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An effort has since been made by the Radical press to discredit these figures, and it has been charged that "Jeff. Davis manufactured them for Hill's use." But with ample time to prepare his rejoinder, and all of the authorities at hand, Mr. Blaine did not dare to deny them. He fully admitted their truth, and only endeavored to weaken their force by the following explanation, of which we give him the full benefit:

The substance of this extract is that Mr. Blaine does not deny the greater mortality of our prisoners in Northern prisons, but accounts for it on the supposition that our men were so much "exhausted, so ill-clad, ill-fed and diseased" that they "died of diseases that they brought with them"

Now, if this explanation were true it would contain a fatal stab to Mr. Blaine's whole argument to prove Confederate cruelty to prisoners. If our own soldiers were so ill-clad and ill-fed as to render them exhausted, and so diseased that when taken prisoners they died like sheep, despite the tender nursing and kind, watchful care