  CONTRIBUTORY TESTIMONY. Many narratives of experiences in the military prisons maintained by the government of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War have been written by Union officers and soldiers confined therein. With minor differences of statement arising from personal diversities these testimonies as a whole establish the fact of unprecedented suffering and mortality. Since the close of the Civil War our government has unstintedly employed ability and money in compiling and publishing an exhaustive exhibit of the Union and Confederate records. These statistics and memoranda afford to the later historian abundant and reliable data, and upon his calm verdict we may rely for the substantial truth. The holding of prisoners during our civil war was a matter of large concern. The number of The number of Confederate soldiers captured was 462,635; paroled on the field 257,769; died in captivity 25,976. The percentage of deaths among the imprisoned Confederates, it will be seen, was far less than among the Union prisoners. The number of enlistments in the Union army was 2,898,304; in the Confederate army from 1,239,000 to 1,400,000. The estimated cost of war to the North was $5,000,000,000, and to the South $3,000,000,000. (The above figures are taken from a “History of the United States,” by James Ford Rhodes, LL.D., Litt.D., who quotes from General F. C. Ainsworth, Chief of the Record and Pension Office.) “We raise our father’s banner that it may bring back better blessings than those of old; ... that it may say to the sword, ‘Return to thy sheath,’ and to the plow and sickle, ‘Go forth.’ That it may heal all jealousies, unite all policies, inspire a new national life, com-pact our strength, ennoble our national ambitions, and make this people great and strong, not for aggression and quarrelsomeness, but for the peace of the world, giving to us the glorious prerogative of leading all nations to juster laws, to more humane policies, to sincerer friendship, to rational, instituted civil liberty, and to universal Christian brotherhood.”—Address of H. W. Beecher at Fort Sumpter flag raising, April 15, 1865. |
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