The reason of our being hurried out of Andersonville under the false pretext of exchange dawned on us before we had been in Savannah long.  If the reader will consult the map of Georgia he will understand this, too.  Let him remember that several of the railroads which now appear were not built then.  The road upon which Andersonville is situated was about one hundred and twenty miles long, reaching from Macon to Americus, Andersonville being about midway between these two.  It had no connections anywhere except at Macon, and it was hundreds of miles across the country from Andersonville to any other road.  When Atlanta fell it brought our folks to within sixty miles of Macon, and any day they were liable to make a forward movement, which would capture that place, and have us where we could be retaken with ease.

There was nothing left undone to rouse the apprehensions of the Rebels in that direction.  The humiliating surrender of General Stoneman at Macon in July, showed them what our, folks were thinking of, and awakened their minds to the disastrous consequences of such a movement when executed by a bolder and abler commander.  Two days of one of Kilpatrick’s swift, silent marches would carry his hard-riding troopers around Hood’s right flank, and into the streets of Macon, where a half hour’s work with the torch on the bridges across the Ocmulgee and the creeks that enter it at that point, would have cut all of the Confederate Army of the Tennessee’s communications.  Another day and night of easy marching would bring his guidons fluttering through the woods about the Stockade at Andersonville, and give him a reinforcement of twelve or fifteen thousand able-bodied soldiers, with whom he could have held the whole Valley of the Chattahoochie, and become the nether millstone, against which Sherman could have ground Hood’s army to powder.

Such a thing was not only possible, but very probable, and doubtless would have occurred had we remained in Andersonville another week.

Hence the haste to get us away, and hence the lie about exchange, for, had it not been for this, one-quarter at least of those taken on the cars would have succeeded in getting off and attempted to have reached Sherman’s lines.

The removal went on with such rapidity that by the end of September only eight thousand two hundred and eighteen remained at Andersonville, and these were mostly too sick to be moved; two thousand seven hundred died in September, fifteen hundred and sixty in October, and four hundred and eighty-five in November, so that at the beginning of December there were only thirteen hundred and fifty-nine remaining.  The larger part of those taken out were sent on to Charleston, and subsequently to Florence and Salisbury.  About six or seven thousand of us, as near as I remember, were brought to Savannah.
                         .......................