The shout was taken up all over the prison.  Even those who had not heard the guard understood that it meant that “Atlanta was ours and fairly won,” and they took up the acclamation with as much enthusiasm as we had begun it.  All thoughts of sleep were put to flight:  we would have a season of rejoicing.  Little knots gathered together, debated the news, and indulged in the most sanguine hopes as to the effect upon the Rebels.  In some parts of the Stockade stump speeches were made.  I believe that Boston Corbett and his party organized a prayer and praise meeting.  In our corner we stirred up our tuneful friend “Nosey,” who sang again the grand old patriotic hymns that set our thin blood to bounding, and made us remember that we were still Union soldiers, with higher hopes than that of starving and dying in Andersonville.  He sang the ever-glorious Star Spangled Banner, as he used to sing it around the camp fire in happier days, when we were in the field.  He sang the rousing “Rally Round the Flag,” with its wealth of patriotic fire and martial vigor, and we, with throats hoarse from shouting; joined in the chorus until the welkin rang again.

The Rebels became excited, lest our exaltation of spirits would lead to an assault upon the Stockade.  They got under arms, and remained so until the enthusiasm became less demonstrative.

A few days later—­on the evening of the 6th of September—­the Rebel Sergeants who called the roll entered the Stockade, and each assembling his squads, addressed them as follows: 

“Prisoners:  I am instructed by General Winder to inform you that a general exchange has been agreed upon.  Twenty thousand men will be exchanged immediately at Savannah, where your vessels are now waiting for you.  Detachments from One to Ten will prepare to leave early to-morrow morning.”

The excitement that this news produced was simply indescribable.  I have seen men in every possible exigency that can confront men, and a large proportion viewed that which impended over them with at least outward composure.  The boys around me had endured all that we suffered with stoical firmness.  Groans from pain-racked bodies could not be repressed, and bitter curses and maledictions against the Rebels leaped unbidden to the lips at the slightest occasion, but there was no murmuring or whining.  There was not a day—­hardly an hour—­in which one did not see such exhibitions of manly fortitude as made him proud of belonging to a race of which every individual was a hero.

But the emotion which pain and suffering and danger could not develop, joy could, and boys sang, and shouted and cried, and danced as if in a delirium.  “God’s country,” fairer than the sweet promised land of Canaan appeared to the rapt vision of the Hebrew poet prophet, spread out in glad vista before the mind’s eye of every one.  It had come—­at last it had come that which we had so longed for, wished for, prayed for, dreamed of; schemed, planned, toiled for, and for which went up the last earnest, dying wish of the thousands of our comrades who would now know no exchange save into that eternal “God’s country” where