XI.
There was another serious defect in the management of the prison, and that was, the neglect to provide the means for entire ablution, which, in warm climes, becomes an imperative necessity. “Animals perspire, that they may live;” and this function is as necessary to a healthy life as either breathing or digestion: the skin, like the lungs, gives off carbonic acid and absorbs oxygen. But it differs from the lungs in giving off a much larger bulk of the former gas than it absorbs of the latter. The quantity of carbonic acid which escapes varies with circumstances. It is sometimes equal to one thirtieth, andsometimes amounts to only a ninetieth part of that which is thrown off from the lungs, but generally it amounts to 100 grains daily. But exercise and hard labor increase the evolution of carbon from the skin, as it does from the lungs. A large quantity of nitrogen also escapes by the skin.
Hence we may infer the effect upon the prisoners, from the want of ablution, and the means of removing the accumulating filth of their bodies. The functions of the skin, and their influence in the practical feeding of animals, have been carefully studied by the experimentalists, and they have observed that the difference in washed and unwashed animals, during the process of fattening, amounts to one fifth.
Pure air and the enforcement of daily ablutions having been introduced into some of the English schools, the sick rate was reduced two thirds. A general of a beleaguered city in Spain was obliged to put his soldiers on short allowance, and compelled them to bathe daily in order to amuse them, when he found, to his surprise, that they became in better condition than when on full rations.
Chadwick states, in his papers on Economy, that “amongst soldiers of the line who have only hands and face washing provided for, the death-rate is upwards of 17 per 1000.”
When sent into prisons where there is a far lower diet, sometimes exclusively vegetable, and without beer or spirits, but where regular head to foot ablutions and cleanliness of clothes, as well as of persons, are enforced, their health is vastly increased, and the death-rate is reduced to 2½ per 1000.
XII.
It appears from the mortuary records of the prison that 13,000 men were registered and buried during the year of its occupation. It also appears from the same hospital lists that 17,873 men received medical treatment, or were known to be sick, and their names entered in the books. Of these, 825 men were exchanged, leaving 17,048 to be accounted for; thus giving a mortality of more than 76 per cent., or 760 men out of every thousand.
It is said, and stated with confidence, that the names of the 4000 soldiers who died in their mud-holes within the pen, and who did not generally receive any medical treatment whatever, were placed upon the hospital register, and their diseases diagnosed after death and removal from the stockade. But of this the writer is not positive, although he has seen tables of statistics of certain periods of the prison, where it is shown that every patient who was treated for disease perished.
XIII.
To form an idea of the awful mortality which reigned here, let us review the records of the hospital prisons, and the casualties of armies of foreign as well as our own country. These comparisons must, however, be received with much allowance, for the circumstances which led to death are very different.
In the prisons of Switzerland, before they wereimproved, the mortality was 25 to 35 per 1000. In the county jails of England it is reckoned at 10 per 1000; in the terrible hulks (Les Bagnes) of France it is 39 to 55 per 1000, including epidemics of cholera.
The average mortality of the London hospitals, where only the severer cases of disease and accident are received and treated, is nine per cent.
In the hospitals of Dublin it is less than 5 per cent.; in the civil hospitals of France it is from 5 to 9 per cent.; in the military hospitals of the same country it is much less; at Val de Grace it was 4 per cent. for a period of forty years; at Vincennes it was 2 per cent. for a long period; at the Gros Caillou, for a term of eleven years, it was less than 3 per cent. out of 55,000 patients.
The mortality at Moyamensing Prison for many years was 1 per cent., and in the New York Penitentiary less than that for seven years. The average deaths in the prisons of Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Maryland, was about 2 per cent. The death-rate of the rebels confined in our military prisons was small, comparatively: at Fort Delaware it was 2 per cent, for eleven months; at Johnson’s Island it was 2 per cent., or 134 deaths out of 6000 prisoners, for the period of twenty-one months.
The loss at the rebel prison at Elmira is not known for the entire term; but it was much less than the rebel “Vinculis” desires to make it.
His own statements make but 4 per cent. during the worst month for instance: “Now out of less than nine thousand five hundred prisoners on the first of September, 386 died that month.”
“At Andersonville the mortality averaged 1000 per monthout of 36,000 prisoners,1⁄36. At Elmira it was 386 per month, out of 9500, or1⁄25of the whole. At Elmira it was 4 per cent.; at Andersonville less than 3 per cent.
“If the mortality at Andersonville had been as great as at Elmira, the deaths should have been fourteen hundred and forty per month, or fifty per cent. more than they were.”
The official records of Andersonville show that Vinculis is greatly in error; for, instead of fourteen hundred and forty, the great number he imagines, they were even more; for the figures show two thousand six hundred and seventy-eight for September, or more than fifteen per cent., and in October fifteen hundred and ninety-five, or more than twenty-seven per cent., and in the month of August three thousand men died, and on the twenty-third of that month one hundred and twenty-seven perished, or one every eleven minutes out of the number present.
XIV.
In the hospitals of the allied forces, during the campaign of the Crimea, which were established along the banks of the Bosphorus and at Constantinople, there were admitted, during the twenty-two months of the war, one hundred and thirty-nine thousand patients, and of these nineteen per cent. were lost during the entire period, or at the rate of ten per cent. per annum.
