Andersonville

by MacKinlay Kantor

  Sometimes in the middle of night, when pacing on desperate solitary rounds in his nightshirt, Ira fancied that he heard the warblers which had loved that tilted pine forest when it was a forest, the nocturnal animals which had lapped at the stream when it was a stream. But mostly he went prying among the present occupants. Had the graybeard died as yet? Who won the fight, and did one prisoner now own the other’s pocket comb? What had those boys read about in the newspaper? A Rebel retreat, a brazen Northern lie? The musket shot rapped out, prisoners yelled in distance and midnight, fires of the outside camp shone hard through trees, a wagon rattled, an engine whistled, frogs hallooed in a steady stream of birdlike music along the low places of farther woodland (they had gone from regions closer at hand, the waters had become too dirty for them). Who fired the musket, and at whom, and did he hit him; and why did that dog bark? Did Ike or Johnny or Silas cry in his sleep, did Ike or Johnny or Silas find sleep?

  More and more the power of Andersonville poured over Ira Claffey like a glistening dark tide; it was there, reaching around him, it was sticky (he thought of molasses leaking from a barrel but the tide was not sweet). . . . Once more to the stockade the next day, wondering, staring, absorbing increased terror of the thing. The mean strength in number of the prisoners rose to ten thousand during April, the graves were said to be over nine hundred.

  One time the very cones were clean, unsaturated, untrodden. One time peaceful trunks stood warm and ruddy with sunset on them, purplish when you looked toward the sunset and watched their shadowy eastern sides. There was pure silence, the ground doves’ cooing instead of the cooing which lorn invalids made. Wood of the stockade might have absorbed those wonders, wood of the stockade could never radiate them now. Wood of the stockade stood cut, hammered, malformed, mute in its resentment of the use to which it had been put. Once, said the night hovering above the increasing stench. Once.

  XVII

  When Henry Wirz arrived in March he rented a house owned and occupied in part by a man named Boss. It was a double house with scabby window frames, and on the side which was to be the Wirz habitat several of the outer shutters were missing. Mr. Boss offered but weak hope that these could be replaced by the time Elizabeth Wirz and the children arrived: where might he get shutters, where might he find a carpenter to make them, what of the hardware? In the rear yawned an abandoned cistern into which a gray cat had slipped to drowning a few days earlier, and now the cat’s body floated like a striped bladder breaking the surface of dark seepage, and nobody’d even tried to get it out. This old cistern had been replaced by a more efficient one hollowed beneath the kitchen floor. There was no need for a disgusting spectacle, no excuse for it; Wirz’s physician’s soul revolted at the idea. The cavity might make a fit trap for an enemy but the gray cat had been nobody’s enemy. Also Wirz feared that little Coralie might fall in as the cat had done. He requested assistance from Lieutenant-Colonel Persons and received it lamely (he felt that it was lamely, since he was sourly certain that Persons did not like him at first sight; God knew why). Shortly thereafter Wirz came riding in a wagon driven by a Negro and containing, besides Henry Wirz, another Negro and some tools and scrap lumber. He presided glowering and barking over the two blacks while they toted stones, shoveled earth, and finally turned the trap into a cylindrical morass less frightening. The cat’s body was out of sight and out of smell. Scrap lumber served to construct a curb and platform ragged but efficient. Cora could not fall in. Susie and Cornelia were big enough not to endanger themselves heedlessly.

  There. This was done. Had anyone ever said that he was not a good father, not a good stepfather? Who had said it? How dared they say it? They would not say it again. For Henry was a man who thought of his family even before he considered the interior of the double house or his own comfort, or which room would be shared by himself and his wife. Henry had wedded himself to the widowed Mrs. Wolfe in a Kentucky village near Louisville ten years previously. She possessed two children already whom Henry accepted as vague compensation for the boy and the girl he had left with their grandparents in Switzerland. With dedication during those moments when he was not burning with the zeal to earn money and thus become rich, or to serve ardently the Confederacy and thus become a storied hero, he had worked at making Elizabeth Wolfe into a good Zurich Hausfrau. Sometimes an acid of indignation burned his stomach and told him that such labors were in vain.

