The Life of Jefferson Davis

by Frank H. Alfriend

But the statement that the mortality of Andersonville was in excess of that of all other military prisons, is a willful falsehood. We present the following extracts from a letter to the New York World, by a gentleman, whose integrity will be vouched for by thousands of the best people in Virginia:

PRISON MORTALITY—ANDERSONVILLE AND ELMIRA.

“Richmond, Va., August 14.

“To the Editor of the World—

“Sir: I have just seen, in a city paper, a paragraph, credited to the World, alleging that among the Confederate prisoners at Elmira, during the last four or five months of the use of that prison, the deaths only amounted to a few individuals out of many thousand prisoners. I am not able to controvert that fact, as I left there on the 11th of October, 1864; but if the impression desired to be produced is that the general mortality at that pen was slight, I can contradict it from the record. During a portion of the period of my incarceration in the Elmira pen, it was my duty to receive, from the surgeon’s office, each morning, the reports of the deaths of the preceding day, and embody them in an official report, to be signed by the commandant of the prison, and forwarded to the commandant of the post. I entered, each morning, in a diary, which now lies before me, the number of reported deaths; and the facts demonstrate that, in as healthy a location as there is in New York, with every remedial appliance in abundance, with no epidemic, and with a great boast of humanity, the deaths were relatively larger than among the Federal prisoners at Andersonville among a famished people, whose quartermaster could not furnish shelter to its soldiers, and whose surgeons were without the commonest medicines for the sick. The record shows that at Andersonville, between the 1st of February and 1st of August, 1864, out of thirty-six thousand prisoners, six thousand, or one-sixth, died—a fearful rate unquestionably. But the official report of the Elmira pen shows, that during the month of September, 1864, which was the first month after the quota of that prison was made up, out of less than nine thousand five hundred prisoners, the deaths were THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX. In other words, the average mortality at Andersonville, during that period, was one thirty-sixth of the whole per month, while at Elmira it was one twenty-fifth of the whole. At Elmira it was four per cent.; at Andersonville, less than three per cent....

“Another item, which I gather from my diary, will indicate the manner in which the medical officer at Elmira discharged his functions. The hospitals began to be filled, in the latter part of August, with obstinate cases of scurvy. Men became covered with fearful sores, many lost their teeth, and many others became cripples, and will die cripples from that cause. The commandant of the post ordered a report to be made of all the scorbutic cases in prison, grave and trifling; and on the morning of Sunday, September 11, the lists were added up, when it was found that of nine thousand three hundred prisoners examined, eighteen hundred and seventy were tainted with scurvy.

“The Federal Government, as one of its measures of reconstruction, is officially and expensively engaged in traducing the Southern people, and the facility with which it procures all necessary evidence, whether the object be to hang or to calumniate, warrants the belief that we shall have a couple of volumes a year for the rest of the century, demonstrating the barbarity of the rebels. Against so admirable a system of manufacturing evidence, it is, of course, idle to oppose the feeble efforts of individuals, but I regard the duty none the less binding on such of us as know the truth to declare it; and I hope that, throughout the Southern States, intelligent and credible men are now putting into authentic form, the evidences of Federal outrages, the exploits of the Shermans and Sheridans, and Milroys and Butlers, one day to be published by general subscription of our people, that the world may judge between us and the spoon thieves, the furniture thieves, the barn-burners, the bummers, and the brutes who too often wore the uniform of the Federal army.

“A. M. K.”

Can the North expect impartial history to accept its miserable subterfuge of “disloyalty,” by which such testimony as this is now excluded?

Any reference to this subject must be wholly inadequate which does not describe the condition of the South at the period when she is alleged to have been guilty of unexampled atrocities. The blockade of the South by the North was stringent beyond any precedent in modern warfare. Medicines were held as contraband. Southern hospitals were not supplied, for that reason, with all the medicaments that were needed by sick and wounded soldiers; and those who were prisoners in our hands necessarily shared, in this respect, the privations of the Confederate soldiers. But if there was any thing “cruel and inhuman” in this deficiency, whose fault was it? Of whom is the cruelty and inhumanity to be alleged? The South searched her forests and meadows for restoratives. She ran in medicines, as far as practicable, at great cost and hazard. We shared our stores with our prisoners. If the supply was inadequate or ill-assorted, we again ask, are we to be charged with cruelty and inhumanity?