One hundred and ninety-three thousand patients were admitted into the French hospitals during the same period, and but fourteen per cent. were lost, or less than eight per cent. per annum.
The mortality of the military hospitals of the army of occupation of Spain in 1824 was less than five per cent.
The extemporized and regular hospitals of Milan, says Baron Larrey, received during the Italian campaign thirty-four thousand sick and wounded; of whom fourteen hundred died, or four per cent., or forty men out of every one thousand. The temporary hospitals of Nashville received during the year 1864 sixty-five thousand sick and wounded, of whom twenty-six hundred died, or four per cent. The numerous hospitals of Washington treated in 1863 sixty-eight thousand patients, and lost twenty-six hundred, or less than four per cent.; and, in 1864, the same hospitals treated ninety-six thousand patients (forty-nine thousand sick and forty-seven thousand wounded), and lost six thousand, or six per cent. The department of Pennsylvania received fifty-six thousand patients in its various hospitals, and lost but two per cent. Twenty-nine thousand nine hundred patients were cared for in the medical and surgical wards of the fourteen great civil hospitals of London in 1861, and but twenty-seven hundred of these died, or nine per cent. The diary of the rebel War Clerk says, that in the hospitals of the rebel service sixteen hundred thousand patients were treated, with a loss of four per cent.; yet it appears from a surreptitious copy of the quarterly report ending 1864, relating to the prisoners in hospital at Richmond, that twenty-seven hundred patients were treated, and thirteen hundred and ninety-six died, or fifty per cent.; more than half of these cases were those of diarrhœa and dysentery, and only seventy deaths from fever. It appears from the official data of theSurgeon-General’s office, published in November, 1865, that eight hundred and seventy thousand cases of wounds and disease were treated by the medical staff of the United States army in 1862, and but two per cent. were lost; also, that in 1863, seventeen hundred thousand cases were cared for, with a loss of three per cent. only.
XV.
The statistics of the great armies of Austria, Sardinia, and France during the Italian war, when half a million of men met in conflict at Magenta and Solferino, show, according to Boudin, that but six thousand four hundred and ten men lost their lives—of the French, three thousand five hundred and five; of the Sardinians, one thousand and forty-five; of the Austrians, one thousand eight hundred and sixty. It is shown by the records of the British army, that, out of the aggregate number of four hundred and thirty-eight thousand British soldiers who were engaged in the twenty-two great battles of the British empire from 1801 to 1854, but fourteen thousand men were killed, or died of their wounds, or three per cent. These battles embrace those of Egypt, Spain, France, Waterloo, and the Crimea.
Contrast these blood-stained records with this one instance of rebel cruelty at Andersonville. Of the number of the Federal soldiers who have been held in captivity during the rebellion by the rebels, more than thirty thousand of them are now dead. We know from official records that twenty-three thousand are buried at Andersonville and Salisbury alone.
XVI.
Up to the month of September, 1864, forty-two thousand four hundred prisoners had been received, and out of this number seven thousand five hundred and eighty-seven, or eighteen per cent., had died since the occupation of the prison—a period of about six months. During August the manœuvres of Sherman alarmed them so much that they thought best to remove many of the prisoners to other stockades in Alabama and in North and South Carolina; but yet the mortality for the remainder of the year was for the month of September seventeen per cent. out of the number present; October, twenty-seven per cent.; November, twenty-four per cent.; and seven per cent. in December, when there were but five thousand inmates. This gives nineteen per cent. average for each of those four months, and indicates that out of the thirty-two thousand present on the first of August, but few thousand would have been living at the close of the year, had not Sherman compelled a reduction in the number of inmates. Out of this number present in August, and distributed afterwards, I believe that but few thousand survived the system of treatment at the other prisons, and ever lived to reach home. Of these few thousand men who were finally exchanged, a great many have since perished; which statement will be admitted by all who have watched the phases of disease since the termination of the war.
XVII.
The records state that eight thousand died from diarrhœa and scurvy, and that three thousand more died from dysentery and unknown causes. Two hundred and fifteen thousand cases of diarrhœa were treated in the United States army in 1862, and but one thousand one hundred died; and of thirty-seven thousand cases of dysentery, but three hundred and forty-seven died; and but one death from scurvy per thirty-five thousand of mean strength. In 1863, according to the official records by Surgeon Woodward, five hundred thousand cases of diarrhœa and dysentery were treated, and but two per cent. died. According to the same authority there were but eight thousand six hundred cases of scurvy during the first two years of the war, and but one per cent. of these died. Fever was almost unknown, although the foul atmospheres and malarial miasms are generally so eager in their attacks, and so rapid in their effects; the autopsies of the dead men revealed to the astonished pathologist the utter absence of all the usual lesions of these diseases.
Boudin, of the French army, in 1843, in his “Essai de Geographie Medicale,” observes that phthisis and typhoid fever are very rare in the marshy districts where intermittent fevers of a certain gravity prevail. It does not appear that either of these diseases declared itself to any perceptible degree.
The effect of starvation was so strong that miasmatic disease could not gain a lodgment in the system, although every other condition was favorable to its production. Scurvy seems to be prominent in the alleged diseases.The combined influence of all the vicious conditions could readily have produced this form of malady in its worst shape; but it is one of those diseases which are clearly within the control of man, and for the existence of which, in this case, there is no excuse whatever. They required the treatment, practised with success in India, for those fluxes which are marked by a scorbutic state of the system—potatoes and lime juice.
