The Life of Jefferson Davis

“Respectfully, your obedient servant,“ROBERT OULD,“Agent of Exchange.”

It will be seen that the Confederate authorities, by this proposition, consented to waive all previous questions, to concede every point to the enemy, that could facilitate the release from captivity of its own soldiers and those of the North. As an inducement to action by the Federal authorities, this letter was accompanied by a statement exhibiting the mortality among the prisoners at Andersonville. Receiving no reply, Commissioner Ould made the same proposition to General Hitchcock, in Washington. The latter making no response, application was made again to Major Mulford, who replied as follows:

“Hon. R. Ould, Agent of Exchange—

“Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of to-day, requesting answer, etc., to your communication of the 10th inst., on the question of the exchange of prisoners, to which, in reply, I would say, I have no communication on the subject from our authorities, nor am I yet authorized to make any.

“I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,“JOHN E. MULFORD,“Assistant Agent of Exchange.”

Nothing could exceed the generosity of this offer. When it was made, the North had a large excess of prisoners. By this arrangement every Federal soldier would have been released from captivity, while a large surplus of Confederates would have remained in the enemy’s hands. The brutal calculation of the Federal authorities was that an exchange would add so many thousands of muskets to the depleted ranks of the Confederacy, and would, besides, deprive them of every pretext for the manufacture of chapters of “rebel barbarities.”

It was known to the world that the means of subsistence in the South was so reduced – chiefly through the cruel warfare waged by the North – that Confederate soldiers were then subsisting upon a third of a pound of meat, and a pound of indifferent meal or flour each day. Upon such rations, half naked, thousands of them barefooted, Confederate soldiers were exposed to sufferings unexampled in history. How could it be possible, under such circumstances, to prevent suffering among the prisoners? Military prisons, under the most favorable circumstances, are miserable enough, but the Federal prisoners in the South were compelled to endure multiplied and aggravated miseries, imposed by the condition of the South – shared by their captors, and by the women and children of the country which they invaded. But what possible palliation can there be for the guilt of a Government which willfully subjected its defenders to horrors which it so blazoned to the world? Declaring that “rebel pens” were worse than Neapolitan prisons and Austrian dungeons, the Federal authorities yet persistently rejected offers of exchange.

There could be no more forcible presentation of the question than that made by President Davis:

“In the meantime a systematic and concerted effort has been made to quiet the complaints in the United States of those relatives and friends of the prisoners in our hands, who are unable to understand why the cartel is not executed in their favor, by the groundless assertion that we are the parties who refuse compliance. Attempts are also made to shield themselves from the execration excited by their own odious treatment of our officers and soldiers now captive in their hands, by misstatements, such as that the prisoners held by us are deprived of food. To this last accusation the conclusive answer has been made, that, in accordance with our laws and the general orders of the department, the rations of the prisoners are precisely the same, in quantity and quality, as those served out to our own gallant soldiers in the field, and which have been found sufficient to support them in their arduous campaign, while it is not pretended by the enemy that they treat prisoners by the same generous rule. By an indulgence, perhaps unprecedented, we have even allowed the prisoners in our hands to be supplied by their friends at home with comforts not enjoyed by the men who captured them in battle, In contrast to this treatment, the most revolting inhumanity has characterized the conduct of the United States towards prisoners held by them. One prominent fact, which admits no denial nor palliation, must suffice as a test: The officers of our army – natives of southern and semi-tropical climates, and unprepared for the cold of a northern winter – have been conveyed for imprisonment, during the rigors of the present season, to the most northern and exposed situation that could be selected by the enemy. There, beyond the reach of comforts, and often even of news from home and family, exposed to the piercing cold of the northern lakes, they are held by men who can not be ignorant of – even if they do not design – the probable result. How many of our unfortunate friends and comrades, who have passed unscathed through numerous battles, will perish on Johnston’s Island, under the cruel trial to which they are subjected, none but the Omniscient can foretell. That they will endure this barbarous treatment with the same stern fortitude that they have ever evinced in their country’s service, we can not doubt. But who can be found to believe the assertion that it is our refusal to execute the cartel, and not the malignity of the foe, which has caused the infliction of such intolerable cruelty on our own loved and honored defenders?”

