Andersonville (53 page)

You acted on your own recognizance, didn’t you? Did anyone try to persuade you to ignore the fact that I’d declined to give you permission for the removal? Did Wirz persuade you?

It would be incorrect, General, to say that he did. We were both of the same mind about it. When permission was refused or declined or however the general wishes to state it, Captain Wirz remonstrated with me.

What did you tell Captain Wirz?

I told him to proceed with the hospital’s removal.

Upon whose authority, then?

I told Captain Wirz that I would take full responsibility.

Bare-faced disobedience! And, by God, you’re positively smug about it!

Persons thought, still in a rage by no means blind— He thought, as a hundred other military men had thought, as a thousand civilians had thought while Winder served as provost-marshal— He thought, If you were my own age, sir! If you didn’t have those dratted stars wreathed upon your collar! How I’d like to knot my fist and push it into your doughy phiz! How I’d like to stand up to you with a pistol!

He said, speaking with a pained deliberation which would have revealed to his intimates that he was very near to physical assault, age or no age, rank or no rank— It occurred to me, sir, that if the general were here in person, on the ground and possessed of firsthand evidence as to the necessities, the general would very likely revise his opinion. Since I held this belief, I gave Captain Wirz instructions accordingly. I repeat, sir, that I assume full responsibility.

Winder growled meaningly, The general is now here, he’s on the ground, by Jesus Christ. I’m going to get you out of here so fast your head’ll spin!

Persons said nothing, he dared not speak.

The entire system is being reorganized, d’you hear? I shall be in sole command of all prisons east of the Mississippi. That’s General Cooper’s plan, and it meets with Mr. Seddon’s approval and with President Davis’s approval, by God!

Persons’ throat and mouth and lips were chalk. I have seen no orders from the I.G. to that effect, sir.

So you haven’t. But it’s in the offing, and I’m giving it to you directly from the horse’s mouth, Colonel. Do you think for one moment that you field grade officers, supposedly occupied with your duties in the field, know everything that goes on in Richmond? In a pig’s ass you do!

Respectfully, General Winder, I am bound to call your attention to the Article of War which states that superiors of every grade are forbidden to injure those under them by tyrannical or capricious conduct, or by abusive language. . . . I shall instruct an officer to extend to you and your party the courtesies of my post. Until I am relieved, sir. Persons saluted, ground his heel into the platform, walked away. He was on the point of throwing up, he hoped that he could control his palpitating stomach until he was out of sight.

Winder bellowed after him, Very well, Colonel, the hospital’s outside and it shall remain outside; we’ve no people to spare for the task of mopping up milk that other men have spilt! I’m here, I’m on the ground, but I tell you that I’ll never set foot inside that damned stockade, I’ll not sully my boots with Yankee scum!

His military family stood clustered fawningly behind him; Captain Peschau cluck-clucked his tongue, shook his head, and spoke in deprecation of Lieutenant-Colonel Persons to the others.

...Find himself commanding Fort Shit on Ass-hole Creek.

...Find himself a captain, you mean!

...Shouldn’t be a bit surprised. Just look at old J.H.W. He’s in a slather.

...Well, walk softly, Major.

...Soft as silk, Jack my boy.

Alex Persons had gone so far as to prepare plans for the barracks which he hoped to erect within the enclosure, working until all hours at night with one Lieutenant Wright of the Fifty-fifth who owned some engineering experience. Sid Winder would have been the logical officer for this task, but Persons knew better than to broach his plan to any of the Winders. With Wright he had labored to secure the maximum amount of effective shelter at a minimum expenditure of planks. So a master drawing had been made, and copies traced through impression paper. Reports were being drawn on the quantity of tools and labor available, some of the lumber had actually been carried as far as the North Gate. Persons strode, defeated and ill, past aromatic stacks of sawed pine. His hope, his accumulated treasure . . . now it would be stolen. He knew what would happen to the lumber after he was sent packing (and it did happen thus). Forty or fifty structures growing over the trampled hillsides, but not within Andersonville. No shelter for the prisoners, but offices and quarters for General Winder, Cousin Dick Winder—dear Cousin Dick!—and Sid Winder. A hospital for the guards, perhaps—they had nothing but tents, but better tents than the Yankees had. Perhaps more barracks for the officers of the Georgia Reserves. Sutlers’ shacks— Reserves would floor their tents with precious boards, they would shade their canvas with more precious boards— Agh.

