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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Martyria, by Augustus C. Hamlin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Martyria
+       or Andersonville Prison
+
+Author: Augustus C. Hamlin
+
+Release Date: October 21, 2011 [EBook #37813]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTYRIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
+Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE MAIN GATE. Taken from rebel photographs of
+the prison when it contained thirty-five thousand men. Original picture in
+possession of the author.]
+
+
+
+
+  MARTYRIA;
+
+  OR,
+
+  ANDERSONVILLE PRISON.
+
+
+  BY AUGUSTUS C. HAMLIN.
+  LATE MEDICAL INSPECTOR U. S. ARMY, ROYAL ANTIQUARIAN, ETC.
+
+
+  _Illustrated by the Author._
+
+
+  BOSTON:
+  LEE AND SHEPARD.
+  1866.
+
+
+
+
+  Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
+  A. C. HAMLIN,
+  In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Maine.
+
+
+  Cambridge Press
+  DAKIN AND METCALF.
+
+  STEREOTYPED AT THE
+  BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.
+
+
+
+
+  TO THE MEMORY OF THE MEN
+  WHO STEADILY UPHELD THE CAUSE OF CIVIL LIBERTY,
+  AND WHO PREFERRED LINGERING DEATH,
+  IN THE MIDST OF UNPARALLELED PRIVATIONS AND HORRORS,
+  RATHER THAN DISHONOR AND DENIAL OF THEIR BIRTHRIGHTS,
+  _THIS BOOK_
+  IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+
+The author presents for review neither style nor language: he offers
+simply the story of the wrong and the heroism, the cause and effect, as it
+rises in his mind.
+
+Neither does he, at this late date, seek to rekindle the smouldering
+embers of hate and conflict, nor, Antony-like, attack persons under the
+recital of the wrongs. Vengeance does not belong to the human race. There
+are times in the history of men when human invectives are without force.
+"There are deeds of which men are no judges, and which mount, without
+appeal, direct to the tribunal of God."
+
+AUGUSTUS CHOATE HAMLIN.
+
+BANGOR, September, 1866.
+
+
+
+
+MARTYRIA.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+                      "They never fail who die
+  In a great cause.    *      *      *      *
+  They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts
+  Which overpower all others, and conduct
+  The world at last to freedom."
+                                        _Byron._
+
+
+I.
+
+History weighs the social institutions of men in the scale of Humanity.
+Time, slowly but surely, accumulates the evidence which relates to their
+materials. It calmly but firmly unveils the statues which men erect as
+their principles, and with "that retributive justice which God has
+implanted in our very acts, as a conscience more sacred than the fatalism
+of the ancients," lays bare the secret springs of action which have
+prompted the deeds of heroism or baseness, of virtue or crime.
+
+Nations are political institutions, and like the system of nature, which
+is governed by positive and fixed laws, so they likewise are swayed and
+directed by mysterious forces, and influenced and moulded into form by
+those external circumstances which are greatly within the control of man.
+Their rise and decadence is in direct ratio to the nature and integrity of
+their customs, the structure of their social fabrics, the vigor of the
+spirit of independence which animates their thoughts, or the strength of
+the despotism which consumes their vitals. "Liberty brings benedictions in
+spite of nature, and in defiance of the same nature tyranny brings
+maledictions. Slavery has always produced only villany, vice, and misery."
+
+Men cannot perpetuate a creed or a system that is not founded on the
+eternal principles of justice and virtue, no more than they can control
+the elements--no more than they can remove or obliterate those
+geographical boundaries, beyond which the human races cannot pass in
+pursuit of the forms of wealth or the dreams of ambition.
+
+The Belgian, who has studied so long and so faithfully the laws of
+metaphysics, exclaims, "All those things which appear to be left to the
+free will, the passions, or the degree of intelligence of men, are
+regulated by laws as fixed, immutable, and eternal as those which govern
+the phenomena of the natural world!"
+
+
+II.
+
+Along the southern tier of the great States which form the American
+Republic, whose gigantic structure and almost supernatural vigor already
+overshadow and animate the older civilizations of the world, we observe
+vast extents of level and alluvial lands and deltas, or "rather a series
+of littoral bands of remarkable disposition," which the ocean left when
+receding from the mountain shores of the interior to its present limits,
+or which slowly and gradually emerged from their watery bed in the
+upheavals during the long intervals of the earth's ages.
+
+This immense territory, stretching from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, and
+hardly broken throughout this long distance by undulations of the soil,
+embraces more than six hundred thousand square miles--an extent greater
+than that of France and the States of the Germanic Confederation combined.
+Eight millions of human souls inhabit the one, whilst one hundred millions
+people the other. Ignorance and brutality darken the one, intelligence and
+humanity illuminate the other.
+
+
+III.
+
+The proximity of the sea, the configuration of the soil, the presence or
+absence of mountains, affect the growth and character of nations, and
+leave their impress upon their institutions. Climate and purity of blood
+complete the determination in the problem of life, the progress and degree
+of development. Upon these external causes also depend, in a great
+measure, the vigor of the imagination, the sentiment of the grand and the
+beautiful, the vivacity and purity of the soul.
+
+The cold breezes of the temperate zones conduce men to wisdom, reason, and
+philosophy. The enervating atmospheres of hot climes incline the mind and
+body to repose, and often pervert the notions of natural justice. In the
+one, the mind is ever delighted and refreshed by the varying scenes of
+nature; in the other, the forms of the mournful and the terrible alone
+excite the imagination.
+
+
+IV.
+
+We have seen these lands occupied for more than two centuries by the
+emigrants from European countries; we have seen the reckless adventurer,
+the noble exile, the fugitive from justice, the outcast of society,
+blended together here in the experiment of colonization.
+
+The form is still the same, for form is always more persistent than
+material in organic life, but the sterling and generous qualities of the
+primitive stock have greatly changed.
+
+We have seen in these lands Slavery--that relic of barbarism, that
+leprosy, the foulest that ever preyed upon the vitals of any
+state--transplanted by that accursed Dutch ship, under the guise of
+Humanity, flourish, increase, and assume, during this brief period, the
+proportions of a despotism so powerful, so tenacious, as to defy and
+resist, almost successfully, the entire strength and resources of the
+Republic, enriching the slave faction with enormous wealth, but debasing
+and deteriorating the morals, the blood of the poor and non-slaveholding
+whites.
+
+This increase of three millions of black men were held in bondage as human
+cattle by a few thousand white men. To these unfortunate creatures society
+extended no generosity, no consideration, but what reduced them still
+lower in the scale of organized beings, and chained them more closely in
+the sordid and selfish interests of their remorseless masters. To teach
+the black man to read, even the light of the divine Gospel, was a matter
+of fine, and imprisonment, and sometimes death.
+
+
+V.
+
+Seeking to perpetuate this atrocious system, this right of brute force
+over the helpless black, and establish a despotism with Slavery as its
+basis, the arrogant faction boldly took up arms against the Republic.
+"When Fortune," says the Latin historian, "is determined upon the ruin of
+a people, she can so blind them as to render them insensible to danger,
+even of the greatest magnitude."
+
+Their appeals to arms were in the name of justice and glory, but they were
+without the echo of liberty and humanity. They summoned the masses of poor
+whites, whom they had degraded below the level of the slave, to rise and
+fight for their liberties, which were as empty as the winds of the desert.
+There were no liberties, no privileges for the poor whites, but to curse
+poverty and question God's providence.
+
+The individual desires of the few had usurped and swallowed up the rights
+of society. There was no society but the relation between the black man
+and his master. The law, order, and force were all within the control of
+the rich slaveholder.
+
+The masses were either their tools, or too abject to be considered as
+dangerous; too ignorant to be feared as seditious, too poor to be regarded
+as anything more than trash, below the level and the value of the negro.
+This condition of the poor whites was the result of physical, political,
+and moral causes, long and silently at work.
+
+
+VI.
+
+The pretence for strife was resistance to oppression, and the extension
+and perfection of liberty to the masses; yet they impelled the people to
+passion, without mingling a single truth with the illusions with which
+they decorated their standards. Whilst they talked of the independent
+spirit of the new government, and the glory of resisting the oppressive
+policy of the invaders, every act and edict gathered closer and stronger
+the bonds which degraded and burdened the poor white.
+
+The owner of seven slaves was exempt from the hazard of battle, but
+poverty and starvation of family were no causes of exemption for the
+non-slaveholder.
+
+The real design, concealed by the strife, was the foundation of an empire
+of gigantic and seductive form, radiant and glittering with the splendid
+architecture of aristocratic sovereignty, but without reason or
+conscience.
+
+The resolve was to control the production of the principal staples of
+industry and trade, and subject the commercial world to their caprices.
+
+Thus they preferred the intoxications of conquest, the gratifications of
+lust, to the triumphs of true civilization, to the congratulations of a
+redeemed race. They cared not for reputation among the nations of the
+earth, nor immortality, nor renown; and they neglected or despised those
+happy stars which, now and then, conduct men and races to glory. "Glory
+belongs to the God in heaven; upon the earth it is the lot of virtue, and
+not of genius--of that virtue which is useful, grand, beneficent,
+brilliant, heroic."
+
+
+VII.
+
+Revolutions almost always spring from the noble and generous enthusiasm of
+youth; but seditions arise from the vulgar and ignoble crowd, or from the
+outcast few, who would, for wealth, sacrifice all that honor and nature
+hold dear; or for the meaner gratifications of self-aggrandizement, would
+crumble into dust, and scatter to the winds of the earth, the noblest
+institutions and laws of mankind. Who will say that this resort to arms
+was an insurrection of justice in favor of the weak, or that it was a
+revolt of nature against tyranny?
+
+The agitations of revolutions stir up the innermost natures of men, and
+from the revelations out of the depths appear the extreme qualities of the
+soul, elevated or debased, according to the inspirations from Heaven or
+the influence of a vile cause.
+
+What rays of intellectual light, what flashes of genuine eloquence, burst
+forth during the tempestuous times of this period to illumine their
+progress or define the glory of their future? When the minds and
+imaginations of men are moved in civil war, they betray, in spite of
+themselves, the nobility or meanness of their cause. Even the ignorant,
+says Quintilian, when moved by the violent passions, do not seek for what
+they are to say. It is the soul alone that renders them eloquent. Only the
+hoarse clamors for revenge, or the hollow laugh against the remonstrance
+of humanity, do we hear from their tribunals and halls of legislation.
+Fatuity possessed their minds, and rather than not succeed in their
+designs, the leaders would have preferred a dreary solitude to the best
+interests of humanity, or, like Erostratus, they would have rather burned
+down the temple of liberty itself.
+
+  "Pejus deteriusque tyrannide sive injusto imperio, bellum civile."
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Civil liberty is again triumphant, but at what a sacrifice of human life!
+What a deluge of blood has been poured over nature's fields, where the
+contending armies have struggled together! A half a million of lives have
+been yielded up in this the nation's sacrifice.
+
+"The tree of Liberty," said Barere, "is best watered with the blood of
+tyrants;" but how few among this immense host of victims were the
+originators of the sedition! The merciless schemers of bloody and cruel
+wars rarely expose their precious lives to the chances of combat.
+
+During the existence of the slave system, and the long period of its
+progress, what has it produced to enrich the heritage of the human mind?
+Where are the holy and pure traditions, the bright recollections?
+
+Neither wisdom nor philosophy has appeared, nor those arts which serve to
+form the "happy genius of nations." There are countries where the march of
+ideas is accelerated only by the force of selfish passions; and
+philanthropy, that true index of civilization, only appears when it is
+required by mercantilism or political ambition. The aims and influences of
+commercial and political life can debase and destroy the noblest impulses.
+"It is a grand and beautiful spectacle," exclaims the eloquent Rousseau,
+"to see man issue forth out of nothingness, as it were, by his own proper
+efforts, to dissipate, by the light of his reason, the shadows in which
+nature had enveloped him, to elevate himself even above himself, to glance
+with his spirit even into the celestial regions, to pass, with the stride
+of a giant, even as the sun, through the vast expanse of the universe, and
+what is still greater and more difficult, to enter one's self, and study
+there man, and to understand his nature, his duties, and his end."
+
+
+IX.
+
+Civilization claims to introduce the elements of peace, happiness, and
+prosperity into the structure of society, and to transform the sword and
+the spear into the harmless implements of husbandry; yet with a swifter
+pace the engines of war increase, man thirsts as fiercely for the blood of
+his fellow-man, and the dormant spirit of destruction is as ready to
+illume the torch, as in the reckless times of past history. Even in this
+enlightened age we are constantly reminded of the truth and force of the
+remark of Hannibal: "No great state can long remain at rest. If it has no
+enemies abroad, it finds them at home; as overgrown bodies seem safe from
+external injuries, but suffer grievous inconveniences from their own
+strength."
+
+The motives of self-aggrandizement by force of arms appear to be innate in
+human nature. We see men maintaining monstrous ideas. We see great armies
+singularly swayed by single minds, in defiance of truth and reason. The
+soldiers of Catiline fought to the last gasp, and perished to a man,
+embracing the eagle of Marius--"Marius, who sprang from the dust the
+expiring Gracchi flung towards heaven," and who first dared attack the
+aristocratic nobility, and defend the down-trodden rights of the oppressed
+plebeian. There are mysterious laws, which seem to regulate the expansion
+and the decay of the human families. There are unseen forces which now and
+then impel vicious men to their own destruction.
+
+
+X.
+
+ANDERSONVILLE--a name which has been stamped so deeply by cruelty into the
+pages of American history--is one of those miserable little hamlets, of a
+score of scattered and dilapidated farm-houses, which relieve the monotony
+of the wide and dreary level of sand plains, which, covered with immense
+forests, interspersed with fens, marshes, corn and cotton fields, stretch
+away, in unbroken surface, from Macon down to the Florida shores. The
+plantations, which were tilled by slave labor, are almost concealed in the
+recesses of the forests, so thickly wooded is the country. Here and there
+only, where the savannas are of unusual fertility, do the cleared lands
+give a wide and extended view of the landscape, but the primeval pines
+everywhere hide the distant horizon.
+
+[Illustration: J. H. Bufford's lith. Boston, Mass.]
+
+The song of the laborer rarely disturbs the silence, which is oppressive.
+Song is the impulsive outburst of a heart filled with joy and hope. The
+slave has neither. His voice is the cry of anguish, of a soul burdened and
+crushed, and is more like the moan of the winds than the accents of
+civilized man.
+
+The physical aspect of the white inhabitant indicates the local
+impressions and inspirations--listless and apathetic in look, lank and
+haggard in form. There are countries, there are even limited localities,
+where the moral and mental faculties expand in accordance with external
+impressions. The laws of beauty and deformity are regulated by the
+condition and circumstances of the outward world to a remarkable degree.
+
+The landscape, the sunshine, and the luxuriance at Corinth and Athens gave
+rise to the most beautiful flowers of art and love, and to that wonderful
+type of human beauty, which the world has since lost; but the rugged and
+stern defiles of the mountains of Calabria, of Albania, and the dreary
+marsh fens of the Campagna, or of the Netherlands, still produce
+characters that rival in ferocity the hyenas of the desert.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nature appears to have selected for man the sites where are performed the
+noble acts which charm and enlighten the mind, or the dark deeds which
+cause men to ponder and regret the frailty of their organization. "It
+seems that the instincts of war conduct from age to age the armies of
+successive empires to the same rendezvous of contest, and that geography
+has laid off in advance certain fields of battle, as a sort of arena for
+these great immolations of humanity." "Hungary," said Sobieski, "is a
+clump of earth, which, if squeezed, would give out but human blood." The
+name and look of Andersonville will always be synonymous with and
+suggestive of cruelty.
+
+
+XI.
+
+At the distance of eight hundred paces from the railway which connects the
+town with Central Georgia on the north and the Gulf of Mexico on the
+south, appears the Prison Stockade, which was located by the Winders of
+the Rebel army, at the suggestion of Howell Cobb, in 1863, and occupied
+for its specific purpose in February, 1864.
+
+It is situated about fifty miles south of Macon, and its position on the
+geographical map is defined by longitude 7� 30' west from Washington,
+latitude 32� 10' north of the equator, corresponding in the western
+hemisphere to the central region of Algiers.
+
+A dense forest of primeval trees covered the spot which was selected by
+the engineers when they marked out the line of the prison. The massive
+pines were levelled by the strong arms of several hundred negro slaves,
+and when their branches were cut away, they were placed side by side,
+standing upright in the deep ditches, which were excavated with
+regularity, and in parallel lines, north and south, east and west. Thus
+were formed the boundaries of the palisade, wherein nearly forty thousand
+human beings were to be herded at one time. The surface of the earth
+was cleared completely away, so as to give full play to the elements of
+destruction.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF THE STOCKADE as the rebels left it.--Page 19.]
+
+Neither shade nor shelter was there to protect from the storm, or from the
+merciless rays of an almost tropical sun. Not a tree nor a shrub was left
+there to cast a shadow over the arid and calcined earth. There was simply
+a rampart of logs, rising from fifteen to eighteen feet in height above
+the surface of the ground. This rampart measured at first ten hundred and
+ten feet in length by seven hundred and seventy-nine feet in width, and
+was surrounded, at a distance of sixty paces, by another palisade of rough
+logs more than twelve feet in height. It was afterwards lengthened, in the
+autumn of 1864, to sixteen hundred and twenty feet.
+
+This enormous structure still stands there, with its giant walls of trees,
+undisturbed.
+
+  *    *    *     "May none those marks efface,
+  For they appeal from tyranny to God."
+
+
+XII.
+
+A small stream of water, which arose in two branches scarcely a thousand
+paces distant, in bogs and fens whose bitterness and impurities continued
+with the current, passed through the central portion of the enclosed space
+with sufficient volume to supply the wants of many thousand men, if it had
+been properly received, protected, and economized.
+
+During the summer many springs burst forth from the soil on either bank of
+the stream within the prison; but the water, neglected by the military
+guards, soon became defiled by the feet and grime of the prisoners, and
+then this portion of the enclosure, embracing several acres, was
+transformed into a deep and horrible mire, quivering with those disgusting
+forms of organic life which are produced by putrid and decaying matter.
+The stench would have corroded the surface of adamant.
+
+Within the two lines of palisades, and on the western side, was erected
+the single bakery which was to furnish the munition bread for the
+prisoners. Upon the hill to the northward, at the distance of two hundred
+paces from the outer line, was strangely placed the building which was
+known as the _kitchen_. The reason why this cookery was placed so far from
+water, and the direct line of communication with the main gate, the
+projectors alone can tell. Consider the enormous weight of provisions and
+water which full rations to even ten thousand men would require daily.
+Consider, then, the distance from the railway depot, the circuitous route
+to the entrance of the prison, the mode, and inefficient transportation,
+and you will have an idea of the ignorance, the carelessness, the
+perversity or wilfulness, or call it what you will, which prevailed here
+in the prison system, if system it can be termed.
+
+
+XIII.
+
+To the south, on the high land which overlooked the prison and its
+appendages, was erected the two-story building which served as quarters
+and offices for the officers and clerks. Along the same elevated ridge
+were located the well-built huts of the guards, who were selected
+from the Confederate Reserves of Georgia, under the command of Howell
+Cobb, and numbered from three to five thousand men. Farther to the west,
+along the same airy and commanding ridge, and close to the track of the
+railway, appears the large two-story wooden buildings, which were built
+and arranged, carefully and comfortably, for the sick of the rebel guards.
+
+[Illustration: _PLAN OF PRISON GROUNDS_ ANDERSONVILLE
+
+_Measured by Dr. Hamlin Copy right secured_]
+
+
+XIV.
+
+To the south-east, and at the distance of a stone's throw from the prison,
+were placed the few miserable and decayed tents which were to serve as
+hospitals, in mockery of science and humanity.
+
+To-day the traces of this useless philanthropy have passed away, but the
+results are fearfully shown in the field to the northward, where thirteen
+thousand soldiers sleep in death,--the harvest of one short year! "Here,"
+said one of the surgeons to the inquirer, "death might be predicted with
+almost absolute certainty."
+
+Here came a medical officer of the highest rank in the Rebel army, and one
+of the most eminent _savans_ of the South, to study the physiology and
+philosophy of starvation. The notes of that fearful clinic are preserved,
+and may some future day startle the scientific world with their clearness,
+their candor, their positive evidence of the cause of death. Thus the
+scalpel silences the argument, the reasoning of sophistry.
+
+That there was scarcity of medicines, and all of those delicacies known to
+the cultivated or luxurious taste, there can be no doubt. Neither the
+country, nor the desires of the people, produced or favored their
+production; but let us thank Heaven there is proof that there were some
+among the medical officers in whom the virtues of the heart were not
+entirely reversed, who did protest against the needless deficiencies and
+the system of treatment.
+
+The sufferings here were less poignant than in the pen; for nature always
+comes to the relief of dying mortals, and tempers the pangs of
+dissolution.
+
+Food was demanded, but it was wanting. Shelter and the pure air of heaven
+were prayed for by gasping men; even these, too, were wanting. Yet close
+by rose the gigantic pines, of the growth of centuries, standing in all
+the grandeur of the primeval forests, and offering to the disordered
+vision and senses of the dying wretches grateful shades, cool bowers, or
+the images of home, and the forms of the well-loved, as the faint and
+sinking traveller beholds them in the far-off mirage of the desert.
+
+
+XV.
+
+The dense pine forests on either side still attest the luxuriant growth,
+which was regarded at the time of its selection as the finest timbered
+land of all Georgia. These immense pines are even yet so near as to cast
+their lengthened shadows, at morning and evening, over the accursed area
+where so many noble men perished for want of shelter from the heat of the
+noonday sun, the chilling dews of evening, and the frequent rain. The
+shade temperature of this place sometimes rose to the height of 105�, even
+110� Fahrenheit. The sun temperature within the stockade must have
+risen to 120� and upwards, for the height of the walls prevented the free
+circulation of the air. The heat of this region during the days of summer
+is unusually great.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF OFFICERS' STOCKADE, with rebel camps and hospitals
+in the distance.--Page 21.]
+
+Its elevation above the tide level is only about three hundred feet; and
+the hot blasts from the burning surface of the Gulf of Mexico, which is
+only about one hundred and fifty miles distant, sweep up over it
+northward, without being deviated or modified by ranges of mountains. The
+intervening country is unbroken, from distance to distance, by the
+undulation of the soil, and resembles more the level of a wide, green sea
+than the usual configurations of the solid earth. It bears the reputation
+of being unhealthy, and it is not strange; for there are certain isolated
+local climates which are absolutely pestilential, as we observe in the
+detached mountain groups and table lands of India and Southern Europe. Its
+isothermal line passes through Tunis and Algiers, and the hyetal charts
+show it to be one of the most humid regions in America.
+
+Fifty-five inches of rain fall here annually, whilst Maine, with her
+constant fogs, receives but forty-two and England but thirty-two.
+
+Was it possible for human life to endure these extremes of heat, rendered
+still more positive by exposure to the damp and chilly dews of the nights
+of southern latitude? It is a well-known fact, that neither men nor
+animals can labor or expose themselves with impunity to the rays of the
+noonday sun of tropical climes. Man, of all terrestrial animals, is the
+least supplied with natural protectives.
+
+
+XVI.
+
+Around this ill-fated spot were stretched a cordon of connected
+earthworks, which completely enveloped the palisades, and commanded, with
+seventeen guns, every nook and corner of the enclosure. The forts were
+well constructed, and provided against the chances of sudden and desperate
+assaults. The cannon were well mounted, and placed in barbette and
+embrasure. Lunettes and redoubts covered all the approaches to the two
+great gates.
+
+Several regiments of the rebel reserves constantly occupied the forts and
+trenches, and guarded closely every avenue. Escape was impossible.
+
+
+XVII.
+
+To preside over this assemblage, with its arranged, premeditated, and
+atrocious system, were selected men well known for their energy of purpose
+and their ferocity of soul, and who hoped, like the Parthian, that cruelty
+might seem to the eye of man a warlike spirit. Winder has already been
+summoned to his God, without affording to the tribunals of men the
+opportunity to judge of his justification or his shame. The wretched Wirz,
+arraigned and convicted by the most overwhelming evidence, has since paid
+the severest penalty which the majesty of violated law can exact on earth.
+
+The instincts of nature always demand a certain respect for the memory of
+the dead, no matter how the death may take place. But shall this shield
+for the executioner obstruct justice, or reverence and admiration for the
+remembrance of the virtues of the nobler victims? Let us bring to light,
+and praise the heroism of noble men, even if we violate and break to
+pieces the sacred mausoleums where a thousand criminals lie buried.
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+The dispositions of man depend greatly upon the associations of his early
+life. The youthful and pliant organization is easily impressed by the
+natural scenes of birthplace and childhood, and the effect of the views of
+the savage mountain gorges, the dark and gloomy forests, or the distant
+landscape, smiling in the rays of the sun, and decorated with the most
+beautiful works of human industry, are felt hereafter in the labors and
+conceptions of manhood. Men sometimes are but the living reflections of
+the savage scenes among which they have been reared, and seldom do we see
+them arise from that immense and world-wide mass of fallen humanity to
+cherish anew, to maintain the noble principles of this earthly life, and
+lead the willing world to the true worship of the Creator.
+
+Wirz was born among the glorious mountains of Switzerland, where the lofty
+and dazzling peaks of eternal snow, pointing upwards into the clear vault
+of heaven, impress the human mind with sublimity, or where the deeper
+glens sadden the heart and blast the aspiring imagination.
+
+It seems that the natural impressions made upon this man in this beautiful
+country were of an earthly and sordid character, for he has always
+exhibited, in his wanderings in pursuit of fortune, the reckless and
+degraded soul of a mercenary.
+
+Seeking gain in the New World, he turned up in the Slave States when the
+revolt was determined upon, and without reluctance, offered his services
+to the frantic and savage horde. Although a Swiss and republican by birth
+and inheritance, he does not hesitate between liberty and despotism. The
+principles of political dogmas do not agitate him; it is the desire for
+money, and an insatiate thirst for blood, blasting the natural heart with
+cruel and remorseless passions, that led him blindly and swiftly to ruin.
+The fatal plunge taken, and there was no return. The compunctions of
+humanity passed over his seared and unfeeling conscience, with no more
+effect than when the waves surge over the huge rocks which form the bed of
+the deepest ocean.
+
+He was selected for the fatal position by the brutal Winder, who first
+observed him among the unfortunate prisoners of the first disastrous
+battle of the republic. What should recommend him, then, to the notice of
+this inhuman officer, can be easily conjectured by the survivors of the
+prisons of that period. Cruelty then was pastime, it afterwards became a
+law. It was then that some of the chivalry, after the manner of the tribes
+of Abyssinia and Eastern Africa, made glorious trophies of the skulls and
+the bones of their antagonists who had fallen in battle.
+
+This man appeared at times kind and humane, and his voice had the accents
+of benevolence; but when excited, natural sentiments recoiled with horror
+at the depth and extent of his imprecations. This assumed gentleness of
+disposition is of but little weight among the examples of history.
+
+"I have often said," writes Montaigne, "that cowardice is the mother of
+cruelty, and by experience have observed that the spite and asperity of
+malicious and inhuman courage are accompanied with the mantle of feminine
+softness." The ensanguined Sylla wept over the recital of the miseries he
+himself had caused.
+
+That daily murderer, the tyrant of Pheres, forbade the play of tragedy,
+lest the citizens should weep over the misfortunes of Hecuba and
+Andromache.
+
+The beautiful eyes of the Roman maidens glistened with tears at the
+imaginary sufferings of the inanimate marbles of Niobe and Laocoon, yet
+how remorselessly they gave the signal of death to the defeated gladiator
+on the arena of the Colosseum!
+
+The warm, generous, natural impulses of the heart soon become affected,
+impaired, and even reversed by brutal associations.
+
+Circumstances develop greatly the characters of men, and they sometimes
+rise to true greatness, or sink into baseness, according to the law of
+effect, of contact, and example.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SECOND.
+
+
+I.
+
+  "Plus in carcere spiritus acquirit, quam caro amittit."--_Tertullian._
+
+  "Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!
+  Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
+  For there thy habitation is the heart--
+  The heart which love of thee alone can bind:
+  And when thy sons to fetters are consigned--
+  To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
+  Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
+  And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind."
+                                        _Prisoner of Chillon._
+
+
+Within the deadly shadows of this enormous palisade were assembled and
+confined together at one time during the hot months of 1864, more than
+thirty-five thousand soldiers, of the various armies of the United
+States--more men than Alexander led across the Hellespont to the conquest
+of Asia; more men than followed Napoleon in those glorious campaigns over
+the bright fields of Northern Italy, where every helmet caught some beam
+of glory.
+
+Here were men of all conditions, birth, and fortune--some of the best
+blood and sap of the republic.
+
+The strong-limbed lumbermen from the forests of Maine, the tall, gigantic
+men from the mountains of Pennsylvania, the hunters of the great
+prairies of the West,--those men of wonderful courage and endurance,--the
+artisan from the workshop, the student from his books, the lawyer from the
+forum, the minister from the pulpit, the child of wealth, and the poor
+widow's only son, were collected here in this field of torture.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF INTERIOR OF THE PRISON, with the quagmire and
+crowds of huts and men beyond. From rebel photographs.--Page 29.]
+
+They were men in the prime of life--young, vigorous, and active--when they
+surrendered themselves as prisoners of war. And as prisoners, they were
+entitled to the care and treatment acknowledged by the general laws and
+usages of civilized nations, and expected even more from those who boasted
+of having revived the generosity and chivalric tone of the feudal ages.
+Besides justice to all men, we owe special grace and benignity to those
+who come into our power from the hazard of battle. However degraded the
+suppliant may be, there is always some commerce between them and us, some
+bond of mutual relation.
+
+Why these men did not receive that respect which true courage always
+accords to the vanquished brave, why they did not receive even that atom
+of compassion which belongs to the nature of man, and which is seen even
+among the lower animals, history, which loves to avenge the weak and
+oppressed, and which affords to all men, to all nations, the opportunity
+for their justification, their vengeance, their glory, will surely exhibit
+in burning characters of horror and shame. There are men even now who
+would sanctify the acts of cruelty of the rebellion over the very ashes of
+this the nation's sepulchre. There are men even now who would outrage
+virtue, and deify the crime. There are men living, like those of the
+past, but not forgotten iron age, possessed of that remorseless fury,
+that implacable hatred, which nothing could arrest, nothing could disarm,
+and which could no more receive a sentiment of compassion than that
+sophistry which allowed outrage and death to the tender and guiltless
+child of Sejanus.
+
+  "Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens, tantum spectaturus occidat."
+
+
+II.
+
+The intention which directed the formation of this vast camp was Cruelty.
+The system which governed, or rather the want of system which neglected,
+each department, whether hospital or commissariat, meant Death. The
+evidence against the leaders of the Confederacy is not wanting, neither is
+it obscure. It is true that most of the witnesses have perished, or are
+fast passing prematurely away; but the chain of circumstantial evidence is
+so connected, so apparent, that, unless the faith of humanity changes,
+that voice, which Tacitus calls "the conscience of the human race," will,
+until the end of time, overwhelm with withering scorn the memory of these
+men as the assassins of sedition, rather than the heroes and saints of a
+just revolution.
+
+We may search history in vain for a parallel in modern times.
+Civilization, in its known vicissitudes, cannot point out a spectacle so
+horrible.
+
+The massacre, in hot blood, of the Tartars of the Crimea by Potemkin, will
+not compare with this slow, merciless, implacable process of murder by
+starvation, and violation of those hygienic laws upon which the principle
+of life depends. The fusilades of that saturnalia of blood, the French
+Revolution, which swept away whole generations, had the pomp of military
+executions, which threw a gleam of brilliancy over the scene, and gave
+momentary enthusiasm to the victims. Those great immolations of the
+Saracens and Persians by the Tartars were as rapid as the cimeters could
+flash. "The fury of ideas," says Lamartine, "is more implacable than the
+fury of men; for men have heart, and opinion none. Systems are brutal
+forces, which bewail not even that which they crush."
+
+"See," said Timour to the learned men of Aleppo, "I am but half a man, and
+yet I have conquered Irak, Persia, and the Indies." "Render glory,
+therefore, to God," replied the Mufti of Aleppo, "and slay no one." "God
+is my witness," said, with apparent sincerity, the destroyer of so many
+millions of men, "that I put no one to death by a premeditated will; no, I
+swear to you I kill no one from cruelty, but it is you who assassinate
+your own souls."
+
+
+III.
+
+The world has never seen such a display of courage and devotion as was
+exhibited by the intelligent masses of the freemen of the North, when the
+liberties of the great republic were menaced by the fierce gestures of the
+slave faction and their misguided supporters.
+
+Men of all classes, forsaking home, kindred, and property, rushed to
+present a living barrier to the impetuous march of the enraged and
+misguided horde that pressed on with almost resistless fury, and
+threatened to overwhelm and destroy the noblest fabric of the enlightened
+mind. At last the carnage of battle has ceased. Nature smiles again, and
+rapidly obliterates the marks of the ravages left upon her green fields,
+where the huge and desperate armies have swayed and struggled in deadly
+conflict. The emblems of civil liberty are again restored, the fasces
+replaced; and it now becomes the country to arouse itself from the depths
+of apathy, and revive those sentiments of tenderness and gratitude which
+nature everywhere bestows upon the memory of those who upheld the cause of
+liberty, and fell in its defence.
+
+
+IV.
+
+To understand fully the determined character, the steadfast loyalty, of
+these brave and unfortunate men, we must consider at length the details of
+this enclosure, with its hungry, emaciate, filthy mass of humanity, whence
+arose a stench of death so powerful as to be perceived at the distance of
+a league--the burning sky, the array of instruments of torture, the
+manifest design of cruelty.
+
+The suffering wretch had only to pronounce the magic words, "Allegiance to
+the Rebel cause," and his sufferings and misery were at an end. The huge
+gates flew open, and with grim smiles, the enfeebled and tottering
+apostate was welcomed as an accession to the southern ranks.
+
+But the republic was safe here, and the sacred fire of its altars burned
+steadily through all the horrors and noxious vapors of this hell on
+earth.
+
+Strange to relate, that out of the seventeen thousand registered sick,
+there is record of only about _twenty-five_ who accepted the offers to
+save their lives, and took the oath of the rebels. Is it not wonderful
+that this great number of men should thus, in silence, brave the horrors
+by which they were surrounded, and remain firm in their convictions of
+right and wrong? An entire army perished, rather than deny the country
+which gave them birth! They would no more surrender their principles, than
+their homes and altars, as ransoms for their lives.
+
+Has the world's history a parallel to this devotion?
+
+  "But these are deeds which should not pass away,
+  And names that must not wither, though the earth
+  Forgets her empires with a just decay."
+
+
+V.
+
+Heroism in the damp and noxious prisons, where the noble qualities of the
+mind are shaken and swayed by the sufferings of the body, is far different
+from that which is displayed upon the battle-field, amid the glittering
+and inspiring pomp of war.
+
+The men at Thermopyl� fought in the shadows of the soul-inspiring
+mountains, and beheld, through the charm of distance, their homes and the
+beautiful valleys they had sworn to defend. The Decii saw the shining
+swords of their enemies when they rushed into battle, and the dying nobly
+and the glory made all fear of death but of little weight.
+
+Here, instead of bright and glorious banners and the flash of arms, the
+long array of men eager for the contest, and the songs, the shouts of
+defiance, there was a vast ditch, crowded with living beings of scarce the
+human form, haggard and unnatural in appearance--a sea of red and fetid
+mud, trampled and defiled by the immense throng. Instead of the white
+tents and canopies of military encampments, there were the ragged blankets
+vainly stretched over upright sticks; there were the holes in the earth,
+the burrows in the sand, like the villages of the rats of the great
+prairies of the West. They were more like the dens of the beasts of the
+desert than habitations for human beings.
+
+No Christian hand ever penetrated to their depths to aid the sick and
+suffering inmates, to nourish the hungry and console the dying, save one
+Romish priest; and in spite of the horrors and dangers of the place, he
+was faithful to his trust. Noble man! you have proved by these acts that
+humanity is not a mendacious idol, and that devotion to humanity is not a
+mere matter of gain and self-aggrandizement.
+
+More than four thousand human beings perished in these excavations!
+
+It seemed as though vengeance was prolonged beyond death itself.
+
+  "Where was thine �gis, Pallas, that appalled
+  Stern Alaric and Havoc on their way?"
+
+
+VI.
+
+Life here was brief. The victims, as they entered the gate, were appalled
+at the horrors that were presented to them in this living sepulchre.
+Nature seemed to have abandoned the struggle early, and the young men
+passed, with rapid pace, from youth--that youth so rich in its future--to
+manhood, from manhood to old age. Neither prudence nor philosophy could
+protect them from the grievous influences of the morbid conditions to
+which they were exposed. The delicate and noble faculties were blunted and
+destroyed. Some perished at once, almost as quickly as though struck by
+the lightning of heaven, whilst others lingered, according to the strength
+of the hidden resources, the reserved and superabundant powers of youth.
+
+Among the few survivors of the present day we can learn of the fearful
+struggle between life and death, by the gray hairs, the impassive
+features, from which the smile of youth has fled forever, the feeble and
+tottering steps of the man who has prematurely arrived at his limit of
+earthly existence.
+
+The integrity and character exhibited by these men, in the midst of these
+tortures, is unsurpassed.
+
+It was the same morale that immortalized the armies of Italy and Moreau,
+that covered with splendor the heroes of Sparta and Rome, and proved
+incontestably the superiority of the volunteer over the mercenary regular.
+The wretched men died in silence, or with the name of home or the loved
+ones on their lips, and adjuring their comrades to stand firm in defence
+of their faith, their country, their God. "My treatment here is killing
+me, mother; but I die cheerfully for my country." They died as the wounded
+French died at Jemappes, with the delirium and exaltation of patriotism,
+uttering at the last moment some of the strains of the songs of freedom,
+and the names of country and liberty. "Thus the enthusiasm of the combat
+prolonged or reproduced itself, and survived even in their agony."
+
+The sufferings of these men, wasting, putrefying, dying daily by scores,
+by hundreds, without touching the remorseless hearts of the
+prison-keepers, recall to mind those monsters which history points out as
+rising now and then from out the wreck of social order. It was one of the
+results of Slavery, for Slavery weakens the natural horror of blood.
+
+Cruelty is naturally progressive, for it engenders the fear of a just
+revenge. New cruelties succeed, until extermination becomes the rule and
+ends the scene.
+
+"To hate whom we have injured is a propensity of the human mind," says
+Tacitus.
+
+
+VII.
+
+At the distance of about five hundred paces northwestward from the
+stockade, in a little field which is almost overshadowed by the
+surrounding pines, appear a multitude of stakes standing upright in the
+earth, in long and regular lines.
+
+Upon every one of these fragments of boards figures have been carelessly
+scratched by an iron instrument; and they run up to the appalling number
+of almost thirteen thousand! Each stick represents a dead man,--a
+hero,--and this multitude of branchless and leafless trunks reminds us
+rather of a blasted vineyard than of a cemetery arranged for the human
+dead.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF THE GRAVEYARD, with its thirteen thousand victims,
+as the rebels left it. Taken from rebel photographs in possession of the
+author.--Page 37.]
+
+I have seen many of the rarest sculptures in civilized lands, where art
+has lavished and exhausted its powers to awaken sympathy for the dead, but
+have met with none that moved my heart more impressively than the brief,
+vague inscriptions, the rude memorials of this silent and neglected field,
+where sleep an entire army of freemen, who preferred lingering death
+rather than allegiance to a rebel and wicked faction.
+
+Beneath the red clods of this field, thickly as the leaves of autumn, are
+stretched side by side a number of men more numerous than all of the
+American soldiers who perished by disease and casualty of battle during
+the Mexican war--more than all of the British soldiers who were killed, or
+perished from their wounds, on the bloody fields of the Crimea, the
+desperate struggles at Waterloo, the four great battles in
+Spain,--Talavera, Salamanca, Albuera, Vittoria,--and also the sanguinary
+contest at New Orleans. All these losses of the sons of the British empire
+do not build up a hecatomb of the human dead so high, so vast, so red, as
+this one single link of the great chain of wrong that stretched from
+Virginia to Texas.
+
+There is no battle-field on the face of the globe, known to the antiquary,
+where so many soldiers are interred in one group as are gathered together
+in the broad trenches of this neglected field among the pine forests of
+Georgia. What a gathering is this! What a monument of the incarnation of
+political lust, of the reckless desperation, the implacability of the
+depraved human heart, when resolved upon cruelty! The world does not
+offer, among all of her extant memorials, a more terrible, a more
+impressive comment upon the ambition, the power, the glory of mankind.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Respect to the dead is an instinct of nature; and to leave the remains of
+a fallen comrade upon the field, unhonored, is repugnant even to the red
+men of the forest. How much more, then, does a civilized nation, of high
+degree, owe to the memory of its brave defenders! Will it now forget the
+noble sacrifice of its sons amid the debasing influences of commerce and
+manufacture? Shall these sticks, which mark the nation's sacrifice,
+moulder into dust, and with their brief inscriptions be swept away by the
+winds of the world, and all traces of this heroism, this martyrdom, lost?
+
+Here is something required more than brief, hollow, human gratitude, and a
+sonorous, perishable epitaph.
+
+Whatever rises above the level of this plain to commemorate for future
+ages the devotion of the men who sleep beneath, should be of lasting
+material, and as colossal as the gigantic proportions of the republic
+itself: or the field should be levelled and swept, and every
+distinguishing sign blended and effaced, and the true altar of memorial
+erected in the hearts of all men who believe and revere those eternal
+principles of love, justice, truth.
+
+Liberty has but one inscription to offer, and that is the noble lines
+which were traced on the dungeon wall in the blood of the noblest and
+purest of the Girondins: "_Potius mori quam foedari_"--Death rather than
+dishonor.
+
+
+IX.
+
+Impartial history will give to the memory of these men a place among the
+records of useless murder.
+
+The law of parole was all-sufficient to prevent their return to service,
+and their absence from the fields of campaign would have been of no
+material weight with the prolific North.
+
+But the intent of their captors was cruelty; and they strove to reduce the
+numbers, and to intimidate the courage, of the Federal soldiers, by acts
+of savage barbarity, as the relentless Tartar hoped to terrify the Hindoos
+into the profession of Mohammedanism by sacrificing multitudes, and
+deluging whole countries in blood.
+
+To deny the criminality is, as Lamartine says of the massacres of
+September, "to belie the right of feeling of the human race. It is to deny
+nature, which is the morality of instinct. There is nothing in mankind
+greater than humanity. It is not more permissible for a government than
+for a man to commit murder. If a drop of blood stains the hand of a
+murderer, oceans of gore do not make innocent the Dantons. The magnitude
+of the crime does not transform it into virtue. Pyramids of dead bodies
+rise high, it is true, but not so high as the execration of mankind."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THIRD.
+
+
+I.
+
+Let us now examine and consider, with impartial eye, the Stockade in
+detail--the locality, the hospital, the dietary, and, in fact, all that
+relates to the condition of life in this region; reviewing at length the
+laws which regulate the animal economy, and judging of cause and effect
+with that spirit which Bacon calls the "_prudens qu�stio_."
+
+In selecting new grounds for the habitations of human families, whether in
+large or limited numbers, particular care must always be observed,
+especially in warm climes, or where malarial influences are known to
+prevail. In the selection of places for the encampment of troops, the
+problem is still more difficult to treat, on account of the general
+dyscrasial condition of the soldier; and oftentimes far more skill and
+prudence are required than in the choosing of a field for battle.
+
+How many a noble regiment have we seen impaired in its effective strength,
+and robbed of its glorious future, by the injudicious encampment, where
+vain and ignorant officers have sacrificed the health and morale of their
+men to please their fanciful ideas as to military etiquette--the form of
+shelter, the position, and the regularity of the prescribed lines of
+encampment!
+
+In one of the last campaigns of Europe, when all the resources which
+modern wealth could afford were lavished with unsparing hand, there was a
+useless and preventible loss of life, that recalled the most disastrous
+epidemics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
+
+War is one of the natural laws for the demolition of the human race, and
+we see the spirit of destruction silently at work among friends as well as
+foes. The supreme commands seem mysteriously to be placed in the hands of
+men who can cause the greatest devastation and sacrifice of life; who
+march their columns steadily to the deadly and murderous assault when
+there is no occasion for it; who encamp their troops in pestilential
+lowlands, when the healthy heights offer safer and better accommodations.
+
+  "Nobilitas cum plebe perit, lateque vagatur ensis."
+
+
+II.
+
+It is a melancholy fact, attested by the distinguished Marshal Saxe, that
+the military men of modern times are far less informed than the great
+generals of antiquity in the profound knowledge of public hygiene, and
+especially of that which relates to the economy of armies. We can admire,
+but hardly improve, the physical education imposed upon the volunteers of
+Sparta and the legionaries of Rome; and we have not surpassed their
+scientific, yet rude alimentation, by which they marched over immense
+distances with rapidity, and preserved their vigor and morale. From the
+extant documents of the ancients, from Xenophon or Vegetius, it is shown
+that their acquaintance with whatever related to clothing, encampment,
+food, the graduation of exercises, and the employ of forces, was of the
+highest character.
+
+The effects of high and low lands, of good and bad water, on the diseases,
+energy, character, and intellect of man, have been sketched in a masterly
+manner by Hippocrates.
+
+The exposure of a few hours to malignant influences may impair the
+strength of an army to such a degree as to thwart the most skilful plans,
+the wisest combinations for vigorous campaigns, as, for instance, the
+Walcheren expedition of the English, the Neapolitan campaign of France,
+when her army was reduced from twenty-eight thousand to four thousand
+effective men, in one hundred hours, from an injudicious encampment at
+Baie, or when Orloff lost his army in Paros, or, still later, the disaster
+to the splendid division of the French army under Espinasse, in the fatal
+Dobrutscha.
+
+Armies have been lost, the fate of empires decided, by the violation or
+neglect of the simple rules of hygiene; and all through the blood-stained
+pages of military history do we observe examples, from the time when
+Scipio lost the battle of Trebbia, or when Bajazet threw away his vast
+empire on the plains of Angora, down to Kunersdorf, when the impetuosity
+of Frederick the Great would not allow rest to his men or horses.
+
+
+III.
+
+In 1863 the depots near Richmond became so crowded by the Federal
+prisoners that it became a matter of serious consideration to the rebel
+authorities how to guard them, and attempt to feed them and the regiments
+guarding them. Then the idea was conceived of forming a Great camp in the
+Gulf States, in a locality fruitful in grain, and in a position secure
+from raids from the Federal cavalry. Several locations were examined, but
+none pleased the selecting officer, until he had examined the site at
+Andersonville, to which he conceived a particular fancy. There were places
+in this section of the country where pure water could be obtained in
+abundance, but these spots were not so readily accessible, and wood was
+not so plenty and handy as at this. There was another consideration in the
+public view of its selection, that it was in the heart of the best
+corn-producing region at that time in Georgia, and easy access could be
+had with the everglades of Florida, where herds of half wild cattle roamed
+at will.
+
+It is not the belief of the writer, although there are many facts to
+warrant such an inference, that the selection was made with the view of
+deliberately destroying the prisoners openly, and without reserve, for
+there were other localities far more pestilential than this; and yet, on
+the other hand, there were also many situations infinitely more salubrious
+and easy of access. There was in reality not much reflection in the
+matter. The selectors thought only of the geographical and strategical
+position; they cared not for its topography or its meteorology.
+
+They consulted only their convenience. The idea of the preservation of the
+lives of their unfortunate prisoners never troubled their minds, never
+disturbed their conscience. They would build a safe and secure pen, and if
+God, in his infinite and mysterious mercy, chose to summon from earth any
+of the hapless wretches, they would not consider themselves as accountable
+for the premature deaths. Such was their reasoning. Such was their
+philosophy. Such was their conscience. The exult of Winder, when asserting
+that he was doing more for the Confederacy than a dozen regiments at the
+front, and the exclamation of Howell Cobb, when pointing to the ten
+thousand graves, "That is the way I would do for them," were perhaps the
+bravado of the southern slaveholder. Even at this late date we can find
+men, of some tenderness, in this vicinity, who have reasoned their weak
+minds into the idea and belief that no harm was ever done or intended; and
+even if it can be proved, then the Federals only received what they
+deserved, and no more than their own sons in the prisons of the North
+endured.
+
+Such was the conscience of the Pharisee.
+
+Such was the remark made to the writer by a southern gentleman over the
+graves of the victims.
+
+
+IV.
+
+The topographical features of the site are not particularly objectionable
+for an encampment of a few hundred men.
+
+The northern and southern banks incline sufficiently towards the stream in
+the centre to allow of proper drainage. The stream itself furnished water
+in sufficient volume to provide for the wants of ten thousand men, if it
+had been turned from its channel above the stockade, and introduced into
+the prison by simple sluices. But to this important item there was not the
+least attention paid.
+
+To preface the analysis of this stockade, &c., we may wisely review the
+remarks of the late Dr. Jackson, the chief medical officer of the British
+army.
+
+
+V.
+
+"A necessity occurs in war, on many occasions, which leaves no option of
+choice in occupying posts of an unhealthy character: but there is,
+unfortunately, an authority, derived from example and the sanction of
+great names, which directs the military officer, when under no military
+necessity, to fix his encampment on grounds which are unhealthy in
+themselves, or which are exposed by position to the influence of noxious
+causes, which are carried from a distance.
+
+"Such advice proceeds from the desire to act on a presumption of
+knowledge, which cannot be ascertained, rather than to act by the
+experience of facts, which man is qualified to observe and verify.
+
+"It is consonant with the experience of military people, in all ages and
+in all countries, that camp diseases most abound near the muddy banks of
+large rivers, near swamps, and ponds, and on grounds which have been
+recently stripped of their woods. The fact is precise: but it has been set
+aside to make way for an opinion.
+
+"It was assumed, about half a century since, by a celebrated army
+physician, that camp diseases originate from causes of putrefaction, and
+that putrefaction is connected radically with a stagnant condition of the
+air. As streams of air usually proceed along rivers, with more certainty
+and force than in other places, and as there is evidently a more certain
+movement of air, that is, more winds, on open grounds than among woods and
+thickets, this sole consideration, without any regard to experience,
+influenced opinion, and gave currency to the destructive maxim, that the
+banks of rivers, open grounds, and exposed heights, are the most eligible
+situations for the encampment of troops. They are the best ventilated:
+they must, if the theory be true, be the most healthy. The fact is the
+reverse. But demonstrative as the fact may be, fashion has more influence
+than multiplied examples of fact, experimentally proved.
+
+"Encampments are still formed in the vicinity of swamps, or on grounds
+which are newly cleared of their woods, in obedience to theory, and
+contrary to fact. The savage, who acts by instinct, or who acts directly
+from the impressions of experience, has in this instance the advantage
+over the philosopher, who, reasoning concerning causes he cannot know, and
+acting according to the result of his reasonings, errs and leads others
+astray by the authority of his name.
+
+"The savage feels, and acting by the impression of what he feels, instead
+of fixing his habitation on the exposed bank of large rivers, unsheltered
+heights, or grounds newly cleared of their woods, seeks the cover of the
+forests, even avoids the streams of air which proceed from rivers, from
+the surface of ponds, or from lands newly opened to the sun. The rule of
+the savage is a rule of experience, founded in truth, and applicable to
+the encampment of troops, even of civilized Europeans.
+
+"In accordance with this principle, it is almost uniformly true, _c�teris
+paribus_, that diseases are more common, at least more violent, in broken,
+irregular, and hilly countries, where the temperature is liable to sudden
+changes, and where blasts descend with fury from the mountains, than in
+large and extensive inclined plains, under the action of equal and gentle
+breezes only. From this fact, it becomes an object of the first
+consideration, in choosing ground for encampments, to guard against the
+impression of strong winds, on their own account, independently of their
+proceeding from swamps, rivers, and noxious soils.
+
+"In countries covered with woods, abundantly supplied with straw, and
+other materials applicable to the purpose of forming shelter, it is, upon
+the whole, better to raise huts and construct bowers than to carry canvas.
+The individual is exercised by labor, and as his mind is employed in
+contriving and executing something for self-accommodation, he is furnished
+with a daily opportunity of renewing the pleasure. The mode of hutting,
+here recommended, effectually precludes the evils arising from those
+contaminations of air in which contagion is generated--an evil which often
+arises in tents, and is carried about with an army in all its movements in
+the field."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The view of the ancients in regard to the encampment of troops may be
+understood from the counsel of Vegetius: "Ne aridis et sine opacitate
+arborum campis, aut collibus ne sine tentoriis �state milites
+commorentur."
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+As we have remarked before, the site of the prison was covered with trees
+when its outlines were traced and surveyed by the rebel engineers. These
+trees, felled to the ground, were hewn, and matched so well on the inner
+line of the palisades as to give no glimpse of the outer world across the
+space of the dead line, which averaged nineteen feet in width, and which
+was defined by a frail wooden railing about three feet in height, from
+fifteen to twenty-five feet distant from the palisades.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+This line of stockade rose from fifteen to eighteen feet above the surface
+of the ground, while the outer line of logs, which was erected about sixty
+paces distant from the inner line, was formed of the rough trunks of
+pines, and projected twelve feet above the earth. The original stockade
+measured but ten hundred and ten feet in length, and seven hundred and
+eighty-three feet in width; and within this space were jammed together,
+for several months, from twenty-two thousand to thirty-five thousand men,
+thus giving a superficial area to each man, when the prison contained
+thirty thousand prisoners, but seventeen square feet, after deducting the
+nineteen feet average for the dead line, and the quagmire, three hundred
+feet in width. This measurement would allow for thirty-five thousand men
+but fifteen square feet of area, or less than two square yards to each
+person, or more than twenty times the density of Liverpool. This was all
+the space that was afforded before the enlargement, and this reckoning
+does not include roads or by-paths for communication among the prisoners.
+
+Seventeen and a half square feet of earth are allowed for the coffin's
+length in the field of sepulchres. There were here to be seen twelve acres
+of living men, packed together like the immense shoals of fish in the
+ocean, but like nothing that has life on the earth, not even the
+ant-fields. The ratio of density was equivalent to more than sixteen
+hundred thousand people to the square mile. The densest portion of East
+London has the great number of one hundred and sixty thousand to the
+square mile.
+
+
+VII.
+
+In the month of August the stockade was lengthened six hundred and ten
+feet, by what influence or from what cause it is unknown; but nevertheless
+it was enlarged to the length of sixteen hundred and twenty feet,--thus
+making the entire area sixteen hundred and twenty by seven hundred and
+eighty-three feet. This enlargement was a salutary movement on a small
+scale, but it only prolonged the sufferings of the victims. The thirty
+thousand men had now twenty-two acres, minus the dead line and marsh, or
+thirty square feet per man, or three and a half square yards. There were
+actually, during this month, thirty-five thousand men within the prison,
+and some authorities give me as high as thirty-six thousand. This density
+is enormous, and cannot be tolerated by animal life in any climate, in any
+latitude, of the world. There must be space for organic life to develop
+and maintain itself, otherwise it perishes. To give a correct idea of the
+crowded condition of this pen, we do not know where to turn for example.
+The great cities of civilized lands do not even approximate in their ratio
+of populations.
+
+The relation of density, in the three great divisions of London, give
+thirty-five, one hundred and nineteen, and one hundred and eighty square
+yards to each inhabitant. The densest portion of Liverpool, with its lofty
+and immense brick ranges of buildings, swarming with industrial life,
+gives more than eighty square feet to each person. The early Roman camps,
+which are a marvel to military men, and the closest known to military
+science, gave to the ordinary legion three hundred and sixty-seven
+square feet of area to each man. The plans of Polybius give two hundred
+and thirty square feet to each soldier of the consular army of two
+legions, numbering nearly eighteen thousand men, and the descriptions of
+Hyginus give similar ratios.
+
+[Illustration: _PLAN OF PRISON GROUNDS_ ANDERSONVILLE
+
+_Measured by Dr. Hamlin Copy right secured_
+
+J. H. BUFFORD'S LITH BOSTON.]
+
+The encampments of the United States infantry afford, in the most
+restricted portion (between stacks of arms and kitchens), two hundred and
+forty-four square feet per man, or seventeen hundred and thirty-one square
+feet per man for the whole camp.
+
+The space allowed by law for barracks alone is fifty-four square feet for
+each soldier, reckoned on the basis of a full complement of men. The rules
+of the rebel army concerning camps are the same as those of the
+regulations of the United States army.
+
+The United States prison at Elmira contained six thousand men, and
+extended over forty acres. The other prisons, at Chicago, Johnson's
+Island, Point Lookout, and Fort Delaware, were provided with spacious
+exercise grounds, and furnished with covered barracks, built of proper
+form, and fitted up with the required conveniences of life. Belle Isle,
+which held ten thousand prisoners, had but six acres, and no shelter, no
+conveniences whatever.
+
+Andersonville, which contained over thirty thousand prisoners, had in the
+stockade, before enlargement, but eighteen acres in all, and but twelve
+acres for the use of the prisoners, minus the dead line and the marsh.
+
+The prison at Dartmoor, in England (which was a paradise in comparison
+with Andersonville), where our prisoners were held in captivity by the
+English during the last war, furnished two hundred to three hundred
+square feet to every prisoner in the barracks, besides allowing spacious
+yards, where the prisoners were permitted to exercise daily. There were
+there seven large two-story stone buildings, each one hundred and eighty
+feet in length. Five thousand prisoners enclosed within twenty acres of
+land at Dartmoor, thirty thousand in twelve acres, or thirty-five thousand
+in twenty-two acres, at Andersonville.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+The timbers composing the stockade were of entire trunks of pines, massive
+and solid, and measuring from one to three feet in diameter. They were
+sunk into the earth for about five or six feet, and held in position at
+the top by long, slender pines, nailed on the outer side by large iron
+spikes. There were but two gates for this vast prison, and but two
+corresponding apertures in the outer palisade. These gates were
+constructed of massive timbers, and protected by a strong porch, occupying
+a base of about thirty feet square. These were always strongly guarded, to
+prevent the sudden rush of masses of men. At intervals of about one
+hundred feet, were erected detached and covered platforms, upon the outer
+side of the palisades, which, overlooking the summit of the wall, and the
+enclosure beyond, served as sentry boxes. The sentries, perched
+buzzard-like on the wall, could observe, from their high positions, at all
+times, the actions, the motions of the uncovered prisoners, and with their
+rifles shoot down the offending prisoner, whether he stood talking with
+his comrades, in the centre of the space, or whether he approached the
+sacred precincts of the dead line.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Sometimes they threw down their unconsumed fragments of bread to the
+hungry men. Sometimes they were hurled with curses; rarely were they
+thrown from feelings of compassion. Yet there were some kind-hearted men
+here, in the degrading position of the sentry box, who viewed the scene
+with affright, and who wept bitterly over the awful torture and sacrifice
+of life.
