Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 18.djvu/336

 336 Southern Historical Society Papers.

beds to beg for the peelings to relieve the hunger that was gnawing

them.

" But the great fault next to the scant supply of food was the inex- cusable deficiency of medicine. During several weeks of dysentery and inflammation of the bowels there was not a grain of any prepara- tion of opium in the dispensary, and for want of this many a poor fellow died."

" The result of this sparseness of food and medicine was apparent in the shocking mortality of the camp. This exceeded even the reported mortality at Andersonville, great as that was. * * * I know that the reader, if a Northern man, will deny this and point to the record of the Wirz trial. I object to the testimony. There never was in all time such a mass of lies as that evidence could have been proven to be if it had been possible to sift the testimony or examine before a jury the several witnesses. I take as the basis of my comparison the published report made by four returned Andersonville prisoners, who were allowed to come North on their representation tbat they could induce their humane government to consent to an exchange. Van- aspes ! Edwin M. Stanton would have seen the whole of them perish before he would give up to General Lee one able-bodied soldier.

COMPARATIVE MORTALITY.

" These four prisoners alleged that out of thirty-six thousand in that pen six thousand, or one- eighth of the whole, died between the ist of February and the ist of August, 1864.

" Now, out of less than nine thousand five hundred Confederate prisoners who were at Elmira the ist of September, three hundred and eighty-six died that month. * * * At Andersonville the mortality averaged one thousand a month out of thirty-six thousand, or one thirty-sixth. At Elmira it was three hundred and eighty-six out of nine thousand five hundred, or one twenty-fifth of the whole. At Elmira it was four per cent. ; at Andersonville, less than three per cent. If the mortality at Andersonville had been as great as that at Elmira the deaths should have been one thousand four hundred and forty per month, or fifty per cent, more than they were.

" I speak by the card respecting these matters, having kept the morning returns of deaths during the last month and a half of my stay at Elmira, and transferred the figures to my diary, which lies before me."