“The mystic chord of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by better angels of our nature.”—Abraham Lincoln, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861.
APPENDIX A.
CONTRIBUTORY TESTIMONY.
Many narratives of experiences in the military prisons maintained by the government of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War have been written by Union officers and soldiers confined therein. With minor differences of statement arising from personal diversities these testimonies as a whole establish the fact of unprecedented suffering and mortality.
Since the close of the Civil War our government has unstintedly employed ability and money in compiling and publishing an exhaustive exhibit of the Union and Confederate records. These statistics and memoranda afford to the later historian abundant and reliable data, and upon his calm verdict we may rely for the substantial truth.
The holding of prisoners during our civil war was a matter of large concern. The number of Union soldiers captured was 211,411; paroled on the field, 16,669; died in captivity, 30,218. These last figures are defective. Of twelve Confederate prisons the “death registers” of five are only partial and thousands of the emaciated men passed away soon after release.
The number of Confederate soldiers captured was 462,635; paroled on the field 257,769; died in captivity 25,976. The percentage of deaths among the imprisoned Confederates, it will be seen, was far less than among the Union prisoners.
The number of enlistments in the Union army was 2,898,304; in the Confederate army from 1,239,000 to 1,400,000. The estimated cost of war to the North was $5,000,000,000, and to the South $3,000,000,000.