volume as the pictures of victims of "starvation" in Confederate dungeons.* Is it possible, indeed, that such flimsy devices of falsehood can impose upon the sympathies of the intelligent. Thus the Committee on "rebel barbarities" prompts a witness from the Libby: "Were you not often very hungry?" "Hungry!" replies the witness, as if *We have seen, as these pages are going through the press, an exposé in a Richmond paper of the cruel lie of the Yankee. It refers to an exchange of sick prisoners made in the fall of 1864: "The mortality among our unfortunate prisoners sent by sea to Savannah to be exchanged was very remarkable. We have published a list of 117 who died on the passage to Savannah; also a list of 32 who died within a few days after being landed. Distressing as is this mortality, the Confederate newspapers have not been so inconsiderate as to impute it to a wrong cause.Revolting at the shocking inhumanity which limits exchanges to the sick, the feeble and the dying, we have received home our brethren, emaciated as they are with long-protracted disease, and we have wondered not that so many died, but that so many, travelling in such a condition, should live. "We have sent to the truce boat a similar class of the Federal prisoners in our hands; it is for these only that the Yankees have bargained. When the poor creatures reach them, worn and wasted by sickness, and evidencing, in their appearance, that they should be in the hospitals instead of travelling, in place of the sense of shame which the Yankee authorities and people should feel at the consequences of their inhuman policy, with such audacious hypocrisy as a Yankee only can manifest, they seize the occasion to calumniate the Confederates, a reluctant party to a commerce worse than "the middle passage," and only better than protracted imprisonment. They pretend to consider the returned men as samples of those who have been left behind; they charge their weakness and emaciation to starvation, and not to sickness; they clamor like so many howling dervishes; and with an effrontery that the world beside cannot equal, they extract self-glorification out of their own crime, and heap reproaches on us who are its victims! "We know that their treatment of our prisoners is horrible enough. We know that of deliberate and systematic villainy, and without pretense of necessity, they torture the unfortunate soldiers who fall into their hands. We know, that in cool, fiendish calculation, they are kept in many of the prison houses under the torment of continual hunger. But much as we execrate such conduct, and the people who can practise it, we respect ourselves too much to slander them. We do not pretend that the sick men who are sent home to us are samples of the rest. We are not so false as to represent their emaciation as due to starvation and not to disease.Multitudes of the poor sufferers die, as we have seen, on their way to our lines. Many die before we can take them to our arms. Many die before we can get them into our hospitals; and many there languish and die without a sight of the home for which they risked the travel. In all our distress at this mortality, we are candid enough to recognize the cause, and to tell the truth amid our resentments. Not so the Yankees. Their morals make it a merit to lie against their enemies, and so far from being restrained by self-respect, they are made zealous by selffelicitations. We trust the world understands them by this time." that word was completely inadequate to his recollections. "Why, I tell you, some of our boys used to get things from home, and when they threw the bones into the spit-boxes, others of us used to be watching to pick them out and gnaw them over again." The Committee is delighted; and the story of the scavenger goes to the Yankee newspapers as a tid-bit of Confederate atrocity. To the sufferings of my first days in Fort Warren my memory reverts with an irrepressible shudder. If I had been in health I might easily have endured the hardships assigned me, including the straw sack, the diaphanous slices of bread and the bits of fat pork. But the nervous affection from which I had long suffered, and which was now aggravated by the anxieties and rude trials of imprisonment, had taken an alarming aspect. A partial paralysis of my body threatened to succeed. I could not rise from my bed or from a long sitting without finding my arm, or perhaps my whole side, temporarily powerless. The kindness of my fellow-prisoners, in these circumstances, is never to be forgotten. I was relieved from my part of cooking and washing dishes, and was excused from "the police duty" assigned to prisoners, which included the cleansing of their quarters and a number of unpleasant tasks. My mess-mates came to my aid with friendly sympathy. I obtained medical advice from Dr. Hambleton, of Georgia, my fellow-prisoner and excellent friend. Although I had but little faith in the justice or humanity of the Government at Washington, I thought it could scarcely insist upon torturing me, and would be satisfied to secure my person. I had applied for a parole on account of my health, but in vain had I waited for a reply. I had never, even, been allowed to see the order committing me to Fort Warren; and it seemed that the authorities had not been willing to spare me any agony of doubt or suspense. I had been in prison nearly a fortnight, when I wrote the following letter to Washington: FORT WARREN, BOSTON HARBOUR, June, 1864. Mr. Gideon Welles, Secretary of the United States Navy: Sir: On the 10th of last month, I was taken one hundred and fifty miles out at sea on a British vessel, where I was simply a citizen-passenger, unconnected with any public service of the Confederate States, and subject to none. of