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Rh Secretary Stanton as to the number of prisoners taken, and a report of Surgeon Barnes giving the total number of deaths. The result of the calculation is startling, for it shows a rate of mortality in the Confederate prisons, excluding Andersonville, only about one-half of that in the Northern. Bearing in mind the great sacrifice of life at Belle Isle and Libby, and the loose way in which the estimate is made from diverse and inaccessible sources, it seems suspicious in the extreme. It has been impossible to learn anything about it from the present Adjutant-General's office, where the applicant will find himself turned off with some ambiguous statement that the mortality on one side is roughly estimated at 12 per cent. and on the other side at 16 per cent.; and if he asks on which side it was twelve and which sixteen, be refused further information on the ground that to answer such requests "would require the entire clerical force of the office for about three years." It is to be hoped that under the new Administration this stain on the national honor may be removed. But meanwhile our reputation suffers most seriously from the charge, as any one who remembers the flingsfilings? [sic] of foreign journals will recall with mortification."

Now, we tell The Nation, in all candor, that "this stain on the national honor" cannot be wiped out by prevailing on the new Administration (if it could succeed in doing so) to have a new set of figures prepared for the purpose. Secretary Stanton's report of the number of prisoner's who died on both sides during the war was made July 19th, 1866; Surgeon-General Barnes' report of the number of deaths on both sides was made the next year, we believe—and the National Intelligencer, in an editorial of June 2d, 1869, collated and compared the figures of the two reports. Southern and foreign papers took hold of these figures and used them as a triumphant vindication of the Confederacy. Now who doubts that if they were wrong the Departments at Washington would have corrected them—even if it had required their "entire clerical force for three years"—and who doubts that they have not been corrected simply because they are fully as favorable to the Federal side as they can be honestly made? These figures have passed into history, and they will be believed, even though the suggestion of The Nation should hereafter be adopted and other figures be cooked up to serve a purpose.

But after all the gist of this whole discussion rests upon the simple question, Did the Confederate Government order, sanction, or negligently permit cruelty to prisoners? We think we proved beyond all reasonable doubt that it did neither.

The Nation tries to fix responsibility on Mr. Davis by a series of assertions, for which we respectfully demand the proof. It will be