Identifier: andersonvilles00mcel (find matches)
Title: Andersonville : a story of Rebel military prisons, fifteen months a guest of the so-called southern confederacy : a private soldier's experience in Richmond, Andersonville, Savannah, Millen, Blackshear, and Florence
Year: 1879 (1870s)
Authors: McElroy, John, 1846-1929
Subjects: Andersonville Prison United States -- History Civil War, 1861-1865
Publisher: Toledo : D. R. Locke
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ot discouragcd, andAndrews and I joined a crowd that wa&constructing a large tunnel from near our quarters on the eastside of the pen. We finished the burrow to within a fewinches of the edge of the ditch, and then ceased operations, tOawait some stormy night, when we could hope to get acrossthe ditcli unnoticed. Orders were issued to guards to fire without warning on menwho were observed to be digging or carrying out dirt afternightfall. They occasionally did so, but the risk did not keepany one from tunneling. Our tunnel ran directly under a sentrybox. When carrying dirt away the bearer of the bucket hadto turn his back on the guard and walk directly down thestreet in front of him, two hundred or three hundred feet, to 410 ANDEESOI^VILLE. the center of the camp, where he scattered the sand around — soas to give no indication of where it came from. Though wealways waited till the moon went down, it seemed as if, unlessthe guard were a fool, both by nature and training, he could
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HIS NEW IDEA WAS TO HAVE A HEAVILY LADEN CAKT DRIVEirAKOUND INSIDE THE DEAD LINE. not help taking notice of what was going on under his eves. Ido not recall any more nervous promenades in my life, thanthose w^hen, taking my turn, I received my bucket of sand atthe mouth of the tunnel, and walked slowly away with it. Themost disagreeable part was in turning my back to the guard.Could I have faced him, I had sufficient confidence in my quick-ness of perception, and talents as a dodger, to imagine that Icould make it difficult for him to hit me. But in walking withmy back to him I was wholly at his mercy. Fortune, however,favored us, and we were allowed to go on with our work — nightafter night — without a shot. In the meanwhile another happy thought slowly gestated inDaviss alleged intellect. How he came to give birth to twoideas with no more than a week between them, puzzled all whoknew him, and still more that he survived this extraordinaxj A STORY OF KEBEL MILITAEY PRISONS. 411 s

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