At least these were my impressions in inspecting it in May, 1865, nearly a year after the events I am now relating. It was quite dark when our prisoners were halted before the Libby; but the gas lamps of the street showed the iron barred front of the building, lined with ghastly faces looking out upon the night. Our men were suffering extremely, all from fatigue, and many from acute illness brought on by eating green corn and green apples, and marching under the burning sun. And many sat down and many dropped upon the sidewalk before the prison, while waiting for the doors to be thrown open. A report went round among them that they were only to be packed up in the Libby for that night; and that next morning they were to be divided between Belle Isle and Castle Thunder. At last the massive doors were thrown open and the prisoners were forced in—really forced, for though _they_ made no sort of resistance, the crowd already there was so great that it formed an almost impassable obstacle to the entrance of any more. But our boys were pushed in and pressed upon this crowd, until it fell heavily back upon itself, to the risk of great injury and even death to individual prisoners. And when nearly all were in, and the crowd still bulged through the open doors, as the contents of an over-full trunk bulges through its open top, these doors were closed by main force upon it, just as you would close down the lid of the trunk. This was not a silent and a patient crowd like that in the barn had been. The greater number of these men had suffered too long and too terribly. Their state had been bad enough before this new instalment of prisoners was thrust in upon them; now it was immeasurably worse. Here were men pressed together by thousands in a stone hall that could not have accommodated a hundred in comfort—pressed together so closely that there was no room to sit or lie down. To be sure they had air from the open gratings at each end of the hall; but the walls on each side were reeking with moisture and sickening with mould, and the ground floor under their feet was paved only with round stones like those in the middle of the streets, and was in many places worn with deep holes, where water had gathered, in which the men stood ankle deep. Many of these men were suffering from wounds, not serious in the beginning, else they had not been brought here, but inflamed and fevered by neglect and ill treatment; many were racked with neuralgia and rheumatism from constant exposure to damp and cold; many were ill from revolting forms of disease brought on by foul food. And added to all this, all were suffering from hunger, thirst and weariness. And there was no relief and no prospect of relief. Here, over these prison doors, might have been inscribed the awful motto over the gates of Hell: WHO ENTERS HERE LEAVES HOPE BEHIND.