However, this order did not prevent the carrying out of the intentions of the confederate President and Congress.
The saddest and blackest chapter of the history of the war of the Rebellion, is that which relates to the treatment of Union prisoners in the rebel prison pens, at Macon, Ga., Belle Island, Castle Thunder, Pemberton, Libbey, at and near Richmond and Danville, Va., Cahawba, Ala., Salisbury, N. C., Tyler, Texas, Florida, Columbia, S. C., Millen and Andersonville, Ga. It is not the purpose to attempt a general description of these modern charnel houses, or to enter into a detailed statement of the treatment of the Union soldiers who were unfortunate enough to escape death upon the battle-field and then fall captive to the confederates. When we consider the fact that the white men who were engaged in the war upon both sides, belonged to one nation, and were Americans, many of whom had been educated at the same schools, and many—very many—of them members of the same religious denominations, and church; not a few springing from the same stock and loins, the atrocities committed by the confederates against the Union soldiers, while in their custody as prisoners of war, makes their deeds more shocking and inhuman than if the contestants had been of a different nationality.
TERRIBLE FIGHT WITH BLOODHOUNDS.
The 1st South Carolina Regiment was attacked by the Confederates with bloodhounds, at Pocaralago Bridge, Oct. 23rd, 1862. The hounds rushed fiercely upon the troops, who quickly shot or bayoneted them and exultingly held aloft the beasts that had been so long a terror to the negro race.
The English soldiers who lashed the Sepoys to the mouths of their cannon, and then fired the pieces, thus cruelly murdering the captured rebels, offered the plea, in mitigation of their crime, and as an excuse for violating the rules of war, that their subjects were not of a civilized nation, and did not themselves adhere to the laws governing civilized nations at war with each other. But no such plea can be entered in the case of the confederates, who starved, shot and murdered 80,000 of their brethren in prison pens, white prisoners of war. If such treatment was meted to those of their own color and race, as is related by an investigating committee of Senators, what must have been the treatment of those of another race,—whom they had held in slavery, and whom they regarded the same as sheep and horses, to be bought and sold at will,—when captured in battle, fighting against them for the Union and their own freedom?
The report of the Congressional Committee furnishes ample proof of the barbarities:
| 38th Congress, | } | { | Rep. Com. |
| 1st Session. | } | { | No. 68. |
"IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.
"Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct and Expenditures of the War.