Page:The Immortal Six Hundred.djvu/89

   small space, deprived of liberty of roaming about, poorly fed, and unprotected from the elements, there must be necessarily much suffering and always much complaint, even if those in authority and control are disposed to be humane in their treatment of those in their custody.

The assistant provost-marshal in charge of the officers' prison at Fort Delaware was a Dutchman, Lieutenant Woolf, a graduate from the slums of Philadelphia City, a coarse, brutal creature, with all the mean, cowardly, and cruel instincts of the beast from which his name was taken; a fellow without culture, refinement, or gentility, who took much delight in insulting the Confederate officers that the misfortunes of war had made prisoners. It might be charity to place this fellow's meanness to the credit of his profound ignorance and slum breeding. His assistants were as miserable fellows as himself. Aided by these assistants and some miserable scoundrels—Confederate soldiers who