Lieutenant-Colonel Persons stumbled behind a tree and was sick in fact. Cold sweat stood out, his temples were pounding him to death. He halted at a nearby well with its leaky tub, washed his face, then went on to headquarters.

He didn’t like Wirz, he didn’t see how anyone could ever like Wirz; but he had grown to admire the sickly man’s zeal. Every frenzied blundering attempt of Wirz at providing better facilities had met with Persons’ approbation. Persons had loaned his best men to aid Wirz in the hospital’s removal, in the shoring of the ugly stream. Lieutenant Wright himself had volunteered to supervise the stockade’s extension. Paroled prisoners and black labor had done the trick, and would have done this trick of barracks-building if allowed to proceed. Alex Persons understood the whole truth at last. Henry Wirz was a frothing little ferret, a martinet of a repulsive sort, but at least his brain was oozing with ideas and some of the ideas were good ones. He was not impelled by humanitarian motives but by a desire for efficiency; had he been provided with the means he might have superintended a cleanly prison if a cruel one. Obviously he wished revenge, but at the same time he was given seriously to stewardship (his own version of stewardship).

General Winder wished to kill as many of the prisoners as he could. It was as simple as that.

Now he would kill them in increasing droves. Persons had seen those reports assembled with so much cursing and fussing. Wirz was always brandishing reports under his nose. He could not recall the exact figures, of course, but he did remember round numbers. The mean strength in March was about seventy-five hundred, the deaths about three hundred. Mean strength in April ten thousand, deaths six hundred. Mean strength in May fifteen thousand, deaths seven hundred. Morbidly he had asked Lieutenant Wright to count marked graves in the cemetery (there were believed to be many unmarked, because of the carelessness surrounding burial) and Wright had reported fifteen hundred and eighty-two marked graves. Alex Persons presumed that the mean strength of prisoners might rise as high as twenty-two or twenty-three thousand when figures for all of June were summed up; that would mean an additional twelve or thirteen hundred dead. What would be the value of prisoners’ barracks in summer? Alex Persons was a Georgian; he knew very well what the value of shade would be. Once he had put a thermometer out in the June sun and the temperature was marked at one hundred and twenty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. In winter he had witnessed as much as twenty-two degrees of frost. The hospital would never have been removed from the stockade unless he, Persons, had exceeded his authority—had, in fact, deliberately disobeyed an opinion if not an order. And now he would be whipped away from this command, the barracks would never be built. Winder would toast Yankees throughout the summer as surely as if he held them impaled on a ramrod above a camp blaze. And, next winter— If it were an especially cold winter— And often in Georgia an especially cold winter followed an especially hot summer, as this was growing to be—

Lieutenant-Colonel Persons thought that his removal from this command would save his life, but it would rob him of an opportunity to save whatever dignity was left to the Confederate States Government insofar as Andersonville was concerned.

He performed courtesy chores for the general and his party, and then left the post in charge of Major Flournoy. His own head was on the chopping block, he had put it there himself, the blade would come down today, tomorrow, next day, it didn’t matter.

He rode to the Claffey plantation, he hadn’t the strength to walk there. He found Ira among peach trees, and Ira offered him a green peach.

That’s all I’d need, Mr. Claffey, sir! Already I’ve been nauseated today. I mean that truly.

Ira looked at Persons’ face, and picked up his implements promptly. We shall go into the house, Colonel. Why not lie awhile on the sofa in my library?

I fear I’d take permanent possession of it.

They did go into the house. Persons sat with a glass of blackberry wine.

One of my daughter’s many triumphs, Colonel. And most settling to the stomach.

Persons sat hunched on the sofa. Soon he was pouring out the Winder story. I speak to you, sir, because I must speak to someone. You’re a citizen, and I’d probably be churched if it came out that I was blabbing. But— Oh, devil take us. I’m going to be churched anyway!

He sipped the wine and said presently in a calmer tone, You have patience and tolerance, Mr. Claffey. And you have been a soldier.

I did know Mr. Davis, said Ira. It was during the Mexican War.

Twould mean nothing. That senile wretch has the President’s ear, or so everybody says.

Will this change in command result in immediate deterioration of the local situation? Ira laughed dryly. You see, I’m trying to speak in military parlance.

Persons told him, biting off his words: It will mean this, sir. No individual of whatever rank will have the right to interfere with General John H. Winder in any shape, form or fashion. This order will give him absolute dominion and control over every Yankee prisoner east of the Mississippi—and of course that’s where most of them are. The extended engagements now being fought above Atlanta and below Richmond— You can understand that, Mr. Claffey. The bulk of all Yanks captured by us during the progress of these campaigns, which campaigns I pray will be terminated by the success of our arms—

Amen, sir!

