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
medical staff of the United States army in 1862, and but two per cent.
were lost; also, that in 1863, seventeen hundred thousand cases were cared
for, with a loss of three per cent. only.
XV.
The statistics of the great armies of Austria, Sardinia, and France during
the Italian war, when half a million of men met in conflict at Magenta and
Solferino, show, according to Boudin, that but six thousand four hundred
and ten men lost their lives--of the French, three thousand five hundred
and five; of the Sardinians, one thousand and forty-five; of the
Austrians, one thousand eight hundred and sixty. It is shown by the
records of the British army, that, out of the aggregate number of four
hundred and thirty-eight thousand British soldiers who were engaged in the
twenty-two great battles of the British empire from 1801 to 1854, but
fourteen thousand men were killed, or died of their wounds, or three per
cent. These battles embrace those of Egypt, Spain, France, Waterloo, and
the Crimea.
Contrast these blood-stained records with this one instance of rebel
cruelty at Andersonville. Of the number of the Federal soldiers who have
been held in captivity during the rebellion by the rebels, more than
thirty thousand of them are now dead. We know from official records that
twenty-three thousand are buried at Andersonville and Salisbury alone.
XVI.
Up to the month of September, 1864, forty-two thousand four hundred
prisoners had been received, and out of this number seven thousand five
hundred and eighty-seven, or eighteen per cent., had died since the
occupation of the prison--a period of about six months. During August the
manoeuvres of Sherman alarmed them so much that they thought best to
remove many of the prisoners to other stockades in Alabama and in North
and South Carolina; but yet the mortality for the remainder of the year
was for the month of September seventeen per cent. out of the number
present; October, twenty-seven per cent.; November, twenty-four per cent.;
and seven per cent. in December, when there were but five thousand
inmates. This gives nineteen per cent. average for each of those four
months, and indicates that out of the thirty-two thousand present on the
first of August, but few thousand would have been living at the close of
the year, had not Sherman compelled a reduction in the number of inmates.
Out of this number present in August, and distributed afterwards, I
believe that but few thousand survived the system of treatment at the
other prisons, and ever lived to reach home. Of these few thousand men who
were finally exchanged, a great many have since perished; which statement
will be admitted by all who have watched the phases of disease since the
termination of the war.
XVII.
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