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pretty palatable.
We were shown many indulgencies, too, until it was ascertained that the most of us would not even take a parole such as they were administering to many citizen prisoners; when suddenly we were informed that we were to be sent off to
Fort Delaware, to be subjected at that abode of horrors to severe treatment, in retaliation for treatment of a similar character alleged to have been extended.to citizens of the
North in Southern prisons.
And here we are, exposed in a degree that threatens seriously our health, if not the lives of some of our party.
But “hitherto hath the
Lord helped us,” and in Him is our trust; we will not fear what man can do unto us.
, one the most devoted and useful ministers in
Virginia, contracted disease at
Fort Delaware, from which he was a great sufferer until, a few years after the war, death came to “set the prisoner free.”
The following deposition of
Mr. T. D. Henry was originally written at
Oak Grove, Kentucky, in 1866, and was sent to us a few weeks ago:
Seeing that the Congress of the United States has appointed a committee to investigate the treatment of Federal prisoners in Southern prisons, I have determined, in my feeble manner, to give an account of what I saw and know to be true, as happening in Federal prisons.
I was captured with
General Morgan at Salenville, Ohio, July 26th, 1863.
After capture was carried to Camp Chase, Ohio, where I remained about one month.
I was then, together with all the prisoners at that place, carried to
Camp Douglas,
Illinois.
Prison life from September 1863, until the 12th of April 1864, was comparatively such as a man who, according to the fates of war, had been captured might expect, especially when a captive of a boasted Christian nation.
Rations were of very good quality and quantity, the only thing unpleasant was the various and severe punishments which the commandant of the camp (
Colonel C. V. Deland) saw fit to inflict.
If you bribed one of his guards or escaped by any other means, and was afterwards recaptured and brought back, he would have you tied up by the thumbs just so as the toe would reach the ground.
I have known men punished thus, until they would grow so deathly sick that they would vomit all over themselves, their heads fall forward and almost every sign of life become extinct; the ends of their thumbs would burst open; a surgeon standing by would feel their pulse and say he thought they could stand it a little longer.
Sometimes he would say they had better be cut down.
If this failed to cause them to tell who assisted them in escaping, they were then thrown into an iron-clad dungeon ten by ten square, with a single window ten inches by ten.
Think of a man staying in this place forty or fifty days, when it was as full as it could be, their only privy being a little hole in the floor,
