Martyria; or, Andersonville Prison

by Augustus C. Hamlin

In the prisons and hospitals of England, Scotland, France, and Germany, the dietaries furnish from seventeen to twenty-eight ounces of nitrogenous and carbonaceous food.

For a time, the solid ration of the prisons of Scotland was reduced to seventeen ounces, but the prisoners lost weight. In the public institutions of England we find the total quantity of solid food to be as follows: The British soldier receives in home service 45 ounces; the seaman of the Royal navy 44 ounces; convicts 54 ounces; male pauper 29 ounces; male lunatic 31 ounces. The full diet of the hospitals of London furnish from 25 to 31 ounces of solid food, besides from one to five pints of beer daily. The Russian soldier has about 50 ounces; the Turkish more than 40 ounces; the French nearly 50 ounces; the Hessian 33 ounces; the Yorkshire laborer 50 ounces; United States navy 50 ounces; and the soldier of the United States army about 50 ounces, of solid food.

XII.

The food allowed to the prisoners at Andersonville, according to the statements of the prisoners and other witnesses, was from two to four ounces of bacon, and from four to twelve ounces of corn bread daily; sometimes a half pint to a pint of bean, pea, or sweet potato soup, of doubtful value. Vegetables were unknown. Thus giving a total weight of solid food, per diem, of six to sixteen ounces of solid food. The amount was not constant: some days the prisoners were entirely without food, as was the case at Belle Isle and Salisbury. Neither was the deficiency afterwards made good. The amount given was oftener less than ten ounces than more.

The contrast furnished by the dietaries of our own military prisons, of those of the British hulks (so much cursed during the last war), or by the food given by the Algerine pirates to their prisoners and slaves, gives rise to terrible convictions as to the regard the rebel authorities placed upon the lives of their prisoners. The United States allowed to the rebel prisoners held by them thirty-eight ounces of solid food at first; but afterwards, in June, 1864, they reduced the ration to thirty-four and a half ounces per day. The range of articles composing the ration was the same as with our own troops, the exception being in the weight in bread. In the Dartmoor prison in England, where our men were confined by the English, when taken prisoners during the last war, and of which so much cruelty has been alleged, the authorities allowed to the prisoners for the first five days in the week 24 ounces of coarse brown bread, 8 ounces of beef, 4 ounces of barley, ⅓ ounce of salt, ⅓ ounce of onions, and 16 ounces of turnips daily (or more than 50 ounces of solid food); and for the remaining two days the usual allowance of bread was given with 16 ounces of pickled fish. The daily allowance to our men, at the Melville Island prison, at Halifax, during the last war, was 16 ounces of bread, 16 ounces of beef, and one gill of peas; the American agent furnishing coffee, sugar, potatoes, and tobacco. The allowance on the noted Medway hulks was 8 ounces of beef, 24 ounces of bread, and one gill of barley, daily, for five days; and 16 ounces of codfish, 16 ounces potatoes, or 16 ounces of smoked herring, the remaining two days of the week. Furthermore, in addition to these generous allowances of the British people, it can be said that the quality of the food was almost always excellent.

The writer, with one exception, knows of no dietary to compare with that adopted, or made use of without the formality of adoption, by the rebel authorities in the treatment of their prisoners.

This exception is found in ancient history, which Plutarch has handed down to us. The Athenians, captured at the siege of Syracuse, were placed in the stone quarries of Ortygia, and fed upon one pint of barley and half a pint of water daily. Most of them perished from this treatment.

XIII.

The corn bread furnished was made, according to the evidence, from corn and the cob, ground up together, and sometimes mixed with what is called in the south cow peas. It varied from four to twelve ounces in weight daily, generally from four to eight ounces. A pound (of sixteen ounces) of corn bread contains, according to chemical analysis, two thousand eight hundred grains of carbon and one hundred and twenty-one grains of nitrogen, and therefore the highest quantity of corn bread furnished, say twelve ounces, afforded but two thousand one hundred grains of carbon and ninety grains of nitrogen, leaving a deficiency, according to the physiologists, of more than twelve hundred grains of carbon and two hundred grains of nitrogen, to be supplied by the two or four ounces of doubtful bacon.

That the bacon could not furnish this deficiency must be apparent to the scientific observer. The quantity of bread alone, required to furnish the desired amount of carbon and nitrogen, would have been over three pounds daily, which quantity the prisoners did not have.