[640] the surplus in captivity. Though this was a departure from the cartel, our anxiety for the exchange induced us to consent. Yet, the Federal authorities repudiated their previous offer, and refused even this partial compliance with the cartel. Secretary Stanton, who has unjustly charged the Confederate authorities with inhumanity, is open to the charge of having done all in his power to prevent a fair exchange, and thus to prolong the sufferings of which he speaks; and very recently, in a letter over his signature, Benjamin F Butler has declared that in April, 1864, the Federal Lieut.-Gen. Grant forbade him “to deliver to the rebels a single able-bodied man ;” and moreover, Gen. Butler acknowledges that in answer to Col. Ould's letter consenting to the exchange, officer for officer and man for man, he wrote a reply, “not diplomatically but obtrusively and demonstratively, not for the purpose of furthering exchange of prisoners, but for the purpose of preventing and stopping the exchange, and furnishing a ground on which we could fairly stand.” These facts abundantly show that the responsibility of refusing to exchange prisoners of war rests with the Government of the United States, and the people who have sustained that Government, and every sigh of captivity, every groan of suffering, every heart broken by hope deferred among these eighty thousand prisoners, will accuse them in the judgment of the just. With regard to the prison stations at Andersonville, Salisbury, and other places south of Richmond, your committee have not made extended examination, for reasons which have already been stated. We are satisfied that privation, suffering and mortality, to an extent much to be regretted, did prevail among the prisoners there, but they were not the result of neglect, still less of design, on the part of the Confederate Government. Haste in preparation; crowded quarters, prepared only for a smaller number; frequent removals to prevent recapture; want of transportation and scarcity of food, have all resulted from the pressure of the war, and the barbarous manner in which it has been conducted by our enemies. Upon these subjects your committee propose to take further evidence, and to report more fully hereafter. But even now enough is known to vindicate the South, and to furnish an overwhelming answer to all complaints on the part of the U. S. Government or people, that their prisoners were stinted in food or supplies. Their own savage warfare has wrought all the evil. They have blockaded our ports; have excluded from us food, clothing and medicines; have even declared medicines contraband of war, and have repeatedly destroyed the contents of drug stores, and the supplies of private physicians in the country; have ravaged our country; burned our houses, and destroyed growing crops and farming implements. One of their officers (General Sheridan) has boasted in his official report, that, in the Shenandoah Valley alone, he burned two thousand barns filled with wheat and corn; that he burned all the mills in the whole tract of country; destroyed all the factories of cloth, and killed or drove off every animal, even to the poultry, that could contribute to human sustenance. These desolations have been repeated again and again in different parts of the South. Thousands of our families have been driven from their homes, as helpless and destitute refugees. Our enemies have destroyed the railroads and other means of transportation, by which food could be supplied from abundant districts to those without it. While thus desolating our country, in violation of the usages of civilized warfare, they have refused to exchange prisoners; have forced us to keep fifty thousand of their men in captivity-and yet have attempted to attribute to us the sufferings and privations caused by their own acts. We cannot doubt that in the view of civilization we shall stand acquitted, while they must be condemned. In concluding this preliminary report, we will notice the strange perversity of interpretation which has induced the Sanitary Commission to affix as a motto to their pamphlet, the words of the compassionate Redeemer of mankind:
For I was anhungered and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me no