The neighboring plantations produced the potatoes in great quantities. In the everglades of Florida the lime tree, which furnishes a positive antidote, grows in wild luxuriance; and the woods everywhere, the corn and potatoes of their fields, furnish vinegar by distillation. If the plantations failed in their supplies of vegetables, the forests furnished, with trifling labor, an excellent substitute.
Vinegar, in the early history of war, was the chief and the sure reliance against the attacks of scurvy and malaria. To this drink chiefly, Marshal Saxe ascribes the amazing success of the Roman campaigns in the varied climates of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Scientific men, from Dioscorides to Orfila, have extolled its virtues in this respect. It is idle to say that they did not know how to make it, for the merest tyro in chemistry understands the method of fermentation and distillation.
XVIII.
It has been stated that the mortality was caused by epidemics; by dysentery or camp distempers; but the testimony of nature, as revealed by the scalpel of the dissector, does not admit of such statement. There wasneither epidemic nor pestilence. There was starvation instead.
That a vast amount of this mortality was caused by the unfavorable, the needless, the cruel circumstances in which the prisoners were placed, no one acquainted with the phenomena of life and death will deny.
But as to how much more than the normal rate, no man has sufficient generosity and impartiality to determine.
This we know, however, that it is an axiom with all hygienists and military men, that the health of the soldier is always in direct ratio of the care taken of him. To give a just estimate of the normal degree of the mortality that was caused by diarrhœa, will indeed form a complex problem, since it is not only the last stage of starvation, but it is often produced by the decomposition of the blood by the dyscrasia peculiar to camp life. We observe it in all armies during the summer months, and that it seems to result from manifold causes. Although the predisposing cause is the dyscrasiac condition of the soldier, the determining cause is most always the quality of the food consumed, and the purity of the water used for potable purposes. Surface water mixed with confervoids and decomposed vegetable matter, and the deeper currents of water which pass through the rotten limestones, are, during the summer, the fruitful sources of intestinal disorders.
Those who have observed the influence of atmospheric changes upon disease, will comprehend why the diarrhœa curve followed the line of high temperature, and how it progressed in consequence of heat, even when unassisted by inanition.
XIX.
It has been maintained by the rebels that many of the deaths were caused by nostalgia, or home-sickness. The truth of this remark we do not consider of sufficient importance to discuss in the extenuation of the crime, although we will admit that this disorder, which impairs the intellectual faculties and enfeebles the digestive functions, is often the cause of death among the French armies in Algeria, and the English in India, and that it can even become epidemic and lead to suicide. But the disease is clearly within the control of man.
We can find a more ready reason for the explanation of the derangement of the mind and nervous system in the dietary. The statistics of insanity show how sad or ferocious delirium may arise from starvation; and according to Combe, “a species of insanity, arising from defective nourishment, is very prevalent among the Milanese, and is easily cured by the nourishing diet provided in the hospitals to which the patients are sent.”
The survivors have explained the causes of death of their comrades. The faces of these men told the story better than the tongue could describe. The peculiar look of these men was common to them all: the shrunken and pallid features—the rough and blighted skin—the vacant, wild, and unearthly stare of the hollow and lustreless eye,—all told of the results of starvation. This look can no more be described than forgotten, when once seen. Wherever the returned sufferers landed, the bystanders were struck with horror by this fearful appearance.
XX.
The impure air, the marked and rapid changes of temperature, and the foul water, rendered the tenacity of animal life a simple problem, and when joined to the deprivation of food, it became a matter of surprise that any of the hapless wretches escaped with life.
The intense heat served to accelerate the destruction of the organism, already weakened and sapped by the want of food and the putridity of the atmosphere.
Life is always best supported at a moderate temperature, which, however, is restricted to a certain degree, depending upon the forces of reserve in the animal; and it is observed by experimentalists that all the vital properties of the nervous centres, the nerves and muscles in adult as well as in young warm-blooded animals, may be much increased by a diminution of temperature.
This is shown by Brown-Sequard, in his illustrations of the influences of prolonged muscular exertion on cadaveric rigidity and putrefaction.
Some few of the soldiers arriving from the army, with their systems already saturated with paludal and animal poisons, and who were profoundly cachectic, could rally very slowly if at all, under the combined influences of the mephitic miasms and heat of the locality, even had there been no fault in the alimentation. But there was a very great number of the prisoners who were free from disease and debility, as they were direct from their homes in the North, or from the healthy camps of instruction.
Scurvy and the vicious forms of zymotic disease, which depend upon starvation and vitiated atmosphere, ragedunchecked. The medical care does not seem to have made any impression upon them, because of the limitations of their materia medica, and the want of attention and accommodations for the patients.
There does not seem to have been any sanitary regulations, nor the simplest hygienic precautions adopted by the prison authorities. No proper military arrangements to enforce order among the turbulent or insane, to protect the weak from the strong in the struggle for a morsel of bread, a bone, or a rag of clothing; no proper system of nurses to assist the feeble within the stockade or the hospital, and administer to their wants. Filth was deposited everywhere, because the enfeebled and dying wretches had not sufficient strength to crawl down to the quagmire by the banks of the stream. In the midst of these horrible circumstances, men met their fate with singular calmness and stoicism. Nature strangely appears to conform and temper the asperities of fate to men and animals alike.