+
+The author, travelling on foot among the mountains and forests of Northern
+Georgia, after peace was declared, found these evidences of humane feeling
+among the letters preserved in the humble cabins of the poor whites. That
+unoffending men were shot down without warning, there is no doubt
+whatever; that men, weary of torture, staggered to the dead line, and
+calmly, joyfully received the fatal shot, there is positive evidence.
+
+
+IX.
+
+The trees were all removed from the enclosure, and with the specific
+intent of cruelty, as was openly stated by the brutal builders. They
+should have no shade, it was said, and no shade had the wretched men but
+what was cast by the few ragged and rotten blankets and shelter tents that
+the prison examiners passed by as utterly worthless in their examination
+and search for articles of value, whether watches, bank notes, hats,
+shirts, and even shoes. There were men who, robbed at the outer gates,
+entered the prison almost naked. This system of robbery was open and
+audacious, and it is said that the only prisoners who escaped spoliation
+were those who were taken from Sherman when Atlanta fell, and when
+consternation prevailed at the prison in consequence. It is positively
+stated that it was sanctioned by Wirz and Winder. At all events, two men,
+by the names of Hume and Duncan, robbed the prisoners systematically, and
+appropriated the packages sent to the prisoners, from the United States,
+to such an extent that few if any articles ever reached the poor men to
+whom the boxes of food and clothing were sent.
+
+These blankets and rags were vainly stretched over sticks, to form the
+semblance of a habitation, wherever the earth gave firm foothold, even
+along the borders of the pestilential marsh. Those who were destitute of
+even these shreds of cloth, dug with their hands holes in the earth,
+after the example of wild beasts, or with the slimy water from the brook
+they built up, with handfuls of mud, little cabins over hollows scooped
+out from below the surface of the ground, and as rude as the clumps of
+earth, which that lowest degree of the human form--the Digger
+Indian--inhabits.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+These may be seen at the present day, looking like the lodges of the
+beaver, or the mounds of the marmots of the prairies, and half concealed
+by those wild, useless, and noxious weeds which linger in, and cling to
+the footsteps of man, as he wanders in his migrations over the
+uncultivated lands of the globe.
+
+Sometimes the heavy rains washed away the roofs of mud, inundating the
+occupants beneath. Some of the poor wretches had not the strength to lift
+up the incumbent mass of earth, and perished miserably in their dens.
+There are now in these demolished excavations the bones of some of our
+fellow-citizens, unknown and unhonored. The cry of distress was so
+constant that few heeded the smothered moan. The stumps of the fallen
+trees were grubbed up by the knives and fingers of the prisoners for
+firewood to warm themselves with, or to cook their scanty food; even the
+roots were followed down deep into the earth, for the purpose of obtaining
+the means of warmth which were almost entirely denied them by the prison
+keepers.
+
+
+X.
+
+There is no excuse for this wanton exposure to the vicissitudes of the
+climate, for the forests adjoining were immense in their extent, and
+thousands of the suffering men offered, begged to go and obtain material
+to build sheds or huts to protect them from the inclemency of the weather.
+Neither parole was allowed for this purpose, nor real attempts made to
+obtain the building tools. To show the force of the argument that the
+rebels had not sufficient aid, and that it would have been dangerous to
+have paroled any of these prisoners, there is the fact that there were
+several large steam saw-mills in the vicinity, and they could have easily
+afforded, in few weeks, all the lumber required for the purpose of
+shelter.
+
+Was it recklessness, was it perversity, or was it malice aforethought,
+that withheld from the prisoners the means of shelter? The few sheds that
+were erected were not commenced until late in the term of its
+occupation, too late to render much service. They were merely roofs of
+boards, placed upon posts, at the distance of seven feet from the ground.
+There were neither sides nor partitions to these sheds, and they were not
+required during the hot months.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF THE MANNER IN WHICH THE DEAD WERE INTERRED.
+
+The bodies were laid in rows of one hundred to three hundred, and after
+the earth was thrown over them a stake was thrust down to mark the place
+of burial. This view is taken from a rebel photograph.--Page 57.]
+
+Pity was not a virtue that was recognized here: the noble impulses of the
+heart were reversed, and the natural instincts perverted.
+
+The dead bodies of the thousands who perished within the stockade, without
+medical attendance, were dragged forth, without care, and thrown
+promiscuously into the common field-carts, which, with their carelessly
+heaped-up burdens, proceeded to the trenches, where the dead heroes were
+laid in long lines, side by side, two or three hundred in a trench, and
+then a stick was thrust into the ground, at the head of each man, to
+indicate the place of burial. For the care observed in the burial of the
+dead after the carts arrived at the cemetery, and the preserving of the
+records of the victims, and the place, we are indebted to our own men, who
+were paroled especially for the purpose.
+
+The only solicitude observed by the rebels during or after interment of
+their victims, was shown by the civil engineer or surveyor of the town. He
+thought that so much animal matter should not go entirely to waste, and so
+commenced to plant grape vines over the mounds of the decomposing dead.
+
+To show the utter want of decency which ruled all things connected with
+the prison, it is stated by positive eye-witnesses that the same carts
+that transported the dead, went forth (without being cleansed of their
+reeking and disgusting filth), to the shambles and the depots for the
+meat and corn for the living prisoners.
+
+
+XI.
+
+An eminent statistician has stated that mortality is in direct ratio to
+the density of population, and that superficial area is as essential to
+health as cubic space. To the writer's mind, the overcrowding of the men,
+and their exposure to the variations of heat and cold, the influence of
+moisture, and the foul emanations of the infected soil, were sufficient to
+cause great destruction of human life; and when combined with the
+deficient dietary, the imagination can hardly conceive of a better field
+for disease and death than the condition of this swarming pen. All the
+elements and combinations of physical destructiveness were here in full
+play. "Losses by battle," says Sir Charles Napier, "sink to nothing,
+compared with those inflicted by improperly constructed barracks, and the
+jamming of soldiers--no other word is sufficiently expressive."
+"Diseases," states the French Inspector Baudens, "slay more men than steel
+or powder, and it is often easy to prevent them by a few simple hygienic
+precautions."
+
+In all campaigns where the care of the soldier is left to the military
+man,--who is educated for destruction, and has not been taught in the
+economy of life,--we see in the mortuary and non-efficient lists a
+disgraceful and culpable array of thoughtless routine, vulgar prejudices,
+and systems. In our Military Academies the elements and the means of
+destruction are taught, but not a law unfolded that relates to the
+principles of health, strength, and life. To alleviate the burden of the
+military list by sanitary measures is an idea unheard of, or at least
+unnoticed. "For these works," writes Chadwick, in his papers on "Economy,"
+"a special training is needed for our military engineers, whose present
+peculiar training is only for old works for war, and for those
+imperfectly,--works for the maintenance of the health of an army being
+necessary means to the maintenance of its military strength.
+
+"The one-sided character of the common training of our military engineers
+was displayed in the Crimea, in the proved need of a sanitary commission
+to give instruction for the selection and the practical drainage of proper
+sites for healthy encampments, for the choice collection and the proper
+distribution of wholesome water, for the construction of wholesome huts,
+and the proper shelter and treatment of horses as well as men."
+
+
+XII.
+
+In this enclosure, during a period of twelve months, from five thousand to
+thirty-six thousand human beings ate, slept, and drank, whilst the piles
+of filth were constantly accumulating, and the germs of infection silently
+at work. There was no regularity in the arrangement of the interior. Men
+collected in groups in the day time, and they lay in rows, like swine, at
+night.
+
+The stream, which with little ingenuity could have been turned to a
+blessing for the prison, was allowed to be obstructed by the heaps of
+grime; and enlarging its area, it assisted in forming the extensive
+quagmires, which were several acres in extent. So little care was
+observed for the comfort or the health of the prisoners, that all the
+washings of the bakery, all the filth of the out-houses of the workmen,
+were allowed to pass down and mingle with the current of the stream only
+thirty feet above the point of entrance into the stockade. The traveller
+can observe to-day that this malicious act of refined cruelty, or fatal
+error in hygiene, was really perpetrated.
+
+Besides this, the drains of the camp and the town above emptied themselves
+into this stream which supplied the prison with water.
+
+
+XIII.
+
+The bakery was located on the west side of the stockade, about equidistant
+from either line of palisade. It was of rough boards, and but one story in
+height. Its interior disclosed two rooms, one of which communicated with
+the two ovens, which were built of common brick. These two ovens--fourteen
+feet in length by seven feet in width, and with one kneading-trough
+fifteen feet long, and less than three feet in width--supplied the
+prisoners with all the bread they obtained; and so far the writer has not
+learned that there was any other source of supply.
+
+These same ovens, kept red hot, and worked night and day, to the fullest
+capacity, by the commissary bakers of the United States service, could not
+have produced but eight thousand rations of white bread, and but nine
+thousand six hundred rations of corn bread. This is the extreme limit; and
+regarded by the workmen, who have made the calculations, as almost an
+impossibility. The ordinary capacity of this establishment was probably
+about four or five thousand rations of corn bread. This quantity, divided
+daily among thirty thousand men, would give but a small morsel to each
+one; and this gives the appearance of truth to the statement, that from
+two to six ounces of corn bread were furnished as rations to the
+prisoners.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Ask a survivor of this prison treatment, if perchance you can find one,
+how he preserved his life, and he will tell you, "By eating the rations of
+the dying." Ten thousand men were sick or dying in this enclosure at one
+time.
+
+After the carts, with their scanty burdens of food, had passed into the
+prison, and distributed their contents, ten or fifteen thousand of the
+haggard and starving men might be seen collected together in the central
+portion of the prison trading with each other. Some of the poor
+wretches would be offering a handful of peas for a knot of wood no
+larger than the human fist, in order that they might cook their allowance;
+others offering, in barter, their remnants of clothing--a cap, or a shoe,
+or anything they possessed--for a morsel of food.
+
+[Illustration: _PLAN OF PRISON BAKERY_ ANDERSONVILLE Ga.]
+
+The little knots of wood above mentioned had a standard value of fifty
+cents; yet there were immense forests all around, and within sight on
+every side.
+
+
+XIV.
+
+There appears to have been but one kitchen for this vast assemblage, and
+that strangely situated--far in rear of the outer palisade, away from
+water-course or spring. The soil to-day does not present traces of a
+much-travelled road from its doorway to the main gate, distant about one
+third of a mile by the route taken. Consider the enormous weight of
+provisions which should have passed over this road when the prison
+contained more than twenty thousand men. This kitchen was a plain
+one-story shed, built of rough boards, one hundred feet in length, and
+less than fifty feet in width. It contained in the interior two
+medium-sized ranges, and four boilers of fifty gallons' capacity each. The
+capacity indicated does not by far equal the cooking apparatus which is
+required and furnished to the Lincoln and Harewood Hospitals, of
+Washington, for twelve hundred men.
+
+It is the opinion of the writer, who is familiar with the amount of
+cooking apparatus required by large hospitals and camps, that this
+kitchen, with its implements, could not, in the course of twenty-four
+hours, by constant relays of industrious workmen, have furnished cooked
+rations to more than five thousand men. There may have been other
+arrangements for cooking in the open air; but there are no longer any
+traces of such operations, nor has the writer any evidence that such was
+the case.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+XV.
+
+Upon the banks of the same stream, and near the railroad station, was
+erected the stockade which was intended for the confinement of the
+officers; but it was abandoned, after few weeks' occupation, partly from
+motives of prudence and in fear of revolt in keeping officers near so
+great a number of the rank and file of the army, and partly from the
+unfortunate selection of the locality. The officers were removed to Macon,
+and were confined there in the cotton sheds during a long period. This
+pen, known as the officers' stockade, was built of pine-tree palisades,
+fifteen feet high, and measured one hundred and ninety-five feet in length
+by one hundred and eight feet in width, and was provided with a shed in
+the interior forty-five feet long by twenty-seven feet wide, and also with
+a walk, suspended on the outside of the palisade, for the use of the
+sentries. The location and the provisions of this stockade were worse and
+more dangerous than even the main prison.
+
+
+XVI.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+On the pathway to the graveyard, not far from the prison, and in open
+sight, was built the hut where the bloodhounds were kept, always ready to
+track and pursue the fugitives, who were so fortunate as to escape by
+evading the vigilance of the guards, or by the slow and dangerous process
+of tunnelling beneath the palisades. The system of pursuit was so perfect,
+the dogs so numerous and well trained, that it was very rarely that any
+one escaped, and then it was only by the kind intervention of the black
+man.
+
+There were but nine bloodhounds kept here, but there were more than fifty
+dogs, kept in relays, along the route of escape, extending from the town
+to the city of Macon, fifty miles distant. The names of these inhuman
+wretches, who kept and hunted with these hounds, are known to the writer,
+the places of their residence, the number of their animals, and the price
+they received for each hapless victim overpowered by their dogs. These
+packs of hounds were generally accompanied by dogs of fierce and
+determined courage, to seize and hold the object pursued until the hunters
+arrived. The ordinary bloodhound of these regions is cowardly from
+degeneration, and dare not face the look, nor disregard the voice of man,
+and until the catch-dogs arrive and dash in, and lead the way, they bay
+and show their teeth from safe distances; but the victim once disabled,
+they tear and rend the living limbs without reluctance. The bloodhound is
+said, when in a state of tranquillity, to be the most affectionate of all
+the canine race, but when once excited, he no longer recognizes the blood
+of his master from that of the stranger. That many men were pursued, and
+caught, and paid for by the rebel authorities, at the price of thirty
+dollars a head, there is abundant proof; that men were disabled, and torn
+wantonly by the hounds, and afterwards died of their wounds, the writer
+has positive proof. That Federal soldiers were overpowered and destroyed
+in the forests by the dogs, and their brutal owners, there is evidence.
+
+It did not shock the civil communities of the South to hear of the use of
+the bloodhounds to pursue and maim men of their own race and nation, for
+in every locality, for a long period past, it had been the custom to rear
+and train dogs to catch the hapless slave who had incurred the rage of his
+master, and vainly sought to escape from his fury in the obscure recesses
+of the tangled forests.
+
+Usage, by long repetition, had blunted the natural sympathies, so that
+hate readily excused the difference in class and color.
+
+
+XVII.
+
+The bloodhounds here used appear to have been of a degenerate breed, and
+to have lacked the great strength, the invincible determination, which the
+true race possesses. The bloodhounds introduced into Cuba, to exterminate
+the Indians, were ferocious and powerful animals. From these the present
+stock in Southern Georgia were probably descended, and during three
+centuries of change, have gradually lost their nobler qualities, but have
+preserved the form. The true bloodhound is taller than the fox-hound, and
+stronger in his make. His color is of a reddish brown, shaded here and
+there with darker tints. His muzzle and jaws wide and strong, and the
+frame firmly knit. His scenting power is extraordinary, and from time
+immemorial his services have been made use of in tracking wounded animals
+or fugitives from justice.
+
+  "Soon the sagacious brute, his curling tail
+  Flourished in air, low bending, plies around
+  His busy nose, the steaming vapor snuffs
+  Inquisitive, nor leaves one turf untried,
+  Till, conscious of the recent stains, his heart
+  Beats quick; his snuffing nose, his active tail
+  Attest his joy: then with deep, opening mouth,
+  That makes the welkin tremble, he proclaims
+  Th' audacious felon: foot by foot he marks
+  His winding way, while all the listening crowd
+  Applaud his reasonings, o'er the watery ford,
+  Dry sandy heaths, and stony, barren hills;
+  O'er beaten paths, with men and beasts disdained,
+  Unerring he pursues, till at the cot
+  Arrived, and seizing by his guilty throat
+  The caitiff vile, redeems the captive prey."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK FOURTH.
+
+
+I.
+
+Animals eat that they may live. Man eats, not only that he may live, but
+that he may gather strength, and fulfil his high destiny on earth.
+
+When God gave form and animation to the dust of the earth, and man
+appeared, he did not intend that the sustenance of life should be left to
+chance or to careless selection. This intent of the Creator is revealed in
+the study of the organic world, where wonderful varieties and productions
+are offered to the appetite of man, in order that the "force of the
+universe may glow within his veins," and that the faculties of his mind
+may so expand that he may behold and comprehend the works and designs of
+his Maker.
+
+Food, next to the purity of the air, determines the degree of the physical
+well-being; it gives the beauty of contour to the form; it builds up the
+marvellous structure of the brain; the ravishing smile of the features,
+the sublimity of thought, depend alike in great measure upon the benign
+influence of food.
+
+It not only gives to nations their characteristics of strength and
+solidity, but it bestows upon society more of grace and refinement than
+philosophy is willing to allow.
+
+
+II.
+
+The question of alimentation with the civil laborer, exposed to healthy
+influences of properly distributed air and sunlight, and to the regular
+motions of a well-conducted life, is easy of solution to the inquiring
+mind.
+
+But when it relates to the soldier, subjected to strange and unhealthy
+influences, the explanations involve much study, care, and research.
+
+In the natural condition of man it is easy to determine how much food will
+support life and sustain physical exertion. The dietaries of the public
+institutions of different countries, the experiments of physiologists, and
+the records of history give the data with sufficient clearness. As to the
+amount of food required daily to repair the waste and wants of the human
+organism, much depends upon the degree of muscular exertion and nervous
+excitation, as well as the temperature of the season. In the alimentation
+of armies scientific principles must not be disregarded. Food must be
+considered as force; it must contain, not only material, but power. The
+strength of men, says Baron Liebig, is in direct ratio to the plastic
+matter in their food.
+
+In determining the absolute quantities of nutrient substances required by
+the system, Lehman observes that there are three magnitudes especially to
+be considered.
+
+The first is the quantity requisite to prevent the animal from sinking by
+starvation. The second is that which affords the right supply of
+nourishment for the perfect accomplishment of the functions, and the last
+is that which indicates the amount of nutrient matter which may, under
+the most favorable circumstances, be subjected to metamorphosis in the
+blood. No one of the four classes, the carbohydrates, the fats, the
+albuminous matters, and the salts, will answer the purpose alone, but all
+must be employed together, and this invariable proportion according to the
+local, and, therefore, variable waste of the system. These considerations
+indicate how complicated the problem is.
+
+
+III.
+
+Life is an action; the principle of life, whatever may be its nature, is
+eminently and visibly a principle of excitation, of impulsion, a motive
+power.
+
+"It is taking a false idea of life," says Cuvier, "to consider it as a
+simple link which binds the elements of the living body together, since,
+on the contrary, it is a power which moves and sustains them unceasingly."
+
+These elements do not for an instant preserve the same relation and
+connection; or, in other words, the living body does not for an instant
+keep the same state and composition. "This law," adds Flourens, "does not
+affect alone the muscles, viscera, and tissues, but there is a continual
+mutation of all the parts composing the bone." These views have been
+substantiated by the extended experiments of Chossat, of Von Bibra, and a
+host of experimentalists, showing how positive and decided are the changes
+in the material composition of the body, and especially the constitution
+of even the bone from the influence of food.
+
+
+IV.
+
+"It is from the blood that life derives the principles which maintain and
+repair it. The more vigorous, plastic, and rich in nutritive material, so
+much the more life increases and manifests itself, so much the quicker the
+reparatory processes restore a lesion to its natural condition.
+
+"The blood owes its vivifying properties to the presence of oxygen, which
+it receives by the respiratory organs; but that nourishing fluid, to
+complete its physiological _r�le_, needs to receive combustible and
+organizable material."
+
+These Protean principles of the healthy blood form one fifth of its
+weight.
+
+Oxygen unites with the carbon of the food in the blood of animals;
+carbonic acid is formed and heat evolved. When the atmosphere is vitiated,
+the oxygenating processes are diminished in ratio to the vitiation.
+
+The experiments of Seguin, Crawford, and De la Roche show that in a
+vitiated and highly heated atmosphere the blood is not thoroughly
+decarbonized, thereby deranging the nervous system, and affecting the
+animal functions as well as the mental faculties. The blood is subject to
+incessant variations. The more feeble the respiration the less rich it is.
+Man absorbs twenty to thirty quarts of oxygen every hour. The pure air is
+a real food, and is as necessary for the development and repair of the
+physical force as the more solid forms of matter. Nine ounces of carbon
+are consumed every day, and the phenomenon of the expired carbonic acid
+has its maxima and minima during the day, like the regular variations of
+the barometer or the tides of the ocean.
+
+
+V.
+
+The great nervous prostration and the lack of energy which were observed
+among the prisoners, were not due entirely to climate. The activity of the
+nervous mechanism depends greatly upon the supply and purity of the
+arterial blood. It is the same with the nerve fibres as with the nerve
+centres, but in less degree. We observe that the exaltation and depression
+of the nervous power are within the control of man by the administration
+of certain drugs, or respiration of appropriate gases. The accumulation of
+bile or urea in the blood diminishes the nerve energy. Many physiologists
+enumerate moral depressions among the principal causes of epidemics; and
+this opinion is not strange when we consider how completely the system is
+under control of the nervous influence, and how much the supply of oxygen
+and blood to the organs and tissues depend upon the nervous power; and how
+much, moreover, the integrity of the nervous system depends upon the
+purity of the blood.
+
+In the process of starvation, during the struggle for life, the hidden
+forces in reserve--the superabundant muscle, fat, tissues, even the
+brain-substance--are gradually absorbed. The volume of blood may remain
+the same, but the vivifying particles which circulate in the vital stream
+are rapidly consumed by the wants of the wasting economy, and disappear.
+And when these hematic globules are lessened to a certain limit below the
+normal proportion death ensues. Vierodt has discovered that the limit of
+this singular law is 52 per 1000 for the dog, and about 60 per 1000 for
+some other species of the mammalia. The physiologists have shown how the
+vivifying principles acquire vigor through the blood discs, and how these,
+when absorbing pure oxygen through the pulmonary circulation, contribute
+to the development of muscular fibre and the nervous material. Mammals and
+birds, when deprived of food, die in ten to twenty days, losing from one
+third to one half of their weight.
+
+
+VI.
+
+In determining the nutritive value of aliments by the study of their
+chemical composition, we cannot adhere strictly to the results furnished
+by analysis. For, says Baron Liebig, we cannot reckon upon results in the
+human stomach with the same regularity as we would in the alembics of our
+laboratories.
+
+Physiologists divide alimentary substances into two classes: the
+nitrogenous, which, according to Dumas, supply the demands of
+assimilation, and the non-nitrogenous, which are called by Liebig
+respiratories, from furnishing the products consumed by respiration.
+Neither the one nor the other will alone support life indefinitely, and
+when one or the other decreases below well-defined limits, health
+declines, and finally life becomes extinct from inanition.
+
+Milne Edwards gives, as the mean amount of these two classes, required for
+all climates, not less than three hundred and fifteen grains of nitrogen
+and thirty-three hundred and fifty grains of carbon in the twenty-four
+hours. These views are adopted by most physiologists; yet the analyses of
+Schlossberger and Kemp indicate that the idea of estimating the value of
+food by the quantity of nitrogen it contains is a fallacious one.
+
+The beautiful experiments of Bernard and the modern physiologists have
+unfolded many of the laws that regulate digestion and assimilation. Yet
+the human researches in the great arcana of nature are extremely limited,
+in comparison with the vast range of physical phenomena, and every day we
+are reminded of the remarks of Boerhaave to his students: "Let all these
+heroes of science meet together; let them take bread and wine, the food
+which forms the blood of man, and by assimilation contributes to the
+growth of the body; let them try by all their art, and assuredly they will
+not be able from these materials to produce a single drop of blood,--so
+much is the most common act of nature beyond the utmost efforts of the
+most extended science."
+
+The composition of the typical food of nature is revealed to us in the
+analysis of human milk.
+
+
+VII.
+
+The need of varied food is apparent to the casual observer, and it is well
+proven in the immortal work of Cabanis. "The experience of civilized life
+has shown," says Professor Horsford, in his admirable pamphlet on the
+marching ration of armies, "that the human organism requires, to maintain
+it in health, both organic and inorganic food.
+
+"Of the organic, it needs nitrogenous food for the support of the vital
+tissues for work; and saccharine, or oleaginous food, for warmth. Of the
+inorganic, it needs phosphates for the bones, brain, muscles, and blood;
+and salt for its influence on the circulation and the secretions, and for
+various purposes where soda is required for a base; and doubtless both
+phosphates and salt for many offices as yet imperfectly understood. 'A man
+may be starved by depriving him of phosphates and salt, just as
+effectively as by depriving him of albumen or oil.' (Dalton's Physiology.)
+
+"The salts of potassa, magnesia, and iron, of manganese, silica, and
+fluorine, are always present, and perform services of greater or less
+obvious moment in the animal economy. These organic and inorganic
+substances are essential, but they are not all that are needed. Man,
+especially when compelled to exhausting labor, requires beverages and
+condiments. He wants coffee, or tea, or cocoa; or, in the absence of
+these, he may feel a craving for wine or spirits. He wants salt, pepper,
+and vinegar. To preserve a sound body, then, there are required organic
+and inorganic food, beverages, and condiments."
+
+"A mixed food," says another writer, "which varies from time to time,
+seems to be essential; and there can be no doubt that the changes which
+physicians have recognized in the nature of the predominating diseases,
+from century to century, are connected with changes which have taken place
+in the nature of the diet. Excess of oil, albumen, and starch produce
+liability to arthritic, bilious, and rheumatic affections; a deficiency of
+oleaginous materials, scrofula, &c."
+
+
+VIII.
+
+In attempting to form a proper estimate of the alleged ration furnished by
+the rebels to their prisoners at Andersonville, we will endeavor to arrive
+at just conclusions by comparing the known quantities with the dietaries
+of long-established hospitals, prisons, and the ration of armies of
+different periods of history.
+
+The effects of food upon the civil prisoners, both of the long and short
+term, have been carefully studied by Christison, Liebig, Barral, and
+Edwards; and it is conclusively shown by their statistics of the prisons
+of Europe how much food will keep the prisoners in athletic condition when
+exposed to healthy influences. The quantity of food required depends upon
+the wants of the system and the quality of food consumed. Some articles
+are far more nutritious than others, and are far less bulky; for instance,
+the rice eaters of China, the potato and milk consumers of Ireland, eat
+enormously, compared with the beef-eating people.
+
+But rarely will a less quantity than seventeen ounces suffice for the
+animal economy, and not then, even, unless it is the concentrated essences
+and principles of carefully selected grains, and healthy meat from cattle
+killed in their native pastures, like the scientific ration correctly
+proposed by Professor Horsford. This ration is intended to enable armies
+to change their base with intervals of more than a month, and to assist
+raiding parties to perform long journeys without relying for subsistence
+on the doubtful and difficult forage along the route, or on the distant
+depots at the point of departure.
+
+A handful of the ripe, golden grains, roasted and mixed with a little
+sugar, with a few ounces of beef dried from the meat of healthy cattle
+killed instantly, will sustain the power of life wonderfully. This is
+shown by the mountaineers of the Cordilleras, of the Andes, and the Rocky
+Mountains.
+
+It was substantially the same ration that enabled the Romans to traverse
+countries far remote from their main depots of supplies, and the Greeks to
+advance across, with safety, the immense arid deserts of Asia. Any of our
+splendidly equipped and fed armies of modern times would perish in a few
+days along the route where Xenophon and his immortal ten thousand passed
+with safety, and without much loss.
+
+
+IX.
+
+The mode of rationing the Roman armies, and the manner in which the
+supplies were obtained and preserved, is well shown in the extant writings
+of those times. Besides the allowance of wheat daily,--one to two
+pounds,--the Roman soldiers often received a ration of pork, mutton,
+legumes, cheese, oil, salt, wine, and vinegar. With the grain, a
+porridge-pot, a spit, the casque for a cup, and with vinegar to mix with
+their water,--which formed the regulation drink posea, or acetum,--they
+marched rapidly, and retained their extraordinary vigor in the midst of
+pestilential regions. Every soldier carried his own food for a given
+length of time, which was from eight to twenty-eight days. "_Cibo cum
+suo._" Hence Josephus wrote, the Roman soldier is laden like a mule. This
+food was always of the best quality; and the wheat was always carefully
+selected by a commission appointed for the purpose, as we may learn from
+the inscription on the column of Trajan. This wheat was not always eaten
+raw; but was oftener roasted, and crushed upon a stone.
+
+                    "Frugesque receptas
+  Et torrere parant flammis et frugere saxo."
+
+With all of these arrangements and movements, there was method even as to
+the time of taking food. The soldier ate twice a day, and at appointed
+hours--at the sixth hour, "Prandium;" and at the tenth hour, "Vesperna."
+
+
+X.
+
+The requirements of the system differ greatly, according to the degree of
+heat, the purity of the air, and the degree of physical exercise. What
+suffices at the equator would be but a morsel at the pole. What sustains
+the quiet student would starve the active athlete.
+
+When Volney spoke in surprise of the few ounces required to sustain the
+Bedouin, he forgot the purity of the air of the desert, as well as the
+indolent life of the Arab.
+
+When we offer as example the frugal diet of Cornaro, which was twelve
+ounces of solid food, with fourteen ounces of wine, daily, we must
+remember that the celebrated man lived a life of moderation, avoided bad
+air, and guarded against the extremes of heat and cold.
+
+The data of Frerichs, the observations of Sir John Sinclair, and the
+determinations of Professor Horsford, show that eighteen ounces of
+properly selected food may sustain life; and they also show that the
+nutrient substances must be of known value.
+
+
+XI.
+
+In forming our ideas as to the required amount of food necessary to
+healthy vigor, we will not attempt to analyze the magnitudes of Lehman,
+nor accept the statement of Chossat, that the animal body loses daily
+about one twenty-fourth of its weight by the metamorphosis of tissue; but
+will again examine the diet tables of the prisons, hospitals, and armies
+of Europe, leaving the reader to form his own conclusions.
+
+The distinguished physiologist, Milne Edwards, maintains that the food
+must contain three hundred and fifteen grains of nitrogen and three
+thousand three hundred and fifty grains of carbon, otherwise the animal
+economy loses force, and gradually deteriorates. The data of Frerichs give
+the same views, and they accord with the observations of the ten years'
+study of the regimens of the prisons of Scotland. Dumas, in his
+calculations of the ration of the French army, gives as its equivalent
+three hundred and thirty-five grains of nitrogen and four thousand nine
+hundred and fifty grains of carbon.
+
+In the prisons and hospitals of England, Scotland, France, and Germany,
+the dietaries furnish from seventeen to twenty-eight ounces of nitrogenous
+and carbonaceous food.
+
+For a time, the solid ration of the prisons of Scotland was reduced to
+seventeen ounces, but the prisoners lost weight. In the public
+institutions of England we find the total quantity of solid food to be as
+follows: The British soldier receives in home service 45 ounces; the
+seaman of the Royal navy 44 ounces; convicts 54 ounces; male pauper 29
+ounces; male lunatic 31 ounces. The full diet of the hospitals of London
+furnish from 25 to 31 ounces of solid food, besides from one to five pints
+of beer daily. The Russian soldier has about 50 ounces; the Turkish more
+than 40 ounces; the French nearly 50 ounces; the Hessian 33 ounces; the
+Yorkshire laborer 50 ounces; United States navy 50 ounces; and the soldier
+of the United States army about 50 ounces, of solid food.
+
+
+XII.
+
+The food allowed to the prisoners at Andersonville, according to the
+statements of the prisoners and other witnesses, was from two to four
+ounces of bacon, and from four to twelve ounces of corn bread daily;
+sometimes a half pint to a pint of bean, pea, or sweet potato soup, of
+doubtful value. Vegetables were unknown. Thus giving a total weight of
+solid food, per diem, of six to sixteen ounces of solid food. The amount
+was not constant: some days the prisoners were entirely without food, as
+was the case at Belle Isle and Salisbury. Neither was the deficiency
+afterwards made good. The amount given was oftener less than ten ounces
+than more.
+
+The contrast furnished by the dietaries of our own military prisons, of
+those of the British hulks (so much cursed during the last war), or by the
+food given by the Algerine pirates to their prisoners and slaves, gives
+rise to terrible convictions as to the regard the rebel authorities placed
+upon the lives of their prisoners. The United States allowed to the rebel
+prisoners held by them thirty-eight ounces of solid food at first; but
+afterwards, in June, 1864, they reduced the ration to thirty-four and a
+half ounces per day. The range of articles composing the ration was the
+same as with our own troops, the exception being in the weight in bread.
+In the Dartmoor prison in England, where our men were confined by the
+English, when taken prisoners during the last war, and of which so much
+cruelty has been alleged, the authorities allowed to the prisoners for the
+first five days in the week 24 ounces of coarse brown bread, 8 ounces of
+beef, 4 ounces of barley, 1/3 ounce of salt, 1/3 ounce of onions, and 16
+ounces of turnips daily (or more than 50 ounces of solid food); and for
+the remaining two days the usual allowance of bread was given with 16
+ounces of pickled fish. The daily allowance to our men, at the Melville
+Island prison, at Halifax, during the last war, was 16 ounces of bread, 16
+ounces of beef, and one gill of peas; the American agent furnishing
+coffee, sugar, potatoes, and tobacco. The allowance on the noted Medway
+hulks was 8 ounces of beef, 24 ounces of bread, and one gill of barley,
+daily, for five days; and 16 ounces of codfish, 16 ounces potatoes, or 16
+ounces of smoked herring, the remaining two days of the week. Furthermore,
+in addition to these generous allowances of the British people, it can be
+said that the quality of the food was almost always excellent.
+
+The writer, with one exception, knows of no dietary to compare with that
+adopted, or made use of without the formality of adoption, by the rebel
+authorities in the treatment of their prisoners.
+
+This exception is found in ancient history, which Plutarch has handed down
+to us. The Athenians, captured at the siege of Syracuse, were placed in
+the stone quarries of Ortygia, and fed upon one pint of barley and half a
+pint of water daily. Most of them perished from this treatment.
+
+
+XIII.
+
+The corn bread furnished was made, according to the evidence, from corn
+and the cob, ground up together, and sometimes mixed with what is called
+in the south cow peas. It varied from four to twelve ounces in weight
+daily, generally from four to eight ounces. A pound (of sixteen ounces) of
+corn bread contains, according to chemical analysis, two thousand eight
+hundred grains of carbon and one hundred and twenty-one grains of
+nitrogen, and therefore the highest quantity of corn bread furnished, say
+twelve ounces, afforded but two thousand one hundred grains of carbon and
+ninety grains of nitrogen, leaving a deficiency, according to the
+physiologists, of more than twelve hundred grains of carbon and two
+hundred grains of nitrogen, to be supplied by the two or four ounces of
+doubtful bacon.
+
+That the bacon could not furnish this deficiency must be apparent to the
+scientific observer. The quantity of bread alone, required to furnish the
+desired amount of carbon and nitrogen, would have been over three pounds
+daily, which quantity the prisoners did not have.
+
+Milne Edwards, after treating at length the subject of alimentation, and
+offering many examples, arrives at the conclusion that the mean quantity
+of bread and meat required to sustain the life of man, consists of sixteen
+ounces of bread and thirteen ounces of beef daily. This conclusion is
+sustained by most of the experimentalists, and if lesser quantities are
+used, they must be of choice selections. A small loaf of bread made of
+flour, ground from ripe, healthy wheat, will accomplish more for nutrition
+than two or three larger loaves, baked of damaged and unripe grain; and
+likewise it is with meat: half a pound of beef from cattle killed
+instantly in their native pastures, when the flesh retains all its natural
+juices and sweetness, is worth more for the support of the system than two
+or three pounds of beef from animals that have been fasted and terrified,
+and have thereby lost, in a very great measure, their nutritious
+qualities.
+
+The flesh of mammalia undergoes a great change in its nutritive qualities
+by reason of fasting, disturbance of sleep, and long-continued suffering,
+resulting in its becoming not only worthless, but deleterious.
+
+
+XIV.
+
+Vegetable substances alone will not sustain life for a great length of
+time in every climate, but there is a vast difference between the wants of
+man at the equator and his necessities at the pole.
+
+Nature requires for the working of her plans materials of diverse natures:
+neither the oil, nor starch, nor sugar, will sustain life alone. Chemical
+analysis and physiological history point out to us how positive is the
+law which fixes the component parts of grains and plants, and how
+imperative the necessity of adjusting in alimentation these forms of
+nutritive matter, which spring up on every side in profusion, and offer
+endless variety to the wants of man.
+
+There must be harmony of certain principles; there must be union of
+starch, of gluten, and fat, to complete the process of digestion and
+assimilation. To feed a patient upon arrow-root, tapioca, or sago, and the
+like, is to consign him to certain death. Instinct impels us sometimes to
+make use of articles which our habits have thrown aside.
+
+
+XV.
+
+It appears from the reasoning of Baron Liebig, that when we replace the
+flesh and bread of ordinary diet by juicy vegetables and fruits, the blood
+is beyond all doubt altered in its chemical character, the alkaline
+carbonates being substituted for the phosphoric acid and alkaline
+phosphates, which are supposed to exert a disturbing influence in so many
+diseases, especially typhoid and inflammatory affections. The gluten of
+grain, and the albumen of vegetable juices, are identical in composition
+with the albumen of blood, but there are varieties of wheat, the ashes of
+which are in quantity and in relative proportion of the salts the same as
+those of boiled and lixiviated meats, and it cannot be maintained that
+bread made of such flour would, if it were the only food taken, support
+life permanently.
+
+The experiments of the French academicians, show that dogs fed
+exclusively on white bread, made from the sifted flour, died in forty
+days; but when fed on black bread (flour with the bran), they lived
+without disturbance of health. Bread should always be made of grains grown
+in healthy places, and should contain the entire seed, with the exception
+of the husk; then it will realize the idea of Paracelsus: "When a man eats
+a bit of bread, does he not therein consume heaven and earth, and all of
+the heavenly bodies, inasmuch as heaven by its fertilizing rain, the earth
+by its soil, and the sun by its luminous and heat-giving rays, have all
+contributed to its production, and are all present in the one substance?"
+
+Desiccated vegetables, which have lost the water of vegetation and other
+gaseous elements, which chemistry thus far has been unable to discover,
+cannot adequately replace the fresh articles; the particular principle,
+the water of vegetation, can no more be restored to them than the dust of
+the crushed quartz can be recrystallized by the simple addition of water.
+
+
+XVI.
+
+In the alimentation of armies bread is the basal element. If it be poor,
+the whole system of the commissariat is deranged. History shows that it is
+the most important item in the feeding of soldiers, and that many a
+campaign, since the disaster to the army of Belisarius at Methon, has been
+lost in consequence of the quality of its munition bread.
+
+France allows to her soldiers 26 ounces of bread, England 24, Belgium 28,
+Sardinia 26, Spain 23, Prussia 32, Austria 32, Turkey 33, United States
+22, _Rebel Prisons_ 4 _to_ 12 _ounces_!
+
+The quantity of corn meal allowed to the rebel soldiers by the rebel
+government was about one and one-third pounds daily: this would give about
+28 ounces of bread, allowing 30 per cent. of water, which is the rule
+among bakers; at least it is the average quantity established by the civil
+tax commission of Paris. Besides the corn meal they had six ounces of
+bacon, and peas, and rice. This ration was sufficient to preserve life, as
+it has been shown by the condition of the rebel armies; the bread alone
+contained 4900 grains of carbon, and 210 grains of nitrogen, without the
+aid of bacon or the peas. The bread alone has an excess of 1600 grains of
+carbon, and a deficiency only of about 100 grains of nitrogen, which was
+readily supplied by the bacon and other articles. Corn bread is one of the
+chief articles of diet in the Southern States, and it is likewise used
+extensively in the South of Europe. It makes heavy bread unless carefully
+prepared and mixed with flour, and when mixed with the cob it often
+produces a laxative effect, the degree of which depends greatly upon the
+quantity the meal contains. When properly prepared with milk and the usual
+ingredients, it becomes an agreeable and nutritious article of diet, but
+carelessly handled, it is disagreeable to the palate and difficult to
+digest.
+
+The bread furnished to the prisoners was simply mixed with salt and the
+dirty water from the brook, or the foul spring in the rear of the bakery,
+and then dried in the heat of the oven. That bad effects arose from such a
+quality of bread cannot be doubted; the injurious influences of impure
+water in panification have been pointed out by Boussingault, in a paper
+presented to the French Academy in 1857.
+
+It is the common saying in the Southern States, where the use of wheaten
+bread is comparatively rare, that a bushel of corn contains more nutriment
+than a bushel of wheat. Yet the southern wheat is superior to the northern
+varieties, and is richer in the azotized, glutinous principles so
+essential to the formation of blood and muscle. Vermicelli and macaroni
+can be made only from the best southern wheat.
+
+Of the varieties of Indian corn in America, the yellow flinty corn is
+reckoned the sweetest and most nutritive; the white corn of the South
+makes the fairest, but considerably the weakest flour. We do not find
+special fault with the coarsely ground meal, provided the cob is not
+included, for Mayer has pointed out, in discarding the commercial bran we
+throw away fourteen times as much phosphoric acid as there is in superfine
+flour. In this bran are contained most of the layers of gluten, in which
+are lodged the phosphates and the companion nitrogenous compounds--the
+sources of living tissues. The nutritious Graham bread is an example; also
+the pumpernickel of Westphalia, the black bread of Russia, the coarse
+oatmeal of Scotland, contain all the gluten, all the phosphates and
+nitrogenous compounds, as well as the starch of the grains. Such was the
+bread that Celsus considered as equal to flesh in its capacity of
+nourishing.
+
+
+XVII.
+
+Fresh meat was rarely furnished to the prison, according to the reports
+and statements of witnesses, and we should doubt that it was furnished at
+all, if it were not for the number of sections of the horns of cattle
+which are strewn about the enclosure, and which the prisoners had used for
+drinking dishes; still, many of these horns may have been taken from the
+cattle killed for the guards.
+
+That the issue of fresh beef would have been beneficial to the men, there
+is no doubt; in fact, the experiment at Jamaica, which continued twenty
+years, proves it; for the troops who were fed with a larger allowance of
+fresh meat suffered far less from dysentery than any of the troops of the
+West India islands. There is always great difficulty in preserving the
+good qualities of fresh meat in hot climes, and, on the other hand, the
+use of salt meat in the same regions is apt to engender scorbutic
+disorders. Whenever putrefactive fermentation begins with any kind of
+meat, or any recently living nitrogenized substance, catalytic action
+takes place, ammonia is evolved, and the product is no longer pleasant to
+the taste or nutritious to the system. Food, when even exposed to vitiated
+air, becomes deteriorated in quality, just as good flour is rendered
+worthless by mixture with the damaged fungoid grain. Butchers' meat on the
+average affords but thirty-five per cent. of real nutritive matter, at
+least such was the opinion presented to the French Minister of the
+Interior by Vauquelin and Percy. Accepting this determination, we may form
+some idea of the relative value of the scanty allowance of the doubtful
+beef furnished to the prisoners, if it was furnished at all.
+
+That bacon was furnished, there is no doubt; neither has the quantity been
+underrated by the sufferers themselves, as we shall presently see. And
+there is no reason why the quality should not have been most excellent,
+unless it had been selected for the purposes of cruelty. There is evidence
+that it was sometimes of very bad quality; but that it was generally and
+systematically selected to disgust the prisoners, we are unwilling to
+believe, although we have evidence that rotten bacon was furnished by
+contractors, and the fact boasted of by them. The influence and effect of
+this decomposed food may be surmised by the following remark of Donovan:
+"Flesh contains the elements of some of the most deadly poisons that are
+found even in the vegetable kingdom; a slight change in their mode of
+combination, or of the ratio of their quantities, may convert nutriment
+into a source of death."
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+There is another very important item to be considered in the dietary of
+this prison, and that is the quality and quantity of the water furnished
+for potable purposes. "Water," says Milne Edwards, "is an aliment, as well
+as sugar and fibrine; for it is indispensable for the nutrition of the
+body, and, by whatever means it arrives in the economy, its _r�le_ is
+always the same."
+
+The water consumed in the prison was obtained from the brook, and from the
+few wells or springs within the stockade. The volume of water in the brook
+was quite sufficient to furnish all the drinking water desired, if it had
+been introduced into the stockade by means of sluices. As it was, the
+course of the stream was left to nature, and no effort made to prevent its
+defilement by the camps situated farther up, or by the bake-house located
+close by. All the camps on the declivities about Andersonville were
+drained into this stream. Some few wells were sunk in the prison which
+yielded scanty supplies, and there were also a few springs undefiled; but
+the quality of water everywhere was surface water, tinged and tainted with
+the impurities of the soil and the infections of the collected filth. The
+thirst, which was excessive among the prisoners, could only be slaked by
+drinking the impure waters. Yet a very little care on the part of the
+rebel authorities would have increased the comfort of the prisoners in
+this respect, and prevented the loss of life to a very considerable
+degree.
+
+"The preservation of potable water," writes Felix Jacquot, "is certainly
+one of the capital points of hygiene."
+
+"I am sometimes disposed to think," states Dr. Letheby, the health officer
+of London, "that impure water is before impure air as one of the most
+powerful causes of disease." In cold climates slight impurities in the
+drinking water are not of vital importance; but in the tropics, and the
+adjacent regions, the least decayed vegetable or animal matter renders it
+injurious and unpalatable, and often is the determining cause of disease,
+especially enteric, to a fearful degree.
+
+
+XIX.
+
+During the months of June, July, August, and September, 1864, there was an
+aggregate number of prisoners of about twenty-eight thousand for each
+month. To supply this vast number of men with bread would have been
+ordinarily no easy task, requiring, as it would have done, twenty-eight
+thousand rations of bread daily, or eight hundred and forty thousand
+rations monthly. We have shown that the bakery could not have furnished
+more than ninety-six hundred rations of corn bread, of the United States
+weight of twenty ounces, or ninety-six hundred rations daily, or two
+hundred and eighty-eight thousand rations monthly, and probably furnished
+but five thousand rations daily, or one hundred and fifty thousand rations
+monthly. If this deficiency of a half a million of rations existed, how
+can it be explained?
+
+Was munition bread brought from a distance to supply the deficiency? When
+and whence, we will ask?
+
+During the period embracing the months of July, August, and September,
+1864, the rebel commissary furnished, according to his statements, two
+hundred and twenty-three thousand bushels of corn meal, and thirty-seven
+hundred bushels of flour for the prison.
+
+There was, during this time (ninety-two days), a monthly aggregate of
+twenty-nine thousand prisoners, who required twenty-nine thousand rations
+of corn meal daily; or, multiplied by ninety-two days, two million six
+hundred and sixty-eight thousand rations for the period of three months;
+or, allowing the same weight as the rebel ration, we have 2,668,000 �
+1-1/3 = 3,567,333 pounds of corn meal, or seventy-one thousand one
+hundred and forty-six bushels, allowing fifty pounds to the bushel. If we
+now estimate the rebel garrison to have been four thousand in the
+aggregate, we will have for the requirements, 4000 � 92 � 1-1/2 = 552,000
+pounds of meal, or ten thousand one hundred and ninety bushels, which
+gives, as total for the prison and garrison, eighty-one thousand two
+hundred and eighty-six bushels of corn meal.
+
+Yet the commissary states that he sent two hundred and twenty-three
+thousand bushels, or almost three times as much as the quantity required.
+This is a strange statement to make, as we shall endeavor to show.
+
+The rebel ration allowed by their law gave thirty-seven and a half pounds
+of corn meal, three pounds of rice, or five pounds of peas, ten pounds of
+bacon, salt, &c., monthly, of twenty-eight days, or about twenty ounces of
+meal daily, and about six ounces of bacon. We have, as an aggregate number
+of men for the above period (prisoners and guards), 29,000 + 4000 � 92 =
+3,036,000 men, requiring, according to law, three million seven hundred
+and ninety-five thousand pounds of corn meal. Now the commissary states
+that he furnished 226,700 bushels of corn meal and flour; or, multiplied
+by 50 pounds = 11,335,000 pounds, thus giving to each man more than three
+and one-fifth pounds of meal and flour; or, allowing the usual per cent.
+of water, more than four pounds of bread. That these men had sixty-eight
+ounces of corn bread apiece, or that they could have eaten it if they had
+been furnished that quantity, is not for a moment to be considered. This
+analysis betrays the falsity of the commissary's statement, and
+invalidates the remainder of his accounts.
+
+It cannot be said that this meal was to be stored for future use, for it
+is well known that corn meal will not keep in this climate but for a few
+days without fermentation taking place. There is, again, another serious
+item to be considered in connection with this statement. Why should this
+overplus, of more than seven millions of pounds of meal, be sent to this
+prison, when the army of Virginia was calling loudly for grain? The
+statement and the figures indicate simply a foolish desire to cover up
+deficiencies, and that too in a very hasty manner.
+
+
+XX.
+
+The same commissary states that he sent, during the same period of time,
+three hundred and thirty-nine thousand pounds of bacon, or five million
+four hundred and twenty-four thousand ounces. This will give thirty-six
+hundred and eighty-four pounds of bacon each day of the ninety-two days;
+and, after allowing six ounces per man to the rebel garrison, we shall
+have remaining but two thousand pounds to be divided among the twenty-nine
+thousand prisoners, or about one and one seventh ounces of bacon to each
+man. Thus the account of the commissary, if true, proves that the
+statement of the prisoners, that they received but two to four ounces of
+bacon daily, was correct.
+
+If the full amount of bacon had been allowed, there would have been
+required, at the rate of six ounces per man, ten thousand eight hundred
+and seventy-five pounds daily, whereas there was in reality but two
+thousand pounds, leaving a deficiency of more than eight thousand pounds
+daily. If fresh beef had been allowed at the same rate as the bacon, there
+would have been required ten thousand eight hundred and seventy-five
+pounds daily, or a herd of thirty of the native cattle, allowing three
+hundred and sixty pounds net weight to each carcass. If the full ration of
+one pound of fresh beef had been furnished, there would have been required
+more than one hundred and twenty of the same class of cattle daily.
+
+
+XXI.
+
+That the dietary of the prisoners was far from being adequate to their
+wants there is no doubt, and it only remains to be determined whether this
+deficiency arose from design, from ignorance, or from real scarcity of
+food.
+
+We have very serious doubts as to the truth of the statements that there
+was a scarcity of food in this vicinity during the time of the occupation
+of the prison.
+
+At the time of its selection the region was considered to be the richest
+in cereals of all the Southern States.
+
+In times previous it had proved to be fertile, and during the progress of
+the war the slave labor was undisturbed by the Federal troops. It is shown
+by their own statistics that in 1860 the four counties near the prison,
+and along the line of railroad, produced nearly fourteen hundred thousand
+bushels of corn, thirty-three thousand bushels of wheat, three hundred
+thousand bushels of potatoes, and more than one hundred thousand bushels
+of beans and peas, besides forty-eight thousand bales of cotton. It is
+highly probable that these quantities were doubled, if not trebled and
+quadrupled during the succeeding years of the war, when the planting of
+cotton was forbidden by rebel ukase, and all energy and labor were turned
+to the production of food. There were in these four counties alone more
+than twenty thousand slaves.
+
+In the south of Georgia, in the wire-grass region, were great numbers of
+cattle roaming at will, and the numbers in the everglades of Florida were
+so vast, that two old steamboat captains offered to furnish the rebel
+government, at this very period, with half a million pounds of salt beef,
+along the railroads in Florida. Governor Watts wrote from Alabama in
+April, 1864, that there were ten million pounds of bacon accessible in
+that State. In September of the same year, Mr. Hudson, of the adjoining
+State of Alabama, offered to deliver to the rebel government half a
+million pounds of bacon in exchange for the same quantity of cotton.
+
+The rebel war clerk, in his diary at Richmond, wrote, March 17, 1864, "It
+appears that there is abundance of grain and meat in the country;" and
+again, July 3, 1864, he notes down, "Our crop of wheat is abundant, and
+the harvest is over."
+
+According to the census of 1860, there were in Florida more than six
+hundred thousand cattle and swine, and more than five millions in Georgia
+and Alabama. These two States produced during the same year more than
+sixty million bushels of corn and thirteen million bushels of potatoes.
+(Vide Appendix.)
+
+
+XXII.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+As to the arrangement for the distribution of the food, there was but
+little attention paid to system. The prisoners were ordered to arrange
+themselves into squads of two hundred and ninety men, and these squads
+were then subdivided into three messes. None of these messes appear to
+have been properly supplied with utensils to receive and distribute their
+food. Every prisoner was obliged to take care of himself, and all around
+the area of the stockade may be seen at the present day remains of bent
+pieces of tinned iron, the rudely-fashioned little tub, and sections of
+the horns of cattle which the poor prisoners had worked up with their
+knives, and utilized for their necessities. Civilized men would never have
+resorted to these primitive, rough, and slovenly means, if they had been
+supplied with the ordinary utensils. At certain hours carts, laden with
+the corn bread and bacon, were driven into the enclosure, and the rations
+were distributed right and left. When soup was made, it was brought in
+pails, and the prisoners received it in their horn cups, wooden tubs, or
+as best they could. No drink was allowed but the water from the brook,
+whose ripples were like the river Lethe, for they contained the elements
+of oblivion and death.
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+It is evident to the writer that the quantity of food furnished to the
+prisoners was far from being adequate to support animal life, and from
+this deficiency alone he can explain to his satisfaction the enormous loss
+of life. The admirable experiments of Boussingault and the French
+academicians show how the increase of weight in the feeding of animals is
+in direct proportion to the amount of plastic constituents in the daily
+supply of food, and how positive is the law which regulates the animal
+economy. Again, we can form some idea of the positive effects of the
+horrible condition of the prison, and of the extremes of heat and moisture
+upon the feeble digestion and assimilation, by the experiments of Claude
+Bernard, who shows how these functions may be disturbed by external
+influences, and how agony even causes the disappearance of sugar in the
+hepatic organ, and how fear disturbs the glucogenic process. There is
+connected with inanition a singular tendency to decomposition and
+putridity, alike in the blood and viscera. The system left unnourished
+rapidly wastes, and its vitality soon lessens to a degree beyond recovery.
+This degree depends upon the forces in reserve, which belongs especially
+to youth; middle age is less liable to impressions, but when once
+affected, has less support from the system. The rapidity with which the
+dead decomposed immediately after death, astonished the observing surgeon.
+
+The prevailing diarrhoea and scorbutic condition were the results of the
+want of food and the combined influences of the bad air and water, and not
+the primary causes of the feebleness and death.
+
+The effect of the want of food first appears in loss of color--wasting
+away of the form, diminution of strength, vertigo, relaxation of the
+system of the viscera as well as of the muscles, diarrhoea appears, and
+rapidly closes the struggle of the natural forces for life.
+
+A few days, or a few weeks, according to the initial condition, is
+sufficient to test the tenacity of the powers of life. Death always takes
+place whenever the diminution of the total weight of the body reaches
+certain limits, which is from 40/100 to 50/100 of the usual weight. We
+observe this law to be quite positive and regular with the lower animals,
+with whom the effect of starvation has been well studied, and the limit of
+loss, compatible with life, found to be 40/100 for mammals and 50/100 for
+birds.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK FIFTH.
+
+    "Les H�pitaux. C'est ici que l'humanit� en pleurs accuse les forfaits
+    de l'ambition."
+
+
+I.
+
+The Hospital is the recognized type of mercy, in its broadest range of
+benevolence, tenderness, and compassion, all over the countries of the
+earth, wherever the noble sentiments of nature have force. It is one of
+the emblems of the great religion of civilization. It is coeval with
+Christ, for it appeared among the institutions of men in definite shape
+only after the establishment of Christianity; and to its true exalting
+effects upon the dispositions of men, the Christian religion owes in great
+measure its rapid progress among the barbarous and pagan nations of the
+earth.
+
+In earlier times public charity was rare or impulsive among the civil
+communities. It was only the suffering and disabled defenders of the
+general service who were cared for at the expense of the state, as at the
+Prytaneum among the Athenians, or the numerous asylums which munificent
+Rome erected to the brave men who carved out with their strong arms and
+their blades of steel the colossal forms of her glory and grandeur. The
+magnificent ruins of Italica, which sheltered the disabled veterans and
+heroes of Africanus, look down at the present day over the vast and
+fertile plains of the Guadalquivir, to reproach later and higher
+civilizations with neglect and ingratitude.
+
+
+II.
+
+But it is to the beneficent and sublime influences of Christianity that
+are to be attributed the noble institutions of the present day, where the
+suffering and infirm receive the attentions of science and the
+consolations of humanity.
+
+Never among civilized nations are they profaned for the purposes of
+cruelty, never defiled by murder under the mask of philanthropy.
+
+Enlightened communities vie with each other in self-sacrifice in the great
+and heroic labor of devotion to suffering mortality. It is the
+distinguishing degree of difference in their excellence, their refinement,
+their religion.
+
+It is the last thought and reflection of the dying man, who, in dividing
+his worldly material with charity and benevolence, hopes to be kindly
+remembered on earth. It is the first dawning idea of childhood, with its
+infant hands filled with roses and garlands of flowers to relieve the
+pains of human suffering, or adorn the pale features of the departed.
+
+To delight in human misery is the last degree of earthly degradation and
+perversity. The mockery of the agony of death belongs only to the fiends
+of hell and their baser imitators.
+
+
+III.
+
+Not until some time after the occupation of the prison did the care and
+condition of the sick attract the attention and excite the solicitude of
+the prison-keepers. Then a space was selected to the eastward, and almost
+adjoining the stockade, and here were pitched the decayed and dilapidated
+tents which were to form the hospital.
+
+The exact size of the space is not known, the boundaries having
+disappeared since the evacuation; but the tents were arranged, it is said,
+with some degree of regularity, and the collection was surrounded by a
+fence, which served only to obstruct the circulation of free air, which
+was of vital importance; and besides, the fence was of no service whatever
+as protection against the escape of the inmates, as they were before
+admission generally far too feeble to make even an effort.
+
+The actual amount of accommodation furnished is not known. By some it is
+stated that there were nothing whatever but a few rotten tent flies; by
+others, and among them one of the surgeons, it is narrated that there were
+tents to cover one thousand men, and three large kettles to provide for
+their cooking, and nothing more. Yet the records show that there were
+nearly four thousand men at one time in this hospital. This distribution
+of the means for the protection and sustenance of life is too terrible to
+be believed. Let us overlook it, for there is sufficient for execration
+elsewhere, without turning to the more revolting violation and desecration
+of one of the sanctuaries of civilization.
+
+Beneath these tent covers there was neither straw, nor mattresses, nor
+bunks: there was simply the bare earth, with no protection but what was
+afforded by the rotten canvas, the scanty clothing, the ragged blanket,
+which the hapless sufferer might possess. Many of the unfortunate men who
+perished here had neither shelter nor clothing. The rapacity of the
+captors had taken the remnants of the rags left by the fury of battle. For
+this want of shelter, and couches to protect and rest the weary limbs,
+there is no excuse, and there can be none; for in the adjoining forests
+there were immense quantities of timber accessible, and easy of conversion
+into manufacture, and the extremities of the boughs of the long-leaved or
+Southern pine afforded the means of making comfortable and healthy beds.
