To fully appreciate the condition of affairs let it be remembered that we were a community of twenty-five thousand boys and young men—­none too regardful of control at best—­and now wholly destitute of government.  The Rebels never made the slightest attempt to maintain order in the prison.  Their whole energies were concentrated in preventing our escape.  So long as we staid inside the Stockade, they cared as little what we did there as for the performances of savages in the interior of Africa.  I doubt if they would have interfered had one-half of us killed and eaten the other half.  They rather took a delight in such atrocities as came to their notice.  It was an ocular demonstration of the total depravity of the Yankees.

Among ourselves there was no one in position to lay down law and enforce it.  Being all enlisted men we were on a dead level as far as rank was concerned—­the highest being only Sergeants, whose stripes carried no weight of authority.  The time of our stay was—­it was hoped—­too transient to make it worth while bothering about organizing any form of government.  The great bulk of the boys were recent comers, who hoped that in another week or so they would be out again.  There were no fat salaries to tempt any one to take upon himself the duty of ruling the masses, and all were left to their own devices, to do good or evil, according to their several bents, and as fear of consequences swayed them.  Each little squad of men was a law unto themselves, and made and enforced their own regulations on their own territory.  The administration of justice was reduced to its simplest terms.  If a fellow did wrong he was pounded—­if there was anybody capable of doing it.  If not he went free.

The almost unvarying success of the Raiders in—­their forays gave the general impression that they were invincible—­that is, that not enough men could be concentrated against them to whip them.  Our ill-success in the attack we made on them in April helped us to the same belief.  If we could not beat them then, we could not now, after we had been enfeebled by months of starvation and disease.  It seemed to us that the Plymouth Pilgrims, whose organization was yet very strong, should undertake the task; but, as is usually the case in this world, where we think somebody else ought to undertake the performance of a disagreeable public duty, they did not see it in the light that we wished them to.  They established guards around their squads, and helped beat off the Raiders when their own territory was invaded, but this was all they would do.  The rest of us formed similar guards.  In the southwest corner of the Stockade—­where I was—­we formed ourselves into a company of fifty active boys—­mostly belonging to my own battalion and to other Illinois regiments—­of which I was elected Captain.  My First Lieutenant was a tall, taciturn, long-armed member of the One Hundred and Eleventh Illinois, whom we called “Egypt,”