One morning orders came for one thousand men to get ready to move.  Andrews and I held a council of war on the situation, the question before the house being whether we would go with that crowd, or stay behind.  The conclusion we came to was thus stated by Andrews: 

“Now, Mc., we’ve flanked ahead every time, and see how we’ve come out.  We flanked into the first squad that left Richmond, and we were consequently in the first that got into Andersonville.  May be if we’d staid back we’d got into that squad that was exchanged.  We were in the first squad that left Andersonville.  We were the first to leave Savannah and enter Millen.  May be if we’d staid back, we’d got exchanged with the ten thousand sick.  We were the first to leave Millen and the first to reach Blackshear.  We were again the first to leave Blackshear.  Perhaps those fellows we left behind then are exchanged.  Now, as we’ve played ahead every time, with such infernal luck, let’s play backward this time, and try what that brings us.”

“But, Lale,” (Andrews’s nickname—­his proper name being Bezaleel), said I, “we made something by going ahead every time—­that is, if we were not going to be exchanged.  By getting into those places first we picked out the best spots to stay, and got tent-building stuff that those who came after us could not.  And certainly we can never again get into as bad a place as this is.  The chances are that if this does not mean exchange, it means transfer to a better prison.”

But we concluded, as I said above, to reverse our usual order of procedure and flank back, in hopes that something would favor our escape to Sherman.  Accordingly, we let the first squad go off without us, and the next, and the next, and so on, till there were only eleven hundred —­mostly those sick in the Hospital—­remaining behind.  Those who went away—­we afterwards learned, were run down on the cars to Wilmington, and afterwards up to Goldsboro, N. C.

For a week or more we eleven hundred tenanted the Stockade, and by burning up the tents of those who had gone had the only decent, comfortable fires we had while in Florence.  In hunting around through the tents for fuel we found many bodies of those who had died as their comrades were leaving.  As the larger portion of us could barely walk, the Rebels paroled us to remain inside of the Stockade or within a few hundred yards of the front of it, and took the guards off.  While these were marching down, a dozen or more of us, exulting in even so much freedom as we had obtained, climbed on the Hospital shed to see what the outlook was, and perched ourselves on the ridgepole.  Lieutenant Barrett came along, at a distance of two hundred yards, with a squad of guards.  Observing us, he halted his men, faced them toward us, and they leveled their guns as if to fire.  He expected to see us tumble down in ludicrous alarm, to avoid the bullets.  But we hated him and them so bad, that we could not give them the poor satisfaction of scaring us.  Only one of our party attempted to slide down, but the moment we swore at him he came back and took his seat with folded arms alongside of us.  Barrett gave the order to fire, and the bullets shrieked aver our heads, fortunately not hitting anybody.  We responded with yells of derision, and the worst abuse we could think of.