Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/180

168 was a favored one compared with that of our fellow prisoners at Fort Baltimore, Point Lookout and Johnson's Island) these men in the Libby prison were faring like princes as compared with the life we had been required to lead at Fort McHenry.

Second. Even if it could be shown that there was as great or greater privation in Southern prisons than in Northern, this would not relieve the contrast which is so unfavorable to the humanity of the Northern people. We can demonstrate the fact that our prisoners of war were served with as good rations and as abundant as our soldiers in the line. Whatever privations they endured, therefore, were the privations of our own men, and were the result, not of willful neglect or bitter hatred, but of that dearth of the necessaries of life under which our whole people were suffering. With the North there was no dearth, no scarcity. The granaries of the world were open to them. When they fed our men on scanty and unwholesome fare, it was not because they could not help it, but because they did not care.

Third. For the sufferings of prisoners on both sides, the North and the North alone is responsible. We were always anxious for exchange. It was to our interest, even if there had been no higher motives operating upon us. We could not supply the places of our men when captured. A single musket was far more to us than to the people of the North. They had all Europe to recruit from. They could supply the places of their men when captured. We could not. It was no great burden to them to guard and feed their prisoners, but it was a heavy tax on us to take care of ours. It was, therefore, to our interest to arrange a cartel. It was to their interest to delay it; and an impartial examination of the case will show beyond all doubt that the failure to make exchange on honorable and equitable terms is chargeable upon them and not upon us. Every proposition that in the interests of humanity could be made was made by the Confederate Government, and was made only to be sullenly rejected. The responsibility for all the suffering on both sides is with those who steadfastly refused either to propose or to accept an honorable cartel. And as in all succeeding time, under the influence of heated imaginations, the spectres of Andersonville and Point Lookout, of Libby prison and Johnson's Island will be rising up to disturb the equanimity of the historian, the South will be able to say with truth to each one as it rises—