Under ‘retaliation’ and living on cats.
We had ‘jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.’ We were all put under what they called ‘retaliation,’ for forty-five days. They claimed that we starved their prisoners at Andersonville (not having much to feed them, as they had cut our lines and refused to exchange), and with all their christianity and philanthropy they held it was right for them to starve us as a vicarious punishment for the sins of others. They gave us absolutely nothing at all to eat for forty-five days but a little rotten cornmeal filled bugs, without salt or anyway to cook it. Our comrades were dying by squads daily, the dead house was filled all the time with corpses. Scores of cats would enter through holes and prey upon the dead. Some of us would put bags over the holes through which the cats entered, and some would go in with clubs, and soon we would have a full supply of cats. They were eaten ravenously by the starving officers, as Lieutenant Peary's men ate their comrades. At last we were ordered back to Fort Delaware. The remnant of the six hundred left that Yankee hell, where Southern braves cried for bread and fed on cats, gorged with the corpses of their dead comrades. We reached Fort Delaware a short time before the surrender. One morning I was aroused by a familiar ‘rebel yell’—looked out and saw the flags drooping at half mast and heard that Booth had killed Lincoln. Soon all privates and line officers were paroled, and sixty field officers were held in prison until August.
