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of prisoners of war; and the rations furnished prisoners of war shall be the same in quantity and quality as those furnished to enlisted men in the army of the Confederacy.A few special acts were passed: one authorizing the close confinement of the higher Federal officers in Richmond and Charleston as hostages for the privateers; one declaring that the men of Butler's command would not be treated as prisoners of war; one declaring that the officers of Pope's command were also to be treated as criminals, and the famous act in regard to negro troops. This is the sum of Confederate Congressional legislation upon the treatment of prisoners. There are three distinct periods to be recognized while writing of the Civil War prisoners and the treatment they received: one, extending from the beginning of the war to the adoption of the cartel for exchange, July 22, 1862; a transition period, covering the operations of that instrument until its suspension, May 25, 1863, and the third, extending to the end of the war. During the first period, there is comparatively little complaint which the same men, three years afterward, would not have considered unjustifiable. The prisoners sometimes complained that their rations and accommodations were not elaborate enough to suit their fancy; but for that matter, complaints of food and quarters in their own camps were common. Soldiers cannot be made in a day. A Confederate officer at Alton complained that his breakfast bacon was too salty and that the coffee was too weak. One of the officers in charge of a Richmond prison was disliked because his voice was harsh, and another inmate of the same prison complained that a woman visitor looked scornful. This does not mean that conditions were ideal, even for prisons; few of them were clean, for neither army had learned to live in crowds. In the first Confederate prison in Richmond, where the officers and part of the privates taken at Manassas and Ball's
