discrimination was made in the issue of rations to guards and prisoners. In quantity, quality and kind the daily supply was exactly the same, man for man. It is true it was very scanty, consisting of a third or half a pound of meat a day, and usually a pint or pint and a half of corn meal, with salt. Occasionally there were small supplies of wheat flour, and sometimes a very few potatoes, but they were rarely to be had. Other vegetables we had none. General Lee's army in Virginia lived but little if any better. The food was sound and wholesome, but meagre in quantity, and not such in kind and variety as Federal soldiers had been accustomed to draw from their abundant commissariat. Our soldiers did very well on "hog and hominy," and rarely complained. The Federals thought it horrible to have nothing else, and but a scanty supply of this simple food. Great scoundrelism was detected amongst the prisoners in cheating each other. They were organized in companies of a hundred each in the stockade, and certain men of their own selection were permitted to come outside the stockade and draw rations for their fellows, and cook them. Many of these rascals would steal and secrete a part of the food, and, as opportunity offered, sell it at an exorbitant rate to their famished comrades. Shortly before I went to Andersonville six of these villains were detected, and, by permission of the prison authorities, the prisoners themselves organized a court of their own, tried them for the offence, found them guilty, and hung them inside the stockade. This event led to a change in the mode of issuing rations, which precluded the possibility of such a diabolical traffic in stolen food.
Bad as was the physical condition of the prisoners, their mental depression was worse, and perhaps more fatal. Thousands of them collected around me in the prison, and begged me to tell them whether there was any hope of release by an exchange of prisoners. Some time before that President Davis had permitted three of the Andersonville prisoners to go to Washington to try and change the determination of their Government and procure a resumption of exchanges. The prisoners knew of the failure of this mission when I was at Andersonville, and the effect was to plunge the great majority of them into the deepest melancholy, home-sickness and despondency. They believed their confinement would continue till the end of the war, and many of them looked upon that as a period so indefinite and remote that they believed that they would die of their sufferings before the day of release came. I explained to them the efforts we had made and were still making to effect an exchange. A Federal captain at Andersonville, learning that I had a brother of the same rank (Captain F. M. Imboden, of the Eighteenth Virginia cavalry) incarcerated at Johnson's Island, in Lake Erie, where he was in a fair way to die from harsh treatment and a lack of food, represented to me that he had powerful connections at Washington, and thought that if I would parole him he could effect his exchange for my brother, and perhaps influence a decision on the general question of exchanges. He agreed to return in
