Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[627] ability, to whom such fellowship, such self-created filth, and such atrocious ruffianism, would of itself cause despondency, disease, and death; and when, in addition to this, was the conviction that the Federal War Department, perfectly cognizant of all this, had deliberately consigned them indefinitely to this condition, a consuming despair was superadded to all their other sufferings.

The merits of Andersonville may be summed up by saying that it was of unquestioned healthfulness; it was large enough and had water enough, and could have been made tolerable for the number originally intended for it. It appears that the increase of that number was apparently a matter of necessity for the time; that other sites were selected and prepared with all possible despatch; that the provisions were similar in amount and quality to those used by Confederate soldiers; that deficient means rendered a supply of clothing, tents, and medicines scanty; that the rules of discipline and sanitary regulations of the prison, if complied with by the prisoners, would have secured to each a supply of food, and have averted almost, if not altogether, the filth and the ruffianism, which two causes outside of unavoidable sickness, caused the great mass of suffering and mortality.

But the history of the extraordinary efforts of the Confederate authorities to relieve the sufferings of Andersonville, through some resumption of exchanges, does not end with the proposition referred to as made by Commissioner Ould to exchange man for man, and leave the surplus at the disposition of the enemy. It was followed by another more liberal and more extraordinary proposition. Acting under the direct instructions of the Secretary of War, and seeing plainly that there was no hope of any general or extended partial system of exchange, Commissioner Ould, in August, 1864, offered to the Federal agent of exchange, Gen. Mulford, to deliver to him all the sick and wounded Federal prisoners we had, without insisting upon the delivery of an equivalent number of our prisoners in return. He also informed Gen. Mulford of the terrible mortality among the Federal prisoners, urging him to be swift in sending transportation to the mouth of the Savannah River for the purpose of taking them away. The offer of Commissioner Ould included all the sick and wounded at Andersonville and other Confederate prisons. lie further informed Gen. Mulford, in order to make his Government safe in sending transportation, that if the sick and wounded did not amount to ten or fifteen thousand men, the Confederate authorities would make up that number in well men. This offer, it will be recollected, was made early in August, 1864. Gen. Mulford informed Commissioner Ould it was directly communicated to his Government, yet no timely advantage was ever taken of it. This interesting and important fact :is for the first time authoritatively published in these pages. It contains volumes of significance. The questtion