CHAPTER XXXV.
A COMMUNITY WITHOUT GOVERNMENT--FORMATION OF THE REGULATORS--RAIDERS ATTACK KEY BUT ARE BLUFFED OFF--ASSAULT OF THE REGULATORS ON THE RAIDERS -- DESPERATE BATTLE--OVERTHROW OF THE RAIDERS.
To fully appreciate the condition of affairs let it be remembered that we were a community of twenty-five thousand boys and young men--none too regardful of control at best--and now wholly destitute of government.
The Rebels never made the slightest attempt to maintain order in the prison.

Their whole energies were concentrated in preventing our escape.
So long as we staid inside the Stockade, they cared as little what we did there as for the performances of savages in the interior of Africa.
I doubt if they would have interfered had one-half of us killed and eaten the other half.

They rather took a delight in such atrocities as came to their notice.

It was an ocular demonstration of the total depravity of the Yankees.
Among ourselves there was no one in position to lay down law and enforce it.

Being all enlisted men we were on a dead level as far as rank was concerned--the highest being only Sergeants, whose stripes carried no weight of authority.