  The Major Griswold incident gave Captain Henry Wirz fresh self-confidence to the point of exuberance. His arm was no better, sometimes he thought it worse; Bucheton’s surgery in Paris had been useless, worse than useless because it caused additional hurt and inconvenience. Wirz should strike Bucheton from his list of friends (ach, where was that list and how long might it be?) and never consult with him personally or professionally again! It was as if the enormous quantities of sulphate of morphia absorbed by Wirz’s body had built up a wall through which the drug’s beneficence might no longer penetrate; except that it leaked surprisingly through unperceived crannies at times. But exercise of such power as was decreed to him, knowledge that he owned prestige above and beyond his rank— They were neither food nor medicine but they were dazzlement. Aloof he could stand blinking at these brightnesses and feel no pain for a time. Griswold had been of field grade; but Wirz, the lowly captain, had managed to have Griswold sent packing and to another post. Wirz was bitter because allowed to wear no major’s insignia, but delighted at his own immediate accomplishment. He would accomplish more. The demonstration should begin at once. As for General Winder, one must remember that Winder meted out promotions grudgingly. His own cousin, his own son—these were but captains, and after three years of war too. This was said to be the case because the elder Winder had been so long in securing his own promotion through lower echelons. It had taken him forty years to attain his majority in the Regular establishment. Well, let him permit Henry Wirz to administer this new stockade; let Henry Wirz be executive, reorganizer, jailer, shrewd schemer. He would do more for the Government in this capacity than the most vaunted leaders might do at the front. Then General John Winder should see who was worthy of field grade. Ja.

  During that first night in the new house which soon would shelter his family, Wirz dwelt without furniture because the furniture had not yet been moved in. In austere extension of courtesy Persons had offered a tent to the newcomer for his convenience, but Henry Wirz wished to be withdrawn from the coughing and foot-pounding and challenging and rattling of camp life; he was no campaigner in the enviable sense; always he preferred to be withdrawn. He brought his blankets to the bare house, took silent supper with the Boss family, insisted on paying them— He could not understand why they pretended reluctance when he offered to pay them; food cost money; they were not in the restaurant business, but food cost money, you could not deny that.

  Wirz sat cross-legged beside a candle on a box and worked out his plans in a manifold order book with a lead pencil. The book said U.S. and must have been captured, or perhaps preëmpted from some depot long before at the outset of the war. There was justice in the notion that now it was employed as a tool in the manipulation of Yankee prisoners.

  ...Thousands. Lieutenant-Colonel Persons had explained that the prisoners were divided into detachments of Thousands and subdivided into Hundreds, as was the case in other prisons. Ha, Thousands were too large, too unwieldy! Prisoners should never be unwieldy, they should be maneuvered as easily as one pushed dominoes. Ninety men were enough for a squad, a hundred men were too many. How many squads to be in a detachment? Henry Wirz pushed his scraggly dark brows together and peered through waving candlelight at the diagrams he had drawn, the numerals he had put down with neatness. Three squads per detachment—that was enough. Two hundred and seventy prisoners in the largest unit. It might make for more bookkeeping but he, Wirz, would find somebody to keep the books. . . . The population of Camp Sumter must become more fluid, more malleable. He himself would make them more fluid and malleable.
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  If any voice were raised, if one person beneath his authority sought to resist reforms— Ach! Almost it would be a pleasure.

  He worked with his left hand; he had learned to write with it, his right hand hurt him sorely. . . . Three squads per detachment, ninety men per squad. Should he term them squads? Nein. That gave him an idea, and the bilingual connotation caused Henry nearly to smile. They should be Nineties.

