almost naked upon our bed of pine leaves, shivering in the raw, rasping
air, and looked out over acres of wretches lying dumbly on the sodden
sand, receiving the benumbing drench of the sullen skies without a groan
or a motion.

It was enough to kill healthy, vigorous men, active and resolute, with
bodies well-nourished and well clothed, and with minds vivacious and
hopeful, to stand these day-and-night-long solid drenchings. No one can
imagine how fatal it was to boys whose vitality was sapped by long months
in Andersonville, by coarse, meager, changeless food, by groveling on the
bare earth, and by hopelessness as to any improvement of condition.

Fever, rheumatism, throat and lung diseases and despair now came to
complete the work begun by scurvy, dysentery and gangrene, in
Andersonville.

Hundreds, weary of the long struggle, and of hoping against hope, laid
themselves down and yielded to their fate. In the six weeks that we were
at Millen, one man in every ten died. The ghostly pines there sigh over
the unnoted graves of seven hundred boys, for whom life's morning closed
in the gloomiest shadows. As many as would form a splendid regiment--as
many as constitute the first born of a populous City--more than three
times as many as were slain outright on our side in the bloody battle of
Franklin, succumbed to this new hardship. The country for which they
died does not even have a record of their names. They were simply
blotted out of existence; they became as though they had never been.

About the middle of the month the Rebels yielded to the importunities of
our Government so far as to agree to exchange ten thousand sick. The
Rebel Surgeons took praiseworthy care that our Government should profit