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the surplus in captivity. Though this was a departure from the cartel, our anxiety for the exchange induced us to consent. Yet, the Federal authorities repudiated their previous offer, and refused even this partial compliance with the cartel. Secretary Stanton, who has unjustly charged the Confederate authorities with inhumanity, is open to the charge of having done all in his power to prevent a fair exchange, and thus to prolong the sufferings of which he speaks; and very recently, in a letter over his signature, Benjamin F Butler has declared that in April, 1864, the Federal Lieut.-Gen. Grant forbade him “tc deliver to the rebels a single able-bodied man ;" and moreover, Gen. Butler acknowledges that in answer to Col. Ould's letter consenting to the exchange, officer for officer and man for man, he wrote a reply, "not diplomatically but obtrusively and demonstratively, not for the purpose of furthering exchange of prisoners, but for the purpose of preventing and stopping the exchange, and furnishing a ground on which we could fairly stand.”

These facts abundantly show that the responsibility of refusing to exchange prisoners of war rests with the Government of the United States, and the people who have sustained that Government, and every sigh of captivity, every groan of suffering, every heart broken by hope deferred among these eighty thousand prisoners, will accuse them in the judgment of the just.

With regard to the prison stations at Andersonville, Salisbury, and other places south of Richmond, your committee have not made extended examination, for reasons which have already been stated. We are satisfied that privation, suffering and mortality, to an extent much to be regretted, did prevail among the prisoners there, but they were not the result of neglect, still less of design, on the part of the Confederate Government. Haste in preparation; crowded quarters, prepared only for a smaller number; frequent removals to prevent recapture; want of transportation and scarcity of food, have all resulted from the pressure of the war, and the barbarous manner in which it has been conducted by our enemies. Upon these subjects your committee propose to take further evidence, and to report more fully hereafter.

But even now enough is known to vindicate the South, and to furnish an overwhelming answer to all complaints on the part of the U. S. Government or people, that their prisoners were stinted in food or supplies. Their own savage warfare has wrought all the evil. They have blockaded our ports; have excluded from us food, clothing and medicines; have even declared medicines contraband of war, and have repeatedly destroyed the contents of drug stores, and the supplies of private physicians in the country; have ravaged our country; burned our houses, and destroyed growing crops and farming implements. One of their officers (General Sheridan) has boasted in his official report, that, in the Shenandoah Valley alone, he burned two thousand barns filled with wheat and corn; that he burned all the mills in the whole tract of country; destroyed all the factories of cloth, and killed or drove off every animal, even to the poultry, that could contribute to human sustenance. These desolations have been repeated again and again in different parts of the South. Thousands of our families have been driven from their homes, as helpless and destitute refugees. Our enemies have destroyed the railroads and other means of transportation, by which food could be supplied from abundant districts to those without it. While thus desolating our country, in violation of the usages of civilized warfare, they have refused to exchange prisoners; have forced us to keep fifty thousand of their men in captivity-and yet have attempted to attribute to us the sufferings and privations caused by their own acts. We cannot doubt that in the view of civilization we shall stand acquitted, while they must be condemned.

In concluding this preliminary report, we will notice the strange perversity of interpretation which has induced the "Sanitary Commission" to affix as a motto to their pamphlet, the words of the compassionate Redeemer of mankind:

"For I was anhungered and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me no

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drink: I was a stranger and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick and in prison and ye visited me not."

We have yet to learn on what principle the Federal soldiers sent with arms in their hands to destroy the lives of our people; to waste our land, burn our houses and barns, and drive us from our homes, can be regarded by us as the followers of the meek and lowly Redeemer, so as to claim the benefit of his words. Yet even these soldiers, when taken captive by us, have been treated with proper humanity. The cruelties inflicted on our prisoners at the North may well justify us in applying to the " Sanitary Commission" the stern words of the Divine Teacher: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

We believe that there are many thousands of just, honourable, and humane people in the United States, upon whom this subject, thus presented, will not be lost; that they will do all they can to mitigate the horrours of war; to complete the exchange of pris oners, now happily in progress, and to prevent the recurrence of such sufferings as have been narrated. And we repeat the words of the Confederate Congress, in their Manifesto of the 14th of June, 1864: "We commit our cause to the enlightened judgment of the world; to the sober reflections of our adversaries themselves, and to the solemn and righteous arbitrament of Heaven."