the military penalties of your Government. Other passengers were released: I, alone, of all the ship's company, an innocent passenger, was doomed to Fort Warren. I was taken from a sick bed to be brought here. In these harsh and invidious circumstances, I asked but a parole on account of desperate health: the bare concession of the plainest humanity. Since my confinement here, I have had an attack of partial paralysis. It is now only left for me to declare to your conscience and to the sympathy of the world-not in terms of importunity or any mere personal disrespect, but in the spirit of a solemn conviction-that I am being murdered by an imprisonment, the object of which is not to secure my person (since I offered to do this by an inviolable pledge of honour) but to punish an enfeebled body, and sharpen the torture of a disease that claims pity for its helplessness. I am, etc., EDW'D A. Pollard. To this letter I never received a word of reply or sign of heed. I was left to imagine the Yankee authorities chuckling with devèlish satisfaction to know how their victim was pincered and excruciated with the tortures they had invented. CHAPTER V. JOURNAL NOTES IN PRISON.-Precious Tributes of Sympathy.-Portrait of the Yankee.-A New England Shepherd.-Sufferings and Reflections.-Fourth of July in Fort Warren. June 17.-The hours weigh heavily upon me. In my imprisonment and sickness I have yet much to be thankful for, especially in the assiduous and cheerful attentions of my fellow-prisoner, Doctor Hambleton. The pastimes in our prison-life are meagre enough. Reading the newspapers and eviscerating Yankee falsehoods are our chief employments. The good friends I have made in Boston have not forgotten me, and I have frequent occasion to acknowledge their kindness in missives of sympathy and occasionally of "material" comfort, in articles of food banished by "orders from Washington" from the slop-boards of our cook-house. Whatever thoughts I have of the cruel despotism at Washington and of those masses of population subject to it, my heart must always retain grateful and faithful memories of those few in a strange land who administered to my sorrow, and dared an expression of sympathy for me, when in the bonds of prison and disease. I have a valued and interesting correspondence with some noble ladies in Boston, whom I have never seen, but whose names are known to several of the prisoners here, who have had various tokens of their sympathy. The correspondence in my case commenced with a present of delicious fruit, to which the card of the donor was attached. The charity of these ladies, and, more than all, the sentiments which have sweetened it, are treasured in the hearts of many prisoners here, and they may be sure that when the name and freedom of our beloved country shall no longer be disputed, their deeds will find a public record somewhere and be rewarded with conspicuous gratitude. Before this war I had lived several years in Washington and in New York; but from all the herd of my acquaintance in the North I have not yet had one line of sympathy or of remembrance. Yet I have had letters from strangers-among them dear, noble countrywo men of mine in the enemy's lines-which have touched my heart with inexpressible gratitude and pride. 圃 I had been in prison but a few days when I received from Mrs. General of Kentucky, a stranger to me, but the name of whose gallant husband, fallen on one of the bright fields of the war, lives in the glorious memories of the Confederacy, a letter of sympathy, subscribed, "a sincere though unknown friend." 66 Do you need aid?" wrote this generous lady. "And will you be allowed to receive any from your friends? It would be a pleasure to relieve your wants as far as we can.' Yesterday I received a letter which is so remarkable, that I cannot forbear transcribing here some passages from it, and taking the liberty of adding the name of the writer-a liberty, I think, which a grateful memoir must admit, unless there is good reason to the contrary: PRAIRIEVILLE, PIKE COUNTY, MISSOURI, Mr. Edward A. Pollard, (of Richmond, Va.): I see from the papers that you are a prisoner of war at Fort Warren. All prisoners need the attention of their friends Though entirely unknown to you, I have still the honour to be a Virginian, and love from a sense of duty all of her worthy sons. If you need money, clothes, or any thing, write immediately and inform me, with directions to whose care to send them. I have a holy veneration for my Mother State, and if I failed to do any thing in my power for her brave sons, I would feel that I had neglected a religious duty. All of my relatives, except my father's immediate family, are in the "Old Dominion." have had a brother at Camp Chase, and a cousin at Johnson's Island, and have cause to know how comforting any sympathy is to the prisoner. Do not forget. that you have many warm friends in Missouri, and in myself a faithful one. So do not fail to let me know if you wish any thing. I think, sir, that we partake of the independent spirit of our mother, and do not like to receive any thing from strangers; but you know Virginians are not strangers, but brothers and sisters wherever they are found.... KATE B. WOODROFF. Sweet lady, God bless you! I wrote that I was in no such need as to tax the generosity of friends; that the letter of my fair correspondent was itself a treasure; that I was proud to have such a country woman. To think that she had written to a desolate prisoner thus from her distant home, with that hearty and persistent offer of assistance, so unlike cheap sympathy, so really anxious to oblige! Well may Virginia herself be proud of such a daughter! The fragrance of many a womanly deed breathes through the gorgeous wreath Virginia . |