View from the Main Gate. Taken from rebel photographs of the prison
when it contained thirty-five thousand men. Original picture in possession of the author.

MARTYRIA;

OR,

ANDERSONVILLE PRISON.

BY
AUGUSTUS C. HAMLIN.
LATE MEDICAL INSPECTOR U. S. ARMY, ROYAL ANTIQUARIAN, ETC.

Illustrated by the Author.

BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD.
1866.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
A. C. HAMLIN,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Maine.

Cambridge Press
Dakin and Metcalf.

STEREOTYPED AT THE
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.

TO THE

MEMORY OF THE MEN

WHO STEADILY UPHELD THE CAUSE OF CIVIL LIBERTY,

AND

WHO PREFERRED LINGERING DEATH,

IN THE MIDST OF UNPARALLELED PRIVATIONS
AND HORRORS,

RATHER THAN DISHONOR

AND DENIAL OF THEIR BIRTHRIGHTS,

THIS BOOK

IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.

NOTE.

MARTYRIA.

I.

History weighs the social institutions of men in the scale of Humanity. Time, slowly but surely, accumulates the evidence which relates to their materials. It calmly but firmly unveils the statues which men erect as their principles, and with “that retributive justice which God has implanted in our very acts, as a conscience more sacred than the fatalism of the ancients,” lays bare the secret springs of action which have prompted the deeds of heroism or baseness, of virtue or crime.

Nations are political institutions, and like the system of nature, which is governed by positive and fixed laws, so they likewise are swayed and directed by mysterious forces, and influenced and moulded into form by those external circumstances which are greatly within the control of man. Their rise and decadence is in direct ratio to the nature and integrity of their customs, the structure of their social fabrics, the vigor of the spirit of independence which animates their thoughts, or the strength of the despotism which consumes their vitals. “Liberty brings benedictions in spite of nature, and in defiance of the same nature tyranny brings maledictions. Slavery has always produced only villany, vice, and misery.”

Men cannot perpetuate a creed or a system that is not founded on the eternal principles of justice and virtue, no more than they can control the elements—no more than they can remove or obliterate those geographical boundaries, beyond which the human races cannot pass in pursuit of the forms of wealth or the dreams of ambition.

The Belgian, who has studied so long and so faithfully the laws of metaphysics, exclaims, “All those things which appear to be left to the free will, the passions, or the degree of intelligence of men, are regulated by laws as fixed, immutable, and eternal as those which govern the phenomena of the natural world!”

II.

Along the southern tier of the great States which form the American Republic, whose gigantic structure and almost supernatural vigor already overshadow and animate the older civilizations of the world, we observe vast extents of level and alluvial lands and deltas, or “rather a series of littoral bands of remarkable disposition,” which the ocean left when receding from the mountain shores of the interior to its present limits, or which slowly and gradually emerged from their watery bed in the upheavals during the long intervals of the earth’s ages.

This immense territory, stretching from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, and hardly broken throughout this long distance by undulations of the soil, embraces more than six hundred thousand square miles—an extent greater than that of France and the States of the Germanic Confederation combined. Eight millions of human souls inhabit the one, whilst one hundred millions people the other. Ignorance and brutality darken the one, intelligence and humanity illuminate the other.

III.

The proximity of the sea, the configuration of the soil, the presence or absence of mountains, affect the growth and character of nations, and leave their impress upon their institutions. Climate and purity of blood complete the determination in the problem of life, the progress and degree of development. Upon these external causes also depend, in a great measure, the vigor of the imagination, the sentiment of the grand and the beautiful, the vivacity and purity of the soul.

The cold breezes of the temperate zones conduce men to wisdom, reason, and philosophy. The enervating atmospheres of hot climes incline the mind and body to repose, and often pervert the notions of natural justice. In the one, the mind is ever delighted and refreshed by the varying scenes of nature; in the other, the forms of the mournful and the terrible alone excite the imagination.

IV.

We have seen these lands occupied for more than two centuries by the emigrants from European countries; we have seen the reckless