XXI.
It is often asked why the prisoners did not revolt, and with the mighty energy of despair wrench down the gates, and strangle with their hands the few thousand of rebel guards. To burst through the massive timbers of the gates and the outer lines of palisades, and then force the encircling row of ramparts, which were bristling with troops and cannon, required something more than courage. This gigantic strength, this desperation of vigor, was not possible for the prisoners; for the food, and the external impressions—whether of the heat, cold,or horror—had too much impoverished the blood,—the blood, which imparts force to human volition.
XXII.
In the summing up of the condition to which life was exposed in this stockade, and reviewing the vicious influences at work, we may come to some definite conclusion as to the true causes of the results. It is evident from the comparisons and estimates of the dietary that the want of food alone was sufficient to cause a great number of deaths. It is also evident from the statements relative to ratio of density, to exposure, to deadly miasms, and exhalations from decomposing animal matter, that these conditions were alone sufficient to cause excessive mortality, even if the alimentation had been generous and proper.
This terrible mortality, without the influence of epidemics, is without parallel, and is without excuse, save on the principle that war is for mutual destruction, that the captor has the right of disposal, and that the captives must be put to death. The philanthropist may console himself with the idea that climate, with its unseen but powerful agencies, has been the author of the destruction of this army of men; but the surgeon and man of science will recognize the true causes, and express their opinion in but one word, and that word isMURDER: that it was deliberate destruction; but whether with the conscience of the Tartar, or with premeditated free-will, it matters little,—the result is the same.
“Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.”—Terence.“Since no man has a natural right over his fellow-creature, and since force produces no right, conventions then remain as the base for all legitimate authority among men.”—Rousseau.
“Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.”—Terence.
“Since no man has a natural right over his fellow-creature, and since force produces no right, conventions then remain as the base for all legitimate authority among men.”—Rousseau.
I.
“War,”exclaims the author of the “Social Contract,” “is not exactly a relation of man to man, but a relation of state to state, in which the individuals are enemies only by accident, and not as men, neither even as citizens, but as soldiers,—not exactly as members of the country, but as its defenders. In fine, every state can have as enemies only other states, and not men, on account of the interference of things of diverse natures, which cannot fix any true relation.
“This principle is even conformed to maxims established in all times, and to the constant practice of all civilized people. The declarations of war are more as warnings to the powers than to their subjects. The stranger—either king, or individual, or people—who seizes, kills, or detains the subjects, without declaring the war to the ruler, is not an enemy, he is a brigand.
“Even in open war, a just ruler seizes property in anenemy’s country, all that which belongs to the public; but he respects the person and the property of the individual; he respects the rights upon which his own are founded.
“The intent of the war being the destruction of the hostile state, we have the right to kill the defenders so often as they have arms in their hands; but as soon as they lay them down, and surrender, ceasing to be enemies, or instruments of the enemy, they become again simply men, and we have no longer a right to their lives. Sometimes we may destroy a state without killing a single one of its members; but war does not confer any right which is not necessary to its end.
“These principles are not those of Grotius: they are not founded upon the authorities of poets: but they are derived from the nature of things, and are founded upon reason. With regard to the right of conquest, it has no other foundation than the law of the most force. If war does not give to the conqueror the right to massacre the vanquished people, that right, which he has not, does not establish that to enslave. We have no more right to kill an enemy than to make him a slave. The right to enslave does not then come from the right to kill. This is then an unjust exchange, to compel him to purchase life at the price of liberty, upon which we have no right.
“In establishing the right of life and death upon the right of slavery, and the right to enslave upon the right of life and death, is it not clear that we fall into a wicked circle?”
II.
Says Mirabeau, in his beautiful essay on “Despotism,” “We can destroy the life of a man for a frightful crime; but that is not to appropriate my existence when it is forced from me. Consider, upon this subject, how absurd is the opinion of the pretended philosophers who have established force as title; who have set up a right of conquest, and recognized to the conquerors the legitimate power to grant life or put to death.
“It is not true that the right of life and death, exercised by a man upon another man, has ever been anything else than an act of frenzy; for your enemy reduced to slavery can be yet useful to you, provided you preserve his life,—and this is less than the right that he has upon you, and the relation which binds you together; but the massacre of a man is nothing more than to dishonor and disgust humanity, * * * the right of life and death, * * * and what other has the Creator to exercise over our existence?
“From man to man the rights then are always respective. Personal propriety cannot surrender itself, liberty cannot alienate itself. This first gift of nature is imprescriptible; and men, even in their delirium, cannot renounce it.”
III.
“Opinion makes the law.” If human laws are uncertain and contradictory, it is not the fault of nature, since man has invented or discovered rules in the science of physics which are constant and invariable, like those of geometry and chemistry.
Whatever renders the laws of society invariable, inoperative, is due to the inherent weakness of their basis, and not to the eternal principles of truth and justice. All human laws must be founded on that fundamental and immutable law of nature, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” This precept of divine origin is the great balance of the human mind; and it is the secret spring of the progress of nations, as well as the social development of individuals: for without this principle the world would be nothing but a vast arena, in which all classes of people would be arrayed against each other in deadly conflict; impelled by the force of passion and appetite, error and prejudice would soon banish the influence of truth and reason. The weaker families would soon be consumed by the stronger in the wars of avarice and religion.
