Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/127

 lAfe^ Services and Character of Jefferson Davis. 119

fact is/' he wrote to a friend, "that I staked all my property and reputation on the defense of States* rights and constitutional liberty as I understand them. The first I spent in the cause, except what was saved and appropriated or destroyed by the enemy ; the last has been persistently assailed by all which falsehood could invent and malignity employ/'

HUMANITY TO PRISONERS OF W^AR.

He would have turned with loathing from misuse of a prisoner, for there was no characteristic of Jefferson Davis more marked than his regard for the weak, the helpless, and the captive. By act of the Confederate Congress and by general orders the same rations served to the Confederates were issued to the prisoners, though taken from a starving army and people.

Brutal and base was the effort to stigmatize him as a conspirator to maltreat prisoners, but better for him that it was made, for while he was himself yet in prison, the evidences of his humanity were so over- whelming that finally slander stood abashed and malignity recoiled.

Even at Andersonville, where the hot summer sun was, of course, disastrous to men of the Northern clime, well-nigh as many of their guard died as of them.

With sixty thousand more Federal prisoners in the South than there were Confederate prisoners in the North, four thousand more Confederates than Federals died in prison. A cyclone of rhetoric cannot shake this mountain of fact, and these facts are alike immova- ble :

1. He tried to get the prisoners exchanged by the cartel agreed on, but as soon as an excess of prisoners was in Federal hands this was refused.

2. A delegation of the prisoners themselves was sent to Washington to represent the situation and the plea of humanity for exchange.

3. Vice-President Stephens was sent to see President Lincoln by President Davis, and urge exchange, in order " to restrict the calami- ties of war,'* but he was denied audience.

4. Twice — in January, 1864, and January, 1865' — President Davis proposed, through Commissioner Quid, that each side should send surgeons and allow money, food, clothing, and medicines to be sent to prisoners, but no answer came.

5. Unable to get medicines in the Confederacy, offer was made to buy them from the United States for the sole use of Federal prisoners. No answer was made.