Anthony M. Keiley

“ The chief of the former department was a club-footed little gentleman, with an abnormal head and a snaky look in his eyes, named Major E. L. Sanger. On our arrival in Elmira, another surgeon, remarkable chiefly for his unaffected simplicity and virgin ignorance of everything appertaining to medicine, played doctor there. But as the prisoners increased in numbers, a more formal and formidable staff was organized, with Sanger at the head.
Sanger was simply a brute, as we found when we learned the whole truth about him from his own people. ”

“ These we seized upon, no one being allowed to touch a piece, however, until the whole company entered, and each man was in position opposite his ration (universally pronounced raytion, among our enemies, as it is almost as generally called with the "a" short among ourselves, symbolical, you observe, of the shortness of provant in Dixie) . This over, a detail of four or five men from each company—made at morning roll-call—formed themselves into squads for the cleansing of the camp; an operation which the Yankees everywhere attend to with more diligence than ourselves. ”

“ During all this season the ration of wood allowed to each man was an arm-full for five days, and this had to cook for him as well as warm him, for at that time there were no public cook-houses and mess-rooms.
An additional refinement of cruelty was the regulation which always obtained at Point Lookout, and which I believe was peculiar to the prison, under which the Yanks stole from us any bed-clothing we might possess, beyond one blanket! This petty larceny was effected through an instrumentality they called inspections. ”

“ Twice a day the camp poured its thousands into the mess-rooms, where each man's ration was assigned him; and twice a day the aforesaid rations were characterized by disappointed "rebs" in language not to be found in a prayer-book. Those whose appetite was stronger than their apprehensions frequently contrived to supply their wants by "flanking"—a performance which consisted in joining two or more companies as they successively went to the mess-rooms, or in quietly sweeping up a ration as the company filed down the table. ”

“ Of the same block Captain Bowden was a chip: a fair-haired, light-moustached, Saxon-faced "Yank"—far the worst type of man, let me tell you, yet discovered—whose whole intercourse with the prisoners was the essence of brutality. An illustration will paint him more thoroughly than a philippic. A prisoner named Hale, belonging to the old Stonewall brigade, was discovered one day rather less sober than was allowable to any but the loyal, and Bowden being officer of the guard, arrested him and demanded where he got his liquor. ”

“ During the scorching summer, whose severity during the day is as great on that sand-barren as anywhere in the Union north of the Gulf, and through the hard winter, which is more severe at that point than anywhere in the country south of Boston, these poor fellows were confined here in open tents, on the naked ground, without a plank or a handful of straw between them and the heat or frost of the earth. ”

“ During several weeks, in which dysentery and inflammation of the bowels were the prevalent diseases in prison, there was not a grain of any preparation of opium in the dispensary, and many a poor fellow died for the want of a common medicine, which no family is ordinarily without—that is, if men ever die for want of drugs. ”

“ Once in every ten days an inspection was ordered, when all the prisoners turned out in their respective divisions and companies in marching order. They ranged themselves in long lines between the rows of tents, with their blankets and haversacks—those being the only articles considered orthodox possessions of a rebel. A Yankee inspected each man, taking away his extra blanket, if he had one, and appropriating any other superfluity he might chance to possess ”

“ The Major bears a bad reputation here, in the matter of money; all of which, I presume, arises from the unreasonableness of the "rebs," who are not aware that they have no rights which Yankees are bound to respect. ”

“ It colors every thing black in which it is allowed to rest, and a scum rises on the top of a vessel if it is left standing during the night, which reflects the prismatic colors as distinctly as the surface of a stagnant pool. ”

“ We make the following extracts concerning Point Lookout:
{{fine block|The routine of prison-life at Point Lookout was as follows: Between dawn and sunrise a "reveille" horn summoned us into line by companies, ten of which constituted each division—of which I have before spoken—and here the roll was called. This performance was hurried over with much as haste as is ascribed to certain marital ceremonies in a poem that it would be obviously improper to make a more particular allusion to; and those whose love of a nap predominates over fear of the Yankees, usually tumble in for another snooze. ”

“ Others found in the barrels of refuse fat, which were accumulated at the cook-house, and in the pickings of the bones, which were cut out of the meat and thrown out in a dirty heap back of the kitchen, to be removed once a week, the means of satisfying the craving for meat, which rations would not satisfy. I have seen a mob of hungry "rebs" besiege the bone-cart, and beg from the driver fragments on which an August sun had been burning for several days, until the impenetrable nose of a Congo could hardly have endured them. ”

“ There would be and is much excuse for such deficiencies in the South—and this is a matter which the Yankees studiously ignore—inasmuch as the blockade renders it impossible to procure any luxuries even for our own sick, and curtails and renders enormously expensive the supply of drugs of the simplest kind, providing they are exotics ”

“ The ground was inclosed at Point Lookout for a prison in July, 1863, and the first installment of prisoners arrived there on the 25th of that month from the Old Capitol, Fort Delaware and Fort McHenry, some of the Gettysburg captures. One hundred and thirty-six arrived on the 31st of the same month from Washington, and on the 10th of August another batch came from Baltimore, having been captured at Falling Waters. Every few weeks the number was increased, until they began to count by thousands. ”

“ When complaint was made of this brutality to the sick, there was always a convenient official excuse. Sometimes the fault would be that a lazy doctor would not make out his provision return in time, in which case his whole ward must go without food, or with an inadequate supply, till the next day. ”

“ Now at Elmira the quota was not made up till the last of August, so that September was the first month during which any fair estimate of the mortality of the camp could be made. Now, out of less than nine thousand five hundred prisoners on the first of September, three hundred and eighty-six died that month.
At Andersonville the mortality averaged a thousand a month out of thirty-six thousand, or one thirty-sixth. At Elmira it was three hundred and eighty-six, out of nine thousand five hundred, or one twenty-fifth of the whole. At Elmira it was four per cent. ”

“ He is a little compound of fice and weasel, and having charge of the cleaning up of the camp, has abundant opportunities to bully and insult, but being, fortunately, very far short of grenadier size, he does not use his boot or fist as freely as his great exemplar. ”

“ If he had not avoided a court-martial by resigning his position, it is likely that even a military commission would have found it impossible to screen his brutality to the sick, although the fact that the United States hanged no one for the massacre of Indian women and sucking infants during the year 1865, inspires the fear that this systematic * * * * of Confederate prisoners would have been commended for his patriotism. ”