“The laws of nature,” writes M. Regis, “are the dictates of right reason, which teach every man how he is to use his natural right; and the laws of nations are the dictates, in like manner, of right reason, which teach every state how to act and behave themselves toward others.”
“As God,” says Blackstone, “when he created matter, and endowed it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the perpetual direction of that motion, so when he created man, and endued him with free will to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature whereby that free will is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws.”
This law of nature being coeval with mankind, anddictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding all over the globe, in all countries and at all times: no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.
Human laws originate in the wisdom of man, and are designed to regulate their behavior to one another, and are enforced by human authority and worldly sanctions.
The fear of punishment and revenge are not strong enough to control the lusts and passions of men.
The true idea and comprehension of the majesty and mercy of the law is infused by the spirit of philosophy.
IV.
“The existence of states,” says Montesquieu, “is like that of man, and the first have the right to make war for their proper preservation; the latter have the right to kill in the case of natural defence. In the case of natural defence I have the right to kill, since my life is my own, as the life of him who attacks me belongs to himself. * * * From the right of war follows that of conquest, which is the consequence: it ought then to follow the spirit. * * * It is clear when the conquest is made, the conqueror has no longer the right to kill, since he is no longer in the position of natural defence, or for his proper preservation.
“That which has made them think thus (right to kill), is that they have believed that the conqueror had theright to destroy society, whence they have concluded that they had that to destroy the men who composed it, which is a false consequence extracted from a false principle. Because the society should perish, it does not follow that the men who form it ought also to perish. Society is a union of men, and not men: the citizen can perish and the man remain. From the right to kill in conquest, politics have derived the right to enslave; but the consequence is as badly founded as the principle.”
There are certain rules that arise from the principle of self-preservation, and form what Wolff calls “the voluntary law of nations.” “Hence it follows that all nations have a right to repel by force what openly violates the law of the society which nature has established among them, or that directly attacks the welfare and safety of that society. At the same time care must be taken not to extend this law to the prejudice of the liberty of nations.”
V.
The right of jurisdiction belongs only to those societies which have united for the purpose of maintaining the natural rights of each individual.
The ablest writers have maintained that society has not the right of life and death, and whoever arrogates that power commits a “divinelèse majesté.” “The object, the interest, and the function of all government are, then, to maintain the harmony of society established upon the moral relations of justice, and upon the physical order that no human power can change, and to protect all those who compose that society.” Louis XI., thatTiberius of France, caused to be put to death more than four thousand persons, and nearly all without process of law.
We see passionate men defending palpable errors with fanaticism and metaphysical temerity, as though they were divine dogmas. Thus Slavery would legalize frightful tyranny, and declare permanent proscriptions, with the same ease that it consigned thousands to starvation. “If liberty,” says the author of the “Essai sur le Despotisme,” “is the first of resorts for man, Slavery must alter all the sentiments, blunt all the sensations, and denaturalize them; stifle all talent, blend all shades, corrupt all the orders of state, and scatter discord, the germ of anarchy and revolutions. Man is only wicked when a superstitious institution or a tyrannical government gives the example of ferocity, and supplies him with fear for motive and cupidity for passion. But it is necessary to distinguish with men the character acquired from natural inclination: we are, of all beings, the most susceptible of modifications, and above all, of extreme passions. An enslaved people are always vile: they can be wicked and cruel, because they are irritable, gloomy, and ignorant; and when, although instruction will not be the only rampart of liberty against tyranny, it will always be the first safeguard of man against man; but the slave is a mutilated man.”
Every writer will admit this whose pen is not enslaved by fear, or rendered venal by interest.
VI.
The right of making prisoners of war, and depriving them of their liberty, and of the power and opportunity of farther resistance, is undoubted, for it is founded on the principles of security and self-defence. But when the soldier has laid down his arms, and submitted to the will of the conqueror, the right of taking his life ceases, unless he should forfeit the right himself by some new crime; and the savage errors of antiquity, in putting prisoners to death, have long been renounced by civilized nations.
Among the European states prisoners of war are seldom ill-treated; and when the number of prisoners is so great as not to be fed, or kept with safety, it has been the custom to parole them, either for a certain length of time, or for the war. All authorities agree that they cannot be made slaves, although under certain circumstances they may be set at labor on the public fortifications and works.
Prisoners of war are retained to prevent their returning to the field of conflict, and there are times when they may be detained and refused all ransom, when, for instance, it is obvious that the parole will not be regarded by the opposing commanders, and when their exchange would throw a preponderance of weight into the ranks of the antagonist. It would have been very dangerous for the Czar Peter the Great to have exchanged his Swedish prisoners for an equal number of unequal Russians; but whilst retained they were treated with kindness.
VII.
