month from the Old Capitol, Fort Delaware and Fort McHenry, some of the Gettysburg captures. One hundred and thirty-six arrived on the 31st of the same month from Washington, and on the 10th of August another batch came from Baltimore, having been captured at Falling Waters. Every few weeks the number was increased, until they began to count by thousands.
During the scorching summer, whose severity during the day is as great on that sand-barren as anywhere in the Union north of the Gulf, and through the hard winter, which is more severe at that point than anywhere in the country south of Boston, these poor fellows were confined here in open tents, on the naked ground, without a plank or a handful of straw between them and the heat or frost of the earth.
And when, in the winter, a high tide and an easterly gale would flood the whole surface of the pen, and freeze as it flooded, the sufferings of the half-clad wretches, many accustomed to the almost vernal warmth of the Gulf, may easily be imagined. Many died outright, and many more will go to their graves crippled and racked with rheumatisms, which they date from the winter of 1863-4. Even the well-clad sentinels, although relieved every thirty minutes (instead of every two hours, as is the army rule), perished in some instances, and in others lost their feet and hands, through the terrible cold of that season.
During all this season the ration of wood allowed to each man was an arm-full for five days, and this had to cook for him as well as warm him, for at that time there were no public cook-houses and mess-rooms.
An additional refinement of cruelty was the regulation which always obtained at Point Lookout, and which I believe was peculiar to the prison, under which the Yanks stole from us any bed-clothing we might possess, beyond one blanket! This petty larceny was effected through an instrumentality they called inspections. Once in every ten days an inspection was ordered, when all the prisoners turned out in their respective divisions and companies in marching order. They ranged themselves in long lines between the rows of tents, with their blankets and haversacks—those being the only articles considered orthodox possessions of a rebel. A Yankee inspected each man, taking away his extra blanket, if he had one, and appropriating any other superfluity he might chance to possess; and this accomplished, he visited the tents and seized every thing therein that under the convenient nomenclature of the Federals was catalogued as "contraband"—blankets, boots, hats, any thing. The only way to avoid this was by a judicious use of greenbacks—and a trifle would suffice—it being true, with honorable exceptions, of course, that Yankee soldiers are very much like ships: to move them, you must "slush the ways."
In the matter of clothing, the management at Point Lookout was simply infamous. You could receive nothing in the way of clothing without giving up the corresponding article which you might
