Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/582

570 We had intended a full analysis and review of the article in this number, but as our printers warn us that they are "nearly full" we must reserve our review for a future issue, and content ourselves now with only a few brief comments.

1. Professor Richardson places the South on the defensive, and while admitting many points in its favor, maintains that it is "a defensive difficult to establish." Now we utterly deny that the South is on the "defensive" except in the sense that the United States Government sought to blacken the fair name of the Confederacy by an utter misrepresentation of the facts—and northern writers have most industriously circulated against us baseless slanders, which they have succeeded in making many of their own people, and of foreign nations believe. We have shown by facts which have not been, and cannot be successfully, controverted that in this whole matter the Federal, and not the Confederate, authorities were responsible for the suffering of prisoners on both sides, and that Elmira, Rock Island, Point Lookout, &c., are really more in need of "defence" than Andersonville, with all of its admitted horrors.

2. He makes various quotations from Pollard (notably from his "Secret History," so-called), when a man of his intelligence ought to know that Pollard's unsupported assertion is of not the slightest value on any mooted historic question, especially when he gets an opportunity of venting his bitter personal hatred against President Davis.

3. While Professor Richardson is very fair in his apologies for sufferings at Andersonville, he seems very skeptical as to the reality of much suffering, on the part of our prisoners at the north. Let any one interested turn to some of the narratives which we published in our number for April, 1876—such as those of Rev. Geo. W. Nelson, Hon. A. M. Keiley, Rev. Dr. I. W. K. Handy, Rev. Geo. W. Harris, Charles Wright, T. D. Henry, and others,—and see whether there is any "striving to make out that the suffering was as great as somebody else'e," rather than "a depth of suffering never reached in the description," such as, it is claimed, the Andersonville and other Federal prisoners endured.

4. Professor Richardson makes an adroit attempt to relieve his government from the unanswerable argument derived from the figures of Secretary Stanton and Surgeon-General Barnes, showing that of 220,000 Confederates in northern prisons 26,436 died, while out of 270,000 Federal prisoners in Confederate hands, only 22,576 died. His effort is more ingenious, and more creditable, than that of either Mr. Elaine or the Nation to which we have replied; but we propose, at our earliest