The humiliating surrender of General Stoneman at Macon in July, showed them what our, folks were thinking of and awakened their minds to the disastrous consequences of such a movement when executed by a bolder and abler commander.

Two days of one of Kilpatrick's swift, silent marches would carry his hard-riding troopers around Hood's right flank, and into the streets of Macon, where a half hour's work with the torch on the bridges across the Ocmulgee and the creeks that enter it at that point, would have cut all of the Confederate Army of the Tennessee's communications.

Another day and night of easy marching would bring his guidons fluttering through the woods about the Stockade at Andersonville, and give him a reinforcement of twelve or fifteen thousand able-bodied soldiers, with whom he could have held the whole Valley of the Chattahoochie, and become the nether millstone, against which Sherman could have ground Hood's army to powder.
Such a thing was not only possible, but very probable, and doubtless would have occurred had we remained in Andersonville another week.
Hence the haste to get us away, and hence the lie about exchange, for, had it not been for this, one-quarter at least of those taken on the cars would have succeeded in getting off and attempted to have reached Sherman's lines.
The removal went on with such rapidity that by the end of September only eight thousand two hundred and eighteen remained at Andersonville, and these were mostly too sick to be moved; two thousand seven hundred died in September, fifteen hundred and sixty in October, and four hundred and eighty-five in November, so that at the beginning of December there were only thirteen hundred and fifty-nine remaining.

The larger part of those taken out were sent on to Charleston, and subsequently to Florence and Salisbury.

About six or seven thousand of us, as near as I remember, were brought to Savannah.
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We were all exceedingly anxious to know how the Atlanta campaign had ended.