+
+There were then within the stockade many thousands of men accustomed to
+the use of the axe, the adze, the saw, and the plane, who would have in
+few days fashioned implements of steel out of the useless scraps of
+railway iron lying at the depot, and transformed the forest into vast,
+even magnificent buildings, replete with the comforts, the conveniences of
+advanced art. There were artisans here, of education and ingenuity, who
+could have formed out of the very dust of the place edifices as beautiful
+and wonderful to the imagination and understanding as the reality was
+repulsive and strange.
+
+
+IV.
+
+The guards furnished themselves with comfortable huts, arranged with the
+common conveniences, and their bunks were suspended above the contact of
+the treacherous ground. Their invalids were well cared for also in the
+large hospital which was erected expressly for the garrison, and which
+consisted of two large two-story wooden buildings, admirably arranged,
+with the conveniences proper to the service. The kitchen, the dispensary,
+the ventilation, and the general arrangement, showed that scientific care
+and forethought had been observed there.
+
+The hospital system of the rebels was quite complete, and most of their
+hospitals throughout the country were well constructed and equipped; and
+some of them were models of neatness, comfort, and scientific arrangement.
+
+The garrison hospital at Andersonville offers a terrible contrast to the
+open space, the wretched agglomeration, which the rebel authorities called
+a hospital for the prisoners.
+
+It is true that the commanding officers were compelled, from some unknown
+pressure,--whether the sense of shame, or dictate from Richmond,--to order
+and commence the erection, at a late date, of a new hospital stockade.
+This was to consist of a high palisade, about one thousand feet in length,
+with twenty-two open sheds erected in the interior; but it was never
+finished, nor occupied, and it remains to-day as it was left by the rude,
+black artisans, one of the evidences of either remorse or reluctant
+obedience to the lingering sense of natural compassion of its senseless
+and heartless rulers.
+
+
+V.
+
+In the organization of a hospital the most important parts are the system
+of nursing and the supply and cooking of food; when these are observed,
+much exposure to the elements can be endured.
+
+Pestilences are retarded, and sometimes completely checked, in their
+destructive career when opposed by generous alimentation and sympathetic
+care; and the vital powers,--the _vis medicatrix natur�_,--rally their
+mighty strength for renewed effort. We have for instance the great and
+marked change in the healthy condition and the mortality of the British
+army before Sebastopol in the spring of 1856, when England poured out
+lavishly her treasures, and sent men of scientific ability to correct the
+well-nigh fatal errors of hygiene which were committed by her military
+men.
+
+We have also another instance in the check of a devastating pestilence at
+New Orleans, as observed and mentioned by Dr. Cartwright. "As soon as a
+generous public diffused the comforts of life among the seventy thousand
+destitute emigrant population of New Orleans, last summer, the pestilence,
+which was sweeping into eternity three hundred a day, immediately began to
+disappear, before frost or any other change in the weather, its artificial
+fabric being broken down by the beneficent hand of the American people."
+
+
+VI.
+
+Here there appears to have been neither system, nor order, nor humanity.
+The chances of recovery were far less than the certainty of death. In
+reality, it was almost certain death; for only twenty-four out of the
+hundred who entered ever returned to the prison again. Those patients who
+possessed sufficient strength helped themselves to what was at hand, and
+what was afforded by the meagre dietary; those who had not, folded their
+arms and died.
+
+Medical men went through the formality of prescribing for the dying men,
+but with formul� whose ingredients were unknown to them.
+
+Some of these surgeons gloated over the distresses of their fellow-men,
+and delighted in the awful destruction of life which was branding with
+eternal infamy the manhood of their nation.
+
+Others turned and wept, for humanity was not extinct. Those tears have in
+part blotted out and redeemed the fearful inscriptions in that record of
+the events of life which form the history of the human race.
+
+It is not known that woman ever visited these precincts from feelings of
+compassion, and offered to console the last moments of the dying. We do
+know that they gazed upon the scene from a distance, but with what emotion
+history wisely makes no note.
+
+In Catholic countries we observe the hospitals attended by nuns, sisters
+of mercy and charity, all eager to labor in behalf of humanity. Besides
+these, the deaconesses of the Rhine and the beguines of Flanders have
+acquired an imperishable record in history for their philanthropic
+efforts. "There is nothing," says Voltaire, "nobler than the sight of
+delicate females sacrificing beauty, youth, often wealth and rank, to
+devote themselves to the relief of human miseries under the most revolting
+forms." We have seen in our own time, in the hospitals of the Federal
+armies, a devoted band of self-sacrificing women striving to perform
+their part in the great work of philanthropy. Here woman never appeared.
+There were, in reality, only the vivid impressions of horror, complaints,
+groans, delirium, and the agony of death.
+
+More than eight thousand of our men perished miserably in this neglected
+and iniquitous spot.
+
+Men were seen here in all stages of idiocy and imbecility from the effects
+of starvation. They were seen asking for bones to gnaw to relieve the
+pangs of hunger. Compassion never will believe that this request was made
+by dying mortals, and that too in a hospital, which is regarded among men
+as the holy institution of society, and even by infuriated combatants as
+the only sacred precinct on the brutal fields of war.
+
+The same wail of distress was heard on the plains of Texas, and along the
+military lines of Virginia.
+
+Thus the black flag, threatened by the rebel cabinet, was hoisted. Without
+the courage to proclaim their intentions openly and boldly upon the
+battle-field, they exhibited them in as sure, but different form, in the
+management of their prisons.
+
+
+VII.
+
+The stories relating to vaccination with poisonous matter are doubtless
+untrue. That there were disastrous effects from vaccination is probably
+correct, but they must have been the results of accident. Similar
+consequences have been observed in civil communities, in armies, and in
+hospitals. Serious results have been noticed by the writer in our own
+armies and hospitals.
+
+Vaccine matter is extremely liable to decomposition; and when heated, even
+by the warmth of the body, fermentation arises, and by catalytic action
+putrefaction results, forming a positive poison. That the directors of
+this hospital should resort to such means for the destruction of human
+life is not at all probable, for the process required labor: and besides,
+the wretched invalids died with sufficient rapidity without the
+intervention of this new art of malice.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+In all military hospitals, food is to be regarded as the principal
+medicament. With good food, the results of surgery may be foretold with
+tolerable certainty, and the obstructions to the medical treatment lessen
+greatly or disappear. Without the aid of pure, healthful, life-giving
+aliment, the duration of animal life is always brief when exposed to
+vicious and hostile influences.
+
+The ration used here, or the system of dietary, was not constant; neither
+do we know sufficiently well the quantity, or quality, or variety, to form
+a true and candid estimate of its value in sustaining the physical
+strength, or repairing the waste and metamorphose of the organs and
+tissues of the system.
+
+We know, however, that it was supposed to be bacon, flour, and corn
+bread--rarely fresh meat; and vegetables were almost unknown. The only
+vegetables and delicacies were either obtained in exchange, at exorbitant
+rates, for the little currency which the prisoners had managed to secrete
+among their rags, or they were now and then introduced stealthily by a
+few of the humane surgeons at the peril of their lives. Persons whose
+systems are weakened by want of proper food, by exhaustion from excessive
+labor, or exposure, or disease, require a great variety of articles from
+which to select the substances which a depraved but instinctive palate
+often craves. Food which would disgust the healthy appetite, will not
+quicken into action the debilitated and flickering sensation of taste.
+During an enfeebled condition, loathsome morsels become injurious; for
+digestion is clearly at the command of the mind, and is often checked by
+its caprices.
+
+
+IX.
+
+The effect of gentle care and kindly sympathy is more felt, more marked in
+the military hospitals, than in the civil. Home is farther away, and the
+sense of loneliness which all invalids experience is far more oppressive.
+Here it is that woman's influence is the strongest, and her sweet
+disposition, her friendly, compassionate smile, seems to prolong life, and
+put to flight the advancing shadows of death. "It is not medicine," says
+Charles Lamb; "it is not broth and coarse meats served up at stated hours
+with all the hard formality of a prison; it is not the scanty dole of a
+bed to lie on which a dying man requires from his species. Looks,
+attentions, consolations, in a word, sympathies, are what a man most needs
+in this awful close of human sufferings. A kind look, a smile, a drop of
+cold water to a parched lip--for these things a man shall bless you in
+death."
+
+With soldiers, these little attentions have great effect; partly from the
+law of contrast with the roughness of their every-day occupations and
+life, and partly from the rarity of such influences. And finally, when
+grim Death appears, there is with them a singular philosophy, calmness,
+and resignation. The writer has observed this upon many battle-fields, and
+in the hospitals far removed. Rarely do we hear lamentations, regrets, and
+shrieks for help: the conscious man folds his arms, and resigns himself to
+his inward thoughts, thinking, perhaps, of
+
+  "His native hills that rise in happier climes,
+  The grot that heard his song of other times,
+  His cottage home, his bark of slender sail,
+  His glassy lake, and broomwood blossomed vale."
+
+
+X.
+
+The forms of disease observed here were simple, and they seldom exhibited
+positive indications, or, rather, the immediate effects and influences of
+malaria. Neither of the four great pestilential diseases
+appeared--cholera, yellow fever, plague, or remittent fever.
+
+The diseases treated, or noted down rather upon the hospital register,
+were generally the different forms of inanition, or of exhaustion of the
+powers of life by the absorption of noxious vapors, or by the exposure
+when in feeble condition to the extremes of heat and moisture.
+
+The mortality among the patients removed to this place was perfectly
+appalling. Nearly eight hundred men out of every thousand perished. Yet
+this might have been foretold from the horrible condition, the
+pre-arranged destitution of the hospital. Besides carefully selected
+food, pure and dry air is indispensable for the recovery of a diseased
+condition, and damp and vitiated air is sure to retard improvement, or to
+induce complications.
+
+Neither food nor healthy atmosphere were afforded.
+
+The symptoms of the patients indicated the want of food, and were not in
+reality the signs of actual disease. And the post-mortems made at this
+hospital revealed the absence of lesion, save those consequent upon
+starvation or prolonged suffering.
+
+The minutes of this clinic are very extensive and particular, and they
+exhibit in overwhelming proof the cause of death.
+
+Life was prolonged to the last degree of the natural vitality, and among
+the phenomena observed, the law of muscular irritability, as discovered
+and explained by Brown-Sequard, was well illustrated. There was no
+cadaveric rigidity; for the want of nutrition, the vitiated atmosphere,
+the exposure to the vicissitudes of climate, had weakened and utterly
+destroyed all nervous power. Immediately after the cessations of the
+functions of life, putrefaction appeared and progressed with great
+rapidity.
+
+
+XI.
+
+In discussing the rate of mortality of this hospital, we cannot with
+propriety assume a standard for comparison, for nowhere can we turn to
+analyze results from similar causes. We may, perhaps, take the data and
+statistics of our own military prisons, but the contrasts are too fearful
+for credulity. We will consider these at length, with other comparisons,
+in the next Book.
+
+"The truth is in the facts, and not in the spirit that judges them."
+
+
+XII.
+
+The want of system cannot be charged to the fault of the organization of
+the rebel Bureau of Medicine, for that was well arranged and strictly
+governed.
+
+It may partly be ascribed to the general carelessness of the officers in
+charge, and partly to the desire of the rulers that the numbers of
+prisoners should decrease, and consequently their labors should diminish,
+no matter how, nor how quickly.
+
+That there were men in charge of the patients who were destitute of all
+moral scruples, of all refined and humane sentiments, there can be no
+doubt, but there were a few men who did not partake of the general madness
+of the spirit of destruction, and who exhibited a tender regard for the
+sufferings of their fellow-men. The names of Thornberg and Head will
+always be preserved as among the only few redeeming acts in the story of
+the great wrong. The sympathy of these men was undisguised, and when
+protest failed to produce kindly impressions, or to bring alleviation to
+misery, they secretly sought to succor the dying men from their own scanty
+store at the peril of their lives.
+
+Dr. Head was not only threatened with death by the brutal Wirz, but he was
+actually imprisoned for a short time for giving to the dying some
+vegetables which he had gathered from his little garden. "Sire," said the
+noble Surgeon Larry to Napoleon, "it is my avocation to prolong life, and
+not to destroy it."
+
+Let no man attempt to recall the scenes that took place in this wretched
+enclosure, which was falsely called a hospital; let no man attempt to lift
+the veil of darkness which now obscures the acts or the animus which
+governed and directed this mockery of philanthropy, for the human mind
+already staggers under the load of horror which is imposed by the events
+of every-day life, and advanced civilization has no desire to renew the
+recollection of the atrocities of the dark ages.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SIXTH.
+
+    "To die, is the common lot of humanity. In the grave, the only
+    distinction lies between those who leave no trace behind and the
+    heroic spirits who transmit their names to posterity."--_Tacitus._
+
+
+I.
+
+It is always difficult to determine the natural duration of life, or the
+death-rate for any locality or any class of people, since the range of
+circumstances that affect the health of men and animals is so vast, that
+it requires great research, powers of analysis and comparison; so
+extensive a knowledge of the phenomena and the laws of life, that few men
+have the courage to attack, or the ability to comprehend and solve the
+complex problem.
+
+In our estimations we must consider what is due to the agencies of the
+natural world, such as geology, meteorology, and the like, as well as to
+age, constitution, temperament, anterior professions, and morbid
+predispositions, also the exaltation and demoralization of moral action.
+
+"We see," says Buffon, "that man perishes at all ages, while animals
+appear to pass through the period of life with firm and steady pace." The
+great naturalist shows how the passions, with their attendant evils,
+exercise great influence upon the health, and derange the principles
+which sustain us; how often men lead a nervous and contentious life, and
+that most of them die of disappointment. Buffon is right, and the English
+statistics show us that the duration of life is generally in proportion to
+its happiness and regularity, and that miserable lives are soon
+extinguished.
+
+Hope sometimes forsakes the stoutest hearts, and with hope disappears the
+mainspring of earthly life.
+
+
+II.
+
+In deciding upon the causes of the excessive mortality at Andersonville,
+there is not much obscurity to contend with. But we must admit that there
+must have been some mortality, for there is a determined duration of life
+for every species of animal; and we must also allow that under the most
+favorable circumstances, the death-rate of soldiers encamped in this
+unhealthy locality would have been far beyond the normal limit.
+
+From calculations based upon the most accurate and extensive observations
+made in England for a long series of years, it was determined that a
+mortality of less than two per cent. per annum for all ages might be
+assumed as a fair average rate of deaths in a population where sanitary
+measures were properly attended to.
+
+It is noticed by eminent observers, that the mean rate for Europe is about
+three per cent.; which is regarded as excessive, being about double of
+what is estimated as the natural ratio.
+
+Our distinguished statistician, Dr. Edward Jarvis, remarks that the
+mortality of two per cent. in England includes all ages--infancy as well
+as the last decades of life; and he states that the proper rates for
+comparison are those of the males in England of the military age, which is
+observed to be less than one per cent.
+
+He shows that the death-rate of the soldier in England is less than one
+per cent., and also considers the stated mortality of three per cent. for
+the continent of Europe as much too high. The mortality on the continent
+is greater than in England, and greater in England than in Scotland.
+
+In times of peace, the mortality of soldiers is not much greater than that
+of the civil laborers; but during campaigns no limit can properly be
+given, for the vicissitudes are so rapid, and the exposures so varied,
+that the chances of life and death cannot be estimated with fairness, or
+with any degree of certainty. But when encampments are arranged, and
+occupied for any considerable length of time, the possibilities and
+probabilities of health may then be considered with propriety.
+
+
+III.
+
+These chances and these causes of general mortality depend upon the
+atmospheric influences, the mephitism of the soil, the density of the
+population, and the excellence of the food and shelter, as well as upon
+the natural vigor and strength of the individual.
+
+Some classes of human beings have greater tenacity of life than others,
+but all are affected by vicious influences, and yield sooner or later to
+the elements of destruction. "Everything in the animal economy is
+regulated by fixed and positive laws."
+
+"We live on our forces," says Galen: "as long as our forces are sound, we
+can resist everything; when they become weak, a trifle injures us." The
+truth of this remark is well illustrated in the life of the soldier, whose
+health is in exact ratio to the condition in which he is placed. And his
+mode of existence, the combined influence of food, exposure, and the
+training of mind and body, give a peculiar character, which requires, when
+disabled, special modification of treatment, and a particular kind of
+experience. The ancient physiologists distinguished two kinds, or rather
+two provisions of strength--the forces in reserve and the forces in use;
+or, as they said, "Vires in posse et vires in actu;" or, as Barthez
+describes it, the radical forces and the acting forces.
+
+The young soldier, supported by this buoyancy of the unknown force of
+life, recovers from terrible shocks and disasters to his system, while the
+old man, fatigued and exhausted by the great and protracted labors of
+active campaigns, feels that he has the hidden resources--the reserved and
+superabundant powers of youth--no longer.
+
+
+IV.
+
+"The atmospheric influences, the mephitism of the soil, and the inhabited
+locality, are the three principal conditions of the causes of general
+mortality," says Pringle.
+
+He should have added food; for diet, of all external causes, affects the
+condition of the human race more than any other. Those who have observed
+the mortality curve follow the harvests in Ireland and Germany, and
+noticed how strangely the number of the dead corresponded to the
+scantiness of food, and those who have experimented with the feeding of
+domesticated animals, will agree with me on this point.
+
+Let us review these three great principles of destruction, as laid down by
+the distinguished European authority, and apply them in the explanations
+of the mortality at Andersonville.
+
+
+V.
+
+It has been observed by medical men, from the time of Hippocrates down to
+the present day, that the effects of a heated atmosphere, saturated with
+moisture, are very injurious, and exceedingly prolific of disease.
+
+Air at 32� of Fahrenheit, according to Leslie, contains, when saturated
+with moisture, 1/160 of its weight of water; at 59�, 1/80; at 86�, 1/40;
+at 113�, 1/20; its capacity for moisture being doubled by each increase of
+27� of Fahrenheit.
+
+The degree of heat within the stockade sometimes rose to beyond 110�
+Fahrenheit, and the degree of humidity was correspondingly as great. That
+moisture exerts more influence in the production of disease than any other
+meteorological condition, is well observed in every-day life. M. Bossi
+found, in his investigations, that the extreme and constant humidity of
+the atmosphere affected the barometer of health very markedly, and he
+established the following ratio of mortality for the different regions:
+The ratio for mountains and elevated regions he observed to be one in
+thirty-eight; on the banks of rivers, one in twenty-six; on the level
+plains, sown with grain, one in twenty-four, and in parts interspersed
+with pools and marshes, one in twenty.
+
+
+VI.
+
+The influence and value of pure and healthy air may be seen in the
+simplest physiological observations.
+
+Animal life is fed and sustained by respiration, as well as vegetable
+life. It is from the blood that animal life derives the materials and
+forces which maintain it, and we have seen how this owes its vivifying
+properties, in a great measure, to the oxygen which it receives from the
+respiratory organs, and how its power is in direct ratio to the purity of
+the air breathed. A vitiated atmosphere manifests itself at once in the
+nutritive powers of the vital stream; and the more feeble the respiration,
+the less rich the blood. This "oxygen enters by the lungs into the blood,
+and with the blood flows on and circulates through the body; it also
+enters partly into the composition of the tissues, so that it is a real
+food, and it is as necessary to the construction of the human body as the
+other forms of food which are usually introduced into the stomach."
+
+The weight of oxygen, says Professor Johnston, taken up by the lungs,
+exceeds considerably that of all the dry, solid food which is introduced
+into the stomach of a healthy man.
+
+Man consumes one hundred gallons of air every hour, ordinarily with
+eighteen respirations per minute, and two hundred and six cubic feet of
+air is the minimum for the preservation of health. The minimum allowed to
+the English hospitals by artificial ventilation is twenty-two hundred
+cubic feet the hour. The patients of St. Guy's receive four thousand cubic
+feet of fresh air every hour. The quantity required by the sick is
+enormous, to compensate the products of respiration, and all the
+deleterious evaporations of the locality where they are placed, and all
+other effluvia of diverse natures. In the Hospital Lariboissaire, at
+Paris, where about fifteen hundred cubic feet of air are furnished by
+machinery every hour, a taint is perceptible in the atmosphere: and Morin,
+in his experiments at Hospital Beaujon, thought that two thousand cubic
+feet were hardly sufficient. Dr. Sutherland believes four thousand feet to
+be necessary. The quantity, however, is nothing compared to quality. The
+quality is of the highest importance. The air must contain the vivifying
+properties of its normal constitution, or it loses force, and death must
+ensue. The source of animal heat is in the mutual chemical action of the
+oxygen and the constituents of the blood conveyed by the circulation. When
+the atmosphere is impure the oxidating processes are much diminished. We
+receive into our lungs about one hundred gallons of air per hour, and from
+this we absorb about five gallons of oxygen, or about one twentieth of the
+volume of air inspired.
+
+"The essential and fundamental condition of all respiration is the
+reciprocal action of the nourishing fluid, and a medium containing
+oxygen." Dumas believes that oxygen is necessary to the conservation of
+the vitality and proper structure of the globules of the blood; also that
+the integrity of these organisms is one of the essential conditions to the
+arterialization of the nourishing stream.
+
+Milne Edwards, also, maintains that the great absorbing powers of the
+blood exist in the globules. The normal number of these globules is one
+hundred and twenty-seven out of the thousand component parts of the blood;
+but they vary according to the barometer of health; sometimes they are
+observed in disease to descend to sixty-five. Vierodt has shown how a
+certain limit in the number of blood globules in the mammalia cannot be
+passed in the descending scale without death taking place. Simon and
+others have also shown how a careful and nutritious regimen may increase
+these globules in the blood of the consumptive, bringing them up from
+sixty-four to even one hundred and forty-four.
+
+The blood of man is the richest of all the mammalia, and it contains,
+according to Berzelius, three times as many hydrochlorates as the blood of
+the ox.
+
+Its richness depends upon the species and individual, and also upon the
+degree of health, it varying according to the condition of the person.
+
+"A diseased pathological condition causes a diminution in the proportion
+of active principles of the nourishing fluid, and especially in fibrine,
+of which the abundance is allied to the most important activity of the
+vital work in some parts of the organism." "The blood," says Dr. Jones,
+"is not only distributed by innumerable channels through every recess of
+the body; the blood is not only the source of all the elements of
+structure; the blood not only furnishes the materials for all the
+secretions and excretions, and for all the chemical changes,--but the
+blood is in turn affected by the physical and chemical changes of every
+vessel, of every nerve, of every organ and texture of the body. It is
+evident then that the constitution of the blood will depend upon the food,
+upon the vigor and perfection of the organs of digestion, respiration,
+circulation, secretion, and excretion; upon the vigor and perfection of
+the nervous system, and of all the organs and apparatus; and upon the
+correlation of the physical, vital, and nervous forces. The character of
+the blood will then vary with the animal; with the organ and tissue
+through which it is circulating; with the age, sex, temperament, race,
+diet, previous habits, occupation, and previous diseases; with the soil
+and climate; and with the relative states of the activity of the forces."
+
+
+VII.
+
+Thus it appears how important is the function of respiration, and how
+vital the necessity for pure air.
+
+Pure dry air contains about 21 gallons of oxygen, and 79 gallons of
+nitrogen out of 100, and about one gallon of carbonic acid out of 2500.
+Man will consume, on the average of 20 respirations a minute, or 1200
+respirations the hour, about 20 pounds of air, and give off 2-1/2 pounds
+or more of carbonic acid, besides half a pound of watery vapor, per diem,
+or, according to Andral and Gavaret, 22 quarts of carbonic acid per hour.
+We have shown in the chapter on Alimentation how this process of
+respiration affects the nutrition, and how serious the results of its
+disturbance. The purer the air, the more perfect the type of men and
+animals. This was understood by the ancients, and they established their
+most famous schools for gladiatorial training at Capua and Ravenna.
+
+The same law is observed at the present day by the admirers of the
+race-horse. The purity of the air gives purity to the blood, and the blood
+builds up the system in like proportion of excellence.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Fifteen hundred cubic inches, or twenty-two quarts, of carbonic acid are
+expired from the lungs every hour, and thrown off into the surrounding
+atmosphere. Besides this, Sequin found that 18 grains of organized matter
+were thrown off per minute from the body in the form of insensible
+perspiration,--7 grains by the lungs, and 11 grains by the skin. Hence we
+may form some idea of the rapid corruption of the air in this stockade,
+where 30,000 men were breathing at one time. The foul and heavy vapors
+could not rise above the palisades unless a strong breeze prevailed; and
+even then they became so offensive as almost to extinguish life, like the
+deadly air of the Grotta del Cane. The exhalations from putrescent animal
+surfaces are always specifically heavier than the upper warm strata in the
+confined spaces where men are crowded together, such as the wards of
+hospitals. We find, according to Professor Graham, the vitiated air to be
+composed somewhat as follows: Phosphoretted hydrogen, sulphuretted
+hydrogen, carbonic acid, carburetted hydrogen, cyanogen with its
+compounds. The first gas is always recognized where the diseases of the
+internal organs are present, especially affections of the liver, stomach,
+bowels, and in fever and dysentery; and we observe the blackening of the
+lead plaster, &c., when the second is present. Stupor, headache, and
+sleepiness betray the presence of the other three gases. The diffusion of
+each gas is always inversely as the square root of the density of such
+gases.
+
+The density is thus, air being regarded as 1000:--
+
+  Phosphuretted hydrogen,              1240
+  Sulphuretted     "                   1170
+  Carburetted      "                    559
+  Carbonic acid,                       1524
+  Cyanogen,                            1806
+
+
+IX.
+
+The report of the British Parliament Commission gives the following data
+in this important question: "The amount of carbonic acid in the air is
+about 1/2000 or .0005; the amount expired is about 1/12, or .083. Respired
+air contains 1/10 or 1 of carbonic acid, and this must be diluted ten
+times to make the air safe. Thus, 1/10 � 10/1 = 1/100, or .01; and this
+again divided by 10, or 1/100 � 10/1 = 1/1000 or .001, gives the amount of
+ventilation needed to reduce the air to that state of purity that only
+1/1000 more of carbonic acid should be added to the air, when it would be
+represented by .0015 instead of .0005."
+
+Observing this rule, and taking 300 cubic feet as the air respired for the
+24 hours, to dilute it ten times it must be mixed with ten times the bulk,
+or 3000 cubic feet--the space to be allowed for each individual; but if it
+is wished to keep up a pure air, it must be mixed with ten times this bulk
+again, or 30,000 cubic feet, which shows the ventilation needed to
+maintain an atmosphere nearly pure; or there must be admitted into the
+space of 3000 cubic feet nearly 21 cubic feet per minute of fresh air by
+ventilation, if the man in it is to breathe an atmosphere which shall
+contain only three times more of carbonic acid than the air he breathes
+originally contained; or again, 300 cubic feet, 3000, and 30,000, mark the
+requirements of one individual, in 24 hours, for respiration, space, and
+ventilation. On a calm day, when there were no strong breezes to change
+the air of the stockade, the entire quantity of air in the old stockade,
+allowing the palisades to be on the average 20 feet high, could be
+exhausted in 20 minutes by the 30,000 men respiring 300 cubic inches per
+minute. This is not a proper estimate to offer; but it will give a just
+idea of the rapid and fearful vitiation of the air that took place within
+the enclosure.
+
+Vierodt shows how rapidly carbonic acid increases when foul air is
+breathed, and Lehman proves the rapid disengagement of the gas in moist
+atmospheres.
+
+Symptoms of uneasiness manifest themselves when the air contains from
+6/1000 to 7/1000 carbonic acid, and when the proportion amounts to ten
+parts to 100 of air, death ensues. "This effect is visible upon vegetables
+also, and many of them are extremely susceptible of impurities in the air,
+and very slight modifications in the proportion of its constituents are
+more or less prejudicial to their growth." But plants, like animals, vary
+in regard to the delicacy of their constitutions, some being much more
+susceptible than others.
+
+In warm climes the respiration becomes slower, and in consequence there
+is less of carbon burned and less oxygen absorbed; but on the other hand
+the functions of the skin become vastly increased, the bilious secretions
+become more active, and the excess of carbon is eliminated by this
+channel.
+
+That we expire more carbonic acid in a warm, moist atmosphere, and less in
+a cold, dry climate, is shown by the exhilaration of our spirits on a fine
+frosty morning.
+
+No wonder that men lost their reason in this prison, for the blood no
+longer reddened from the imperfect arterialization, and burdened the brain
+with its effete matter, paralyzing and clogging up the delicate filaments
+and the narrow channels of thought and life.
+
+We have seen that the blood is subject to incessant variations in its
+precise chemical constitution; a free atmosphere, well supplied,
+oxygenates and destroys the numerous impurities that tend to lurk in the
+system and develop disease.
+
+Bichat shows, in his researches on life and death, how the black and
+carbonized blood disturbs the functions of the brain and acts like a
+narcotic poison, causing the heart finally to cease its throbbings.
+
+These miasms and poisons floated about the enclosure where there was not
+the least sign of vegetable organism to absorb and convert them. As they
+passed into the systems of the prisoners they became the cause of disease,
+decrepitude, and death.
+
+
+X.
+
+Vitiated air is one of the most subtile and powerful of poisons, and it
+seems to affect soldiers more than any other class of persons, and its
+consequences have been commented upon by most of the military
+writers,--from Xenophon among the Greeks, Vegetius among the Romans, down
+to those of the present time. Cavalry horses have been observed to suffer
+deterioration and death from the same cause.
+
+Ague and fever, states Dr. Johnson, "two of the most prominent features of
+the malarious influences, are as a drop of water in the ocean when
+compared with the other, but less obtrusive, but more dangerous maladies
+that silently disorganize the vital structure of the human fabric under
+the influence of this deleterious and invisible poison."
+
+One fourth of the sailors of the English navy are sent home invalided
+every year, and one tenth of them die from the effects of foul air of
+their cabins. "Two thirds of the pulmonary diseases which desolate England
+are induced by this cause." Baudelocque long ago pointed out its
+influences in the etiology of scrofula.
+
+It is really the same influence observed by Magendie, and not contradicted
+to the present day, that putrid blood, brain, bile, or pus, when laid on
+flesh wounds, produce in animals, after a longer or shorter interval,
+vomiting, languor, and death. The same results and phenomena are observed
+in the inspiration of bad air; the most terrible forms of fever arise from
+the overcrowding of people in confined and limited spaces. Most of the
+zymotic diseases enter by the lungs, which are the principal absorbing
+agents.
+
+The breathing in of foul air, loaded with perceptible and putrid animal
+and vegetable emanations, gives rise to those zymotici, the ideas of which
+originated with Hippocrates, and to which the distinguished Liebig has
+since given form and prominence.
+
+Not only is animal life disturbed and destroyed, but we observe that
+vegetables even are affected by the same or similar causes; that they are
+extremely susceptible of impurities in the air, and that the rapidity and
+vigorous appearance of their growth are affected whenever there is very
+slight modification in the healthy proportions of the atmosphere. Again,
+we see how seeds, when placed in elementary oxygen, germinate with extreme
+rapidity, and soon decay, thus indicating how the presence of nitrogen in
+the natural air restrains the force of the other element.
+
+
+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, and sometimes 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 2-1/2 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 were improved, 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 month out of 36,000
+prisoners, 1/36. At Elmira it was 386 per month, out of 9500, or 1/25 of
+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 diarrhoea and dysentery, and
+only seventy deaths from fever. It appears from the official data of the
+Surgeon-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
+manoeuvres 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 diarrhoea and scurvy, and
+that three thousand more died from dysentery and unknown causes. Two
+hundred and fifteen thousand cases of diarrhoea 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 diarrhoea 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 was
+neither 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 diarrhoea, 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 diarrhoea 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, raged unchecked. 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 is MURDER: 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.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SEVENTH.
+
+    "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 an enemy'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, and dictated 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 the right 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 "divine _l�se
+majest�_." "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.,
+that Tiberius 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 sustenance
+or 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 contrary it 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 the captor'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 so limited 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 was _controlled 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. Seddon declined 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 of
+pantaloons, 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:--
+
+    JOINT RESOLUTION, advising Retaliation for the Cruel Treatment of
+    Prisoners by the Insurgents.
+
+    _Whereas_, It has come to the knowledge of Congress that great numbers
+    of our soldiers, who have fallen as prisoners of war into the hands
+    of the insurgents, have been subjected to treatment unexampled for
+    cruelty in the history of civilized war, and finding its parallels
+    only in the conduct of savage tribes; a treatment resulting in the
+    death of multitudes by the slow but designed process of starvation,
+    and by mortal diseases occasioned by insufficient and unhealthy food,
+    by wanton exposure of their persons to the inclemency of the weather,
+    and by deliberate assassination of unoffending men; and the murder, in
+    cold blood, of prisoners after surrender; and, whereas a continuance
+    of these barbarities, in contempt of the laws of war, and in disregard
+    of the remonstrances of the national authorities, has presented to us
+    the alternative of suffering our brave soldiers thus to be destroyed,
+    or to apply the principle of retaliation for their protection:
+    Therefore,
+
+    _Resolved_, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
+    States of America, in Congress assembled, That, in the judgment of
+    Congress, it has become justifiable and necessary that the President
+    should, in order to prevent the continuance and recurrence of such
+    barbarities, and to insure the observance by the insurgents of the
+    laws of civilized war, resort at once to measures of retaliation.
+    That, in our opinion, such retaliation ought to be inflicted upon the
+    insurgent officers now in our hands, or hereafter to fall into our
+    hands, as prisoners; that such officers ought to be subjected to like
+    treatment practised towards our officers or soldiers in the hands of
+    the insurgents, in respect to quantity and quality of food, clothing,
+    fuel, medicine, medical attendance, personal exposure, or other mode
+    of dealing with them; that, with a view to the same ends, the
+    insurgent prisoners in our hands ought to be placed under the control
+    and in the keeping of officers and men who have themselves been
+    prisoners in the hands of the insurgents, and have thus acquired a
+    knowledge of their mode of treating Union prisoners; that explicit
+    instructions ought to be given to the forces having the charge of such
+    insurgent prisoners, requiring them to carry out strictly and promptly
+    the principles of this resolution in every case, until the President,
+    having received satisfactory information of the abandonment by the
+    insurgents of such barbarous practices, shall revoke or modify said
+    instructions. Congress do not, however, intend by this resolution to
+    limit or restrict the power of the President to the modes or
+    principles of retaliation herein mentioned, but only to advise a
+    resort to them as demanded by the occasion.
+
+Mr. Sumner offered the following Resolutions as a substitute for the
+Resolution of the Committee:--
+
+    _Resolved_, That retaliation is harsh always, even in the simplest
+    cases, and is permissible only where, in the first place, it may
+    reasonably be expected to effect its object, and where, in the second
+    place, it is consistent with the usages of civilized society; and
+    that, in the absence of these essential conditions, it is a useless
+    barbarism, having no other end than vengeance, which is forbidden
+    alike to nations and to men.
+
+    _Resolved_, That the treatment of our officers and soldiers in rebel
+    prisons is cruel, savage, and heart-rending beyond all precedent; that
+    it is shocking to morals; that it is an offence against human nature
+    itself; that it adds new guilt to the great crime of the rebellion,
+    and constitutes an example from which history will turn with sorrow
+    and disgust.
+
+    _Resolved_, That any attempted imitation of rebel barbarism in the
+    treatment of prisoners would be plainly impracticable, on account of
+    its inconsistency with the prevailing sentiments of humanity among us;
+    that it would be injurious at home, for it would barbarize the whole
+    community; that it would be utterly useless, for it could not affect
+    the cruel authors of the revolting conduct which we seek to overcome;
+    that it would be immoral, inasmuch as it proceeded from vengeance
+    alone; that it could have no other result than to degrade the national
+    character and the national name, and to bring down upon our country
+    the reprobation of history; and that, being thus impracticable,
+    useless, immoral, and degrading, it must be rejected as a measure of
+    retaliation, precisely as the barbarism of roasting or eating
+    prisoners is always rejected by civilized powers.
+
+    _Resolved_, That the United States, filled with grief and sympathy for
+    cherished citizens, who, as officers and soldiers, have become the
+    victims of Heaven-defying outrage, hereby declare their solemn
+    determination to put an end to this great iniquity by putting an end
+    to the rebellion of which it is the natural fruit; that to secure this
+    humane and righteous consummation, they pledge anew their best
+    energies and all the resources of the whole people, and they call upon
+    all to bear witness that, in this necessary warfare with barbarism,
+    they renounce all vengeance and every evil example, and plant
+    themselves firmly on the sacred landmarks of Christian civilization,
+    under the protection of that God who is present with every prisoner,
+    and enables heroic souls to suffer for their country.
+
+
+XV.
+
+The pathetic letter, which was composed by the suffering and dying men at
+Andersonville, and addressed to the President in August, 1864, and
+forwarded by the prisoners who were sent to Charleston, led to renewed
+efforts on the part of the United States government; but no notice was
+taken by the rebel authorities of the plea in behalf of humanity. The
+following letter is said to be the one sent to the President:--
+
+    _The Memorial of the Union Prisoners confined at Andersonville,
+    Georgia, to the President of the United States._
+
+    CONFEDERATE STATES PRISON,
+    CHARLESTON, S. C., Aug., 1864.
+
+    TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
+
+    The condition of the enlisted men belonging to the Union armies, now
+    prisoners to the Confederate rebel forces, is such that it becomes our
+    duty, and the duty of every commissioned officer, to make known the
+    facts in the case to the government of the United States, and to use
+    every honorable effort to secure a general exchange of prisoners,
+    thereby relieving thousands of our comrades from the horror now
+    surrounding them.
+
+    For some time past there has been a concentration of prisoners from
+    all parts of the rebel territory to the State of Georgia--the
+    commissioned officers being confined at Macon, and the enlisted men at
+    Andersonville.
+
+    Recent movements of the Union armies under General Sherman have
+    compelled the removal of prisoners to other points, and it is now
+    understood that they will be removed to Savannah, Georgia, and
+    Columbus and Charleston, South Carolina. But no change of this kind
+    holds out any prospect of relief to our poor men. Indeed, as the
+    localities selected are far more unhealthy, there must be an increase
+    rather than a diminution of suffering.
+
+    Colonel Hill, provost-marshal general Confederate States army, at
+    Atlanta, stated to one of the undersigned that there were thirty-five
+    thousand prisoners at Andersonville, and by all accounts from the
+    United States soldiers who have been confined there, the number is not
+    overstated by him. These thirty-five thousand are confined in a field
+    of some thirty acres, enclosed by a board fence, heavily guarded.
+    About one third have various kinds of indifferent shelter, but upwards
+    of thirty thousand are wholly without shelter, or even shade of any
+    kind, and are exposed to the storms and rains which are of almost
+    daily occurrence, the cold dews of the night, and the more terrible
+    effects of the sun striking with almost tropical fierceness upon their
+    unprotected heads. This mass of men jostle and crowd each other up and
+    down the limits of their enclosure in storms or sun, and others lie
+    down upon the pitiless earth at night with no other covering than the
+    clothing upon their backs, few of them having even a blanket.
+
+    Upon entering the prison every man is deliberately stripped of money
+    and other property, and as no clothing or blankets are ever supplied
+    to their prisoners by the rebel authorities, the condition of the
+    apparel of the soldiers, just from an active campaign, can be easily
+    imagined. Thousands are without pants or coats, and hundreds without
+    even a pair of drawers to cover their nakedness.
+
+    To these men, as indeed to all prisoners, there are issued three
+    quarters of a pound of bread or meal, and one eighth of a pound of
+    meat, per day. This is the entire ration, and upon it the prisoner
+    must live or die. The meal is often unsifted and sour, and the meat
+    such as in the North is consigned to the soap-maker. Such are the
+    rations upon which Union soldiers are fed by the rebel authorities,
+    and by which they are barely holding on to life. But to starvation,
+    and exposure to sun and storm, add the sickness which prevails to a
+    most alarming and terrible extent. On an average, one hundred die
+    daily. It is impossible that any Union soldiers should know all the
+    facts pertaining to this terrible mortality, as they are not paraded
+    by the rebel authorities. Such statement as the following, made by
+    ---- ----, speaks eloquent testimony. Said he, "Of twelve of us who
+    were captured, six died, four are in the hospital, and I never expect
+    to see them again. There are but two of us left."
+
+    In 1862, at Montgomery, Alabama, under far more favorable
+    circumstances, the prisoners being protected by sheds, from one
+    hundred and fifty to two hundred were sick from diarrhoea and chills
+    out of seven hundred. The same percentage would give seven thousand
+    sick at Andersonville.
+
+    It needs no comment, no efforts at word-painting, to make such a
+    picture stand out boldly in most horrible colors.
+
+    Nor is this all. Among the ill-fated of the many who have suffered
+    amputation in consequence of injuries received before capture, sent
+    from rebel hospitals before their wounds were healed, there are
+    eloquent witnesses of the barbarities of which they are victims. If to
+    these facts is added this, that nothing more demoralizes soldiers and
+    develops the evil passions of man than starvation, the terrible
+    condition of Union prisoners at Andersonville can be readily imagined.
+    They are fast losing hope and becoming utterly reckless of life.
+
+    Numbers, crazed by their sufferings, wander about in a state of
+    idiocy; others deliberately cross the "dead line," and are
+    remorselessly shot down.
+
+    In behalf of these men we most earnestly appeal to the President of
+    the United States. Few of them have been captured, except in the front
+    of battle, in the deadly encounter, and only when overpowered by
+    numbers. They constitute as gallant a portion of our armies as carry
+    our banners anywhere. If released, they would soon return to again do
+    vigorous battle for our cause. We are told that the only obstacle in
+    the way of exchange is the status of enlisted negroes captured from
+    our armies, the United States claiming that the cartel covers all who
+    serve under its flag, and the Confederate States refusing to consider
+    the colored soldiers, heretofore slaves, as prisoners of war.
+
+    We beg leave to suggest some facts bearing upon the question of
+    exchange, which we would urge upon this consideration. Is it not
+    consistent with the national honor, without waiving the claim that the
+    negro soldiers shall be treated as prisoners of war, to effect an
+    exchange of the white soldiers? The two classes are treated
+    differently by the enemy. The whites are confined in such prisons as
+    Libby and Andersonville, starved and treated with a barbarism unknown
+    to civilized nations. The blacks, on the contrary, are seldom
+    imprisoned. They are distributed among the citizens, or employed on
+    government works. Under these circumstances they receive enough to
+    eat, and are worked no harder than they have been accustomed to be.
+    They are neither starved nor killed off by the pestilence in the
+    dungeons of Richmond and Charleston. It is true they are again made
+    slaves; but their slavery is freedom and happiness compared with the
+    cruel existence imposed upon our gallant men. They are not bereft of
+    hope, as are the white soldiers, dying by piecemeal. Their chances of
+    escape are tenfold greater than those of the white soldiers, and their
+    condition, in all its lights, is tolerable in comparison with that of
+    the prisoners of war now languishing in the dens and pens of
+    secession.
+
+    While, therefore, believing the claims of our government, in matters
+    of exchange, to be just, we are profoundly impressed with the
+    conviction that the circumstances of the two classes of soldiers are
+    so widely different that the government can honorably consent to an
+    exchange, waiving for a time the established principle justly claimed
+    to be applicable in the case. Let thirty-five thousand suffering,
+    starving, and enlisted men aid this appeal. By prompt and decided
+    action in their behalf, thirty-five thousand heroes will be made
+    happy. For the eighteen hundred commissioned officers now prisoners we
+    urge nothing. Although desirous of returning to our duty, we can bear
+    imprisonment with more fortitude if the enlisted men, whose sufferings
+    we know to be intolerable, were restored to liberty and life.
+
+
+XVI.
+
+The threatening manoeuvres of Sherman alone caused the rebel authorities
+to diminish the number of inmates of this stockade, and thereby lessen the
+dangers of recapture, and remove the temptation to the United States
+authorities to make an effort for their rescue. It has been stated that
+the rebels were anxious to exchange prisoners, man for man, and that the
+obstructions were caused by the Federal authorities, and that Mr. Stanton,
+in particular, was responsible for the stoppage of exchange and the
+consequent death of so many thousands of our fellow-citizens detained in
+the rebel prisons.
+
+General Hitchcock, the United States commissioner of exchange, however,
+denies most emphatically that Mr. Stanton was any way responsible for the
+refusal to make exchanges, man for man, officer for officer, according to
+grade, and he makes the following statement: "At no instance within my
+knowledge did Mr. Stanton refuse to acquiesce in any proposition looking
+to that result. There is not in my office, nor have I ever seen such a
+proposition from a rebel commissioner or the rebel authorities. Nor have I
+any reason to believe that any such proposition was ever made by Judge
+Ould, or any of his superiors, except in a letter from Judge Ould
+addressed to Major Mulford, which fell into the hands of Major-General
+Butler. This is true, emphatically, as a protection against the
+accusations levelled at Mr. Stanton. * * * * * Mr. Stanton has not only
+been willing, but anxious to make exchanges referred to, as I have
+abundant means of showing by indisputable documents, the aim and purpose
+of Judge Ould was to draw from us all of the rebel prisoners held in
+exchange for white troops of the United States held as prisoners in the
+South, persistently refusing to exchange colored troops to a very late
+date; when, to carry a special purpose, he receded so far as to agree to
+exchange free colored men, leaving the general principle where it was on
+his side against the just claims of a large body of colored prisoners held
+in the South."
+
+
+XVII.
+
+The following letter from General Butler to the rebel commissioner of
+exchange will throw some light upon the subject, and give an idea as to
+whom the blame of non-exchange and non-intercourse belongs:--
+
+    _Letter of Major-General Butler, United States Commissioner of
+    Exchange, to Colonel Ould, the Confederate Commissioner._
+
+    HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF VIRGINIA AND NORTH}
+    CAROLINA, IN THE FIELD, AUGUST, 1864.        }
+
+    HON. ROBERT OULD, _Commissioner of Exchange_.
+
+    SIR: Your note to Major Mulford, assistant agent of exchange, under
+    date of 10th August, has been referred to me.
+
+    You therein state that Major Mulford has several times proposed "to
+    exchange prisoners respectively held by the two belligerents--officer
+    for officer, and man for man," and that "the offer has also been made
+    by other officials having charge of matters connected with the
+    exchange of prisoners," and that "this proposal has been heretofore
+    declined by the Confederate authorities." That you now "consent to the
+    above proposition, and agree to deliver to you (Major Mulford) the
+    prisoners held in captivity by the Confederate authorities, provided
+    you agree to deliver an equal number of officers and men. As equal
+    numbers are delivered from time to time they will be declared
+    exchanged. This proposal is made with the understanding that the
+    officers and men on both sides who have been longest in captivity will
+    be first delivered, where it is practicable."
+
+    From a slight ambiguity in your phraseology, but more perhaps from the
+    antecedent action of your authorities, and because of your acceptance
+    of it, I am in doubt whether you have stated the proposition with
+    entire accuracy.
+
+    It is true, a proposition was made both by Major Mulford and myself,
+    as agent of exchange, to exchange all prisoners of war taken by either
+    belligerent party, man for man, officer for officer, of equal rank, or
+    their equivalents. It was made by me as early as the first of the
+    winter of 1863-4, and has not been accepted. In May last I forwarded
+    to you a note, desiring to know whether the Confederate authorities
+    intended to treat colored soldiers of the United States army as
+    prisoners of war. To that inquiry no answer has yet been made. To
+    avoid all possible misapprehension or mistake hereafter as to your
+    offer now, will you now say whether you mean by "prisoners held in
+    captivity" colored men, duly enrolled, and mustered into the service
+    of the United States, who have been captured by the Confederate
+    forces; and if your authorities are willing to exchange all soldiers
+    so mustered into the United States army, whether colored or otherwise,
+    and the officers commanding them, man for man, officer for officer?
+
+    At the interview which was held between yourself and the agent of
+    exchange on the part of the United States at Fortress Monroe, in March
+    last, you will do me the favor to remember the principal discussion
+    turned upon this very point; you, on behalf of the Confederate
+    government, claiming the right to hold all negroes who had heretofore
+    been slaves, and not emancipated by their masters, enrolled and
+    mustered into the service of the United States, when captured by your
+    forces, not as prisoners of war, but upon capture to be turned over to
+    their supposed masters or claimants, whoever they might be, to be held
+    by them as slaves.
+
+    By the advertisements in your newspapers, calling upon masters to come
+    forward and claim these men so captured, I suppose that your
+    authorities still adhere to that claim--that is to say, that whenever
+    a colored soldier of the United States is captured by you, upon whom
+    any claim can be made by any person residing within the States now in
+    insurrection, such soldier is not to be treated as a prisoner of war,
+    but is to be turned over to his supposed owner or claimant, and put at
+    such labor or service as that owner or claimant may choose, and the
+    officers in command of such soldiers, in the language of a supposed
+    act of the Confederate States, are to be turned over to the governors
+    of States, upon requisitions, for the purpose of being punished by the
+    laws of such States for acts done in war in the armies of the United
+    States.
+
+    You must be aware that there is still a proclamation by Jefferson
+    Davis, claiming to be chief executive of the Confederate States,
+    declaring in substance that all officers of colored troops mustered
+    into the service of the United States were not to be treated as
+    prisoners of war, but were to be turned over for punishment to the
+    governors of States.
+
+    I am reciting these public acts from memory, and will be pardoned for
+    not giving the exact words, although I believe I do not vary the
+    substance and effect.
+
+    These declarations on the part of those whom you represent yet remain
+    unrepealed, unannulled, unrevoked, and must therefore be still
+    supposed to be authoritative.
+
+    By your acceptance of our proposition, is the government of the United
+    States to understand that these several claims, enactments, and
+    proclaimed declarations are to be given up, set aside, revoked, and
+    held for nought by the Confederate authorities, and that you are ready
+    and willing to exchange, man for man, those colored soldiers of the
+    United States, duly mustered and enrolled as such, who have heretofore
+    been claimed as slaves by the Confederate States, as well as white
+    soldiers?
+
+    If this be so, and you are so willing to exchange these colored men
+    claimed as slaves, and you will so officially inform the government of
+    the United States, then, as I am instructed, a principal difficulty in
+    effecting exchanges will be removed.
+
+    As I informed you personally, in my judgment it is neither consistent
+    with the policy, dignity, or honor of the United States, upon any
+    consideration, to allow those who, by our laws solemnly enacted, are
+    made soldiers of the Union, and who have been duly enlisted, enrolled,
+    and mustered as such soldiers, who have borne arms in behalf of this
+    country, and who have been captured while fighting in vindication of
+    the rights of that country, not to be treated as prisoners of war, and
+    remain unchanged and in the service of those who claim them as
+    masters; and I cannot believe that the government of the United States
+    will ever be found to consent to so gross a wrong.
+
+    Pardon me if I misunderstand you in supposing that your acceptance of
+    our proposition does not in good faith mean to include all the
+    soldiers of the Union, and that you still intend, if your acceptance
+    is agreed to, to hold the colored soldiers of the Union unexchanged,
+    and at labor or service, because I am informed that very lately,
+    almost contemporaneously with this offer on your part to exchange
+    prisoners, and which seems to include _all_ prisoners of war, the
+    Confederate authorities have made a declaration that the negroes
+    heretofore held to service by owners in the States of Delaware,
+    Maryland, and Missouri are to be treated as prisoners of war, when
+    captured in arms in the service of the United States.
+
+    Such declaration that a part of the colored soldiers of the United
+    States were to be prisoners of war, would seem most strongly to imply
+    that others were not to be so treated, or, in other words, that the
+    colored men from the insurrectionary States are to be held to labor
+    and returned to their masters, if captured by the Confederate forces
+    while duly enrolled and mustered into and actually in the armies of
+    the United States.
+
+    In the view which the government of the United States takes of the
+    claim made by you to the persons and services of these negroes, it is
+    not to be supported upon any principle of national and municipal law.
+
+    Looking upon these men only as property upon your theory of property
+    in them, we do not see how this claim can be made, certainly not how
+    it can be yielded. It is believed to be a well-settled rule of public
+    international law, and a custom and part of the laws of war, that the
+    capture of movable property vests the title to that property in the
+    captor, and therefore where one belligerent gets into full possession
+    property belonging to the subjects or citizens of the other
+    belligerent, the owner of that property is at once divested of his
+    title, which rests in the belligerent government capturing and holding
+    such possessions. Upon this rule of international law all civilized
+    nations have acted, and by it both belligerents have dealt with all
+    property, save slaves, taken from each other during the present war.
+
+    If the Confederate forces capture a number of horses from the United
+    States, the animals are claimed to be, and, as we understand it,
+    become the property of the Confederate authorities.
+
+    If the United States capture any movable property in the rebellion, by
+    our regulations and laws, in conformity with international law and the
+    laws of war, such property is turned over to our government as its
+    property. Therefore, if we obtain possession of that species of
+    property known to the laws of the insurrectionary States as slaves,
+    why should there be any doubt that that property, like any other,
+    vests in the United States?
+
+    If the property in the slave does so vest, then the _jus disponendi_,
+    the right of disposing of that property, vests in the United States.
+
+    Now, the United States have disposed of the property which they have
+    acquired by capture in slaves taken by them, i.e., by emancipating
+    them, and declaring them free forever; so that, if we have not
+    mistaken the principles of international law and the laws of war, we
+    have no slaves in the armies of the United States. All are free men,
+    being made so in such manner as we have chosen to dispose of our
+    property in them which we acquired by capture.
+
+    Slaves being captured by us, and the right of property in them thereby
+    vested in us, that right of property has been disposed of by us by
+    manumitting them, as has already been the acknowledged right of the
+    owner to do to his slave. The manner in which we dispose of our
+    property while it is in our possession certainly cannot be questioned
+    by you. Nor is the case altered if the property is not actually
+    captured in battle, but comes either voluntarily or involuntarily from
+    the belligerent owner into the possession of the other belligerent.
+
+    I take it no one would doubt the right of the United States to a drove
+    of Confederate mules or a herd of Confederate cattle which should
+    wander or rush across the Confederate lines into the lines of the
+    United States army. So it seems to me, treating the negro as property
+    merely, if that piece of property passes the Confederate lines, and
+    comes into the lines of the United States, that property is as much
+    lost to its owner in the Confederate States as would be the mule or
+    ox, the property of the resident of the Confederate States, which
+    should fall into our hands.
+
+    If, therefore, the privilege of international law and the laws of war
+    used in this discussion are correctly stated, then it would seem that
+    the deduction logically flows therefrom in natural sequence, that the
+    Confederate States can have no claim upon the negro soldiers captured
+    by them from the armies of the United States because of the former
+    ownership of them by their citizens or subjects, and only claim such
+    as result, under the laws of war, from their captor merely.
+
+    Do the Confederate authorities claim the right to reduce to a state of
+    slavery free men, prisoners of war captured by them? This claim our
+    fathers fought against under Bainbridge and Decatur, when set up by
+    the Barbary Powers on the northern shore of Africa, about the year
+    1800,--and in 1864 their children will hardly yield it upon their own
+    soil.
+
+    This point I will not pursue further, because I understand you to
+    repudiate the idea that you will reduce free men to slaves because of
+    capture in war, and that you base the claim of the Confederate
+    authorities to re-enslave our negro soldiers, when captured by you,
+    upon the _jus postliminii_, or that principle of the law of nations
+    which inhabilitates the former owner with his property taken by an
+    enemy when such property is recovered by the forces of his own
+    country. Or, in other words, you claim that, by the laws of nations
+    and of war, when property of the subjects of one belligerent power,
+    captured by the forces of the other belligerent, is recaptured by the
+    armies of the former owner, then such property is to be restored to
+    its prior possessor, as if it had never been captured; and, therefore,
+    under this principle, your authorities propose to restore to their
+    masters the slaves which heretofore belonged to them which you may
+    capture from us.
+
+    But this postliminary right under which you claim to act, as
+    understood and defined by all writers on national law, is applicable
+    simply to _immovable property_, and that, too, only after complete
+    resubjugation of that portion of the country in which the property is
+    situated, upon which this right fastens itself. By the laws and
+    customs of war, this right has never been applied to _movable_
+    property. True it is, I believe, that the Romans attempted to apply it
+    to the case of slaves; but for two thousand years no other nation has
+    attempted to set up this right as ground for treating slaves
+    differently from other property.
+
+    But the Romans even refused to re-enslave men captured from opposing
+    belligerents in a civil war, such as ours unhappily is.
+
+    Consistently, then, with any principle of the law of nations, treating
+    slaves as property merely, it would seem to be impossible for the
+    government of the United States to permit the negroes in their ranks
+    to be re-enslaved when captured, or treated otherwise than as
+    prisoners of war.
+
+    I have forborne, sir, in this discussion, to argue the question upon
+    any other or different ground of right than those adopted by your
+    authorities in claiming the negro as property, because I understand
+    that your fabric of opposition to the government of the United States
+    has the right of property in man as its corner-stone. Of course, it
+    would not be profitable in settling a question of exchange of
+    prisoners of war to attempt to argue the question of abandonment of
+    the very corner-stone of their attempted political edifice. Therefore
+    I have admitted all the considerations which should apply to the negro
+    soldier as a man, and dealt with him upon the Confederate theory of
+    property only.
+
+    I unite with you most cordially, sir, in desiring a speedy settlement
+    of all these questions, in view of the great suffering endured by our
+    prisoners in the hands of your authorities, of which you so feelingly
+    speak. Let me ask, in view of that suffering, why you have delayed
+    eight months to answer a proposition which by now accepting you admit
+    to be right, just, and humane, allowing that suffering to continue so
+    long? One cannot help thinking, even at the risk of being deemed
+    uncharitable, that the benevolent sympathies of the Confederate
+    authorities have been lately stirred by the depleted condition of
+    their armies, and a desire to get into the field, to affect the
+    present campaign, the hale, hearty, and well-fed prisoners held by the
+    United States in exchange for the half-starved, sick, emaciated, and
+    unserviceable soldiers of the United States now languishing in your
+    prisons. The events of this war, if we did not know it before, have
+    taught us that it is not the northern people alone who know how to
+    drive sharp bargains.
+
+    The wrongs, indignities, and privations suffered by our soldiers would
+    move me to consent to anything to procure their exchange, except to
+    barter away the honor and faith of the government of the United
+    States, which has been so solemnly pledged to the colored soldiers in
+    its ranks.
+
+    Consistently with national faith and justice we cannot relinquish this
+    position. With your authorities it is a question of property merely.
+    It seems to address itself to you in this form: Will you suffer your
+    soldier, captured in fighting your battles, to be in confinement for
+    months rather than release him by giving for him that which you call a
+    piece of property, and which we are willing to accept as a man?
+
+    You certainly appear to place less value upon your soldier than you do
+    upon your negro. I assure you, much as we of the North are accused of
+    loving property, our citizens would have no difficulty in yielding up
+    any piece of property they have in exchange for one of their brothers
+    or sons languishing in your prisons. Certainly there could be no doubt
+    that they would do so, were that piece of property less in value than
+    five thousand dollars in Confederate money, which is believed to be
+    the price of an able-bodied negro in the insurrectionary States.