The rebel policy and system towards the Federal prisoners, along the entire line, without exception, from Virginia to Texas, was one of stupendous atrocity. It was one of the most inhuman and monstrous that hate and tyranny ever invented. It was no less derogatory to human character than defiant to the principles of Christianity; but Christianity was unknown there. The gods of worship were the deities of the dark ages, and the fancied garlands of flowers that decorated their statues were nothing more than wreaths of cyprus leaves. This stockade was the epitome and concentration of all earthly misery, to which the Bastile and the Inquisition offer but feeble comparisons, as prototypes, as models, as ideas, for the destruction of human life.
In this we recognize the perversion of the natural sentiments after two centuries of crime, the defiance of all honorable law, “the barbarism of slavery.”
What can we, in extenuation, ascribe to recklessness, what to ignorance? “There is,” says the eloquent Rousseau, “a brutal and ferocious ignorance, which springs from a bad heart and a false spirit. A criminal ignorance, which extends itself even to the duties of humanity; which multiplies vices, which degrades reason, debases the soul, and renders man like the beasts.”
These men destroyed the strength, the lives of thousands, by stealthy means, and excused their consciences by the reflections of perverted nature: as Timour said to his victims, “It is you who assassinate your own souls!”
VIII.
It has been the custom, among European nations, to treat prisoners of war liberally, and the expenses of maintaining them are paid by both sides at the close of the war.
The British Parliament voted, in 1780, to pay forty thousand pounds sterling to disinfect and improve the prison where the Spanish prisoners were confined, and where a fatal fever had declared itself. And there are many instances where European powers have acted kindly and humanely towards those who had fallen into their power from hazard of battle. War was declared against states, and not against the individual subjects of those states.
At all times, kindness to the unfortunate, and hospitality to strangers, has always been considered as a virtue of the first rank among people whose manners are simple, and who, uncontaminated by vices of a false and frivolous civilization, exhibit the natural qualities of the human race. Even among the darkness of the middle ages kindness was compulsory, and hospitality enforced by statute, and whoever denied succor to misery was liable to punishment. “Quicunque hospiti venienti lectum aut focum negaverit trium solidorum in latione mulctetur.” (Leg. Burgund., tit. 38, § I.)
The laws of the Slavi ordained that the movables of an inhospitable person should be confiscated, and his house burned.
IX.
In comparison with these humane provisions, how terribly contrasted are the modes of treatment as practised by the rebel authorities upon the Federal soldiers! “Let us hoist the black flag, and kill every prisoner,” said one of the cabinet officers. “I will sell my wheat,” said another cabinet officer, “to my fellow-citizens, at exorbitant prices.” “My God,” said a poor woman, “how can I pay such prices! I have seven children? What shall I do?” “I do not know, madam,” was the brutal answer, “unless you eat them.”
When such sentiments prevailed at Richmond, what could be expected in kindness by those who were looked upon with hatred and as worthy of death?
In the revolutionary times of 1776 there was no brutal treatment of prisoners of war by Americans. Washington was extremely solicitous that no act of barbarity should stain the sanctity of the cause. In a letter of May 11, 1776, Washington wrote to the President of Congress, recommending that measures be adopted to secure for prisoners of war the most humane treatment; and again to the Massachusetts Committee, February 6, 1776, he wrote, recommending that captives should be treated with humanity and kindness. The Continental Congress passed a resolution in 1776 that all taken with arms be treated as prisoners of war, but with humanity, and allowed the same rations as the troops in the service of the United States.
X.
The United States Government adopted the following rules in 1863 for the guidance of our armies, and published them in General Order, No. 100, April 24:—
11. The law of war not only disclaims all cruelty and bad faith concerning engagements concluded with the enemy during the war, but also the breaking of stipulations solemnly contracted by the belligerents in time of peace, and avowedly intended to remain in force in case of war between the contracting powers.
It disclaims all extortions and other transactions for individual gain; all acts of private revenge, or connivance at such acts.
Offences to the contrary shall be severely punished, and especially so if committed by officers.
14. Military necessity, as understood by modern civilized nations, consists in the necessity of those measures which are indispensable for securing the ends of war, and which are lawful according to the modern law and usages of war.
15. Military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government, or of peculiar danger to the captor; it allows of all destruction of property, and obstruction of the ways and channels of traffic, travel, or communication, and of all withholding of sustenanceor means of life from the enemy; of the appropriation of whatever an enemy’s country affords necessary for the safety and subsistence of the army, and of such deception as does not involve the breaking of good faith, either positively pledged regarding agreements entered into during the war, or supposed by the modern law of war to exist. Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God.
16. Military necessity does not admit of cruelty,—that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or revenge,—nor of maiming or wounding, except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. It does not admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of the wanton devastation of a district. It admits of deception, but disdains acts of perfidy; and, in general, military necessity does not include any act of hostility which renders the return to peace unnecessarily difficult.
27. The law of war can no more wholly dispense with retaliation than can the law of nations, of which it is a branch; yet civilized nations acknowledge retaliation as the sternest feature of war. A reckless enemy often leaves to his opponents no other means of securing himself against the repetition of barbarous outrage.
28. Retaliation will, therefore, never be resorted to as a measure of mere revenge, but only as a means of protective retribution, and cautiously and unavoidably; that is to say, retaliation shall only be resorted to after careful inquiry into the real occurrence and the character of the misdeeds that may demand retribution.
