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welcomed by Mayor Tyler. Rev. Matthew Hart of St. Patrick's Church delivered a brief address, of which the following is an extract:

"We hoped for great things from you; and I proclaim before you that our hopes have not been disappointed, no, not in a single instance. We have followed you from Ship Island to Pass Christian since your first encounters in the war, when, after having conquered the fathers, you gave bread to the starving children. We followed you to New Orleans. We found you in the expedition bound for Vicksburg. There many of your noble brothers in arms laid down their lives upon their country's altar. Sacred be their memories to-night! Honored be the graves in which their patriotic dust is laid to rest! and may our country, for which they died, care for their widows and orphaned ones! From Vicksburg, we watched your steps to Baton Rouge, now made famous by your exploits ; where, after a most desperate contest, lasting for six hours, your gallant colonel (Cahill) was placed in command, by whose efforts the day was won, and the enemy defeated, forced to retire, leaving their dead and wounded in your hands. You have done well. We are proud of you. Other regiments may have fought more than you, because they had it to do. You have done all the fighting given you to do, and done it well. We honor you, therefore, and were proud of you when we heard of your congratulatory orders, and your compliments for discipline and bravery."

The Thirteenth, under Col. C. D. Blinn of West Cornwall, did not reach New Haven until July 26. The veterans were cordially greeted. Gov. Buckingham made a short address, of which the following is an extract:—

"We know that the dangers which you have braved have not dampened your ardor nor quenched your patriotism; but you have re-enlisted to give yourselves for three years more to the country, and, through the country, to God. Those at home appreciate your services and your devotion; and, though you may sometimes feel that there is a coldness toward you, let me tell you it is only in appearance: there is a feeling in this people's heart which perhaps no other people have cherished towards their brave soldiers. Let me tell you, that, so long as this heart beats, it will beat with gratitude and love for the men who have offered themselves as a bulwark to the nation. So long as this voice can speak, so long will it speak in praise of the men of the Thirteenth Connecticut. God bless you! I welcome you to the City and the State."

The veteran regiments received many recruits at home; and they marched back again to the front, when their brief furlough was ended, followed by the benedictions of the State, and made readier by the touch of loving hands for the last death-grapple with the Rebellion.

CHAPTER XXXII.

The Sixteenth in Rebel Prisons.-The Enlisted Men at Andersonville. - Rations.Terrible Suffering in the Stockade. -The "Dead-Line."- Starvation. - Insanity. - The Patriot's Burial. - The Hospital. - Officers at Macon.-Chivalry and Bloodhounds. The "Glorious Fourth."-In Charleston. - Efforts to Escape. - Exchange.

LYMOUTH was the end of the active war-life of the Sixteenth. Almost a year of captivity was before them, the year when rebel prisons were the portals of death. Of the four hun

dred enlisted men, less than two hundred ever escaped to tell the story of the starvation and nameless tortures in the loathsome hell of Andersonville. The cowardly persecution of prisoners of war had not then culminated; and the men had but a very faint foreshadowing of the ghastly future, as they dropped their burnished arms, and stepped into the midst of the exulting "graybacks."

The Sixteenth had fallen into the hands of a detail of the 35th North-Carolina, kindly-disposed fellows, who treated Union soldiers with some humanity and respect. The prisoners were not plundered, but retained their blankets, overcoats, and all clothing and personal property. They perhaps abused their privileges; for the soldiers tell, that, as they marched into Williamston, they howled into the ears of their indulgent escort the song,

"John Brown's body lies moldering in the grave."

The hard-tack and raw pork captured at Plymouth were dealt out in slim rations. At Hamilton, some of the officers

1 The following account of the imprisonment of the enlisted men is mainly compiled from Life and Death in Rebel Prisons; a book by Sergeant-Major Robert H Kellogg of the Sixteenth.

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bought corn-meal pone at five dollars a small loaf; and the prisoners struck up a "right smart of trading" with the guard. Those who were deserters from the rebel army were taken out to be shot. "For a piece of pie," says Sergeant Kellogg, "I gave the last 'greenback' dollar I had in the world. Some time before, our forces had made a raid to Elizabeth City; and some of the men, breaking into the Farmers' Bank, appropriated to themselves a large number of unsigned certificates of deposit. These were now filled out with any names most convenient, and passed with the greatest readiness as good, sound money."

They staid a while in Tarborough; thence by rail, uncomfortably enough, to Wilmington; thence to Charleston, arriving May 1; thence to Savannah; thence to Macon. Here the officers found quarters. The enlisted men sped on sixty miles south-westward to Andersonville. As they entered, they were shocked to see the prisoners reduced to mere walking skeletons by privation and exposure, and covered with filth and vermin. A ration for a day consisted of a pint and a half of coarse corn-meal, two ounces of musty bacon, and a pinch of salt. The first night, ten died near the position of the Sixteenth. The old prisoners called it, with a touching humor, "being exchanged."

