Page:The Immortal Six Hundred.djvu/19

 PREFACE did all they could do, to alleviate the lot of the unfortunates that the fate of war threw into their hands. Whatever the Confederate soldier received in the field as ration, was given to the Union prisoners of war, and Mr. Edwin M. Stanton was fully informed, officially and otherwise, of this tact. The charges that the Confederate authorities refused to make exchange of prisoners of war, were made at a time when passion was at fever heat in the North, and the charges were made and circulated to conceal from the people of the North, the real culprits who were responsible for the home sickness, and troubles of the Union prisoners of war confined in the South.

Capt. J. Madison Page, 2d Wisconsin Volunteers, U. S. A., a gallant Union soldier, in his book the "True Andersonville" charges all the discomforts of the Union prisoners of war to Mr. Stanton and the Washington authorities, for violating the exchange cartel; surely this gallant soldier's word will be accepted by the North. Read what Mr. Charles A. Dana says. He was Stanton's Assistant Secretary of War, 1861-65. Read what the commission appointed by the United States Government, to investigate Northern Military prisons say of the conditions they found, and see where the blame of cruelty rests. Read General Grant's request and order to stop