We turned out languidly in the morning to roll-call, endured silently the raving abuse of the cowardly brute Barrett, hung stupidly over the flickering little fires, until the gates opened to admit the rations.  For an hour there was bustle and animation.  All stood around and counted each sack of meal, to get an idea of the rations we were likely to receive.

This was a daily custom.  The number intended for the day’s issue were all brought in and piled up in the street.  Then there was a division of the sacks to the thousands, the Sergeant of each being called up in turn, and allowed to pick out and carry away one, until all were taken.  When we entered the prison each thousand received, on an average, ten or eleven sacks a day.  Every week saw a reduction in the number, until by midwinter the daily issue to a thousand averaged four sacks.  Let us say that one of these sacks held two bushels, or the four, eight bushels.  As there are thirty-two quarts in a bushel, one thousand men received two hundred and fifty-six quarts, or less than a half pint each.

We thought we had sounded the depths of misery at Andersonville, but Florence showed us a much lower depth.  Bad as was parching under the burning sun whose fiery rays bred miasma and putrefaction, it was still not so bad as having one’s life chilled out by exposure in nakedness upon the frozen ground to biting winds and freezing sleet.  Wretched as the rusty bacon and coarse, maggot-filled bread of Andersonville was, it would still go much farther towards supporting life than the handful of saltless meal at Florence.

While I believe it possible for any young man, with the forces of life strong within him, and healthy in every way, to survive, by taking due precautions, such treatment as we received in Andersonville, I cannot understand how anybody could live through a month of Florence.  That many did live is only an astonishing illustration of the tenacity of life in some individuals.

Let the reader imagine—­anywhere he likes—­a fifteen-acre field, with a stream running through the center.  Let him imagine this inclosed by a Stockade eighteen feet high, made by standing logs on end.  Let him conceive of ten thousand feeble men, debilitated by months of imprisonment, turned inside this inclosure, without a yard of covering given them, and told to make their homes there.  One quarter of them—­two thousand five hundred—­pick up brush, pieces of rail, splits from logs, etc., sufficient to make huts that will turn the rain tolerably.  The huts are in no case as good shelter as an ordinarily careful farmer provides for his swine.  Half of the prisoners—­five thousand—­who cannot do so well, work the mud up into rude bricks, with which they build shelters that wash down at every hard rain.  The remaining two thousand five hundred do not do even this, but lie around on the ground, on old blankets and overcoats, and in day-time prop these up on sticks, as shelter