Men were shot for wandering over the "dead-line," or for crossing the brook. On the fifth night, a squad tunneled out; but they were hunted down with bloodhounds, captured, and returned; some of them horribly lacerated. The dead were piled, just as they were, one upon another, in wagon-loads, carted out, thrown into a ditch, and covered with earth; and that was the patriot's burial.

Sometimes women came to the gates, and amused themselves by throwing in bread, and witnessing the eagerness with which the poor fellows scrambled to get it. The men had no bed but the ground; too little food to support life, and not wood enough to cook even that little; clothing that did not cover their nakedness. Rations were cut down onehalf.

There was great rejoicing at the news brought by prisoners from Sherman's army; and the fact that telegraph dis

patches were cut from the papers which were handed in filled the men with hope and enthusiasm. The rebels were very ignorant. A pompous Confederate officer in search of a clerk addressed a newly-arrived lot of prisoners one day, "If there is a man among you that can write his name, he may step this way." Of course, the whole crowd charged on the inquirer, to his infinite amazement and perplexity.

Suffering became extreme. Men died every hour, and were carted off like cattle. Rations grew worse and worse. One day a cripple, unable to hold his way any longer, and filled with despair, deliberately crossed the dead-line, and refused to go out; telling the sentry that he wished to die. The sentinel shot the poor fellow dead; and the released soul could not have found at the hand of a loving Father any other hell like that from which it had escaped.

The prisoners made sundry attempts to dig out; but every time, just as they were upon the eve of accomplishing their escape, they were betrayed. After a while, the rations were varied to one bucket of mush for forty-five men. Those who still had life enough left for a facetious word called it "chicken-feed;" for it was nothing but coarse corn-meal and water, half cooked.

About the 1st of June, a large number of prisoners came in from Butler's army, including twenty-four of the Eighth Connecticut, fifty-two of the Seventh, a hundred and thirty of the Eleventh, and fifteen of the Twenty-first.

Rations were again reduced; and rains came on, beating mercilessly on the unsheltered thousands. Many died of exposure; and corpses were now carried from the stockade at the rate of a hundred a day. The ration was a few teaspoonfuls of uncooked rice, and two ounces of bacon, to be cooked and eaten amid the mud and desolation of the place. One or two could almost always be seen at the brookside, whither they had crawled to die. Every week, some were killed at the dead-line; one being shot for reaching over to get a root to kindle fire with: and constantly, through the long and dreary months, the hopeless prisoners were tortured anew with the promise of immediate exchange.

Large gangs of prisoners, from fifty to five hundred a

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day, were brought within the stockade, which increased the number, notwithstanding the loads of the dead daily carted out. Every week, the waiting skeletons heard from the armies of Grant, Butler, and Sherman. On the 4th of July, a little raw food was thrown in to them, and they were denied wood wherewith to cook it. Some of the wasted creatures gave their morsels away to others, declaring that they were tired of fighting for life, and were resolved to die of the hunger that had seized them. Many were now too emaciated, even if they could have obtained wood, to cook the bits of bacon on which maggots were crawling. Yet the day was not wholly forgotten; for Kellogg says, "One of the boys had a few percussion-caps, and, by snapping these with a fragment of brick upon a tenpenny nail, we had a miniature celebration."

A petition to President Lincoln for exchange was at this time circulated; but the men of the Sixteenth generally refused to sign it, on the ground that it might embarrass the government in its dealings with the Rebellion; and that the loyal authorities were already, doubtless, doing what they could. There were now thirty thousand in the stockade. A rebel contractor came in to induce men to desert, and promised them good rations and pay if they would go out and make shoes for the Confederacy: but the starving patriots resolutely refused such service; and the recruiting cobbler was hooted and jeered out of the stockade. It was now Aug. 1; and the distress had become very great. Some of the Sixteenth died nearly every day.

The prisoners had nothing to shield them from the thunder-storms and the burning sun. Many were insane. One poor fellow would strip off his rags, and wallow in the dirty stream where the men both washed, and quenched their thirst. Sergeant Kellogg asked him," Why don't you wash, and not stay there in the sun?" His hopeless reply was, "I am waiting for the water to become clear." Alas! it would never run clear for him; for the rebel cook-house was on its brink outside, and the prisoner's sink upon its brink inside. Hundreds lost their lives by scurvy. A member of the 52d New-York became corrupt while still conscious