The author of “Andersonville” makes a wide distinction between the members of the 29th Alabama and the 55th Georgia regiments, which guarded us, in relation to treatment of prisoners, claiming that Alabama troops were more humane than the Georgia “crackers.” This was undoubtedly true in this instance, but I am of the opinion that state lines had nothing to do with the matter.
The 29th Alabama was an old regiment and had been to the front and seen war, had fired at Yankees, and had been fired at by Yankees in return; they had no need to shoot defenseless prisoners in order to establish the enviable reputation of having killed a “damned Yank;” while the 55th Georgia was a new regiment, or at least one which had not faced the music of bullets and shells on the field of battle, they had a reputation to make yet, and they made one as guards at Andersonville, but the devil himself would not be proud of it, while the 5th Georgia Home Guards, another regiment of guards, was worse than the 55th.
In making up the 5th Geo. H. G. the officers had “robbed the cradle and the grave,” as one of my comrades facetiously remarked.
Old men with long white locks and beards, with palsied, trembling limbs, vied with boys, who could not look into the muzzles of their guns when they stood on the ground, who were just out of the sugar pap and swaddling clothes period of their existence, in killing a Yank. It was currently reported that they received a thirty days furlough for every prisoner they shot; besides the distinguished “honah.”
In marked contrast with these two Georgia regiments was the 5th Georgia regulars. This regiment guarded us at Charleston, S. C., the following September, and during our three weeks stay at that place I have no recollection of the guards firing on us, although we were camped in an open field with nothing to prevent our escape but sickness, starvation, and a thin line of guards of the 5th Ga. regulars. But this regiment too had seen service at the front. They had been on the Perryville Campaign, had stood opposed to my regiment at the battle of Perryville and had received the concentrated volleys of Simonson’s battery and the 10th Wisconsin Infantry, and in return had placed 146 of my comrades HORS DE COMBAT. They had fought at Murfresboro and Chickamauga, at Lookout and Missionary Ridge and had seen grim visaged war in front of Sherman’s steadily advancing columns in the Atlanta campaign. Surely they had secured a record without needlessly shooting helpless prisoners.