Prison Memoir of Almon J. Houston

I was captured at Gettysburg, July 1, 1863, and on July 4, was marched south with several hundred other captives, not halting till we reached Williamsport where the rise of the Potomac detained the crossing for two days. Thence we marched for Staunton. The first night of this march, we were halted in a filed and searched for all valuables and surplus clothing. When I saw this, I cut my new rubber blanket into shreds with my knife, rather than let the enemy have it. For this act I was bucked and gagged for over two hours. This was done by tying my wrists together and drawing my elbows down below the under part of my knees, and putting a stick between knees and elbows. A stick was put in my mouth and tied behind my head. Circulation stopped in my limbs and I could not stand when cut loose.

The next morning the march was resumed for Staunton, Virginia, where we were put into old cars and taken to Richmond. I was five weeks in Libby prison and then put on Belle Isle. While here, in November, eight or ten of our soldiers died while sleeping on the outside of the embankment thrown up to separate us from the guard. They had frozen to death. Their bodies were left for there for five days until the hogs on the island ate them up, the rebels refusing to have them removed.

At first we had a very small piece of meat and a cup of pea soup, once a day. These peas were infested with black bugs in the shells and often they had eaten the entire pea out. Of such peas was our soup made, bugs and all. Often we had to scrape the bugs off the top of our soup before we ate it. The Union Sanitary Commission sent supplies for us but the rebels confiscated them and they did not reach us. The guards would show us the supplies, saying they from the _____ Yankees, and eat them before our eyes. Occasionally they threw pieces of food down into the open sinks to see our starved men in their rage for food, reach down into the fecal mass of filth and fish them out to eat!

Often the stomachs of our men could not digest the poor, uncooked food furnished us, and they would vomit it up. I have seen a comrade gather up the whole beans vomited up, wash, re-cook and eat them! During my stay on Belle Isle, the rebel surgeons vaccinated the prisoners with vaccine that killed the men off faster than if they had the small pox. The vaccinated limbs would rot and the whole body became infected with the poisonous virus.

On February 22, 1864, I left that God forsaken island and was taken back to Richmond, and then further South. None knew where we were destined until, at the end of six days and nights on the cars, we arrived at Andersonville prison. One day on the route we had peanuts only to eat. We were turned into this pen without shelter, like a lot of animals. Here, for rations, we received corn meal, a pint for twenty-four hours, and nothing to cook it with, although forests we could see all around us. The meal often was sour and being eaten uncooked gave the men a diarrhea from which they died by the hundred. Soon our numbers increased to 35,000 men in the prison.

At night, pine fires were built all around the prison to light up the pen for the guards to sight any escaping. From the smoke of these pine fires, the men’s faces, hands and naked feet became black. Their clothing hung in tatters from their emaciated limbs. Many had no hats. Many had no shirts, or coats, or shoes. A swamp ran through the center of this camp, one side of which was used for a sink, which under a broiling sun, became too vile to describe, and the maggots covered the surface of the stagnant mass. Our men died off from starvation like sheep with the rot. Every morning corpses were laid out to be hauled away. One day I counted over 200 dead who had died within twenty-four hours! Negroes would come in with a span of mules hitched to a wagon with the box top spreading outwards, and the stiffened corpses would we tossed into the wagon like so many dead hogs, one top of the other until the box was filled. This same wagon, uncleaned, was used to haul in, to our men, their daily supply of food.

Every few mornings the deep mouthed bayings of the large blood hounds kept for the purpose, were heard in the neighboring forests, indicating the woeful fate of some escaped prisoner. I have read histories of those Southern prisons, but the fullness of all their hellish enormities has never been told. It can never be. In the fall of 1864, many of us were taken to Millen, Georgia. This was the same as Andersonville in the treatment of the men. A few months later, I was released for exchange along with 1,000 others. My diary that I had kept was taken from me by the rebels before I got out of their hands. There were thirty-two of our men who died while coming North, too weak to stand the journey.

This memoir is found in pages 437-440 of O.B. Curtis' "History of the Twenty-fourth Michigan of the Iron Brigade.