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A Sorrowful Christmas By early December , almost four thousand wretched former Millen prisoners—those not exchanged at Savannah or removed to Florence—had fetched up in remote Blackshear in southeastern Georgia. About twenty were from the Ninth Minnesota, including liberators Frahm, Gordon, and Rodier. Isolated from Savannah by Sherman’s march, the prisoners would have to stay at Blackshear until Winder made other arrangements. The captives, camped in the tall timber outside of town, for once enjoyed plenty of firewood and tree branches for improvising shelters. The food got better as well, with a little fresh beef and sweet potatoes added to the inevitable corn bread. “Our rations were fair after the first three or four days,” wrote Ohioan Jacob Hutchinson. “I seemed to improve a little and a part of the time was able to get around on my feet.” Although Aslakson’s chronic diarrhea, which he first experienced at Millen (and which plagued him for the rest of his life), worsened at Blackshear , he did get some anti-scorbutic value for inflamed gums and loose teeth by chewing Southern pine needles. Any improvement was a blessing, for he and his companions would soon need all their strength.1 On December  as Sherman closed in on Savannah, the authorities began shuttling the Blackshear prisoners by train  miles southwest to Thomasville , terminus of the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad, not far from the Florida line. A mile northwest of town, slaves had hastily excavated a deep ditch around a five-acre site where big fires blazed all night to mark the perimeter. By December  all prisoners capable of being moved from Blackshear were concentrated there. Unusually cold weather gripped Thomasville despite its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico. At night a substantial number of prisoners  chapter seventeen ‫ﱸﱷﱶ‬ Andersonville (III) and Cahaba froze to death. Aslakson was surprised not to be one of them. “My clothes were torn and literally worn out, and my shoes were so worn that I was about barefoot.” The plentiful “needle-like thorns” proved useful for mending garments , such as they were. On December  Winder ordered the prisoners at Thomasville moved to Andersonville, which was what they most feared. No direct rail link existed. The already frail prisoners would have to trod sixty miles north through rough country to Albany, endpoint of the Southwest Railroad, from where they could ride the remaining forty-seven miles to Andersonville.2 On December  nearly , starving, poorly clad prisoners, in groups of , started trudging toward Albany. Perhaps as many as  more had died either at Thomasville or on the trains that brought them. Never identified, they were buried in a mass grave in the Old City Cemetery. It is quite possible a few of the unknown dead were from the Ninth Minnesota. The fate of several prisoners who were thought to have been at Millen, such as Pliny Conkey and young Dudley Perry of Company C, remains unknown. “Now commenced the hardest march I ever made,” wrote Hutchinson. “I was able to walk about a little, but was not fit for a long march.” Uriah Karmany, the hospital orderly of the Second Minnesota, concurred. “The suffering on this march was intense. Many were very feeble and without food or shoes. Officers would force them on with bayonets until they staggered by the way side unable to rise, when they would be left to starve.” Hutchinson soon dropped out, but his Rebel guard, “an old soldier,” turned out to be “a whole-souled man” who kindly and patiently kept him going, even giving him a ride on his horse. Hutchinson was truly fortunate. In a few days he felt “better than I had for weeks.” Simon Peter Obermier observed in his diary that “those that couldn’t keep up [were] killed on the spot” and that “many drowned crossing creeks and rivers.” Some exhausted stragglers were brought in by wagons, as Karmany noted, like “so much inanimate baggage.”3 The gruesome trek lasted between four and five days, part of the time without rations. The last two days, moreover, were especially cold during which bare feet—many of the prisoners were shoeless—bled profusely. Aslakson well understood by that time how “hunger drives one to the unbelievable.” During halts he “found strength enough to gather up some corn among the litter where the horses and mules had been fed, rinsed it in water and ate it with a relish I have seldom experienced.” Corporal McLean of the th New York...

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