Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/179

Rh smile made the sunlight of the hospitable home, and whose heart was as pure as the escutcheon of the country she loved so well, has been called to the citizenship of a better country and the enjoyment of a happier home; but though years intervened, I could never find it in my heart to undeceive her, and it was her happiness always to remember how she had honored, with her best chamber and most luxurious bed, the returning soldier boy.

Having presented you with this inside view of life in a Federal prison, I feel that I cannot close without adding my testimony to that of others in reference to the comparative suffering under Federal and Confederate imprisonment. The effort is being persistently made to represent the hardships as all on one side, to throw upon the South the odium of having subjected her prisoners, taken in war, to unnecessary privations and wanton cruelties, and to claim for the North that her prison government and discipline were, with perhaps a few rare exceptions, of the most humane and kindly nature.

Now I have no disposition to stir up feelings of bitterness between the two sections of a common country. I would speak only in the interests of peace and good-will; but I must also speak in the interests of truth and justice, and in vindication of the South. I would call attention to the following points: First. It is not true that the prison discipline and the personal treatment of prisoners was either juster or more humane in Northern prisons than in those at the South. When the facts of history are all brought out, and in that sufficient light the comparison is made between Andersonville and Point Lookout, it will be found that the contrast is overwhelmingly in favor of the former; that in point of diet, health regulations, hospital prescriptions, &c., our men at Point Lookout were subjected to far greater privations and hardships than were the Federal soldiers at Andersonville.

But to confine myself simply to what passed under my own personal observation, and of which consequently I am a competent witness, I may say that on our release from Fort McHenry and return to Richmond, a number of us asked and obtained permission to go through all the wards of that portion of the Libby prison in which the Federal officers were confined. We saw their arrangements for sleep, exercise and cleanliness; we inspected the food as it was prepared for them, and saw all the arrangements for cooking and serving it, and we came away with the impression that (although we had been constantly reminded at Fort McHenry that our lot