The execution of these men was witnessed by all the prisoners who were able to get out of their tents, and it is needless to add, was approved by them, all except the Raiders. Besides the prisoners, all the rebels who were on duty outside, found a position where they could witness the scene. The Confederate officers, apprehensive of a stampede of the prisoners, took the precaution to keep their men under arms, and the guns in the forts were loaded, the fuses inserted in the vents and No. 4 stood with lanyard in hand ready to suppress an outbreak. The hanging of these men had a very salutary effect upon the other evil doers in the prison. Heretofore we had had no organization; we were a mob of thirty-three thousand men, without law, and without officers. Each mess had its own laws and each man punished those who had offended him; that is, if he could. But now this band of thugs was broken up and their leaders hanged. The Regulators were turned into a police force, with the gallant Limber Jim as chief, and henceforth order prevailed among the prisoners at Andersonville. The reader will readily see, from reading what I have written in this chapter, that our sufferings did not all proceed from the rebels. Almost twenty-five years have elapsed since those scenes were enacted, the hot passion engendered by the cruelties of prison life, have measurably cooled, and as I am writing this story, I am determined to “hew to the line let the chips fall where they will,” and with a full understanding of what I say, I affirm that many of the prisoners suffered more cruelly, at the hands of their comrades, than they did from the rebels themselves. There was among the Pilgrims, a fiend by the name of McClellan, a member of the 12th New York cavalry, who kicked, and abused, and maltreated the poor weak prisoners who got in his way in a manner which deserved the punishment meted out to the six Raiders. He had charge of delivering the rations inside of the prison, and if some poor starved boy, looking for a crumb got in his way he would lift him clear off from the ground with the toe of his huge boot. One day while the bread wagon was unloading, I saw a boy not more than eighteen years old who had become so weak from starvation, and so crippled by scurvy that he could not walk, but crawled around on his hands and knees, trying to pick up some crumbs which had fallen from the bread; he happened to get in McClellan’s way, when that brute drew back his foot and gave the poor fellow a kick which sent him several feet, and with a monstrous oath, told him to keep out of his way. This was only one instance among thousands of his brutality, yet with all his meanness I never heard him charged with dishonesty.