Southern Storm Read Online Free PDF Page B

durable heavy cloth called osnaburg as well as pants for soldiers. Other women had formed a Ladies Aid Society whose squads of knitters were urged on with the battle cry, “a sock a day.” Patriotic pride centered on the 102-foot-high flagpole, whose mastlike look was credited to the retired sea captain who had directed its construction. The captain also raised and lowered the standard each day, carefully handling the emblem that had been hand-sewn by a female resident who had attended the first Confederate Congress just to get the proper specifications.
    The Central of Georgia continued its eastward wandering, passing through the town of Millen, where another spur shunted off the main trunk line, this one making possible one of the Confederacy’s newest and largest prisoner enclosures. Camp Lawton, as it was called, came into being as a way of relieving the overcrowding and suffering at Camp Sumter (also known as Andersonville), south of Atlanta, which had been in operation since late February. With losses reaching toward one hundred a day from disease, starvation, and violence, a decision was made in July to build another prison. A site was found five miles north of Millen blessed with a good supply of fresh water, high ground for guard stations, and easy access to the railroad spur. Construction on Camp Lawton began in late July, and the first Union prisoners reached the stockade in mid-October as Hood’s planned move forced Camp Sumter’s temporary closure.
    Reaction by the POWs to the new, still incomplete facility was mixed. An Ohio artilleryman swore that there was little improvement over Andersonville, while an infantryman from Illinois found the newlocation to be “much more pleasant” than Camp Sumter. “Disease and starvation together are decimating us daily,” recorded another Federal captive, “and the average deaths are twenty to thirty-five per day.” There were regular visits from Confederate officials anxious to recruit disaffected Yankees into their ranks. These “galvanized Rebels,” * as they were called, were promised better fare and treatment, benefits that a few found irresistible. “Let us not judge them too harshly,” noted a captive who did not sign up, “remembering how sorely they were tempted.” Confederate officials hoped that Camp Lawton was secluded enough to be secure from enemy raiders, even though the nearby railroad marked it clearly on Union maps.
    Farther north along the Millen spur was Waynesboro, near which a visitor would find the Carswell house, known as Bellevue. Mrs. Carswell, the former Sarah Ann Devine, was a New Englander who loved to tend her garden. Her special pride was the rosebush that ran along the side of the house. There is no evidence that Mr. Carswell, a lawyer and judge, ever gave much thought to his wife’s horticultural passion, but in the not very distant future that rosebush would come to mean life itself.
    Seventeen miles outside Savannah, young Jennie Ihly was boarding with her grandparents, who lived near one of the main roads leading into the port city. Writing years later, Jennie described herself then as “a merry hearted girl, little dreaming of the realities of war, for to me it sounded like a fairy tale as I heard it discussed by the people of matured years.” Lying between this household and Savannah was a belt of tidal marshes that had been cultivated for rice and sea island cotton. Working the rice fields was difficult, dangerous labor, and slave mortality was high.
    The Central of Georgia Railroad terminated at Savannah, a town renowned for the public greens that checkerboarded its central district, crowned by the twenty-acre Forsyth Park. Shortly before the war Savannah played host to the English writer William Thackeray, who described it as a “tranquil old city, wide streeted, tree shrouded.” Although the heaviest ground fighting in Georgia was well off to the west, Savannah’s residents had constant reminders of the