By getting into those places first we picked out the best spots to stay, and got tent-building stuff that those who came after us could not.

And certainly we can never again get into as bad a place as this is.

The chances are that if this does not mean exchange, it means transfer to a better prison." But we concluded, as I said above, to reverse our usual order of procedure and flank back, in hopes that something would favor our escape to Sherman.

Accordingly, we let the first squad go off without us, and the next, and the next, and so on, till there were only eleven hundred -- mostly those sick in the Hospital--remaining behind.

Those who went away--we afterwards learned, were run down on the cars to Wilmington, and afterwards up to Goldsboro, N.C.
For a week or more we eleven hundred tenanted the Stockade, and by burning up the tents of those who had gone had the only decent, comfortable fires we had while in Florence.