Prison Life in the Old Capitol and Reminiscences of the Civil War

by James J. Williamson

TREATMENT OF PRISONERS OF WAR

Hon. Jefferson Davis, in a letter written from Beauvoir, December, 1888, said:

“Nearly a quarter of a century has elapsed since war between the States ceased. Has the prejudice fed on the passions of that period ceased with the physical strife? Shall it descend from sire to son, hardened by its transmission? Or shall it be destroyed by the full development of the truth, the exposure of the guilty, and the vindication of the innocent?”

In the North a general impression was produced, and exists to a certain extent even at this late day, that Northern prisoners incarcerated in Southern prisons during the war, were brutally treated, starved, frozen, neglected and inhumanly treated in sickness, and even murdered, and that this was done in accordance with a wilful and deliberate plan, inaugurated by the Confederate Government and carried out by its officers and soldiers. And no other subject has tended more to keep alive a bitter and hostile feeling between the sections.

It is not so much among soldiers who fought through the war that the intenseness of this feeling is shown as among those whose fighting has been done since the war. In most cases it is the result of prejudice or through ignorance of the real facts.

The Confederate authorities made every effort possible to alleviate the sufferings of prisoners in Southern prisons. Finding it impossible to effect exchange man for man, and aware of their inability to properly care for the sick and wounded, they offered to deliver to the United States authorities the sick and wounded without insisting on the delivery of any equivalent in return. It was nearly four months after this offer was made by the Confederate authorities before it was accepted by the United States authorities, who had been informed of the frightful mortality among their soldiers in Southern prisons and urged to send speedy transportation to take them away.

Robert Ould, Confederate Agent of Exchange, offered to purchase medicines from the United States authorities, to be used exclusively for the relief of United States prisoners—to pay in gold, cotton or tobacco—two or three prices even—such medicines to be brought into the Confederate lines and dispensed by United States surgeons.

The following letter will show the persistent efforts made by the Confederate authorities for the relief of prisoners in their hands:

Confederate States of America,
War Department, Richmond, Va., Jan. 24, 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 prisoners. I further propose that these surgeons be selected by their own governments, 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.

Could anything be fairer and more humane than this proposal?

In a letter to the editor of the National Intelligencer, dated August 17, 1868, Robert Ould says:

“The cartel of exchange bears date July 22, 1862. The fourth article provided that all prisoners of war should be discharged on parole in ten days after capture. From the date of the cartel until the summer of 1863, the Confederate authorities had the excess of prisoners. During that interval deliveries were made as fast as the Federal Government furnished transportation.... As long as the Confederate Government had the excess of prisoners matters went on smoothly enough; but as soon as the posture of affairs in that respect was changed the cartel could no longer be observed.

“More than once I urged the mortality at Andersonville as a reason for haste on the part of the United States authorities. I know personally it was the purpose of the Confederate Government to send off from its prisons all the sick and wounded, and to continue to do the same from time to time, without requiring any equivalents.”

The War Department at Washington, on July 3, 1863, issued General Order No. 209, which states that “it is understood captured officers and men and sick and wounded in hospitals have been paroled and released,” and concludes: “Any officer or soldier who gives such parole will be returned to duty without exchange, and, moreover, will be punished for disobedience to orders.”

General J. A. Early, commenting on this order, said: “But for that order all the prisoners captured by us at Gettysburg, amounting to fully six thousand, would have been paroled, and, in fact, the proper staff officers were proceeding to parole them, and had actually paroled and released a large number of them, when news came of the order referred to. Why did Mr. Stanton object to the paroling of those prisoners? And why did he prefer that they should be confined in prisons in the South—‘prison pens,’ as Northern Republicans are pleased to call them.... If any of the prisoners brought from Gettysburg, or subsequently captured, lost their lives at Andersonville, or any other Southern prison, is it not palpable that the responsibility for their deaths rested on Edwin M. Stanton?”

The fact is, the authorities at Washington were willing to allow their soldiers to languish and die in Southern prisons rather than consent to exchange. Would rather have them kept and starved that they might make capital out of it. When they consented to receive the sick and wounded, they did it—not for the purpose of ameliorating their sufferings, but that they might take the worst looking of the sick and starved prisoners and make an exhibition of their pictures to arouse a feeling of resentment among the Northern people, cover up their own infamy and place the South in a false light before the powers of the world.

In August, 1864, Brigadier-Generals Wessells and Seymour were sent South to look into the condition and treatment of Union prisoners. From a report of General Seymour to Colonel Hoffman, Commissary-General of Prisoners, Washington, D. C., I take the following extract, which proves how little the United States authorities were concerned on account of the sufferings of their soldiers who were held as prisoners of war:

“The Southern authorities are exceedingly desirous of an exchange of prisoners. General Wessells and myself had an interview with General Ripley at Charleston, S. C., on this point. Their urgency is unbounded, but we asserted that it was the poorest possible policy for our Government to deliver to them 40,000 prisoners, better fed and clothed than ever before in their lives, in good condition for the field, while the United States receives in return an equal number of men worn out with privations and neglect, barely able to walk, often drawing their last breath, and utterly unfit to take the field as soldiers.”

