Identifier: battlefieldpriso00urba (find matches)
Title: Battle field and prison pen, or Through the war, and thrice a prisoner in rebel dungeons
Year: 1882 (1880s)
Authors: Urban, John W
Subjects: United States -- History Civil War, 1861-1865 Personal narratives United States -- History Civil War, 1861-1865 Prisoners and prisons
Publisher: (Philadelphia, Hubbard Brothers) Edgewood Pub. Co
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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, and what kind of treatment wewould receive from our new jailers. Surely inour case ignorance was bliss. We were in-formed by some of the guards that it was a campin the woods, and that alone made the impressionthat It would be a better place than prison-life inbuildings like Libby. The descriptions we re-ceived of the place were not unfavorable, and therebels assured us that the treatment we wouldreceive would be much better than that which weexperienced in Richmond. Whether they did this from ignorance, or froma desire to keep the truth from us until they hadus safely inclosed in the pen, or from a fiendishdesire to increase our torture by disappointment,we could not find out; but we did discover thatthey were either liars or ignorant of what theywere talking about, and that all our former ex-perlences and sufferings in rebel prisons werebut an Intimation of what was still In store for us. We arrived at Andersonville at two oclock p. m.,June 16th, and as the train stopped we looked
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ARRIVAL AT ANDERSONVILLE. 307 around anxiously to see what kind of a place itwas. We were somewhat surprised to find thatit was only a small way station, with few housesin sight. Directly after our arrival we wereordered to eet out of the cars and form in line for o the purpose of marching to the prison, which wasabout one mile from the station. It was rainingvery fast at the time, and, as we were in a coun-try almost entirely covered with timber, we ex-pected to find some kind of shelter in our newprison; but as we marched from the station, andcaught a sight of the prison, our hearts sankwithin us, for inside of the large inclosure wesaw a living mass of prisoners, the most of thembeing wholly without shelter, standing aroundin the rain and mud, presenting an appearanceno words can describe. It was so crowded thatwe could not at first believe it possible for themto put all of us into the inclosure. As we camenear the eate we noticed that a reo^iment of rebelsoldiers were drawn up in

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