Frankly, sir, I’d thought in terms of one thousand dollars.
One thousand dollars? Perfectly preposterous, young man, preposterrrruss!
But, sir, I—
It would amount to an insult to my professional integrity, Mr. Ransom! A thousand dollars? Humph, I’ll pay you a hundred.
But, sir, one hundred dollars—
I didn’t mean one hundred dollars! I meant one hundred thousand dollars! Beamingly the publisher opened his desk, scratched around here and there, and then began to toss small bags filled with gold coins, to toss them at John Ransom. John dodged and ducked, the plummets fell faster, one struck him in the eye and he yelled with the grief of it. A horse-fly had bitten him on the right eyelid. He sat awake and scorching in the dry bath of the shebang. Bateese came near to feel the back of Johnny’s neck, to feel fever there, to say, I bring water.
July 5, wrote the young man a day later. Court is in session outside and raiders being tried by our own men. Wirtz—
(Never could he spell this name correctly.)
—Has done one good thing, but it’s a question whether he is entitled to any credit, as he had to be threatened with a break before he would assist us. Rations again today. I am quite bad off with my diseases, but still there are so many thousands so much worse off that I do not complain much, or try not to however.
Boiling hot, camp reeking with filth . . . men dying off. . . . Have more mementoes than I can carry, from those who have died, to be given to their friends at home. At least a dozen have given me letters, pictures &c., to take North. Hope I shan’t have to turn them over to some one else. . . . Rebel visitors . . . look at us from a distance. It is said the stench keeps all away who have no business here and can keep away.
(All except Ira Claffey, who appeared on a sentry platform daily. Guards begged tobacco from him, he tried to remember to carry a plug at all times; though often he would forget, he used tobacco so rarely himself. He looked down and saw Newgate, Bedlam, and camps where he had heard that Spanish torturers herded the rebellious in colonies of New Spain. He watched the pen where Andy Jackson had suffered and sickened when he was a boy, when the spunky Andrew refused to clean a British officer’s boots. He observed the misery of Seminoles, saw Osceola dying in filth and stony pride. Here was an inclusion of every indignity and deprivation which a captor might visit upon those he’d shackled. Shackles? So identified: Ira saw the chain gangs dragging as he walked back to his plantation. He marveled how Henry Wirz could sleep at night, he did not know that often Henry Wirz never slept.)
At the end of the week, first decisions of the court trying the raiders were written out on a sheet torn from the manifold order book (captured: a Federal manifold order book) which had been donated by Wirz for judicial purposes. This paper was posted upon the South Gate. Many crowded there to read it; the news spread far within minutes, and was the signal for congratulatory hullabaloo.
Willie Collins, Patrick Delaney, John Sarsfield, Charles Curtis and the sailors Munn and Rickson had been sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead. Seventeen other men were sentenced to floggings, buckings and to the stocks or chain gang for various terms.
The court’s deliberations were still proceeding when Henry Wirz sent for Leroy Key and Seneca MacBean. The two were conveyed to his office under guard.
The Gate pen I got to have back!
Captain, you told us we could have it to keep our prisoners in, to use for the trial—
Ja, how many days you have it now?
Key still objected, MacBean said nothing. Seneca had deplored the leisurely garrulous aspect of the trial; he thought that it was a mistake to lean over backward in selecting a court of thirteen sergeants, all of whom were recent arrivals at Andersonville. He supposed that this was a weakness inherent in American institutions; he called it creaky justice. It had worked to the Nation’s detriment many times before, and no doubt would until the end of time. Those new-come sergeants had no true conception of what occurred within the stockade during raider-ridden months. They had but academic secondhand knowledge of the fear which had gripped, hands which had gripped, the rupturings and burstings and fracturings so commonplace. MacBean would have been perfectly willing to place any and all of the captured roughs before the muzzles of a firing squad. He would have been willing, if not eager, to stand with that squad. But the dubious chimera of fair play fogged the scene. Cogitations and ramblings of witnesses and counsels alike had long since passed the point of practicality.