+
+    Trusting that I may receive such a reply to the questions propounded
+    in this note as will tend to a speedy resumption of the negotiations
+    in a full exchange of all prisoners, and a delivery of them to their
+    respective authorities,
+
+      I have the honor to be,
+          Very respectfully,
+              Your obedient servant,
+                  BENJAMIN F. BUTLER,
+
+    _Major-General and Commissioner of Exchange_.
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+The wretched "material" exchanged for healthy rebel soldiers called forth
+a note of joy from the rebel commissioner, Ould. The exchanged Federal
+soldiers were half-naked, "living skeletons," covered with filth and
+vermin; and nearly all of them were unfit for service or labor, and most
+of them physically ruined for the remainder of their lives. The
+flag-of-truce boats of the different parties presented terrible contrasts.
+On the one were to be seen feeble, emaciated, ragged, filthy, and dying
+men from the rebel prisons; whilst on the other were the rebels returning
+from our prisons, well clad in our uniforms, strong and healthy from the
+abundance of food. We returned men who had been well treated, and who were
+then ready to take the field again; whilst we received in turn abused and
+decrepit soldiers, who were so much reduced and weakened that few,
+comparatively, ever again returned to service. Along the entire line of
+prison stockades, from Belle Isle in Virginia to Prison Tyler in Texas,
+the same story is told of fiendish cruelty.
+
+More than thirty thousand of our soldiers have undoubtedly perished
+during, or in consequence of the barbarities of their prison life in the
+South. To ascertain the precise number will be a difficult task, for many
+of the returned prisoners have died since they have left the service; but
+when we consider the number of prisons, and the long period of occupation,
+we think that the estimate of thirty thousand is not too high.
+
+
+XIX.
+
+When General Stoneman made his attempt to rescue the prisoners, Winder
+issued the order No. 13, which stamps the brute with infamy beyond
+redemption. In this order, which has been preserved, Winder commanded the
+officers in charge of the artillery to open their batteries, loaded with
+grape-shot, as soon as the Federals approached within seven miles, and to
+continue the slaughter until every prisoner was exterminated. Similar
+threats were made all along the line of the prison stockades in North
+Carolina and in Virginia. "Was the prison mined," said Colonel Farnsworth
+to Turner, the jailer of Libby Prison, "when General Kilpatrick approached
+Richmond to attempt to rescue the prisoners?" "Yes," was the brutal reply;
+"and I would have blown you all to Hades before I would have suffered you
+to be rescued." Twelve hundred men blown into atoms at one explosion!
+Thirty thousand men to be torn into shreds by the iron bullets of the
+cannon! Contrast the orders of these chivalric men with that of Aboukere,
+the chief of a reputed barbarous horde of Bedouins of the desert:--
+
+"Warriors of Islam! attend a moment, and listen well to the precepts which
+I am about to promulge to you for observation in times of war. Fight with
+bravery and loyalty. Never use artifice or perfidy towards your enemies.
+Do not mutilate the fallen. Do not slay the aged, nor the children, nor
+the women. You will find upon your route men living in solitude, in
+meditation, in the adoration of God: do them no injury, give them no
+offence."
+
+In which are the evidences the most positive of a fraternal religion and
+an advanced civilization?
+
+
+XX.
+
+Even women and young girls came from distances to view the spectacle. They
+climbed the parapets of the earthworks, and gloated and made merry over
+the scene of suffering. They threw crusts of bread over the palisades to
+see the starving wretches struggle for the morsel of life.
+
+They even reviled the condition of the dying. This surpasses the ferocity,
+the depravity, the wickedness of gladiatorial times. "The fury of women
+when once excited," says the French historian, "soon rises to profanation
+and excess." When the love of humanity vanishes from our breasts, it is
+the death of nature.
+
+There were, however, a few noble exceptions to those strange acts of
+delight in cruelty; and the deeds of kindness of a few women in other
+parts of the South shine with increased brilliancy from the terrible
+contrast.
+
+
+XXI.
+
+Several of the papers of the South openly and unhesitatingly approved of
+the methods of their prison depletion, and gloated over the fearful
+destitution and mortality.
+
+The Macon "Telegraph and Confederate," only the day before the surrender
+of the city to the Federal forces, justified the atrocities at
+Andersonville; and the Richmond "Examiner" exclaimed, "Let the Yankee
+prisoners be put where the cold weather and scant fare will thin them out
+in accordance with the laws of nature." There were, however, noble
+exceptions to the general exhibition of ferocity; and several officers of
+the rebel army did declare that the condition of affairs at Andersonville
+was a "reproach to them as a nation."
+
+The author, who served for five years in the Federal armies of Virginia,
+of the South, and the South-west, and whose opportunities for observation
+and inquiry were extensive, does not believe General Lee to be implicated
+in these outrages. It is true that Lee might have openly and boldly
+protested against the barbarities, and gained thereby the admiration and
+the blessing of mankind; but he knew full well that the remonstrance would
+have fallen upon the cold ear of the implacable executive with no more
+effect and weight than when the snow-flake falls upon the Alps.
+
+The Virginian struggled to hold his own against the selfish and jealous
+ambition of the remorseless Mississippian.
+
+To have participated in the revolting cabal of cruelty, there was required
+the baseness of political intrigue, and to this depth the soldier never
+sank.
+
+
+XXII.
+
+To charge an entire people with barbarity, because its rulers sanction
+crime, and a vile and venal press applaud the motives and the deeds,
+should not be maintained without long deliberation. "History has the right
+of suspecting without evidence, but never of accusing without proof." The
+rank and file of the rebel army were drawn from the classes of poor
+whites, who were essentially rural in their populations, and who possessed
+some trace of the morals and the natural sentiments of generosity that
+belong to people who cultivate the earth. Although their instincts were
+modified by the contact of slave labor, they never sank so low in the
+social scale--to that level of the vile populace of the Roman or medieval
+times, when the crimes of the emperors were applauded. These men on the
+battle-field exhibited feelings of humanity; and it was only under the
+direction of their leaders that they became unkind and ferocious.
+
+It was the leaders who were responsible for the crimes of the sedition;
+and what of humanity could be expected from men degenerated in blood? What
+of noble intelligence could be looked for from mental faculties long since
+degraded? What evidence of a Christian spirit could be hoped for from men
+who had openly perverted or denied all the divine precepts, upon which
+revolve the well-being of the human race? "If we had triumphed," says one
+of its apostles, at this late day of forgiveness and repentance--"if we
+had triumphed, I should have favored stripping them naked. Pardon! They
+might have appealed for pardon, but I would have seen them damned before I
+would have granted it!"
+
+When Suwarrow forced his way by the sword into the heart of Poland,
+dividing the realm, devastating the land, and destroying multitudes of
+people, he offered blasphemous thanks to Heaven for victories obtained
+over men fighting in the sacred cause of liberty, and for all the human
+heart holds dear.
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+To judge correctly of the magnitudes of these immolations, these crimes,
+history must wait for a calmer period, when prejudice shall have relaxed
+its hold upon the understanding, and when time shall have rolled up its
+accumulated materials of accusation and denial, of proof and exoneration.
+At present we can form some idea of their designs, and the degree of the
+implacability of their souls, from the evidence already placed before us,
+as we measure inaccessible heights by the awful shadows which they
+project.
+
+Pity appears to have been with them only a vain, fleeting emotion, if the
+soul was disturbed at all; and whenever an act of humanity was displayed,
+there seems to have been the secret motive of gain at work. In defining
+the natural sentiments of pity, they would have declared them the
+illusions of the imagination.
+
+The brutalizing scenes of Slavery had modified and affected their natural
+feelings, as the gladiatorial combats and exposures of the Christians to
+the attacks of infuriated wild beasts had inspired the vile populace of
+Rome with the love of blood and cruelty.
+
+When these men, with sonorous rhetoric, proclaimed themselves as the
+guiding minds of the republic, the patrons, the judges of the correct
+ideas and principles of civilization,--when they arrogated to themselves
+the appearance of the wisdom of Laced�mon with the politeness of
+Athens,--they forgot or despised those cardinal virtues of society,
+"justice and truth--these are the first duties of man; humanity,
+country--these his first affections."
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+"I fear," writes the rebel War Clerk, observing from his secure position
+in the war office, "I fear this government in future times will be
+denounced as a cabal of bandits and outlaws, making and executing the most
+despotic decrees."
+
+Whether this system of the reduction of prisoners was devised by the
+executive, or his immediate advisers, time may reveal. But of this we may
+remain positive, that the crime belongs to that little faction of
+Breckinridge Democrats who ruled the Confederacy as they pleased, and of
+which Davis was the recognized leader. Wirz was only the De Vargas and
+Winder the Alva of the arranged system. Neither is there any doubt that
+the power of affording relief was clearly within the control of the
+executive. This power was not withheld from want of audacity, for the man
+who dared place in power, in spite of remonstrance, men who jeopardized
+the existence of the Confederacy, and who openly disgraced its honor,
+certainly had sufficient courage to perform a common act of humanity, and
+relieve the sufferings of tortured prisoners, if such had been his
+inclination.
+
+No; there was a system, and "systems are brutal forces." "What are your
+laws and theories," said Danton, brutally, to Gensonn�, "when the only law
+is to triumph, and the sole theory for the nation is the theory of
+existence."--"Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you
+extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great
+pillars of morality. This, too, we find confirmed by matter of fact. How
+many hopeful heirs-apparent to grand empires, when in possession of them,
+have become such monsters of lust and cruelty as are a reproach to human
+nature!"--"Ambition brings to men dissimulation, perfidy, the art of
+feigning the language and sentiments which lay at the bottom of the heart;
+of measuring their hate and their friendship only by their interests and
+circumstances; and above all, the perfidious science of composing their
+features, rather than correct and govern their principles."
+
+The wills of bad men are their laws, and brute strength their logic.
+
+
+XXV.
+
+It is only distance in time that separates and distinguishes the Caligulas
+of history, the early, medieval, and present periods. History exhibits the
+first as the undisguised monster of atrocity. The last, overshadowed by
+the mantle of the law, stands but partially revealed.
+
+To the perverted imaginations of the first the senate presented no force
+of resistance. To the petulant asperity, the abuse of power of the last,
+the doubtful liberties of the people imposed certain restrictions, which
+led to the resort of narrow and malignant minds--secrecy and concealment.
+
+Nature had not cast him in the mould of those statesmen who sacrifice all
+personal feelings for the public good, and who willingly yield up their
+lives to advance the noble work of true civilization. Obstinacy with him
+was firmness; cunning, depth; resistance to humane feelings, resolution.
+Envy, hatred, murmurs, were braved with inflexible determination when
+pursuing his plans of favoritism, or defending his tools of oppression
+and cruelty against the voice of nature and outraged liberty.
+
+There are some men who appear to be destined for the instruction of the
+world, as the abettors and satellites of despotism, who cannot or who do
+not recognize the difference between interest or conscience; who desire to
+debase mankind, that they may appear above the common level of humanity,
+conscious of their incapability of lifting themselves up by virtue and by
+nobility of action.
+
+This man was the incarnation of the spirit of Slavery; he could have
+exclaimed, with Barnave, "Perish the colonies rather than a principle."
+This man was, for the time being, the entire incorporation of the
+sedition--its principles, its passions, its impulses, its cruelties.
+
+"There are abysses which we dare not sound, and characters we desire not
+to fathom, for fear of finding in them too great darkness, too much
+horror."
+
+This man, so calm, so dignified, so wise in his exterior, could not find
+sufficient generosity in his soul, although the representative of five
+millions of men, to say to these armies of suffering prisoners, * * *
+_indignus C�saris ir�_--unworthy of the anger of C�sar.
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+What have the wretches to offer in atonement for these outrages upon
+nature, these violations of the spirit and majesty of the law, from which
+they now claim protection?
+
+Will the blood of these living monsters expiate the martyrdom of the host
+of dead heroes? No!
+
+Will it give ease or bring congratulation to the broken and aching hearts
+who yet revere the memory of the thirty thousand victims? Never!
+
+The divine spirit of liberty would protest against the defilement of her
+sacred altars with the foul blood of such filthy and depraved sacrifices.
+
+Let the gates of the prison open, and these men stand forth to the full
+gaze of offended mankind, assassins and murderers as they are.
+
+Vengeance does not belong to the human race.
+
+There are times in the history of men when human invectives are without
+force. "There are deeds of which no men are judges, and which mount,
+without appeal, direct to the tribunal of God."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK EIGHTH.
+
+
+I.
+
+Certain branches of the human family present physical peculiarities and
+aptitudes for certain climates which others do not. The one thrives and
+arrives at perfection, whilst the other languishes and dies.
+
+Floras and Faunas have well-defined limits of latitude, beyond which they
+decline and become extinct, and in some countries we observe certain
+limitations as to longitudes. "There are tropical trees that become shrubs
+in our zone, and the flowers of our meadows have their types in the
+tapering trunks of other climes."
+
+How rapidly the beautiful varieties of domestic animals deteriorate and
+disappear when removed from the localities and conditions in which they
+attained their excellence. The handsome Swiss cattle when carried to the
+plains of Lombardy, and the remarkable varieties of the English herds when
+removed to Central France, quickly lose their characteristics of form and
+superiority. Under the tropics the sheep loses its silken fleece, and the
+noble qualities of the dog greatly change.
+
+Even the insect world changes greatly in every twelve degrees of latitude,
+and an alteration, almost total, appears in double the space.
+
+The influence of climate and locality, which exercises so positive a power
+in the vegetable kingdom and animal reign, affects man likewise, and would
+be as distinctly marked were it not resisted by the forces of the
+intelligence. We find under certain parallels of latitude more energy of
+mind and greater activity of body than at others; we observe this more
+distinctly with particular races or varieties than with others, thus
+indicating that all have not the same aptitudes: again, through a
+combination of organic and social laws, types adapted to certain pursuits
+spring up in every civilized country, these types distinct from either
+varieties or species. We also see the sharp characteristics of races, when
+migrating, become less distinct, and mixtures increase, and the inferior
+races disappear, like "the elementary language or the primitive forms of
+the social state."
+
+The observed limit of range of the Hindoo and the African, in the Old
+World, is not beyond 30� of the equator, and in a lower latitude than 36�
+the European colonies have never prospered, never succeeded, in their
+attempts for empire. Where now are the countless hosts of Romans, Gauls,
+and Vandals that have occupied Northern Africa in past times? The
+ethnologist of to-day cannot discover a feature, hardly a trace even, of
+the language of the conquerors remaining among the present tribes of
+occupation. Even the Roman has vanished, and the only vestige of the
+Carthaginian and Numidian is shown by the scattered and diminished
+Bergers. These varieties contended with the climate, and were gradually
+absorbed by the stronger native tribes.
+
+The Mongols once held Central Europe, the Goths ruled Italy. Where are
+they? There is no longer Vandalic blood in Africa or Gothic blood in
+Italy.
+
+In later times the strong, the fierce and dauntless Northmen held the
+Sicilies, and as the incorruptible Varingar guarded and upheld with their
+fearless swords the waning empire of the effeminate Greeks at the
+Dardanelles. Where are they and their descendants? The only traces are
+seen among the tombstones at Palermo, or in the Runic inscriptions which
+they sacrilegiously sculptured with their long blades of steel upon the
+flanks of the marble lion of the Pir�us.
+
+
+II.
+
+In the year 1600 hardly a European family could be found along the
+headlands and indentations of the coast which form the southern limit of
+the Slave States of America.
+
+Since that time the countless multitudes of the red men who inhabited the
+forests of these lands have disappeared, and other races from an older
+world and other climes have taken their places, increasing in numbers with
+as great rapidity as the other declined.
+
+We have seen here the swarthy sons of Nubia, under the fostering care of
+Slavery, or under the mysterious and unexplained influences of climate,
+increase with such rapidity, that the ratio for the last decade (previous
+to the war), if continued for a century, would give a black population of
+more than forty millions. Strange spectacle in the movement of races!
+
+Here we see, almost during the memory of living men, a distinct race
+disappear, and a new nation of totally opposite character rise up, as if
+by magic, in their vanishing footsteps. How prophetic was the speech of
+the Indian chief to his tribe, when he beheld with dismay the steady
+progress of the white men who lived upon the cereals! "I say, then,"
+exclaimed the red man, "to every one who hears me, before the trees above
+our heads shall have died of age, before the maples of the valley cease to
+yield us sugar, the race of the sowers of corn will have extirpated the
+race of flesh-eaters."
+
+
+III.
+
+This rate of increase observed among the blacks of our Slave States is not
+seen among the population of the West India Islands, where singular
+oscillations are exhibited, and the statistics of the past two centuries
+have inclined two of the most eminent European statisticians to assert
+that in a century the negro will nearly have disappeared from these
+islands.
+
+Observations at Martinique and Guadaloupe certainly warrant the inference.
+In Cuba the blacks decreased four or five thousand during the period of
+1804 to 1817.
+
+This decrease or stand-still in the progress of the race in these regions
+may have been caused by conditions, moral or physical, wholly within the
+control of man.
+
+There are animals who will not propagate and continue their species whilst
+in a state of servitude, and it is reasonable to believe that the same
+moral causes affect the condition of enslaved mankind. Naturalists have
+shown how the evils of Slavery degrade animals, and Buffon has pointed
+out the deep and conspicuous impressions it has made upon the camel.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Since the discovery and forcible entrance of the golden Empire of Mexico,
+and the display of her marvellous mineral treasures by the bold Cortez and
+his companions, we have seen a constant stream of the Spaniards and the
+affiliated nations of the Latin race pouring across the Atlantic to the
+new worlds which were given to the house of Castile and Leon by the
+sublime genius of the Genoese, following the stars and the traditions of
+the Northmen.
+
+Wealth and the baseless fabrics of martial glory were the alluring objects
+of this migrating column of men.
+
+"Hast thou gold?" exclaimed they to the Mexican princes. "I and my
+companions have a malady which is only cured by gold."
+
+After these four centuries of occupation of the elevated plains and
+table-lands of Mexico, where the mean temperature does not exceed 77�
+Fahrenheit, and where the mildness of climate, the wealth of a wonderful,
+prolific nature, excite the ambition and the cupidity of men; and after
+the long efforts at colonization, in which the parent country was almost
+exhausted by the drain of her best blood,--Spain finds that the
+predictions of Dr. Knox are rapidly being realized, and that only 600,000
+Europeans and their hybrid descendants, and but 8000 Spaniards of pure
+blood, can be found of all the numberless hosts that have embarked for
+these lands. Spain halts, and reflects upon this report of her scientific
+commission, which shows a decrease of one half since the estimate of
+Humboldt, in 1793; whilst France, always blind to reason whenever the
+eagles of glory desire to expand their wings, persists in her useless
+occupation of Algeria, where Gaul has again and again vainly endeavored to
+rear her colonies in times past; and she now attempts to unfurl her
+standards and establish her institutions on those Mexican shores where the
+blood and energy of a stronger and better adapted people have been
+expended in vain. Idle effort! The elements of nature are stronger than
+the will of men; neither do they give way to the desires or attacks of
+human ambition.
+
+There are geographical boundaries which races cannot pass in pursuit of
+wealth or the dreams of ambition. A single generation will not determine
+the law of expansion and decay.
+
+
+V.
+
+In this connection it will be proper to glance over the past, among those
+phenomena which men have observed, and those laws which the Creator has
+thus far revealed to us for guidance in the procession of races or the
+march of intellect.
+
+In the mysteries of the material world everything is governed by fixed and
+positive laws. Not a flower appears in the field to gladden the hearts of
+men but what rises up with invariable structure, and blooms at definite
+periods. Not a sparrow falls to the earth but in accordance with Nature's
+law. Not a star shines in the firmament but in unison with the great and
+illimitable designs of God. Everywhere do we observe harmony in space, in
+movement; everywhere visible signs of a beneficent, protecting Creator. It
+is the same with the enormous forms of living animals as with the
+insignificant shapes of the insect world: all play their part in the
+problem of Nature. Size is nothing with the Creator; form is nothing.
+Perchance
+
+        "the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
+  In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great
+  As when a giant dies."
+
+
+VI.
+
+History indicates mysterious laws in the progress of the typical stocks of
+the human families; and it shows, in the colonization of the past, how
+frail are human calculations in migration and settlement unless based upon
+science. "It is not unknown to me," said the Roman soldier, two thousand
+years ago, when about to attack the remnant of the army of Brennus, that
+had passed over into Asia Minor, and conquered the land by the fierceness
+of their attack, and the terror of their name,--"it is not unknown to me,"
+said Manlius, "that of all the nations inhabiting Asia, the Gauls have the
+highest reputation as soldiers.
+
+"A fierce nation, after overrunning the face of the earth with its arms,
+has fixed its abode in the midst of a race of men the gentlest in the
+world. Their tall persons; their long, red hair; their vast shields, and
+swords of enormous length; their songs also when they are advancing to
+action; their yells and dances, and the horrid clashing of their arrows
+while they brandish their shields in a peculiar manner practised in their
+original country,--all these are circumstances calculated to strike
+terror. But let Greeks, and Phrygians, and Carians, who are unaccustomed
+to and unacquainted with these things, be frightened by such. The Romans,
+long acquainted with Gallic tumults, have learned the emptiness of their
+parade. Our forefathers had to deal with genuine native Gauls; but they
+are now a degenerate, a mongrel race, and in reality what they are named,
+Gallogrecians. Just so is the case of vegetables, the seeds not being so
+efficacious for preserving their original constitution as the properties
+of the soil and climate in which they may be reared, when changed, are
+towards altering it. The Macedonians who settled at Alexandria, in Egypt,
+or in Seleucia, or Babylonia, or in any other of their colonies scattered
+over the world, have sunk into Syrians, Parthians, or Egyptians.
+
+"What trace do the Tarentines retain of the hardy, rugged discipline of
+Sparta? Everything that grows in its own natural soil attains the greater
+perfection: whatever is planted in a foreign land, by a gradual change in
+its nature degenerates into a similitude to that which affords it nurture.
+Brutes retain for a time, when taken, their natural ferocity; but after
+being long fed by the hands of men, they grow tame. Think ye then that
+Nature does not act in the same manner in softening the savage tempers of
+men? Do you believe these to be of the same kind that their fathers and
+grandfathers were?
+
+* * * "By the very great fertility of the soil, the very great mildness
+of the climate, and the gentle dispositions of the neighboring nations,
+all that barbarous fierceness which they brought with them has been quite
+mollified."
+
+And finally the Romans themselves, in spite of their sanitary measures,
+became from year to year more alien in blood from the genuine stock of
+Romulus and Remus, until the distinctive characters of the conquerors of
+the earth finally disappeared.
+
+The Latins, Sabines, and primitive Etruscans pressed constantly upon them
+with the irresistible force of destiny. When Scipio �milianus was
+interrupted in the forum by this mongrel populace, he exclaimed, "Silence,
+false sons of Italy! Think ye to scare me with your brandished hands, ye
+whom I led myself in bonds to Rome?"
+
+When the fierce and hardy Northmen descended into Southern Europe, they
+carried along with their laws a chastity and a reserve that excited
+universal surprise. But these virtues were not of long continuance there;
+the climate and the customs of the new society soon warmed their frozen
+imaginations, and their laws by degrees relaxed, and their manners even
+more than their laws.
+
+The giants of the North many times swept down over the plains of Italy,
+and regenerated with fresh and pure blood the puny breeds of degenerate
+Rome, but they have since disappeared, and their descendants are no longer
+to be found in these countries.
+
+
+VII.
+
+In relation to the futile efforts of Spain in Mexico, the ethnologist Knox
+exclaims, "Neither climate, nor government, nor external influences ever
+alter race. They may and they do affect them, and in time destroy them,
+but they never give rise to a new race. In half a century the dreams of
+Humboldt, of Canning, of Guizot, and other profound statesmen, have come
+to a close, and Nature once more, as I long ago predicted, asserts her
+rights."
+
+Naturalists, from Hippocrates to Buffon, have believed that climate, heat
+and cold, dryness and humidity, the qualities and abundance of
+nourishment, have power to modify men and animals, but "neither climate,
+nor government, nor external circumstances ever give rise to a new race."
+The generous qualities once gone, are departed forever, and their loss can
+rarely be retrieved. Where is the instance of a fallen man, class, or
+nation?
+
+"The history of nations," writes the Registrar-General of England,--"the
+history of nations on the Mediterranean or the plains of the Euphrates and
+Tigris, the deltas of the Indies and Ganges, and the rivers of China,
+exhibits the great fact: the gradual descent of race from the highlands,
+their establishment on the coasts, in cities sustained and refreshed for a
+season by emigration from the interior--their degradation in successive
+generations under the influence of the unhealthy earth, and their final
+ruin, effacement, or subjugation by new races of conquerors. The causes
+that destroy individual men lay cities waste, which, in their nature, are
+immortal, and silently undermine eternal empires.
+
+  "A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
+  An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
+  Can man its shattered splendors renovate,
+  Recall its virtues back, and vanquish time and fate?"
+
+
+VIII.
+
+During this period of two centuries of colonization the European races
+have attempted to perpetuate their families upon these lands in question.
+They brought with them strong physical forces, and a high degree of mental
+cultivation. Mental strength will endure extremes of climate to a singular
+degree, but even this gradually yields to cosmic influences. It is a
+well-observed law of Nature that man must be organized in harmony with the
+condition of climate, otherwise he perishes. This scale of the strength of
+resisting opposing forces depends greatly upon the purity of the blood and
+the cultivation of the mind, whose remarkable powers of resisting disease
+have been observed and pointed out by Malte-Brun, Goethe, Kant, and other
+philosophers.
+
+Europeans may visit and remain for limited periods in almost every portion
+of the globe. The deadly miasms of Central America, the pestilential
+atmospheres of Central Africa, and the frozen mists of either pole, are
+braved by the inquiring travellers of the civilized races, but not with
+impunity.
+
+Intelligent and educated men may live for a while as gentlemen of leisure,
+in the midst of malarial climates, almost without perceptible effect, but
+the moment they apply their forces to the cultivation of the earth, Nature
+asserts her rights.
+
+Yet during the period of the rich man, whilst he lives without physical
+labor, in ease, contemplation, and contentment, degeneration is slowly but
+surely taking place. The law of fecundity proves it, as with the Mamelukes
+in Egypt, as observed by Volney.
+
+The English race loses its energy, according to Farr, in two or three
+generations in the lowlands of the West India Islands and in Southern
+Asia. The Duke of Wellington believed that every English family in Lower
+Bengal would die out in the third generation.
+
+
+IX.
+
+The laws of nature as regards influences of climate, food, and society,
+have operated less upon the condition of the rich slaveholder than the
+poorer white, who has struggled for existence, contending with the poverty
+of sterile or abandoned soils, and the hostile influences of climate, and
+the sneer of the slave and his master. The rich man has resisted the
+opposing forces of the elements with less apparent changes, whilst the
+poor man has succumbed to the influences and sadly degenerated, but the
+poor white still possesses the rough nobility and majesty of natural man,
+whilst the rich slaveholder, with his perverted ideas of honor, virtue,
+and justice, has gained the merited contempt of mankind. For the one,
+civilization has the sympathetic feeling of compassion; from the other,
+Nature herself recoils in horror.
+
+This degeneration of the poor white is no mystery. Their poverty of blood
+and weakness of mind were not engendered by the insalubrity of climate,
+nor even by the sterility of the soil alone. Deny to any race, class, or
+community free social condition, freedom of thought, the expansion of the
+mind, the liberty of political and religious ideas, and it is sure to
+degenerate, and in time to perish.
+
+The doctrine of Adam Smith and the theory of Malthus as to the fatal
+necessity of starvation, are in some measure correct, but they are
+mistaken in the view that human fecundity tends to get the start of the
+means of subsistence, for on the contrary it keeps pace with it.
+
+We find that the fishes in the lakes, and the wolves in the forests,
+increase in exact ratio to the amount of food furnished. Nature regulates
+the fecundity of animals and human beings when society neglects it.
+
+
+X.
+
+The influences of climate, of food, of temperature, of domesticity upon
+the variation of species is well known. These mediate and external causes
+act with more vigor when the immediate and internal causes favor the
+effect. "All the mechanism of the formation of varieties," says Flourens,
+"turns upon these two internal causes--the tendency of the species to
+vary, and the transmission of the acquired variations." Cultivated plants
+and domesticated animals, when deprived of the modifying influence of man,
+return to the state of nature, and undergo new modifications, alterations,
+degenerations, even so far as to disguise and conceal the primitive type.
+
+A few generations suffice to restore a variety to the primitive stock
+without retaining any of the organic elements which would debase it.
+
+The more the influence of civilized man makes itself felt, the more the
+superior species overpower, absorb, or modify the inferior species.
+
+The more rude the people and the less polished their societies, the more
+powerful and rapid will be the influences of climate. Civilized men are
+continually exercising their talents to conform their conditions to the
+necessities of the time and place, and by their ingenuity remedy the
+defects, and by the resisting powers of a cultivated and occupied mind
+resist many of the morbid influences of climate. But plants and animals
+succumb at once if not protected by man.
+
+
+XI.
+
+During the more than two centuries of occupation of these southern lands
+there appear sufficient data to form, perhaps, some definite ideas of the
+success or failure of colonization, and the vague and doubtful process of
+acclimation. These evidences, thus far, are decidedly in favor of the
+black man. For he has multiplied with astonishing rapidity, and preserved
+his physical forces, and during this long and brutalizing term of his
+servitude he has not exhibited the ferocity of his master, save when
+hunted down like the beasts of prey, as in Hayti; neither has he sunk so
+low in the scale of true humanity as those who have held him in bondage.
+
+The hungry and maimed soldier of the republic, escaping from the murderous
+prison-dens of the rebels, always found a crust of bread, a protecting
+shelter, and a kind word from the humblest and most oppressed of these
+beings.
+
+Never were they betrayed by the black man, although the reward was large.
+Never were they denied assistance, although the penalty was death.
+
+Although history seems to forbid, we are not of that class of men who
+maintain that there are inferior races, intended by nature for servitude;
+for we believe that every race contains the elements of greatness, and
+that there is a common destiny to all. And we cherish the idea that there
+is a better future even for the black man among the civilized nations of
+the earth. The singular aptitude of the black man for music, which is the
+language of the soul; his deep, sincere, immovable veneration for the
+precepts, the faith, the hope of Christianity, do not indicate a race lost
+to the nobler impulses, or to the benign influences of civilization, nor a
+people abandoned and accursed by Providence. God has gifted every living
+creature with the instinct of self-preservation; he has endowed all
+animated creatures of the human form with the love of the beautiful, with
+the desire of developing and perfecting their innate powers, and of
+leaving on earth some act, some memorial worthy of imitation or
+remembrance. He who declines to help his fellow-creature in the struggle
+for social existence, in the effort for happiness, knowledge, and
+immortality, is less than a man.
+
+The problem of civilization is left mostly to the free will of men, and
+God blasts and crumbles into dust only those nations who have abused the
+gifts and privileges of nature, and who, when arriving at the height of
+prosperity and power, have disregarded and despised those principles of
+morality and religion which form the true base of all society. How all the
+noble aspirations may be crushed and the instincts perverted; how from a
+species of voluntary insanity, by our own fierce passions, and by a
+strange desire of mutual destruction, men rush on to contest and to ruin,
+is well illustrated by the past of the slave faction.
+
+
+XII.
+
+It is evident that the black man has not deteriorated during his sojourn
+in these countries; on the contrary, he has improved in physique: the
+repulsive Congo type has changed, and the Circassian features appear. It
+is the result of the law of contact and example; it is the effect of
+civilization.
+
+Has the white man gained in similar ratio? Go to the cotton fields and
+rice lands, and learn a lesson from the instructive contrast of the gaunt
+and apathetic white laborer, with the sturdy, well-developed, lively
+black. You will then observe that these vast alluvial lands, which rank in
+richness and fertility with the best on the globe, must be consigned to
+waste by reason of insalubrity, if not cultivated by races of men who are
+congenial to the soil and climate. There is no white race who can
+cultivate these lands, and enjoy life and establish society with any
+duration. Malaria would forbid, if other conditions were favorable.
+
+The littoral lands of the lower tier of Slave States, which are composed
+of post tertiary and alluvial soils, tertiary sands and secondary chalk
+marls, can be tilled in safety and with economy and with gain only by the
+black man. Below the upper terraces and the slopes of the mountain ranges
+of the northern limits of these States, where we find the primary and
+metamorphic rocks and their debris, the white laborer cannot descend
+without contending with the full force of his nature, with disease,
+degeneration, and premature death.
+
+There are now in the States of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and
+Louisiana thirty millions of acres of arable land yet belonging to the
+United States, unsold and unoccupied. In all England there are but seven
+million acres of uncultivated land.
+
+
+XIII.
+
+Malaria, that curse of the Circassian race, which is the chief source of
+the inefficiency and mortality of their efforts of colonizations in
+semi-tropical climes, exerts but little influence upon the negroes, and
+hence they are admirably qualified for the occupation of pestilential
+soils.
+
+It appears from the statistics of the English that remittent and
+intermittent fevers, which prove the great source of inefficiency and
+mortality among the white troops in tropical climes, exert comparatively
+but little influence upon the blacks.
+
+The writer has observed the fatal effects of the pernicious fevers upon
+the white inhabitants of the low coasts of Georgia and South Carolina, and
+has seen men perish in a single night from the deadly action of the
+miasms, whilst the negroes were unaffected.
+
+During the English expedition up the Nile nearly all the whites were
+prostrated by fevers, and none of the native blacks were affected. After
+the French landed at Vera Cruz the yellow fever found great numbers of
+victims among the Europeans; but according to the report of the
+inspector-general, Regnaud, not one of the 600 negro soldiers and sailors
+from the West Indies, though hard at work there, were attacked, or rather
+not one of them died. There are hundreds of similar examples to illustrate
+the theory.
+
+We cannot escape the mephitism of the soil. So long as we respire the air,
+so long shall we receive into the system the deleterious vapors by the
+respiratory apparatus, which is the most perfect of the absorbing agents:
+the time of effect is determined only by the health, the strength, and
+vigor of our forces. The destroying elements may take effect at once, or
+they may be resisted for a long, though definite period of time. Malaria
+alone has a wide range among the causes of human misery, and it is
+believed to cause more than half of the mortality of the human families on
+the globe.
+
+Its deadly action, in depopulating cities and provinces, is well attested
+in history, and its effect upon the intellectual expansion is still more
+marked; sadness, languor, paludal cachexia, scrofulous, deformed, and
+short-lived offspring, are among its train of evils. In the Roman states
+alone, sixty thousand perish every year from this paludal influence. These
+deltas of the Southern States are among the greater miasmatic foyers of
+the world, and are as deadly in their miasms as the Campagna of Italy or
+the Sunderbunds of Hindostan.
+
+
+XIV.
+
+There are many reasons to induce the belief, that if properly directed,
+the blacks may attain distinction in social life and progress, and a
+higher degree of perfection in physical development. The skeleton of the
+negro is firmer and heavier, the bones being larger and thicker than that
+of any other race; but physiologists observe that the muscular development
+does not correspond to the strong dimensions of the frame. This deficiency
+of nature may be explained by the want of proper nutrition, or to physical
+causes within human control, for all proportions in nature are harmonious.
+Two of the most admirable boxers that have appeared in the British arena
+were blacks, and the dark, swarthy hue of the famous wrestler, Marseilles,
+reminds how common is the tinge of African blood in South France, Spain,
+and Italy.
+
+While statistics appear to exhibit the physical superiority of the blacks
+in the low countries, they also prove how prone to pulmonary disease are
+they when migrating to the uplands, or higher latitudes, and how fearful
+the mortality. Thus Nature, it seems, offers serious barriers to their
+progress, and boundaries within which they must confine themselves or
+perish.
+
+
+XV.
+
+It has been urged that the intermingling of the freed blacks with the
+whites in these States will produce a variety of people more vicious, and
+less willing to be controlled by the social laws, than either pure race.
+
+Of this there is but little danger, as ethnology will show. There will not
+be, under any ordinary circumstances, any intermingling of the two races,
+for the law of ethnic repugnance is too great. The strong ethnic
+antipathies will keep them apart. The possibility of the intermixture of
+families and races so widely remote is as rigidly limited as the law of
+chemical proportions, and the absorption of the minor quantity is
+inevitable. Give both races the same field for expansion in these States,
+and the white race will soon find itself in the minority, both of numbers
+and in physical strength; for, according to natural laws, the stronger
+blood always absorbs the weaker when there is unobstructed action, and
+especially when climate favors vastly one of the contending types.
+
+There are to-day four or five times as many centenarians among the blacks
+as there are among the whites of the cotton regions.
+
+In consideration of this subject of miscegenation, let us review the
+phenomena that have been brought to light by the naturalists who have
+studied hybridity among animals, and recall a few facts from history to
+support the experimentalists.
+
+
+XVI.
+
+In the animal world, in the wild state, hybrids are rarely if ever
+produced, and it is only from the experiments of the naturalists that the
+law of hybridity has been explained.
+
+We see the bipartites appear, when two kindred species mix together under
+the influence of man, these animals partaking of the qualities of both.
+The horse and the ass; the ass, zebra, and hermione; the wolf and the dog;
+the dog and the jackal; the goat and the ram; the deer and the axis, &c.,
+unite and breed; but these artificial species are not durable, and they
+have only limited fecundity. "The mongrels of the dog and the wolf are
+sterile from the third generation. The mongrels of the jackal and the dog
+are so from the fourth. Moreover, if we unite these mongrels to one of the
+two primitive species, they soon revert completely and totally to that
+species.
+
+"The mongrel of the dog and jackal contains more of the jackal than the
+dog. It has the straight ears, the pendent tail; it does not bark; it is
+wild. It is more jackal than dog. This is the first product of the crossed
+union of the dog with the jackal. I continue to unite the successive
+produce, from generation to generation, with one of the two primitive
+roots,--with that of the dog, for example.
+
+"The mongrel of the second generation does not bark yet, but it has the
+ears pendent at the tip: it is less wild.
+
+"The mongrel of the third generation barks: it has pendent ears, raised
+tail: it is no longer wild. The mongrel of the fourth generation is
+entirely dog. Four generations, then, have sufficed to restore one of the
+two primitive types--the dog type; and four generations suffice also to
+restore the other type--the jackal type. Thus, when the mongrels produced
+from the union of two distinct species unite together, either become soon
+sterile, or they unite with one of the two primitive stocks, and they soon
+revert to this stock; in no case do they yield what may be called a new
+species, that is, an intermediate, durable species.
+
+"Whether, then, we consider the external causes,--the succession of time,
+years, ages, revolutions of the globe, or internal causes,--that is to
+say, the crossing of the species, the species do not alter, do not change,
+nor pass from one to the other; the species is fixed." Such are the
+conclusions of the admirable efforts of Flourens.
+
+"The imprint of each species," says Buffon, "is a type, the principal
+features of which are engraved in characters ineffaceable, and permanent
+forever; but all the accessory touches vary; no individual perfectly
+resembles another."
+
+
+XVII.
+
+Among the human families, the law of hybridity, which has been pointed out
+so clearly by Flourens, has also its fixed and inflexible rules; these
+rules have not been so well studied with men as with animals, but it is
+believed to have its limit at the seventh generation. At all events, the
+experiments of human hybridism, and acclimation in strange latitudes, have
+always in time ended in disaster; and that such will always be the fate of
+the attempted union of different races in unfavorable climes, have been
+the views of Humboldt, of Canning, of Guizot, and other profound
+statesmen. We observe among the races in savage life a natural repugnance
+to unite: as for instance, the negroes and the fairer people of the
+Philippine and Polynesian Isles show no disposition to unite; and though
+living side by side, in the same country, for a long period, they have not
+produced an intermediate race. Neither do the Eskimos nor the Red Men,
+neither do the Caffres nor the Hottentots mix, for in the state of nature
+the law of ethnic repugnance is supreme. It is only in the artificial and
+depraved states of society that hybrids appear, and their existence is of
+short and fixed duration.
+
+The apparent duration and perfection of the Coulouglis, the bipartates of
+the Bergers and Turks, may be an exception to the general rule. But the
+results of the mingling of human families, widely separated, is generally
+very decided.
+
+The Creoles, produced by the African with the Spaniard, Italian, and the
+Southern French, possess considerable durability, but disease and
+degeneration soon appear when the black mingles with the blood and humors
+of the more northern nations. With all these mixtures there is a profound
+characteristic, which constitutes the unity, identity, and reality of the
+species, which is, continuous fecundity; and this characteristic never
+varies: it is immutable. The mulattoes live less time than the black or
+the white race, and their offspring perish readily, and are rarely
+prolific, except when united with stronger individuals of either primitive
+type, to which they soon return.
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+The blacks have been too degraded to more than conceive of liberty, too
+debased to think of resistance to the forces that crushed them, and they
+have neither observed, nor sought for opportunities, to throw off their
+chains and sweep over the lands, like a destroying element, with the
+accumulated wrongs of centuries. Yet there were black men among them who
+were capable of high cultivation. The long contact with the superior white
+race had recast the faculties of their mind, and had altered perceptibly
+the rugged contour of their forms and features.
+
+The writer observed with wonder in the regiment of black men which formed
+part of the column of the desperate assault upon Fort Wagner, beautiful
+heads, whose classic and regular outlines recalled the finest of the
+antique.
+
+We believe with the writer in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," that contact
+with the white races has given the negro the lines of the Caucasian form,
+and that the Congo type can disappear or become greatly modified.
+
+These changes in the typical form, which we have since observed elsewhere,
+appear to have taken place sometimes without the admixture of the blood of
+the whites.
+
+That the black men in the United States army fought well, no one will
+deny; that they conducted themselves admirably in the murderous assaults
+at Fort Wagner, or under the destroying fire at Olustee, and in many other
+conflicts, every one possessed of any candor will admit. When we consider
+the degradation whence they suddenly rose, and the steadiness and
+firmness, and the manly bearing they exhibited after the few lessons of
+military training, we are compelled to render thanks to them for their
+efforts in the struggle for national existence, and to admit the
+probability of their attaining that degree of intelligence, wisdom, and
+virtue which distinguish the true citizen. That these men will attain the
+standard of intellect of the Caucasian, we neither expect nor believe; but
+we do maintain, that in the nature of every race, however debased by
+prejudice, and the avarice of superior society, there exists the element
+of honesty, virtue, truth, and a horror of wrong, which may be developed
+and turned to the good of all society, in repelling and resisting the
+force of machination, the intrigue which arises from disappointed
+ambition, or the insatiable lust of more favored and less considerate
+classes.
+
+No one acquainted with the history of the commerce of human beings will
+wonder at the present condition of the blacks, or that they have not risen
+in the scale of social and intellectual advancement. For, looking back to
+the primitive ages we may see how the human species have been depressed in
+servitude, and how the very same families, who carried the arts and
+sciences to celestial limits, were affected by this influence. Persons of
+the same blood and inheritance as the best families of Greece and Rome,
+were often reduced to slavery, and they sank rapidly under its debasing
+effects. They were tamed like the black man of the South; "like brutes, by
+the stings of hunger and the lash; and their education was so conducted as
+to render them commodious instruments of labor for their possessors. This
+degradation of course depressed their minds, restricted the expansion of
+their faculties, stifled almost every effort of genius, and exhibited them
+to the world as beings endued with inferior capacities to the rest of
+mankind. But for this opinion there appears to have been no foundation in
+truth or justice. Equal to their fellow-men in natural talents, and alike
+capable of improvement, any apparent or real difference between them and
+some others must have been owing to the mode of education, to the rank
+they were doomed to occupy, and to the treatment they were appointed to
+endure."
+
+After all, the world appears to be a vast arena, where the good and the
+bad are gathered together, and men are left to their own efforts, whether
+to rise up in that scale of intelligence and virtue which conducts to
+immortality, or to grovel deeper into the depths of degradation, where
+there is nothing but death and annihilation. The vault of heaven grows in
+immensity as we gaze into its limitless expanse, whilst the shadows and
+attractions of earth fade away from view, or allure only those who have
+forsaken nature.
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+Have the European races advanced in these latitudes in strength of mind
+and body with equal ratio as the black man? We think not. Let us consider.
+
+The qualities of plants and vegetables are often affected by external
+influences, so as to assume different characters, and the impressions upon
+the leaves and the fruits are distinctly marked. These alterations,
+degenerations, and modifications may disguise the primitive type so far
+that it is no longer recognizable. We observe these properties among all
+organic bodies, among those of the animal and as well as of the vegetable
+world. The vine and its golden extracts are very much dependent upon these
+influences.
+
+The exquisite bouquet, the soul-inspiring qualities of the best varieties
+of wine, cannot be acquired by the efforts of man at pleasure; without the
+generous nature of the soil, the rays of sunlight, and the inspiring
+breezes of favored localities and climes, the extract of the pressed grape
+is without that flavor and force which warm into life the brilliancy of
+the imagination, the nobility of the soul.
+
+There is also a marked effect of soil and climate upon the odor of
+plants, and in their narcotic constituents. Does not the same law affect
+man?
+
+The Italian violets grow sweeter as we climb the Alpine slopes; the
+mignonette blooms with greater perfection and perfume as we approach the
+shores of the lowlands of the Mediterranean. We find the finest types of
+the human race among the uplands and the mountains; below, on the low
+coasts and river margins, where pestilences are generated, the physical
+and mental forces do not fully expand, and we find there neither liberty,
+virtue, nor science.
+
+Dr. Rusdorf, in his work on the influence of European climate, regards the
+temperate zone as the brain-making region, and attempts to prove it by
+physiological deductions. The brain of the Caucasian, he says, determines
+the superiority over the other races, and it is the standard of the
+organism. This, he maintains, is produced by the richness of albumen in
+the blood, which is also dependent upon the oxygen of pure air. The
+extensive observations of the English Registrar-General show indisputably
+that the elevation of the soil exercises as decided an influence on the
+English race as it does on the native races of other climes and soils.
+They also show that the finest animals are raised in the healthiest
+districts. We see that certain heights above the plains are remarkably
+exempt from maladies which devastate nations inhabiting lower levels.
+Cholera, remittent fever, yellow fever, and plague, disappear at
+well-defined degrees of elevation.
+
+At Vera Cruz, and along its latitude, the yellow fever vanishes at the
+height of three thousand feet above the Gulf shores.
+
+The Prussian, in his "Medicinische Geographie," appears to indicate with
+great degree of certainty the limits and altitudes of the three zones,
+into which he classifies the catarrhal, the dysenteric, and the scrofulous
+diseases. The scrofulous zone ceases at an altitude of two thousand feet
+above the level of the sea, and here, he says, there is no pulmonary
+consumption, scrofula, cancer, or typhus fever. "It is," says Babinet,
+"the climate of each country which permits or arrests the development of
+the human race, which, joined with the industry of populations, imposes
+limits to the numerical force of each meteorological district, and which
+subsists four million of men in fertile Belgium, which is no more than a
+small fraction of the territory of France, whilst Siberia can with
+difficulty nourish a part of that number with an extent which is
+twenty-six times that of France." "All over the world, physical
+circumstances," exclaims Draper, "control the human race."
+
+
+XIX.
+
+It is vain to assert that the atmospheres of the maritime or the low
+levels do not affect the physical and mental condition of men; and after
+all, Fontenelle was right when he maintained, in a curious paradox, that
+inspiration is a barometer that varies, which mounts to genius or descends
+to absurdity, according to the inconstancy of the weather; that there are
+unhealthy countries, full of mists, winds, tempests, that never produce
+clear understandings; and, on the contrary, there are lands with beautiful
+skies and fields filled with sunlight and roses which give out flashes of
+divine light.
+
+Nearly all of the Grecian lyrists were born in the enchanting climates,
+and among the beautiful scenes of the Asiatic shore or the isles of the
+�gean Sea. Most of the eminent men of Italy rose from similar
+inspirations, which Michael Angelo observed when speaking of Vasari in
+terms of admiration. Historians say that the sun was never softer, the
+heavens brighter, the roses more prolific, the winds more perfumed, than
+in the dawn of the eighteenth century, which produced that "wild garland
+of beautiful women who recalled by their graces, their genius, the
+courtesans of Greece," which gave birth to those philosophers who gave a
+new impetus to liberty and religion.
+
+
+XX.
+
+According to some writers, the unequal distribution of solar heat over the
+earth is the cause of marked differences in national character; others
+refer the distinctive effects to the quality of the air they breathe.
+Arbuthnot maintains that air not only fashions the body, but has also had
+great influence in forming language; that the close, serrated method of
+speaking of Northern nations was due to coldness of the climate, and
+hesitation of opening the mouth; whilst the sweet, sonorous phrases of
+temperate climes, like those of the Mediterranean, were due to the
+mildness of climate, where the vocal organs could be exposed without
+danger. "It is incontestable," also writes Alfred Maury, in his "Earth and
+Man," "that climate has upon the mode of government a considerable
+influence, because it exercises an immediate effect upon the character of
+individuals. In the warm countries, under an enervating atmosphere, where
+all inclines to effeminacy and idleness, the soul has not that energy and
+that force of will necessary to a people who wish to be free. Under a
+severe and cold climate, to the contrary, the character acquires more of
+energy, and the body more of activity. The passions are less violent, and
+leave to the reason a freer exercise. In the hot climes the instincts are
+impetuous, and they pass from an extreme of dejection to a state of
+exaltation which produces revolutions, insurrections, but which do not
+establish the independence. For, to the contrary, these violent crises
+introduce retaliation; and in the sanguinary conflicts, the power of an
+individual, although tyrannical, appears as a benefit, or is accepted as a
+necessity."
+
+
+XXI.
+
+The anger of the European has always raged with undefinable fury, when
+once aroused, in these southern latitudes, and especially in the regions
+in question. The spirit is the same, whether we review the cruel and
+useless extermination of the Indians in Cuba or Florida; the massacres of
+the Mexicans by the merciless Spaniards; the internecine slaughter of the
+French, English, and Spaniards along the coasts of South Carolina,
+Georgia, and Florida; the extermination of whole tribes, like the
+Yemassee, or the forced removal of the red men from the broad lands of
+their birthplace and inheritance. All show the implacable depth of his
+avarice or his ire. It was not merely the honor of subjugation, of
+conquering strange races, that was the object of the politics, and that
+excited the emulation of these iron-mailed and iron-hearted men and their
+descendants: it seems to have been an irresistible desire to immolate
+human races, to glut with blood that thirst for destruction which arises
+from depraved and burning hearts.
+
+It was the same spirit, under the mask of avarice, that tore the
+well-behaved Creeks and Cherokees from the homes of their ancestors, and
+banished them to the prairies of the West; that hunted down the last
+Seminole in the everglades of Florida, where there are to-day twenty
+millions of acres of land unsold and unoccupied.
+
+It was the same spirit that, in later times, recklessly and ruthlessly
+destroyed, at Camp Sumter, an army of freemen, under the pretence of
+treating them as prisoners of war.
+
+
+XXII.
+
+Yet this depraved fury does not appear to have been natural to the soil,
+climate, or the native races, as observed by the early navigators;
+although Ponce de Leon received his death-wound from them when he sought
+the fountain of youth in the everglades of Florida, and De Soto
+encountered fierce opposition from the red men of the forest when he
+pursued his way towards the Appalachian mountains in search of the mines
+of gold. But nevertheless the Europeans were treated almost always with
+kindness whenever they approached the Indian with good intentions.
+
+Contrast the present time and the people with the period and the natives
+when the great Navigator discovered the adjacent isles. "Nature is here,"
+he exclaims, "so prolific, that property has not produced the feelings of
+avarice or cupidity. These people seem to live in a golden age, happy and
+quiet, amid open and endless gardens, neither surrounded by ditches,
+divided by fences, nor protected by walls. They behave honorably towards
+one another, without laws, without books, without judges. They consider
+him wicked who takes delight in harming another. This aversion of the good
+to the bad seems to be all their legislation."
+
+These people with natural sentiments have passed away, and new races, with
+strange and repulsive ideas, have taken their place. "Like the statue of
+Glaucus, that time, the sea, the storms have so disfigured that it
+resembles less a god than a ferocious beast, the human soul, altered in
+the bosom of society by a thousand causes rising without cessation, by the
+acquisition of a multitude of creeds and errors, by the changes produced
+in the constitution of bodies by the continual shock of passions, has
+caused a change in appearance almost unrecognizable; and we sooner find,
+instead of the being acting always by certain and invariable principles,
+instead of that celestial and majestic simplicity in which the Creator has
+left his impress, the deformed contrast of the understanding in delirium,
+and of the passion which pretends to reason."
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+Wherever society forms and sustains itself, there must be adopted certain
+rules and laws to maintain it.
+
+These seemingly arbitrary laws represent the interests, the passions, and
+opinions of those who establish them, and they differ widely, according
+to the nature of the men and the climate which they inhabit.
+
+The inhabitants of hot climes and the cold zones present strange contrasts
+in their natural ideas of justice, as well as in instincts and appetites.
+The Turk regards intemperance as a crime, and polygamy as a virtue. The
+Englishman looks upon the one with complaisance, but regards the other
+with horror. Thus reason yields to physical force, or to the differences
+of climate; and what men call virtue in one clime, loses its force and
+beauty in another. Yet there are natural laws older than the empires of
+force or reason; more ancient than society itself; more powerful and
+sublime than the passions and interests of men. These laws of kindness, of
+mercy, of friendship, like elementary language, come from divination.
+
+Nature has planted certain instincts in the bosoms of all the different
+races of the globe alike; and these become developed according to
+cultivation, or debased according to degrading influences. The good of
+society may define the measure between good and evil, but it cannot
+extinguish the principles, or obliterate the sharply defined distinctions.
+The will of the Creator has manifested itself clearly in the workings of
+the natural world, if it has not been revealed to us in those tablets
+which fell from the skies.
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+The benign influences of society, the exercise of politeness and reason,
+inspire polished and agreeable manners; yet, in the midst of these, we
+find men who think barbarity to be one of their rights; and they abuse
+their fellow-creatures without pretext, and commit murder without
+necessity, which is a degree of ferocity below that of the carnivorous
+animals; for they destroy life only when impelled by the motives of
+hunger. Societies of men are institutions of nature, and they are founded
+upon the principles of mutual obligations. Society relapses into barbarism
+when the golden rule of "doing as we would be done by" is violated; when
+individual liberty is lost; and when man treats his fellow-man as property
+under the right of force, and therefore without legal relations.
+Constitutions are the indices of the education and the aspiration of
+nations, and they keep pace with the onward march of intelligence. These
+become altered and modified, as the intellect and hearts of men expand;
+and it is nothing but bigotry that believes in the inviolability, the
+perfection of the doctrines and tenets of men in the present or the past.
+The wise man, says the old proverb, often changes his opinion, the fool
+never.
+
+
+XXV.
+
+Slavery appears to be coeval with war; and war is as ancient as the human
+race. Plutarch believed that there had been a time, a golden age, when
+there were neither masters nor slaves. The human mind, at the time when
+Plutarch wrote, was almost controlled by the empire of force. The
+selfishness and superstition of society fettered the nobility of nature,
+and healthy reason could not assume its rightful sway.
+
+The depth of the philosophical reasoning, the degree of humanity of one of
+the brightest periods of antiquity, may be comprehended from the
+"Politics" of Aristotle, when he says, "To the Greeks belongs dominion
+over the barbarians, because the former have the understanding requisite
+to rule, the latter, the body only to obey. For the slave, considered
+simply as such, no friendship can be entertained, but it may be felt for
+him, as he is a man." Some of the ancient nations, the most enthusiastic
+in the dreams of liberty, were the most savage and stern in their laws
+concerning their slaves; and they adhered to their brutal doctrines in
+defiance of nature with singular tenacity. The right of life and death
+over the slave was one of the fundamental principles of the society of the
+Athenians, Lacedemonians, Romans, and Carthaginians.
+
+Strange condition of society among men who cultivated the arts and
+sciences so successfully! Yet it does not appear that any legislator
+attempted to abrogate servitude.
+
+Stranger still that the glorious period of the reign of democracy at
+Athens should not have brought with it the universal freedom of men, when
+liberty was the divine ideal of its aspirations.
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+Not until the star of Christianity rose above the horizon of the pagan and
+superstitious world, softening the hearts of men and revealing to them a
+new life, did Slavery vanish from among refined and generous societies,
+under the charter, _Pro amore Dei, pro mercede anim�_. And never has it
+reappeared, except among those nations who have become debased from
+avarice, or depraved by ambition. When cupidity allows fanaticism to blind
+the mind with the belief that savages or negroes can be more easily
+converted to Christianity whilst in slavery than in freedom, then there is
+an end to social progress. Yet such were the ideas of Louis XIII. when he
+consigned the negroes of his colonies to Slavery. And such has been the
+creed of the slaveholders and breeders of America. The monstrous doctrine
+imposed itself upon the understandings of the slave faction, as the
+superstitions of the false prophets have fettered and crushed the minds of
+the pagan nations. It has debased their natural sentiments, as well as it
+has depressed and perverted their natural talents and virtues. "In the
+same manner," said Longinus, "as some children always remain pygmies,
+whose infant limbs, fettered by the prejudices and habits of servitude,
+are unable to expand themselves, or to attain that well-proportioned
+greatness which we admire in the ancients, who, living under a popular
+government, wrote with the same freedom as they acted."
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+We may learn from the history of the past, if we will not accept the data
+of the present, how climate, food, domesticity, or recognized customs of
+society may alter the minds and dispositions of men; how they may
+gradually build up governments, founded upon monstrous ideas, and yet in
+unison with the compunctions of their conscience. Ascribe the origin to
+any cause you will, it does not alter the revolting facts, nor lessen the
+repulsiveness of the absurdity, nor the enormity of the crime. Volney
+believed "that the social institutions called Government and Religion
+were the true sources and regulators of the activity or indolence of
+individuals and nations; that they were the efficient causes which, as
+they extend or limit the natural or superfluous wants, limit or extend the
+activity of all men. A proof that their influence operates in spite of the
+difference of climate and soil is, that Tyre, Carthage, and Alexandria
+formerly possessed the same industry as London, Paris, and Amsterdam; that
+the Buccaneers and the Malayans have displayed equal turbulence and
+courage with the Normans, and that the Russians and Polanders have the
+apathy and indifference of the Hindoos and the Negroes. But, as civil and
+religious institutions are perpetually varied and changed by the passions
+of men, their influence changes and varies in very short intervals of
+time. Hence it is that the Romans commanded by Scipio resembled so little
+those governed by Tiberius, and that the Greeks of the age of Aristides
+and Themistocles were so unlike those of the time of Constantine."
+
+Volney observes that "the moral character of nations, taken from that of
+individuals, chiefly depends on the social state in which they live; since
+it is true that our actions are governed by our civil and religious laws,
+and since our habits are no more than a repetition of those actions, and
+our character only the disposition to act in such a manner under such
+circumstances, it evidently follows that these must essentially depend on
+the nature of the government and religion."
