dent and Vice-President, defy description. The scanty rations, less than one sixth the amount required to sustain men in healthy condition, often consisted of raw corn, or what is still worse, corn and cobs ground together, and no fuel was allowed to cook it. Then they would place small sticks of wood just oxer the dead line; one day one of E——’s comrades reached across the fatal line to get a stick to use in cooking his cob meal; the crack of a gun was heard, and the body of the poor fellow lay stretched across the line, from whence his comrades could not remove him without subjecting themselves to the same penalty. The camp was surrounded with timber, but they were never allowed a quarter of a supply for cooking, still less to keep them warm in winter. They were without tents or shelter of any kind. Had they been allowed the privilege they would have brought timber from the woods and made shanties for themselves, but this was denied them. Several men were shot in trying to reach across the dead line to get a little clean water, none fit to use being within reach elsewhere.
Great numbers of these unfortunate prisoners had been stripped of their boots and all their clothing, and received in return a ragged shirt and pants, without blanket or overcoat, with no shelter whatever. They dug holes in the ground to keep warm in, from whence they were often driven out by water on stormy nights, and as the result, thirty dead bodies were often gathered up in the morning. No class of human beings have been found in any country, claiming to be civilized, who have been guilty of such horrid atrocities, except in communities where slavery existed, and strange as it may seem, it is always the oppressor and not the oppressed who suffers this moral degradation, as will be seen in the relation of a few incidents.