33. It is no longer considered lawful—on the contraryit is held to be a serious breach of the law of war—to force the subjects of the enemy into the service of the victorious government, except the latter should proclaim, after a fair and complete conquest of the hostile country or district, that it is resolved to keep the country, district, or place permanently as its own, and make it a portion of its own country.
49. A prisoner of war is a public enemy, armed or attached to the hostile army for active aid, who has fallen into the hands of the captor, either fighting or wounded, on the field or in the hospital, by individual surrender or by capitulation.
52. No belligerent has the right to declare that he will treat every captured man in arms, of a levy en masse, as a brigand or bandit. * * *
56. A prisoner of war is subject to no punishment for being a public enemy, nor is any revenge wreaked upon him by the intentional infliction of any suffering, or disgrace by cruel imprisonment, want of food, by mutilation, death, or any other barbarity.
57. So soon as a man is armed by a sovereign government, and takes the soldier’s oath of fidelity, he is a belligerent; his killing, wounding, or other warlike acts are no individual crime or offence. * * *
67. The law of nations allows every sovereign government to make war upon another sovereign state, and therefore admits of no rules or laws different from those of regular warfare regarding the treatment of prisoners of war, although they may belong to the army of a government which the captor may consider as a wanton and unjust assailant.
The use of poison in any manner, be it to poison wells, or food, or arms, is wholly excluded from modern warfare. He that uses it puts himself out of the pale of the laws and usages of war.
71. Whoever intentionally inflicts additional wounds on an enemy already wholly disabled, or kills such an enemy, or who orders or encourages soldiers to do so, shall suffer death if duly convicted, whether he belongs to the army of the United States, or is an enemy captured after having committed his misdeed.
72. Money and other valuables on the person of a prisoner, such as watches or jewelry, as well as extra clothing, are regarded by the American army as the private property of the prisoners, and the appropriation of such valuables or money is considered dishonorable, and is prohibited.
74. A prisoner of war, being a public enemy, is the prisoner of the government and not of the captor. No ransom can be paid by a prisoner of war to his individual captor or to any officer in command. The government alone releases captives, according to rules prescribed by itself.
75. Prisoners of war are subject to confinement or imprisonment, such as may be deemed necessary on account of safety, but they are to be subjected to no other intentional suffering or indignity. The confinement and mode of treating a prisoner may be varied during his captivity, according to the demands of safety.
76. Prisoners of war shall be fed upon plain and wholesome food whenever practicable, and treated with humanity. They may be required to work for the benefit of thecaptor’s government, according to their rank and condition.
77. A prisoner of war who escapes, may be shot or otherwise killed in his flight, but neither death nor any other punishment shall be inflicted upon him, simply for his attempt to escape, which the law of war does not consider a crime. Stricter means of security shall be used after an unsuccessful attempt at escape. * * *
109. The exchange of prisoners of war is an act of convenience to both belligerents. If no general cartel has been concluded it cannot be demanded by either of them. No belligerent is obliged to exchange prisoners of war. A cartel is voidable as soon as either party has violated it.
119. Prisoners of war may be released from captivity by exchange and under certain circumstances, also by parole.
120. The term parole designates the pledge of individual good faith and honor to do, or to omit doing, certain acts after he who gives his parole shall have been dismissed wholly or partially from the power of the captor.
121. The pledge of the parole is always an individual but not a private act.
133. No prisoner of war can be forced by the hostile government to parole himself, and no government is obliged to parole prisoners of war, or to parole all captured officers, if it paroles any. As the pledging of the parole is an individual act, so is paroling, on the other hand, an act of choice on the part of the belligerent.
XI.
From the evidence obtained from different sources, and from the results, it may be properly reasoned that there was a secret and fixed intent on the part of the cabal at Richmond to weaken the Federal armies by destroying the prisoners by starvation and exposure.
The open robbery of all the captives, the neglect of the commissariat when there was no excuse, the refusal to remedy atrocious evils, all betray malice and design. That intrepid and humane officer, Colonel Chandler, made complaint of this prison, in his Inspection Report, as early as July 5, 1864, when he uses the following language: “No shelter whatever, nor materials for constructing any, had been provided by the prison authorities, and the ground being entirely bare of trees, none is within reach of the prisoners; nor has it been possible, from the overcrowded state of the enclosure, to arrange the camp with any system. Each man has been permitted to protect himself as best he can, by stretching his blanket, or whatever he may have about him, on such sticks as he can procure. Of other shelter there has been none. There is no medical attendance within the stockade. Many (twenty yesterday) are carted out daily who have died from unknown causes, and whom the medical officers have never seen. The dead are hauled out by the wagon-load, and buried without coffins, their hands, in many instances, being first mutilated with an axe in the removal of any finger-rings they may have. Raw rations have to be issued to a very large portion, who are entirely unprovided with proper utensils, and furnished solimited a supply of fuel they are compelled to dig with their hands in the filthy marsh before mentioned for roots, &c. No soap or clothing have ever been issued. After inquiry, the writer is confident that, with slight exertions, green corn and other anti-scorbutics could readily be obtained. The present hospital arrangements were only intended for the accommodation of ten thousand men, and are totally insufficient, both in character and extent, for the present need,—the number of prisoners being now more than three times as great. The number of cases requiring medical treatment is in an increased ratio. It is impossible to state the number of sick, many dying within the stockade whom the medical officers have never seen or heard of till their remains are brought out for interment.”
