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10 “All are glad to go somewhere” The officers’ odyssey, 1864–65 some three months after Union enlisted men and noncommissioned officers began arriving in Andersonville, their officers followed them to Georgia. Their destination was macon, some forty miles to the north. officers from the Plymouth garrison arrived as early as may 1. however, it was not until the next day that Adjutant General Cooper informed howell Cobb that yankee officers were on their way and ordered him to make preparations for their safekeeping. Cobb responded the same day, informing Cooper that he had ordered barracks erected at Camp oglethorpe. The prisoners would be kept outside until they were finished.1 one week later macon’s mayor received word from the War Department that his city would again be housing yankee captives. stockade walls were soon going up at Camp oglethorpe. in announcing the news to the populace, the MaconTelegraph observed, “it is not, in many respects, a good selection, and we are sorry so many prisoners should be quartered in macon, but perhaps we may as well bear the burden as any other community.” on the 18th the paper reported that nearly a thousand prisoners had arrived the previous day. Three more shipments of between five hundred and a thousand reached macon the following week. Although some remained, the majority appear to have been enlisted men bound for Andersonville .2 Among the first contingent of officers to reach macon were Cyrus heffley and George Grant, both of whom had spent the previous winter at libby. stockade walls with platforms for sentinels were up by the time they arrived on may 17. A second line of guards stood beyond the walls. Although there was a building in the center of the fairgrounds that served as a hospital, the men occupied tents made from their own blankets. heffley found water to be abundant, and Grant found it 168 • Chapter 10 to be of good quality. A small stream ran through the compound, and there was also a spring and a well.3 The tents proved temporary, although it was not Cobb’s forces that put up barracks . on the 20th the officers received lumber to erect their own shelters. Two days later heffley’s mess had its shanty, one hundred feet long by sixteen wide, half under roof.The next day the men added bunks. Arriving on may 25, Charles mattocks , who had previously spent time at lynchburg and Danville, wrote, “This is a much better place than any we have had, because we are now out of doors, with sheds built by our own hands to lie under nights.” By July 10 one prisoner estimated that two-thirds of the macon captives had shelter.4 on may 25 Capt. George C. Gibbs, who had served at prisons in Richmond and salisbury, was placed in command of the macon prison. Capt. W. KempTabb, however, was the officer immediately in charge of the prisoners.Tabb had accompanied the first detachment from Richmond, and he had earned the men’s enmity before they ever reached Georgia. one wrote, “he is a dirty low lifed drunken Pig. he was very abusive in language and manner toward us on our way here.” Added another, “Capt. Tabbs, who commanded us is a brute and will be remembered by all who saw his actions. he spoke very rough, called officers sons of b——.”5 other macon prisoners soon adopted similar opinions. one termed Tabb “a rascal” and “a most infernal scoundrel.” on may 28 the captain threatened to shoot any man who did not fall in line for roll call at the proper time. Two prison diarists dismissed the order as a vain attempt to frighten them. A third considered it nothing more than the ramblings of “a regular drunken fool.” The next day James Penfield wrote that Tabb and a guard entered their shed and immediately uncovered a tunnel. he ordered a prisoner to fill it in, and when the officer refusedTabb struck him with a gun and threatened to shoot him. some two months later Tabb fell into Union hands when a train he was in was captured south of Richmond. Gen. Truman seymour, who had been a prisoner at macon, wrote to William hoffman on behalf of a group of exchanged prisoners. “The prisoners of war very generally desire that steps be taken to visit upon Captain Tabb some of those indignities that he heaped upon them while in his hands,” seymour wrote. he...

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