developed a new sense of brotherhood as the desperate struggle went on.
Never was there a war carried on with such intensity by day and such a
sense of mutual respect at night. Once when the Rappahannock separated
the two armies, and it was evident that there was no campaign beyond, a
revival broke out in one of Stonewall Jackson's regiments and there were
prayer-meetings in almost every tent every night. Becoming acquainted,
a number of boys in blue by previous arrangement crossed the river, and
knelt in the prayer service. One night the sound of the regiments
singing, "Nearer My God to Thee," rolled through the air across the
river, and finally the boys in the Northern army joined in, until at the
last verse, the two regiments, opposed in arms, were one in voice and
heart, as they poured out their souls to God in the old hymn they had
learned at their mother's knee. For the soldier knew that any moment a
shot might bring the end.

The sufferings of men in prisons touch the note of horror. The national
government is planning a monument for those who died in Andersonville.
Gettysburg slew 26,000, Andersonville 32,000. The stockade included
twenty-six acres, but three acres were marsh. Incredible as it may seem,
there was no shelter, no beds, no cook-house, no hospital, no nothing.
Just the cold rain in winter chilling men to death, just the pitiless
glare of the August sun scorching them to death. There was no
sanitation, and when it rained the little stream backed up the sewage,
and after each shower men died by scores. Wirtz wrote Jefferson Davis
that one-fifth of the meal was bran, and that he had no meat, no
medicine, no clothing. Men burrowed in the ground, dug caves like rats,
and not infrequently fifty bodies were carried out in a single day.
Wirtz destroyed men faster than did General Lee. The men imprisoned in
Andersonville urge that there were thousands of cords of wood just
outside the stockade, miles upon miles of forests all about, that the
prisoners could have built their own shanties and hospitals, and
cookhouses. To which Wirtz's friends answer that he did not have weapons
or Confederate soldiers enough to guard the prisoners on parole. While
they also answer that the prisoners in Andersonville had as much food
and the same kind as Lee's army was then enjoying. The plain fact is
that the South was out of medicine, clothing and food, and was itself on
the edge of starvation.

The wonderful thing is that