Prison, in reference to the treatment of our prisoners, Many sunk under it, and falling away into living skeletons were passed over to the hospital, in the end of the building, where they lived or died, as circumstances might decide. How often have I seen this? So often that it had long ceased to call forth special attention. Did men fall down exhausted upon the floor, those stronger picked them up, and strove to have them removed to the hospital. Did they die, their bodies were carelessly thrown to one side until convenience suited them to hurry them under ground. During this time the heat was intense, and the suffering from this cause alone very great. Speaking of their rations, he said: The bread was very unpalatable and unwholesome; the beef oftentimes tainted, and sometimes evidently diseased, as we could see where tumors had been extracted. If, in lieu of rice, we obtained beans or peas, we received no small quantity of animated life in the form of worms, fat and plump. If by any means we offended his supreme highness (the commandant of the prison), our supply of water was cut off for half a day and night, and this during the suffocating weather of summer, or, to vary the punishment and give zest, to the regimen, we would be left without wood for three-fourths of a day wherewith to cook our food. I have seen a captain of cavalry, for the simple offence of missing the spittoon, and spitting on the floor, thrown into a dark, damp dungeon for two days and nights, on bread and water, causing serious inflammation. Lieutenant Welch, of the Eighty-seventh Pennsylvania Infantry, lay for six weeks in a dungeon under the building, because, as an orderly sergeant acting under appointment as a lieutenant, although not mustered in, he had rightly classed himself with the enlisted men. When brought up among the other officers, his clothes and shoes, &c., were covered with green mould. Lieutenant Dutton, of the Sixty-seventh Pennsylvania Infantry, has been doomed to a dungeon until the close of the war, and is now suffering for a similar offence, with the additional fact that he assumed the name of another. Colonel Powell, of the Twelfth Virginia Union Cavalry, wounded severely in the back from a window in Wytheville, and left behind, was carried to Richmond, and placed in the hospital. A few days after, one of the Richmond papers railed out against him in a most brutal manner, and suggested he be executed. The prison inspector entered the hospital, and ordered him to get up off his bed and follow him. He was placed in one of the dungeons spoken of, and, upon asking him what were the charges against him, he was answered, God d-n you, you will soon find out. Here, with a ball in his back, he remained five weeks and four days, part of the time without a blanket, rarely receiving any medical care, and sometimes his rations withheld. While he was confined there, the entry-way was frequently blocked up with dead bodies remaining there for several days, and this during the heat of summer. This entry performed another important part, being the place where men and women were brought in to receive their lawful allowance of lashes at the hands of the prison inspectors. I have so far only given an outline of the treatment and condition of the officers, which in comparison was a favoured one. I cannot describe the condition of the enlisted men. Hunger, bad treatment, and exposure have done their work too surely for many brave souls who have gone to testify at the bar of God to the barbarities practised upon them. Many of them, also, were shot by the guard upon the most frivolous pretences. I have seen our men marched through the city of Richmond barefooted, bareheaded, without coats, and with only the remnants of other articles of clothing. I have seen them brought from this island in the evening, to ship them in the morning for City Point, so weak from hunger and disease that they were unable to stand upon their feet. One of the many nights spent in Libby is engraven upon my mind. A free negro of Philadelphia, nearly white, captured while serving in our navy, received three hundred and twenty lashes. His loud cries and pleadings penetrated every part of the building, as blow followed blow. He was then wrapped in a blanket, saturated with salt and water, and cast into one of the dungeons for a month or so. Such scenes and cries were frequent. Major Houstain and Lieutenant Von Weltrien, who escaped from Richmond in November, 1863, stated, in a conversation at Fort Monroe, that the cries of the prisoners for food were piteous, and the ravings of the men, rendered insane in many instances by the pangs of hunger, sounded through the Libby building night and day. One man in the room with Major Houstain was so prostrated by want of food, that when a piece of bread was thrown to him by his brutal jailor, he had not the strength to eat it, and died with the scrap in his hand, clutching in death the very staff of life. Rev. James Harvey, Chaplain of the Hundred-and-Tenth Ohio Volunteers, who was taken prisoner at Winchester, Va., says: After spending three days in connection with our hospitals in gathering up our wounded, I found in the dead-room of one of our hospitals files of men who were lying in a state of decomposition. The nurses told me that they could not be taken out, as the stench was such that the room could not be entered. WRETCHED CONDITION OF UNION PRISONERS, RELEASED FROM RICHMOND. THE following is a simple statement of facts from a gentleman of undoubted veracity: The flag-of-truce boat New York arrived at the Naval School wharf, Annapolis, Maryland, this morning, October 30th, 1863, from City Point, with one hundred and eighty-one paroled men. Eight of the men died on the boat, on its way hither. They had literally been starved to death. Never, in the whole course of my life, have I witnessed such a scene as these men presented. They were living skeletons; every man of them had to be sent to the hospitals, and the surgeon's opinion of them is, that more than one-third of them must die. They are beyond the reach of medicine. I questioned several of them, and all stated that their condition has been brought on by the treatment which they have received at the hands of the rebels. They have been kept without food, and exposed, a large portion of the time, without shelter of any kind. To look at the attenuated and squalid condition of these poor men, and listen to their tales of woe and agony, as to how they have been treated, one would not suppose they had fallen into the hands of Southern Chivalry! but rather into the hands of savage barbarians, destitute of all humanity or feeling. The following is a letter addressed to the editor of the Daily Chronicle, of Washington, by Rev. E. W. Hutter, Pastor of St. Matthew's Lutheran Church, New Street, Philadelphia, in regard to the prisoners referred to in the ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND, Dear Sir: Although the statements respecting the extreme wretchedness of the Union prisoners returned from Richmond, seemed to me to be so well authenticated as to preclude all possibility of doubt or mistake, I yet resolved to satisfy myself of their truthfulness, or otherwise, by actual personal observation. To this step I was prompted by no desire to gratify a mere idle curiosity, but to render to those poor men, if possible, all the good that might be in my power. "He that knoweth to do good," says St. James, "and doeth it not, to him it is sin." Nor are we, in our ministrations of mercy, to wait until occasions for their exercise present themselves at our doors, but, in imitation of our blessed Redeemer, we are to seek them out. Actuated by motives such as these, I paid a visit to the Government Hospitals at Annapolis, and proceed to furnish you with a statement of the condition of the prisoners recently returned from Richmond. In my visit there, I was most kindly assisted by Rev. H. C. Henries, the laborious and self-denying chaplain in charge of that place. Be assured, it is not possible to exaggerate the scenes there presented; they defy the descriptive powers of language. The pictorial representation in Harper's Weekly, so far from being an exaggeration, affords but a very inadequate view of these scenes of wretchedness. In my pastoral experience, I have stood at the bed-side of many dying sufferersoften have I seen the human frame painfully reduced by the ravages of consumption-but never before have my sensibilities been so shocked as at Annapolis. To look upon men who, a short time since, were robust and stalwart men, not brutes-immortal men, created by a com |