+
+Says Addison, "In all despotic governments, though a particular prince may
+favor arts and letters, there is a natural degeneracy of mankind, as you
+may observe from Augustus's reign, how the Romans lost themselves by
+degrees, until they fell to an equality with the most barbarous nations
+that surrounded them. Look upon Greece under its free states, and you
+would think its inhabitants lived in different climates and under
+different heavens from those at present, so different are the geniuses
+which are formed under Turkish slavery and Grecian liberty.
+
+"Besides poverty and want, there are other reasons that debase the minds
+of men who live under Slavery, though I look on this as the principal. The
+natural tendency of despotic powers to ignorance and barbarity, though not
+insisted upon by others, is, I think, an unanswerable argument against
+that form of government, as it shows how repugnant it is to the good of
+mankind and the perfection of human nature, which ought to be the great
+end of all civil institutions."
+
+"Liberty should reach every individual of a people, as they all share one
+common nature; if it only spreads among particular branches there had
+better be none at all, since such a liberty only aggravates the misfortune
+of those who are deprived of it, by setting before them a disagreeable
+subject of comparison."
+
+"The pride of Athens," writes Mirabeau, "and the jealousy of the Greeks,
+banished forever the liberty of those countries, so long fortunate."
+
+Such is and always was our world, covered from time to time with
+conquerors and slaves, because the conquering, in forging the irons of the
+unhappy, with which they bound them, sharpen those which must bind them in
+turn.
+
+Such is and always will be man, from time to time despot and slave, for
+man, denaturalized by servitude, becomes readily the most ferocious of
+animals if he escapes an instant from oppression. There is but one step
+from the despot to the slave, from the slave to the despot, and the chain
+becomes them alike.
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+There are strange forces constantly at work: civilizations spring up,
+disappear, and sometimes, but rarely, return again after a sleep of ages:
+it seems as though genius laid fallow for a period, like the golden
+grains.
+
+The Greek mind teaches the Arabs under the Caliphs of Bagdad and Cordova,
+and in turn the Arabian influence instructs the reviving European mind
+after the dark ages. The fall of Constantinople crushed the Greek mind
+completely. The genius and the "godlike men" of Rome vanished under the
+influence of the strong blood of the Goths, and the flourishing nations of
+the African shore have yielded so completely to physical and moral causes,
+that we justly doubt the story of their magnificence, their power, their
+intelligence.
+
+We see the effete races infused with the fresh blood; the vigorous juices
+of the Scandinavians march forward with unparalleled pace to the triumphs
+of reason and philosophy. The pure, warm, healthy vitality of the North
+recalls to life the exact sciences, the laws of reasoning, and philosophy,
+and �sthetics, which, arising from Grecian genius, had slumbered for a
+thousand years.
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+In the slave lands of America a high order of intellect was proclaimed;
+but when analysis approached, it sank into mediocrity, or vanished into
+dust, like the forms in the ancient tombs when exposed to the light of
+heaven. Slavery has produced nothing but horror. The flashes of light that
+have burst forth through its mists have been the expiring efforts of
+genius. Here the sciences have always languished and declined to take
+root, for they are the offspring of genius and reason. The arts never
+appeared, for the spirit of imitation never arose. To cultivate the
+sciences, there is need of exalted desire, which comes from healthy and
+prosperous races or from celestial fire. Here there was the barbarity of
+ignorance; the only desires were to increase the enormities of their
+crimes, by the spread and general adoption of Slavery, and to conceal its
+proportions and influences beneath a cloud of mental darkness, which is
+frightful to contemplate, when placed in comparison with intelligent
+communities like New England, Belgium, and Prussia.
+
+They thought to perpetuate an aristocratic power, and transmit the
+inheritance of Slavery as a blessing, but they forgot that in the
+formation of happy nations and states humanity forms the broad base; they
+forgot that ambitious and avaricious families quickly degenerate and
+disappear completely from the earth. The vicissitudes of political life
+hasten that decline which is commenced by riches and rank, when supported
+by morbid ideas and sentiments.
+
+The noble families of Athens and Corinth, the patrician body at Rome,
+vanished so rapidly as to excite the surprise of the nations they
+governed. The names of the descendants of the founders of Venice, written
+in the Libro di Oro, are no longer to be found among the living in Italy.
+
+The same law is silently at work in our times.
+
+
+XXX.
+
+The inequalities of the earth's surface are like the rugosities of the
+human brain: the depths of the one contain the richest and most
+inexhaustible treasures of mineral wealth, as the wrinkles of the other
+collect the stores of mental lore. As the surface of the brain becomes
+less marked and rugged, the strength and scope of the mind vanish, and
+approach the standard of the lower animals; and likewise, as the elevated
+lands of the earth shrink in form, and sink into the level of the plain,
+so the characters of the races who inhabit them lose force and elevation.
+
+Sometimes the minds of men are the reflections of the beauties and
+sublimities of nature. Sometimes men become degraded, and nature then does
+not inspire.
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+The lofty and diversified mountain range, or system of ranges, known as
+the Appalachian or Alleghany, rises or reappears in the State of New York,
+midway between the Atlantic coast and the shores of those fresh-water
+seas, Erie and Ontario. It then stretches down south-westward, with its
+adjacent spurs, through the great States of Pennsylvania and Virginia;
+then, dividing, it forms, with its eastern range, the western and northern
+limit of North and South Carolina and Georgia; and with the western it
+intersects Tennessee, forming that beautiful basin known among the white
+men as East Tennessee, but among the traditions of the red men as the
+Garden of the Manitou--their God. In Northern Alabama, the separated
+ranges seemingly unite; and passing southward, towards the central portion
+of the State, the mountain summits gradually contract, and finally sink
+into the level of the great alluvial plains, which stretch away, without
+undulation, to the shores of the Gulf. These huge masses of rock,
+dislocated and elevated like the Vosges and the Hartz Mountains at the
+close of the carboniferous or devonian period of the earth's age, contain,
+with the adjacent and connecting bands,--which are composed of the
+silurian, primitive, and metamorphic ledges,--most of the accessible
+mineral wealth of the republic. And the collective beds of iron, coal,
+marble, zinc, copper, and gold are unsurpassed in similar extent and
+richness by the mines of any country of the known world, with the
+exception of those wonderful deposits of ores and minerals among the
+unexplored and almost inaccessible recesses and plateaus of the Sierra
+Nevada or the Andes.
+
+With the exception of the northern extremity of this mountain group, these
+mines of natural wealth may be said to have been unexplored. Below the
+rich and populous State of Pennsylvania, the hum of human industry ceases;
+for we then pass into the paralyzing shadow of Slavery. This Slavery
+forbade the development of the earth's treasures, as well as the
+enlightenment of the minds of the poor and ignorant whites. The forges of
+Vulcan would have hammered out and broken into fragments the chains of
+that bondage which not only oppressed the fettered blacks, but debased,
+with its corroding influence, the competing labor of the white man.
+
+The slaveholders concealed this immense natural wealth from the eyes of
+science from motives of policy; and rather than incur the hazard of
+revolution, by educating the masses of their own people, they preferred to
+neglect their natural advantages, and to send to distant and even foreign
+lands the products of their fields and their system, to be worked up into
+the marvellous fabrics of human ingenuity and skill. This same State of
+Virginia, which is the real gateway to the empires of the West, and which
+is not surpassed in natural physical advantages by any equal extent of
+territory on the globe, is the most ignorant of all of the States of the
+republic. Ninety thousand of its native-born free people, over twenty
+years of age, before the war could not read nor write; whilst sterile and
+stormy Maine, with her cold lands and colder skies, contained but two
+thousand of the same class, out of a population more than half as great.
+And New England, with a population of almost three times as great as the
+free people of Virginia, is ashamed by the number of seven thousand
+illiterate natives past the age of twenty. Who will wonder at the display
+of barbarity and audacity when the statistics of education and ignorance
+are exhibited? "Education and liberty," says Mirabeau, "are the bases of
+all social harmony and all human prosperity."
+
+Which can civilization curse the most, London or Amsterdam? the Dutch who
+introduced Slavery, or the English who thought Virginia a good place to
+"colonize aristocratic stupidity," and who sent colonists, who were,
+according to the historian, "fitter to breed a riot than to found a
+colony." The condition of the present day shows how rigidly the first
+instructions have been observed and enforced. "Thank God," writes one of
+its early governors to the English Privy Council, "thank God there are no
+free schools or printing, and I hope we shall not have any these hundred
+years! for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the
+world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best
+government. God keep us from both!"
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+And so these mines, and fields, and forests, remain to the present day,
+unsurveyed, unexplored and unknown, save to a few wanderers of science.
+
+In Northern Alabama, where the terminating slopes of this upheaval of
+rocks disappear beneath the level of the vast cotton fields, which number
+their acres by the million, there appear enormous deposits of iron ore, of
+extraordinary richness and depth, lying in juxtaposition with
+corresponding beds of limestones and coal.
+
+Here is alone sufficient material for the iron fingers and forges and the
+steam power to fabricate the vegetable growths, the harvests of the vast
+and fertile plains of the entire South, and to build up with enduring form
+those great and thriving cities which are seen in the dim vista of the
+future of the Mississippi Valley, with its hundred millions of people.
+These elevations, when denuded of their immense primeval forests of pine
+and oak, will be covered with constant verdure, affording sure sustenance
+to numberless flocks and herds of kine, which will require less care than
+the cattle of the plains of Texas or the pampas of Peru, since Nature,
+with her caverns and narrow valleys, will afford shelter from the
+destructive storms of winter and the chilling blasts of spring.
+
+Between the two great spurs of the divided mountain range which encompass
+the head-waters and tributaries of the Tennessee, appears the garden spot
+of the Republic: the soils, enriched by the decomposition of the blue
+limestones, are here of great strength and endurance; the innumerable
+streams are of sufficient force and volume to satisfy the wants of
+industry and mechanics, whilst the lofty mountains, which rise to the
+height of seven thousand feet above the ocean, with their broad and
+impressive shadows, temper the atmospheres, so that the body can labor and
+the mind expand.
+
+To the natural beauties of the landscape art has yet added nothing: from
+the teeming harvests of the valleys, from the massive ledges of minerals,
+man has yet detracted nothing.
+
+Nature here is almost inexhaustible.
+
+No wonder that the dying Indian returns to the region of the Hiwassee to
+end his days on earth, impelled by an irresistible desire to behold once
+more the wonders and beauties of natural scenery, which are preserved
+among the fading traditions of the tribes that have been banished to the
+far off western frontiers.
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+From beneath the eastern aspect of the mountains of Alabama, a broad belt
+of metamorphic rocks bursts forth, and trends to the north-eastward,
+following the mountain ranges in almost parallel lines through the States
+of Georgia, South and North Carolina, and disappearing in Virginia beneath
+the waters of the Potomac. These lands of decomposed mica and talcose
+schists contain throughout their broad extent particles of gold; and some
+of the narrow and circumscribed fields are unsurpassed in their
+undeveloped richness by any of the known gold fields of similar extent in
+the world. These auriferous soils, owned or controlled by the slaveholder,
+have yielded, by the superficial scratchings and washings of the slave and
+the poor white, during the period since the discovery of the precious
+metal, about forty millions of dollars. There are not less than one
+hundred millions more within the reach and grasp of skilled and determined
+labor.
+
+Along beside, and traversing through and through these golden rocks and
+sands, occur immense bands of itacolumite, known, from its flexibility, as
+the elastic sandstone. They stretch from Alabama to the interior of North
+Carolina, bursting forth now as great flexible bands of stone, and then
+bulging out as entire mountains. This singular formation is the same that
+has been recognized in Brazil, Ural Mountains, and Hindostan, as the
+matrix of the diamond; and here, nearly one hundred of the precious gems
+of fine water have been picked up from the earth, from time to time, by
+the careless observer.
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+This upheaval of the earth's surface, reminding the geographer of the
+Italian peninsula, vaguely perhaps in form, in natural fertility and in
+purity of climate, is destined to play an important part in the future
+advancement of the Republic. For here is the heart of the eastern portion
+of the continent, geographically, climatologically, and mineralogically.
+Here Nature is too prolific to be long neglected by the cupidity or the
+ambition of men, when the barriers and obstructions of inquiry and
+settlement, which have been reared against the advance and design of
+civilization by the Slave Faction, shall have been removed. When the tide
+of European emigration, which steadily brings to the New World the pure
+blood and youth of races, turns its stream of industrial life towards
+these valleys, mountain slopes, and terraces; when the laws of
+alimentation are understood and properly observed; when the spire of the
+school-house rises in the vista of every landscape, or points the way at
+every cross-road,--then we may expect to see a new variety of the human
+race appear, possessed of remarkable physical strength and beauty, and
+whose ideas and efforts, typical of the healthy and developed mind, will,
+like the influences of New England and Scandinavia, give fresh impulse and
+impress to the civilizations of the earth.
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+Races of men--nations--even the lesser communities, during the periods of
+their social existence, erect monuments, or leave, unwillingly sometimes,
+traces of their progress, their advancement, their culture, as memorials
+for the admiration, or as the objects of horror for the contempt, of
+future generations.
+
+The gigantic pyramids and sphinxes of Egypt tell of the civilization of
+their extinct founders; the airy and graceful columns, with the wonderful
+sculptures of the Parthenon, disclose the degree of the perfection and the
+delicacy of the Greek mind. Rome, though long since vanished from among
+the nations of the earth, has left the impress of her force, grandeur, and
+wisdom in those laws which now direct the tribunals of men; the lofty and
+colossal structures of the temples of the Rhine are the emblems of faith
+as well as the masterpieces of the Gothic heart and intellect; even the
+mysterious and history-forgotten Druids have left their rude reminiscences
+in those weird circles of enormous and cyclopean rocks, beyond which all
+is darkness.
+
+Thus men perpetuate their memories among the annals of the earth. But
+after their long period of existence and progress, what have the Slave
+Faction left for the historian to contemplate with satisfaction? for an
+attentive world to study, imitate, and admire? What beyond this appalling
+cloud of ignorance have they left as legacy to the poor white? What
+besides misery, violence, and crime have they bequeathed to the black man?
+With what treasures, in the estimation of mankind, have they enriched
+themselves, or left as inheritance to their degenerate offspring?
+
+The history of this remorseless party, its selfish and sordid aims, its
+cruel results, will always find place among the annals of civilized man so
+long as the noblest acts of men are admired, and so long as the dark deeds
+of cruelty appall and overshadow our better nature. Thermopyl�, Marathon,
+and the holy sites where Liberty has struggled for existence, and where
+men have risen above the trammels of their earthly natures, will be
+remembered no longer than this field of blood and torture among the
+obscure forests of Georgia.
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+Who will say that Nature and Liberty were the genii who directed the
+labors of the leaders of the Rebellion?
+
+Soil, climate, hereditary traditions, and customs of society, give to a
+people the fierceness and gentleness of character, as well as the
+perfection of mind and body. This fatal Stockade, with the silent mound of
+earth which contains its harvest of death, is a fair and just exponent of
+the bigoted and selfish policy that struck down the Flag of the Republic;
+of that cruel and unearthly spirit which has despised all the "attachments
+with which God has formed the chain of human sympathies," and which,
+without a tear of remorse, has strewn the Atlantic Ocean with a broad
+pathway of human bones!
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+Since the close of the war, and since the time when the sketch of the
+graveyard was taken, Colonel Moore, of the U. S. Quartermaster's
+Department, has been to Andersonville, under orders from the Secretary of
+War, and arranged the cemetery in a very acceptable manner. All of the
+stakes were removed, and neat head-boards placed instead, with the names
+of the dead properly painted in black letters. The ground has been cleared
+up by this efficient officer, and the cemetery carefully laid out into
+walks, adorned with flowers and trees. Colonel Moore, in his report to the
+Quartermaster-General, writes the following account:--
+
+"The dead were found buried in trenches, on a site selected by the rebels,
+about three hundred yards from the stockade. The trenches varied in length
+from fifty to one hundred and fifty yards. The bodies in the trenches were
+from two to three feet below the surface, and in several instances, where
+the rain had washed away the earth, but a few inches. Additional earth
+was, however, thrown upon the graves, making them of still greater depth.
+So close were they buried, without coffins, or the ordinary clothing to
+cover their nakedness, that not more than twelve inches were allowed to
+each man. Indeed, the little tablets marking their resting-places,
+measuring hardly ten inches in width, almost touch each other. United
+States soldiers, while prisoners at Andersonville, had been detailed to
+inter their companions; and by a simple stake at the head of each grave,
+which bore a number corresponding with a similarly numbered name upon the
+Andersonville hospital record, I was enabled to identify, and mark with a
+neat tablet, similar to those in the cemeteries at Washington, the number,
+name, rank, regiment, company, and date of death of twelve thousand four
+hundred and sixty-one graves; there being but four hundred and fifty-one
+that bore the sad inscription, 'Unknown U. S. Soldier.'"
+
+Extract from letters of the rebel Senator Foote, dated Montreal, June 21,
+1865.
+
+"Touching the Congressional report referred to, I have this to say: A
+month or two anterior to the date of said report, I learned from a
+government officer of respectability, that the prisoners of war then
+confined in and about Richmond were suffering severely from want of
+provisions. He told me, further, that it was manifest to him that a
+systematic scheme was on foot for subjecting these unfortunate men to
+starvation; that the Commissary-General, Mr. Northrup (a most wicked and
+heartless wretch), had addressed a communication to Mr. Seddon, the
+Secretary of War, proposing to withhold meat altogether from military
+prisoners then in custody, and to give them nothing but bread and
+vegetables; and that Mr. Seddon had indorsed the document containing this
+communication affirmatively. I learned, further, that by calling upon
+Major Ould, the commissioner for exchange of prisoners, I would be able to
+obtain further information upon the subject. I went to Major Ould
+immediately, and obtained the desired information. Being utterly unwilling
+to countenance such barbarity for a moment,--regarding, indeed, the honor
+of the whole South as concerned in the affair,--I proceeded without delay
+to the hall of the House of Representatives, called the attention of that
+strangely constituted body to the subject, and insisted upon an immediate
+committee of investigation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As to the capacity of the bakery, any one can make his own estimates from
+the plan given. The foreman of the government bakery at Nashville, gives
+his views in the following note:--
+
+    "SIR: Our system in wheaten flour bread is, five men bake six ovens
+    full in the twelve hours; one oven full, 36 pans; 9 loaves (18
+    rations) in each pan; 36 pans � 18 = 648 � 6 ovens full = 3888 � 2
+    (for twenty-four hours) = 7776 rations: this is done by two ovens. Say
+    six men on each oven (any more would be in the way), two and a half
+    hours to knead and bake each oven full (almost impossible), ten ovens
+    full in the twelve hours in the day time (two ovens five times full in
+    the twelve hours), ten ovens full in the twelve hours in the night
+    time, each oven full 40 pans, 12 rations in each (20 oz. of corn
+    bread); 40 pans � 12 = 480 � 10 for day's work = 4800 + 4800 for night
+    work = 9600 rations in the twenty-four hours.
+
+    Sir, all the above are in the extreme.
+
+      Most respectfully,
+        JOHN WITHERSPOON, Foreman U. S. Bakery."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The hospital register gives the following data as to the number of
+prisoners present during each month, the number treated medically, and the
+average number of deaths:--
+
+  ===============================================================
+                      |  Number of   | Number in  |    Average
+        Month.        |  Prisoners.  | Hospital.  | Daily Deaths.
+  --------------------+--------------+------------+--------------
+  February, 1864      |     1,600    |       33   |     ..
+  March,     "        |     4,603    |      909   |      9
+  April,     "        |     7,875    |      870   |     19
+  May,       "        |    13,486    |    1,190   |     23
+  June,      "        |    22,352    |    1,605   |     40
+  July,      "        |    28,689    |    2,156   |     56
+  August,    "        |    32,193    |    3,709   |     99
+  September, "        |    17,733    |    3,026   |     89
+  October,   "        |     5,885    |    2,245   |     51
+  November,  "        |     2,024    |      242   |     16
+  December,  "        |     2,218    |      431   |      5
+  January, 1865       |     4,931    |      595   |      6
+  February,  "        |     5,195    |      365   |      5
+  March,     "        |     4,800    |      140   |      3
+  ===============================================================
+
+The greatest number of deaths, on any single day, was on the 23d of
+August, 1864, and was 127, or one death every eleven minutes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fact of the employment of blood-hounds is too notorious to admit of
+doubt. Many packs of dogs were kept, and a profitable business was done in
+the catching of escaped prisoners. Ben Harris was seen to receive pay for
+the capture of sixty prisoners, at thirty dollars apiece. That some of the
+pursued were killed in the forests during the pursuit, there is no doubt
+in the writer's mind, from the evidence offered.
+
+The following table was collated from the hospital records of the prison,
+and is believed, by the writer and clerks who were employed at the rebel
+office, to be quite correct:--
+
+  ===============================================================
+                   |  Deaths   |  Deaths   |  Deaths in |
+       Month.      |    in     |    in     |  Small Pox | Total.
+                   | Hospital. | Stockade. |  Hospital. |
+  -----------------+-----------+-----------+------------+--------
+  February, 1864.  |       1   |      ..   |      ..    |      1
+  March,     "     |     262   |      15   |       5    |    282
+  April,     "     |     471   |      71   |      34    |    576
+  May,       "     |     633   |      65   |      10    |    708
+  June,      "     |   1,041   |     150   |      10    |  1,201
+  July,      "     |   1,119   |     614   |       5    |  1,738
+  August,    "     |   1,489   |   1,592   |      ..    |  3,081
+  September, "     |   1,255   |   1,423   |      ..    |  2,678
+  October,   "     |   1,294   |     301   |      ..    |  1,595
+  November,  "     |     494   |      ..   |      ..    |    494
+  December,  "     |     166   |       2   |      ..    |    168
+  January,  1865.  |     191   |       8   |      ..    |    199
+  February,  "     |     147   |      ..   |      ..    |    147
+  March,     "     |     100   |      ..   |      ..    |    100
+                   +-----------+-----------+------------+--------
+    Total          |   8,663   |   4,241   |      64    | 12,968
+  -----------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
+  Hung in stockade for crime                            |      6
+                                                        +--------
+    Total deaths as registered                          | 12,974
+  ===============================================================
+
+The hospital records show that 17,873 patients were registered, and that
+823 of these were exchanged, and about 25 took the oath of allegiance,
+leaving 17,048 to be accounted for, giving a mortality of seventy-six per
+cent. Besides the registered dead, there were some who perished by the
+falling of the excavations in the stockade, and others destroyed by hounds
+and hunters in the forests.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The meteorological tables and the vegetal charts of Blodgett will give the
+rain-fall of this region in comparison with the other districts of the
+United States.
+
+The following table, which was compiled by the author from the official
+records of the British army, gives the number of soldiers who were killed
+in action, or afterwards perished from their wounds, in many of the great
+battles of the British empire:--
+
+  =====================================================
+            |             | Total Strength  | Estimated
+    Year.   |  Battles.   |    engaged.     |  Deaths.
+  ----------+-------------+-----------------+----------
+    1809.   | Talavera,   |    22,100       |   1,445
+    1811.   | Albuera,    |     9,000       |   1,358
+    1812.   | Salamanca,  |    30,500       |     770
+    1813.   | Vittoria,   |    42,000       |     890
+    1815.   | Ligny,      |       ...       |     ...
+      ..    | Quatre Bras,|       ...       |     ...
+      ..    | Wavre,      |    49,900       |   3,245
+      ..    | Waterloo,   |       ...       |     ...
+      ..    | New Orleans,|     6,000       |     625
+    1854.   | Crimea,     |       ...       |   4,595
+  ----------+-------------+-----------------+---------
+    Total number of deaths from wounds      |  12,928
+  ====================================================
+
+
+STATISTICS FROM THE CENSUS REPORTS OF 1860.
+
+GEORGIA.
+
+  =================================================================
+             |  Corn,   |  Wheat, | Cotton,|Potatoes,| Peas and
+   Counties. | bushels. | bushels.| bales. | bushels.| Beans, bush.
+  -----------+----------+---------+--------+---------+-------------
+  Macon.     |  313,906 |  22,312 | 10,248 |  86,000 |  37,836
+  Lee.       |  319,653 |   2,250 | 14,445 |  60,000 |  34,599
+  Sumter.    |  386,892 |   8,396 | 14,423 |  92,234 |  12,483
+  Dougherty. |  356,812 |     553 |  9,580 |  56,310 |  23,061
+             |----------+---------+--------+---------+-------------
+    Total.   | 1,377,263|  33,511 | 48,696 | 294,544 | 108,019
+  =================================================================
+
+  ==========================================================
+             |Land improved, | Land unimproved, | Number of
+   Counties. |    acres.     |      acres.      |  Slaves.
+  -----------+---------------+------------------+-----------
+  Macon.     |    88,353     |     108,176      |   4,865
+  Lee.       |    85,840     |     113,172      |   4,947
+  Sumter.    |   102,327     |     160,742      |   4,890
+  Dougherty. |    91,470     |      99,048      |   6,079
+             |---------------+------------------+-----------
+    Total.   |   367,990     |     481,138      |  20,781
+  ==========================================================
+
+There were, in 1860, nearly 600,000 cattle and swine in the State of
+Florida alone, whilst Maine had but 200,000 at the same time. Georgia and
+Alabama had together, in 1860, 5,000,000 of cattle and swine, and they
+produced during the same year more than 60,000,000 bushels of corn,
+4,000,000 bushels of wheat, and 13,000,000 bushels of potatoes. All New
+England, during the same period, produced but 1,000,000 bushels of wheat
+and 9,000,000 bushels of corn, although containing a million more people
+than Georgia and Alabama.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following is a copy of the order relating to the treatment of the
+rebel prisoners in the hands of the United States authorities. Contrast it
+with the rebel barbarities.
+
+
+A.
+
+  OFFICE OF COMMISSARY GENERAL OF PRISONERS,}
+  WASHINGTON, April 20, 1864.               }
+
+[_Circular._]
+
+By authority of the War Department, the following Regulations will be
+observed at all stations where prisoners of war and political or state
+prisoners are held. The Regulations will supersede those issued from this
+office July 7, 1861:--
+
+I. The Commanding Officer at each station is held accountable for the
+discipline and good order of his command, and for the security of the
+prisoners; and will take such measures, with the means placed at his
+disposal, as will best secure these results. He will divide the prisoners
+into companies, and will cause written reports to be made to him of their
+condition every morning, showing the changes made during the preceding
+twenty-four hours, giving the names of the "joined," "transferred,"
+"deaths," &c. At the end of every month, Commanders will send to the
+Commissary General of Prisoners a Return of Prisoners, giving names and
+details to explain "alterations." If rolls of "joined" or "transferred"
+have been forwarded during the month, it will be sufficient to refer to
+them on the return, according to forms furnished.
+
+II. On the arrival of any prisoners at any station, a careful comparison
+of them with the rolls which accompany them will be made, and all errors
+on the rolls will be corrected. When no roll accompanies the prisoners,
+one will immediately be made out, containing all the information required,
+as correct as can be, from the statements of prisoners themselves. When
+the prisoners are citizens, the town, county, and State from which they
+come will be given on the rolls, under the headings Rank, Regiment, and
+Company. At stations where prisoners are received frequently, and in small
+parties, a list will be furnished every fifth day--the last one in the
+month may be for six days--of all prisoners received during the preceding
+five days. Immediately on their arrival, prisoners will be required to
+give up all arms and weapons of every description, of which the Commanding
+Officer will require an accurate list to be made. When prisoners are
+forwarded for exchange, duplicate parole rolls, signed by the prisoners,
+will be sent with them, and an ordinary roll will be sent to the
+Commissary General of Prisoners. When they are transferred from one
+station to another, an ordinary roll will be sent with them, and a copy of
+it to the Commissary General of Prisoners. In all cases, the officer
+charged with conducting prisoners will report to the officer under whose
+order he acts the execution of his service, furnishing a receipt for the
+prisoners delivered, and accounting by name for those not delivered; which
+report will be forwarded, without delay, to the Commissary General of
+Prisoners.
+
+III. The hospital will be under the immediate charge of the senior Medical
+Officer present, who will be held responsible to the Commanding Officer
+for its good order and the proper treatment of the sick. A fund for this
+hospital will be created, as for other hospitals. It will be kept separate
+from the fund of the hospital for the troops, and will be expended for the
+objects specified, and in the manner prescribed, in paragraph 1212,
+Revised Regulations for the Army of 1863, except that the requisition of
+the Medical Officer in charge, and the bill of purchase, before payment,
+shall be approved by the Commanding Officer. When this "fund" is
+sufficiently large, it may be expended also for shirts and drawers for the
+sick, the expense of washing clothes, articles for policing purposes, and
+all articles and objects indispensably necessary to promote the sanitary
+condition of the hospital.
+
+IV. Surgeons in charge of hospitals where there are prisoners of war will
+make to the Commissary General of Prisoners, through the Commanding
+Officer, semi-monthly reports of deaths, giving names, rank, regiment, and
+company; date and place of capture; date and cause of death; place of
+interment, and number of grave. Effects of deceased prisoners will be
+taken possession of by the Commanding Officer--the money and valuables to
+be reported to this office (see note on blank reports), the clothing of
+any value to be given to such prisoners as require it. Money left by
+deceased prisoners, or accruing from the sale of their effects, will be
+placed in the Prison Fund.
+
+V. A fund, to be called "The Prison Fund," and to be applied in procuring
+such articles as may be necessary for the health and convenience of the
+prisoners, not expressly provided for by General Army Regulations, 1863,
+will be made by withholding from their rations such parts thereof as can
+be conveniently dispensed with. The Abstract of Issues to Prisoners, and
+Statement of the Prison Fund, shall be made out, commencing with the month
+of May, 1864, in the same manner as is prescribed for the Abstract of
+Issues to Hospital and Statement of the Hospital Fund (see paragraphs
+1209, 1215, and 1246, and Form 5, Subsistence Department, Army
+Regulations, 1863), with such modifications in language as may be
+necessary. The ration for issue to prisoners will be composed as follows,
+viz.:--
+
+  Hard Bread,           { 14 oz. per one ration, or
+                        { 18 oz. Soft Bread one ration.
+
+  Corn Meal,              18 oz. per one ration.
+  Beef,                   14  "   "   "
+  Bacon or Pork,          10  "   "   "
+  Beans,                   6 qts. per 100 men.
+  Hominy or Rice,          8 lbs.  "   "
+  Sugar,                  14  "    "   "
+  R. Coffee,               5 lbs. ground, or 7 lbs. raw, per 100 men.
+  Tea,                    18 oz. per 100 men.
+  Soap,                    4  "   "   "
+  Adamantine Candles,      5 Candles per 100 men.
+  Tallow Candles,          6   "      "   "
+  Salt,                    2 qts.     "   "
+  Molasses,                1 qt.      "   "
+  Potatoes,               30 lbs.     "   "
+
+When beans are issued, hominy or rice will not be. If at any time it
+should seem advisable to make any change in this scale, the circumstances
+will be reported to the Commissary General of Prisoners for his
+consideration.
+
+VI. Disbursements to be charged against the Prison Fund will be made by
+the Commissary of Subsistence, on the order of the Commanding Officer; and
+all such expenditures of funds will be accounted for by the Commissary, in
+the manner prescribed for the disbursements of the Hospital Fund. When in
+any month the items of expenditures on account of the Prison Fund cannot
+be conveniently entered on the Abstract of Issues to Prisoners, a list of
+the articles and quantities purchased, prices paid, statement of services
+rendered, &c., certified by the Commissary as correct, and approved by the
+Commanding Officer, will accompany the Abstract. In such cases it will
+only be necessary to enter on the Abstract of Issues the total amount of
+funds thus expended.
+
+VII. At the end of each calendar month, the Commanding Officer will
+transmit to the Commissary General of Prisoners a copy of the "Statement
+of the Prison Fund," as shown in the Abstract of Issues for that month,
+with a copy of the list of expenditures specified in preceding paragraph,
+accompanied by vouchers, and will indorse thereon, or convey in letter of
+transmittal, such remarks as the matter may seem to require.
+
+VIII. The Prison Fund is a credit with the Subsistence Department, and at
+the request of the Commissary General of Prisoners may be transferred by
+the Commissary General of Subsistence in the manner prescribed by existing
+Regulations for the transfer of Hospital Fund.
+
+IX. With the Prison Fund may be purchased such articles, not provided for
+by regulations, as may be necessary for the health and proper condition
+of the prisoners, such as table furniture, cooking utensils, articles for
+policing, straw, the means for improving or enlarging the barracks or
+hospitals, &c. It will also be used to pay clerks and other employees
+engaged in labors connected with prisoners. No barracks or other
+structures will be erected or enlarged, and no alterations made, without
+first submitting a plan and estimate of the cost to the Commissary General
+of Prisoners, to be laid before the Secretary of War for his approval; and
+in no case will the services of clerks or of other employees be paid for
+without the sanction of the Commissary General of Prisoners. Soldiers
+employed with such sanction will be allowed 40 cents per day when employed
+as clerks, stewards, or mechanics; 25 cents a day when employed as
+laborers.
+
+X. It is made the duty of the Quartermaster, or, when there is none, the
+Commissary, under the orders of the Commanding Officer, to procure all
+articles required, and to hire clerks or other employees. All bills for
+service or for articles purchased will be certified by the Quartermaster,
+and will be paid by the Commissary on the order of the Commanding Officer,
+who is held responsible that all expenditures are for authorized purposes.
+
+XI. The Quartermaster will be held accountable for all property purchased
+with the Prison Fund, and he will make a return of it to the Commissary
+General of Prisoners at the end of each calendar month, which will show
+the articles on hand on the first day of the month; the articles
+purchased, issued, and expended during the month; and the articles
+remaining on hand. The return will be supported by abstracts of the
+articles purchased, issued, and expended, certified by the Quartermaster,
+and approved by the Commanding Officer.
+
+XII. The Commanding Officer will cause requisitions to be made by his
+Quartermaster for such clothing as may be absolutely necessary for the
+prisoners, which requisition will be approved by him, after a careful
+inquiry as to the necessity, and submitted for the approval of the
+Commissary General of Prisoners.
+
+The clothing will be issued by the Quartermaster to the prisoners, with
+the assistance and under the supervision of an officer detailed for the
+purpose, whose certificate that the issue has been made in his presence
+will be the Quartermaster's voucher for the clothing issued. From the 30th
+of April to the 1st of October, neither drawers nor socks will be allowed,
+except to the sick. When army clothing is issued, buttons and trimmings
+will be taken off the coats, and the skirts will be cut so short that the
+prisoners who wear them will not be mistaken for United States soldiers.
+
+XIII. The Sutler for the prisoners is entirely under the control of the
+Commanding Officer, who will require him to furnish the prescribed
+articles, and at reasonable rates. For this privilege the Sutler will be
+taxed a small amount by the Commanding Officer, according to the amount of
+his trade, which tax will be placed in the hands of the Commissary to make
+part of the Prison Fund.
+
+XIV. All money in possession of prisoners, or received by them, will be
+taken charge of by the Commanding Officer, who will give receipts for it
+to those to whom it belongs. Sales will be made to prisoners by the Sutler
+on orders on the Commanding Officer, which orders will be kept as vouchers
+in the settlement of the individual accounts. The Commanding Officer will
+procure proper books in which to keep an account of all moneys deposited
+in his hands, these accounts to be always subject to inspection by the
+Commissary General of Prisoners, or other inspecting officer. When
+prisoners are transferred from the post, the moneys belonging to them,
+with a statement of the amount due each, will be sent with them, to be
+turned over by the officer in charge to the officer to whom the prisoners
+are delivered, who will give receipts for the money. When prisoners are
+paroled, their money will be returned to them.
+
+XV. All articles sent by friends to prisoners, if proper to be delivered,
+will be carefully distributed as the donors may request; such as are
+intended for the sick passing through the hands of the Surgeon, who will
+be responsible for their proper use. Contributions must be received by an
+officer, who will be held responsible that they are delivered to the
+person for whom they are intended. All uniform, clothing, boots, or
+equipments of any kind for military service, weapons of all kinds, and
+intoxicating liquors, including malt liquors, are among the contraband
+articles. The material for outer clothing should be gray, or some dark
+mixed color, and of inferior quality. Any excess of clothing, over what
+is required for immediate use, is contraband.
+
+XVI. When prisoners are seriously ill, their nearest relatives, being
+loyal, may be permitted to make them short visits; but under no other
+circumstances will visitors be admitted without the authority of the
+Commissary General of Prisoners. At those places where the guard is inside
+the enclosure, persons having official business to transact with the
+Commander or other officer will be admitted for such purposes, but will
+not be allowed to have any communication with the prisoners.
+
+XVII. Prisoners will be permitted to write and to receive letters, not to
+exceed one page of common letter paper each, provided the matter is
+strictly of a private nature. Such letters must be examined by a reliable
+non-commissioned officer, appointed for that purpose by the Commanding
+Officer, before they are forwarded or delivered to the prisoners.
+
+XVIII. Prisoners who have been reported to the Commissary General of
+Prisoners will not be paroled or released except by authority of the
+Secretary of War.
+
+  W. HOFFMAN,
+  Col. 3d Infantry, Commissary General of Prisoners.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+The publishers have the names of all of those soldiers who perished at
+Andersonville, the date of death, and the number of their graves; and they
+contemplate publishing the list hereafter, if sufficient encouragement is
+offered.
+
+  Address
+
+  LEE & SHEPARD,
+  149 Washington Street, Boston.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+The Illustrations were drawn by the author from sketches upon the spot,
+and from photographs which were taken by the rebels during the occupation
+of the prison. The figures are by Charles A. Barry, Esq., and the
+engraving by Henry Marsh, Esq.
+
+  NUMBER                                                 PAGE
+
+      I. View from Main Gate (from rebel photograph)        2
+
+     II. Vignette                                           7
+
+    III. Bird's-eye View of Stockade                       19
+
+     IV. View of Officers' Stockade                        21
+
+      V. View of Interior of the Prison                    29
+
+     VI. View of Graveyard (from rebel photograph)         37
+
+    VII. View of Dead Line (from rebel photograph)         48
+
+   VIII. View of Gates                                     53
+
+     IX. View of Mud Huts                                  55
+
+      X. View of Burial (from rebel photograph)            57
+
+     XI. View of Bakery                                    61
+
+    XII. View of Kitchen                                   63
+
+   XIII. View of Blood-hound Hut                           64
+
+    XIV. View of Utensils used by the Prisoners            96
+
+     XV. Map of Georgia                                    18
+
+    XVI. Plan of Andersonville                             20
+
+   XVII. Plan of Prison                                    50
+
+  XVIII. Plan of Bakery                                    60
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+  BOOK FIRST.
+
+  _Introduction. Description of Andersonville: Locality,
+  Arrangement, and Construction of the Camp._                     7-28
+
+
+  BOOK SECOND.
+
+  _Descriptive: the Number of Prisoners compared with the
+  Armies of Alexander and Napoleon. The Dead compared with
+  the Losses of the British Soldiers at Waterloo, Crimea,
+  Spain, Mexican War, &c._                                       28-40
+
+
+  BOOK THIRD.
+
+  _Describes at length the Stockade, with all the
+  Arrangements, with Comparisons, Ratio of Density, &c._         40-68
+
+
+  BOOK FOURTH.
+
+  _Relates to the Alimentation of the Prisoners, with
+  Comparisons with the Dietaries of Foreign Armies,
+  Hospitals, Prisons, Scarcity of Food in the Prison,
+  Abundance of Food in the Country, &c._                         68-99
+
+
+  BOOK FIFTH.
+
+  _Review of the Hospital--its Arrangement and Results._        99-113
+
+
+  BOOK SIXTH.
+
+  _Relates to the Mortality as compared with that of our
+  Armies and Prisons, also with Foreign Armies, Prisons,
+  and Hospitals, &c._                                          113-142
+
+
+  BOOK SEVENTH.
+
+  _Relates to the Legal Right of Death over the Captive,
+  with the Views of the Ablest Writers of Past Times,
+  Rousseau, Montesquieu, Mirabeau, &c. The Treatment of
+  Prisoners of War by the Rebels contrasted with Usages of
+  Civilized Nations. Regulations of the United States. Letter
+  of General Butler on the Exchange of Prisoners. Complicity
+  of Jeff Davis, &c., &c._                                     142-194
+
+
+  BOOK EIGHTH.
+
+  _Review of the Physical and Moral Causes,--Climatological,
+  Ethnological, Social, &c.,--that have led to the Degeneration
+  of the White Race in the South, and the consequent Degree
+  of Perversity and Barbarity, &c._                            194-242
+
+
+  APPENDIX.
+
+  _Notes. Statistical Tables. General Orders of the United
+  States in Reference to Treatment of their Prisoners._        243-254
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Martyria, by Augustus C. Hamlin
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+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Martyria; or, Andersonville Prison, by Augustus C. Hamlin.
+    </title>
+
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+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Martyria, by Augustus C. Hamlin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Martyria
+       or Andersonville Prison
+
+Author: Augustus C. Hamlin
+
+Release Date: October 21, 2011 [EBook #37813]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTYRIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
+Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<p><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">View from the Main Gate.</span> Taken from rebel photographs of
+the prison<br />when it contained thirty-five thousand men. Original picture in possession of the author.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">MARTYRIA;</span></p>
+<p class="center">OR,</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">ANDERSONVILLE PRISON.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><small>BY</small><br />
+AUGUSTUS C. HAMLIN.<br />
+<small>LATE MEDICAL INSPECTOR U. S. ARMY, ROYAL ANTIQUARIAN, ETC.</small></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><i>Illustrated by the Author.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">BOSTON:<br />
+LEE AND SHEPARD.<br />
+1866.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by<br />
+A. C. HAMLIN,<br />
+In the Clerk&#8217;s Office of the District Court of the District of Maine.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">Cambridge Press<br />
+<span class="smcap">Dakin and Metcalf.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">STEREOTYPED AT THE<br />
+BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><small>TO THE</small></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">MEMORY OF THE MEN</span></p>
+<p class="center">WHO STEADILY UPHELD THE CAUSE OF CIVIL LIBERTY,</p>
+<p class="center"><small>AND</small></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="large">WHO PREFERRED LINGERING DEATH,</span></p>
+<p class="center">IN THE MIDST OF UNPARALLELED PRIVATIONS<br />AND HORRORS,</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="large">RATHER THAN DISHONOR</span></p>
+<p class="center">AND DENIAL OF THEIR BIRTHRIGHTS,</p>
+<p class="center"><i>THIS BOOK</i></p>
+<p class="center">IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+<h2>NOTE.</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="note">
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> author presents for review neither style nor language: he offers
+simply the story of the wrong and the heroism, the cause and effect, as it
+rises in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Neither does he, at this late date, seek to rekindle the smouldering
+embers of hate and conflict, nor, Antony-like, attack persons under the
+recital of the wrongs. Vengeance does not belong to the human race. There
+are times in the history of men when human invectives are without force.
+&#8220;There are deeds of which men are no judges, and which mount, without
+appeal, direct to the tribunal of God.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Augustus Choate Hamlin.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Bangor</span>, September, 1866.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_FIRST" id="BOOK_FIRST"></a>MARTYRIA.</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img1.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 8em;">&#8220;They never fail who die</span><br />
+In a great cause.<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span>*<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span>*<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span>*<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span>*<br />
+They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts<br />
+Which overpower all others, and conduct<br />
+The world at last to freedom.&#8221;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 16em;"><i>Byron.</i></span></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">I.</p>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">History</span> weighs the social institutions of men in the scale of Humanity.
+Time, slowly but surely, accumulates the evidence which relates to their
+materials. It calmly but firmly unveils the statues which men erect as
+their principles, and with &#8220;that retributive justice which God has
+implanted in our very acts, as a conscience more sacred than the fatalism
+of the ancients,&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> lays bare the secret springs of action which have
+prompted the deeds of heroism or baseness, of virtue or crime.</p>
+
+<p>Nations are political institutions, and like the system of nature, which
+is governed by positive and fixed laws, so they likewise are swayed and
+directed by mysterious forces, and influenced and moulded into form by
+those external circumstances which are greatly within the control of man.
+Their rise and decadence is in direct ratio to the nature and integrity of
+their customs, the structure of their social fabrics, the vigor of the
+spirit of independence which animates their thoughts, or the strength of
+the despotism which consumes their vitals. &#8220;Liberty brings benedictions in
+spite of nature, and in defiance of the same nature tyranny brings
+maledictions. Slavery has always produced only villany, vice, and misery.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Men cannot perpetuate a creed or a system that is not founded on the
+eternal principles of justice and virtue, no more than they can control
+the elements&mdash;no more than they can remove or obliterate those
+geographical boundaries, beyond which the human races cannot pass in
+pursuit of the forms of wealth or the dreams of ambition.</p>
+
+<p>The Belgian, who has studied so long and so faithfully the laws of
+metaphysics, exclaims, &#8220;All those things which appear to be left to the
+free will, the passions, or the degree of intelligence of men, are
+regulated by laws as fixed, immutable, and eternal as those which govern
+the phenomena of the natural world!&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">II.</p>
+
+<p>Along the southern tier of the great States which form the American
+Republic, whose gigantic structure and almost supernatural vigor already
+overshadow and animate the older civilizations of the world, we observe
+vast extents of level and alluvial lands and deltas, or &#8220;rather a series
+of littoral bands of remarkable disposition,&#8221; which the ocean left when
+receding from the mountain shores of the interior to its present limits,
+or which slowly and gradually emerged from their watery bed in the
+upheavals during the long intervals of the earth&#8217;s ages.</p>
+
+<p>This immense territory, stretching from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, and
+hardly broken throughout this long distance by undulations of the soil,
+embraces more than six hundred thousand square miles&mdash;an extent greater
+than that of France and the States of the Germanic Confederation combined.
+Eight millions of human souls inhabit the one, whilst one hundred millions
+people the other. Ignorance and brutality darken the one, intelligence and
+humanity illuminate the other.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">III.</p>
+
+<p>The proximity of the sea, the configuration of the soil, the presence or
+absence of mountains, affect the growth and character of nations, and
+leave their impress upon their institutions. Climate and purity of blood
+complete the determination in the problem of life, the progress and degree
+of development. Upon these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> external causes also depend, in a great
+measure, the vigor of the imagination, the sentiment of the grand and the
+beautiful, the vivacity and purity of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>The cold breezes of the temperate zones conduce men to wisdom, reason, and
+philosophy. The enervating atmospheres of hot climes incline the mind and
+body to repose, and often pervert the notions of natural justice. In the
+one, the mind is ever delighted and refreshed by the varying scenes of
+nature; in the other, the forms of the mournful and the terrible alone
+excite the imagination.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">IV.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen these lands occupied for more than two centuries by the
+emigrants from European countries; we have seen the reckless adventurer,
+the noble exile, the fugitive from justice, the outcast of society,
+blended together here in the experiment of colonization.</p>
+
+<p>The form is still the same, for form is always more persistent than
+material in organic life, but the sterling and generous qualities of the
+primitive stock have greatly changed.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen in these lands Slavery&mdash;that relic of barbarism, that
+leprosy, the foulest that ever preyed upon the vitals of any
+state&mdash;transplanted by that accursed Dutch ship, under the guise of
+Humanity, flourish, increase, and assume, during this brief period, the
+proportions of a despotism so powerful, so tenacious, as to defy and
+resist, almost successfully, the entire strength and resources of the
+Republic, enriching the slave faction with enormous wealth, but debasing
+and deteriorating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> the morals, the blood of the poor and non-slaveholding
+whites.</p>
+
+<p>This increase of three millions of black men were held in bondage as human
+cattle by a few thousand white men. To these unfortunate creatures society
+extended no generosity, no consideration, but what reduced them still
+lower in the scale of organized beings, and chained them more closely in
+the sordid and selfish interests of their remorseless masters. To teach
+the black man to read, even the light of the divine Gospel, was a matter
+of fine, and imprisonment, and sometimes death.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">V.</p>
+
+<p>Seeking to perpetuate this atrocious system, this right of brute force
+over the helpless black, and establish a despotism with Slavery as its
+basis, the arrogant faction boldly took up arms against the Republic.
+&#8220;When Fortune,&#8221; says the Latin historian, &#8220;is determined upon the ruin of
+a people, she can so blind them as to render them insensible to danger,
+even of the greatest magnitude.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Their appeals to arms were in the name of justice and glory, but they were
+without the echo of liberty and humanity. They summoned the masses of poor
+whites, whom they had degraded below the level of the slave, to rise and
+fight for their liberties, which were as empty as the winds of the desert.
+There were no liberties, no privileges for the poor whites, but to curse
+poverty and question God&#8217;s providence.</p>
+
+<p>The individual desires of the few had usurped and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> swallowed up the rights
+of society. There was no society but the relation between the black man
+and his master. The law, order, and force were all within the control of
+the rich slaveholder.</p>
+
+<p>The masses were either their tools, or too abject to be considered as
+dangerous; too ignorant to be feared as seditious, too poor to be regarded
+as anything more than trash, below the level and the value of the negro.
+This condition of the poor whites was the result of physical, political,
+and moral causes, long and silently at work.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VI.</p>
+
+<p>The pretence for strife was resistance to oppression, and the extension
+and perfection of liberty to the masses; yet they impelled the people to
+passion, without mingling a single truth with the illusions with which
+they decorated their standards. Whilst they talked of the independent
+spirit of the new government, and the glory of resisting the oppressive
+policy of the invaders, every act and edict gathered closer and stronger
+the bonds which degraded and burdened the poor white.</p>
+
+<p>The owner of seven slaves was exempt from the hazard of battle, but
+poverty and starvation of family were no causes of exemption for the
+non-slaveholder.</p>
+
+<p>The real design, concealed by the strife, was the foundation of an empire
+of gigantic and seductive form, radiant and glittering with the splendid
+architecture of aristocratic sovereignty, but without reason or
+conscience.</p>
+
+<p>The resolve was to control the production of the principal staples of
+industry and trade, and subject the commercial world to their caprices.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>Thus they preferred the intoxications of conquest, the gratifications of
+lust, to the triumphs of true civilization, to the congratulations of a
+redeemed race. They cared not for reputation among the nations of the
+earth, nor immortality, nor renown; and they neglected or despised those
+happy stars which, now and then, conduct men and races to glory. &#8220;Glory
+belongs to the God in heaven; upon the earth it is the lot of virtue, and
+not of genius&mdash;of that virtue which is useful, grand, beneficent,
+brilliant, heroic.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VII.</p>
+
+<p>Revolutions almost always spring from the noble and generous enthusiasm of
+youth; but seditions arise from the vulgar and ignoble crowd, or from the
+outcast few, who would, for wealth, sacrifice all that honor and nature
+hold dear; or for the meaner gratifications of self-aggrandizement, would
+crumble into dust, and scatter to the winds of the earth, the noblest
+institutions and laws of mankind. Who will say that this resort to arms
+was an insurrection of justice in favor of the weak, or that it was a
+revolt of nature against tyranny?</p>
+
+<p>The agitations of revolutions stir up the innermost natures of men, and
+from the revelations out of the depths appear the extreme qualities of the
+soul, elevated or debased, according to the inspirations from Heaven or
+the influence of a vile cause.</p>
+
+<p>What rays of intellectual light, what flashes of genuine eloquence, burst
+forth during the tempestuous times of this period to illumine their
+progress or define the glory of their future? When the minds and
+imaginations of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> men are moved in civil war, they betray, in spite of
+themselves, the nobility or meanness of their cause. Even the ignorant,
+says Quintilian, when moved by the violent passions, do not seek for what
+they are to say. It is the soul alone that renders them eloquent. Only the
+hoarse clamors for revenge, or the hollow laugh against the remonstrance
+of humanity, do we hear from their tribunals and halls of legislation.
+Fatuity possessed their minds, and rather than not succeed in their
+designs, the leaders would have preferred a dreary solitude to the best
+interests of humanity, or, like Erostratus, they would have rather burned
+down the temple of liberty itself.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Pejus deteriusque tyrannide sive injusto imperio, bellum civile.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VIII.</p>
+
+<p>Civil liberty is again triumphant, but at what a sacrifice of human life!
+What a deluge of blood has been poured over nature&#8217;s fields, where the
+contending armies have struggled together! A half a million of lives have
+been yielded up in this the nation&#8217;s sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The tree of Liberty,&#8221; said Barere, &#8220;is best watered with the blood of
+tyrants;&#8221; but how few among this immense host of victims were the
+originators of the sedition! The merciless schemers of bloody and cruel
+wars rarely expose their precious lives to the chances of combat.</p>
+
+<p>During the existence of the slave system, and the long period of its
+progress, what has it produced to enrich the heritage of the human mind?
+Where are the holy and pure traditions, the bright recollections?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>Neither wisdom nor philosophy has appeared, nor those arts which serve to
+form the &#8220;happy genius of nations.&#8221; There are countries where the march of
+ideas is accelerated only by the force of selfish passions; and
+philanthropy, that true index of civilization, only appears when it is
+required by mercantilism or political ambition. The aims and influences of
+commercial and political life can debase and destroy the noblest impulses.
+&#8220;It is a grand and beautiful spectacle,&#8221; exclaims the eloquent Rousseau,
+&#8220;to see man issue forth out of nothingness, as it were, by his own proper
+efforts, to dissipate, by the light of his reason, the shadows in which
+nature had enveloped him, to elevate himself even above himself, to glance
+with his spirit even into the celestial regions, to pass, with the stride
+of a giant, even as the sun, through the vast expanse of the universe, and
+what is still greater and more difficult, to enter one&#8217;s self, and study
+there man, and to understand his nature, his duties, and his end.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">IX.</p>
+
+<p>Civilization claims to introduce the elements of peace, happiness, and
+prosperity into the structure of society, and to transform the sword and
+the spear into the harmless implements of husbandry; yet with a swifter
+pace the engines of war increase, man thirsts as fiercely for the blood of
+his fellow-man, and the dormant spirit of destruction is as ready to
+illume the torch, as in the reckless times of past history. Even in this
+enlightened age we are constantly reminded of the truth and force of the
+remark of Hannibal: &#8220;No great state can long remain at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> rest. If it has no
+enemies abroad, it finds them at home; as overgrown bodies seem safe from
+external injuries, but suffer grievous inconveniences from their own
+strength.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The motives of self-aggrandizement by force of arms appear to be innate in
+human nature. We see men maintaining monstrous ideas. We see great armies
+singularly swayed by single minds, in defiance of truth and reason. The
+soldiers of Catiline fought to the last gasp, and perished to a man,
+embracing the eagle of Marius&mdash;&#8220;Marius, who sprang from the dust the
+expiring Gracchi flung towards heaven,&#8221; and who first dared attack the
+aristocratic nobility, and defend the down-trodden rights of the oppressed
+plebeian. There are mysterious laws, which seem to regulate the expansion
+and the decay of the human families. There are unseen forces which now and
+then impel vicious men to their own destruction.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">X.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Andersonville</span>&mdash;a name which has been stamped so deeply by cruelty into the
+pages of American history&mdash;is one of those miserable little hamlets, of a
+score of scattered and dilapidated farm-houses, which relieve the monotony
+of the wide and dreary level of sand plains, which, covered with immense
+forests, interspersed with fens, marshes, corn and cotton fields, stretch
+away, in unbroken surface, from Macon down to the Florida shores. The
+plantations, which were tilled by slave labor, are almost concealed in the
+recesses of the forests, so thickly wooded is the country. Here and there
+only, where the savannas are of unusual fertility, do the cleared lands
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>give a wide and extended view of the landscape, but the primeval pines
+everywhere hide the distant horizon.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img2.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center">J. H. Bufford&#8217;s lith. Boston, Mass.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The song of the laborer rarely disturbs the silence, which is oppressive.
+Song is the impulsive outburst of a heart filled with joy and hope. The
+slave has neither. His voice is the cry of anguish, of a soul burdened and
+crushed, and is more like the moan of the winds than the accents of
+civilized man.</p>
+
+<p>The physical aspect of the white inhabitant indicates the local
+impressions and inspirations&mdash;listless and apathetic in look, lank and
+haggard in form. There are countries, there are even limited localities,
+where the moral and mental faculties expand in accordance with external
+impressions. The laws of beauty and deformity are regulated by the
+condition and circumstances of the outward world to a remarkable degree.</p>
+
+<p>The landscape, the sunshine, and the luxuriance at Corinth and Athens gave
+rise to the most beautiful flowers of art and love, and to that wonderful
+type of human beauty, which the world has since lost; but the rugged and
+stern defiles of the mountains of Calabria, of Albania, and the dreary
+marsh fens of the Campagna, or of the Netherlands, still produce
+characters that rival in ferocity the hyenas of the desert.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>Nature appears to have selected for man the sites where are performed the
+noble acts which charm and enlighten the mind, or the dark deeds which
+cause men to ponder and regret the frailty of their organization. &#8220;It
+seems that the instincts of war conduct from age to age the armies of
+successive empires to the same rendezvous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> of contest, and that geography
+has laid off in advance certain fields of battle, as a sort of arena for
+these great immolations of humanity.&#8221; &#8220;Hungary,&#8221; said Sobieski, &#8220;is a
+clump of earth, which, if squeezed, would give out but human blood.&#8221; The
+name and look of Andersonville will always be synonymous with and
+suggestive of cruelty.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XI.</p>
+
+<p>At the distance of eight hundred paces from the railway which connects the
+town with Central Georgia on the north and the Gulf of Mexico on the
+south, appears the Prison Stockade, which was located by the Winders of
+the Rebel army, at the suggestion of Howell Cobb, in 1863, and occupied
+for its specific purpose in February, 1864.</p>
+
+<p>It is situated about fifty miles south of Macon, and its position on the
+geographical map is defined by longitude 7&deg; 30&#8242; west from Washington,
+latitude 32&deg; 10&#8242; north of the equator, corresponding in the western
+hemisphere to the central region of Algiers.</p>
+
+<p>A dense forest of primeval trees covered the spot which was selected by
+the engineers when they marked out the line of the prison. The massive
+pines were levelled by the strong arms of several hundred negro slaves,
+and when their branches were cut away, they were placed side by side,
+standing upright in the deep ditches, which were excavated with
+regularity, and in parallel lines, north and south, east and west. Thus
+were formed the boundaries of the palisade, wherein nearly forty thousand
+human beings were to be herded at one time. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>The surface of the earth
+was cleared completely away, so as to give full play to the elements of
+destruction.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img3.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">View of the Stockade</span> as the rebels left it.&mdash;Page 19.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Neither shade nor shelter was there to protect from the storm, or from the
+merciless rays of an almost tropical sun. Not a tree nor a shrub was left
+there to cast a shadow over the arid and calcined earth. There was simply
+a rampart of logs, rising from fifteen to eighteen feet in height above
+the surface of the ground. This rampart measured at first ten hundred and
+ten feet in length by seven hundred and seventy-nine feet in width, and
+was surrounded, at a distance of sixty paces, by another palisade of rough
+logs more than twelve feet in height. It was afterwards lengthened, in the
+autumn of 1864, to sixteen hundred and twenty feet.</p>
+
+<p>This enormous structure still stands there, with its giant walls of trees,
+undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">* * * &#8220;May none those marks efface,<br />
+For they appeal from tyranny to God.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XII.</p>
+
+<p>A small stream of water, which arose in two branches scarcely a thousand
+paces distant, in bogs and fens whose bitterness and impurities continued
+with the current, passed through the central portion of the enclosed space
+with sufficient volume to supply the wants of many thousand men, if it had
+been properly received, protected, and economized.</p>
+
+<p>During the summer many springs burst forth from the soil on either bank of
+the stream within the prison; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> the water, neglected by the military
+guards, soon became defiled by the feet and grime of the prisoners, and
+then this portion of the enclosure, embracing several acres, was
+transformed into a deep and horrible mire, quivering with those disgusting
+forms of organic life which are produced by putrid and decaying matter.
