[641] drink: I was a stranger and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick and in prison and ye visited me not.We have yet to learn on what principle the Federal soldiers sent with arms in their hands to destroy the lives of our people; to waste our land, burn our houses and barns, and drive us from our homes, can be regarded by us as the followers of the meek and lowly Redeemer, so as to claim the benefit of his words. Yet even these soldiers, when taken captive by us, have been treated with proper humanity. The cruelties inflicted on our prisoners at the North may well justify us in applying to the Sanitary Commission the stern words of the Divine Teacher: “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.” We believe that there are many thousands of just, honourable, and humane people in the United States, upon whom this subject, thus presented, will not be lost; that they will do all they can to mitigate the horrours of war; to complete the exchange of prisoners, now happily in progress, and to prevent the recurrence of such sufferings as have been narrated. And we repeat the words of the Confederate Congress, in their Manifesto of the 14th of June, 1864: “We commit our cause to the enlightened judgment of the world; to the sober reflections of our adversaries themselves, and to the solemn and righteous arbitrament of Heaven.” The general important fact of this report is, the declaration of the result of sworn investigations to the effect that from the necessity of the case, Federal prisoners suffered considerably in the South, but were not, unless exceptionally, treated with indignity, oppression or cruelty; and that the general rule was the other way as to our prisoners at the North--that the rule there was indignity, oppression and cruelty, and threatened, if not attempted, starvation in the midst of plenty. Where this fearful penalty was held over the victim was not in a land where the invader had proclaimed and carried out the policy of destroying every grain of wheat, and every ounce of meat, and everything that tended to its production; not in a land whose women and children were already perishing for bread, but starvation in a land that flowed with milk and honey, starvation in a land that had not only an abundance, but a superabundance even of the luxuries of life!1
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1 The author might make, from various memoranda he has personally collected of the experiences of Confederate prisoners, a very vast addition to the instances of suffering collected by the committee at Richmond. The following will suffice for examples. A Confederate officer, whose experience was at Johnson's Island, writes:
No sugar, no coffee, no tea; only bread and salt beef, or salt pork, or salt fish, the latter as poor as poverty, and as unnutritious as pine shavings, varied occasionally with fresh beef, but never more than two-thirds enough of either. Occasionally, we would get one onion, or one potato each, and an ounce or so of hominy. Many would consume the whole at one meal; others thought it more wise to divide it into two or three meals; but all were hungry continually. Sir, it is a terrible thing to be hungry from day to day, from week to week, from month to month — to be always hungry I It is fearful to see three thousand men cooped up and undergoing such an ordeal! Should it be a matter of surprise that men dwindled from 200 to 140 and 100 pounds; that their eyes had a strange and eager expression; that they grew pale, cadaverous; that they walked with an unsteady gait; that all talked continually of “ something to eat ” --of the good dinner, or breakfast, or supper they had had at times and places that seemed very long ago, and very far off; that they slept but to dream of sitting down to tables groaning with rich viands, where they ate, and ate, and still could not be satisfied; that with miserly care they picked up every crumb; that they pounded up old bones, and boiled them over and over, until they were as white as the driven snow; that they fished in the swill-barrel at the prison hospital; that they greedily devoured rats and cats; that they resorted to all manner of devices and tricks to cheat the surgeon out of a certificate; that they became melancholy and dejected; that they fell an easy prey to disease and death! Ah! there is many a poor fellow in his grave on Johnson's Island to-day, who would not be there had he been allowed wholesome food and enough of it.A personal friend of the author gives a long and painfully interesting account of his experience in a trans-shipment of prisoners from Hilton Head to Fort Delaware, the terrible facts of which rival all that is known of the horrours of the “middle passage.” Of 420 prisoners shipped by sea, only sixty-two could walk when the vessel arrived at Fort Delaware; the others were all down with sickness and exhaustion, and had to be taken to their cells on stretchers and ambulances. Many of them had lost their teeth by scurvy, and many were blind from disease. For months they had been subsisted on eight ounces of corn meal (ground in 1860) and one ounce of pickle (vitriol and salt), as a substitute for sorghum. Their rations were improved for a little while at Fort Delaware. But the regulations for cooking there allotted for such purpose to a company of 100 men every twenty-four hours, a log, 10 feet long and eight inches in diameter. There were no cooking utensils. Old pieces of tin were used over the fire. The men were locked up eighteen out of twenty-four hours, and only twenty at a time were allowed to pass out for the offices of nature.
1866.
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