Since the war, Commissioner Ould has given testimony of the most conclusive character. While the subject of the treatment of prisoners was pending in Congress, during the past summer, he wrote the following letter. It will be observed that he offers to prove his statements by the testimony of Federal officers.

“Washington, July 23, 1867.

“To the Editors of the National Intelligencer—

“I respectfully request the publication of the following letter, received by me from Colonel Robert Ould, of Richmond. It will be perceived that it fully sustains my statement in the House, with the unimportant exception of the number of prisoners offered to be exchanged, without equivalent, by the Confederate authorities.

“Very respectfully,“CHARLES A. ELDRIDGE.”“Richmond, July 19, 1867.

“Hon. Charles A. Eldridge—

“My Dear Sir: I have seen your remarks as published. They are substantially correct. Every word that I said to you in Richmond is not only true, but can be proved by Federal officers. I did offer, in August, to deliver the Federal sick and wounded, without requiring equivalents, and urged the necessity of haste in sending for them, as the mortality was terrible. I did offer to deliver from ten to fifteen thousand at Savannah without delay. Although this offer was made in August, transportation was not sent for them until December, and during the interval, the mortality was perhaps at its greatest height. If I had not made the offer, why did the Federal authorities send transportation to Savannah for ten or fifteen thousand men? If I made the offer, based only on equivalents, why did the same transportation carry down for delivery only three thousand men?

“Butler says the offer was made in the fall (according to the newspaper report), and that seven thousand were delivered. The offer was made in August, and they were sent for in December. I then delivered more than thirteen thousand, and would have gone to the fifteen thousand if the Federal transportation had been sufficient. My instructions to my agents were to deliver fifteen thousand sick and wounded, and if that number of that class were not on hand, to make up the number by well men. The offer was made by me in pursuance of instructions from the Confederate Secretary of War. I was ready to keep up the arrangement until every sick and wounded man had been returned.

“The three thousand men sent to Savannah by the Federals were in as wretched a condition as any detachment of prisoners ever sent from a Confederate prison.

“All these things are susceptible of proof, and I am much mistaken if I can not prove them by Federal authority. I am quite sure that General Mulford will sustain every allegation here made.

“Yours truly,“R. OULD.

“P. S. – General Butler’s correspondence is all on one side, as I was instructed, at the date of his letters, to hold no correspondence with him. I corresponded with Mulford or General Hitchcock.

“R. OULD.”

In another letter, written about the same time, Colonel Ould thus invites investigation:

“General Mulford will sustain every thing I have herein written. He is a man of honor and courage, and I do not think will hesitate to tell the truth. I think it would be well for you to make the appeal to him, as it has become a question of veracity.”

But though President Davis and Colonel Ould are known by thousands of people, North and South, to be men of unimpeachable truthfulness, and though no honorable enemy would question their statements, we can not hope that their testimony will make headway against the intolerant prejudices and passions of faction. General B. F. Butler is doubtless sufficiently orthodox, and, besides, his testimony is voluntary. Says this exponent of latter-day “loyalty:”

“The great importance of the question; the fearful responsibility for the many thousands of lives which, by the refusal to exchange, were sacrificed by the most cruel forms of death; from cold, starvation, and pestilence of the prison-pens of Raleigh and Andersonville, being more than all the British soldiers killed in the wars of Napoleon; the anxiety of fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, wives, to know the exigency which caused this terrible – and perhaps as it may have seemed to them useless and unnecessary – destruction of those dear to them, by horrible deaths, each and all have compelled me to this exposition, so that it may be seen that these lives were spent as a part of the system of attack upon the rebellion, devised by the wisdom of the General-in-Chief of the armies, to destroy it by depletion, depending upon our superior numbers to win the victory at last.