+The stench would have corroded the surface of adamant.</p>
+
+<p>Within the two lines of palisades, and on the western side, was erected
+the single bakery which was to furnish the munition bread for the
+prisoners. Upon the hill to the northward, at the distance of two hundred
+paces from the outer line, was strangely placed the building which was
+known as the <i>kitchen</i>. The reason why this cookery was placed so far from
+water, and the direct line of communication with the main gate, the
+projectors alone can tell. Consider the enormous weight of provisions and
+water which full rations to even ten thousand men would require daily.
+Consider, then, the distance from the railway depot, the circuitous route
+to the entrance of the prison, the mode, and inefficient transportation,
+and you will have an idea of the ignorance, the carelessness, the
+perversity or wilfulness, or call it what you will, which prevailed here
+in the prison system, if system it can be termed.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XIII.</p>
+
+<p>To the south, on the high land which overlooked the prison and its
+appendages, was erected the two-story building which served as quarters
+and offices for the officers and clerks. Along the same elevated ridge
+were located the well-built huts of the guards, who were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>selected
+from the Confederate Reserves of Georgia, under the command of Howell
+Cobb, and numbered from three to five thousand men. Farther to the west,
+along the same airy and commanding ridge, and close to the track of the
+railway, appears the large two-story wooden buildings, which were built
+and arranged, carefully and comfortably, for the sick of the rebel guards.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img4.jpg" alt="" /><br /><br />
+<img src="images/img5.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>PLAN OF PRISON GROUNDS</i><br />
+ANDERSONVILLE<br />
+<i>Measured by Dr. Hamlin</i><br />
+<i>Copy right secured</i></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XIV.</p>
+
+<p>To the south-east, and at the distance of a stone&#8217;s throw from the prison,
+were placed the few miserable and decayed tents which were to serve as
+hospitals, in mockery of science and humanity.</p>
+
+<p>To-day the traces of this useless philanthropy have passed away, but the
+results are fearfully shown in the field to the northward, where thirteen
+thousand soldiers sleep in death,&mdash;the harvest of one short year! &#8220;Here,&#8221;
+said one of the surgeons to the inquirer, &#8220;death might be predicted with
+almost absolute certainty.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Here came a medical officer of the highest rank in the Rebel army, and one
+of the most eminent <i>savans</i> of the South, to study the physiology and
+philosophy of starvation. The notes of that fearful clinic are preserved,
+and may some future day startle the scientific world with their clearness,
+their candor, their positive evidence of the cause of death. Thus the
+scalpel silences the argument, the reasoning of sophistry.</p>
+
+<p>That there was scarcity of medicines, and all of those delicacies known to
+the cultivated or luxurious taste, there can be no doubt. Neither the
+country, nor the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> desires of the people, produced or favored their
+production; but let us thank Heaven there is proof that there were some
+among the medical officers in whom the virtues of the heart were not
+entirely reversed, who did protest against the needless deficiencies and
+the system of treatment.</p>
+
+<p>The sufferings here were less poignant than in the pen; for nature always
+comes to the relief of dying mortals, and tempers the pangs of
+dissolution.</p>
+
+<p>Food was demanded, but it was wanting. Shelter and the pure air of heaven
+were prayed for by gasping men; even these, too, were wanting. Yet close
+by rose the gigantic pines, of the growth of centuries, standing in all
+the grandeur of the primeval forests, and offering to the disordered
+vision and senses of the dying wretches grateful shades, cool bowers, or
+the images of home, and the forms of the well-loved, as the faint and
+sinking traveller beholds them in the far-off mirage of the desert.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XV.</p>
+
+<p>The dense pine forests on either side still attest the luxuriant growth,
+which was regarded at the time of its selection as the finest timbered
+land of all Georgia. These immense pines are even yet so near as to cast
+their lengthened shadows, at morning and evening, over the accursed area
+where so many noble men perished for want of shelter from the heat of the
+noonday sun, the chilling dews of evening, and the frequent rain. The
+shade temperature of this place sometimes rose to the height of 105&deg;, even
+110&deg; Fahrenheit. The sun <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>temperature within the stockade must have
+risen to 120&deg; and upwards, for the height of the walls prevented the free
+circulation of the air. The heat of this region during the days of summer
+is unusually great.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img6.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">View of Officers&#8217; Stockade</span>, with rebel camps and hospitals in the distance.&mdash;Page 21.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Its elevation above the tide level is only about three hundred feet; and
+the hot blasts from the burning surface of the Gulf of Mexico, which is
+only about one hundred and fifty miles distant, sweep up over it
+northward, without being deviated or modified by ranges of mountains. The
+intervening country is unbroken, from distance to distance, by the
+undulation of the soil, and resembles more the level of a wide, green sea
+than the usual configurations of the solid earth. It bears the reputation
+of being unhealthy, and it is not strange; for there are certain isolated
+local climates which are absolutely pestilential, as we observe in the
+detached mountain groups and table lands of India and Southern Europe. Its
+isothermal line passes through Tunis and Algiers, and the hyetal charts
+show it to be one of the most humid regions in America.</p>
+
+<p>Fifty-five inches of rain fall here annually, whilst Maine, with her
+constant fogs, receives but forty-two and England but thirty-two.</p>
+
+<p>Was it possible for human life to endure these extremes of heat, rendered
+still more positive by exposure to the damp and chilly dews of the nights
+of southern latitude? It is a well-known fact, that neither men nor
+animals can labor or expose themselves with impunity to the rays of the
+noonday sun of tropical climes. Man, of all terrestrial animals, is the
+least supplied with natural protectives.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XVI.</p>
+
+<p>Around this ill-fated spot were stretched a cordon of connected
+earthworks, which completely enveloped the palisades, and commanded, with
+seventeen guns, every nook and corner of the enclosure. The forts were
+well constructed, and provided against the chances of sudden and desperate
+assaults. The cannon were well mounted, and placed in barbette and
+embrasure. Lunettes and redoubts covered all the approaches to the two
+great gates.</p>
+
+<p>Several regiments of the rebel reserves constantly occupied the forts and
+trenches, and guarded closely every avenue. Escape was impossible.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XVII.</p>
+
+<p>To preside over this assemblage, with its arranged, premeditated, and
+atrocious system, were selected men well known for their energy of purpose
+and their ferocity of soul, and who hoped, like the Parthian, that cruelty
+might seem to the eye of man a warlike spirit. Winder has already been
+summoned to his God, without affording to the tribunals of men the
+opportunity to judge of his justification or his shame. The wretched Wirz,
+arraigned and convicted by the most overwhelming evidence, has since paid
+the severest penalty which the majesty of violated law can exact on earth.</p>
+
+<p>The instincts of nature always demand a certain respect for the memory of
+the dead, no matter how the death may take place. But shall this shield
+for the executioner<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> obstruct justice, or reverence and admiration for the
+remembrance of the virtues of the nobler victims? Let us bring to light,
+and praise the heroism of noble men, even if we violate and break to
+pieces the sacred mausoleums where a thousand criminals lie buried.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XVIII.</p>
+
+<p>The dispositions of man depend greatly upon the associations of his early
+life. The youthful and pliant organization is easily impressed by the
+natural scenes of birthplace and childhood, and the effect of the views of
+the savage mountain gorges, the dark and gloomy forests, or the distant
+landscape, smiling in the rays of the sun, and decorated with the most
+beautiful works of human industry, are felt hereafter in the labors and
+conceptions of manhood. Men sometimes are but the living reflections of
+the savage scenes among which they have been reared, and seldom do we see
+them arise from that immense and world-wide mass of fallen humanity to
+cherish anew, to maintain the noble principles of this earthly life, and
+lead the willing world to the true worship of the Creator.</p>
+
+<p>Wirz was born among the glorious mountains of Switzerland, where the lofty
+and dazzling peaks of eternal snow, pointing upwards into the clear vault
+of heaven, impress the human mind with sublimity, or where the deeper
+glens sadden the heart and blast the aspiring imagination.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that the natural impressions made upon this man in this beautiful
+country were of an earthly and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>sordid character, for he has always
+exhibited, in his wanderings in pursuit of fortune, the reckless and
+degraded soul of a mercenary.</p>
+
+<p>Seeking gain in the New World, he turned up in the Slave States when the
+revolt was determined upon, and without reluctance, offered his services
+to the frantic and savage horde. Although a Swiss and republican by birth
+and inheritance, he does not hesitate between liberty and despotism. The
+principles of political dogmas do not agitate him; it is the desire for
+money, and an insatiate thirst for blood, blasting the natural heart with
+cruel and remorseless passions, that led him blindly and swiftly to ruin.
+The fatal plunge taken, and there was no return. The compunctions of
+humanity passed over his seared and unfeeling conscience, with no more
+effect than when the waves surge over the huge rocks which form the bed of
+the deepest ocean.</p>
+
+<p>He was selected for the fatal position by the brutal Winder, who first
+observed him among the unfortunate prisoners of the first disastrous
+battle of the republic. What should recommend him, then, to the notice of
+this inhuman officer, can be easily conjectured by the survivors of the
+prisons of that period. Cruelty then was pastime, it afterwards became a
+law. It was then that some of the chivalry, after the manner of the tribes
+of Abyssinia and Eastern Africa, made glorious trophies of the skulls and
+the bones of their antagonists who had fallen in battle.</p>
+
+<p>This man appeared at times kind and humane, and his voice had the accents
+of benevolence; but when excited, natural sentiments recoiled with horror
+at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> depth and extent of his imprecations. This assumed gentleness of
+disposition is of but little weight among the examples of history.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have often said,&#8221; writes Montaigne, &#8220;that cowardice is the mother of
+cruelty, and by experience have observed that the spite and asperity of
+malicious and inhuman courage are accompanied with the mantle of feminine
+softness.&#8221; The ensanguined Sylla wept over the recital of the miseries he
+himself had caused.</p>
+
+<p>That daily murderer, the tyrant of Pheres, forbade the play of tragedy,
+lest the citizens should weep over the misfortunes of Hecuba and
+Andromache.</p>
+
+<p>The beautiful eyes of the Roman maidens glistened with tears at the
+imaginary sufferings of the inanimate marbles of Niobe and Laocoon, yet
+how remorselessly they gave the signal of death to the defeated gladiator
+on the arena of the Colosseum!</p>
+
+<p>The warm, generous, natural impulses of the heart soon become affected,
+impaired, and even reversed by brutal associations.</p>
+
+<p>Circumstances develop greatly the characters of men, and they sometimes
+rise to true greatness, or sink into baseness, according to the law of
+effect, of contact, and example.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_SECOND" id="BOOK_SECOND"></a>BOOK SECOND.</h2>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">I.</p>
+
+<p class="center">&#8220;Plus in carcere spiritus acquirit, quam caro amittit.&#8221;&mdash;<i>Tertullian.</i></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&#8220;Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!<br />
+Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,<br />
+For there thy habitation is the heart&mdash;<br />
+The heart which love of thee alone can bind:<br />
+And when thy sons to fetters are consigned&mdash;<br />
+To fetters, and the damp vault&#8217;s dayless gloom,<br />
+Their country conquers with their martyrdom,<br />
+And Freedom&#8217;s fame finds wings on every wind.&#8221;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><i>Prisoner of Chillon.</i></span></td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Within</span> the deadly shadows of this enormous palisade were assembled and
+confined together at one time during the hot months of 1864, more than
+thirty-five thousand soldiers, of the various armies of the United
+States&mdash;more men than Alexander led across the Hellespont to the conquest
+of Asia; more men than followed Napoleon in those glorious campaigns over
+the bright fields of Northern Italy, where every helmet caught some beam
+of glory.</p>
+
+<p>Here were men of all conditions, birth, and fortune&mdash;some of the best
+blood and sap of the republic.</p>
+
+<p>The strong-limbed lumbermen from the forests of Maine, the tall, gigantic
+men from the mountains of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> Pennsylvania, the hunters of the great
+prairies of the West,&mdash;those men of wonderful courage and endurance,&mdash;the
+artisan from the workshop, the student from his books, the lawyer from the
+forum, the minister from the pulpit, the child of wealth, and the poor
+widow&#8217;s only son, were collected here in this field of torture.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">View of Interior of the Prison</span>, with the quagmire and
+crowds of huts<br />and men beyond. From rebel photographs.&mdash;Page 29.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>They were men in the prime of life&mdash;young, vigorous, and active&mdash;when they
+surrendered themselves as prisoners of war. And as prisoners, they were
+entitled to the care and treatment acknowledged by the general laws and
+usages of civilized nations, and expected even more from those who boasted
+of having revived the generosity and chivalric tone of the feudal ages.
+Besides justice to all men, we owe special grace and benignity to those
+who come into our power from the hazard of battle. However degraded the
+suppliant may be, there is always some commerce between them and us, some
+bond of mutual relation.</p>
+
+<p>Why these men did not receive that respect which true courage always
+accords to the vanquished brave, why they did not receive even that atom
+of compassion which belongs to the nature of man, and which is seen even
+among the lower animals, history, which loves to avenge the weak and
+oppressed, and which affords to all men, to all nations, the opportunity
+for their justification, their vengeance, their glory, will surely exhibit
+in burning characters of horror and shame. There are men even now who
+would sanctify the acts of cruelty of the rebellion over the very ashes of
+this the nation&#8217;s sepulchre. There are men even now who would outrage
+virtue, and deify the crime. There are men living, like those of the
+past,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> but not forgotten iron age, possessed of that remorseless fury,
+that implacable hatred, which nothing could arrest, nothing could disarm,
+and which could no more receive a sentiment of compassion than that
+sophistry which allowed outrage and death to the tender and guiltless
+child of Sejanus.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens, tantum spectaturus occidat.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">II.</p>
+
+<p>The intention which directed the formation of this vast camp was Cruelty.
+The system which governed, or rather the want of system which neglected,
+each department, whether hospital or commissariat, meant Death. The
+evidence against the leaders of the Confederacy is not wanting, neither is
+it obscure. It is true that most of the witnesses have perished, or are
+fast passing prematurely away; but the chain of circumstantial evidence is
+so connected, so apparent, that, unless the faith of humanity changes,
+that voice, which Tacitus calls &#8220;the conscience of the human race,&#8221; will,
+until the end of time, overwhelm with withering scorn the memory of these
+men as the assassins of sedition, rather than the heroes and saints of a
+just revolution.</p>
+
+<p>We may search history in vain for a parallel in modern times.
+Civilization, in its known vicissitudes, cannot point out a spectacle so
+horrible.</p>
+
+<p>The massacre, in hot blood, of the Tartars of the Crimea by Potemkin, will
+not compare with this slow, merciless, implacable process of murder by
+starvation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> and violation of those hygienic laws upon which the principle
+of life depends. The fusilades of that saturnalia of blood, the French
+Revolution, which swept away whole generations, had the pomp of military
+executions, which threw a gleam of brilliancy over the scene, and gave
+momentary enthusiasm to the victims. Those great immolations of the
+Saracens and Persians by the Tartars were as rapid as the cimeters could
+flash. &#8220;The fury of ideas,&#8221; says Lamartine, &#8220;is more implacable than the
+fury of men; for men have heart, and opinion none. Systems are brutal
+forces, which bewail not even that which they crush.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;See,&#8221; said Timour to the learned men of Aleppo, &#8220;I am but half a man, and
+yet I have conquered Irak, Persia, and the Indies.&#8221; &#8220;Render glory,
+therefore, to God,&#8221; replied the Mufti of Aleppo, &#8220;and slay no one.&#8221; &#8220;God
+is my witness,&#8221; said, with apparent sincerity, the destroyer of so many
+millions of men, &#8220;that I put no one to death by a premeditated will; no, I
+swear to you I kill no one from cruelty, but it is you who assassinate
+your own souls.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">III.</p>
+
+<p>The world has never seen such a display of courage and devotion as was
+exhibited by the intelligent masses of the freemen of the North, when the
+liberties of the great republic were menaced by the fierce gestures of the
+slave faction and their misguided supporters.</p>
+
+<p>Men of all classes, forsaking home, kindred, and property, rushed to
+present a living barrier to the impetuous march of the enraged and
+misguided horde that pressed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> on with almost resistless fury, and
+threatened to overwhelm and destroy the noblest fabric of the enlightened
+mind. At last the carnage of battle has ceased. Nature smiles again, and
+rapidly obliterates the marks of the ravages left upon her green fields,
+where the huge and desperate armies have swayed and struggled in deadly
+conflict. The emblems of civil liberty are again restored, the fasces
+replaced; and it now becomes the country to arouse itself from the depths
+of apathy, and revive those sentiments of tenderness and gratitude which
+nature everywhere bestows upon the memory of those who upheld the cause of
+liberty, and fell in its defence.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">IV.</p>
+
+<p>To understand fully the determined character, the steadfast loyalty, of
+these brave and unfortunate men, we must consider at length the details of
+this enclosure, with its hungry, emaciate, filthy mass of humanity, whence
+arose a stench of death so powerful as to be perceived at the distance of
+a league&mdash;the burning sky, the array of instruments of torture, the
+manifest design of cruelty.</p>
+
+<p>The suffering wretch had only to pronounce the magic words, &#8220;Allegiance to
+the Rebel cause,&#8221; and his sufferings and misery were at an end. The huge
+gates flew open, and with grim smiles, the enfeebled and tottering
+apostate was welcomed as an accession to the southern ranks.</p>
+
+<p>But the republic was safe here, and the sacred fire of its altars burned
+steadily through all the horrors and noxious vapors of this hell on
+earth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>Strange to relate, that out of the seventeen thousand registered sick,
+there is record of only about <i>twenty-five</i> who accepted the offers to
+save their lives, and took the oath of the rebels. Is it not wonderful
+that this great number of men should thus, in silence, brave the horrors
+by which they were surrounded, and remain firm in their convictions of
+right and wrong? An entire army perished, rather than deny the country
+which gave them birth! They would no more surrender their principles, than
+their homes and altars, as ransoms for their lives.</p>
+
+<p>Has the world&#8217;s history a parallel to this devotion?</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;But these are deeds which should not pass away,<br />
+And names that must not wither, though the earth<br />
+Forgets her empires with a just decay.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">V.</p>
+
+<p>Heroism in the damp and noxious prisons, where the noble qualities of the
+mind are shaken and swayed by the sufferings of the body, is far different
+from that which is displayed upon the battle-field, amid the glittering
+and inspiring pomp of war.</p>
+
+<p>The men at Thermopyl&aelig; fought in the shadows of the soul-inspiring
+mountains, and beheld, through the charm of distance, their homes and the
+beautiful valleys they had sworn to defend. The Decii saw the shining
+swords of their enemies when they rushed into battle, and the dying nobly
+and the glory made all fear of death but of little weight.</p>
+
+<p>Here, instead of bright and glorious banners and the flash of arms, the
+long array of men eager for the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>contest, and the songs, the shouts of
+defiance, there was a vast ditch, crowded with living beings of scarce the
+human form, haggard and unnatural in appearance&mdash;a sea of red and fetid
+mud, trampled and defiled by the immense throng. Instead of the white
+tents and canopies of military encampments, there were the ragged blankets
+vainly stretched over upright sticks; there were the holes in the earth,
+the burrows in the sand, like the villages of the rats of the great
+prairies of the West. They were more like the dens of the beasts of the
+desert than habitations for human beings.</p>
+
+<p>No Christian hand ever penetrated to their depths to aid the sick and
+suffering inmates, to nourish the hungry and console the dying, save one
+Romish priest; and in spite of the horrors and dangers of the place, he
+was faithful to his trust. Noble man! you have proved by these acts that
+humanity is not a mendacious idol, and that devotion to humanity is not a
+mere matter of gain and self-aggrandizement.</p>
+
+<p>More than four thousand human beings perished in these excavations!</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as though vengeance was prolonged beyond death itself.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Where was thine &AElig;gis, Pallas, that appalled<br />
+Stern Alaric and Havoc on their way?&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VI.</p>
+
+<p>Life here was brief. The victims, as they entered the gate, were appalled
+at the horrors that were presented to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> them in this living sepulchre.
+Nature seemed to have abandoned the struggle early, and the young men
+passed, with rapid pace, from youth&mdash;that youth so rich in its future&mdash;to
+manhood, from manhood to old age. Neither prudence nor philosophy could
+protect them from the grievous influences of the morbid conditions to
+which they were exposed. The delicate and noble faculties were blunted and
+destroyed. Some perished at once, almost as quickly as though struck by
+the lightning of heaven, whilst others lingered, according to the strength
+of the hidden resources, the reserved and superabundant powers of youth.</p>
+
+<p>Among the few survivors of the present day we can learn of the fearful
+struggle between life and death, by the gray hairs, the impassive
+features, from which the smile of youth has fled forever, the feeble and
+tottering steps of the man who has prematurely arrived at his limit of
+earthly existence.</p>
+
+<p>The integrity and character exhibited by these men, in the midst of these
+tortures, is unsurpassed.</p>
+
+<p>It was the same morale that immortalized the armies of Italy and Moreau,
+that covered with splendor the heroes of Sparta and Rome, and proved
+incontestably the superiority of the volunteer over the mercenary regular.
+The wretched men died in silence, or with the name of home or the loved
+ones on their lips, and adjuring their comrades to stand firm in defence
+of their faith, their country, their God. &#8220;My treatment here is killing
+me, mother; but I die cheerfully for my country.&#8221; They died as the wounded
+French died at Jemappes, with the delirium and exaltation of patriotism,
+uttering at the last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> moment some of the strains of the songs of freedom,
+and the names of country and liberty. &#8220;Thus the enthusiasm of the combat
+prolonged or reproduced itself, and survived even in their agony.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The sufferings of these men, wasting, putrefying, dying daily by scores,
+by hundreds, without touching the remorseless hearts of the
+prison-keepers, recall to mind those monsters which history points out as
+rising now and then from out the wreck of social order. It was one of the
+results of Slavery, for Slavery weakens the natural horror of blood.</p>
+
+<p>Cruelty is naturally progressive, for it engenders the fear of a just
+revenge. New cruelties succeed, until extermination becomes the rule and
+ends the scene.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To hate whom we have injured is a propensity of the human mind,&#8221; says
+Tacitus.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VII.</p>
+
+<p>At the distance of about five hundred paces northwestward from the
+stockade, in a little field which is almost overshadowed by the
+surrounding pines, appear a multitude of stakes standing upright in the
+earth, in long and regular lines.</p>
+
+<p>Upon every one of these fragments of boards figures have been carelessly
+scratched by an iron instrument; and they run up to the appalling number
+of almost thirteen thousand! Each stick represents a dead man,&mdash;a
+hero,&mdash;and this multitude of branchless and leafless trunks reminds us
+rather of a blasted vineyard than of a cemetery arranged for the human
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img8.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">View of the Graveyard</span>, with its thirteen thousand victims,
+as the rebels left it.<br />Taken from rebel photographs in possession of the author.&mdash;Page 37.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>I have seen many of the rarest sculptures in civilized lands, where art
+has lavished and exhausted its powers to awaken sympathy for the dead, but
+have met with none that moved my heart more impressively than the brief,
+vague inscriptions, the rude memorials of this silent and neglected field,
+where sleep an entire army of freemen, who preferred lingering death
+rather than allegiance to a rebel and wicked faction.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath the red clods of this field, thickly as the leaves of autumn, are
+stretched side by side a number of men more numerous than all of the
+American soldiers who perished by disease and casualty of battle during
+the Mexican war&mdash;more than all of the British soldiers who were killed, or
+perished from their wounds, on the bloody fields of the Crimea, the
+desperate struggles at Waterloo, the four great battles in
+Spain,&mdash;Talavera, Salamanca, Albuera, Vittoria,&mdash;and also the sanguinary
+contest at New Orleans. All these losses of the sons of the British empire
+do not build up a hecatomb of the human dead so high, so vast, so red, as
+this one single link of the great chain of wrong that stretched from
+Virginia to Texas.</p>
+
+<p>There is no battle-field on the face of the globe, known to the antiquary,
+where so many soldiers are interred in one group as are gathered together
+in the broad trenches of this neglected field among the pine forests of
+Georgia. What a gathering is this! What a monument of the incarnation of
+political lust, of the reckless desperation, the implacability of the
+depraved human heart, when resolved upon cruelty! The world does not
+offer, among all of her extant memorials, a more terrible, a more
+impressive comment upon the ambition, the power, the glory of mankind.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">VIII.</p>
+
+<p>Respect to the dead is an instinct of nature; and to leave the remains of
+a fallen comrade upon the field, unhonored, is repugnant even to the red
+men of the forest. How much more, then, does a civilized nation, of high
+degree, owe to the memory of its brave defenders! Will it now forget the
+noble sacrifice of its sons amid the debasing influences of commerce and
+manufacture? Shall these sticks, which mark the nation&#8217;s sacrifice,
+moulder into dust, and with their brief inscriptions be swept away by the
+winds of the world, and all traces of this heroism, this martyrdom, lost?</p>
+
+<p>Here is something required more than brief, hollow, human gratitude, and a
+sonorous, perishable epitaph.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever rises above the level of this plain to commemorate for future
+ages the devotion of the men who sleep beneath, should be of lasting
+material, and as colossal as the gigantic proportions of the republic
+itself: or the field should be levelled and swept, and every
+distinguishing sign blended and effaced, and the true altar of memorial
+erected in the hearts of all men who believe and revere those eternal
+principles of love, justice, truth.</p>
+
+<p>Liberty has but one inscription to offer, and that is the noble lines
+which were traced on the dungeon wall in the blood of the noblest and
+purest of the Girondins: &#8220;<i>Potius mori quam f&oelig;dari</i>&#8221;&mdash;Death rather than
+dishonor.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">IX.</p>
+
+<p>Impartial history will give to the memory of these men a place among the
+records of useless murder.</p>
+
+<p>The law of parole was all-sufficient to prevent their return to service,
+and their absence from the fields of campaign would have been of no
+material weight with the prolific North.</p>
+
+<p>But the intent of their captors was cruelty; and they strove to reduce the
+numbers, and to intimidate the courage, of the Federal soldiers, by acts
+of savage barbarity, as the relentless Tartar hoped to terrify the Hindoos
+into the profession of Mohammedanism by sacrificing multitudes, and
+deluging whole countries in blood.</p>
+
+<p>To deny the criminality is, as Lamartine says of the massacres of
+September, &#8220;to belie the right of feeling of the human race. It is to deny
+nature, which is the morality of instinct. There is nothing in mankind
+greater than humanity. It is not more permissible for a government than
+for a man to commit murder. If a drop of blood stains the hand of a
+murderer, oceans of gore do not make innocent the Dantons. The magnitude
+of the crime does not transform it into virtue. Pyramids of dead bodies
+rise high, it is true, but not so high as the execration of mankind.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_THIRD" id="BOOK_THIRD"></a>BOOK THIRD.</h2>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">I.</p>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Let</span> us now examine and consider, with impartial eye, the Stockade in
+detail&mdash;the locality, the hospital, the dietary, and, in fact, all that
+relates to the condition of life in this region; reviewing at length the
+laws which regulate the animal economy, and judging of cause and effect
+with that spirit which Bacon calls the &#8220;<i>prudens qu&aelig;stio</i>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In selecting new grounds for the habitations of human families, whether in
+large or limited numbers, particular care must always be observed,
+especially in warm climes, or where malarial influences are known to
+prevail. In the selection of places for the encampment of troops, the
+problem is still more difficult to treat, on account of the general
+dyscrasial condition of the soldier; and oftentimes far more skill and
+prudence are required than in the choosing of a field for battle.</p>
+
+<p>How many a noble regiment have we seen impaired in its effective strength,
+and robbed of its glorious future, by the injudicious encampment, where
+vain and ignorant officers have sacrificed the health and morale of their
+men to please their fanciful ideas as to military etiquette&mdash;the form of
+shelter, the position, and the regularity of the prescribed lines of
+encampment!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>In one of the last campaigns of Europe, when all the resources which
+modern wealth could afford were lavished with unsparing hand, there was a
+useless and preventible loss of life, that recalled the most disastrous
+epidemics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.</p>
+
+<p>War is one of the natural laws for the demolition of the human race, and
+we see the spirit of destruction silently at work among friends as well as
+foes. The supreme commands seem mysteriously to be placed in the hands of
+men who can cause the greatest devastation and sacrifice of life; who
+march their columns steadily to the deadly and murderous assault when
+there is no occasion for it; who encamp their troops in pestilential
+lowlands, when the healthy heights offer safer and better accommodations.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Nobilitas cum plebe perit, lateque vagatur ensis.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">II.</p>
+
+<p>It is a melancholy fact, attested by the distinguished Marshal Saxe, that
+the military men of modern times are far less informed than the great
+generals of antiquity in the profound knowledge of public hygiene, and
+especially of that which relates to the economy of armies. We can admire,
+but hardly improve, the physical education imposed upon the volunteers of
+Sparta and the legionaries of Rome; and we have not surpassed their
+scientific, yet rude alimentation, by which they marched over immense
+distances with rapidity, and preserved their vigor and morale. From the
+extant documents of the ancients, from Xenophon or Vegetius, it is shown
+that their <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>acquaintance with whatever related to clothing, encampment,
+food, the graduation of exercises, and the employ of forces, was of the
+highest character.</p>
+
+<p>The effects of high and low lands, of good and bad water, on the diseases,
+energy, character, and intellect of man, have been sketched in a masterly
+manner by Hippocrates.</p>
+
+<p>The exposure of a few hours to malignant influences may impair the
+strength of an army to such a degree as to thwart the most skilful plans,
+the wisest combinations for vigorous campaigns, as, for instance, the
+Walcheren expedition of the English, the Neapolitan campaign of France,
+when her army was reduced from twenty-eight thousand to four thousand
+effective men, in one hundred hours, from an injudicious encampment at
+Baie, or when Orloff lost his army in Paros, or, still later, the disaster
+to the splendid division of the French army under Espinasse, in the fatal
+Dobrutscha.</p>
+
+<p>Armies have been lost, the fate of empires decided, by the violation or
+neglect of the simple rules of hygiene; and all through the blood-stained
+pages of military history do we observe examples, from the time when
+Scipio lost the battle of Trebbia, or when Bajazet threw away his vast
+empire on the plains of Angora, down to Kunersdorf, when the impetuosity
+of Frederick the Great would not allow rest to his men or horses.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">III.</p>
+
+<p>In 1863 the depots near Richmond became so crowded by the Federal
+prisoners that it became a matter of serious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> consideration to the rebel
+authorities how to guard them, and attempt to feed them and the regiments
+guarding them. Then the idea was conceived of forming a Great camp in the
+Gulf States, in a locality fruitful in grain, and in a position secure
+from raids from the Federal cavalry. Several locations were examined, but
+none pleased the selecting officer, until he had examined the site at
+Andersonville, to which he conceived a particular fancy. There were places
+in this section of the country where pure water could be obtained in
+abundance, but these spots were not so readily accessible, and wood was
+not so plenty and handy as at this. There was another consideration in the
+public view of its selection, that it was in the heart of the best
+corn-producing region at that time in Georgia, and easy access could be
+had with the everglades of Florida, where herds of half wild cattle roamed
+at will.</p>
+
+<p>It is not the belief of the writer, although there are many facts to
+warrant such an inference, that the selection was made with the view of
+deliberately destroying the prisoners openly, and without reserve, for
+there were other localities far more pestilential than this; and yet, on
+the other hand, there were also many situations infinitely more salubrious
+and easy of access. There was in reality not much reflection in the
+matter. The selectors thought only of the geographical and strategical
+position; they cared not for its topography or its meteorology.</p>
+
+<p>They consulted only their convenience. The idea of the preservation of the
+lives of their unfortunate prisoners never troubled their minds, never
+disturbed their conscience. They would build a safe and secure pen, and if
+God, in his infinite and mysterious mercy, chose to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> summon from earth any
+of the hapless wretches, they would not consider themselves as accountable
+for the premature deaths. Such was their reasoning. Such was their
+philosophy. Such was their conscience. The exult of Winder, when asserting
+that he was doing more for the Confederacy than a dozen regiments at the
+front, and the exclamation of Howell Cobb, when pointing to the ten
+thousand graves, &#8220;That is the way I would do for them,&#8221; were perhaps the
+bravado of the southern slaveholder. Even at this late date we can find
+men, of some tenderness, in this vicinity, who have reasoned their weak
+minds into the idea and belief that no harm was ever done or intended; and
+even if it can be proved, then the Federals only received what they
+deserved, and no more than their own sons in the prisons of the North
+endured.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the conscience of the Pharisee.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the remark made to the writer by a southern gentleman over the
+graves of the victims.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">IV.</p>
+
+<p>The topographical features of the site are not particularly objectionable
+for an encampment of a few hundred men.</p>
+
+<p>The northern and southern banks incline sufficiently towards the stream in
+the centre to allow of proper drainage. The stream itself furnished water
+in sufficient volume to provide for the wants of ten thousand men, if it
+had been turned from its channel above the stockade, and introduced into
+the prison by simple sluices. But to this important item there was not the
+least attention paid.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>To preface the analysis of this stockade, &amp;c., we may wisely review the
+remarks of the late Dr. Jackson, the chief medical officer of the British
+army.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">V.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A necessity occurs in war, on many occasions, which leaves no option of
+choice in occupying posts of an unhealthy character: but there is,
+unfortunately, an authority, derived from example and the sanction of
+great names, which directs the military officer, when under no military
+necessity, to fix his encampment on grounds which are unhealthy in
+themselves, or which are exposed by position to the influence of noxious
+causes, which are carried from a distance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Such advice proceeds from the desire to act on a presumption of
+knowledge, which cannot be ascertained, rather than to act by the
+experience of facts, which man is qualified to observe and verify.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is consonant with the experience of military people, in all ages and
+in all countries, that camp diseases most abound near the muddy banks of
+large rivers, near swamps, and ponds, and on grounds which have been
+recently stripped of their woods. The fact is precise: but it has been set
+aside to make way for an opinion.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was assumed, about half a century since, by a celebrated army
+physician, that camp diseases originate from causes of putrefaction, and
+that putrefaction is connected radically with a stagnant condition of the
+air. As streams of air usually proceed along rivers, with more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> certainty
+and force than in other places, and as there is evidently a more certain
+movement of air, that is, more winds, on open grounds than among woods and
+thickets, this sole consideration, without any regard to experience,
+influenced opinion, and gave currency to the destructive maxim, that the
+banks of rivers, open grounds, and exposed heights, are the most eligible
+situations for the encampment of troops. They are the best ventilated:
+they must, if the theory be true, be the most healthy. The fact is the
+reverse. But demonstrative as the fact may be, fashion has more influence
+than multiplied examples of fact, experimentally proved.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Encampments are still formed in the vicinity of swamps, or on grounds
+which are newly cleared of their woods, in obedience to theory, and
+contrary to fact. The savage, who acts by instinct, or who acts directly
+from the impressions of experience, has in this instance the advantage
+over the philosopher, who, reasoning concerning causes he cannot know, and
+acting according to the result of his reasonings, errs and leads others
+astray by the authority of his name.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The savage feels, and acting by the impression of what he feels, instead
+of fixing his habitation on the exposed bank of large rivers, unsheltered
+heights, or grounds newly cleared of their woods, seeks the cover of the
+forests, even avoids the streams of air which proceed from rivers, from
+the surface of ponds, or from lands newly opened to the sun. The rule of
+the savage is a rule of experience, founded in truth, and applicable to
+the encampment of troops, even of civilized Europeans.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>&#8220;In accordance with this principle, it is almost uniformly true, <i>c&aelig;teris
+paribus</i>, that diseases are more common, at least more violent, in broken,
+irregular, and hilly countries, where the temperature is liable to sudden
+changes, and where blasts descend with fury from the mountains, than in
+large and extensive inclined plains, under the action of equal and gentle
+breezes only. From this fact, it becomes an object of the first
+consideration, in choosing ground for encampments, to guard against the
+impression of strong winds, on their own account, independently of their
+proceeding from swamps, rivers, and noxious soils.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In countries covered with woods, abundantly supplied with straw, and
+other materials applicable to the purpose of forming shelter, it is, upon
+the whole, better to raise huts and construct bowers than to carry canvas.
+The individual is exercised by labor, and as his mind is employed in
+contriving and executing something for self-accommodation, he is furnished
+with a daily opportunity of renewing the pleasure. The mode of hutting,
+here recommended, effectually precludes the evils arising from those
+contaminations of air in which contagion is generated&mdash;an evil which often
+arises in tents, and is carried about with an army in all its movements in
+the field.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>The view of the ancients in regard to the encampment of troops may be
+understood from the counsel of Vegetius: &#8220;Ne aridis et sine opacitate
+arborum campis, aut collibus ne sine tentoriis &aelig;state milites
+commorentur.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">VI.</p>
+
+<p>As we have remarked before, the site of the prison was covered with trees
+when its outlines were traced and surveyed by the rebel engineers. These
+trees, felled to the ground, were hewn, and matched so well on the inner
+line of the palisades as to give no glimpse of the outer world across the
+space of the dead line, which averaged nineteen feet in width, and which
+was defined by a frail wooden railing about three feet in height, from
+fifteen to twenty-five feet distant from the palisades.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img9.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>This line of stockade rose from fifteen to eighteen feet above the surface
+of the ground, while the outer line of logs, which was erected about sixty
+paces distant from the inner line, was formed of the rough trunks of
+pines, and projected twelve feet above the earth. The original stockade
+measured but ten hundred and ten feet in length, and seven hundred and
+eighty-three feet in width; and within this space were jammed together,
+for several months, from twenty-two thousand to thirty-five thousand men,
+thus giving a superficial area to each man, when the prison contained
+thirty thousand prisoners, but seventeen square feet, after deducting the
+nineteen feet average for the dead line, and the quagmire, three hundred
+feet in width. This measurement would allow for thirty-five thousand men
+but fifteen square feet of area, or less than two square yards to each
+person, or more than twenty times the density of Liverpool. This was all
+the space that was afforded before the enlargement, and this reckoning
+does not include roads or by-paths for communication among the prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>Seventeen and a half square feet of earth are allowed for the coffin&#8217;s
+length in the field of sepulchres. There were here to be seen twelve acres
+of living men, packed together like the immense shoals of fish in the
+ocean, but like nothing that has life on the earth, not even the
+ant-fields. The ratio of density was equivalent to more than sixteen
+hundred thousand people to the square mile. The densest portion of East
+London has the great number of one hundred and sixty thousand to the
+square mile.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">VII.</p>
+
+<p>In the month of August the stockade was lengthened six hundred and ten
+feet, by what influence or from what cause it is unknown; but nevertheless
+it was enlarged to the length of sixteen hundred and twenty feet,&mdash;thus
+making the entire area sixteen hundred and twenty by seven hundred and
+eighty-three feet. This enlargement was a salutary movement on a small
+scale, but it only prolonged the sufferings of the victims. The thirty
+thousand men had now twenty-two acres, minus the dead line and marsh, or
+thirty square feet per man, or three and a half square yards. There were
+actually, during this month, thirty-five thousand men within the prison,
+and some authorities give me as high as thirty-six thousand. This density
+is enormous, and cannot be tolerated by animal life in any climate, in any
+latitude, of the world. There must be space for organic life to develop
+and maintain itself, otherwise it perishes. To give a correct idea of the
+crowded condition of this pen, we do not know where to turn for example.
+The great cities of civilized lands do not even approximate in their ratio
+of populations.</p>
+
+<p>The relation of density, in the three great divisions of London, give
+thirty-five, one hundred and nineteen, and one hundred and eighty square
+yards to each inhabitant. The densest portion of Liverpool, with its lofty
+and immense brick ranges of buildings, swarming with industrial life,
+gives more than eighty square feet to each person. The early Roman camps,
+which are a marvel to military men, and the closest known to military
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>science, gave to the ordinary legion three hundred and sixty-seven
+square feet of area to each man. The plans of Polybius give two hundred
+and thirty square feet to each soldier of the consular army of two
+legions, numbering nearly eighteen thousand men, and the descriptions of
+Hyginus give similar ratios.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img10.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>PLAN OF PRISON GROUNDS</i><br />
+ANDERSONVILLE<br />
+<i>Measured by Dr. Hamlin</i><br />
+<i>Copy right secured</i><br />
+J. H. BUFFORD&#8217;S LITH BOSTON.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The encampments of the United States infantry afford, in the most
+restricted portion (between stacks of arms and kitchens), two hundred and
+forty-four square feet per man, or seventeen hundred and thirty-one square
+feet per man for the whole camp.</p>
+
+<p>The space allowed by law for barracks alone is fifty-four square feet for
+each soldier, reckoned on the basis of a full complement of men. The rules
+of the rebel army concerning camps are the same as those of the
+regulations of the United States army.</p>
+
+<p>The United States prison at Elmira contained six thousand men, and
+extended over forty acres. The other prisons, at Chicago, Johnson&#8217;s
+Island, Point Lookout, and Fort Delaware, were provided with spacious
+exercise grounds, and furnished with covered barracks, built of proper
+form, and fitted up with the required conveniences of life. Belle Isle,
+which held ten thousand prisoners, had but six acres, and no shelter, no
+conveniences whatever.</p>
+
+<p>Andersonville, which contained over thirty thousand prisoners, had in the
+stockade, before enlargement, but eighteen acres in all, and but twelve
+acres for the use of the prisoners, minus the dead line and the marsh.</p>
+
+<p>The prison at Dartmoor, in England (which was a paradise in comparison
+with Andersonville), where our prisoners were held in captivity by the
+English during<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> the last war, furnished two hundred to three hundred
+square feet to every prisoner in the barracks, besides allowing spacious
+yards, where the prisoners were permitted to exercise daily. There were
+there seven large two-story stone buildings, each one hundred and eighty
+feet in length. Five thousand prisoners enclosed within twenty acres of
+land at Dartmoor, thirty thousand in twelve acres, or thirty-five thousand
+in twenty-two acres, at Andersonville.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VIII.</p>
+
+<p>The timbers composing the stockade were of entire trunks of pines, massive
+and solid, and measuring from one to three feet in diameter. They were
+sunk into the earth for about five or six feet, and held in position at
+the top by long, slender pines, nailed on the outer side by large iron
+spikes. There were but two gates for this vast prison, and but two
+corresponding apertures in the outer palisade. These gates were
+constructed of massive timbers, and protected by a strong porch, occupying
+a base of about thirty feet square. These were always strongly guarded, to
+prevent the sudden rush of masses of men. At intervals of about one
+hundred feet, were erected detached and covered platforms, upon the outer
+side of the palisades, which, overlooking the summit of the wall, and the
+enclosure beyond, served as sentry boxes. The sentries, perched
+buzzard-like on the wall, could observe, from their high positions, at all
+times, the actions, the motions of the uncovered prisoners, and with their
+rifles shoot down the offending prisoner, whether he stood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> talking with
+his comrades, in the centre of the space, or whether he approached the
+sacred precincts of the dead line.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img11.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes they threw down their unconsumed fragments of bread to the
+hungry men. Sometimes they were hurled with curses; rarely were they
+thrown from feelings of compassion. Yet there were some kind-hearted men
+here, in the degrading position of the sentry box, who viewed the scene
+with affright, and who wept bitterly over the awful torture and sacrifice
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>The author, travelling on foot among the mountains and forests of Northern
+Georgia, after peace was declared, found these evidences of humane feeling
+among the letters preserved in the humble cabins of the poor whites. That
+unoffending men were shot down without warning, there is no doubt
+whatever; that men, weary of torture, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>staggered to the dead line, and
+calmly, joyfully received the fatal shot, there is positive evidence.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">IX.</p>
+
+<p>The trees were all removed from the enclosure, and with the specific
+intent of cruelty, as was openly stated by the brutal builders. They
+should have no shade, it was said, and no shade had the wretched men but
+what was cast by the few ragged and rotten blankets and shelter tents that
+the prison examiners passed by as utterly worthless in their examination
+and search for articles of value, whether watches, bank notes, hats,
+shirts, and even shoes. There were men who, robbed at the outer gates,
+entered the prison almost naked. This system of robbery was open and
+audacious, and it is said that the only prisoners who escaped spoliation
+were those who were taken from Sherman when Atlanta fell, and when
+consternation prevailed at the prison in consequence. It is positively
+stated that it was sanctioned by Wirz and Winder. At all events, two men,
+by the names of Hume and Duncan, robbed the prisoners systematically, and
+appropriated the packages sent to the prisoners, from the United States,
+to such an extent that few if any articles ever reached the poor men to
+whom the boxes of food and clothing were sent.</p>
+
+<p>These blankets and rags were vainly stretched over sticks, to form the
+semblance of a habitation, wherever the earth gave firm foothold, even
+along the borders of the pestilential marsh. Those who were destitute of
+even these shreds of cloth, dug with their hands holes in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> earth,
+after the example of wild beasts, or with the slimy water from the brook
+they built up, with handfuls of mud, little cabins over hollows scooped
+out from below the surface of the ground, and as rude as the clumps of
+earth, which that lowest degree of the human form&mdash;the Digger
+Indian&mdash;inhabits.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img12.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>These may be seen at the present day, looking like the lodges of the
+beaver, or the mounds of the marmots of the prairies, and half concealed
+by those wild, useless, and noxious weeds which linger in, and cling to
+the footsteps of man, as he wanders in his migrations over the
+uncultivated lands of the globe.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the heavy rains washed away the roofs of mud, inundating the
+occupants beneath. Some of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> poor wretches had not the strength to lift
+up the incumbent mass of earth, and perished miserably in their dens.
+There are now in these demolished excavations the bones of some of our
+fellow-citizens, unknown and unhonored. The cry of distress was so
+constant that few heeded the smothered moan. The stumps of the fallen
+trees were grubbed up by the knives and fingers of the prisoners for
+firewood to warm themselves with, or to cook their scanty food; even the
+roots were followed down deep into the earth, for the purpose of obtaining
+the means of warmth which were almost entirely denied them by the prison
+keepers.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">X.</p>
+
+<p>There is no excuse for this wanton exposure to the vicissitudes of the
+climate, for the forests adjoining were immense in their extent, and
+thousands of the suffering men offered, begged to go and obtain material
+to build sheds or huts to protect them from the inclemency of the weather.
+Neither parole was allowed for this purpose, nor real attempts made to
+obtain the building tools. To show the force of the argument that the
+rebels had not sufficient aid, and that it would have been dangerous to
+have paroled any of these prisoners, there is the fact that there were
+several large steam saw-mills in the vicinity, and they could have easily
+afforded, in few weeks, all the lumber required for the purpose of
+shelter.</p>
+
+<p>Was it recklessness, was it perversity, or was it malice aforethought,
+that withheld from the prisoners the means of shelter? The few sheds that
+were erected were not commenced until late in the term of its
+occupation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> too late to render much service. They were merely roofs of
+boards, placed upon posts, at the distance of seven feet from the ground.
+There were neither sides nor partitions to these sheds, and they were not
+required during the hot months.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img13.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">View of the manner in which the Dead were Interred.</span></p>
+
+<p class="note">The bodies were laid in rows of one hundred to three hundred, and after
+the earth was thrown over them a stake was thrust down to mark the place
+of burial. This view is taken from a rebel photograph.&mdash;Page 57.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Pity was not a virtue that was recognized here: the noble impulses of the
+heart were reversed, and the natural instincts perverted.</p>
+
+<p>The dead bodies of the thousands who perished within the stockade, without
+medical attendance, were dragged forth, without care, and thrown
+promiscuously into the common field-carts, which, with their carelessly
+heaped-up burdens, proceeded to the trenches, where the dead heroes were
+laid in long lines, side by side, two or three hundred in a trench, and
+then a stick was thrust into the ground, at the head of each man, to
+indicate the place of burial. For the care observed in the burial of the
+dead after the carts arrived at the cemetery, and the preserving of the
+records of the victims, and the place, we are indebted to our own men, who
+were paroled especially for the purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The only solicitude observed by the rebels during or after interment of
+their victims, was shown by the civil engineer or surveyor of the town. He
+thought that so much animal matter should not go entirely to waste, and so
+commenced to plant grape vines over the mounds of the decomposing dead.</p>
+
+<p>To show the utter want of decency which ruled all things connected with
+the prison, it is stated by positive eye-witnesses that the same carts
+that transported the dead, went forth (without being cleansed of their
+reeking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> and disgusting filth), to the shambles and the depots for the
+meat and corn for the living prisoners.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XI.</p>
+
+<p>An eminent statistician has stated that mortality is in direct ratio to
+the density of population, and that superficial area is as essential to
+health as cubic space. To the writer&#8217;s mind, the overcrowding of the men,
+and their exposure to the variations of heat and cold, the influence of
+moisture, and the foul emanations of the infected soil, were sufficient to
+cause great destruction of human life; and when combined with the
+deficient dietary, the imagination can hardly conceive of a better field
+for disease and death than the condition of this swarming pen. All the
+elements and combinations of physical destructiveness were here in full
+play. &#8220;Losses by battle,&#8221; says Sir Charles Napier, &#8220;sink to nothing,
+compared with those inflicted by improperly constructed barracks, and the
+jamming of soldiers&mdash;no other word is sufficiently expressive.&#8221;
+&#8220;Diseases,&#8221; states the French Inspector Baudens, &#8220;slay more men than steel
+or powder, and it is often easy to prevent them by a few simple hygienic
+precautions.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In all campaigns where the care of the soldier is left to the military
+man,&mdash;who is educated for destruction, and has not been taught in the
+economy of life,&mdash;we see in the mortuary and non-efficient lists a
+disgraceful and culpable array of thoughtless routine, vulgar prejudices,
+and systems. In our Military Academies the elements and the means of
+destruction are taught, but not a law unfolded that relates to the
+principles of health, strength,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> and life. To alleviate the burden of the
+military list by sanitary measures is an idea unheard of, or at least
+unnoticed. &#8220;For these works,&#8221; writes Chadwick, in his papers on &#8220;Economy,&#8221;
+&#8220;a special training is needed for our military engineers, whose present
+peculiar training is only for old works for war, and for those
+imperfectly,&mdash;works for the maintenance of the health of an army being
+necessary means to the maintenance of its military strength.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The one-sided character of the common training of our military engineers
+was displayed in the Crimea, in the proved need of a sanitary commission
+to give instruction for the selection and the practical drainage of proper
+sites for healthy encampments, for the choice collection and the proper
+distribution of wholesome water, for the construction of wholesome huts,
+and the proper shelter and treatment of horses as well as men.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XII.</p>
+
+<p>In this enclosure, during a period of twelve months, from five thousand to
+thirty-six thousand human beings ate, slept, and drank, whilst the piles
+of filth were constantly accumulating, and the germs of infection silently
+at work. There was no regularity in the arrangement of the interior. Men
+collected in groups in the day time, and they lay in rows, like swine, at
+night.</p>
+
+<p>The stream, which with little ingenuity could have been turned to a
+blessing for the prison, was allowed to be obstructed by the heaps of
+grime; and enlarging its area, it assisted in forming the extensive
+quagmires,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> which were several acres in extent. So little care was
+observed for the comfort or the health of the prisoners, that all the
+washings of the bakery, all the filth of the out-houses of the workmen,
+were allowed to pass down and mingle with the current of the stream only
+thirty feet above the point of entrance into the stockade. The traveller
+can observe to-day that this malicious act of refined cruelty, or fatal
+error in hygiene, was really perpetrated.</p>
+
+<p>Besides this, the drains of the camp and the town above emptied themselves
+into this stream which supplied the prison with water.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XIII.</p>
+
+<p>The bakery was located on the west side of the stockade, about equidistant
+from either line of palisade. It was of rough boards, and but one story in
+height. Its interior disclosed two rooms, one of which communicated with
+the two ovens, which were built of common brick. These two ovens&mdash;fourteen
+feet in length by seven feet in width, and with one kneading-trough
+fifteen feet long, and less than three feet in width&mdash;supplied the
+prisoners with all the bread they obtained; and so far the writer has not
+learned that there was any other source of supply.</p>
+
+<p>These same ovens, kept red hot, and worked night and day, to the fullest
+capacity, by the commissary bakers of the United States service, could not
+have produced but eight thousand rations of white bread, and but nine
+thousand six hundred rations of corn bread. This is the extreme limit; and
+regarded by the workmen, who have made the calculations, as almost an
+impossibility. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> ordinary capacity of this establishment was probably
+about four or five thousand rations of corn bread. This quantity, divided
+daily among thirty thousand men, would give but a small morsel to each
+one; and this gives the appearance of truth to the statement, that from
+two to six ounces of corn bread were furnished as rations to the
+prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img14.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Ask a survivor of this prison treatment, if perchance you can find one,
+how he preserved his life, and he will tell you, &#8220;By eating the rations of
+the dying.&#8221; Ten thousand men were sick or dying in this enclosure at one
+time.</p>
+
+<p>After the carts, with their scanty burdens of food, had passed into the
+prison, and distributed their contents, ten or fifteen thousand of the
+haggard and starving men might be seen collected together in the central
+portion of the prison trading with each other. Some of the poor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>wretches would be offering a handful of peas for a knot of wood no
+larger than the human fist, in order that they might cook their allowance;
+others offering, in barter, their remnants of clothing&mdash;a cap, or a shoe,
+or anything they possessed&mdash;for a morsel of food.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img15.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="center"><i>PLAN OF PRISON BAKERY</i><br />ANDERSONVILLE Ga.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The little knots of wood above mentioned had a standard value of fifty
+cents; yet there were immense forests all around, and within sight on
+every side.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XIV.</p>
+
+<p>There appears to have been but one kitchen for this vast assemblage, and
+that strangely situated&mdash;far in rear of the outer palisade, away from
+water-course or spring. The soil to-day does not present traces of a
+much-travelled road from its doorway to the main gate, distant about one
+third of a mile by the route taken. Consider the enormous weight of
+provisions which should have passed over this road when the prison
+contained more than twenty thousand men. This kitchen was a plain
+one-story shed, built of rough boards, one hundred feet in length, and
+less than fifty feet in width. It contained in the interior two
+medium-sized ranges, and four boilers of fifty gallons&#8217; capacity each. The
+capacity indicated does not by far equal the cooking apparatus which is
+required and furnished to the Lincoln and Harewood Hospitals, of
+Washington, for twelve hundred men.</p>
+
+<p>It is the opinion of the writer, who is familiar with the amount of
+cooking apparatus required by large hospitals and camps, that this
+kitchen, with its implements, could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> not, in the course of twenty-four
+hours, by constant relays of industrious workmen, have furnished cooked
+rations to more than five thousand men. There may have been other
+arrangements for cooking in the open air; but there are no longer any
+traces of such operations, nor has the writer any evidence that such was
+the case.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img16.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XV.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the banks of the same stream, and near the railroad station, was
+erected the stockade which was intended for the confinement of the
+officers; but it was abandoned, after few weeks&#8217; occupation, partly from
+motives of prudence and in fear of revolt in keeping officers near so
+great a number of the rank and file of the army, and partly from the
+unfortunate selection of the locality. The officers were removed to Macon,
+and were confined there in the cotton sheds during a long period. This<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+pen, known as the officers&#8217; stockade, was built of pine-tree palisades,
+fifteen feet high, and measured one hundred and ninety-five feet in length
+by one hundred and eight feet in width, and was provided with a shed in
+the interior forty-five feet long by twenty-seven feet wide, and also with
+a walk, suspended on the outside of the palisade, for the use of the
+sentries. The location and the provisions of this stockade were worse and
+more dangerous than even the main prison.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XVI.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img17.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>On the pathway to the graveyard, not far from the prison, and in open
+sight, was built the hut where the bloodhounds were kept, always ready to
+track and pursue<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> the fugitives, who were so fortunate as to escape by
+evading the vigilance of the guards, or by the slow and dangerous process
+of tunnelling beneath the palisades. The system of pursuit was so perfect,
+the dogs so numerous and well trained, that it was very rarely that any
+one escaped, and then it was only by the kind intervention of the black
+man.</p>
+
+<p>There were but nine bloodhounds kept here, but there were more than fifty
+dogs, kept in relays, along the route of escape, extending from the town
+to the city of Macon, fifty miles distant. The names of these inhuman
+wretches, who kept and hunted with these hounds, are known to the writer,
+the places of their residence, the number of their animals, and the price
+they received for each hapless victim overpowered by their dogs. These
+packs of hounds were generally accompanied by dogs of fierce and
+determined courage, to seize and hold the object pursued until the hunters
+arrived. The ordinary bloodhound of these regions is cowardly from
+degeneration, and dare not face the look, nor disregard the voice of man,
+and until the catch-dogs arrive and dash in, and lead the way, they bay
+and show their teeth from safe distances; but the victim once disabled,
+they tear and rend the living limbs without reluctance. The bloodhound is
+said, when in a state of tranquillity, to be the most affectionate of all
+the canine race, but when once excited, he no longer recognizes the blood
+of his master from that of the stranger. That many men were pursued, and
+caught, and paid for by the rebel authorities, at the price of thirty
+dollars a head, there is abundant proof; that men were disabled, and torn
+wantonly by the hounds, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> afterwards died of their wounds, the writer
+has positive proof. That Federal soldiers were overpowered and destroyed
+in the forests by the dogs, and their brutal owners, there is evidence.</p>
+
+<p>It did not shock the civil communities of the South to hear of the use of
+the bloodhounds to pursue and maim men of their own race and nation, for
+in every locality, for a long period past, it had been the custom to rear
+and train dogs to catch the hapless slave who had incurred the rage of his
+master, and vainly sought to escape from his fury in the obscure recesses
+of the tangled forests.</p>
+
+<p>Usage, by long repetition, had blunted the natural sympathies, so that
+hate readily excused the difference in class and color.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XVII.</p>
+
+<p>The bloodhounds here used appear to have been of a degenerate breed, and
+to have lacked the great strength, the invincible determination, which the
+true race possesses. The bloodhounds introduced into Cuba, to exterminate
+the Indians, were ferocious and powerful animals. From these the present
+stock in Southern Georgia were probably descended, and during three
+centuries of change, have gradually lost their nobler qualities, but have
+preserved the form. The true bloodhound is taller than the fox-hound, and
+stronger in his make. His color is of a reddish brown, shaded here and
+there with darker tints. His muzzle and jaws wide and strong, and the
+frame firmly knit. His scenting power is extraordinary, and from time
+immemorial his services have been made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> use of in tracking wounded animals
+or fugitives from justice.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Soon the sagacious brute, his curling tail<br />
+Flourished in air, low bending, plies around<br />
+His busy nose, the steaming vapor snuffs<br />
+Inquisitive, nor leaves one turf untried,<br />
+Till, conscious of the recent stains, his heart<br />
+Beats quick; his snuffing nose, his active tail<br />
+Attest his joy: then with deep, opening mouth,<br />
+That makes the welkin tremble, he proclaims<br />
+Th&#8217; audacious felon: foot by foot he marks<br />
+His winding way, while all the listening crowd<br />
+Applaud his reasonings, o&#8217;er the watery ford,<br />
+Dry sandy heaths, and stony, barren hills;<br />
+O&#8217;er beaten paths, with men and beasts disdained,<br />
+Unerring he pursues, till at the cot<br />
+Arrived, and seizing by his guilty throat<br />
+The caitiff vile, redeems the captive prey.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_FOURTH" id="BOOK_FOURTH"></a>BOOK FOURTH.</h2>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">I.</p>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Animals</span> eat that they may live. Man eats, not only that he may live, but
+that he may gather strength, and fulfil his high destiny on earth.</p>
+
+<p>When God gave form and animation to the dust of the earth, and man
+appeared, he did not intend that the sustenance of life should be left to
+chance or to careless selection. This intent of the Creator is revealed in
+the study of the organic world, where wonderful varieties and productions
+are offered to the appetite of man, in order that the &#8220;force of the
+universe may glow within his veins,&#8221; and that the faculties of his mind
+may so expand that he may behold and comprehend the works and designs of
+his Maker.</p>
+
+<p>Food, next to the purity of the air, determines the degree of the physical
+well-being; it gives the beauty of contour to the form; it builds up the
+marvellous structure of the brain; the ravishing smile of the features,
+the sublimity of thought, depend alike in great measure upon the benign
+influence of food.</p>
+
+<p>It not only gives to nations their characteristics of strength and
+solidity, but it bestows upon society more of grace and refinement than
+philosophy is willing to allow.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">II.</p>
+
+<p>The question of alimentation with the civil laborer, exposed to healthy
+influences of properly distributed air and sunlight, and to the regular
+motions of a well-conducted life, is easy of solution to the inquiring
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>But when it relates to the soldier, subjected to strange and unhealthy
+influences, the explanations involve much study, care, and research.</p>
+
+<p>In the natural condition of man it is easy to determine how much food will
+support life and sustain physical exertion. The dietaries of the public
+institutions of different countries, the experiments of physiologists, and
+the records of history give the data with sufficient clearness. As to the
+amount of food required daily to repair the waste and wants of the human
+organism, much depends upon the degree of muscular exertion and nervous
+excitation, as well as the temperature of the season. In the alimentation
+of armies scientific principles must not be disregarded. Food must be
+considered as force; it must contain, not only material, but power. The
+strength of men, says Baron Liebig, is in direct ratio to the plastic
+matter in their food.</p>
+
+<p>In determining the absolute quantities of nutrient substances required by
+the system, Lehman observes that there are three magnitudes especially to
+be considered.</p>
+
+<p>The first is the quantity requisite to prevent the animal from sinking by
+starvation. The second is that which affords the right supply of
+nourishment for the perfect accomplishment of the functions, and the last
+is that which indicates the amount of nutrient matter which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> may, under
+the most favorable circumstances, be subjected to metamorphosis in the
+blood. No one of the four classes, the carbohydrates, the fats, the
+albuminous matters, and the salts, will answer the purpose alone, but all
+must be employed together, and this invariable proportion according to the
+local, and, therefore, variable waste of the system. These considerations
+indicate how complicated the problem is.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">III.</p>
+
+<p>Life is an action; the principle of life, whatever may be its nature, is
+eminently and visibly a principle of excitation, of impulsion, a motive
+power.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is taking a false idea of life,&#8221; says Cuvier, &#8220;to consider it as a
+simple link which binds the elements of the living body together, since,
+on the contrary, it is a power which moves and sustains them unceasingly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>These elements do not for an instant preserve the same relation and
+connection; or, in other words, the living body does not for an instant
+keep the same state and composition. &#8220;This law,&#8221; adds Flourens, &#8220;does not
+affect alone the muscles, viscera, and tissues, but there is a continual
+mutation of all the parts composing the bone.&#8221; These views have been
+substantiated by the extended experiments of Chossat, of Von Bibra, and a
+host of experimentalists, showing how positive and decided are the changes
+in the material composition of the body, and especially the constitution
+of even the bone from the influence of food.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">IV.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is from the blood that life derives the principles which maintain and
+repair it. The more vigorous, plastic, and rich in nutritive material, so
+much the more life increases and manifests itself, so much the quicker the
+reparatory processes restore a lesion to its natural condition.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The blood owes its vivifying properties to the presence of oxygen, which
+it receives by the respiratory organs; but that nourishing fluid, to
+complete its physiological <i>r&ocirc;le</i>, needs to receive combustible and
+organizable material.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>These Protean principles of the healthy blood form one fifth of its
+weight.</p>
+
+<p>Oxygen unites with the carbon of the food in the blood of animals;
+carbonic acid is formed and heat evolved. When the atmosphere is vitiated,
+the oxygenating processes are diminished in ratio to the vitiation.</p>
+
+<p>The experiments of Seguin, Crawford, and De la Roche show that in a
+vitiated and highly heated atmosphere the blood is not thoroughly
+decarbonized, thereby deranging the nervous system, and affecting the
+animal functions as well as the mental faculties. The blood is subject to
+incessant variations. The more feeble the respiration the less rich it is.