You God damn Yankees got lead in your ass, Wirz was screaming. All day you take to tell one man you hang him, one more day you take to tell one more man! Maybe a year you take for the rest, hah? Gott, I must use my gate. Those damn prisoners I put back Inside!
Wirz granted but an hour’s grace, and said that he would turn the remaining prisoners back into the stockade, using bayonets if necessary. The Illinoisans were dismissed with a few more execrations, but MacBean lingered, even when a guard jerked at his sleeve.
You go when I tell you, you bad sergeant! Oder you also I put in the stocks!
Captain, one thing: we’ve got to have some wood. Planks, timbers, plenty of ropes—
For why should I give you those things, God damn?
Can’t hang the guilty folks on thin air. We can’t make a gallows out of our shebang poles.
All you damn Yankees thirst for blood!
MacBean stood grinning with saturnine calm, and let Wirz brandish his fist until the arm tired and the fist fell. He saw fierce darting pain in the captain’s face, and was annoyed to find himself pitying Wirz. Resolutely he put the pity down.
Going to be a good fellow, Captain, and give us a nice sound gallows? We got hundreds of qualified carpenters who’d be willing to work without pay—
He won the promise of adequate materials for the execution, to be delivered—on loan, not as a gift—within the stockade on Monday morning. Wirz had shrieked that the hanging should occur the very next day. MacBean pointed out that the next day was Sunday, and thousands of prisoners might object to a sextuple execution on the Sabbath. It wouldn’t matter to him, he said.
But you might get a riot, Captain.
At that dread word the superintendent winced and agreed that Monday would be best. MacBean went back to the cubicle, provoking guards to rage by his sauntering, and found that the six condemned hooligans had been placed in stocks to await their death. Key adjourned court permanently. The seventeen men already sentenced were herded off to punishment; but more than a hundred others still sat with bound hands (the feet of the more recalcitrant were also bound).
Can’t turn them back inside, MacBean told Key, without taking off those ties. They’d be torn to death instanter.
The innocent along with the guilty?
Hell’s bells, they’re all guilty.
Word of the intended repatriation of untried, unconvicted raiders had seeped into the pen; prisoners were roaring. Many, who had been reluctant to assist the Regulators until tide of battle turned in their favor, were now vociferous in declaring their hatred of the accused. They brandished cudgels, declared that they would pound the accused to a pulp the moment they appeared.
A hasty trip through the wicket convinced Key that the danger was real and not fancied. He sent another appeal to Wirz but it fell upon deaf ears. Several squads of guards with fixed bayonets entered the enclosure through its outer gate, and Key shrugged hopelessly.
I don’t like it, Seneca.
Don’t like it too well myself, but what’s a feller to do? Let’s you and I haste back inside for keeps.
There was not time to marshal the Regulators. They were scattered over the entire stockade, and had it been possible to marshal them, nothing could have resulted except the burden of perpetual guarding and tending. Swarms of the furious came milling as Key and MacBean stepped through the narrow portal.
Make them run the gantlet, said MacBean in inspiration.
This notion was accepted with roaring enthusiasm. To the end of his life Seneca would believe sincerely that he had saved many lives in this way, although what was the purpose in saving lives such as these? It was apparent that when those hated men were shoved individually through the door they would be mobbed as fast as they appeared. . . . A gantlet was something else: it appealed to a sporting instinct however savage. It suggested in its very form an Indian tradition that if a man managed to flee under a lengthy rain of blows, and survived them, he would achieve to some asylum.
Before the first unhappy New Yorker was shoved through the wicket, a vengeful population had formed a lane for the man’s reception. Hundreds of others rushed to extend the course of punishment. The first New Yorker through the gate was an undersized long-armed man called Monk Galloway, ticketed appropriately because of the length of his dangling arms, the flatness of his bald dome, the jut of jaw and scrolling of face. He had trailed with the Roach Guards through a number of street brawls. He knew Willie Collins by sight, if Willie did not know him, before either of them ever heard of Andersonville. Monk was afraid of Willie, and thus had joined the gang captained by Curtis. He was not large, but a dangerous fighter: a man who delighted in cries and blanchings of his victims; then his eyes shone hot, his breath puffed short, spasmodic. Had he come to trial, Monk Galloway might not have been hanged but would have been condemned to a chain gang.
