The years 1864-5 were a season of desperate battles, but in that time many more Union soldiers were slain behind the Rebel armies, by starvation and exposure, than were killed by cannon and rifle. The country has heard much of the heroism and sacrifices of those loyal youths who fell on the field of battle; it has heard little of the still greater number who died in prison pens. It knows full well how grandly her sons met death in front of the serried ranks of treason, but little of the sublime firmness with which they endured unto the death, all that ingenious cruelty their foes could inflict upon them while in captivity. It is to help supply this deficiency that this book is written. It describes the spectacle and process of seventy thousand young, strong, able-bodied men, starving and rotting to death in Andersonville prison. Such a gigantic tragedy as this stuns the mind and benumbs the imagination.