“The loyal mourners will doubtless derive solace from this fact, and appreciate all the more highly the genius which conceived the plan and the success won at so great a cost.”

The New York Tribune will also be accepted as competent authority. Referring to the occurrences of 1864, the Tribune editorially says:

“In August the rebels offered to renew the exchange, man for man. General Grant then telegraphed the following important order: ‘It is hard on our men, held in Southern prisons, not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. Every man released on parole or otherwise becomes an active soldier against us at once, either directly or indirectly. If we commence a system of exchange which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on till the whole South is exterminated. If we hold those caught, they amount to no more than dead men. At this particular time, to release all rebel prisoners North would insure Sherman’s defeat, and would compromise our safety here.’”

Here is even a stronger statement from a Northern source:

“New York, August 8, 1865.

“Moreover, General Butler, in his speech at Lowell, Massachusetts, stated positively that he had been ordered by Mr. Stanton to put forward the negro question to complicate and prevent the exchange… Every one is aware that, when the exchange did take place, not the slightest alteration had occurred in the question, and that our prisoners might as well have been released twelve or eighteen months before as at the resumption of the cartel, which would have saved to the Republic at least twelve or fifteen thousand heroic lives. That they were not saved is due alone to Mr. Edwin M. Stanton’s peculiar policy and dogged obstinacy; and, as I have remarked before, he is unquestionably the digger of the unnamed graves that crowd the vicinity of every Southern prison with historic and never-to-be-forgotten horrors.

“I regret the revival of this painful subject, but the gratuitous effort of Mr. Dana to relieve the Secretary of War from a responsibility he seems willing to bear, and which merely as a question of policy, independent of all considerations of humanity, must be regarded as of great weight, has compelled me to vindicate myself from the charge of making grave statements without due consideration.

“Once for all, let me declare that I have never found fault with any one because I was detained in prison, for I am well aware that that was a matter in which no one but myself, and possibly a few personal friends, would feel any interest; that my sole motive for impeaching the Secretary of War was that the people of the loyal North might know to whom they were indebted for the cold-blooded and needless sacrifice of their fathers and brothers, their husbands and their sons.

“JUNIUS HENRI BROWNE.”

Now, what is the “inexorable logic” of this train of evidence? Either the calumnies against the South stand self-convicted, or those who have uttered them show themselves to have been worse fiends than they pretend to believe the Confederate authorities to have been.

But can a candid world credit the charge of cruelty against the South? Honorable enemies, even, will scorn the allegation of torture, of designedly inflicting suffering upon helpless men, against a people who, within the past six years, have so honorably illustrated the American name. Brave men are never cruel – cowards only delight in torture of the helpless. Cruelty to prisoners would be inconsistent not only with the known generosity of the Southern character, but with that splendid courage which the North will not dishonor itself by calling in question.

Until the suspension of the cartel, the Federal prisoners, even at the risk of their recapture, were kept in Richmond convenient for exchange. Confederate prisoners, on the other hand, were hurried to the Northern frontier, where the rigor of the climate alone subjected them to the most cruel sufferings. Driven by the course of the Federal Government, respecting the subject of exchange, the Confederate authorities selected a site for the quartering of prisoners, whom it was impossible to subsist in Richmond or its neighborhood. Andersonville was selected, in accordance with an official order contemplating the following objects: “A healthy locality, plenty of pure, good water, a running stream, and, if possible, shade trees, and in the immediate neighborhood of grist and saw-mills.” Such were the “horrors of Andersonville,” which the world has been urged to believe the Confederate Government selected with special view to the torment and death of prisoners.

