Page:The Immortal Six Hundred.djvu/48

   "The man who hates knows no law but selfishness. They hate the precepts of the Master. They ignore His command, 'love thy neighbor'."

There is no part of the conflict of 1861-65 that has been so imperfectly told, and no subject of more importance than the history of the military prisons North and South. The story must be truthfully told by the historian. If it is not truthfully told it cannot and should not have place in history. Nothing is history if it is not absolutely correct. If future generations are to sit as judges of the past we must give them data of absolute truth upon which they can base a verdict. If we in the least deviate from this line judgment must be against us.

In telling the story of the Six Hundred Immortals,—the Confederate officers, prisoners of war,—who were taken from Fort Delaware prison in August, 1864, by order of Edwin M. Stanton, Federal Secretary of War, and confined in a stockade on Morris Island, S. C,