{"id":4727,"date":"2014-03-04T17:42:36","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T23:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4727"},"modified":"2014-03-04T17:42:36","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T23:42:36","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-march-4-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=4727","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour for March 4, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Raiding Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Between February, 1864 and April, 1865 it is estimated that 45,000 Union prisoners were confined in the Confederate stockade, Camp Sumter, near Anderson Station, Georgia, forever to be remembered as Andersonville. Of that number, approximately 25,000 men survived their prison experience and returned home to tell their tale of suffering. It is unknown how many survivors, with their health and lives shattered, died as a direct result of their captivity after returning to civilian life. Close to 13,000 Union soldiers did \u201cgive up the ghost\u201d at Andersonville, and it was the ghost of Andersonville that haunted the survivors for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n

The following is an excerpt from the account of Private George Weiser, who arrived in Andersonville on May 25, 1864.<\/p>\n

At this time we were pested with a gang of our men who were called Mosby’s Raiders. \u00a0There seemed to be about one thousand of these men banded together, nearly all of them were known, and we could point them out wherever we would see them. \u00a0These men, or raiders, did not disturb many of the old prisoners but they would steal off the new ones when they first came in, which made a great deal of trouble in the prison.<\/p>\n

One day three Rebs came in the prison. \u00a0One appeared to be a doctor who had a little pet dog with him. \u00a0I saw one of the raiders slip up behind them and steal the dog. \u00a0He took it to his shanty, killed it and made it into soup. \u00a0I saw that same raider that evening going through the prison selling soup. \u00a0He would sing out, “Here is your nice mutton soup, twenty-five cents a pint, with a piece of mutton in every pint.” \u00a0The doctor never knew what became of his dog. \u00a0One day these raiders stole \u00a0a watch. \u00a0Some said they stole from the Rebs and some said they stole it off one of the new prisoners. \u00a0I do not know which it was… any way there was quite a riot started on account of it.<\/p>\n

The watch was never found but the raiders got themselves into trouble by it. \u00a0The excitement was so strong that the Rebs marched in a company of their men. \u00a0They then had it explained to them how we were tormented by the raiders. \u00a0The captain in charge of the prison now ordered the regulators to arrest all the raiders and send them outside to him. \u00a0The regulators in two days had arrested over three hundred and sent them out. \u00a0They were then tried by a court-martial composed of prisoners and rebels, six of them were found guilty of murder. \u00a0One of their shanties was dug out and one of the prisoners found murdered and buried therein. \u00a0Then all but the six were sent back into the prison again and they were kept out until the 11th of July.<\/p>\n

The Captain that had charge over the prison came in and said, “We have arrested some of your men and have given them a fair trial; six of them have been found guilty of murder; we do not know what to do with those six men; they ought to be hung, but we dare not hang them for fear your government may retaliate, so we have made up our minds to send them back into the prison and let them go. \u00a0You men can take them, let them go free, hang them or do what you like with them.” \u00a0Every thing had been still and silent while the captain was speaking, but now a cry went up from five thousand me, to “hang them, hang them.”<\/p>\n

One of the prisoners went up to the captain in charge of the prison and said that he would hang them if the captain would give him lumber to build a scaffold and rope to do the hanging with, for said he, “these raiders have killed my brother and I want to hang them for it.” \u00a0The captain said he would send everything in that was needed. \u00a0A wagon was sent in with the lumber and soon the men had a scaffold built with six ropes dangling on it. \u00a0Then about three o’clock in the afternoon the six men were brought in hand-cuffed. \u00a0The captain in charge of the prison then removed the hand-cuffs and turned the men over to the prisoners. \u00a0The Rebs then all went out except the Quartermaster and the Priest. \u00a0These two stayed inside the prison until after the hanging. \u00a0There were about five thousand prisoners at this time standing crowded together near the gate.<\/p>\n

As soon as the six men were relieved of cuffs one of them, the leader of the gang, made a break for liberty. \u00a0He ran through this crowd of five thousand men, up and down the prison, across the low muddy ground, went up to his knees in mud, fell down, crawled out of the mud, got on the land and kept on running until some one run up to him and caught him. \u00a0Then they were taken to the scaffold, the ropes put around their necks, mealsacks pulled over their heads, and soon they were dangling in the air. \u00a0One man broke the rope but he was put up again and hung. \u00a0They were left hanging for about one hour when a wagon drove in and they were then cut down, loaded on the wagon and took out. \u00a0This stopped the raiding and there was no raiders now to be found. \u00a0Now if a man was caught stealing he was taken to the regulators and if found guilty, he was tied to a post, received from five to twenty lashes, and then let go.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Culled from:\u00a0Andersonville Giving Up the Ghost: Diaries & Recollections of the Prisoners.<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Raiding Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Between February, 1864 and April, 1865 it is estimated that 45,000 Union prisoners were confined in the Confederate stockade, Camp Sumter, near Anderson Station, Georgia, forever to be remembered as Andersonville. Of that number, approximately 25,000 men survived their prison experience and returned home to tell their tale of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4727"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4761,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4727\/revisions\/4761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}