A guard’s weapon prodded him, he stepped across the bottom plank. Immediately someone kicked him in the thigh; a club was swung at his head, the blow missed. Holding arms lifted and bent for protection he was propelled down the line by a succession of swats and punches. He fell beneath howls and punishment, leaped up and closed in a tussle with the nearest men. A club snapped against his right ear, already corrugated with scars of old feuds; when he was torn out of this grip and hammered on to the next, he bled at ears and at the nose, his eyes protruded with gleaming fear of death. Any individual of the herd assailing him, he felt that he could have handled alone—in many cases two or three of them together. But neither were they now fellow prisoners nor a flock of bleating creatures to be snapped at by wolves of his species. They were turned into gesticulating Indians, cannibals. They could have been weaker than cats; still the blows would have fallen, there were too many of them.
A new chorus of shouts rang at the gate, another and larger man was hustled. His name was Myles Crickland, his home had been a lumber camp in Michigan. He’d never stolen so much as a dime, and never whipped a smaller man for gain, until he came to Andersonville. But while being shipped he had fallen in with John Sarsfield. Crickland had not wished to starve any more than Edward Blamey wished to starve: he lent size and ferocity to the Sarsfield cause. The same prisoner who’d aimed the initial cudgel stroke at Galloway now whirled his club at the target of the Michigander’s head; this time the blow did not miss. The dazed lumberman faltered in a blind circle, his weight carried him completely through one pouncing screaming line before he fell. He could have been pounded to death then and there, but another raider was forced into the arena, attention was distracted. Crickland fell to his knees, fell further. His length stretched across the ground, his shoulders shook as he blubbered. Three contorted youths stood above him, alternately kicking with bare feet and jabbing with poles wrenched from some nearby shebang. . . .
The third man was one Ross from Boston; the fourth a stupid longshoreman, middle-aged, who’d supported the banner of Patrick Delaney. A voice yelled, I think he killed one of our boys, and Ross ran away from that voice. He pushed his bulk down the lane with lurching strides until he was tripped and fell to be stomped upon. Old Cleary made rough agonized progress behind him; most of Cleary’s clothes were torn off before he’d gone as far as Ross. . . .
So they came: Murphy, Rae, Billings, Apgar, a dozen more, to receive hackings and thwackings, to be swatted, bloodied . . . beasts of prey turned miraculously into dogs, to accept that cruelty visited upon homeless animals, to know—for the first time, perhaps—what it was to sustain the attack of wretches who gave quarter only when distracted by a new victim.
The eleventh man through the gate was Edward Blamey. Seemingly his legs were more bowed than ever, since he wore a sailor’s clothing. In an instant boys were yelling, Look out! Look out, he’s got a knife! Certainly Edward Blamey had a knife. In looking after Number One he’d kept gold pieces sewn in the collar of his blouse, and with a gold piece had bought a butcher knife from the venal Mackey Nall, unperceived by Regulators who also guarded. How Ed Blamey had concealed that knife: whether in blouse or sleeve, how he had hidden it when his hands were tied, no one might ever know. The blade flashed in Edward Blamey’s freed hand, files of prisoners scattered before him. He went tearing away down the slope; but all The Wrath To Come which had been preached and which he had dreaded, cried at his heels.
Blamey had never been a fast runner. Desperation gave him speed. He fled squarely through one shebang, tried to rush through another and was staggered by the collision. He went to the left . . . no, that way lay the deadline; he held a swift vision of guards lifting their guns above him. He raced back to the east. A small group stood in his path, he yelled, knifed at them, did not strike anyone. The men jumped apart, then joined the pack baying on Ed Blamey’s trail.
