“Prisoners, you can no longer have any doubt that your Government has cruelly abandoned you; it makes no efforts to release you, and refuses all our offers of exchange.  We are anxious to get our men back, and have made every effort to do so, but it refuses to meet us on any reasonable grounds.  Your Secretary of War has said that the Government can get along very well without you, and General Halleck has said that you were nothing but a set of blackberry pickers and coffee boilers anyhow.

“You’ve already endured much more than it could expect of you; you served it faithfully during the term you enlisted for, and now, when it is through with you, it throws you aside to starve and die.  You also can have no doubt that the Southern Confederacy is certain to succeed in securing its independence.  It will do this in a few months.  It now offers you an opportunity to join its service, and if you serve it faithfully to the end, you will receive the same rewards as the rest of its soldiers.  You will be taken out of here, be well clothed and fed, given a good bounty, and, at the conclusion of the War receive a land warrant for a nice farm.  If you”—­

But we had heard enough.  The Sergeant of our division—­a man with a stentorian voice sprang out and shouted: 

“Attention, first Division!”

We Sergeants of hundreds repeated the command down the line.  Shouted he: 

“First Division, about—­”

Said we: 

“First Hundred, about—­”

“Second Hundred, about—­”

“Third Hundred, about—­”

“Fourth Hundred, about—­” etc., etc.

Said he:—­

“Face!!”

Ten Sergeants repeated “Face!” one after the other, and each man in the hundreds turned on his heel.  Then our leader commanded—­

“First Division, forward!  March!” and we strode back into the Stockade, followed immediately by all the other divisions, leaving the orator still standing on the stump.

The Rebels were furious at this curt way of replying.  We had scarcely reached our quarters when they came in with several companies, with loaded guns and fixed bayonets.  They drove us out of our tents and huts, into one corner, under the pretense of hunting axes and spades, but in reality to steal our blankets, and whatever else they could find that they wanted, and to break down and injure our huts, many of which, costing us days of patient labor, they destroyed in pure wantonness.

We were burning with the bitterest indignation.  A tall, slender man named Lloyd, a member of the Sixty-First Ohio—­a rough, uneducated fellow, but brim full of patriotism and manly common sense, jumped up on a stump and poured out his soul in rude but fiery eloquence:  “Comrades,” he said, “do not let the blowing of these Rebel whelps discourage you; pay no attention to the lies they have told you to-day; you know well that our