THE CONFEDERATE PRISONS.
FOR some time past, in spite of the silence of journals which hasten to dilate on every act of lawless folly of which any Northern officer is guilty, accounts have reached this country of the cruelties practised by theConfederate autho- rities on the helpless prisoners in their hands which seemed simply incredible. Even the publication by the authority of Congress of the evidence taken by the Committee on the Progress of the War scarcely seemed conclusive. One asked for information from some quarter less liable to the imputation of partiality, for evidence may be true, yet carefully selected. so as to support a foregone conclusion. Such information is, we regret to say, now before us. The -United States Sanitary Commission is a body formed at the very beginning of the war, with the beneficent object of mitigating the suffer- ings of the sick and wounded soldiers. We have more than once called attention to the gigantic proportions which this under- taking has assumed, and the proof which it affords of the strange power of voluntary combination which is possessed by the American people. From an early period the Commission conquered recognition from the Federal Government, and the impartiality with which it has assisted both friend and foe has been more than once gratefully acknowledged by the Con- federate Generals. It stands precisely in the position which Miss Nightingale occupied in the Crimean war. It has access to the hospitals. It is independent of the Government, and yet has a quasi-official position. Above all, the purity of motive and philanthropy of its leading members are above suspicion. We have now before us the result of an indepen- dent inquiry undertaken by the Sanitary Commission, together with the evidence on which it is founded. It completely bears out the report of the Committee of Congress. Of the condition in which the returned prisoners from the South reach Annapolis and Baltimore there can be no doubt.
It is evident to the gazers who line the quays when they are landed. We have, moreover, the evidence of the hospital surgeons. Every ship even during the short voyage from City Point has its proportion of deaths. The men are almost without clothes. They are in the last stage of emaciation. There are attached to this report photographs of some of the worst cases which are not describable, and are not to be contem- plated without a shudder. Many of the men are frostbitten. Their diseases are always the diseases which result from starvation and exposure to cold—pulmonary complaints, scurvy, and diarrho3a. "No words," says Mr. Ely, surgeon at the Annapolis Hospital, "no words can describe their appearance. In each case the sunken eye, the gaping mouth, the filthy skin, the clothes and head alive with vermin, the repelling bony contour "—all show "the victims of starva- tion, cruelty, and exposure." If anything more were required to establish the facts, it may be found in this, that all the surgeons agree that medicine does no good. The most suc- cessful treatment is that adapted to starving men,--cod-liver oil, quinine, and iron in small doses, and nourishing food supplied in small quantities at a time. Even then "as many as four or six have been repeatedly known to die within twelve hours of their reception," and of those who recover many are permanently broken down in health. The evidence of the prisoners, both officers and men, com- pletely bears out the opinion of the surgeons. All on reaching the prisons are systematically robbed oven of their blankets and great-coats. This is not the work of the soldiers. Colonel Farnsworth, of the 1st Connecticut Cavalry, expressly exonerates his captors, who even aided him to con- ceal money. He was confined in the Libby Prison in Rich- mond—the officers' prison. It is an old tobacco warehouse, containing six rooms' 100 ft. by 40 ft. For many months each room contained 200 officers, so that each man had just 10 ft. by 2 ft. to live upon. They were not allowed benches or stools, but had to sit on their haunches, "like so many slaves," says Colonel Farnsworth, "on the middle passage." Apparently for no object whatever even this space was diminished by an order that no prisoner should go within three feet of the window on pain of death, and the sentries carried out the order by simply shooting at every man they saw. Many were wounded, some killed. In one very gross case Lieutenant Hammond complained to Major Turner, the commander of the prison, who laughed, and said, "The boys were in want of practice." The food was equally bad and deficient. At first the rations were enough to keep a man alive, though not in health. After November 11, 1863, says Colonel Farnsworth, "the rations issued would not support life." Captain Calhoun gives similar testimony:— " For two months I have had a burning sensation in the in- testines. I used to dream of food, and foolishly blame myself for not having eaten more when at home." And yet all this time these starving gentlemen from their windows could see in the building opposite the boxes of food sent them from the North ! After January last the officials received about 300 boxes a week, and issued to the prisoners about five or six.