A lone man watched his rapid approach. His name was Lynn, a solemn farmer from Indiana who had been in the stockade only since the first of the month; he had not been set upon by raiders on his arrival; his uniform was fairly new and fairly clean. Lynn had bull strength left to him. He’d been busy this day, had helped to carry two dead bodies to the habitat of the dead, and was rewarded with the common premium of being allowed to go Outside with a wood-detail. His own wood was secured in the shape of a long rail of pine; once the rail had been part of a Claffey fence. Lynn returned through the North Gate. He lugged his pine pole all the way to the shebang he shared with friends on the southern slope, and had been wondering what to do with his prize . . . whether to seek help in cutting it up, whether to sell all or only part of this wooden treasure. He must consult with friends, and they were not at home. He stood as if once more armed and with the Union forces, holding his rifle at Present Arms; actually he held the tall rail straight into the air.
Edward Blamey might not have seen this man; again, he might have seen him and decided flashingly to run the risk. His rubber-legged stride carried him directly in front of Farmer Lynn, and when Ed was two leaps distant the rail began to speed in lowering. It came down rapidly. It had been vertical, it went through its portion of an arc. The sound rapped clear as it struck squarely atop Edward Blamey’s bare head. The knife flew. Blamey never thought again, there was no waking mind surviving to reason or repent. The Wrath overtook him. He did not know that Number One was dying, did not know when Number One died.
XXXIII
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Death On A Pale Horse: people described Henry Wirz so, because of course he rode the old gray-white mare and wore his one suit of white duck.
More and more was Wirz departing from prescribed military usage in his habit and attire. One might have thought that John Winder would upbraid him for these lapses and bring about a reformation. The fact was that the old general paid little attention; but rarely did awareness of slip-shod deportment penetrate the toughening hide which wrapped that senile brain. The guards were slovens, their officers slovens. Sid Winder wore a plaid shirt and a straw hat; Cousin Dick was neater than he, but still he wore red knit galluses. The general himself had streaks of egg and fat upon his tunic, he belched heavily after eating, he ate prodigiously, you could hear him belch if you were standing in the yard outside his quarters. On a single occasion was it observed that his tantrum rose from recognizing that the Swiss captain was not up-to-snuff. An edict had come from Richmond f
orbidding anyone to issue an order for transportation except on the orders of chiefs of bureaus, or commanders of Armies and Departments. Wirz complained that this dictate locked up the post decisively and hampered him in discharging his duties. He appeared before John Winder with a request that the general obtain an order which would make him, Wirz, an exception and would allow him to issue transportation at least in Winder’s name if not merely above his own signature. No one else was in the room with the two, but Captain Peschau sat at an improvised desk on the outside stoop, and two sentries lounged near. They heard a familiar bellow, a wail which stemmed apparently from physical anguish. They heard John Winder roaring, God damn it, can’t you grant me the courtesy of appearing in uniform? Henry Wirz emerged trotting, with his face ashy; lips trembled under his beard as he muttered, as he ran. It was believed that old J.H.W. had emphasized criticism by grasping the captain’s arm, his wounded arm. On this day Wirz wore the bright-piped calico waist, pearl buttons and all; but he had worn it many times before in the general’s presence without engendering annoyance. Peschau decided uncomfortably that General Winder had eaten too much pork again. Peschau wondered how soon he himself would stand to endure a verbal thrashing. He watched Henry Wirz retreating on horseback after his usual struggle to hoist that round-shouldered tormented body into the saddle. Peschau thought that he should not wish Wirz’s job—not for a fortune in greenbacks, a fortune in gold; not for all the flimsy banknotes which ever poured from Confederate presses.
Death on a white horse, Death on a pale horse, Death warmed over, Death cooled off. So the prisoners typified Henry during this forenoon of July eleventh, when he headed a procession into the stockade.
Holy Mary, pray for them.
All ye holy Angels and Archangels, pray for them.
Holy Abel, pray for them.
All ye choirs of the just, pray for them.
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