Later reports were made by this inspector, and they were forwarded to the rebel executive, indorsed by the assistant-secretary of war, Campbell, that this condition was a reproach to the Confederates as a nation. But not the least notice was taken of these startling and heart-rending revelations, in which Winder was denounced as a murderer from the statements made by Winder himself. The wretch and the system of treatment were denounced by Stephens of South Carolina, by Foote of Tennessee; yet no response was obtained from the secretary of war, or from the executive, Davis. When Breckenridge became secretary of war, shortly before the downfall of the rebellion, the brave Chandler demanded that some notice, some action, should be taken on the reports he had submitted months before, or he would resign his commission; for his honor and humanity were involved.
What action was taken, if any there was, is not known to the writer. The thanks of the South, the kind wishes of all who honor the warm and generous impulses of our better nature, are due to the noble Chandler, who had the courage, the temerity, to expose the suffering condition at Andersonville, and to denounce the authors again and again at the peril of his life.
It is known to the writer that Surgeons Bemis and Fluellen, of the rebel army medical staff, inspected the condition of the prison, and protested against the cruel management.
One of the chief medical officers of the rebel army of the South informed the author that the medical men at this prison were without any influence whatever; and although the prison was within his department for a time, he had no more voice or influence in its management than the man in the moon; and that everything relating to the prison wascontrolled and devised by the authorities at Richmond.
The refusal or the neglect of the rebel authorities, to whom these reports were submitted, to take notice of or remedy the exposed evils, is a tacit acknowledgment and approval of the system at work.
XII.
Northrop, the rebel commissary-general, whom Foote denounced in the rebel Congress as a monster, and incompetent, urged the secretary of war, Seddon, to reduce the rations to gruel and bread, in retaliation for alleged abuses to the rebel prisoners in our hands. Seddondeclined to do it openly, on account of the technicalities of the law; but Northrop took the measure quietly into his own hands, and withheld meat so often and so long from the prisoners near Richmond as to call forth a yell of remonstrance from even the inhuman Winder.
When the prisoners at Belle Isle—numbering from eight to thirteen thousand—were deprived of meat,—from the incompetency or the wilfulness of the commissary-general,—for a fortnight at a time, the secretary of war refused to allow compassionate parties to buy cattle in the neighborhood of the city, and bring them to the prison, stating that Northrop had informed him that the prisoners fared as well as the soldiers.
And in pursuance of this diabolical plan of starvation, orders were given, in December, by the rebel war department, that no more supplies should be received from the United States for the prisoners, for which no apology or reason was ever given.
Winder was denounced by members of Congress; but Davis tools no notice, because he was his personal friend. Seddon took sides with Northrop, and would not allow Captain Warner to buy cattle for the prisoners around Richmond, as he offered to do, and relieve their sufferings.
The postmaster-general wanted to kill the prisoners taken in raiding; and Seddon, the secretary of war, stated that he was always in favor of fighting under the black flag.
When Chandler made his report, Cobb was writing that all was going on well at the prison. Colonel Persons, who was the first commander, and relieved by Winder,applied for an injunction against the prison as a nuisance. No compassion, humanity, or decency was observed in the demand for the process: it was simply a nuisance, and dangerous to the health of the surrounding region. No plea was made that thousands were being murdered there.
XIII.
It is known, and proved beyond “cavil of a doubt,” that the prisoners were robbed of all articles of value, even hats, coats, blankets, and shoes, and that no attempt was made to restore them, or to supply any deficiency that arose from this rapacious dishonesty.
In striking contrast with this “barbarism of slavery,” notice the treatment in our own prisons, where all needful clothing and blankets were issued to the rebel prisoners, whenever their circumstances required it; and during the period of rebellion, a vast quantity of coats, blankets, stockings, shirts, and drawers were supplied by the quartermaster’s department. Thirty-five thousand articles of clothing were issued in eight months to the rebel prisoners at Fort Delaware alone. Of the many thousand rebel wounded and sick prisoners in our hands, who have been under the observation of the writer during the war, all, without exception, were treated with kindness, and the wants of all supplied in the same manner as with our men.
In the Dartmoor prison, the British allowed to each of our men a hammock, a blanket, a horse rug, and a bed containing four pounds of flocks; and every eighteen months one woollen cap, one yellow jacket, one pair ofpantaloons, and one waistcoat of the same material as allowed to the British army; and also, every nine months, one pair of shoes, and one shirt. The prison was inspected by the chief surgeon of England, and whenever complaint was made by the prisoners, the admiralty sent officers of high rank to investigate the causes of complaint. The officers of the prison hulks in England behaved generally with kindness and humanity to our men, as is shown by the records of the captivity.
But even this treatment, humane as it appears when compared with the rebel system, was less generous than that bestowed by the Algerine pirates upon our sailors captured by them. The captives in Algiers received good and abundant vegetable food, and were lodged in airy places.
XIV.
This system of barbarity of the rebels towards their prisoners having become known to the United States government, efforts were made to ameliorate the condition of the suffering men, but without avail.
Measures of retaliation were entertained by Congress, in hopes of effecting a change by the clamors from the rebel prisoners themselves, and the following resolutions were introduced by Mr. Wade, of Ohio, but they were not adopted:—