Dear Sir: I have the honor to enclose the photograph of John Breinig, with the desired information written upon it. I am very sorry your committee could not have seen these cases when first received. No one, from these pictures, can form a true estimate of their condition then. Not one in ten was able to stand alone; some of them so covered and eaten by vermin that they nearly resembled cases of small-pox, and so emaciated that they were really living skeletons, and hardly that, as the result shows, forty out of one hundred and four having died up to this date.
If there has been anything so horrible, so fiendish, as this wholesale starvation, in the history of this satanic rebellion, I have failed to note it. Better the massacres at Lawrence, Fort Pillow, and Plymouth than to be thus starved to death by inches, through long and weary months. I wish I had possessed the power to compel all the northern sympathizers with this rebellion to come in and look upon the work of the chivalrous sons of the hospitable and sunny south when these skeletons were first received here. A rebel colonel, a prisoner here, who stood with sad face looking on as they were received, finally shook his head and walked away, apparently ashamed that he held any relations to men who could be guilty of such deeds.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
A. CHAPEL.
Hon. B. F. Wade,
Chairman of Committee on the Conduct of the War, Senate U. S.
U. S. GENERAL HOSPITAL, DIV. No. 1,
ANNAPOLIS, MD.
Private FRANCIS W. BEEDLE,
Company M, 8th Michigan Cavalry,
Was admitted per Steamer New York, from Richmond, Va., May 2, 1864. Died May 3, 1864, from effects of treatment while in the hands of the enemy.
WEST'S BUILDING HOSPITAL,
BALTIMORE, MD.
Private JOHN BREINIG,
Company G, 4th Kentucky Cavalry,
Admitted April 18, 1864. Improved a little for two weeks, then gradually failed and died on the 12th instant.