The terrible mortality among the prisoners at Andersonville was not due either to starvation or to the unhealthiness of the locality. Federal soldiers were unaccustomed to the scanty and indifferent diet upon which the Confederates were fed, and which caused the death of thousands of delicate youths in the Southern armies. By this single fact may be explained much of the mortality at Andersonville. When to scurvy and other fatal forms of disease, produced by inadequate and unwholesome diet, are added the mental sufferings, which are peculiarly the lot of a prisoner, the despondency, and, in the case of the Andersonville prisoners, the despair occasioned by the refusal of their own Government to relieve them, we have abundant explanation of the most shocking mortality.

But the statement that the mortality of Andersonville was in excess of that of all other military prisons, is a willful falsehood. We present the following extracts from a letter to the New York World, by a gentleman, whose integrity will be vouched for by thousands of the best people in Virginia:

PRISON MORTALITY – ANDERSONVILLE AND ELMIRA“Richmond, Va., August 14.

“To the Editor of the World—

“Sir: I have just seen, in a city paper, a paragraph, credited to the World, alleging that among the Confederate prisoners at Elmira, during the last four or five months of the use of that prison, the deaths only amounted to a few individuals out of many thousand prisoners. I am not able to controvert that fact, as I left there on the 11th of October, 1864; but if the impression desired to be produced is that the general mortality at that pen was slight, I can contradict it from the record. During a portion of the period of my incarceration in the Elmira pen, it was my duty to receive, from the surgeon’s office, each morning, the reports of the deaths of the preceding day, and embody them in an official report, to be signed by the commandant of the prison, and forwarded to the commandant of the post. I entered, each morning, in a diary, which now lies before me, the number of reported deaths; and the facts demonstrate that, in as healthy a location as there is in New York, with every remedial appliance in abundance, with no epidemic, and with a great boast of humanity, the deaths were relatively larger than among the Federal prisoners at Andersonville among a famished people, whose quartermaster could not furnish shelter to its soldiers, and whose surgeons were without the commonest medicines for the sick. The record shows that at Andersonville, between the 1st of February and 1st of August, 1864, out of thirty-six thousand prisoners, six thousand, or one-sixth, died – a fearful rate unquestionably. But the official report of the Elmira pen shows, that during the month of September, 1864, which was the first month after the quota of that prison was made up, out of less than nine thousand five hundred prisoners, the deaths were THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX. In other words, the average mortality at Andersonville, during that period, was one thirty-sixth of the whole per month, while at Elmira it was one twenty-fifth of the whole. At Elmira it was four per cent.; at Andersonville, less than three per cent.…

“Another item, which I gather from my diary, will indicate the manner in which the medical officer at Elmira discharged his functions. The hospitals began to be filled, in the latter part of August, with obstinate cases of scurvy. Men became covered with fearful sores, many lost their teeth, and many others became cripples, and will die cripples from that cause. The commandant of the post ordered a report to be made of all the scorbutic cases in prison, grave and trifling; and on the morning of Sunday, September 11, the lists were added up, when it was found that of nine thousand three hundred prisoners examined, eighteen hundred and seventy were tainted with scurvy.

“The Federal Government, as one of its measures of reconstruction, is officially and expensively engaged in traducing the Southern people, and the facility with which it procures all necessary evidence, whether the object be to hang or to calumniate, warrants the belief that we shall have a couple of volumes a year for the rest of the century, demonstrating the barbarity of the rebels. Against so admirable a system of manufacturing evidence, it is, of course, idle to oppose the feeble efforts of individuals, but I regard the duty none the less binding on such of us as know the truth to declare it; and I hope that, throughout the Southern States, intelligent and credible men are now putting into authentic form, the evidences of Federal outrages, the exploits of the Shermans and Sheridans, and Milroys and Butlers, one day to be published by general subscription of our people, that the world may judge between us and the spoon thieves, the furniture thieves, the barn-burners, the bummers, and the brutes who too often wore the uniform of the Federal army.

“A. M. K.”

Can the North expect impartial history to accept its miserable subterfuge of “disloyalty,” by which such testimony as this is now excluded?