The bulk of the captured Yanks will land
here.
That old monster has planned it so, else he’d not be sending all these trainloads. I’ve exceeded my authority—he calls it bare-faced mutiny—and I shall be flogged or broken for it. So farewell, Mr. Claffey, and bless you for your hospitality.

He stood up, and Ira took his arm and walked with Persons to his horse.

Persons went but Winder stayed. And in his dedication Father Peter Whelan stayed. Peter Whelan dwelt sparely in an unpainted shack nearly a mile from Andersonville. His stove was a charred hollow stump at the door with a half-burned-out grating spread over the top and blackened stones to hold his little kettle in place. There was an open frieze of sky and pines showing around the edges of the roof where shakes had peeled; when rains came there fell steady leakage all along the ridgepole. There was no door, only a gaping doorway and a half of a cedar log for a step. Father Whelan’s army blanket was spread over a compressed mound of pine straw and oak leaves. Rats came to visit him at night but they did not offer to bite; he’d hoped that the persuasion of Saint Francis of Assisi might rule these small creatures away from their natural savagery, and it did rule. Father Whelan wore a coat of faded blue linen, and this jacket was busy with lice throughout its seams. He tried to keep the lice in check, burning them off over a flame as he had seen the Yankees do, but it was only a gesture. There were too many hovels into which he must crawl, too many shivering skeletons beside whom he must crouch or even lie to hear their mutterings. Lice lived in every beard, every squirming tuft of hair. Father Hamilton had warned him about vermin after the Macon priest made his explorative visits during May. Indeed, said Father Hamilton, it’s such a filthy place. The men huddled together, crawling with filth. Ah, hear me—I went in there wearing my white coat, and I’d not been there but one quarter of an hour at the most, when a guard kindly drew my attention to the condition of my coat. It was fairly alive. I had to take my coat off and leave it with the guard, and perform my religious duties in my shirt sleeves, the place was that filthy.

Och, the poor boys!

But you’re an old man, Father Whelan. Do you think you can bear with it?

If Bishop Verot should send me— Ah, no. If Our Lord should send me—

I fear you’ll but sicken and die.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may I sleep and rest in peace in your holy company.

Henry Wirz showed not the slightest objection to providing Peter Whelan with a pass to visit stockade or hospital as he chose; perhaps he might have objected had Whelan been a minister of the Protestant faith. (Thus far only one Protestant had evinced a desire to enter Andersonville to preach; and he was a die-hard Secessionist who preached Secession intermingled with Christianity, and came near to being thrown out bodily by the prisoners.) Henry Wirz placed the leaky shack at the priest’s disposal and saw that rations were issued to him by the guards’ commissary. Other than that Wirz did not seek the venerable Father’s company; he felt that Whelan was disgusted if not appalled by boorish profanity, and since Captain Wirz might not conduct his superintendency of the prison without employing boorish and worse than boorish profanity—

The old priest. You got him a place to sleep,
ja?

Yes sir, Captain. Sergeant Prather fixed him up tolerable in that old shanty over past the sawmill.

Every day inside among the Yankees he goes?

Yes sir, Captain. I just seen that old bumbershoot of his a-flapping along the road. Generally he gets inside by nine o’clock, don’t come out till nigh onto dark.

The Church had a power greater than the power of all armies of all countries and all centuries put together; partly because its equipment and tendons and the valves of its bejeweled heart were disciplined, but mostly because it was the Church. (When Henry Wirz thought of the Church, which was seldom, he thought of a certain dark portal in Bern where columns of midgets and saints and beasts with gargoyle faces marched unendingly toward some sort of doom; medieval craftsmen had made them march that way, and so they frightened a little boy worse than the Bern bears.) Naked Christians stood with bellies exposed to tigers’ claws in Rome, they quailed at a subterranean roar which came up from dens in Italica (then they saw a light shining). A prelate was squeezed into an iron basket, and to and fro he swung above the coals; and so many thousands of fires had cooked other flesh through the ages (yea, there were fires in Smithfield as well). The poisoned wine, the small hidden dagger, the ring with the needle’s prick, the solemn walling-away . . . road of rocks bruised by sandaled feet or multitudes of feet which wore no sandals . . . heavy fall the pikes of Cromwell’s men, down comes the axe. . . .