Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/527

Rh remote from Andersonville as soon as barrack accommodations could be built and supplies collected. The removal was effected as rapidly as possible and by the last of September all were gone except such as were in the hospitals unable to travel. It thus appears that Andersonville was used as a main prison not more than six months, during the first four of which the percentage of mortality did not reach the average rate at which Confederate prisoners died in Northern hands, and that as soon as possible the prisoners were removed. The medical corps detailed to remain with the great body of the infected, struggled with the desperate disease with all odds against them. The camp being relieved of all except about 5,000 invalids and nurses, besides laborers and a small guard, the surgeons were enabled to improve the general sanitary conditions and to erect new and large hospital sheds. Confederate surgeons &quot; remained by their dying patients when even their own countrymen had deserted them,&quot; some dying at their posts, and all evincing a devotion to professional duty and humanity which merits the linking of Andersonville prison and the heroic charity of their profession together. But with all their care the progress of death was terrible for two months. In fact, &quot; at one time it had been thought by the medical officers that nearly all the infected would die, but by the use of vegetables in such quantities as could be procured and an acid beer made from cornmeal and sorghum molasses, the death rate fell from about 3,000 in August to 160 in December.&quot;

In the beginning of these horrors the Confederate government renewed the efforts for exchange of prisoners for at least the one good reason that the captives on their hands were an immense disadvantage. Supposing that the South had no humane feelings toward Northern captives and cared nothing for the appeals of its own brave soldiers suffering at Elmira, Johnson s Island and elsewhere, it will still appear that there were military