It was enough to kill healthy, vigorous men, active and resolute, with bodies well-nourished and well clothed, and with minds vivacious and hopeful, to stand these day-and-night-long solid drenchings.  No one can imagine how fatal it was to boys whose vitality was sapped by long months in Andersonville, by coarse, meager, changeless food, by groveling on the bare earth, and by hopelessness as to any improvement of condition.

Fever, rheumatism, throat and lung diseases and despair now came to complete the work begun by scurvy, dysentery and gangrene, in Andersonville.

Hundreds, weary of the long struggle, and of hoping against hope, laid themselves down and yielded to their fate.  In the six weeks that we were at Millen, one man in every ten died.  The ghostly pines there sigh over the unnoted graves of seven hundred boys, for whom life’s morning closed in the gloomiest shadows.  As many as would form a splendid regiment—­as many as constitute the first born of a populous City—­more than three times as many as were slain outright on our side in the bloody battle of Franklin, succumbed to this new hardship.  The country for which they died does not even have a record of their names.  They were simply blotted out of existence; they became as though they had never been.

About the middle of the month the Rebels yielded to the importunities of our Government so far as to agree to exchange ten thousand sick.  The Rebel Surgeons took praiseworthy care that our Government should profit as little as possible by this, by sending every hopeless case, every man whose lease of life was not likely to extend much beyond his reaching the parole boat.  If he once reached our receiving officers it was all that was necessary; he counted to them as much as if he had been a Goliath.  A very large portion of those sent through died on the way to our lines, or within a few hours after their transports at being once more under the old Stars and Stripes had moderated.

The sending of the sick through gave our commandant—­Captain Bowes—­a fine opportunity to fill his pockets, by conniving at the passage of well men.  There was still considerable money in the hands of a few prisoners.  All this, and more, too, were they willing to give for their lives.  In the first batch that went away were two of the leading sutlers at Andersonville, who had accumulated perhaps one thousand dollars each by their shrewd and successful bartering.  It was generally believed that they gave every cent to Bowes for the privilege of leaving.  I know nothing of the truth of this, but I am reasonably certain that they paid him very handsomely.