The contents of these even were tumbled altogether into one blanket, sons to spoil them. Sometimes the officers would bribe the guards to buy them food, and would get articles marked with the brand of the Sanitary Commission, so that we know whe- the contents of the boxes went. Indeed on one occasion se of the prisoners escaped by digging a tunnel under the egia—` so as to come out near the building in which the boxes were kept. They were not stopped, and the sentries admitted that they took them for "citizens" stealing the prisoners' property. All this time there was no lack of food. The officers once broke up the floor and got into the cellar, where they found plenty of good corn-meal, flour, turnips, and potatoes. The guards had plenty of good food, though not probably. com- forts such as were forwarded by the Sanitary Commission. The Southern prisoners when questioned all agree that they never wanted food, except perhaps on a forced march, which of course might happen to any army. The inevitable con- clusion is that these things were done deliberately. They were not done in some out-of-the-way prison in Carolina or Mississippi, but in Richmond, under the eyes of the Confederate Government. Whatever may be the want of medicines or manufactured goods in the Smith, there is no ground for think- ing that they suffer from any scarcity of food, bread, and meat. Yet they starved their prisoners, deliberatery re- fused to issue the food sent to them from home, and with a refinement of cruelty kept it piled, 3,000 boxes at a time, under the eyes of famished men. "I have seen," says Surgeon Ferguson, "an officer gnawing a bone like a dog. I asked him, What do you do it for ?' His reply was, It will help fill up.'" If this was the condition of the officers, it is not hard to conjecture that of the men. Yet conjecture would probably • fall short of the truth. The quantity of food required by man is somewhere about 30 ozs. per diem. The quantity allowed by the Southern chivalry to their prisoners varied from somewhere about 5 to 18 ozs. The quality of even this was execrable. The corn-meal was ill-ground, ill-baked, sour, and musty. The peas were so maggoty that the insects floated on the soup. The effect of hunger was increased by cold. The prisoners are not housed. At Belleisle, in the James River, for instance, from three to six acres are surrounded by an earthwork, and tents, torn and rotten, form the only shel- ter. Even these were insufficient. Into this enclosure were crowded at one time twelve thousand men. And during the cold of "one of the hardest winters ever experienced" in Virginia, the unhappy prisoners lay huddled in the ditch under the open sky, while each successive morning saw some of their number—happier than their fellows !—frozen to death. The survivors caught and ate rats. An officer's dog strayed into the enclosure, and was instantly torn to pieces and devoured. "There was no name for our hunger," says Private Foote. "We made an estimate," says George Dingman, "and found that on an average seventeen men died a night from starvation and cold." "I saw a man kill a dog and eat part of it," says Daniel MacMann, "and he sold the rest of it. I got some." But the case does not rest on the unsupported evidence of the Federals. At Andersonville, Georgia, one of the worst of these prison enclosures, a prisoner detailed to act as an hospital clerk, managed to secrete the daily reports of the Confederate surgeons on duty. We say nothing of their complaints about the want of medicines and comforts. This was probably inevitable. But at least cleanliness might have been secured and wholesome food. "I find the beef in very bad condition," reports Surgeon Massee, "having been blown by flies so long that it was infested with live insects or creepers." "The crowded condition," says Surgeon Saunders, "the lack of an abundance of good water, the accumulation of human excrements, the prisoners' food not being cooked, don't speak well of the health of the prison." It is an established fact, he naively continues, that decayed peas will produce disease among swine. The corn bread, says another, is wholly unfit for the use of the sick, and is often perfectly raw. The tents are too crowded, says another, rotten, and full of holes. The men are on the ground without blankets or anything to protect them from dampness, flies, or mos- quitoes. The streets are not kept clean, and the nurses ought to keep the tents more cleanly. From another quarter comes similar evidence. The quarterly report of the Surgeon- General of the Hospitals for Federal prisoners at Richmond shows that in the three months ending April 1, 1864, there were 2,779 patients, mostly suffering from diarrhcea, dysentery, pneumonia, bronchitis, and rheumatism. During that time 1,396 cases proved fatal, orffly per cent., and the conduct of the Confederate surgeons is the one bright spot in this melancholy picture. The Federal prisoners are unanimous as to their kindness.
In conclusion, we must say that this conduct cannot be 'listed by counter-accusations. The proof of this is over- lining, and derived from all sources. But one simple fact 'Went. None of the Northern prisons have been more comPnined of than Johnson's Island in Ohio. In twenty-one months out of an aggregate of 6,410 prisoners there were only 134 deaths. No doubt there are cases of hardship, and early in the war, before there was any proper system there were more, but substantially the treatment is good, and the proof is that the men are healthy and contented.
If the facts which have been stated above, facts of which we may truly say that the half of them has not been so much as alluded to, fail to excite the horror and pity of our readers, rhetoric is of no avail. In America, where men see these things, their indignation knows no bounds. They openly accuse the Confederate Government of a deliberate purpose to destroy the health and even the lives of its prisoners. For our own part we will not believe it. Even the worst of men in the worst of times will scarcely proceed to such shocking extremities. On both sides there have been lawless deeds, but they have been perpetrated in hot blood, or directed against individuals and property. Deliberate intentional cruelty is another matter. But then how to account for this horrible callousness, which leaves men to starve when food is plenty, which leaves them honseless even in sight of shelter? It is the fruit of slavery, and of that utter in- difference to human suffering which is its constant and legiti- mate result.
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