Page:Confederate Cause and Conduct.djvu/123

 Rh from ten to fifteen thousand Federal prisoners, although, the offer was accompanied with the statement of our Agent of Exchange (Judge Ould), showing the monthly mortality at Andersonville, and that we were utterly unable to care for these prisoners as they should be cared for, and that Judge Ould again and again urged compliance with this humane proposal on our part.

(6) That the sufferings of Confederates in Northern prisons were terrible, almost beyond description; that they were starved in a land of plenty; that they were allowed to freeze where clothing and fuel were plentiful; that they suffered for hospital stores, medicines and proper attention when sick; that they were shot by sentinels, beaten by officers, and subjected to the most cruel punishments upon the slightest pretexts; that friends at the North were, in many instances, refused the privilege of clothing their nakedness or feeding them when they were starving; and that these outrages were often perpetrated not only with the knowledge, but by the orders of E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War of the United States.

And (7) That the sufferings of prisoners on both sides were caused by the failure to carry out the terms of the Cartel for exchange, and for this failure the Federal authorities were alone responsible.

These propositions are stated substantially in the language employed by Dr. Jones, and although twenty-five years have since elapsed, they have never been controverted in any essential particular, as far as we have heard or known. Our people owe Dr. Jones a debt of gratitude for this able and effective vindication of their course in this important matter, which they can never repay.

As to the treatment of Mr. Davis whilst a prisoner:

Captain Charles M.[Minor] Blackford of Lynchburg, Va., in an article read before the Virginia Bar Association at its meeting at Old Point, in 1900 (the facts of which article were taken entirely from the official records of the Federal Government), showed in a masterly manner that this treatment was the refinement of cruelty and cowardice on the part of the Federal authorities, and such as should bring the blush of shame to the cheek of every