The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South
Alexander Kelly McClure, Ed.

[187] prisoners, and all others against whom they could have trumped up charges. They had then gone so far that they refused to release chaplains and surgeons. They would have obtained 20,000 men above an equivalent for the Federal prisoners which they held. These 20,000 would have been thrown into the field, judging from the former course of the Confederate authorities.

The Confederate Government either did not understand the usages of civilized warfare, or else violated them wilfully Federal officers, who fell into their hands, were frequently condemned to close confinement in damp cells, upon frivolous charges. In the summer of 1863, General Neal Dow was captured near Port Hudson, Louisiana, and first sent to Richmond, and confined in Libby prison, but was shortly transferred to Pensacola, Florida, and placed in close confinement upon some frivolous charge. He was kept there a few months, and then returned to Libby, without being tried, or even knowing what the charges against him were. Captains Sawyer and Flinn were condemned by lottery to suffer death by hanging without any just cause. The gallant General Harry White was subjected to much annoyance, and his exchange refused and delayed, because he was a member of the State Senate of Pennsylvania, and had he been exchanged, he would probably have resumed his place in the Senate, which would have given his party one majority in that body. Notwithstanding the Federal Government frequently offered liberal terms of exchange for him, the Confederates persistently refused, and on the 25th of December, 1863, he was sent to Salisbury, North Carolina, and there placed in close confinement. He was kept there and in other Southern prisons until the following September, when he made his escape, and succeeded in reaching the Federal lines at Knoxville, Tennessee. Such treatment as General White received was violative of the rules of civilized warfare.

The treatment of General Goff, of West Virginia, by the Confederates, was more reprehensible, if possible, than that of General White. General Goff, at the time of his capture, was Major of the Fourth West Virginia Cavalry. He was confined in Libby prison with other Federal officers for a short time, when it was concluded to place him in close confinement, as a hostage for a Confederate Major, by the name of Armsey, who had been condemned to be executed by hanging, but whose sentence had been commuted to fifteen years solitary confinement in Fort Delaware by President Lincoln. This Armsey, at the beginning of the war, was a citizen of Harrison county, West Virginia. At the beginning of