The Maine bugle ... campaign; 1-5 Jan. 1894-Oct. 1898 - Maine.gov

110 THE MAINE BUGLE.
March !
" and we were soon filing into the south gate of the
infamous prison. The prisoners inside were eager to meet us
and learn what had transpired since their capture and to see if
any of their respective comrades were among the unfortunates,
and they pressed forward and made quite a crowd.
" Fall back
there," shouted the sentinel from his box by the gate. Old
VVirz yelled to the guard in a rage, " Don't speak to 'em, shoot
'em." The sentinel did not fire on the prisoners then, but Wirz
wanted one or more murders set down against his name there
and then just the same. I will tell you how this prison was
built and situated. It was built of hard pine logs sided
with an ax and set in a trench four to six feet deep, the sided
sides being placed together. The stockade stood about eighteen
feet high. To hold them in place there were two tiers of poles
trunnelled or spiked on to the outside, one near the ground, the
other near the top. Then a little platform was put up with
roofs and bushes over them high enough for sentry boxes, so
the guards could shoot inside conveniently. Inside, sixteen
feet from the stockade was a line of stakes about two and a half
feet high, with board edgings nailed on top of them. This was
the dead line. Sometimes if a prisoner touched the line with
his hand bang would go a rebel bullet at him and often would
wound or kill some one ten or fifteen feet away, while the one
who touched the deadline was unhurt. However, it satisfied
the rebels just as well. We found a few old acquaintances in
the prison and they posted us up on the customs in vogue as
well as they could, and cautioned us against " Mosby's Raid-
ers." This was a gang of bounty jumpers and thieves and
criminals of all sorts who had most of them deserted to the
enemy and made so much trouble for him that they were finally
put in with the prisoners of war. They lived well on what they
robbed from the other prisoners, had whiskey and fights and
enjoyed themselves generally in their way. The prison was sit-
uated on both sides of a small brook which flowed into the
Flint river. As we went in we filed to the right down a narrow
path and crossed the brook, then filed to the left, clear across