his leaving his place in the line. Knowing
Sergeant Cosgrove (or Cunningham, as his right name was, he having, as he
told me on leaving the service, enlisted under an assumed name), and
having been with him in places that tried what kind of stuff men were made
of, I could understand the look of contempt with which he quietly took his
place again in the line.

After the enlisted men had been sent to the pen, the officers were
conducted to a small church, or rather chapel, on the opposite side of the
road, where we remained over night. We were not very closely guarded, and