“F-i-r-s-t R-a-t-e!”

This scene was repeated every morning for over a week.  Every day the Rebel Surgeon would insist that the man should betaken out, and every morning Bickford would gasp out with troublesome exertion that he felt: 

“F-i-r-s-t R-a-t-e!”

It ended one morning by his inability, to make his usual answer, and then he was carried out to join the two score others being loaded into the wagon.

CHAPTER LXXIV.

New year’s day—­death of John H. Winder—­he dies on his way to A dinner —­something as to character and career—­one of the worst men that ever lived.

On New Year’s Day we were startled by the information that our old-time enemy—­General John H. Winder—­was dead.  It seemed that the Rebel Sutler of the Post had prepared in his tent a grand New Year’s dinner to which all the officers were invited.  Just as Winder bent his head to enter the tent he fell, and expired shortly after.  The boys said it was a clear case of Death by Visitation of the Devil, and it was always insisted that his last words were: 

“My faith is in Christ; I expect to be saved.  Be sure and cut down the prisoners’ rations.”

Thus passed away the chief evil genius of the Prisoners-of-War.  American history has no other character approaching his in vileness.  I doubt if the history of the world can show another man, so insignificant in abilities and position, at whose door can be laid such a terrible load of human misery.  There have been many great conquerors and warriors who have

          Waded through slaughter to a throne,
          And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

but they were great men, with great objects, with grand plans to carry out, whose benefits they thought would be more than an equivalent for the suffering they caused.  The misery they inflicted was not the motive of their schemes, but an unpleasant incident, and usually the sufferers were men of other races and religions, for whom sympathy had been dulled by long antagonism.

But Winder was an obscure, dull old man—­the commonplace descendant of a pseudo-aristocrat whose cowardly incompetence had once cost us the loss of our National Capital.  More prudent than his runaway father, he held himself aloof from the field; his father had lost reputation and almost his commission, by coming into contact with the enemy; he would take no such foolish risks, and he did not.  When false expectations of the ultimate triumph of Secession led him to cast his lot with the Southern Confederacy, he did not solicit a command in the field, but took up his quarters in Richmond, to become a sort of Informer-General, High-Inquisitor and Chief Eavesdropper for his intimate