+Man absorbs twenty to thirty quarts of oxygen every hour. The pure air is
+a real food, and is as necessary for the development and repair of the
+physical force as the more solid forms of matter. Nine ounces of carbon
+are consumed every day, and the phenomenon of the expired carbonic acid
+has its maxima and minima<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> during the day, like the regular variations of
+the barometer or the tides of the ocean.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">V.</p>
+
+<p>The great nervous prostration and the lack of energy which were observed
+among the prisoners, were not due entirely to climate. The activity of the
+nervous mechanism depends greatly upon the supply and purity of the
+arterial blood. It is the same with the nerve fibres as with the nerve
+centres, but in less degree. We observe that the exaltation and depression
+of the nervous power are within the control of man by the administration
+of certain drugs, or respiration of appropriate gases. The accumulation of
+bile or urea in the blood diminishes the nerve energy. Many physiologists
+enumerate moral depressions among the principal causes of epidemics; and
+this opinion is not strange when we consider how completely the system is
+under control of the nervous influence, and how much the supply of oxygen
+and blood to the organs and tissues depend upon the nervous power; and how
+much, moreover, the integrity of the nervous system depends upon the
+purity of the blood.</p>
+
+<p>In the process of starvation, during the struggle for life, the hidden
+forces in reserve&mdash;the superabundant muscle, fat, tissues, even the
+brain-substance&mdash;are gradually absorbed. The volume of blood may remain
+the same, but the vivifying particles which circulate in the vital stream
+are rapidly consumed by the wants of the wasting economy, and disappear.
+And when these hematic globules are lessened to a certain limit below the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+normal proportion death ensues. Vierodt has discovered that the limit of
+this singular law is 52 per 1000 for the dog, and about 60 per 1000 for
+some other species of the mammalia. The physiologists have shown how the
+vivifying principles acquire vigor through the blood discs, and how these,
+when absorbing pure oxygen through the pulmonary circulation, contribute
+to the development of muscular fibre and the nervous material. Mammals and
+birds, when deprived of food, die in ten to twenty days, losing from one
+third to one half of their weight.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VI.</p>
+
+<p>In determining the nutritive value of aliments by the study of their
+chemical composition, we cannot adhere strictly to the results furnished
+by analysis. For, says Baron Liebig, we cannot reckon upon results in the
+human stomach with the same regularity as we would in the alembics of our
+laboratories.</p>
+
+<p>Physiologists divide alimentary substances into two classes: the
+nitrogenous, which, according to Dumas, supply the demands of
+assimilation, and the non-nitrogenous, which are called by Liebig
+respiratories, from furnishing the products consumed by respiration.
+Neither the one nor the other will alone support life indefinitely, and
+when one or the other decreases below well-defined limits, health
+declines, and finally life becomes extinct from inanition.</p>
+
+<p>Milne Edwards gives, as the mean amount of these two classes, required for
+all climates, not less than three hundred and fifteen grains of nitrogen
+and thirty-three<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> hundred and fifty grains of carbon in the twenty-four
+hours. These views are adopted by most physiologists; yet the analyses of
+Schlossberger and Kemp indicate that the idea of estimating the value of
+food by the quantity of nitrogen it contains is a fallacious one.</p>
+
+<p>The beautiful experiments of Bernard and the modern physiologists have
+unfolded many of the laws that regulate digestion and assimilation. Yet
+the human researches in the great arcana of nature are extremely limited,
+in comparison with the vast range of physical phenomena, and every day we
+are reminded of the remarks of Boerhaave to his students: &#8220;Let all these
+heroes of science meet together; let them take bread and wine, the food
+which forms the blood of man, and by assimilation contributes to the
+growth of the body; let them try by all their art, and assuredly they will
+not be able from these materials to produce a single drop of blood,&mdash;so
+much is the most common act of nature beyond the utmost efforts of the
+most extended science.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The composition of the typical food of nature is revealed to us in the
+analysis of human milk.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VII.</p>
+
+<p>The need of varied food is apparent to the casual observer, and it is well
+proven in the immortal work of Cabanis. &#8220;The experience of civilized life
+has shown,&#8221; says Professor Horsford, in his admirable pamphlet on the
+marching ration of armies, &#8220;that the human organism requires, to maintain
+it in health, both organic and inorganic food.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>&#8220;Of the organic, it needs nitrogenous food for the support of the vital
+tissues for work; and saccharine, or oleaginous food, for warmth. Of the
+inorganic, it needs phosphates for the bones, brain, muscles, and blood;
+and salt for its influence on the circulation and the secretions, and for
+various purposes where soda is required for a base; and doubtless both
+phosphates and salt for many offices as yet imperfectly understood. &#8216;A man
+may be starved by depriving him of phosphates and salt, just as
+effectively as by depriving him of albumen or oil.&#8217; (Dalton&#8217;s Physiology.)</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The salts of potassa, magnesia, and iron, of manganese, silica, and
+fluorine, are always present, and perform services of greater or less
+obvious moment in the animal economy. These organic and inorganic
+substances are essential, but they are not all that are needed. Man,
+especially when compelled to exhausting labor, requires beverages and
+condiments. He wants coffee, or tea, or cocoa; or, in the absence of
+these, he may feel a craving for wine or spirits. He wants salt, pepper,
+and vinegar. To preserve a sound body, then, there are required organic
+and inorganic food, beverages, and condiments.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A mixed food,&#8221; says another writer, &#8220;which varies from time to time,
+seems to be essential; and there can be no doubt that the changes which
+physicians have recognized in the nature of the predominating diseases,
+from century to century, are connected with changes which have taken place
+in the nature of the diet. Excess of oil, albumen, and starch produce
+liability to arthritic, bilious, and rheumatic affections; a deficiency of
+oleaginous materials, scrofula, &amp;c.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">VIII.</p>
+
+<p>In attempting to form a proper estimate of the alleged ration furnished by
+the rebels to their prisoners at Andersonville, we will endeavor to arrive
+at just conclusions by comparing the known quantities with the dietaries
+of long-established hospitals, prisons, and the ration of armies of
+different periods of history.</p>
+
+<p>The effects of food upon the civil prisoners, both of the long and short
+term, have been carefully studied by Christison, Liebig, Barral, and
+Edwards; and it is conclusively shown by their statistics of the prisons
+of Europe how much food will keep the prisoners in athletic condition when
+exposed to healthy influences. The quantity of food required depends upon
+the wants of the system and the quality of food consumed. Some articles
+are far more nutritious than others, and are far less bulky; for instance,
+the rice eaters of China, the potato and milk consumers of Ireland, eat
+enormously, compared with the beef-eating people.</p>
+
+<p>But rarely will a less quantity than seventeen ounces suffice for the
+animal economy, and not then, even, unless it is the concentrated essences
+and principles of carefully selected grains, and healthy meat from cattle
+killed in their native pastures, like the scientific ration correctly
+proposed by Professor Horsford. This ration is intended to enable armies
+to change their base with intervals of more than a month, and to assist
+raiding parties to perform long journeys without relying for subsistence
+on the doubtful and difficult forage along the route, or on the distant
+depots at the point of departure.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>A handful of the ripe, golden grains, roasted and mixed with a little
+sugar, with a few ounces of beef dried from the meat of healthy cattle
+killed instantly, will sustain the power of life wonderfully. This is
+shown by the mountaineers of the Cordilleras, of the Andes, and the Rocky
+Mountains.</p>
+
+<p>It was substantially the same ration that enabled the Romans to traverse
+countries far remote from their main depots of supplies, and the Greeks to
+advance across, with safety, the immense arid deserts of Asia. Any of our
+splendidly equipped and fed armies of modern times would perish in a few
+days along the route where Xenophon and his immortal ten thousand passed
+with safety, and without much loss.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">IX.</p>
+
+<p>The mode of rationing the Roman armies, and the manner in which the
+supplies were obtained and preserved, is well shown in the extant writings
+of those times. Besides the allowance of wheat daily,&mdash;one to two
+pounds,&mdash;the Roman soldiers often received a ration of pork, mutton,
+legumes, cheese, oil, salt, wine, and vinegar. With the grain, a
+porridge-pot, a spit, the casque for a cup, and with vinegar to mix with
+their water,&mdash;which formed the regulation drink posea, or acetum,&mdash;they
+marched rapidly, and retained their extraordinary vigor in the midst of
+pestilential regions. Every soldier carried his own food for a given
+length of time, which was from eight to twenty-eight days. &#8220;<i>Cibo cum
+suo.</i>&#8221; Hence Josephus wrote, the Roman soldier is laden like a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> mule. This
+food was always of the best quality; and the wheat was always carefully
+selected by a commission appointed for the purpose, as we may learn from
+the inscription on the column of Trajan. This wheat was not always eaten
+raw; but was oftener roasted, and crushed upon a stone.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6.5em;">&#8220;Frugesque receptas</span><br />
+Et torrere parant flammis et frugere saxo.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>With all of these arrangements and movements, there was method even as to
+the time of taking food. The soldier ate twice a day, and at appointed
+hours&mdash;at the sixth hour, &#8220;Prandium;&#8221; and at the tenth hour, &#8220;Vesperna.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">X.</p>
+
+<p>The requirements of the system differ greatly, according to the degree of
+heat, the purity of the air, and the degree of physical exercise. What
+suffices at the equator would be but a morsel at the pole. What sustains
+the quiet student would starve the active athlete.</p>
+
+<p>When Volney spoke in surprise of the few ounces required to sustain the
+Bedouin, he forgot the purity of the air of the desert, as well as the
+indolent life of the Arab.</p>
+
+<p>When we offer as example the frugal diet of Cornaro, which was twelve
+ounces of solid food, with fourteen ounces of wine, daily, we must
+remember that the celebrated man lived a life of moderation, avoided bad
+air, and guarded against the extremes of heat and cold.</p>
+
+<p>The data of Frerichs, the observations of Sir John <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>Sinclair, and the
+determinations of Professor Horsford, show that eighteen ounces of
+properly selected food may sustain life; and they also show that the
+nutrient substances must be of known value.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XI.</p>
+
+<p>In forming our ideas as to the required amount of food necessary to
+healthy vigor, we will not attempt to analyze the magnitudes of Lehman,
+nor accept the statement of Chossat, that the animal body loses daily
+about one twenty-fourth of its weight by the metamorphosis of tissue; but
+will again examine the diet tables of the prisons, hospitals, and armies
+of Europe, leaving the reader to form his own conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>The distinguished physiologist, Milne Edwards, maintains that the food
+must contain three hundred and fifteen grains of nitrogen and three
+thousand three hundred and fifty grains of carbon, otherwise the animal
+economy loses force, and gradually deteriorates. The data of Frerichs give
+the same views, and they accord with the observations of the ten years&#8217;
+study of the regimens of the prisons of Scotland. Dumas, in his
+calculations of the ration of the French army, gives as its equivalent
+three hundred and thirty-five grains of nitrogen and four thousand nine
+hundred and fifty grains of carbon.</p>
+
+<p>In the prisons and hospitals of England, Scotland, France, and Germany,
+the dietaries furnish from seventeen to twenty-eight ounces of nitrogenous
+and carbonaceous food.</p>
+
+<p>For a time, the solid ration of the prisons of Scotland<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> was reduced to
+seventeen ounces, but the prisoners lost weight. In the public
+institutions of England we find the total quantity of solid food to be as
+follows: The British soldier receives in home service 45 ounces; the
+seaman of the Royal navy 44 ounces; convicts 54 ounces; male pauper 29
+ounces; male lunatic 31 ounces. The full diet of the hospitals of London
+furnish from 25 to 31 ounces of solid food, besides from one to five pints
+of beer daily. The Russian soldier has about 50 ounces; the Turkish more
+than 40 ounces; the French nearly 50 ounces; the Hessian 33 ounces; the
+Yorkshire laborer 50 ounces; United States navy 50 ounces; and the soldier
+of the United States army about 50 ounces, of solid food.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XII.</p>
+
+<p>The food allowed to the prisoners at Andersonville, according to the
+statements of the prisoners and other witnesses, was from two to four
+ounces of bacon, and from four to twelve ounces of corn bread daily;
+sometimes a half pint to a pint of bean, pea, or sweet potato soup, of
+doubtful value. Vegetables were unknown. Thus giving a total weight of
+solid food, per diem, of six to sixteen ounces of solid food. The amount
+was not constant: some days the prisoners were entirely without food, as
+was the case at Belle Isle and Salisbury. Neither was the deficiency
+afterwards made good. The amount given was oftener less than ten ounces
+than more.</p>
+
+<p>The contrast furnished by the dietaries of our own military prisons, of
+those of the British hulks (so much cursed during the last war), or by the
+food given by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> Algerine pirates to their prisoners and slaves, gives
+rise to terrible convictions as to the regard the rebel authorities placed
+upon the lives of their prisoners. The United States allowed to the rebel
+prisoners held by them thirty-eight ounces of solid food at first; but
+afterwards, in June, 1864, they reduced the ration to thirty-four and a
+half ounces per day. The range of articles composing the ration was the
+same as with our own troops, the exception being in the weight in bread.
+In the Dartmoor prison in England, where our men were confined by the
+English, when taken prisoners during the last war, and of which so much
+cruelty has been alleged, the authorities allowed to the prisoners for the
+first five days in the week 24 ounces of coarse brown bread, 8 ounces of
+beef, 4 ounces of barley, &#8531; ounce of salt, &#8531; ounce of onions, and 16
+ounces of turnips daily (or more than 50 ounces of solid food); and for
+the remaining two days the usual allowance of bread was given with 16
+ounces of pickled fish. The daily allowance to our men, at the Melville
+Island prison, at Halifax, during the last war, was 16 ounces of bread, 16
+ounces of beef, and one gill of peas; the American agent furnishing
+coffee, sugar, potatoes, and tobacco. The allowance on the noted Medway
+hulks was 8 ounces of beef, 24 ounces of bread, and one gill of barley,
+daily, for five days; and 16 ounces of codfish, 16 ounces potatoes, or 16
+ounces of smoked herring, the remaining two days of the week. Furthermore,
+in addition to these generous allowances of the British people, it can be
+said that the quality of the food was almost always excellent.</p>
+
+<p>The writer, with one exception, knows of no dietary to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> compare with that
+adopted, or made use of without the formality of adoption, by the rebel
+authorities in the treatment of their prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>This exception is found in ancient history, which Plutarch has handed down
+to us. The Athenians, captured at the siege of Syracuse, were placed in
+the stone quarries of Ortygia, and fed upon one pint of barley and half a
+pint of water daily. Most of them perished from this treatment.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XIII.</p>
+
+<p>The corn bread furnished was made, according to the evidence, from corn
+and the cob, ground up together, and sometimes mixed with what is called
+in the south cow peas. It varied from four to twelve ounces in weight
+daily, generally from four to eight ounces. A pound (of sixteen ounces) of
+corn bread contains, according to chemical analysis, two thousand eight
+hundred grains of carbon and one hundred and twenty-one grains of
+nitrogen, and therefore the highest quantity of corn bread furnished, say
+twelve ounces, afforded but two thousand one hundred grains of carbon and
+ninety grains of nitrogen, leaving a deficiency, according to the
+physiologists, of more than twelve hundred grains of carbon and two
+hundred grains of nitrogen, to be supplied by the two or four ounces of
+doubtful bacon.</p>
+
+<p>That the bacon could not furnish this deficiency must be apparent to the
+scientific observer. The quantity of bread alone, required to furnish the
+desired amount of carbon and nitrogen, would have been over three pounds
+daily, which quantity the prisoners did not have.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>Milne Edwards, after treating at length the subject of alimentation, and
+offering many examples, arrives at the conclusion that the mean quantity
+of bread and meat required to sustain the life of man, consists of sixteen
+ounces of bread and thirteen ounces of beef daily. This conclusion is
+sustained by most of the experimentalists, and if lesser quantities are
+used, they must be of choice selections. A small loaf of bread made of
+flour, ground from ripe, healthy wheat, will accomplish more for nutrition
+than two or three larger loaves, baked of damaged and unripe grain; and
+likewise it is with meat: half a pound of beef from cattle killed
+instantly in their native pastures, when the flesh retains all its natural
+juices and sweetness, is worth more for the support of the system than two
+or three pounds of beef from animals that have been fasted and terrified,
+and have thereby lost, in a very great measure, their nutritious
+qualities.</p>
+
+<p>The flesh of mammalia undergoes a great change in its nutritive qualities
+by reason of fasting, disturbance of sleep, and long-continued suffering,
+resulting in its becoming not only worthless, but deleterious.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XIV.</p>
+
+<p>Vegetable substances alone will not sustain life for a great length of
+time in every climate, but there is a vast difference between the wants of
+man at the equator and his necessities at the pole.</p>
+
+<p>Nature requires for the working of her plans materials of diverse natures:
+neither the oil, nor starch, nor sugar, will sustain life alone. Chemical
+analysis and physiological<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> history point out to us how positive is the
+law which fixes the component parts of grains and plants, and how
+imperative the necessity of adjusting in alimentation these forms of
+nutritive matter, which spring up on every side in profusion, and offer
+endless variety to the wants of man.</p>
+
+<p>There must be harmony of certain principles; there must be union of
+starch, of gluten, and fat, to complete the process of digestion and
+assimilation. To feed a patient upon arrow-root, tapioca, or sago, and the
+like, is to consign him to certain death. Instinct impels us sometimes to
+make use of articles which our habits have thrown aside.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XV.</p>
+
+<p>It appears from the reasoning of Baron Liebig, that when we replace the
+flesh and bread of ordinary diet by juicy vegetables and fruits, the blood
+is beyond all doubt altered in its chemical character, the alkaline
+carbonates being substituted for the phosphoric acid and alkaline
+phosphates, which are supposed to exert a disturbing influence in so many
+diseases, especially typhoid and inflammatory affections. The gluten of
+grain, and the albumen of vegetable juices, are identical in composition
+with the albumen of blood, but there are varieties of wheat, the ashes of
+which are in quantity and in relative proportion of the salts the same as
+those of boiled and lixiviated meats, and it cannot be maintained that
+bread made of such flour would, if it were the only food taken, support
+life permanently.</p>
+
+<p>The experiments of the French academicians, show<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> that dogs fed
+exclusively on white bread, made from the sifted flour, died in forty
+days; but when fed on black bread (flour with the bran), they lived
+without disturbance of health. Bread should always be made of grains grown
+in healthy places, and should contain the entire seed, with the exception
+of the husk; then it will realize the idea of Paracelsus: &#8220;When a man eats
+a bit of bread, does he not therein consume heaven and earth, and all of
+the heavenly bodies, inasmuch as heaven by its fertilizing rain, the earth
+by its soil, and the sun by its luminous and heat-giving rays, have all
+contributed to its production, and are all present in the one substance?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Desiccated vegetables, which have lost the water of vegetation and other
+gaseous elements, which chemistry thus far has been unable to discover,
+cannot adequately replace the fresh articles; the particular principle,
+the water of vegetation, can no more be restored to them than the dust of
+the crushed quartz can be recrystallized by the simple addition of water.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XVI.</p>
+
+<p>In the alimentation of armies bread is the basal element. If it be poor,
+the whole system of the commissariat is deranged. History shows that it is
+the most important item in the feeding of soldiers, and that many a
+campaign, since the disaster to the army of Belisarius at Methon, has been
+lost in consequence of the quality of its munition bread.</p>
+
+<p>France allows to her soldiers 26 ounces of bread, England 24, Belgium 28,
+Sardinia 26, Spain 23, Prussia 32,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> Austria 32, Turkey 33, United States
+22, <i>Rebel Prisons</i> 4 <i>to</i> 12 <i>ounces</i>!</p>
+
+<p>The quantity of corn meal allowed to the rebel soldiers by the rebel
+government was about one and one-third pounds daily: this would give about
+28 ounces of bread, allowing 30 per cent. of water, which is the rule
+among bakers; at least it is the average quantity established by the civil
+tax commission of Paris. Besides the corn meal they had six ounces of
+bacon, and peas, and rice. This ration was sufficient to preserve life, as
+it has been shown by the condition of the rebel armies; the bread alone
+contained 4900 grains of carbon, and 210 grains of nitrogen, without the
+aid of bacon or the peas. The bread alone has an excess of 1600 grains of
+carbon, and a deficiency only of about 100 grains of nitrogen, which was
+readily supplied by the bacon and other articles. Corn bread is one of the
+chief articles of diet in the Southern States, and it is likewise used
+extensively in the South of Europe. It makes heavy bread unless carefully
+prepared and mixed with flour, and when mixed with the cob it often
+produces a laxative effect, the degree of which depends greatly upon the
+quantity the meal contains. When properly prepared with milk and the usual
+ingredients, it becomes an agreeable and nutritious article of diet, but
+carelessly handled, it is disagreeable to the palate and difficult to
+digest.</p>
+
+<p>The bread furnished to the prisoners was simply mixed with salt and the
+dirty water from the brook, or the foul spring in the rear of the bakery,
+and then dried in the heat of the oven. That bad effects arose from such a
+quality of bread cannot be doubted; the injurious influences of impure
+water in panification have been pointed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> out by Boussingault, in a paper
+presented to the French Academy in 1857.</p>
+
+<p>It is the common saying in the Southern States, where the use of wheaten
+bread is comparatively rare, that a bushel of corn contains more nutriment
+than a bushel of wheat. Yet the southern wheat is superior to the northern
+varieties, and is richer in the azotized, glutinous principles so
+essential to the formation of blood and muscle. Vermicelli and macaroni
+can be made only from the best southern wheat.</p>
+
+<p>Of the varieties of Indian corn in America, the yellow flinty corn is
+reckoned the sweetest and most nutritive; the white corn of the South
+makes the fairest, but considerably the weakest flour. We do not find
+special fault with the coarsely ground meal, provided the cob is not
+included, for Mayer has pointed out, in discarding the commercial bran we
+throw away fourteen times as much phosphoric acid as there is in superfine
+flour. In this bran are contained most of the layers of gluten, in which
+are lodged the phosphates and the companion nitrogenous compounds&mdash;the
+sources of living tissues. The nutritious Graham bread is an example; also
+the pumpernickel of Westphalia, the black bread of Russia, the coarse
+oatmeal of Scotland, contain all the gluten, all the phosphates and
+nitrogenous compounds, as well as the starch of the grains. Such was the
+bread that Celsus considered as equal to flesh in its capacity of
+nourishing.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XVII.</p>
+
+<p>Fresh meat was rarely furnished to the prison, according to the reports
+and statements of witnesses, and we should doubt that it was furnished at
+all, if it were not for the number of sections of the horns of cattle
+which are strewn about the enclosure, and which the prisoners had used for
+drinking dishes; still, many of these horns may have been taken from the
+cattle killed for the guards.</p>
+
+<p>That the issue of fresh beef would have been beneficial to the men, there
+is no doubt; in fact, the experiment at Jamaica, which continued twenty
+years, proves it; for the troops who were fed with a larger allowance of
+fresh meat suffered far less from dysentery than any of the troops of the
+West India islands. There is always great difficulty in preserving the
+good qualities of fresh meat in hot climes, and, on the other hand, the
+use of salt meat in the same regions is apt to engender scorbutic
+disorders. Whenever putrefactive fermentation begins with any kind of
+meat, or any recently living nitrogenized substance, catalytic action
+takes place, ammonia is evolved, and the product is no longer pleasant to
+the taste or nutritious to the system. Food, when even exposed to vitiated
+air, becomes deteriorated in quality, just as good flour is rendered
+worthless by mixture with the damaged fungoid grain. Butchers&#8217; meat on the
+average affords but thirty-five per cent. of real nutritive matter, at
+least such was the opinion presented to the French Minister of the
+Interior by Vauquelin and Percy. Accepting this determination, we may form
+some idea of the relative value<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> of the scanty allowance of the doubtful
+beef furnished to the prisoners, if it was furnished at all.</p>
+
+<p>That bacon was furnished, there is no doubt; neither has the quantity been
+underrated by the sufferers themselves, as we shall presently see. And
+there is no reason why the quality should not have been most excellent,
+unless it had been selected for the purposes of cruelty. There is evidence
+that it was sometimes of very bad quality; but that it was generally and
+systematically selected to disgust the prisoners, we are unwilling to
+believe, although we have evidence that rotten bacon was furnished by
+contractors, and the fact boasted of by them. The influence and effect of
+this decomposed food may be surmised by the following remark of Donovan:
+&#8220;Flesh contains the elements of some of the most deadly poisons that are
+found even in the vegetable kingdom; a slight change in their mode of
+combination, or of the ratio of their quantities, may convert nutriment
+into a source of death.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XVIII.</p>
+
+<p>There is another very important item to be considered in the dietary of
+this prison, and that is the quality and quantity of the water furnished
+for potable purposes. &#8220;Water,&#8221; says Milne Edwards, &#8220;is an aliment, as well
+as sugar and fibrine; for it is indispensable for the nutrition of the
+body, and, by whatever means it arrives in the economy, its <i>r&ocirc;le</i> is
+always the same.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The water consumed in the prison was obtained from the brook, and from the
+few wells or springs within the stockade. The volume of water in the brook
+was quite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> sufficient to furnish all the drinking water desired, if it had
+been introduced into the stockade by means of sluices. As it was, the
+course of the stream was left to nature, and no effort made to prevent its
+defilement by the camps situated farther up, or by the bake-house located
+close by. All the camps on the declivities about Andersonville were
+drained into this stream. Some few wells were sunk in the prison which
+yielded scanty supplies, and there were also a few springs undefiled; but
+the quality of water everywhere was surface water, tinged and tainted with
+the impurities of the soil and the infections of the collected filth. The
+thirst, which was excessive among the prisoners, could only be slaked by
+drinking the impure waters. Yet a very little care on the part of the
+rebel authorities would have increased the comfort of the prisoners in
+this respect, and prevented the loss of life to a very considerable
+degree.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The preservation of potable water,&#8221; writes Felix Jacquot, &#8220;is certainly
+one of the capital points of hygiene.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am sometimes disposed to think,&#8221; states Dr. Letheby, the health officer
+of London, &#8220;that impure water is before impure air as one of the most
+powerful causes of disease.&#8221; In cold climates slight impurities in the
+drinking water are not of vital importance; but in the tropics, and the
+adjacent regions, the least decayed vegetable or animal matter renders it
+injurious and unpalatable, and often is the determining cause of disease,
+especially enteric, to a fearful degree.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XIX.</p>
+
+<p>During the months of June, July, August, and September, 1864, there was an
+aggregate number of prisoners of about twenty-eight thousand for each
+month. To supply this vast number of men with bread would have been
+ordinarily no easy task, requiring, as it would have done, twenty-eight
+thousand rations of bread daily, or eight hundred and forty thousand
+rations monthly. We have shown that the bakery could not have furnished
+more than ninety-six hundred rations of corn bread, of the United States
+weight of twenty ounces, or ninety-six hundred rations daily, or two
+hundred and eighty-eight thousand rations monthly, and probably furnished
+but five thousand rations daily, or one hundred and fifty thousand rations
+monthly. If this deficiency of a half a million of rations existed, how
+can it be explained?</p>
+
+<p>Was munition bread brought from a distance to supply the deficiency? When
+and whence, we will ask?</p>
+
+<p>During the period embracing the months of July, August, and September,
+1864, the rebel commissary furnished, according to his statements, two
+hundred and twenty-three thousand bushels of corn meal, and thirty-seven
+hundred bushels of flour for the prison.</p>
+
+<p>There was, during this time (ninety-two days), a monthly aggregate of
+twenty-nine thousand prisoners, who required twenty-nine thousand rations
+of corn meal daily; or, multiplied by ninety-two days, two million six
+hundred and sixty-eight thousand rations for the period of three months;
+or, allowing the same weight as the rebel ration, we have 2,668,000 &times;
+1&#8531; = 3,567,333 pounds of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> corn meal, or seventy-one thousand one
+hundred and forty-six bushels, allowing fifty pounds to the bushel. If we
+now estimate the rebel garrison to have been four thousand in the
+aggregate, we will have for the requirements, 4000 &times; 92 &times; 1&#189; = 552,000
+pounds of meal, or ten thousand one hundred and ninety bushels, which
+gives, as total for the prison and garrison, eighty-one thousand two
+hundred and eighty-six bushels of corn meal.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the commissary states that he sent two hundred and twenty-three
+thousand bushels, or almost three times as much as the quantity required.
+This is a strange statement to make, as we shall endeavor to show.</p>
+
+<p>The rebel ration allowed by their law gave thirty-seven and a half pounds
+of corn meal, three pounds of rice, or five pounds of peas, ten pounds of
+bacon, salt, &amp;c., monthly, of twenty-eight days, or about twenty ounces of
+meal daily, and about six ounces of bacon. We have, as an aggregate number
+of men for the above period (prisoners and guards), 29,000 + 4000 &times; 92 =
+3,036,000 men, requiring, according to law, three million seven hundred
+and ninety-five thousand pounds of corn meal. Now the commissary states
+that he furnished 226,700 bushels of corn meal and flour; or, multiplied
+by 50 pounds = 11,335,000 pounds, thus giving to each man more than three
+and one-fifth pounds of meal and flour; or, allowing the usual per cent.
+of water, more than four pounds of bread. That these men had sixty-eight
+ounces of corn bread apiece, or that they could have eaten it if they had
+been furnished that quantity, is not for a moment to be considered. This
+analysis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> betrays the falsity of the commissary&#8217;s statement, and
+invalidates the remainder of his accounts.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be said that this meal was to be stored for future use, for it
+is well known that corn meal will not keep in this climate but for a few
+days without fermentation taking place. There is, again, another serious
+item to be considered in connection with this statement. Why should this
+overplus, of more than seven millions of pounds of meal, be sent to this
+prison, when the army of Virginia was calling loudly for grain? The
+statement and the figures indicate simply a foolish desire to cover up
+deficiencies, and that too in a very hasty manner.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XX.</p>
+
+<p>The same commissary states that he sent, during the same period of time,
+three hundred and thirty-nine thousand pounds of bacon, or five million
+four hundred and twenty-four thousand ounces. This will give thirty-six
+hundred and eighty-four pounds of bacon each day of the ninety-two days;
+and, after allowing six ounces per man to the rebel garrison, we shall
+have remaining but two thousand pounds to be divided among the twenty-nine
+thousand prisoners, or about one and one seventh ounces of bacon to each
+man. Thus the account of the commissary, if true, proves that the
+statement of the prisoners, that they received but two to four ounces of
+bacon daily, was correct.</p>
+
+<p>If the full amount of bacon had been allowed, there would have been
+required, at the rate of six ounces per man, ten thousand eight hundred
+and seventy-five pounds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> daily, whereas there was in reality but two
+thousand pounds, leaving a deficiency of more than eight thousand pounds
+daily. If fresh beef had been allowed at the same rate as the bacon, there
+would have been required ten thousand eight hundred and seventy-five
+pounds daily, or a herd of thirty of the native cattle, allowing three
+hundred and sixty pounds net weight to each carcass. If the full ration of
+one pound of fresh beef had been furnished, there would have been required
+more than one hundred and twenty of the same class of cattle daily.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXI.</p>
+
+<p>That the dietary of the prisoners was far from being adequate to their
+wants there is no doubt, and it only remains to be determined whether this
+deficiency arose from design, from ignorance, or from real scarcity of
+food.</p>
+
+<p>We have very serious doubts as to the truth of the statements that there
+was a scarcity of food in this vicinity during the time of the occupation
+of the prison.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of its selection the region was considered to be the richest
+in cereals of all the Southern States.</p>
+
+<p>In times previous it had proved to be fertile, and during the progress of
+the war the slave labor was undisturbed by the Federal troops. It is shown
+by their own statistics that in 1860 the four counties near the prison,
+and along the line of railroad, produced nearly fourteen hundred thousand
+bushels of corn, thirty-three thousand bushels of wheat, three hundred
+thousand bushels of potatoes, and more than one hundred thousand bushels
+of beans and peas, besides forty-eight thousand bales of cotton.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> It is
+highly probable that these quantities were doubled, if not trebled and
+quadrupled during the succeeding years of the war, when the planting of
+cotton was forbidden by rebel ukase, and all energy and labor were turned
+to the production of food. There were in these four counties alone more
+than twenty thousand slaves.</p>
+
+<p>In the south of Georgia, in the wire-grass region, were great numbers of
+cattle roaming at will, and the numbers in the everglades of Florida were
+so vast, that two old steamboat captains offered to furnish the rebel
+government, at this very period, with half a million pounds of salt beef,
+along the railroads in Florida. Governor Watts wrote from Alabama in
+April, 1864, that there were ten million pounds of bacon accessible in
+that State. In September of the same year, Mr. Hudson, of the adjoining
+State of Alabama, offered to deliver to the rebel government half a
+million pounds of bacon in exchange for the same quantity of cotton.</p>
+
+<p>The rebel war clerk, in his diary at Richmond, wrote, March 17, 1864, &#8220;It
+appears that there is abundance of grain and meat in the country;&#8221; and
+again, July 3, 1864, he notes down, &#8220;Our crop of wheat is abundant, and
+the harvest is over.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>According to the census of 1860, there were in Florida more than six
+hundred thousand cattle and swine, and more than five millions in Georgia
+and Alabama. These two States produced during the same year more than
+sixty million bushels of corn and thirteen million bushels of potatoes.
+(Vide Appendix.)</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XXII.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img18.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>As to the arrangement for the distribution of the food, there was but
+little attention paid to system. The prisoners were ordered to arrange
+themselves into squads of two hundred and ninety men, and these squads
+were then subdivided into three messes. None of these messes appear to
+have been properly supplied with utensils to receive and distribute their
+food. Every prisoner was obliged to take care of himself, and all around
+the area of the stockade may be seen at the present day remains of bent
+pieces of tinned iron, the rudely-fashioned little tub, and sections of
+the horns of cattle which the poor prisoners had worked up with their
+knives, and utilized for their necessities. Civilized men would never have
+resorted to these primitive, rough, and slovenly means, if they had been
+supplied with the ordinary utensils. At certain hours carts, laden with
+the corn bread and bacon, were driven into the enclosure, and the rations
+were distributed right and left. When soup was made, it was brought in
+pails, and the prisoners received it in their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> horn cups, wooden tubs, or
+as best they could. No drink was allowed but the water from the brook,
+whose ripples were like the river Lethe, for they contained the elements
+of oblivion and death.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXIII.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident to the writer that the quantity of food furnished to the
+prisoners was far from being adequate to support animal life, and from
+this deficiency alone he can explain to his satisfaction the enormous loss
+of life. The admirable experiments of Boussingault and the French
+academicians show how the increase of weight in the feeding of animals is
+in direct proportion to the amount of plastic constituents in the daily
+supply of food, and how positive is the law which regulates the animal
+economy. Again, we can form some idea of the positive effects of the
+horrible condition of the prison, and of the extremes of heat and moisture
+upon the feeble digestion and assimilation, by the experiments of Claude
+Bernard, who shows how these functions may be disturbed by external
+influences, and how agony even causes the disappearance of sugar in the
+hepatic organ, and how fear disturbs the glucogenic process. There is
+connected with inanition a singular tendency to decomposition and
+putridity, alike in the blood and viscera. The system left unnourished
+rapidly wastes, and its vitality soon lessens to a degree beyond recovery.
+This degree depends upon the forces in reserve, which belongs especially
+to youth; middle age is less liable to impressions, but when once
+affected, has less support from the system. The rapidity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> with which the
+dead decomposed immediately after death, astonished the observing surgeon.</p>
+
+<p>The prevailing diarrh&oelig;a and scorbutic condition were the results of the
+want of food and the combined influences of the bad air and water, and not
+the primary causes of the feebleness and death.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of the want of food first appears in loss of color&mdash;wasting
+away of the form, diminution of strength, vertigo, relaxation of the
+system of the viscera as well as of the muscles, diarrh&oelig;a appears, and
+rapidly closes the struggle of the natural forces for life.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>A few days, or a few weeks, according to the initial condition, is
+sufficient to test the tenacity of the powers of life. Death always takes
+place whenever the diminution of the total weight of the body reaches
+certain limits, which is from <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>40</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">100</span> to
+<span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>50</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">100</span> of the usual weight. We
+observe this law to be quite positive and regular with the lower animals,
+with whom the effect of starvation has been well studied, and the limit of
+loss, compatible with life, found to be <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>40</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">100</span>
+for mammals and <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>50</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">100</span> for birds.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOOK_FIFTH" id="BOOK_FIFTH"></a>BOOK FIFTH.</h2>
+
+<p class="center">&#8220;Les H&ocirc;pitaux. C&#8217;est ici que l&#8217;humanit&eacute; en pleurs accuse les forfaits de l&#8217;ambition.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">I.</p>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> Hospital is the recognized type of mercy, in its broadest range of
+benevolence, tenderness, and compassion, all over the countries of the
+earth, wherever the noble sentiments of nature have force. It is one of
+the emblems of the great religion of civilization. It is coeval with
+Christ, for it appeared among the institutions of men in definite shape
+only after the establishment of Christianity; and to its true exalting
+effects upon the dispositions of men, the Christian religion owes in great
+measure its rapid progress among the barbarous and pagan nations of the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>In earlier times public charity was rare or impulsive among the civil
+communities. It was only the suffering and disabled defenders of the
+general service who were cared for at the expense of the state, as at the
+Prytaneum among the Athenians, or the numerous asylums which munificent
+Rome erected to the brave men who carved out with their strong arms and
+their blades of steel the colossal forms of her glory and grandeur. The
+magnificent ruins of Italica, which sheltered the disabled veterans and
+heroes of Africanus, look down at the present<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> day over the vast and
+fertile plains of the Guadalquivir, to reproach later and higher
+civilizations with neglect and ingratitude.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">II.</p>
+
+<p>But it is to the beneficent and sublime influences of Christianity that
+are to be attributed the noble institutions of the present day, where the
+suffering and infirm receive the attentions of science and the
+consolations of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Never among civilized nations are they profaned for the purposes of
+cruelty, never defiled by murder under the mask of philanthropy.</p>
+
+<p>Enlightened communities vie with each other in self-sacrifice in the great
+and heroic labor of devotion to suffering mortality. It is the
+distinguishing degree of difference in their excellence, their refinement,
+their religion.</p>
+
+<p>It is the last thought and reflection of the dying man, who, in dividing
+his worldly material with charity and benevolence, hopes to be kindly
+remembered on earth. It is the first dawning idea of childhood, with its
+infant hands filled with roses and garlands of flowers to relieve the
+pains of human suffering, or adorn the pale features of the departed.</p>
+
+<p>To delight in human misery is the last degree of earthly degradation and
+perversity. The mockery of the agony of death belongs only to the fiends
+of hell and their baser imitators.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">III.</p>
+
+<p>Not until some time after the occupation of the prison did the care and
+condition of the sick attract the attention and excite the solicitude of
+the prison-keepers. Then a space was selected to the eastward, and almost
+adjoining the stockade, and here were pitched the decayed and dilapidated
+tents which were to form the hospital.</p>
+
+<p>The exact size of the space is not known, the boundaries having
+disappeared since the evacuation; but the tents were arranged, it is said,
+with some degree of regularity, and the collection was surrounded by a
+fence, which served only to obstruct the circulation of free air, which
+was of vital importance; and besides, the fence was of no service whatever
+as protection against the escape of the inmates, as they were before
+admission generally far too feeble to make even an effort.</p>
+
+<p>The actual amount of accommodation furnished is not known. By some it is
+stated that there were nothing whatever but a few rotten tent flies; by
+others, and among them one of the surgeons, it is narrated that there were
+tents to cover one thousand men, and three large kettles to provide for
+their cooking, and nothing more. Yet the records show that there were
+nearly four thousand men at one time in this hospital. This distribution
+of the means for the protection and sustenance of life is too terrible to
+be believed. Let us overlook it, for there is sufficient for execration
+elsewhere, without turning to the more revolting violation and desecration
+of one of the sanctuaries of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath these tent covers there was neither straw, nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> mattresses, nor
+bunks: there was simply the bare earth, with no protection but what was
+afforded by the rotten canvas, the scanty clothing, the ragged blanket,
+which the hapless sufferer might possess. Many of the unfortunate men who
+perished here had neither shelter nor clothing. The rapacity of the
+captors had taken the remnants of the rags left by the fury of battle. For
+this want of shelter, and couches to protect and rest the weary limbs,
+there is no excuse, and there can be none; for in the adjoining forests
+there were immense quantities of timber accessible, and easy of conversion
+into manufacture, and the extremities of the boughs of the long-leaved or
+Southern pine afforded the means of making comfortable and healthy beds.</p>
+
+<p>There were then within the stockade many thousands of men accustomed to
+the use of the axe, the adze, the saw, and the plane, who would have in
+few days fashioned implements of steel out of the useless scraps of
+railway iron lying at the depot, and transformed the forest into vast,
+even magnificent buildings, replete with the comforts, the conveniences of
+advanced art. There were artisans here, of education and ingenuity, who
+could have formed out of the very dust of the place edifices as beautiful
+and wonderful to the imagination and understanding as the reality was
+repulsive and strange.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">IV.</p>
+
+<p>The guards furnished themselves with comfortable huts, arranged with the
+common conveniences, and their bunks were suspended above the contact of
+the treacherous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> ground. Their invalids were well cared for also in the
+large hospital which was erected expressly for the garrison, and which
+consisted of two large two-story wooden buildings, admirably arranged,
+with the conveniences proper to the service. The kitchen, the dispensary,
+the ventilation, and the general arrangement, showed that scientific care
+and forethought had been observed there.</p>
+
+<p>The hospital system of the rebels was quite complete, and most of their
+hospitals throughout the country were well constructed and equipped; and
+some of them were models of neatness, comfort, and scientific arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>The garrison hospital at Andersonville offers a terrible contrast to the
+open space, the wretched agglomeration, which the rebel authorities called
+a hospital for the prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the commanding officers were compelled, from some unknown
+pressure,&mdash;whether the sense of shame, or dictate from Richmond,&mdash;to order
+and commence the erection, at a late date, of a new hospital stockade.
+This was to consist of a high palisade, about one thousand feet in length,
+with twenty-two open sheds erected in the interior; but it was never
+finished, nor occupied, and it remains to-day as it was left by the rude,
+black artisans, one of the evidences of either remorse or reluctant
+obedience to the lingering sense of natural compassion of its senseless
+and heartless rulers.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">V.</p>
+
+<p>In the organization of a hospital the most important parts are the system
+of nursing and the supply and cooking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> of food; when these are observed,
+much exposure to the elements can be endured.</p>
+
+<p>Pestilences are retarded, and sometimes completely checked, in their
+destructive career when opposed by generous alimentation and sympathetic
+care; and the vital powers,&mdash;the <i>vis medicatrix natur&aelig;</i>,&mdash;rally their
+mighty strength for renewed effort. We have for instance the great and
+marked change in the healthy condition and the mortality of the British
+army before Sebastopol in the spring of 1856, when England poured out
+lavishly her treasures, and sent men of scientific ability to correct the
+well-nigh fatal errors of hygiene which were committed by her military
+men.</p>
+
+<p>We have also another instance in the check of a devastating pestilence at
+New Orleans, as observed and mentioned by Dr. Cartwright. &#8220;As soon as a
+generous public diffused the comforts of life among the seventy thousand
+destitute emigrant population of New Orleans, last summer, the pestilence,
+which was sweeping into eternity three hundred a day, immediately began to
+disappear, before frost or any other change in the weather, its artificial
+fabric being broken down by the beneficent hand of the American people.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VI.</p>
+
+<p>Here there appears to have been neither system, nor order, nor humanity.
+The chances of recovery were far less than the certainty of death. In
+reality, it was almost certain death; for only twenty-four out of the
+hundred who entered ever returned to the prison again. Those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> patients who
+possessed sufficient strength helped themselves to what was at hand, and
+what was afforded by the meagre dietary; those who had not, folded their
+arms and died.</p>
+
+<p>Medical men went through the formality of prescribing for the dying men,
+but with formul&aelig; whose ingredients were unknown to them.</p>
+
+<p>Some of these surgeons gloated over the distresses of their fellow-men,
+and delighted in the awful destruction of life which was branding with
+eternal infamy the manhood of their nation.</p>
+
+<p>Others turned and wept, for humanity was not extinct. Those tears have in
+part blotted out and redeemed the fearful inscriptions in that record of
+the events of life which form the history of the human race.</p>
+
+<p>It is not known that woman ever visited these precincts from feelings of
+compassion, and offered to console the last moments of the dying. We do
+know that they gazed upon the scene from a distance, but with what emotion
+history wisely makes no note.</p>
+
+<p>In Catholic countries we observe the hospitals attended by nuns, sisters
+of mercy and charity, all eager to labor in behalf of humanity. Besides
+these, the deaconesses of the Rhine and the beguines of Flanders have
+acquired an imperishable record in history for their philanthropic
+efforts. &#8220;There is nothing,&#8221; says Voltaire, &#8220;nobler than the sight of
+delicate females sacrificing beauty, youth, often wealth and rank, to
+devote themselves to the relief of human miseries under the most revolting
+forms.&#8221; We have seen in our own time, in the hospitals of the Federal
+armies, a devoted band of self-sacrificing women<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> striving to perform
+their part in the great work of philanthropy. Here woman never appeared.
+There were, in reality, only the vivid impressions of horror, complaints,
+groans, delirium, and the agony of death.</p>
+
+<p>More than eight thousand of our men perished miserably in this neglected
+and iniquitous spot.</p>
+
+<p>Men were seen here in all stages of idiocy and imbecility from the effects
+of starvation. They were seen asking for bones to gnaw to relieve the
+pangs of hunger. Compassion never will believe that this request was made
+by dying mortals, and that too in a hospital, which is regarded among men
+as the holy institution of society, and even by infuriated combatants as
+the only sacred precinct on the brutal fields of war.</p>
+
+<p>The same wail of distress was heard on the plains of Texas, and along the
+military lines of Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the black flag, threatened by the rebel cabinet, was hoisted. Without
+the courage to proclaim their intentions openly and boldly upon the
+battle-field, they exhibited them in as sure, but different form, in the
+management of their prisons.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VII.</p>
+
+<p>The stories relating to vaccination with poisonous matter are doubtless
+untrue. That there were disastrous effects from vaccination is probably
+correct, but they must have been the results of accident. Similar
+consequences have been observed in civil communities, in armies, and in
+hospitals. Serious results have been noticed by the writer in our own
+armies and hospitals.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>Vaccine matter is extremely liable to decomposition; and when heated, even
+by the warmth of the body, fermentation arises, and by catalytic action
+putrefaction results, forming a positive poison. That the directors of
+this hospital should resort to such means for the destruction of human
+life is not at all probable, for the process required labor: and besides,
+the wretched invalids died with sufficient rapidity without the
+intervention of this new art of malice.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VIII.</p>
+
+<p>In all military hospitals, food is to be regarded as the principal
+medicament. With good food, the results of surgery may be foretold with
+tolerable certainty, and the obstructions to the medical treatment lessen
+greatly or disappear. Without the aid of pure, healthful, life-giving
+aliment, the duration of animal life is always brief when exposed to
+vicious and hostile influences.</p>
+
+<p>The ration used here, or the system of dietary, was not constant; neither
+do we know sufficiently well the quantity, or quality, or variety, to form
+a true and candid estimate of its value in sustaining the physical
+strength, or repairing the waste and metamorphose of the organs and
+tissues of the system.</p>
+
+<p>We know, however, that it was supposed to be bacon, flour, and corn
+bread&mdash;rarely fresh meat; and vegetables were almost unknown. The only
+vegetables and delicacies were either obtained in exchange, at exorbitant
+rates, for the little currency which the prisoners had managed to secrete
+among their rags, or they were now and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> then introduced stealthily by a
+few of the humane surgeons at the peril of their lives. Persons whose
+systems are weakened by want of proper food, by exhaustion from excessive
+labor, or exposure, or disease, require a great variety of articles from
+which to select the substances which a depraved but instinctive palate
+often craves. Food which would disgust the healthy appetite, will not
+quicken into action the debilitated and flickering sensation of taste.
+During an enfeebled condition, loathsome morsels become injurious; for
+digestion is clearly at the command of the mind, and is often checked by
+its caprices.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">IX.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of gentle care and kindly sympathy is more felt, more marked in
+the military hospitals, than in the civil. Home is farther away, and the
+sense of loneliness which all invalids experience is far more oppressive.
