Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 30.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[78]

4th. That on the part of the South the war was conducted according to the principles of civilized warfare, whilst on the part of the North it was conducted in the most inhuman and barbarous manner.

The last of the above named was the subject of our last report, in which we drew a contrast between the way the war was conducted on our part, and the way it was conducted by our quondam enemies, which, we think, was greatly to the credit of the South. The subject of this report, the

‘Treatment and exchange of prisoners,’

is really a continuation and further discussion of the contrast begun in that report and a necessary sequel to that discussion. The further treatment of this subject becomes most important too, from the fact that our people know very little about the true state of the case, whilst both during and since the war, the people of the North, with the superior means at their command, have denounced and maligned the South and its leaders as murderers and assassins, and illustrated these charges by the alleged inhuman and barbarous way in which they treated their prisoners during the late war: e. g., the late James G. Blaine, of Maine, said on the floor of the United States Congress in 1876:

‘Mr. Davis was the author, knowingly, deliberately, guiltily and wilfully of the gigantic murder and crime at Andersonville, and I here before God, measuring my words, knowing their full extent and import, declare, that neither the deeds of the Duke of Alva in the Low Countries, nor the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, nor the thumb-screws and engines of torture of the Spanish Inquisition, begin to compare in atrocity with the hideous crimes of Andersonville;’ and he quoted and endorsed a report of a committee of the Federal Congress made during the war, in which they say:

‘No pen can describe, no painter sketch, no imagination comprehend, its fearful and unutterable iniquity. It would seem that the concentrated madness of earth and hell had found its final lodgment in the breasts of those who had inaugurated the rebellion, and controlled the policy of the Confederate Government, and that the prison at Andersonville had been selected for the most terrible human sacrifice which the world had ever seen.’

It is true that the statement made by Mr. Blaine was denied, and its falsity fully shown by both Mr. Davis and Senator Hill, of Georgia; and