  Prisoner, who are you? Sir, I am James Büttner, Third Detachment, Second Ninety— What mess? . . . Thirty men to a mess; that should be convenient for the quartermaster’s purposes, convenient for Wirz’s own, convenient for the men themselves (he did not wish to afford them any convenience truly). But the double series of threes would simplify things. Three Messes to a Ninety, three Nineties to a Detachment. Three Detachments to a— To a what? A regiment, a brigade? Leave it there. Let the area swarm with detachments, not with strictly military designations. It would be well for the prisoners to realize that they were no longer troops, they were prisoners. He would never refer to them as men, he would refer to them always as prisoners.

  Prisoner, Attention! Speak up, Prisoner, tell me your name. Sir, I am James Büttner (ja, you traitor, James Büttner, with a German-sounding name!), Third Detachment, Second Ninety, First Mess. Perhaps it should be the other way around? Instruct him to say in order, First Mess, Second Ninety, Third Detachment? Best to wait and see. He would tolerate no nonsense from prisoners. This they must get into their thick Yankee skulls at the very start. Suppose a prisoner did not speak correctly, did not reply in the prescribed manner? Then he should go supperless. Suppose that the prisoner continued to prove insolent, even so? . . . There were punishments. Chains could be forged. Wirz would cause stocks and whipping posts to be constructed; there should be arrangements for the bucking and gagging of mutineers; order should come from confusion. Confusion bred waste, expense, incompetence among the administrators. Everything here at Camp Sumter should be orderly. Promotions did not come about as a result of disorder. Henry Wirz blew out his candle and sought such sleep as his arm would permit him to find. It was not a good sleep.

  Early he was awakened by children’s talking and running about in the Boss premises. He arose, pleased that for the moment he did not have to dress his forearm amid uncomfortable surroundings. The bone infection healed and opened alternately; he had lost track of the number of times when flesh grew in scarred covering over the minced tissues, the number of times when inflammation redeveloped, swelled, heated, throbbed, puffed, to be relieved only by its own bursting forth through the taut thin surface or by the slash of an instrument which he or some other person wielded. Midway through the act of donning his clothes, Henry Wirz remained motionless for a full five seconds while a delightfully bitter thought overwhelmed him. Suppose that the Yankee artillerist who had hurt him was even now a prisoner within the stockade! What justice in that! . . . But how would he know, how could ever the prisoner confess his crime, how could ever the prisoner know that he had been guilty of that most heinous offense: the Maiming of Doctor Henry Wirz? Impossible. But still the creature might be there, one of those scrofulous pinched-faced gypsies he had observed when he peeked from a sentry station. As yet Henry had not entered the stockade proper, he had only observed. Today he would go inside; he would walk with keen deliberation, estimating necessary changes which must be brought about under his jurisdiction. It was good that he needed not to go with his forearm swathed; it had healed when last he was in Richmond, perhaps it would remain with dermis and epidermis intact for a time, torturing him slowly but not draining, not making yellow stains and smelling like bran.

  Elizabeth had worked a new shirt for her husband. The day was fair (he glanced through the six-paned window with one broken pane) and thus he should not be forced to wear a jacket. He was an individual, he was no professional soldier (although he knew that he could offer wisdom, courage and efficiency beyond the ability of many professional soldiers) and as he sought to relieve the drabness of his being by use of bright colors when in citizen’s attire, so he tried to vary the meanness, the uniformity of dun badly-dyed Confederate clothing. A few officers looked askance at him from time to time, but no one had ever lectured him for his lack of conformity. This was an army where few conformed or could conform. Uniform habiliments were scarce. In the field, men fought in red or tawny undershirts in summer, many of them were apt to be in Yankee overcoats when winter came. Officer X had a green velvet collar on his dress jacket because no gray velvet had been available when that jacket was stitched, Officer Y had a turned-down collar, Officer Z had a stiff standing collar. Officer Q wore the British vest he had worn when fighting for the Queen, and Officer P rode to inspect the pickets in a flat straw hat. Henry Wirz’s reluctance to garb himself according to regulation was neither unique nor ununderstandable. If Elizabeth presented him with a beautiful calico shirt (ach, where had that woman gotten calico? She was clever at times) it was his own business; and he would wear the shirt because he liked new clothing and could not often come by it.

