Williams, W. F., Maryland.
Williamson, James J., Washington, D. C.
Wright, J.
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.