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: