Andersonville — Volume 4 by John McElroy
page 102 of 190 (53%)
page 102 of 190 (53%)
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HEADQUARTERS MILITARY PRISON, ANDERSONVILLE, Ga., July 27, 1864. The officers on duty and in charge of the Battery of Florida Artillery at the time will, upon receiving notice that the enemy has approached within seven miles of this post, open upon the Stockade with grapeshot, without reference to the situation beyond these lines of defense. JOHN H. WINDER, Brigadier General Commanding. This man was not only unpunished, but the Government is to-day supporting his children in luxury by the rent it pays for the use of his property --the well-known Winder building, which is occupied by one of the Departments at Washington. I confess that all my attempts to satisfactorily analyze Winder's character and discover a sufficient motive for his monstrous conduct have been futile. Even if we imagine him inspired by a hatred of the people of the North that rose to fiendishness, we can not understand him. It seems impossible for the mind of any man to cherish so deep and insatiable an enmity against his fellow-creatures that it could not be quenched and turned to pity by the sight of even one day's misery at Andersonville or Florence. No one man could possess such a grievous sense of private or national wrongs as to be proof against the daily spectacle of thousands of his own fellow citizens, inhabitants of the same country, associates in the same institutions, educated in the same principles, speaking the same language--thousands of his brethren in race, creed, and all that unite men into great communities, starving, |
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