to starve." One of their leading men said to me, "Libby Prison and Belle Island are our best generals—they are killing off more men than Bragg and Lee!"

One other fact I learned most discreditable to the rebel authorities. Bell Island is a contracted patch of ground, consisting of only three or four acres, on which thousands of prisoners are crowded, with scarcely a foot of intervening space. The water they are compelled to drink is in close proximity to the sinks, and necessarily polluted and poisoned. This the prisoners are compelled to drink, in very sight of clear and wholesome water, which is running in perennial streams before their eyes. Their hardships are thus purposely aggravated, and under them, an iron constitution melts away as frost before a summer's sun. This, indeed, is the very refinement of cruelty.

From another of the dying men, I learned the astonishing fact, that since the incarceration of our poor prisoners at Richmond, in no solitary instance has a woman appeared in their midst to minister even to our wounded and dying. From the "gentler sex," ordinarily so noted for the finer and better sensibilities of human nature, not one of our prisoners has received as much as a "cup of cold water"—nothing but insults and reproaches. How strikingly this contrasts with the kindness lavished by the ladies of the North on the suffering rebels whom the "accidents" of war have thrown into our hands! After the battle of Gettysburg, numbers of ladies from Phila delphia and elsewhere hastened to the scene, and dis tributed stores, to the amount of thousands, indiscriminately-between the parties they made no distinction. Had they been monsters in human shape, they might then have suffered thousands of rebels to die of neglect; but it sufficed for them to know, that although engaged

in a gigantic iniquity-such as has not been paralleled in the annals of crime since the crucifixion of Jesus on Calvary these misguided men were nevertheless of a race of our universal manhood, redeemed by the blood of Christ. This consideration alone sufficed to secure them a passport to the enlarged sympathies and the most generous and substantial aid of our Christian ladies. This, as thousands can and do attest, was spontaneously rendered, "without respect of persons," in no pharisaical spirit, but in that of unsophisticated truth and soberness. May we, who espouse the cause of the Union, thank God that such cruelty and inhumanity as are now under review may not be charged to us!

To the conduct of the rebel conspirators it adds mon-1 strous aggravation, that these barbarities are being enacted in Richmond, under the immediate cognisance of the so-called "Confederate" authorities Had they ever occurred in the wilds of Arkansas or Texas, or among the Sioux savages on the Pembina, they might challenge some degree of palliation; but, when we call to mind. that the voluntary starvation of defenceless men is occurring at Richmond, within the sound of the voices of Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, and their associates in crime, then does the bogus Confederacy itself become responsible for these atrocities to God and man; and impartial men, all the world over, who use all efforts to bewilder the human mind, by leading it into a mazy labyrinth of doubt, will reach the inevitable conclusion, that these men deserve the scorn of the civilized world, not to speak of the just vengeance of Heaven. Surely, surely, the vengeance of an incensed Omnipotence must ultimately overtake them!

Very truly, your friend,

E. W. HUTTER,

Pastor of St. Matthew's Lutheran Church, Phil'a.

RELEASED PRISONERS.

REPORT of the Committee on the Conduct of the War on the condition of our released prisoners, after their confinement in the dens, and prisons, and unsheltered fields, at and near Richmond ::

IN SENATE, Wednesday, May 9, 1864.

Mr. Wade, from the Joint Committee on the Conduct and Expenditures of the War, submitted the following Report, with the accompanying testimony:

On the 4th instant your committee received a commu nication of that date from the Secretary of War, enclosing the Report of Colonel Hoffman, commissarygeneral of prisoners, dated May 3, calling the attention of the committee to the condition of returned Union prisoners, with the request that the committee would immediately proceed to Annapolis, "and examine with their own eyes the condition of those who have returned from rebel captivity." The committee resolved that they would comply with the request of the Secretary of War on the first opportunity. The 5th of May was devoted by the committee to conclude their labors upon the investigation of the Fort Pillow massacre. On the 6th of May, however, the committee proceeded to Annapolis and Baltimore, to examine the condition of our returned soldiers, and took the testimony of several of them, together with the testimony of surgeons, and other persons in attendance upon the hospitals. That testimony, with the communication of the Secretary of War, and the Report of Colonel Hoffman, is herewith submitted.

The evidence proves, beyond all manner of doubt, a determination on the part of the rebel authorities, delibe

rately and persistently practised for a long time past, to subject those of our soldiers who have been so unfortunate as to fall into their hands, to a system of treatment which has resulted in reducing many of those who have survived, and been permitted to return to us, to a condition, both physically and mentally, which no language we can use can adequately describe. Though nearly all the patients now in the Naval Academy Hospital, at Annapolis, and in the West Hospital, at Baltimore, have been under the kindest and most intelligent treatment for about three weeks past, and many of them for a greater length of time, still they present literally the appearance of living skeletons-many of them being nothing but skin and bone. Some of them are maimed for life, from being exposed to the inclemency of the winter season on Belle Isle-being compelled to lie upon the bare ground, without tents or blankets-some of them without overcoats, or even coats-with but little fire to mitigate the severity of the wind and storms to which they were exposed.

The testimony shows that the general practice of their captors was to rob them, as soon as they were taken prisoners, of all their money, valuables, blankets, and good clothing, for which they received nothing in exchange, except, perhaps, some old worn-out rebel clothing, hardly better than none at all. Upon their arrival at Richmond they have been confined, without blankets or other covering, in buildings without fire, or upon Belle Isle, in many cases with no shelter, and in others with nothing but discarded army tents, so injured by rents and holes as to present but little barrier to the winds and storms. On several occasions the witnesses say they have risen in the morning from their resting-places upon the barę earth, and found several of their comrades frozen to

death through the night; and that many others would have met the same fate had they not walked rapidly back and forth through the hours which should have been devoted to sleep, for the purpose of retaining sufficient warmth to preserve life. In respect to the food furnished to our men by the rebel authorities, the testimony proves that the ration of each man was hardly sufficient in quantity to preserve the life of a child, even had it been. of proper quality, which it was not. It consisted usually, at the most, of two small pieces of corn bread, made in many instances, as the witnesses say, of corn and cobs ground together, and badly prepared and cooked; of perhaps two ounces of meat, usually of poor quality, and unfit to be eaten; and occasionally a few black, worm-eaten beans, or something of that kind. Many of our men were compelled to sell to their guards and others, for what price they could get, such clothing and blankets as they were permitted to receive and have furnished for their use by our Government, in order to obtain sufficient food to sustain life; thus, by endeavoring to avoid one privation, reducing themselves to the same destitute condition, in respect to clothing and covering, as they were in before they received any from our Government. When they became diseased and sick, in consequence of this exposure and privation, and were admitted into the hospital, their treatment was little if any improved as to food, though they doubtless suffered less from exposure to cold than before. Their food still remained insufficient in quantity, and altogether unfit in quality. Their diseases and wounds did not receive the treatment which the commonest dictates of humanity would have prompted. One witness, whom your committee examined, who had lost all the toes of one foot, through being frozen on Belle Isle, states that for days at a time his wounds were