File:The soldier's story of his captivity at Andersonville, Belle Isle, and other Rebel prisons (1873) (14779793662).jpg

Identifier: soldiersstoryofh00ingoss (find matches)
Title: The soldier's story of his captivity at Andersonville, Belle Isle, and other Rebel prisons
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors: Goss, Warren Lee, 1835-1925 Nast, Thomas, 1840-1902, illustrator
Subjects: Andersonville Prison
Publisher: Boston : I.N. Richardson & Co.
Contributing Library: Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection
Digitizing Sponsor: The Institute of Museum and Library Services through an Indiana State Library LSTA Grant

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before their comple-tion. Hunger is a great demoralizer, and there weremen in prison who for an extra ration would inform theauthorities of the prison of plots and plans in whichthey themselves were actively engaged. There, nodoubt, was a struggle with hunger before it obtainedmastery over them. Starve a man, and you stunt thegrowth of all his finer qualities, if you do not crushthem out entirely. It changes the expression of hisface; his mode of walking becomes loose, undecided;his intelligence is dimmed. Hunger blunts the keenestintelligence, and deadens susceptibility to wrong doing,and mere moral wrongs look small, or seem overbal-anced, when placed by the side of food. If you narrow down a mans purpose to sustaininghis body — let his be a continual struggle for a foot-hold upon life, with uncertainty as to its results — givea man, in fact, crime with bread, on the one hand, and £ O OS A - a itC OS *™00 • o 3 oj ao b £ .£ a > > 5 « m o be & a- 5 c Si £ * s 0
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o a TUNNELLING. 117 on the other, integrity and truth with death — the thou-sand recollections of the old home, with the arms of adear mother or wife or children that once encircled hisneck — all these recollections bid him live. Conse-quently, it was difficult to trust men with secrets whichmight be sold for bread. Again, an impedimentexisted in digging tunnels in disposing of the earthexcavated, in such a manner as not to attract suspicionand consequent detection. These were the potentcauses of failure in all our tunnelling plans. Theauthorities were continually on the lookout for anytrace of tunnelling. Py tarn, said Captain Wirzto some fellow who had been detected tunnelling, vydont some of you Yankees get out? mine togs aregetting ungry to pite you. I had been engaged on so many tunnels which werefailures, that I began to regard them as an unprofitablespeculation, yielding no prospects of a desirablenature.In this frame of mind, I often queried if there was notsome method by

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