on to the bones and tendons long after the nerves and veins had ceased to
perform their functions, and sometimes startled one by dropping off in a
lump, without causing pain or hemorrhage.

The appearance of these was, of course, frightful, or would have been,
had we not become accustomed to them. The spectacle of men with their
feet and legs a mass of dry ulceration, which had reduced the flesh to
putrescent deadness, and left the tendons standing out like cords, was
too common to excite remark or even attention. Unless the victim was a
comrade, no one specially heeded his condition. Lung diseases and low
fevers ravaged the camp, existing all the time in a more or less virulent
condition, according to the changes of the weather, and occasionally
ragging in destructive epidemics. I am unable to speak with any degree
of definiteness as to the death rate, since I had ceased to interest
myself about the number dying each day. I had now been a prisoner a
year, and had become so torpid and stupefied, mentally and physically,
that I cared comparatively little for anything save the rations of food
and of fuel. The difference of a few spoonfuls of meal, or a large
splinter of wood in the daily issues to me, were of more actual
importance than the increase or decrease of the death rate by a half a
score or more. At Andersonville I frequently took the trouble to count
the number of dead and living, but all curiosity of this kind had now
died out.

Nor can I find that anybody else is in possession of much more than my
own information on the subject. Inquiry at the War Department has
elicited the following letters:


I.