Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 1.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[297] to starve; but why, is a query which I will allow your readers to infer, and to draw conclusions therefrom. Out of the number of prisoners, as before mentioned, over three thousand of them now lay buried in the cemetery located near the camp for that purpose; a mortality equal, if not greater than that of any prison in the South. At Andersonville, as I am well informed by brother officers who endured confinement there, as well as by the records at Washington, the mortality was twelve thousand out of say about forty thousand prisoners. Hence it is readily to be seen that range of mortality was no less at Elmira than at Andersonville.

At Andersonville there was actually nothing to feed or clothe the prisoners with, their own soldiers faring but little better than their prisoners; this, together with a torrid sun and an impossibility of exchange, was abundant cause for their mortality. With our prisoners at Elmira, no such necessity should honestly have existed, as our Government had actually, as I have stated, most bountifully made provision for the wants of all detained, both of officers and men. Soldiers who have been prisoners at Andersonville, and have done duty at Elmira, confirm this statement, and which is in nowise in one particular exaggerated; also, the same may be told of other prisons managed in a similarly terrible manner. I allude to Sandusky, Delaware and others. I do not say that all prisoners at the North suffered and endured the terrors and the cupidity of venal sub-officials; on the contrary, at the camps in the harbor of New York, and at Point Lookout, and at other camps where my official duties from time to time have called me, the prisoners in all respects have fared as our Government intended and designated they should. Throughout Texas, where food and the necessaries of life were plentiful, I found our own soldiers faring well, and to a certain extent contented, so far, at least, as prisoners of war could reasonably expect to be.

Our Government allowed the prisoners of war the following rations: Twelve ounces of pork or bacon, or one pound of salt or fresh beef; one pound six ounces of soft bread or flour, or one pound of corn meal; and to every one hundred rations, fifteen pounds of beans or peas and ten pounds of rice or hominy, ten pounds of green coffee or five pounds of roasted ditto, or one pound eight ounces of tea, fifteen pounds of sugar, four quarts of vinegar, thirty pounds of potatoes, and if fresh potatoes could not be obtained, canned vegetables were allowed. Prisoners of war will receive for subsistence one ration each, without regard to rank; their private property shall be duly respected, and each shall be treated with regard to his rank, and the wounded are to be treated with the same care as the wounded of our army.

How faithfully these regulations were carried out at Elmira is shown by the following statement of facts: The sick in hospitals were curtailed in every respect (fresh vegetables and other antiscorbutics were dropped from the list), the food scant, crude and unfit; medicine so badly dispensed that it was a farce for the medical