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who knew Northrup well, long before the war, that he invented a method, after many experiments, that would surely effect the utter prostration of prisoners, while there should not seem to be actual starvation.
It was the giving to each prisoner, for a day's sustenance, six ounces of flour, two ounces of bacon, one gill of molasses, and a pint of cow-peas: a composition calculated to disorder the bowels, and produce marasmus and death!
“Print this,” said the indignant officer, when he gave the writer an account of it, “and give my name as authority, if you like.”
Such were the instruments employed by Jefferson Davis, in the case of Union prisoners.
Jones, in his. Rebel War Clerk's Diary, frequently shows his detestation of Winder; and even the Richmond Examiner exclaimed, when, at the age of seventy years, Davis's commissary of prisoners went to Andersonville because there was a wider field for his awful vocation:--“Thank God that Richmond is at last rid of old Winder!
God have mercy upon those to whom he has been sent!”
1
Everywhere the Union prisoners were closely crowded in ill-ventilated and unwholesome places.
Libby Prison2 contained six rooms, each one hundred feet in length and forty in breadth.
At one time, these held twelve hundred Union officers of every grade, from a lieutenant to a brigadier-general.
They were allowed no other place in which to cook, eat, wash and dry their clothes and their persons, sleep, and take exercise.
Ten feet by two was all that might be claimed for each man. They were usually despoiled of their money, watches, and sometimes portions of their clothing, before entering, with promises, rarely fulfilled, of a return of them, when exchanged.
At one time, they were not allowed a seat of any kind to sit upon.
The floors of rough boards were always washed in the afternoon, so that at night they were damp.
On these, some without any thing under them, the prisoners were compelled to sleep, and many thereby took cold, which ended in consumption and death.
The windows were numerous, and most of the glasses were broken, in consequence of which they suffered intensely from cold.3 The captives were subjected to the caprices of Turner, who, among other cruelties, ordered that no one should go within three feet of the windows, a rule that seems to have been adopted in other prisons in the South.
A violation of the rule gave license to the guard to shoot the offending prisoner.
It was enforced with the greatest cruelty.
Sometimes by accident, or unconsciously in his sufferings, an officer would go by a window, and be instantly shot at, without warning.
The brutal guards took pleasure in the sport of “shooting Yankees,” and eagerly watched for opportunities to indulge in it.4
2 See page 46.
3 The captives had only one blanket-each. These, in time, became ragged and filthy, and, in spite of all precautions, filled with vermin.
4 They did not always wait for an infraction of the rule. Lieutenant Hammond was shot at while in a boarded inclosure, where there was no window, only an aperture between the boards. The guard caught sight of his hat through this opening, and aiming lower, so as to reach his heart, fired. A nail turned the bullet upward, and it passed through his ear and hat-brim. The officer reported the outrage to Turner, who merely replied:--“The boys are in want of practice.” The culprit guard said he “had made a bet that he would kill a damned Yankee, before he came off duty.” No official notice was taken of the occurrence, and the fellow tried to murder another officer (Lieutenant Huggins) in the same way, but failed. At Danville, a prisoner was standing at a window, but in such a position that only his shadow could have given the guard knowledge of the fact. The sentinel went many feet from the line of his beat, and shot at and killed the captive, the bullet entering his brain. Similar cruelties were practiced at all other Confederate prisons. It appeared in evidence that, at Atlanta, a sick soldier, who was near what was called “the dead-line,” beyond which prisoners were not allowed to go, put his hand over to pluck a bunch of leaves, that were not a foot from the boundary. The instant he did so, the guard caught sight of him, fired, and killed him.--Report of the Committee of the United States Sanitary Commission, September, 1864.
The conduct of the National authorities toward the Confederate captives in Libby Prison, after the former entered Richmond, in April, 1865, was in marked contrast to that of the agents of the Conspirators. There were not more than twenty-five prisoners on each floor. The rooms were kept clean and well-ventilated, and sup. plied with an abundance of pure water; and sympathizing friends were allowed to furnish the prisoners with whatever they pleased. The writer, who was in Richmond a few days after its evacuation by Lee, visited Libby Prison. He saw dozens of knapsacks let down by ropes from the windows, filled by a crowd of friends outside, and drawn up, while the Union guard, instead of having license either from authority or desire to harm the prisoners, looked on with seeming pleasure, because the wants of the poor captives were relieved. The writer saw two women, each dressed in silk, filling a knapsack with food which he had seen the same women receive from the Union Commissary Department, or its place of distribution, not far from the Capitol, half an hour before. These women, at the place of distribution, pretended to be entirely destitute of food for themselves and little ones, and so they received from their kind Government relief for their wants. The food thus obtained by false pretenses, was carried to prisoners who were already supplied with abundant and wholesome rations.
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