The general important fact of this report is, the declaration of the result of sworn investigations to the effect that from the necessity of the case, Federal prisoners suffered considerably in the South, but were not, unless exceptionally, treated with indignity, oppression or cruelty; and that the general rule was the other way as to our prisoners at the Norththat the rule there was indignity, oppression and cruelty, and threatened, if not attempted, starvation in the midst of plenty. Where this fearful penalty was held over the victim was not in a land where the invader had proclaimed and carried out the policy of destroying every grain of wheat, and every ounce of meat, and everything that tended to its production; not in a land whose women and children were already perishing for bread, but starvation in a land that flowed with milk and honey, starvation in a land that had not only an abundance, but a superabundance even of the luxuries of life! *

*The author might make, from various memoranda he has personally collected of the experiences of Confederate prisoners, a very vast addition to the instances of suffering collected by the committee at Richmond. The following will suffice for examples. A Confederate officer, whose experience was at Johnson's Island, writes:

"No sugar, no coffee, no tea; only bread and salt beef, or salt pork, or salt fish, the latter as poor as poverty, and as unnutritious as pine shavings, varied occasionally with fresh beef, but never more than two-thirds enough of either. Occasionally, we would get one onion, or one potato each, and an ounce or so of hominy. Many would consume the whole at one meal; others thought it more wise to divide it into two or three meals; but all were hungry continually. Sir, it is a terrible thing to be hungry from day to day, from week to week, from month to month--to be always hungry! It is fearful to see three thousand men cooped up and undergoing such an ordeal! Should it be a matter of surprise that men dwindled from 200 to 140 and 100 pounds; that their eyes had a strange and eager expression; that they grew pale, cadaverous; that they walked with an

To the exposition made by the Richmond Congress of the humane endeavours of the Confederacy, with respect to prisoners of the war, there is yet an addition to be made. Impressed with the exaggerations of the newspapers on this subject, and desiring to secure the publication of the truth from time to time, Commissioner Ould, in January, 1864, wrote to Gen. Hitchcock the following letter:

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA,

WAR DEPARTMENT. RICHMOND, VA., Jan. 24th, 1864

MAJOR-GENERAL E. A. HITCHCOCK,

Agent of Exchange;

SIR: In view of the present difficulties attending the exchange and release of prisoners, I propose that all such on each side shall be attended by a proper number of their own surgeons, who under rules to be established, shall be permitted to take charge of their health and comfort. I also propose that these surgeons shall act as commissaries, with power to receive and distribute such contributions of money, food, clothing and medicines as may be forwarded for the relief of the prisoners. I further propose that these surgeons shall be selected by their own Government, and that they shall have full liberty at any and all times through the Agents of Exchange, to make reports not only of their own acts, but of any matters relating to the welfare of the prisoners.

Respectfully your obedient servant,
RO. OULD, Agent of Exchange.

To this letter Commissioner Ould received no reply. In January, 1865, the proposition was renewed to Gen. Grant, with the following remarks: "It is true your prisoners are suffering. It is one of the calamities and

unsteady gait; that all talked continually of 'something to eat '—of the good dinner, or breakfast, or supper they had had at times and places that seemed very long ago, and very far off; that they slept but to dream of sitting down to tables groaning with rich viands, where they ate, and ate, and still could not be satisfied; that with miserly care they picked up every crumb; that they pounded up old bones, and boiled them over and over, until they were as white as the driven snow; that they fished in the swill-barrel at the prison hospital; that they greedily devoured rats and cats; that they resorted to all manner of devices and tricks to cheat the surgeon out of a certificate; that they became melancholy and dejected; that they fell an easy prey to disease and death! Ah! there is many a poor fellow in his grave on Johnson's Island to-day, who would not be there had he been allowed wholesome food and enough of it."

A personal friend of the author gives a long and painfully interesting account of his experience in a trans-shipment of prisoners from Hilton Head to Fort Delaware, the terrible facts of which rival all that is known of the horrours of the "middle passage." Of 420 prisoners shipped by sea, only sixty-two could walk when the vessel arrived at Fort Delaware; the others were all down with sickness and exhaustion, and had to be taken to their cells on stretchers and ambulances. Many of them had lost their teeth by scurvy, and many were blind from disease. For months they had been subsisted on eight ounces of corn meal (ground in 1860) and one ounce of pickle (vitriol and salt), as a substitute for sorghum. Their rations were improved for a little while at Fort Delaware. But the regulations for cooking there allotted for such purpose to a company of 100 men every twenty-four hours, a log, 10 feet long and eight inches in diameter. There were no cooking utensils. Old pieces of tín were used over the fire. The men were locked up eighteen out of twenty. four hours, and only twenty at a time were allowed to pass out for the offices ofnature.

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necessities of the war, made so not by our choice. We have done everything we can consistently with the duty we owe to ourselves. We intend to do the same in the future. But that great suffering must ensue if your prisoners remain in our hands, is very certain. For that reason, I propose that all of them be delivered to you in exchange, man for man, and officer for officer, according to grade, for those of ours whom you hold. Will not the cause of humanity be far more promoted by such a course, even if, as you suggest, the friends of prisoners, both North and South, are satisfied of the exaggeration of the reports of suffering so rife in both sections? If, however, prisoners are to remain in confinement, at least, let us mutually send to their relief and comfort stationary agents, whose official duty requires them to devote all their time and labour to their sacred mission."