Major-General Ben Butler, referring to the frustration of his efforts, while in command at Fortress Monroe, to bring about an exchange of prisoners, says in his book:

“His (Grant’s) proposition was to make an aggressive fight upon Lee, trusting to the superiority of numbers and to the practical impossibility of Lee getting any considerable reinforcements to keep up his army. We had 26,000 Confederate prisoners, and if they were exchanged it would give the Confederates a corps larger than any in Lee’s army, of disciplined veterans, better able to stand the hardships of a campaign and more capable than any other,” etc.

At the last session of the Confederate Congress a joint committee of the two Houses was appointed to take up and investigate the “Condition and Treatment of Prisoners of War.” This committee took a vast amount of testimony—sworn depositions of witnesses—surgeons, officers and soldiers, private citizens and Federal prisoners.

The object of this was to correct the unjust statements and misrepresentations which were circulated, and to remove false impressions and unfounded prejudices—to present to the world “a vindication of their country and relieve her authorities from the injurious slanders brought against her by her enemies.”

From the extremely lengthy Report of this committee I give here a few extracts:

“This Report is rendered especially important by reason of persistent efforts lately made by the Government of the United States and by associations and individuals connected or co-operating with it, to asperse the honor of the Confederate authorities and to charge them with deliberate and wilful cruelty to prisoners of war. Two publications have been issued at the North within the past year and have been circulated not only in the United States but in some parts of the South and in Europe. One of these is the Report of the joint select committee of the Northern Congress on the Conduct of the War, known as ‘Report No. 67.’ It is accompanied by eight pictures or photographs alleged to represent United States prisoners of war returned from Richmond in a sad state of emaciation and suffering.

“The intent and spirit of this report may be gathered from the following extract: ‘The evidence proves beyond all manner of doubt, a determination on the part of the rebel authorities, deliberately 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.’—Rep. p. 1.

“The other (Report) purports to be a ‘Narrative of the Privations and Sufferings of United States Officers and Soldiers while Prisoners of War,’ and is issued as a Report of a Commission of Inquiry appointed by the United States Sanitary Commission.

“The disingenuous attempt is made in both these publications to produce the impression that these sick and emaciated men were fair representatives of the general state of the prisoners held by the South, and that all their prisoners were being rapidly reduced to the same state by starvation and cruelty, and by neglect, ill-treatment and denial of proper food, stimulants and medicines in the Confederate hospitals. The facts are simply these:

“The Federal authorities, in violation of the cartel, having for a long time refused exchange of prisoners, finally consented to a partial exchange of the sick and wounded on both sides. Accordingly a number of such prisoners were sent from the hospitals in Richmond. General directions had been given that none should be sent, except those who might be expected to endure the removal and passage with safety to their lives; but in some cases the surgeons were induced to depart from this rule by the entreaties of some officers and men in the last stages of emaciation, suffering not only with excessive debility, but with ‘nostalgia,’ or home-sickness, whose cases were regarded as desperate, who could not live if they remained, and might possibly improve if carried home. Thus it happened that some very sick and emaciated men were carried to Annapolis, but their illness was not the result of ill-treatment or neglect. Such cases might be found in any large hospital North or South. They might even be found in private families, where the sufferer would be surrounded by every comfort that love could bestow. Yet these are the cases which, with hideous violation of decency, the Northern Committee have paraded in pictures and photographs. They have taken their own sick and enfeebled soldiers, have stripped them naked; have exposed them before a daguerrean apparatus, have pictured every shrunken limb and muscle, and all for the purpose, not of relieving their sufferings, but of bringing a false and slanderous charge against the South.

“A candid reader of these publications will not fail to discover that, whether the statements they make be true or not, their spirit is not adapted to promote a better feeling between the hostile powers. They are not intended for the humane purpose of ameliorating the condition of the unhappy prisoners held in captivity. They are designed to inflame the evil passions of the North; to keep up the war spirit among their own people; to represent the South as acting under the dominion of a spirit of cruelty, inhumanity and interested malice, and thus to vilify her people in the eyes of all on whom these publications can work.

“But even now enough is known to vindicate the South, and to furnish an overwhelming answer to all complaints on the part of the United States Government or people, that their prisoners were stinted in food or supplies. Their own savage warfare has wrought 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 2,000 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 our 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 50,000 of their men in captivity, and yet have attempted to attribute to us the sufferings and privations caused by their own acts.”

The report also contains a great amount of testimony concerning the cruel treatment of Confederate prisoners in Northern prisons.

Pollard, in his history of the “Lost Cause,” after reciting the extraordinary efforts made by the Confederate authorities to relieve the sufferings at Andersonville, says:

“Who was responsible for the sufferings of the sick and wounded prisoners at Andersonville, from August to December, 1864? The world will ask with amazement if it was possible that thousands of prisoners were left to die in inadequate places of confinement, merely to make a case against the South—merely for romance! The simple fact gives the clue to the whole story of the deception and inhuman cruelty of the authorities at Washington with reference to their prisoners of war—the key to a chapter of horrors that even the hardy hand of history shakes to unlock. To blacken the reputation of an honorable enemy; to make a false appeal to the sensibilities of the world; to gratify an inhuman revenge, Mr. Stanton, the saturnine and malignant Secretary of War at Washington, did not hesitate to doom to death thousands of his countrymen, and then to smear their sentinels with accusing blood.”