Sultana by Alan Huffman

Author:Alan Huffman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061971235
Publisher: HarperCollins

Chapter Ten

RELEASE

IN SEPTEMBER THE PRISONERS SAW THE FIRST SIGNS that their long ordeal was coming to an end. The odds of survival increased with every trainload of prisoners that left the Andersonville stockade, though it would be months before all of them were released.

The reason for the initial removals was not the long-sought exchange of prisoners but Sherman’s occupation of Atlanta, which increased the threat of a Union raid. In response, the Confederate military began moving most of the prisoners from Andersonville to other camps in South Carolina and coastal Georgia. Among the prisoners, jubilation over their release was muted by uncertainty over where exactly they were going—and by past experience. They had seen their hopes dashed before.

John Ransom was among those who chose to revel in the moment. After hearing that seven detachments were to be removed from the camp, he wrote on September 6, “Hurrah! Hurrah!! Hurrah!!! Can’t holler except on paper.” The next day, the buzz was wearing off. The prisoners were told that those who were unable to walk had to stay behind.

George Weiser was circumspect about the news. Noting that the longed-for exchange had still not come, he wrote, “It appears that the federal government thinks more of a few hundred niggers than of the thirty thousand white here in bondage.” Three days later he was more optimistic. On September 7, he wrote, “Hot. Thank God I have lived to see a day of rejoicing for at least a portion of the miserable wretches whom I call my fellow prisoners. Ten detachments have gone out of the stockade and are being shipped on board the cars.” No one was sure where the trains were headed. Some of the guards said the prisoners would be paroled, but the prisoners correctly speculated that they were simply being moved because the Union Army was advancing into Georgia.

On September 10, Weiser’s detachment of a thousand men was removed from the stockade and taken north by train. Only then did he allow the gravity of his imprisonment to fully sink in. All of his shebang mates had died, he had endured worse than he could have ever imagined, and he was wary of the future. “Now I was very sad indeed,” he wrote. If nothing else, Andersonville was now the known. Weiser had trouble rebuilding trust in the future.

On September 12, William Farrand Keys wrote, “Four Detachments left this morning. We lay in the sun among the fleas till near dark and then left also. My emotions at passing out the gate were not what they would have been if I had been sure of a speedy transit to the federal lines…They have given us three days of rations of cornbread & bacon, and we are moving, but our destination is unknown.”

Watching the departures was disheartening for those who remained behind. After the exodus began, George Hitchcock wrote, “It seems lonely and drear to see the thousands of deserted burrows and dens.”

Keys, who was still inside the stockade on September

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