Gen. Grant did not reply. Perhaps he thought matters were too near the end to entertain any new negotiations on the subject referred to. However this may be, whatever was to be the catastrophe, the conclusion is simply stated: it was to leave the Confederacy with a complete record of justice, a testimony of humanity, on the whole subject of the exchange and treatment of prisoners, which must ever remain among the noblest honours and purest souvenirs of a lost cause.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

HOW SHERMAN'S MARCH THROUGH GEORGIA DEVELOPED A CRISIS IN THE CONFEDERACY.-GEOGRAPHICAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE CONQUEST OF THE SOUTH.-ADDRESS OF THE CONFEDRRATE CONGRESS.-A VULGAR AND FALSE ESTIMATE OF THE ENEMY'S SUCCESS.-MAPS OF CONQUEST AND COBWEB LINES OF OCCUPATION.-GENERAL DECAY OF PUBLIC SPIRIT IN THE CONFEDERACY.-POPULAR IMPATIENCE OF THE WAR.-WANT OF CONFIDENCE IN PRESIDENT DAVIS' ADMINISTRATION.-BEWILDERED ATTEMPTS AT COUNTER-REVOLUTION. -EXECUTIVE MISMANAGEMENT IN RICHMOND.-HOW THE CONSCRIPTION LAW WAS CHEATED. DESERTERS IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMIES. PECULIAR CAUSES FOR IT.-ITS FRIGHTFUL EXTENT.-HOW IT WAS NOT A SIGN OF INFIDELITY TO THE CONFEDERATE CAUSE.— CONDITION OF THE COMMISSARIAT.-BREAD TAKEN FROM GEN. LEE'S ARMY TO FEED PRISONERS.-ALARMING REDUCTION OF SUPPLIES.-MAJOR FRENCH'S LETTER.-LEE'S TROOPS BORDERING ON STARVATION.-EIGHT POINTS PRESENTED TO CONGRESS.-WHAT IT DID. THE CONDITION OF THE CURRENCY.-CONGRESS CURTAILS THE CURRENCY ONE

THIRD.-ACT Of 17th February, 1864.-SECRETARY SEDDON GIVES THE Coup de grace

TO THE CURRENCY.-HIS NEW STANDARD OF VALUE IN WHEAT AT FORTY DOLLARS A
BUSHEL.-DISORDERS OF THE CURRENCY AND COMMISSARIAT AS CONTRIBUTING TO DESER-
TIONS.-IMPRACTICABILITY OF ALL REMEDIES FOR DESERTIONS.-NO DISAFFECTION IN THE
CONFEDERACY, EXCEPT WITH REFERENCE TO FAULTS OF THE RICHMOND ADMINISTRATION.
-PRESIDENT DAVIS AND THE CONFEDERATE CONGRESS, &0.—THREE PRINCIPAL MEASURES
IN CONGRESS DIRECTED AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.-REMONSTRANCE OF THE VIRGINIA
DELEGATION WITH REFERENCE TO THE CABINET.-RESIGNATION OF MR. SEDDON.-PER-
SONAL RELATIONS BETWEEN PRESIDENT DAVIS AND GEN. LEE.-WHY THE LATTER DE-
CLINED TO TAKE COMMAND OF ALL THE ARMIES OF THE CONFEDERACY.-WANT OF SELF-
ASSERTION IN GEN. LEE'S CHARACTER. WHY HIS INFLUENCE IN THE GENERAL AFFAIRS
OF THE CONFEDERACY WAS NEGATIVE.-RECRIMINATION BETWEEN PRESIDENT DAVIS AND
CONGRESS.-A SINGULAR ITEM IN THE CONSCRIPTION BUREAU.-REMARK OF MRS. DAVIS
TO A CONFEDERATE SENATOR.-THE OPPOSITION LED BY SENATOR WIGFALL.-HIS TERRIBLE
AND ELOQUENT INVECTIVES.-A CHAPTER OF GREAT ORATORY LOST TO THE WORLD.-AN
APPARENT CONTRADICTION IN THE PRESIDENT'S CHARACTER. THE INFLUENCE OF
SMALL
FAVOURITES."-JOHN M. DANIEL'S OPINION OF PRESIDENT DAVIS' TEARS.-INFLUENCE OF
THE PRESIDENT ALMOST ENTIRELY GONE IN THE LAST PERIODS OF THE WAR.—THE VISIBLE
WRECKS OF HIS ADMINISTRATION.-HISTORY OF PEACE PROPOSITIONS IN CONGRESS.-
THEY WERE GENERALITIES.-ANALYSIS OF THE UNION PARTY IN THE SOUTH.-HOW
GOV. BROWN, OF GEORGIA, WAS USED BY IT.-ITS PERSISTENT DESIGN UPON THE VIRGINIA
LEGISLATURE.-HOW IT WAS REBUFFED.-HEROIC CHOICE
OF VIRGINIA.-PRESIDENT

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