As the Union position crumbled before a Confederate assault on the second day of the 1863 Battle of Chickamauga, Sergeant Clark N. Thorp bolted with his unit, the 19th U.S. Infantry, in a mad dash for the rear. “Our retreat,” Thorp would later write, “was about such as you would have seen a rabbit make when the dogs are close behind.” Amid the smoke and noise of battle, Thorp walked straight into a Rebel line—and 19 months inside Confederate prisons. He would spend 11 of those months in Andersonville, the South’s largest prison, in Americus, Georgia.

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Thorp’s memoir—originally a typed transcript—was obtained by contributing editor George Skoch about 20 years ago at a Civil?War Roundtable “sale/swap meet.” Skoch learned that Thorp, a 22-year-old Regular Army officer from Sylvania, Ohio, at the time of his Andersonville imprisonment, frequently recounted his story to local church and youth groups between 1896 and 1924, just three years before his death. “To my knowledge,” Skoch said, “his story has never before been published.” Spelling and punctuation from the original have been preserved. The text has been edited for length; paragraph breaks were added for readability.

At the time we arrived [in early May 1864] I suppose there were about 15 to 18 acres enclosed by a huge fence, built by hewing pine logs, 24 feet long, on two sides and placing them tight in the ground, about eight feet deep, leaving 16 feet out of the ground. At a distance of about two hundred feet apart, outside the stockade, there were rude ladders erected leading to a platform about twelve or thirteen feet above the ground, on which the guards stood. They were protected from the sun’s rays and from storms by a rough board roof.

The height of the platform would give the guard easy oversight of the interior of the prison and the top of the stockade made a good rest for his gun. Many of the guards lost no opportunity to shoot at a Yank. There was a dead-line, formed by driving stakes into the ground, leaving about three feet high and sixteen feet from the Stockade. On these stakes were placed sticks of wood 1” x 3.” Beyond this line none dared to go unless he wished to commit suicide….Words of mine are altogether inadequate to describe our feelings when the ponderous gates swung open and we saw the interior of Andersonville. Here was a picture of squalor and misery seldom equaled in the sight of man—thousands of men, many of them nearly naked, barefoot, black and filthy beyond the power of words to describe. The space inside was covered, in great part, by rude shelters of all descriptions and sizes, from the some-what commodious tent made by sewing two army blankets together and stretching them over a ridge-pole and pinning the outer ends to the ground, under which several men could crawl for shelter, to a little affair, made by stretching shirts, blouses, etc., in like manner, which could scarcely shelter two men.

There were no regular streets except the two running into the stockade from the two gates. Spaces were reserved at intervals where men could get into line to be counted. All other spaces were filled up as any man, or squad, chose in pitching their tents….I speak of tents, not because we all had them by any means, but because many were fortunate enough to have one or a portion of one and if so it meant a great deal—it became a question of life or death to us.

We had now been in captivity about eight months and our clothing was in rags though we had been careful to keep it. You must understand that the Confederate government made no attempt to house its Andersonville prisoners….Here we were, by the thousands, taking the weather night and day as it came, without any covering except the clothes worn throughout the twenty four hours. Let me say here that during June and July 1864 it rained for twenty-one consecutive days and the rain-fall amounted at times almost to a deluge. During a heavy storm none of us could keep from getting soaked and those poor fellows who were without any shelter were much worse off than those who had only a blanket for a roof.

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