Any reference to this subject must be wholly inadequate which does not describe the condition of the South at the period when she is alleged to have been guilty of unexampled atrocities. The blockade of the South by the North was stringent beyond any precedent in modern warfare. Medicines were held as contraband. Southern hospitals were not supplied, for that reason, with all the medicaments that were needed by sick and wounded soldiers; and those who were prisoners in our hands necessarily shared, in this respect, the privations of the Confederate soldiers. But if there was any thing “cruel and inhuman” in this deficiency, whose fault was it? Of whom is the cruelty and inhumanity to be alleged? The South searched her forests and meadows for restoratives. She ran in medicines, as far as practicable, at great cost and hazard. We shared our stores with our prisoners. If the supply was inadequate or ill-assorted, we again ask, are we to be charged with cruelty and inhumanity?

The same observations are applicable as to supplies of food and clothing. The war was waged, by the North, on the policy of unsparing devastation. Mills were burnt, factories demolished, barns given to the flames, and the means of comfort and of living destroyed on system. What the South was able to save, she shared with her prisoners. We gave them such rations as we gave our own soldiers. Does any one suspect the Confederate Government of deliberately stinting its own soldiers? How, then, can it be pretended that it was “cruel and inhuman” to prisoners whom it fed as well? If we could not maintain them as well as we wished, it was through the success of those who wasted our subsistence, for the purpose of reducing us to that precise condition of inability. It is obviously monstrous to charge the fact, and to charge it as blame, upon us– to accuse the South of “cruelty and inhumanity.”71

But there is still another revelation to be added to the overwhelming evidence which demonstrates the murderous purpose of the Federal authorities, equally toward their own men and toward Confederate soldiers, by which they adroitly sought to cover the Confederate Government with accusing blood. A marked feature in the policy of the Lincoln cabinet was, at concerted intervals, to inflame the heart of the North by appeals to passion and resentment. The supreme excellence of the Federal administration, in this respect, was, indeed, its substitute for statesmanship. To conceal its own iniquitous course, with reference to the exchange of prisoners, the administration successfully sought to frenzy the Northern masses by the most ingenious misrepresentations of the condition of their men in the Southern prisons.

To this end the foul brood of pictorial falsifiers – the Harpers, Leslies, etc. – gave willing and effective aid. Men in the most horrible conditions of human suffering – ghastly skeletons, creatures demented from sheer misery – a set of wretched, raving, and dying creatures – were photographed, the pictures reduplicated to an unlimited extent, and scattered broadcast over the North, as evidence of the brutality practiced upon Federal prisoners in the South. In view of the well-known and designed influence of these appeals upon Northern sentiment, what must be the scorn of the civilized world for the perfidy which used the means which we here relate, to accomplish its iniquitous ends?

Immediately preceding the return of these prisoners, the Federal Agent applied for the delivery of the worst cases of sick Federal prisoners. Said he: “Even in cases where your surgeons think the men too ill to be moved, and not strong enough to survive the trip, if they express a desire to come, let them come.” At this time, it should be remembered, regular exchanges were intermitted. Commissioner Ould, consistently with his known humanity and the humane disposition of his Government, consented to send the worst cases of their prisoners, provided that they would not be accepted as representatives of the average condition of the Federal prisoners in the South, and used as a means to inflame Northern sentiment. This condition was sacredly pledged.

With this understanding, Commissioner Ould prepared a barge adapted specially to the purpose, and, with the aid of the Richmond Ambulance Committee, carefully and tenderly delivered the prisoners. The Federal vessel that received them sailed immediately to Annapolis, where, instead of receiving the tender treatment that their pitiable condition required, they were made a spectacle of for an obvious purpose. Photographic artists made portraits of them; a committee of Congress was sent to report upon their condition; in short, they had been obtained for a purpose; and, how well that purpose was subserved, the South, at least, well knows. These miserable wrecks of humanity, specially asked for, specially selected as the worst cases, were pointed to as representatives of the average state of Federal prisoners in the South, although the most sacred assurances had been given that they would be used for no such purpose.