The Confederate soldiers were patriots, fighting for their country, while a large majority of the Yankee army were hirelings, fighting for money. Yet these hirelings are lauded as patriots by the North and pensioned by the United States Government!
For a time the rations were better here than on Morris Island. All the men and officers of this regiment had seen service in the field and had a fellow-feeling for a soldier, although he was a "Rebel" prisoner. Whenever we were guarded by Yankees who had never seen service in the field, they were as mean as snakes. The guards at Fort Delaware were of the latter kind—they shot several prisoners without cause. One instance I remember was that of Colonel —— Jones, of Virginia, who was sick and very feeble, scarcely able to walk. He had gone to the sink and had started back when a guard ordered him to move faster, which he could not do, and was shot through the body, dying the next day. The miscreant boasted that, "This makes two Rebels my gun has killed."
ROTTEN CORNMEAL AND PICKLED RATIONS
While at Fort Pulaski, Gen. J. G. Foster, the Yankee general commanding the department, and a cruel, unfeeling wretch he must have been, issued an order to put the prisoners on ten ounces of cornmeal and half pint of onion pickles per day.
This cornmeal was shipped from the North, was completely spoiled and utterly unfit for food, being mouldy, in hard lumps, and full of worms, big and little, some of them an inch long. The brands on the barrels showed that this cornmeal was ground at Brandywine in the year 1861. This was done, it was said, in retaliation for the Confederates feeding the Yankee prisoners on cornbread and sour sorghum. We would have been very glad to have gotten cornbread and sorghum, such as the Yankee prisoners had. They did not even give us salt, absolutely nothing but this ten ounces of rotten, wormy cornmeal and pickles, and would not allow those who had money to buy anything to eat from the sutler's. Some say that Edward M. Stanton, the Yankee Secretary of War, the arch-fiend of South-haters, was responsible for this cruel treatment. It savored of many of Stanton's acts during and after the war. In consequence of this inhuman order, there was a great deal of sickness and many deaths among the prisoners. "Starved to death," said the Yankee surgeon who attended the sick, "medicine will do them no good." Scurvy, a loathsome disease, prevailed to an alarming extent; the gums would become black and putrid, the legs full of sores, drawn and distorted. Many a poor fellow, in attempting to make his way to the sinks, would fall fainting to the ground. I remember, in one day, assisting three of these unfortunates to rise from the ground and back to their bunks. To substantiate what I have here recorded as facts, I give the following from the "War of the Rebellion, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series II, Vol. VIII, page 163":
"Headquarters, District of Savannah,
Savannah, Ga.,
February 1, 1865.
"Assistant Adjutant General,