facts gleaned during a trip to Andersonville, Georgia, concerning the Confederate military prison there and the treatment of Federal prisoners. Instead of reviewing the article in detail, I will merely take up, one by one, the principal false statements.
THE WATER THE PRISONERS DRANK.
It was my fortune to be stationed at Andersonville almost from the first establishment of the prison until the removal to Millen, Georgia, or Camp Lawton, and I unhesitatingly pronounce the statement that "the prisoners had to drink the water which conveyed the offal of three camps and two large bakeries or kitchens off before it reached them," utterly false. The guards drank of the same water that quenched the prisoners' thirst, cooked their food with the same water, the same large stream or creek flowing through the encampment of guards and stockade, or prison-pen, as Northern writers sneeringly call it. The camps of the guards all faced the stream, while their sinks were far off in the rear, and orders were most strict not to muddy the water, much less defile it in any way. As to the offal of the bakeries, these being presided over by prisoners on parole, and who did the cooking for the entire prison, I cannot believe they would pollute the water their brother prisoners had to drink. As rapidly as they could the prisoners dug wells; in all some two hundred were dug, and purer, sweeter, colder water I never drank. Being on the staff of Captain Wirz, I had free access to the prison at all times day or night, and whenever I wished to quench my thirst, I went inside the prison and drank from one of these wells.
THAT PROVIDENTIAL SPRING, SO-CALLED.
That "providential spring" is an impious myth. I have been in the prisons thousands of times and never before heard it so called, except on reading the Herald's account of the anniversary of the Fulton street prayer meeting, when some pharisaically pious old brother recited a long rigmarole about this same "providential spring," and said it was planted there in direct answer to prayer. The gist of this spring tale is that when the prisoners' sickness and suffering from thirst was at its greatest, all at once, in the twinkling of an eye, this spring gushed forth in direct answer to prayer. Was ever such blasphemy? If such was the case, why does the spring still exist after it has answered its purpose? Do those rocks of Horeb struck by Moses to slake the children of Israel's thirst still exist, and at this late day the water gush forth? It is all a cock-and-bull story, and unlike Sterne's, one of the poorest I ever heard.
TWO FEDERAL AND THREE REBEL PROVIDENTIAL SPRINGS.
If my recollection serves me right, there was yet another of these same "providential springs" inside the stockade, and that Providence who sends the rain alike upon the just and the unjust gave
