  RESPONSIBILITY FOR PRISON TREATMENT. It is difficult, even after the lapse of years not a few, to consider dispassionately the treatment accorded by the Confederacy to her prisoners. War had fanned to a flame the fire of sectional animosity, and a spirit of retaliation was awakened. It is true the South was comparatively a poor country, and the hand of war had stripped her bare. The mighty armies of both sides carried on their vast operations on southern soil; the one as an army of defense, the other as an army of invasion. In the movements of strategy and battle, many combatants were taken prisoners; these were sent to the rear for safe keeping and maintenance. With practically unlimited resources this additional burden was scarcely felt at the North. At the South, the case was different. Moreover, unfriendly prejudices were increasing by the very fact of invasion, and as the North was held responsible for the war, the prisoners were the object of bitter hatred. In numerous minor particulars, such as ample supply of water, of shelter and of food and fuel, the obligations of the southern military authorities were criminally negligent; yet many of the features of the prison circumstances were probably unavoidable. The situation in the South is summed up in the following extract from “A “One of the most distressing evidences of the straits to which the South had been brought was seen in the state of the prisons in which she was forced to keep the thousands of prisoners who fell into the hands of her armies. “More than two hundred thousand, first and last, were taken, and only some sixteen thousand of these were paroled upon the field.... “Not until the war seemed turning toward its end could an exchange of prisoners be arranged. The Federal authorities knew their superiority in fighting population and did not care to lose by returning fighting men to the South. If her soldiers died in Southern prisons, they were dying for their country there, General Grant said, as truly as if they lost their lives in battle. “In the south men could not be spared from the field to guard the prisons; there were not guards enough; there was not food enough; and many thousands were crowded together under a handful of men. “Proper sanitary precautions were, in the circumstances, impossible. The armies themselves lacked food and went without every comfort, and the prisoners could fare no better—inevitably fared worse, because they were penned within a narrow space and lacked the One recollection has burned itself into memory. At Andersonville there was a standing offer of immediate release to any prisoner of average strength who would take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy and engage in non-combatant service. Officers who entered the prison with these proposals were shunned by our men. I recall a recently naturalized Federal prisoner who thus enlisted. When he re-entered the prison in Confederate uniform as a recruiting officer, his reception was such that he fled to the gate for his life; shouting to the guard to protect him. For flag and country our boys could uncomplainingly die a lingering death, but they could not turn traitor. |
|
