Lieutenant-General."
Proof of Grant's order to Foster for exchange at Charleston is in the same volume, page 219, and is dated 14th of February, 1865. "So near," we were to exchange and relief from suffering, "and yet so far."
CHAPTER XXI
Yankee Infamy—Conduct of the War—Sherman's
March—Virginia Dismembered
The Yankees were continually giving out to the world exaggerated accounts of the conditions of their soldiers in Confederate prisons, and are still at it, all the while refusing to exchange prisoners, except in a few instances.
The Yankees during the war did many mean, contemptible and uncivilized things, but I have always thought about the most contemptible and meanest thing they did was when, sometimes, there was an exchange of sick and wounded prisoners, they would strip to the skin their sick and wounded men, the most emaciated, have their pictures taken and sent broadcast over the country, to fire the Northern people and prejudice the world against the Confederates, when they knew the Confederate sick from Northern prisons were equally emaciated; but never a picture of these did they take and scatter abroad. I have seen some of these pictures. They are still harping on the horrors of Andersonville, but never a word do they utter about the wilful, malicious and cruel treatment of prisoners on Morris Island, and in Fort Pulaski, and Hilton Head.
The Confederates fed the Yankee prisoners, as best they could, the same rations issued to Confederate soldiers—cut off as they were from the world, a large part of their country overrun by a brutal and merciless foe, who carried desolation and destruction through the land, wherever their worse than Hessian hoards went. There was much suffering everywhere in the South.
Food was scarce in the South, women and children suffered, and our own soldiers in the field had scanty rations, very often nothing but bread and not enough of that, while the Yankees, with plenty of supplies, their ports open to the world, less than half fed the Confederates in all their prisons, through malice and revenge.
It is a well-known fact, established by the records, that while there were more Yankee prisoners in Southern prisons than there were Confederates in Northern prisons, many thousands more of Confederate prisoners died in Northern prisons than Yankees in Southern prisons. It is established by the records of the war office at Washington that, during the war, Yankee prisoners to the number of 270,000 were captured and that 220,000 Confederates were captured. Of these prisoners 20,000 Yankees died in Southern prisons (about eight per cent.), while 26,000 Confederate prisoners died in Northern prisons (about sixteen per cent. of those captured). Most of the Confederate prisoners were confined in prisons in cold lake regions, and at Point Lookout, where they suffered untold miseries from exposure in those bleak locations. Confined in open, board barracks and tents with a very, very scant supply of fuel, with only a few thin blankets, thin, worn out clothing, and less than half fed, no wonder many of them died, victims of Yankee cruelty.
Let it ever be remembered that all this suffering, privation, and tens of thousands of deaths, were caused by the Yankees during the last two years of the war refusing to exchange prisoners, while the Confederates were always willing and anxious to exchange. General Grant said, when urged to agree to exchanges to prevent suffering and death in prison of his own men, "It is hard on our men confined in Southern prisons, but it would be harder on our soldiers in the field to consent to an exchange, because, if the 30,00 Rebel prisoners were released, they would go back to the army and fight, while our men would return to their homes." The Confederate authorities offered the Yankees the privilege of sending food, medicine, and hospital supplies to their prisoners in the South to be dispensed by Yankee doctors, but the offer was coldly and cruelly declined.