  Actually it was not a shirt but a waist, a waist such as was worn by young boys, and it gave him a fleeting sense of extreme youth and energy to put it on. White pearl buttons adorned the bottom hem of the waist—Elizabeth had sewn them at the proper intervals—probably she had used an old wornout pair of his uniform pants to measure with. He pressed the staring pearl wafers through button holes and stretched his thin chest and tried to square his round shoulders. Ja. Very nice. She should receive from him a letter of thanks as soon as he had time to write it; but perhaps his duties would keep him from writing until Elizabeth and the children arrived.

  He pulled on his boots with some trouble, reaching across with his left arm to drag at his right boot, not daring to stretch the tender right arm. He tied a black scarf about his neck and reached for his revolver belt. The new weapon was a pride. He had bought it while abroad after concentrated search amid the shops of Parisian gunsmiths. This revolver was in fine condition, though it was secondhand, and a special holster had been sewn to contain it. The cylinder itself was built of barrels, ten small barrels; and from the larger bore in the center of the cylinder a musket ball could be projected whenever one chose to pull the trigger which operated it. Do not fool with me, Yankees. No monkey business from you! . . . The acrid but pleasing scent of barley coffee came to his nostrils. Ha, this was a good day, his first day of duty at Camp Sumter. He wished that he might enjoy an egg, but Mr. Boss said that rats or mink or some such vermin had taken off the chickens. Doubtless he would be served corn pone and fried hog-meat, the common fare of these backwoods ignoramuses. Henry Wirz felt in his pocket for the silver dime which he must offer in payment, and went clumping to his breakfast.

  ...Yes, a very fair day; birds were straining with song as he rode toward the stockade half an hour later. This was a borrowed horse, a bad one because he was close to being fractious, and difficult to manage with but one arm and a half. Henry must procure another mount. He must speak to Captain Dick Winder at once, and convey the unpleasantly perfunctory greeting which General Winder had sent to Cousin Dick, and inquire after a sedate gray-white mare he had seen in the pine-pole paddock behind a kind of outhouse indicated as Winder’s office, the previous day. The quartermaster was absent—a lounging sentry said with little respect, Well, Captain, sir, he’s away someplace like he usually is. The sentry had spat tobacco juice dangerously close to Wirz’s boot-toe. Discipline was needed sorely in these parts. He would instill it. Wirz pushed back his shoulders as he rode.

  He called at Dick Winder’s shack, could not find him, left word that he had called, and rode to the North Gate where he dismounted and tied his sore-flanked horse firmly to an adjacent railing from which all bark was already chewed. Henry Wirz would show this ragged hireling horde of Yankees that he was not afraid of them; he would go inside on foot, man to man (no, no—man to prisoner) and look them fiercely in their eyes. Wirz’s own nervous pink-lidded
eyes shone with fresh fire when he glanced at his shabby patent-leather boots. His boots would be dirtied by prisoners’ filth but he would get a Negro to clean them for him. Yes, and he should have an orderly; he must have clerks; he concluded shrewdly that such might be found readily among the mass of Yankees. Errand boys, clerks, personal servants; he would make them walk chalk—no funny business from any of them; but if they volunteered to come Outside in response to his summons they would receive in turn many morsels of food not obtainable in the pen. Would he be justified in offering prisoners double rations if they came to serve him? Assuredly. No one could complain about that.

  At the outer gate of the boxed-off rectangle the sentry did not recognize him as the new superintendent and refused to let him pass. Wirz shrieked, flew into the German which temper always made him spew, shaped the German into broken English once more—English interlarded generously with the oaths and obscenities which at least he could speak clearly. The sentry was unmoved: a stupid elderly fellow with lack-lustre eyes, split lip, stringy beard. Wirz brandished his orders under the fellow’s nose; the fellow could not read, and Henry Wirz would make him sweat for this. He would write out a complaint to the lieutenant-colonel commanding! He—