Humanity to prisoners of war.
He would have turned with loathing from misuse of a prisoner, for there was no characteristic of
Jefferson Davis more marked than his regard for the weak, the helpless, and the captive.
By act of the Confederate Congress and by general orders the same rations served to the
Confederates were issued to the prisoners, though taken from a starving army and people.
Brutal and base was the effort to stigmatize him as a conspirator to maltreat prisoners, but better for him that it was made, for while he was himself yet in prison, the evidences of his humanity were so overwhelming that finally slander stood abashed and malignity recoiled.
Even at
Andersonville, where the hot summer sun was, of course, disastrous to men of the
Northern clime, well-nigh as many of their guard died as of them.
With sixty thousand more Federal prisoners in the
South than there were Confederate prisoners in the
North, four thousand more Confederates than Federals died in prison.
A cyclone of rhetoric cannot shake this mountain of fact, and these facts are alike immovable:
1. He tried to get the prisoners exchanged by the cartel agreed on, but as soon as an excess of prisoners was in Federal hands this was refused.
2. A delegation of the prisoners themselves was sent to
Washington to represent the situation and the plea of humanity for exchange.
3.
Vice-President Stephens was sent to see
President Lincoln by
President Davis, and urge exchange, in order ‘to restrict the calamities of war,’ but he was denied audience.
4. Twice—in January, 1864, and January, 1865—
President Davis proposed, through
Commissioner Ouid, that each side should send surgeons and allow money, food, clothing, and medicines to be sent to prisoners, but no answer came.
5. Unable to get medicines in the
Confederacy, offer was made to buy them from the
United States for the sole use of Federal prisoners.
No answer was made.
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6. Then offer was made to deliver the sick and wounded without any equivalent in exchange.
There was no reply for months.
7. Finally, and as soon as the
United States would receive them, thousands of both sick and well were delivered without exchange.
The record leaves no doubt as to the responsibility for refusal to exchange.
General Grant assumed it, saying in his letter of August 18, 1864: ‘It is hard on our men in Southern prisons not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles.
If we commence a system of exchanges which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the whole
South is exterminated.
If we hold those caught they amount to no more than dead men. At this particular time, to release all rebel prisoners North, would insure
Sherman's defeat and would compromise our own safety here.’
Alexander H. Stephens declared that the effort to fix odium on
President Davis constituted ‘one of the boldest and baldest attempted outrages upon the truth of history which has ever been essayed.’
Charles A. Dana, of the New York
Sun, formerly
Assistant Secretary of War, nobly vindicated
President Davis while he lived, declared him ‘altogether acquitted’ of the charge, and said of him dead, ‘A majestic soul has passed.’
When
General Lee congratulated his army on the victories of
Richmond, he said to them: ‘Your humanity to the wounded and the prisoners was the fit and crowning glory of your valor.’
And could that army now march by, they would lift those laurels from their bayonets and throw them upon the grave of the
Confederate President.
