The negro soldiers were also treated as badly as possible.  The wounded were turned into the Stockade without having their hurts attended to.  One stalwart, soldierly Sergeant had received a bullet which had forced its way under the scalp for some distance, and partially imbedded itself in the skull, where it still remained.  He suffered intense agony, and would pass the whole night walking up and down the street in front of our tent, moaning distressingly.  The, bullet could be felt plainly with the fingers, and we were sure that it would not be a minute’s work, with a sharp knife, to remove it and give the man relief.  But we could not prevail upon the Rebel Surgeons even to see the man.  Finally inflammation set in and he died.

The negros were made into a squad by themselves, and taken out every day to work around the prison.  A white Sergeant was placed over them, who was the object of the contumely of the guards and other Rebels.  One day as he was standing near the gate, waiting his orders to come out, the gate guard, without any provocation whatever, dropped his gun until the muzzle rested against the Sergeant’s stomach, and fired, killing him instantly.

The Sergeantcy was then offered to me, but as I had no accident policy, I was constrained to decline the honor.

CHAPTER XXIV.

April—­longing to get out—­the death rate—­the plague of lice —­the so-called hospital.

April brought sunny skies and balmy weather.  Existence became much more tolerable.  With freedom it would have been enjoyable, even had we been no better fed, clothed and sheltered.  But imprisonment had never seemed so hard to bear—­even in the first few weeks—­as now.  It was easier to submit to confinement to a limited area, when cold and rain were aiding hunger to benumb the faculties and chill the energies than it was now, when Nature was rousing her slumbering forces to activity, and earth, and air and sky were filled with stimulus to man to imitate her example.  The yearning to be up and doing something-to turn these golden hours to good account for self and country—­pressed into heart and brain as the vivifying sap pressed into tree-duct and plant cell, awaking all vegetation to energetic life.

To be compelled, at such a time, to lie around in vacuous idleness —­to spend days that should be crowded full of action in a monotonous, objectless routine of hunting lice, gathering at roll-call, and drawing and cooking our scanty rations, was torturing.

But to many of our number the aspirations for freedom were not, as with us, the desire for a wider, manlier field of action, so much as an intense longing to get where care and comforts would arrest their swift progress to the shadowy hereafter.  The cruel rains had sapped away their stamina, and they could not recover it with the meager and innutritious diet of coarse meal, and an occasional scrap of salt meat.  Quick consumption, bronchitis, pneumonia, low fever and diarrhea seized upon these ready victims for their ravages, and bore them off at the rate of nearly a score a day.