Confederate View Of The Treatment Of Prisoners

Author : J. Jones
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781719533324
Total Pages : 318 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (333 download)

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Download or read book Confederate View of the Treatment of Prisoners written by J. Jones and published by . This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The demand for the contents of two papers printed in the old Southern Historical Society magazine on the treatment of prisoners during the War Between the States induced them to be put together in book form and published. Let it be distinctly understood that we do not for a moment affirm that there was not a vast amount of suffering and fearful mortality among the Federal prisoners at the South. But we are prepared to prove before any fair tribunal, from documents now in our archives, the following points:1. The Confederate authorities always ordered the kind treatment of prisoners of war and if there were individual cases of cruel treatment it was in violation of positive orders.2. The orders were to give prisoners the same rations that our own soldiers received and if rations were scarce and of inferior quality, it was through no fault of the Confederacy. 3. The prison hospitals were put on the same footing precisely as the hospitals for our own men and if there was unusual suffering caused by want of medicine and hospital stores, it arose from the fact that the Federal authorities declared these "contraband of war," and refused to accept the Confederate offer to allow Federal surgeons to come to the prisons with supplies of medicines and stores. 4. The prisons were established with reference to healthfulness of locality and the great mortality among the prisoners arose from epidemics and chronic diseases which our surgeons had not the means of preventing or arresting.A strong proof of this is the fact that nearly as large a proportion of the Confederate guard at Andersonville died as of the prisoners themselves.5. The above reasons cannot be assigned for the cruel treatment which Confederates received in Northern prisons. Though in a land flowing with plenty, our poor fellows in prison were famished with hunger and would have considered half the rations served Federal soldiers bountiful indeed. Their prison-hospitals were very far from being on the same footing with the hospitals for their own soldiers and our men died by thousands from causes which the Federal authorities could have prevented.6. But the real cause of the suffering on both sides was the stoppage of the exchange of prisoners and for this the Federal authorities alone were responsible. The Confederates kept the cartel in good faith. It was broken on the other side.The Confederates were anxious to exchange man for man. It was the settled policy on the other side not to exchange prisoners The Confederates offered to exchange sick and wounded. This was refused. In August 1864, we offered to send home all the Federal sick and wounded without equivalent. The offer was not accepted until the following December and it was during that period that the greatestmortality occurred. The Federal authorities determined as their war policy not to exchange prisoners, they invented every possible pretext to avoid it and they at the same time sought to quiet the friends of their prisoners and to "fire the Northern heart" by most shamelessly charging that the Confederate Government refused to exchange and by industriously circulating the most malignant stories of "Rebel barbarities" to helpless veterans of the Union. This book asks the question, "Upon whom does this tremendous responsibility rest -- this sacrifice of human life, with all its indescribable miseries and sufferings? The facts, beyond question or doubt, show that it rests entirety upon the authorities at Washington! To avert the indignation which the open avowal of this policy by them at the time would have excited throughout the North and throughout the civilized world, the false cry of cruelty towards prisoners was raised against the Confederates as pretext to cover their own violation of the usages of war in this respect among civilized nations.