by BY JOHN McELROY
829 pgs.

Subtitle: Fifteen Months A Guest Of The So-Called Southern Confederacy - A Private Soldiers Experience In Richmond, Andersonville, Savannah, Millen Blackshear And Florence

As a reporter before the war, McElroy has a keen eye for detail and a lucid style of writing. He served in the 16th Illinois Cavalry, Company L and was captured early in the war near Cumberland Gap, Tennessee. He spent most of the war a guest of the Southern Confederacy.

"Only Wirz--small, insignificant, miserable Wirz, the underling, the tool, the servile, brainless, little fetcher-and-carrier of these men, was punished--was hanged, and upon the narrow shoulders of this pitiful scapegoat was packed the entire sin of Jefferson Davis and his crew. What a farce! A petty little Captain made to expiate the crimes of Generals, Cabinet Officers, and a President. How absurd! But I do not ask for vengeance. I do not ask for retribution for one of those thousands of dead comrades, the glitter of whose sightless eyes will follow me through life. I do not desire even justice on the still living authors and accomplices in the deep damnation of their taking off. I simply ask that the great sacrifices of my dead comrades shall not be suffered to pass unregarded to irrevocable oblivion."