Was it possible that such scarecrows as these could in every battle have driven back the well-fed and cared-for Northern soldiers! "Are they all like this ?" one burly young soldier from a Western State asked their guard.
"That's them, sir," the sergeant in charge of the party replied.

"Not much to look at, are they?
But, by gosh, you should see them fight! You wouldn't think of their looks then." "If that's soldiering," the young farmer said solemnly, "the sooner I am back home again the better.

But it don't seem to me altogether strange as they should fight so hard, because I should say they must look upon it as a comfort to be killed rather than to live like that." A shout of laughter from the prisoners showed the young rustic that the objects of his pity did not consider life to be altogether intolerable even under such circumstances, and he moved away meditating on the discomforts of war, and upon the remarks that would be made were he to return home in so sorrowful a plight as that of these Confederate prisoners.
"I bargained to fight," he said, "and though I don't expect I shall like it, I shan't draw back when the time comes; but as to being starved till you are nigh a skeleton, and going about barefooted and in such rags as a tramp wouldn't look at, it aint reasonable." And yet, had he known it, among those fifteen prisoners more than half were possessors of wide estates, and had been brought up from their childhood in the midst of luxuries such as the young farmer never dreamed of.
Among many of the soldiers sympathy took a more active form, and men pressed forward and gave packets of tobacco, cigars, and other little presents to them, while two or three pressed rolls of dollar notes into their hands, with words of rough kindness.
"There aint no ill feeling in us, Rebs.

You have done your work like men, and no doubt you thinks your cause is right, just as we does; but it's all over now, and maybe our turn will come next to see the inside of one of your prisons down south.

So we are just soldiers together, and can feel for each other." Discipline in small matters was never strictly enforced in the American armies, and the sergeant in charge offered no opposition to the soldiers mingling with the prisoners as they walked along.
Two days later they were sent by railway to the great prison at Elmira, in the State of New York.