Martyria; or, Andersonville PrisonHamlin, Augustus C. (Augustus Choate)
History
Martyria; or, Andersonville Prison
Hamlin, Augustus C. (Augustus Choate)
Andersonville Prison; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Prisoners and prisons
This line of stockade rose from fifteen to eighteen feet above the surface
of the ground, while the outer line of logs, which was erected about sixty
paces distant from the inner line, was formed of the rough trunks of
pines, and projected twelve feet above the earth. The original stockade
measured but ten hundred and ten feet in length, and seven hundred and
eighty-three feet in width; and within this space were jammed together,
for several months, from twenty-two thousand to thirty-five thousand men,
thus giving a superficial area to each man, when the prison contained
thirty thousand prisoners, but seventeen square feet, after deducting the
nineteen feet average for the dead line, and the quagmire, three hundred
feet in width. This measurement would allow for thirty-five thousand men
but fifteen square feet of area, or less than two square yards to each
person, or more than twenty times the density of Liverpool. This was all
the space that was afforded before the enlargement, and this reckoning
does not include roads or by-paths for communication among the prisoners.
Seventeen and a half square feet of earth are allowed for the coffin's
length in the field of sepulchres. There were here to be seen twelve acres
of living men, packed together like the immense shoals of fish in the
ocean, but like nothing that has life on the earth, not even the
ant-fields. The ratio of density was equivalent to more than sixteen
hundred thousand people to the square mile. The densest portion of East
London has the great number of one hundred and sixty thousand to the
square mile.
VII.
In the month of August the stockade was lengthened six hundred and ten
feet, by what influence or from what cause it is unknown; but nevertheless
it was enlarged to the length of sixteen hundred and twenty feet,--thus
making the entire area sixteen hundred and twenty by seven hundred and
eighty-three feet. This enlargement was a salutary movement on a small
scale, but it only prolonged the sufferings of the victims. The thirty
thousand men had now twenty-two acres, minus the dead line and marsh, or
thirty square feet per man, or three and a half square yards. There were
actually, during this month, thirty-five thousand men within the prison,
and some authorities give me as high as thirty-six thousand. This density
is enormous, and cannot be tolerated by animal life in any climate, in any
latitude, of the world. There must be space for organic life to develop
and maintain itself, otherwise it perishes. To give a correct idea of the
crowded condition of this pen, we do not know where to turn for example.
The great cities of civilized lands do not even approximate in their ratio
of populations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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