Waiting for Release

THE following pages were written during the years 1866 and 1867, almost immediately following my release from the Southern prisons. It is my own personal experience, and was written while fresh in my mind that it might not be lost to memory. It is but the experience of several thousands of others who were comrades with me at Andersonville, Charleston, and Florence, only the half is not told; while if the experience of many others was told it would be greater and worse than my own.

After twenty years I revised the original manuscript, leaving out much of its bitterness, and nearly all the explosive adjectives and personal opinions.