Jubal Anderson Early, Ruth Hairston Early, Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early , C. S. A.

[292] right to release themselves from prison by giving their paroles. If it thought proper not only to adopt the extreme harsh measure of non-exchange from motives of policy, but to go further and adopt a new rule upon the subject of paroles, then it had no right whatever to complain of any measures of harshness towards its prisoners which the necessities or the interests of our government and our army rendered necessary.

So much for the question of rights; and now for the facts as to the actual treatment which the prisoners in our hands received. I think I can safely deny that they were ever subjected to any maltreatment, suffering, or neglect, which it was in our power to avoid. We did not resort to the extreme measures which perhaps the laws of war and our own necessities would have justified, but the prisoners were treated with all the humanity possible under the circumstances in which we were placed. Doubtless there may have been rare individual acts of maltreatment, but until human nature is a very different thing from what it is, there can be no body of men in which there are not some who act unjustly and oppressively.

Such is the case everywhere over the world, in the church, in government, in society, and in all the relations which men bear to each other, it has been the case, and will continue to be the case until the end of all things that some will do wrong, and we of the South cannot claim an exemption from the common lot. What I maintain is that no harsh treatment to the prisoners was authorized or tolerated, and if there were individual cases of the kind they were exceedingly rare.

The condition of a prisoner is by no means a desirable one under any circumstances, and he who is captured in war must expect to suffer inconveniences. The soldiers of the Federal Army were supplied with an abundance of everything necessary for their comfort and even luxury, to which many of them, including some officers, had never been accustomed before, and to which but few