560 TREATMENT OF SOLDIERS. sioner refused to accede, giving various reasons for his refu sal, but they failed to satisfy the people who were becoming clamorous on the subject. The real fact was, the Secretary of War saw that while we could raise an indefinite number of men, the South was exhausted, and he had no idea of reinforcing its armies with thirty or forty thousand able-bodied men, and getting in return the same number of emaciated, half-starved, enfeebled soldiers, that would not be fit for duty till the war was over, if ever. His motives, unquestionably, were right, and he thought that he was doing his country a service by keeping the rebel army reduced in this way. Doubtless, too, he thought this course would be a saving of life in the end, but it was cruel as the grave. There are certain things to be done and to be left undone, without regard to consequences. A ruler may think it the quickest way to end a war, to massacre all the young men fit to bear arms, that he can capture, but the end sought to be obtained can never justify the use of such means. A powerful nation, in war with a weaker one, might think that the shortest way to end the struggle, would be to hoist the black flag and give no quarter, and judge rightly, too; but the whole civilized world would cry out against the barbarous act. And yet these measures have their excuses, but no course can be justified, that, for a probable good, allows brave soldiers, who have nobly struggled to sustain their Government, to languish and die in prison. There is no class of men, whose interests and welfare should be so dear to the Government, as its soldiers captured in battle. So the country felt, and the pressure became at length so great on the Administration, that it was compelled to turn over the whole matter to General Grant. With his strong, practical common sense, and his love of the SOUTHERN CRUELTY. 561 soldier, he did not long hesitate respecting the course he ought to adopt. Not the injustice and wickedness of the South, nor the advantages that might accrue to it, could deter him from acting humanely to our own soldiers, and exchanging man for man as long as it could be done. The exchange of prisoners, under his wise administration, became very active, and as the emaciated, dying, half-idiotic forms of humanity, that had once been brave American soldiers, reached our lines, the barbaric, diabolical system practised in Southern prisons became painfully apparent. It was vain for the rebel authorities to say that their own soldiers lacked food, and that the inhabitants were starving, and that our prisoners only shared the common fate. Making all due allowance for the scarcity of provisions in the South, the treatment of our prisoners indicated a depth of moral degradation and a savage hate, that will be a disgrace to Southern civilization as long as time endures. If such inhumanity and fiendish cruelty were the result of Slavery, it would need no deeper damnation. We cannot go over the sickening details of Southern prison-life. Men left to perish with the scurvy-slowly eaten up with maggots-shot without excuse, and tortured, apparently, for mere love of cruelty, make up a picture from which the heart of any but a Fejee would turn with loathing and abhorrence. The principal prisons, South, were Andersonville and Millen, Georgia; Columbia, Florence, and Charleston, South Carolina; Tyler, Texas; Salisbury, North Carolina; Cahawba, Alabama; Danville, Virginia; and Libby, Pemberton, Castle Thunder, and Belle Isle, Richmond. Of these, Millen, Andersonville, and the Richmond prisons, were preeminent for infamous barbarity. It is impossible to tell how many perished in these various 562 ANDERSONVILLE PRISON. prisons during the war, but some have put them as high as seventy thousand. Over ten thousand perished in Andersonville prison alone. In the latter, although the camp was located in the immediate neighborhood of large forests, the captives were allowed no shelter, and the sick groaned out their lives on the bare ground. The treatment was not the same at every period during the war, nor the same in all the prisons, but at Andersonville, the record of every day and month was one of horrors. Here some twenty acres were inclosed by a stockade, with a swamp in the centre, where, at times, thirty thousand Union prisoners were confined. This space was dotted with holes dug by the prisoners to obtain a place of shelter. American soldiers and citizens were here compelled by their former fellow-citizens, to burrow like wild animals in the earth. The horrors and sufferings of this mundane hell were such that some went mad and roamed about in helpless idiocy; others deliberately walked across the dead-line, as it was called, to be shot, and so get rid of their misery. Those who attempted to escape were hunted with blood-hounds or shot down. Many of the efforts put forth by these men to keep up their spirits, and brace them to endure their sufferings, were most pitiful. The rebel officers sought to take advantage of their sufferings and make them enlist in the Confederate army, but in most cases without success. The brave fellows, though utterly prostrated in strength and spirits, still refused to betray the flag under which they had fought-and so died, unknown and unsung, yet noble martyrs for their country. The rebel surgeons were, in most cases, humane, and remonstrated with the authorities against the cruelties perpetrated on Union prisoners. Those who wish to read the heart-rending details of Southern prison-life, will find them at length, in the account A CRUEL POLICY. 563 of the trial of Captain Wirz, who was in immediate command of Andersonville prison. This wretch, who, we are glad to know, was not born in this country, was arraigned soon after the close of the war, before a military commission in Washington, tried, convicted and hung. There is no language too strong to express the enormity of the guilt of the Southern authorities. On the other hand, there can be no justification of a policy, on our part, that would permit tens of thousands of brave soldiers to perish under untold sufferings, when they might have been saved. If the principle, laid down by Mr. Lincoln, and given on a former page, had been carried out, a greater part of this misery might have been prevented. CHAPTER XL. JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 1865. THE RIGHT WING OF SHERMAN'S ARMY THREATENS CHARLESTON-THE LEFT ITANTS BURNING OF WINNSBORO'-CHARLOTTE, N. C., THREATENED—SHER- SHI CAMPAIGN OF THE CAROLINAS. HERMAN, having rested his army at Savannah and HERMAN, completed his plans, began, in the middle of January, to send off a part of his troops, in transports, to Beaufort, preparatory to the commencement of his campaign through the Carolinas. But his army was not in motion until the first of February. It numbered about sixty-five thousand men, and was divided into four Corps, with a train of four thou sand five hundred vehicles, of all kinds, which, if stretched in a single line, in marching order, would have extended forty-five miles. Each Corps, however, had its own train, which occupied a separate road so as to avoid crowding or delay. The news of his departure from Savannah filled the South with alarm, and the North with solicitude. The question |