Talk about Camp Chase, Rock island, or any other prison as you please, but Elmira was nearer Hades than I thought any place could be made by human cruelty. It was a bend of the small river, surrounded by a high board inclosure, with sentinels walking on a platform near the top outside, with a dead line some fifteen or twenty feet on the inside; and if prisoners went near the line, a wound or death was the invariable result. Snow and ice several feet thick covered the place from Decmeber 6 to March 15, 1865. We were in shacks some seventy or eighty feet long, and they were very open, with but one stove to the house. We had bunks three tiers high, with only two men to a bunk, while we were allowed only one blanket to the man. Our quarters were searched every day, and any extra blankets were taken from us. For the least infraction, we were sent to the guardhouse and made to wear a "barrel shirt" or were tied up by the thumbs for hours at a time. There was one Major Beal who, I believe, was the meanest man I ever knew. Our rations were very scant. About eight or nine in the morning we were furnished a small piece loaf bread and a small piece of salt port or pickled beef each, and in the afternoon a small piece of bread and a tin plate of soup, with sometimes a little rice or Irish potato in the soup where the pork or beef had been boiled. We were not allowed to have money, but could make rings or pins or buttons and sell them for suttler tickets and buy tobacco or apples; but we were not allowed to buy rations. After the surrender of General Lee, we thought it would be better, but were mistaken.
In May they commenced to liberate prisoners, sending three hundred every other day. I got out on July 7, 1865, and started for my home in Alabama. Upon arrival in New York City I secured my first "square meal" in over ten months.
My experience was that when you met a Western man you met a gentleman and soldier; but when you met a "down Easterner" or a Southern renegade, you met the other fellow.
If any of the 1st Battalion of Heavy Artillery of Alabama or any of the 1st Tennessee Heavy Artillery or any of Captain [Cary W.] Butt's company, 21st Alabama Infantry sees this, please write me.