+Here it is that woman&#8217;s influence is the strongest, and her sweet
+disposition, her friendly, compassionate smile, seems to prolong life, and
+put to flight the advancing shadows of death. &#8220;It is not medicine,&#8221; says
+Charles Lamb; &#8220;it is not broth and coarse meats served up at stated hours
+with all the hard formality of a prison; it is not the scanty dole of a
+bed to lie on which a dying man requires from his species. Looks,
+attentions, consolations, in a word, sympathies, are what a man most needs
+in this awful close of human sufferings. A kind look, a smile, a drop of
+cold water to a parched lip&mdash;for these things a man shall bless you in
+death.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>With soldiers, these little attentions have great effect;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> partly from the
+law of contrast with the roughness of their every-day occupations and
+life, and partly from the rarity of such influences. And finally, when
+grim Death appears, there is with them a singular philosophy, calmness,
+and resignation. The writer has observed this upon many battle-fields, and
+in the hospitals far removed. Rarely do we hear lamentations, regrets, and
+shrieks for help: the conscious man folds his arms, and resigns himself to
+his inward thoughts, thinking, perhaps, of</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;His native hills that rise in happier climes,<br />
+The grot that heard his song of other times,<br />
+His cottage home, his bark of slender sail,<br />
+His glassy lake, and broomwood blossomed vale.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">X.</p>
+
+<p>The forms of disease observed here were simple, and they seldom exhibited
+positive indications, or, rather, the immediate effects and influences of
+malaria. Neither of the four great pestilential diseases
+appeared&mdash;cholera, yellow fever, plague, or remittent fever.</p>
+
+<p>The diseases treated, or noted down rather upon the hospital register,
+were generally the different forms of inanition, or of exhaustion of the
+powers of life by the absorption of noxious vapors, or by the exposure
+when in feeble condition to the extremes of heat and moisture.</p>
+
+<p>The mortality among the patients removed to this place was perfectly
+appalling. Nearly eight hundred men out of every thousand perished. Yet
+this might have been foretold from the horrible condition, the
+pre-arranged destitution of the hospital. Besides carefully selected<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+food, pure and dry air is indispensable for the recovery of a diseased
+condition, and damp and vitiated air is sure to retard improvement, or to
+induce complications.</p>
+
+<p>Neither food nor healthy atmosphere were afforded.</p>
+
+<p>The symptoms of the patients indicated the want of food, and were not in
+reality the signs of actual disease. And the post-mortems made at this
+hospital revealed the absence of lesion, save those consequent upon
+starvation or prolonged suffering.</p>
+
+<p>The minutes of this clinic are very extensive and particular, and they
+exhibit in overwhelming proof the cause of death.</p>
+
+<p>Life was prolonged to the last degree of the natural vitality, and among
+the phenomena observed, the law of muscular irritability, as discovered
+and explained by Brown-Sequard, was well illustrated. There was no
+cadaveric rigidity; for the want of nutrition, the vitiated atmosphere,
+the exposure to the vicissitudes of climate, had weakened and utterly
+destroyed all nervous power. Immediately after the cessations of the
+functions of life, putrefaction appeared and progressed with great
+rapidity.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XI.</p>
+
+<p>In discussing the rate of mortality of this hospital, we cannot with
+propriety assume a standard for comparison, for nowhere can we turn to
+analyze results from similar causes. We may, perhaps, take the data and
+statistics of our own military prisons, but the contrasts are too fearful
+for credulity. We will consider these at length, with other comparisons,
+in the next Book.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>&#8220;The truth is in the facts, and not in the spirit that judges them.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XII.</p>
+
+<p>The want of system cannot be charged to the fault of the organization of
+the rebel Bureau of Medicine, for that was well arranged and strictly
+governed.</p>
+
+<p>It may partly be ascribed to the general carelessness of the officers in
+charge, and partly to the desire of the rulers that the numbers of
+prisoners should decrease, and consequently their labors should diminish,
+no matter how, nor how quickly.</p>
+
+<p>That there were men in charge of the patients who were destitute of all
+moral scruples, of all refined and humane sentiments, there can be no
+doubt, but there were a few men who did not partake of the general madness
+of the spirit of destruction, and who exhibited a tender regard for the
+sufferings of their fellow-men. The names of Thornberg and Head will
+always be preserved as among the only few redeeming acts in the story of
+the great wrong. The sympathy of these men was undisguised, and when
+protest failed to produce kindly impressions, or to bring alleviation to
+misery, they secretly sought to succor the dying men from their own scanty
+store at the peril of their lives.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Head was not only threatened with death by the brutal Wirz, but he was
+actually imprisoned for a short time for giving to the dying some
+vegetables which he had gathered from his little garden. &#8220;Sire,&#8221; said the
+noble Surgeon Larry to Napoleon, &#8220;it is my avocation to prolong life, and
+not to destroy it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>Let no man attempt to recall the scenes that took place in this wretched
+enclosure, which was falsely called a hospital; let no man attempt to lift
+the veil of darkness which now obscures the acts or the animus which
+governed and directed this mockery of philanthropy, for the human mind
+already staggers under the load of horror which is imposed by the events
+of every-day life, and advanced civilization has no desire to renew the
+recollection of the atrocities of the dark ages.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_SIXTH" id="BOOK_SIXTH"></a>BOOK SIXTH.</h2>
+
+<p class="note">&#8220;To die, is the common lot of humanity. In the grave, the only
+distinction lies between those who leave no trace behind and the
+heroic spirits who transmit their names to posterity.&#8221;&mdash;<i>Tacitus.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">I.</p>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">It</span> is always difficult to determine the natural duration of life, or the
+death-rate for any locality or any class of people, since the range of
+circumstances that affect the health of men and animals is so vast, that
+it requires great research, powers of analysis and comparison; so
+extensive a knowledge of the phenomena and the laws of life, that few men
+have the courage to attack, or the ability to comprehend and solve the
+complex problem.</p>
+
+<p>In our estimations we must consider what is due to the agencies of the
+natural world, such as geology, meteorology, and the like, as well as to
+age, constitution, temperament, anterior professions, and morbid
+predispositions, also the exaltation and demoralization of moral action.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We see,&#8221; says Buffon, &#8220;that man perishes at all ages, while animals
+appear to pass through the period of life with firm and steady pace.&#8221; The
+great naturalist shows how the passions, with their attendant evils,
+exercise great influence upon the health, and derange the principles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+which sustain us; how often men lead a nervous and contentious life, and
+that most of them die of disappointment. Buffon is right, and the English
+statistics show us that the duration of life is generally in proportion to
+its happiness and regularity, and that miserable lives are soon
+extinguished.</p>
+
+<p>Hope sometimes forsakes the stoutest hearts, and with hope disappears the
+mainspring of earthly life.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">II.</p>
+
+<p>In deciding upon the causes of the excessive mortality at Andersonville,
+there is not much obscurity to contend with. But we must admit that there
+must have been some mortality, for there is a determined duration of life
+for every species of animal; and we must also allow that under the most
+favorable circumstances, the death-rate of soldiers encamped in this
+unhealthy locality would have been far beyond the normal limit.</p>
+
+<p>From calculations based upon the most accurate and extensive observations
+made in England for a long series of years, it was determined that a
+mortality of less than two per cent. per annum for all ages might be
+assumed as a fair average rate of deaths in a population where sanitary
+measures were properly attended to.</p>
+
+<p>It is noticed by eminent observers, that the mean rate for Europe is about
+three per cent.; which is regarded as excessive, being about double of
+what is estimated as the natural ratio.</p>
+
+<p>Our distinguished statistician, Dr. Edward Jarvis, remarks that the
+mortality of two per cent. in England<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> includes all ages&mdash;infancy as well
+as the last decades of life; and he states that the proper rates for
+comparison are those of the males in England of the military age, which is
+observed to be less than one per cent.</p>
+
+<p>He shows that the death-rate of the soldier in England is less than one
+per cent., and also considers the stated mortality of three per cent. for
+the continent of Europe as much too high. The mortality on the continent
+is greater than in England, and greater in England than in Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>In times of peace, the mortality of soldiers is not much greater than that
+of the civil laborers; but during campaigns no limit can properly be
+given, for the vicissitudes are so rapid, and the exposures so varied,
+that the chances of life and death cannot be estimated with fairness, or
+with any degree of certainty. But when encampments are arranged, and
+occupied for any considerable length of time, the possibilities and
+probabilities of health may then be considered with propriety.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">III.</p>
+
+<p>These chances and these causes of general mortality depend upon the
+atmospheric influences, the mephitism of the soil, the density of the
+population, and the excellence of the food and shelter, as well as upon
+the natural vigor and strength of the individual.</p>
+
+<p>Some classes of human beings have greater tenacity of life than others,
+but all are affected by vicious influences, and yield sooner or later to
+the elements of destruction. &#8220;Everything in the animal economy is
+regulated by fixed and positive laws.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>&#8220;We live on our forces,&#8221; says Galen: &#8220;as long as our forces are sound, we
+can resist everything; when they become weak, a trifle injures us.&#8221; The
+truth of this remark is well illustrated in the life of the soldier, whose
+health is in exact ratio to the condition in which he is placed. And his
+mode of existence, the combined influence of food, exposure, and the
+training of mind and body, give a peculiar character, which requires, when
+disabled, special modification of treatment, and a particular kind of
+experience. The ancient physiologists distinguished two kinds, or rather
+two provisions of strength&mdash;the forces in reserve and the forces in use;
+or, as they said, &#8220;Vires in posse et vires in actu;&#8221; or, as Barthez
+describes it, the radical forces and the acting forces.</p>
+
+<p>The young soldier, supported by this buoyancy of the unknown force of
+life, recovers from terrible shocks and disasters to his system, while the
+old man, fatigued and exhausted by the great and protracted labors of
+active campaigns, feels that he has the hidden resources&mdash;the reserved and
+superabundant powers of youth&mdash;no longer.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">IV.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The atmospheric influences, the mephitism of the soil, and the inhabited
+locality, are the three principal conditions of the causes of general
+mortality,&#8221; says Pringle.</p>
+
+<p>He should have added food; for diet, of all external causes, affects the
+condition of the human race more than any other. Those who have observed
+the mortality curve follow the harvests in Ireland and Germany, and
+noticed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> how strangely the number of the dead corresponded to the
+scantiness of food, and those who have experimented with the feeding of
+domesticated animals, will agree with me on this point.</p>
+
+<p>Let us review these three great principles of destruction, as laid down by
+the distinguished European authority, and apply them in the explanations
+of the mortality at Andersonville.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">V.</p>
+
+<p>It has been observed by medical men, from the time of Hippocrates down to
+the present day, that the effects of a heated atmosphere, saturated with
+moisture, are very injurious, and exceedingly prolific of disease.</p>
+
+<p>Air at 32&deg; of Fahrenheit, according to Leslie, contains, when saturated
+with moisture, <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">160</span>
+of its weight of water; at 59&deg;, <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">80</span>;
+at 86&deg;, <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">40</span>;
+at 113&deg;, <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">20</span>;
+its capacity for moisture being doubled by each increase of 27&deg; of Fahrenheit.</p>
+
+<p>The degree of heat within the stockade sometimes rose to beyond 110&deg;
+Fahrenheit, and the degree of humidity was correspondingly as great. That
+moisture exerts more influence in the production of disease than any other
+meteorological condition, is well observed in every-day life. M. Bossi
+found, in his investigations, that the extreme and constant humidity of
+the atmosphere affected the barometer of health very markedly, and he
+established the following ratio of mortality for the different regions:
+The ratio for mountains and elevated regions he observed to be one in
+thirty-eight; on the banks of rivers, one in twenty-six; on the level
+plains, sown with grain, one in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> twenty-four, and in parts interspersed
+with pools and marshes, one in twenty.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VI.</p>
+
+<p>The influence and value of pure and healthy air may be seen in the
+simplest physiological observations.</p>
+
+<p>Animal life is fed and sustained by respiration, as well as vegetable
+life. It is from the blood that animal life derives the materials and
+forces which maintain it, and we have seen how this owes its vivifying
+properties, in a great measure, to the oxygen which it receives from the
+respiratory organs, and how its power is in direct ratio to the purity of
+the air breathed. A vitiated atmosphere manifests itself at once in the
+nutritive powers of the vital stream; and the more feeble the respiration,
+the less rich the blood. This &#8220;oxygen enters by the lungs into the blood,
+and with the blood flows on and circulates through the body; it also
+enters partly into the composition of the tissues, so that it is a real
+food, and it is as necessary to the construction of the human body as the
+other forms of food which are usually introduced into the stomach.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The weight of oxygen, says Professor Johnston, taken up by the lungs,
+exceeds considerably that of all the dry, solid food which is introduced
+into the stomach of a healthy man.</p>
+
+<p>Man consumes one hundred gallons of air every hour, ordinarily with
+eighteen respirations per minute, and two hundred and six cubic feet of
+air is the minimum for the preservation of health. The minimum allowed to
+the English hospitals by artificial ventilation is twenty-two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> hundred
+cubic feet the hour. The patients of St. Guy&#8217;s receive four thousand cubic
+feet of fresh air every hour. The quantity required by the sick is
+enormous, to compensate the products of respiration, and all the
+deleterious evaporations of the locality where they are placed, and all
+other effluvia of diverse natures. In the Hospital Lariboissaire, at
+Paris, where about fifteen hundred cubic feet of air are furnished by
+machinery every hour, a taint is perceptible in the atmosphere: and Morin,
+in his experiments at Hospital Beaujon, thought that two thousand cubic
+feet were hardly sufficient. Dr. Sutherland believes four thousand feet to
+be necessary. The quantity, however, is nothing compared to quality. The
+quality is of the highest importance. The air must contain the vivifying
+properties of its normal constitution, or it loses force, and death must
+ensue. The source of animal heat is in the mutual chemical action of the
+oxygen and the constituents of the blood conveyed by the circulation. When
+the atmosphere is impure the oxidating processes are much diminished. We
+receive into our lungs about one hundred gallons of air per hour, and from
+this we absorb about five gallons of oxygen, or about one twentieth of the
+volume of air inspired.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The essential and fundamental condition of all respiration is the
+reciprocal action of the nourishing fluid, and a medium containing
+oxygen.&#8221; Dumas believes that oxygen is necessary to the conservation of
+the vitality and proper structure of the globules of the blood; also that
+the integrity of these organisms is one of the essential conditions to the
+arterialization of the nourishing stream.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>Milne Edwards, also, maintains that the great absorbing powers of the
+blood exist in the globules. The normal number of these globules is one
+hundred and twenty-seven out of the thousand component parts of the blood;
+but they vary according to the barometer of health; sometimes they are
+observed in disease to descend to sixty-five. Vierodt has shown how a
+certain limit in the number of blood globules in the mammalia cannot be
+passed in the descending scale without death taking place. Simon and
+others have also shown how a careful and nutritious regimen may increase
+these globules in the blood of the consumptive, bringing them up from
+sixty-four to even one hundred and forty-four.</p>
+
+<p>The blood of man is the richest of all the mammalia, and it contains,
+according to Berzelius, three times as many hydrochlorates as the blood of
+the ox.</p>
+
+<p>Its richness depends upon the species and individual, and also upon the
+degree of health, it varying according to the condition of the person.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A diseased pathological condition causes a diminution in the proportion
+of active principles of the nourishing fluid, and especially in fibrine,
+of which the abundance is allied to the most important activity of the
+vital work in some parts of the organism.&#8221; &#8220;The blood,&#8221; says Dr. Jones,
+&#8220;is not only distributed by innumerable channels through every recess of
+the body; the blood is not only the source of all the elements of
+structure; the blood not only furnishes the materials for all the
+secretions and excretions, and for all the chemical changes,&mdash;but the
+blood is in turn affected by the physical and chemical changes of every
+vessel, of every nerve, of every organ and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>texture of the body. It is
+evident then that the constitution of the blood will depend upon the food,
+upon the vigor and perfection of the organs of digestion, respiration,
+circulation, secretion, and excretion; upon the vigor and perfection of
+the nervous system, and of all the organs and apparatus; and upon the
+correlation of the physical, vital, and nervous forces. The character of
+the blood will then vary with the animal; with the organ and tissue
+through which it is circulating; with the age, sex, temperament, race,
+diet, previous habits, occupation, and previous diseases; with the soil
+and climate; and with the relative states of the activity of the forces.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VII.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it appears how important is the function of respiration, and how
+vital the necessity for pure air.</p>
+
+<p>Pure dry air contains about 21 gallons of oxygen, and 79 gallons of
+nitrogen out of 100, and about one gallon of carbonic acid out of 2500.
+Man will consume, on the average of 20 respirations a minute, or 1200
+respirations the hour, about 20 pounds of air, and give off 2&#189; pounds
+or more of carbonic acid, besides half a pound of watery vapor, per diem,
+or, according to Andral and Gavaret, 22 quarts of carbonic acid per hour.
+We have shown in the chapter on Alimentation how this process of
+respiration affects the nutrition, and how serious the results of its
+disturbance. The purer the air, the more perfect the type of men and
+animals. This was understood by the ancients, and they established their
+most famous schools for gladiatorial training at Capua and Ravenna.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>The same law is observed at the present day by the admirers of the
+race-horse. The purity of the air gives purity to the blood, and the blood
+builds up the system in like proportion of excellence.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VIII.</p>
+
+<p>Fifteen hundred cubic inches, or twenty-two quarts, of carbonic acid are
+expired from the lungs every hour, and thrown off into the surrounding
+atmosphere. Besides this, Sequin found that 18 grains of organized matter
+were thrown off per minute from the body in the form of insensible
+perspiration,&mdash;7 grains by the lungs, and 11 grains by the skin. Hence we
+may form some idea of the rapid corruption of the air in this stockade,
+where 30,000 men were breathing at one time. The foul and heavy vapors
+could not rise above the palisades unless a strong breeze prevailed; and
+even then they became so offensive as almost to extinguish life, like the
+deadly air of the Grotta del Cane. The exhalations from putrescent animal
+surfaces are always specifically heavier than the upper warm strata in the
+confined spaces where men are crowded together, such as the wards of
+hospitals. We find, according to Professor Graham, the vitiated air to be
+composed somewhat as follows: Phosphoretted hydrogen, sulphuretted
+hydrogen, carbonic acid, carburetted hydrogen, cyanogen with its
+compounds. The first gas is always recognized where the diseases of the
+internal organs are present, especially affections of the liver, stomach,
+bowels, and in fever and dysentery; and we observe the blackening of the
+lead plaster, &amp;c., when the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> second is present. Stupor, headache, and
+sleepiness betray the presence of the other three gases. The diffusion of
+each gas is always inversely as the square root of the density of such
+gases.</p>
+
+<p>The density is thus, air being regarded as 1000:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>Phosphuretted hydrogen,</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td><td align="right">1240</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sulphuretted<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span>"</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1170</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Carburetted<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span> "</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">559</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Carbonic acid,</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1524</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Cyanogen,</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1806</td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">IX.</p>
+
+<p>The report of the British Parliament Commission gives the following data
+in this important question: &#8220;The amount of carbonic acid in the air is
+about <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">2000</span> or .0005;
+the amount expired is about <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">12</span>, or .083. Respired
+air contains <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">10</span> or 1 of carbonic acid, and this must be diluted ten
+times to make the air safe. Thus, <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">10</span>
+&divide; <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>10</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">1</span> =
+<span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">100</span>, or .01; and this
+again divided by 10, or <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">100</span> &divide;
+<span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>10</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">1</span> =
+<span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">1000</span> or .001, gives the amount of
+ventilation needed to reduce the air to that state of purity that only
+<span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">1000</span> more of carbonic
+acid should be added to the air, when it would be represented by .0015 instead of .0005.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Observing this rule, and taking 300 cubic feet as the air respired for the
+24 hours, to dilute it ten times it must be mixed with ten times the bulk,
+or 3000 cubic feet&mdash;the space to be allowed for each individual; but if it
+is wished to keep up a pure air, it must be mixed with ten times this bulk
+again, or 30,000 cubic feet, which shows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> the ventilation needed to
+maintain an atmosphere nearly pure; or there must be admitted into the
+space of 3000 cubic feet nearly 21 cubic feet per minute of fresh air by
+ventilation, if the man in it is to breathe an atmosphere which shall
+contain only three times more of carbonic acid than the air he breathes
+originally contained; or again, 300 cubic feet, 3000, and 30,000, mark the
+requirements of one individual, in 24 hours, for respiration, space, and
+ventilation. On a calm day, when there were no strong breezes to change
+the air of the stockade, the entire quantity of air in the old stockade,
+allowing the palisades to be on the average 20 feet high, could be
+exhausted in 20 minutes by the 30,000 men respiring 300 cubic inches per
+minute. This is not a proper estimate to offer; but it will give a just
+idea of the rapid and fearful vitiation of the air that took place within
+the enclosure.</p>
+
+<p>Vierodt shows how rapidly carbonic acid increases when foul air is
+breathed, and Lehman proves the rapid disengagement of the gas in moist
+atmospheres.</p>
+
+<p>Symptoms of uneasiness manifest themselves when the air contains from
+<span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>6</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">1000</span> to
+<span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>7</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">1000</span> carbonic acid, and when the proportion amounts to ten
+parts to 100 of air, death ensues. &#8220;This effect is visible upon vegetables
+also, and many of them are extremely susceptible of impurities in the air,
+and very slight modifications in the proportion of its constituents are
+more or less prejudicial to their growth.&#8221; But plants, like animals, vary
+in regard to the delicacy of their constitutions, some being much more
+susceptible than others.</p>
+
+<p>In warm climes the respiration becomes slower, and in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> consequence there
+is less of carbon burned and less oxygen absorbed; but on the other hand
+the functions of the skin become vastly increased, the bilious secretions
+become more active, and the excess of carbon is eliminated by this
+channel.</p>
+
+<p>That we expire more carbonic acid in a warm, moist atmosphere, and less in
+a cold, dry climate, is shown by the exhilaration of our spirits on a fine
+frosty morning.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder that men lost their reason in this prison, for the blood no
+longer reddened from the imperfect arterialization, and burdened the brain
+with its effete matter, paralyzing and clogging up the delicate filaments
+and the narrow channels of thought and life.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen that the blood is subject to incessant variations in its
+precise chemical constitution; a free atmosphere, well supplied,
+oxygenates and destroys the numerous impurities that tend to lurk in the
+system and develop disease.</p>
+
+<p>Bichat shows, in his researches on life and death, how the black and
+carbonized blood disturbs the functions of the brain and acts like a
+narcotic poison, causing the heart finally to cease its throbbings.</p>
+
+<p>These miasms and poisons floated about the enclosure where there was not
+the least sign of vegetable organism to absorb and convert them. As they
+passed into the systems of the prisoners they became the cause of disease,
+decrepitude, and death.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">X.</p>
+
+<p>Vitiated air is one of the most subtile and powerful of poisons, and it
+seems to affect soldiers more than any other class of persons, and its
+consequences have been commented upon by most of the military
+writers,&mdash;from Xenophon among the Greeks, Vegetius among the Romans, down
+to those of the present time. Cavalry horses have been observed to suffer
+deterioration and death from the same cause.</p>
+
+<p>Ague and fever, states Dr. Johnson, &#8220;two of the most prominent features of
+the malarious influences, are as a drop of water in the ocean when
+compared with the other, but less obtrusive, but more dangerous maladies
+that silently disorganize the vital structure of the human fabric under
+the influence of this deleterious and invisible poison.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>One fourth of the sailors of the English navy are sent home invalided
+every year, and one tenth of them die from the effects of foul air of
+their cabins. &#8220;Two thirds of the pulmonary diseases which desolate England
+are induced by this cause.&#8221; Baudelocque long ago pointed out its
+influences in the etiology of scrofula.</p>
+
+<p>It is really the same influence observed by Magendie, and not contradicted
+to the present day, that putrid blood, brain, bile, or pus, when laid on
+flesh wounds, produce in animals, after a longer or shorter interval,
+vomiting, languor, and death. The same results and phenomena are observed
+in the inspiration of bad air; the most terrible forms of fever arise from
+the overcrowding of people in confined and limited spaces. Most of the
+zymotic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> diseases enter by the lungs, which are the principal absorbing
+agents.</p>
+
+<p>The breathing in of foul air, loaded with perceptible and putrid animal
+and vegetable emanations, gives rise to those zymotici, the ideas of which
+originated with Hippocrates, and to which the distinguished Liebig has
+since given form and prominence.</p>
+
+<p>Not only is animal life disturbed and destroyed, but we observe that
+vegetables even are affected by the same or similar causes; that they are
+extremely susceptible of impurities in the air, and that the rapidity and
+vigorous appearance of their growth are affected whenever there is very
+slight modification in the healthy proportions of the atmosphere. Again,
+we see how seeds, when placed in elementary oxygen, germinate with extreme
+rapidity, and soon decay, thus indicating how the presence of nitrogen in
+the natural air restrains the force of the other element.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XI.</p>
+
+<p>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. &#8220;Animals perspire, that they may
+live;&#8221; 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, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> sometimes 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Chadwick states, in his papers on Economy, that &#8220;amongst soldiers of the
+line who have only hands and face washing provided for, the death-rate is
+upwards of 17 per 1000.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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 2&#189; per 1000.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XII.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XIII.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>In the prisons of Switzerland, before they were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>improved, 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.</p>
+
+<p>The average mortality of the London hospitals, where only the severer
+cases of disease and accident are received and treated, is nine per cent.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;s Island it was 2 per cent., or 134
+deaths out of 6000 prisoners, for the period of twenty-one months.</p>
+
+<p>The loss at the rebel prison at Elmira is not known for the entire term;
+but it was much less than the rebel &#8220;Vinculis&#8221; desires to make it.</p>
+
+<p>His own statements make but 4 per cent. during the worst month for
+instance: &#8220;Now out of less than nine thousand five hundred prisoners on
+the first of September, 386 died that month.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;At Andersonville the mortality averaged 1000 per month<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> out of 36,000
+prisoners, <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">36</span>. At Elmira it was 386
+per month, out of 9500, or <span style="font-size: 0.8em;"><sup>1</sup></span>&frasl;<span style="font-size: 0.6em;">25</span> of
+the whole. At Elmira it was 4 per cent.; at Andersonville less than 3 per
+cent.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XIV.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>The mortality of the military hospitals of the army of occupation of Spain
+in 1824 was less than five per cent.</p>
+
+<p>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 diarrh&oelig;a and dysentery, and
+only seventy deaths from fever. It appears from the official data of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>Surgeon-General&#8217;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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XV.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XVI.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a period of about six months. During August the
+man&oelig;uvres 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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XVII.</p>
+
+<p>The records state that eight thousand died from diarrh&oelig;a and scurvy,
+and that three thousand more died from dysentery and unknown causes. Two
+hundred and fifteen thousand cases of diarrh&oelig;a 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 diarrh&oelig;a 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.</p>
+
+<p>Boudin, of the French army, in 1843, in his &#8220;Essai de Geographie
+Medicale,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> 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&mdash;potatoes and lime
+juice.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XVIII.</p>
+
+<p>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 was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+neither epidemic nor pestilence. There was starvation instead.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But as to how much more than the normal rate, no man has sufficient
+generosity and impartiality to determine.</p>
+
+<p>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 diarrh&oelig;a, 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.</p>
+
+<p>Those who have observed the influence of atmospheric changes upon disease,
+will comprehend why the diarrh&oelig;a curve followed the line of high
+temperature, and how it progressed in consequence of heat, even when
+unassisted by inanition.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XIX.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the rough and blighted skin&mdash;the vacant, wild, and
+unearthly stare of the hollow and lustreless eye,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XX.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>This is shown by Brown-Sequard, in his illustrations of the influences of
+prolonged muscular exertion on cadaveric rigidity and putrefaction.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Scurvy and the vicious forms of zymotic disease, which depend upon
+starvation and vitiated atmosphere, raged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> unchecked. 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXI.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;whether of the heat, cold,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> or horror&mdash;had too much
+impoverished the blood,&mdash;the blood, which imparts force to human volition.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXII.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 is <span class="smcaplc">MURDER</span>: that it was deliberate
+destruction; but whether with the conscience of the Tartar, or with
+premeditated free-will, it matters little,&mdash;the result is the same.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_SEVENTH" id="BOOK_SEVENTH"></a>BOOK SEVENTH.</h2>
+
+<div class="note">
+<p>&#8220;Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.&#8221;&mdash;<i>Terence.</i></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;&mdash;<i>Rousseau.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">I.</p>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">&#8220;War,&#8221;</span> exclaims the author of the &#8220;Social Contract,&#8221; &#8220;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,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&mdash;either king, or individual, or people&mdash;who seizes, kills, or
+detains the subjects, without declaring the war to the ruler, is not an
+enemy, he is a brigand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Even in open war, a just ruler seizes property in an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> enemy&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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?&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">II.</p>
+
+<p>Says Mirabeau, in his beautiful essay on &#8220;Despotism,&#8221; &#8220;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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,&mdash;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?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">III.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Opinion makes the law.&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>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, &#8220;Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,
+do ye even so to them.&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The laws of nature,&#8221; writes M. Regis, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As God,&#8221; says Blackstone, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This law of nature being coeval with mankind, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> dictated 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The fear of punishment and revenge are not strong enough to control the
+lusts and passions of men.</p>
+
+<p>The true idea and comprehension of the majesty and mercy of the law is
+infused by the spirit of philosophy.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">IV.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The existence of states,&#8221; says Montesquieu, &#8220;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That which has made them think thus (right to kill), is that they have
+believed that the conqueror had the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> right 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There are certain rules that arise from the principle of
+self-preservation, and form what Wolff calls &#8220;the voluntary law of
+nations.&#8221; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">V.</p>
+
+<p>The right of jurisdiction belongs only to those societies which have
+united for the purpose of maintaining the natural rights of each
+individual.</p>
+
+<p>The ablest writers have maintained that society has not the right of life
+and death, and whoever arrogates that power commits a &#8220;divine <i>l&egrave;se
+majest&eacute;</i>.&#8221; &#8220;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.&#8221; Louis XI.,
+that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>Tiberius of France, caused to be put to death more than four
+thousand persons, and nearly all without process of law.</p>
+
+<p>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. &#8220;If
+liberty,&#8221; says the author of the &#8220;Essai sur le Despotisme,&#8221; &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Every writer will admit this whose pen is not enslaved by fear, or
+rendered venal by interest.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">VI.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">VII.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>In this we recognize the perversion of the natural sentiments after two
+centuries of crime, the defiance of all honorable law, &#8220;the barbarism of
+slavery.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>What can we, in extenuation, ascribe to recklessness, what to ignorance?
+&#8220;There is,&#8221; says the eloquent Rousseau, &#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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, &#8220;It is you who assassinate your own
+souls!&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">VIII.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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. &#8220;Quicunque hospiti venienti lectum aut focum
+negaverit trium solidorum in latione mulctetur.&#8221; (Leg. Burgund., tit. 38,
+&sect; I.)</p>
+
+<p>The laws of the Slavi ordained that the movables of an inhospitable person
+should be confiscated, and his house burned.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">IX.</p>
+
+<p>In comparison with these humane provisions, how terribly contrasted are
+the modes of treatment as practised by the rebel authorities upon the
+Federal soldiers! &#8220;Let us hoist the black flag, and kill every prisoner,&#8221;
+said one of the cabinet officers. &#8220;I will sell my wheat,&#8221; said another
+cabinet officer, &#8220;to my fellow-citizens, at exorbitant prices.&#8221; &#8220;My God,&#8221;
+said a poor woman, &#8220;how can I pay such prices! I have seven children? What
+shall I do?&#8221; &#8220;I do not know, madam,&#8221; was the brutal answer, &#8220;unless you
+eat them.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">X.</p>
+
+<p>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:&mdash;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It disclaims all extortions and other transactions for individual gain;
+all acts of private revenge, or connivance at such acts.</p>
+
+<p>Offences to the contrary shall be severely punished, and especially so if
+committed by officers.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 sustenance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+or means of life from the enemy; of the appropriation of whatever an
+enemy&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>16. Military necessity does not admit of cruelty,&mdash;that is, the infliction
+of suffering for the sake of suffering or revenge,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>33. It is no longer considered lawful&mdash;on the contrary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> it is held to be a
+serious breach of the law of war&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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. * * *</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>57. So soon as a man is armed by a sovereign government, and takes the
+soldier&#8217;s oath of fidelity, he is a belligerent; his killing, wounding, or
+other warlike acts are no individual crime or offence. * * *</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> captor&#8217;s government, according to their rank and
+condition.</p>
+
+<p>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. * * *</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>119. Prisoners of war may be released from captivity by exchange and under
+certain circumstances, also by parole.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>121. The pledge of the parole is always an individual but not a private
+act.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XI.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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: &#8220;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 so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> limited a supply of fuel they are
+compelled to dig with their hands in the filthy marsh before mentioned for
+roots, &amp;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,&mdash;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 was <i>controlled and devised by
+the authorities at Richmond</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XII.</p>
+
+<p>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. Seddon <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>declined 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.</p>
+
+<p>When the prisoners at Belle Isle&mdash;numbering from eight to thirteen
+thousand&mdash;were deprived of meat,&mdash;from the incompetency or the wilfulness
+of the commissary-general,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XIII.</p>
+
+<p>It is known, and proved beyond &#8220;cavil of a doubt,&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>In striking contrast with this &#8220;barbarism of slavery,&#8221; 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&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+pantaloons, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XIV.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><span class="smcap">Joint Resolution</span>, advising Retaliation for the Cruel Treatment of
+Prisoners by the Insurgents.</p>
+
+<p><i>Whereas</i>, It has come to the knowledge of Congress that great numbers
+of our soldiers, who have fallen as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> prisoners of war into the hands
+of the insurgents, have been subjected to treatment unexampled for
+cruelty in the history of civilized war, and finding its parallels
+only in the conduct of savage tribes; a treatment resulting in the
+death of multitudes by the slow but designed process of starvation,
+and by mortal diseases occasioned by insufficient and unhealthy food,
+by wanton exposure of their persons to the inclemency of the weather,
+and by deliberate assassination of unoffending men; and the murder, in
+cold blood, of prisoners after surrender; and, whereas a continuance
+of these barbarities, in contempt of the laws of war, and in disregard
+of the remonstrances of the national authorities, has presented to us
+the alternative of suffering our brave soldiers thus to be destroyed,
+or to apply the principle of retaliation for their protection:
+Therefore,</p>
+
+<p><i>Resolved</i>, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
+States of America, in Congress assembled, That, in the judgment of
+Congress, it has become justifiable and necessary that the President
+should, in order to prevent the continuance and recurrence of such
+barbarities, and to insure the observance by the insurgents of the
+laws of civilized war, resort at once to measures of retaliation.
+That, in our opinion, such retaliation ought to be inflicted upon the
+insurgent officers now in our hands, or hereafter to fall into our
+hands, as prisoners; that such officers ought to be subjected to like
+treatment practised towards our officers or soldiers in the hands of
+the insurgents, in respect to quantity and quality of food, clothing,
+fuel, medicine, medical attendance, personal exposure, or other mode
+of dealing with them; that,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> with a view to the same ends, the
+insurgent prisoners in our hands ought to be placed under the control
+and in the keeping of officers and men who have themselves been
+prisoners in the hands of the insurgents, and have thus acquired a
+knowledge of their mode of treating Union prisoners; that explicit
+instructions ought to be given to the forces having the charge of such
+insurgent prisoners, requiring them to carry out strictly and promptly
+the principles of this resolution in every case, until the President,
+having received satisfactory information of the abandonment by the
+insurgents of such barbarous practices, shall revoke or modify said
+instructions. Congress do not, however, intend by this resolution to
+limit or restrict the power of the President to the modes or
+principles of retaliation herein mentioned, but only to advise a
+resort to them as demanded by the occasion.</p></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Sumner offered the following Resolutions as a substitute for the
+Resolution of the Committee:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Resolved</i>, That retaliation is harsh always, even in the simplest
+cases, and is permissible only where, in the first place, it may
+reasonably be expected to effect its object, and where, in the second
+place, it is consistent with the usages of civilized society; and
+that, in the absence of these essential conditions, it is a useless
+barbarism, having no other end than vengeance, which is forbidden
+alike to nations and to men.</p>
+
+<p><i>Resolved</i>, That the treatment of our officers and soldiers in rebel
+prisons is cruel, savage, and heart-rending beyond all precedent; that
+it is shocking to morals; that it is an offence against human nature
+itself; that it adds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> new guilt to the great crime of the rebellion,
+and constitutes an example from which history will turn with sorrow
+and disgust.</p>
+
+<p><i>Resolved</i>, That any attempted imitation of rebel barbarism in the
+treatment of prisoners would be plainly impracticable, on account of
+its inconsistency with the prevailing sentiments of humanity among us;
+that it would be injurious at home, for it would barbarize the whole
+community; that it would be utterly useless, for it could not affect
+the cruel authors of the revolting conduct which we seek to overcome;
+that it would be immoral, inasmuch as it proceeded from vengeance
+alone; that it could have no other result than to degrade the national
+character and the national name, and to bring down upon our country
+the reprobation of history; and that, being thus impracticable,
+useless, immoral, and degrading, it must be rejected as a measure of
+retaliation, precisely as the barbarism of roasting or eating
+prisoners is always rejected by civilized powers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Resolved</i>, That the United States, filled with grief and sympathy for
+cherished citizens, who, as officers and soldiers, have become the
+victims of Heaven-defying outrage, hereby declare their solemn
+determination to put an end to this great iniquity by putting an end
+to the rebellion of which it is the natural fruit; that to secure this
+humane and righteous consummation, they pledge anew their best
+energies and all the resources of the whole people, and they call upon
+all to bear witness that, in this necessary warfare with barbarism,
+they renounce all vengeance and every evil example, and plant
+themselves firmly on the sacred landmarks of Christian <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>civilization,
+under the protection of that God who is present with every prisoner,
+and enables heroic souls to suffer for their country.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XV.</p>
+
+<p>The pathetic letter, which was composed by the suffering and dying men at
+Andersonville, and addressed to the President in August, 1864, and
+forwarded by the prisoners who were sent to Charleston, led to renewed
+efforts on the part of the United States government; but no notice was
+taken by the rebel authorities of the plea in behalf of humanity. The
+following letter is said to be the one sent to the President:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="hang"><i>The Memorial of the Union Prisoners confined at Andersonville,
+Georgia, to the President of the United States.</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="padding-right: 6em;"><span class="smcap">Confederate States Prison,</span></span><br />
+<span style="padding-right: 3em;"><span class="smcap">Charleston, S. C.</span>, Aug., 1864.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">To the President of the United States</span>:</p>
+
+<p>The condition of the enlisted men belonging to the Union armies, now
+prisoners to the Confederate rebel forces, is such that it becomes our
+duty, and the duty of every commissioned officer, to make known the
+facts in the case to the government of the United States, and to use
+every honorable effort to secure a general exchange of prisoners,
+thereby relieving thousands of our comrades from the horror now
+surrounding them.</p>
+
+<p>For some time past there has been a concentration of prisoners from
+all parts of the rebel territory to the State of Georgia&mdash;the
+commissioned officers being confined at Macon, and the enlisted men at
+Andersonville.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>Recent movements of the Union armies under General Sherman have
+compelled the removal of prisoners to other points, and it is now
+understood that they will be removed to Savannah, Georgia, and
+Columbus and Charleston, South Carolina. But no change of this kind
+holds out any prospect of relief to our poor men. Indeed, as the
+localities selected are far more unhealthy, there must be an increase
+rather than a diminution of suffering.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Hill, provost-marshal general Confederate States army, at
+Atlanta, stated to one of the undersigned that there were thirty-five
+thousand prisoners at Andersonville, and by all accounts from the
+United States soldiers who have been confined there, the number is not
+overstated by him. These thirty-five thousand are confined in a field
+of some thirty acres, enclosed by a board fence, heavily guarded.
+About one third have various kinds of indifferent shelter, but upwards
+of thirty thousand are wholly without shelter, or even shade of any
+kind, and are exposed to the storms and rains which are of almost
+daily occurrence, the cold dews of the night, and the more terrible
+effects of the sun striking with almost tropical fierceness upon their
+unprotected heads. This mass of men jostle and crowd each other up and
+down the limits of their enclosure in storms or sun, and others lie
+down upon the pitiless earth at night with no other covering than the
+clothing upon their backs, few of them having even a blanket.</p>
+
+<p>Upon entering the prison every man is deliberately stripped of money
+and other property, and as no clothing or blankets are ever supplied
+to their prisoners by the rebel authorities, the condition of the
+apparel of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>soldiers, just from an active campaign, can be easily
+imagined. Thousands are without pants or coats, and hundreds without
+even a pair of drawers to cover their nakedness.</p>
+
+<p>To these men, as indeed to all prisoners, there are issued three
+quarters of a pound of bread or meal, and one eighth of a pound of
+meat, per day. This is the entire ration, and upon it the prisoner
+must live or die. The meal is often unsifted and sour, and the meat
+such as in the North is consigned to the soap-maker. Such are the
+rations upon which Union soldiers are fed by the rebel authorities,
+and by which they are barely holding on to life. But to starvation,
+and exposure to sun and storm, add the sickness which prevails to a
+most alarming and terrible extent. On an average, one hundred die
+daily. It is impossible that any Union soldiers should know all the
+facts pertaining to this terrible mortality, as they are not paraded
+by the rebel authorities. Such statement as the following, made by
+&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;, speaks eloquent testimony. Said he, &#8220;Of twelve of us who
+were captured, six died, four are in the hospital, and I never expect
+to see them again. There are but two of us left.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In 1862, at Montgomery, Alabama, under far more favorable
+circumstances, the prisoners being protected by sheds, from one
+hundred and fifty to two hundred were sick from diarrh&oelig;a and chills
+out of seven hundred. The same percentage would give seven thousand
+sick at Andersonville.</p>
+
+<p>It needs no comment, no efforts at word-painting, to make such a
+picture stand out boldly in most horrible colors.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>Nor is this all. Among the ill-fated of the many who have suffered
+amputation in consequence of injuries received before capture, sent
+from rebel hospitals before their wounds were healed, there are
+eloquent witnesses of the barbarities of which they are victims. If to
+these facts is added this, that nothing more demoralizes soldiers and
+develops the evil passions of man than starvation, the terrible
+condition of Union prisoners at Andersonville can be readily imagined.
+They are fast losing hope and becoming utterly reckless of life.</p>
+
+<p>Numbers, crazed by their sufferings, wander about in a state of
+idiocy; others deliberately cross the &#8220;dead line,&#8221; and are
+remorselessly shot down.</p>
+
+<p>In behalf of these men we most earnestly appeal to the President of
+the United States. Few of them have been captured, except in the front
+of battle, in the deadly encounter, and only when overpowered by
+numbers. They constitute as gallant a portion of our armies as carry
+our banners anywhere. If released, they would soon return to again do
+vigorous battle for our cause. We are told that the only obstacle in
+the way of exchange is the status of enlisted negroes captured from
+our armies, the United States claiming that the cartel covers all who
+serve under its flag, and the Confederate States refusing to consider
+the colored soldiers, heretofore slaves, as prisoners of war.</p>
+
+<p>We beg leave to suggest some facts bearing upon the question of
+exchange, which we would urge upon this consideration. Is it not
+consistent with the national honor, without waiving the claim that the
+negro soldiers shall be treated as prisoners of war, to effect an
+exchange <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>of the white soldiers? The two classes are treated
+differently by the enemy. The whites are confined in such prisons as
+Libby and Andersonville, starved and treated with a barbarism unknown
+to civilized nations. The blacks, on the contrary, are seldom
+imprisoned. They are distributed among the citizens, or employed on
+government works. Under these circumstances they receive enough to
+eat, and are worked no harder than they have been accustomed to be.
+They are neither starved nor killed off by the pestilence in the
+dungeons of Richmond and Charleston. It is true they are again made
+slaves; but their slavery is freedom and happiness compared with the
+cruel existence imposed upon our gallant men. They are not bereft of
+hope, as are the white soldiers, dying by piecemeal. Their chances of
+escape are tenfold greater than those of the white soldiers, and their
+condition, in all its lights, is tolerable in comparison with that of
+the prisoners of war now languishing in the dens and pens of
+secession.</p>
+
+<p>While, therefore, believing the claims of our government, in matters
+of exchange, to be just, we are profoundly impressed with the
+conviction that the circumstances of the two classes of soldiers are
+so widely different that the government can honorably consent to an
+exchange, waiving for a time the established principle justly claimed
+to be applicable in the case. Let thirty-five thousand suffering,
+starving, and enlisted men aid this appeal. By prompt and decided
+action in their behalf, thirty-five thousand heroes will be made
+happy. For the eighteen hundred commissioned officers now prisoners we
+urge nothing. Although desirous of returning <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>to our duty, we can bear
+imprisonment with more fortitude if the enlisted men, whose sufferings
+we know to be intolerable, were restored to liberty and life.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XVI.</p>
+
+<p>The threatening man&oelig;uvres of Sherman alone caused the rebel authorities
+to diminish the number of inmates of this stockade, and thereby lessen the
+dangers of recapture, and remove the temptation to the United States
+authorities to make an effort for their rescue. It has been stated that
+the rebels were anxious to exchange prisoners, man for man, and that the
+obstructions were caused by the Federal authorities, and that Mr. Stanton,
+in particular, was responsible for the stoppage of exchange and the
+consequent death of so many thousands of our fellow-citizens detained in
+the rebel prisons.</p>
+
+<p>General Hitchcock, the United States commissioner of exchange, however,
+denies most emphatically that Mr. Stanton was any way responsible for the
+refusal to make exchanges, man for man, officer for officer, according to
+grade, and he makes the following statement: &#8220;At no instance within my
+knowledge did Mr. Stanton refuse to acquiesce in any proposition looking
+to that result. There is not in my office, nor have I ever seen such a
+proposition from a rebel commissioner or the rebel authorities. Nor have I
+any reason to believe that any such proposition was ever made by Judge
+Ould, or any of his superiors, except in a letter from Judge Ould
+addressed to Major Mulford, which fell into the hands of Major-General
+Butler. This is true, emphatically, as a protection<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> against the
+accusations levelled at Mr. Stanton. * * * * * Mr. Stanton has not only
+been willing, but anxious to make exchanges referred to, as I have
+abundant means of showing by indisputable documents, the aim and purpose
+of Judge Ould was to draw from us all of the rebel prisoners held in
+exchange for white troops of the United States held as prisoners in the
+South, persistently refusing to exchange colored troops to a very late
+date; when, to carry a special purpose, he receded so far as to agree to
+exchange free colored men, leaving the general principle where it was on
+his side against the just claims of a large body of colored prisoners held
+in the South.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XVII.</p>
+
+<p>The following letter from General Butler to the rebel commissioner of
+exchange will throw some light upon the subject, and give an idea as to
+whom the blame of non-exchange and non-intercourse belongs:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="hang"><i>Letter of Major-General Butler, United States Commissioner of
+Exchange, to Colonel Ould, the Confederate Commissioner.</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="padding-right: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Headquarters Department of Virginia and North</span></span><br />
+<span style="padding-right: 6em;">Carolina, in the Field, August, 1864.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hon. Robert Ould</span>, <i>Commissioner of Exchange</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>: Your note to Major Mulford, assistant agent of exchange, under
+date of 10th August, has been referred to me.</p>
+
+<p>You therein state that Major Mulford has several times <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>proposed &#8220;to
+exchange prisoners respectively held by the two belligerents&mdash;officer
+for officer, and man for man,&#8221; and that &#8220;the offer has also been made
+by other officials having charge of matters connected with the
+exchange of prisoners,&#8221; and that &#8220;this proposal has been heretofore
+declined by the Confederate authorities.&#8221; That you now &#8220;consent to the
+above proposition, and agree to deliver to you (Major Mulford) the
+prisoners held in captivity by the Confederate authorities, provided
+you agree to deliver an equal number of officers and men. As equal
+numbers are delivered from time to time they will be declared
+exchanged. This proposal is made with the understanding that the
+officers and men on both sides who have been longest in captivity will
+be first delivered, where it is practicable.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>From a slight ambiguity in your phraseology, but more perhaps from the
+antecedent action of your authorities, and because of your acceptance
+of it, I am in doubt whether you have stated the proposition with
+entire accuracy.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, a proposition was made both by Major Mulford and myself,
+as agent of exchange, to exchange all prisoners of war taken by either
+belligerent party, man for man, officer for officer, of equal rank, or
+their equivalents. It was made by me as early as the first of the
+winter of 1863-4, and has not been accepted. In May last I forwarded
+to you a note, desiring to know whether the Confederate authorities
+intended to treat colored soldiers of the United States army as
+prisoners of war. To that inquiry no answer has yet been made. To
+avoid all possible misapprehension or mistake hereafter as to your
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>offer now, will you now say whether you mean by &#8220;prisoners held in
+captivity&#8221; colored men, duly enrolled, and mustered into the service
+of the United States, who have been captured by the Confederate
+forces; and if your authorities are willing to exchange all soldiers
+so mustered into the United States army, whether colored or otherwise,
+and the officers commanding them, man for man, officer for officer?</p>
+
+<p>At the interview which was held between yourself and the agent of
+exchange on the part of the United States at Fortress Monroe, in March
+last, you will do me the favor to remember the principal discussion
+turned upon this very point; you, on behalf of the Confederate
+government, claiming the right to hold all negroes who had heretofore
+been slaves, and not emancipated by their masters, enrolled and
+mustered into the service of the United States, when captured by your
+forces, not as prisoners of war, but upon capture to be turned over to
+their supposed masters or claimants, whoever they might be, to be held
+by them as slaves.</p>
+
+<p>By the advertisements in your newspapers, calling upon masters to come
+forward and claim these men so captured, I suppose that your
+authorities still adhere to that claim&mdash;that is to say, that whenever
+a colored soldier of the United States is captured by you, upon whom
+any claim can be made by any person residing within the States now in
+insurrection, such soldier is not to be treated as a prisoner of war,
+but is to be turned over to his supposed owner or claimant, and put at
+such labor or service as that owner or claimant may choose, and the
+officers in command of such soldiers, in the language of a supposed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>act of the Confederate States, are to be turned over to the governors
+of States, upon requisitions, for the purpose of being punished by the
+laws of such States for acts done in war in the armies of the United
+States.</p>
+
+<p>You must be aware that there is still a proclamation by Jefferson
+Davis, claiming to be chief executive of the Confederate States,
+declaring in substance that all officers of colored troops mustered
+into the service of the United States were not to be treated as
+prisoners of war, but were to be turned over for punishment to the
+governors of States.</p>
+
+<p>I am reciting these public acts from memory, and will be pardoned for
+not giving the exact words, although I believe I do not vary the
+substance and effect.</p>
+
+<p>These declarations on the part of those whom you represent yet remain
+unrepealed, unannulled, unrevoked, and must therefore be still
+supposed to be authoritative.</p>
+
+<p>By your acceptance of our proposition, is the government of the United
+States to understand that these several claims, enactments, and
+proclaimed declarations are to be given up, set aside, revoked, and
+held for nought by the Confederate authorities, and that you are ready
+and willing to exchange, man for man, those colored soldiers of the
+United States, duly mustered and enrolled as such, who have heretofore
+been claimed as slaves by the Confederate States, as well as white
+soldiers?</p>
+
+<p>If this be so, and you are so willing to exchange these colored men
+claimed as slaves, and you will so officially inform the government of
+the United States, then, as I am instructed, a principal difficulty in
+effecting exchanges will be removed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>As I informed you personally, in my judgment it is neither consistent
+with the policy, dignity, or honor of the United States, upon any
+consideration, to allow those who, by our laws solemnly enacted, are
+made soldiers of the Union, and who have been duly enlisted, enrolled,
+and mustered as such soldiers, who have borne arms in behalf of this
+country, and who have been captured while fighting in vindication of
+the rights of that country, not to be treated as prisoners of war, and
+remain unchanged and in the service of those who claim them as
+masters; and I cannot believe that the government of the United States
+will ever be found to consent to so gross a wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Pardon me if I misunderstand you in supposing that your acceptance of
+our proposition does not in good faith mean to include all the
+soldiers of the Union, and that you still intend, if your acceptance
+is agreed to, to hold the colored soldiers of the Union unexchanged,
+and at labor or service, because I am informed that very lately,
+almost contemporaneously with this offer on your part to exchange
+prisoners, and which seems to include <i>all</i> prisoners of war, the
+Confederate authorities have made a declaration that the negroes
+heretofore held to service by owners in the States of Delaware,
+Maryland, and Missouri are to be treated as prisoners of war, when
+captured in arms in the service of the United States.</p>
+
+<p>Such declaration that a part of the colored soldiers of the United
+States were to be prisoners of war, would seem most strongly to imply
+that others were not to be so treated, or, in other words, that the
+colored men from the insurrectionary States are to be held to labor
+and returned to their masters, if captured by the Confederate <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>forces
+while duly enrolled and mustered into and actually in the armies of
+the United States.</p>
+
+<p>In the view which the government of the United States takes of the
+claim made by you to the persons and services of these negroes, it is
+not to be supported upon any principle of national and municipal law.</p>
+
+<p>Looking upon these men only as property upon your theory of property
+in them, we do not see how this claim can be made, certainly not how
+it can be yielded. It is believed to be a well-settled rule of public
+international law, and a custom and part of the laws of war, that the
+capture of movable property vests the title to that property in the
+captor, and therefore where one belligerent gets into full possession
+property belonging to the subjects or citizens of the other
+belligerent, the owner of that property is at once divested of his
+title, which rests in the belligerent government capturing and holding
+such possessions. Upon this rule of international law all civilized
+nations have acted, and by it both belligerents have dealt with all
+property, save slaves, taken from each other during the present war.</p>
+
+<p>If the Confederate forces capture a number of horses from the United
+States, the animals are claimed to be, and, as we understand it,
+become the property of the Confederate authorities.</p>
+
+<p>If the United States capture any movable property in the rebellion, by
+our regulations and laws, in conformity with international law and the
+laws of war, such property is turned over to our government as its
+property. Therefore, if we obtain possession of that species of
+property known to the laws of the insurrectionary States as <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>slaves,
+why should there be any doubt that that property, like any other,
+vests in the United States?</p>
+
+<p>If the property in the slave does so vest, then the <i>jus disponendi</i>,
+the right of disposing of that property, vests in the United States.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the United States have disposed of the property which they have
+acquired by capture in slaves taken by them, i.e., by emancipating
+them, and declaring them free forever; so that, if we have not
+mistaken the principles of international law and the laws of war, we
+have no slaves in the armies of the United States. All are free men,
+being made so in such manner as we have chosen to dispose of our
+property in them which we acquired by capture.</p>
+
+<p>Slaves being captured by us, and the right of property in them thereby
+vested in us, that right of property has been disposed of by us by
+manumitting them, as has already been the acknowledged right of the
+owner to do to his slave. The manner in which we dispose of our
+property while it is in our possession certainly cannot be questioned
+by you. Nor is the case altered if the property is not actually
+captured in battle, but comes either voluntarily or involuntarily from
+the belligerent owner into the possession of the other belligerent.</p>
+
+<p>I take it no one would doubt the right of the United States to a drove
+of Confederate mules or a herd of Confederate cattle which should
+wander or rush across the Confederate lines into the lines of the
+United States army. So it seems to me, treating the negro as property
+merely, if that piece of property passes the Confederate lines, and
+comes into the lines of the United States, that property is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>as much
+lost to its owner in the Confederate States as would be the mule or
+ox, the property of the resident of the Confederate States, which
+should fall into our hands.</p>
+
+<p>If, therefore, the privilege of international law and the laws of war
+used in this discussion are correctly stated, then it would seem that
+the deduction logically flows therefrom in natural sequence, that the
+Confederate States can have no claim upon the negro soldiers captured
+by them from the armies of the United States because of the former
+ownership of them by their citizens or subjects, and only claim such
+as result, under the laws of war, from their captor merely.</p>
+
+<p>Do the Confederate authorities claim the right to reduce to a state of
+slavery free men, prisoners of war captured by them? This claim our
+fathers fought against under Bainbridge and Decatur, when set up by
+the Barbary Powers on the northern shore of Africa, about the year
+1800,&mdash;and in 1864 their children will hardly yield it upon their own
+soil.</p>
+
+<p>This point I will not pursue further, because I understand you to
+repudiate the idea that you will reduce free men to slaves because of
+capture in war, and that you base the claim of the Confederate
+authorities to re-enslave our negro soldiers, when captured by you,
+upon the <i>jus postliminii</i>, or that principle of the law of nations
+which inhabilitates the former owner with his property taken by an
+enemy when such property is recovered by the forces of his own
+country. Or, in other words, you claim that, by the laws of nations
+and of war, when property of the subjects of one belligerent power,
+captured by the forces of the other belligerent, is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>recaptured by the
+armies of the former owner, then such property is to be restored to
+its prior possessor, as if it had never been captured; and, therefore,
+under this principle, your authorities propose to restore to their
+masters the slaves which heretofore belonged to them which you may
+capture from us.</p>
+
+<p>But this postliminary right under which you claim to act, as
+understood and defined by all writers on national law, is applicable
+simply to <i>immovable property</i>, and that, too, only after complete
+resubjugation of that portion of the country in which the property is
+situated, upon which this right fastens itself. By the laws and
+customs of war, this right has never been applied to <i>movable</i>
+property. True it is, I believe, that the Romans attempted to apply it
+to the case of slaves; but for two thousand years no other nation has
+attempted to set up this right as ground for treating slaves
+differently from other property.</p>
+
+<p>But the Romans even refused to re-enslave men captured from opposing
+belligerents in a civil war, such as ours unhappily is.</p>
+
+<p>Consistently, then, with any principle of the law of nations, treating
+slaves as property merely, it would seem to be impossible for the
+government of the United States to permit the negroes in their ranks
+to be re-enslaved when captured, or treated otherwise than as
+prisoners of war.</p>
+
+<p>I have forborne, sir, in this discussion, to argue the question upon
+any other or different ground of right than those adopted by your
+authorities in claiming the negro as property, because I understand
+that your fabric of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>opposition to the government of the United States
+has the right of property in man as its corner-stone. Of course, it
+would not be profitable in settling a question of exchange of
+prisoners of war to attempt to argue the question of abandonment of
+the very corner-stone of their attempted political edifice. Therefore
+I have admitted all the considerations which should apply to the negro
+soldier as a man, and dealt with him upon the Confederate theory of
+property only.</p>
+
+<p>I unite with you most cordially, sir, in desiring a speedy settlement
+of all these questions, in view of the great suffering endured by our
+prisoners in the hands of your authorities, of which you so feelingly
+speak. Let me ask, in view of that suffering, why you have delayed
+eight months to answer a proposition which by now accepting you admit
+to be right, just, and humane, allowing that suffering to continue so
+long? One cannot help thinking, even at the risk of being deemed
+uncharitable, that the benevolent sympathies of the Confederate
+authorities have been lately stirred by the depleted condition of
+their armies, and a desire to get into the field, to affect the
+present campaign, the hale, hearty, and well-fed prisoners held by the
+United States in exchange for the half-starved, sick, emaciated, and
+unserviceable soldiers of the United States now languishing in your
+prisons. The events of this war, if we did not know it before, have
+taught us that it is not the northern people alone who know how to
+drive sharp bargains.</p>
+
+<p>The wrongs, indignities, and privations suffered by our soldiers would
+move me to consent to anything to procure their exchange, except to
+barter away the honor and faith <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>of the government of the United
+States, which has been so solemnly pledged to the colored soldiers in
+its ranks.</p>
+
+<p>Consistently with national faith and justice we cannot relinquish this
+position. With your authorities it is a question of property merely.
+It seems to address itself to you in this form: Will you suffer your
+soldier, captured in fighting your battles, to be in confinement for
+months rather than release him by giving for him that which you call a
+piece of property, and which we are willing to accept as a man?</p>
+
+<p>You certainly appear to place less value upon your soldier than you do
+upon your negro. I assure you, much as we of the North are accused of
+loving property, our citizens would have no difficulty in yielding up
+any piece of property they have in exchange for one of their brothers
+or sons languishing in your prisons. Certainly there could be no doubt
+that they would do so, were that piece of property less in value than
+five thousand dollars in Confederate money, which is believed to be
+the price of an able-bodied negro in the insurrectionary States.</p>
+
+<p>Trusting that I may receive such a reply to the questions propounded
+in this note as will tend to a speedy resumption of the negotiations
+in a full exchange of all prisoners, and a delivery of them to their
+respective authorities,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">I have the honor to be,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Very respectfully,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Your obedient servant,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><span class="smcap">Benjamin F. Butler</span>,</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Major-General and Commissioner of Exchange</i>.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XVIII.</p>
+
+<p>The wretched &#8220;material&#8221; exchanged for healthy rebel soldiers called forth
+a note of joy from the rebel commissioner, Ould. The exchanged Federal
+soldiers were half-naked, &#8220;living skeletons,&#8221; covered with filth and
+vermin; and nearly all of them were unfit for service or labor, and most
+of them physically ruined for the remainder of their lives. The
+flag-of-truce boats of the different parties presented terrible contrasts.
+On the one were to be seen feeble, emaciated, ragged, filthy, and dying
+men from the rebel prisons; whilst on the other were the rebels returning
+from our prisons, well clad in our uniforms, strong and healthy from the
+abundance of food. We returned men who had been well treated, and who were
+then ready to take the field again; whilst we received in turn abused and
+decrepit soldiers, who were so much reduced and weakened that few,
+comparatively, ever again returned to service. Along the entire line of
+prison stockades, from Belle Isle in Virginia to Prison Tyler in Texas,
+the same story is told of fiendish cruelty.</p>
+
+<p>More than thirty thousand of our soldiers have undoubtedly perished
+during, or in consequence of the barbarities of their prison life in the
+South. To ascertain the precise number will be a difficult task, for many
+of the returned prisoners have died since they have left the service; but
+when we consider the number of prisons, and the long period of occupation,
+we think that the estimate of thirty thousand is not too high.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XIX.</p>
+
+<p>When General Stoneman made his attempt to rescue the prisoners, Winder
+issued the order No. 13, which stamps the brute with infamy beyond
+redemption. In this order, which has been preserved, Winder commanded the
+officers in charge of the artillery to open their batteries, loaded with
+grape-shot, as soon as the Federals approached within seven miles, and to
+continue the slaughter until every prisoner was exterminated. Similar
+threats were made all along the line of the prison stockades in North
+Carolina and in Virginia. &#8220;Was the prison mined,&#8221; said Colonel Farnsworth
+to Turner, the jailer of Libby Prison, &#8220;when General Kilpatrick approached
+Richmond to attempt to rescue the prisoners?&#8221; &#8220;Yes,&#8221; was the brutal reply;
+&#8220;and I would have blown you all to Hades before I would have suffered you
+to be rescued.&#8221; Twelve hundred men blown into atoms at one explosion!
+Thirty thousand men to be torn into shreds by the iron bullets of the
+cannon! Contrast the orders of these chivalric men with that of Aboukere,
+the chief of a reputed barbarous horde of Bedouins of the desert:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Warriors of Islam! attend a moment, and listen well to the precepts which
+I am about to promulge to you for observation in times of war. Fight with
+bravery and loyalty. Never use artifice or perfidy towards your enemies.
+Do not mutilate the fallen. Do not slay the aged, nor the children, nor
+the women. You will find upon your route men living in solitude, in
+meditation, in the adoration of God: do them no injury, give them no
+offence.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>In which are the evidences the most positive of a fraternal religion and
+an advanced civilization?</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XX.</p>
+
+<p>Even women and young girls came from distances to view the spectacle. They
+climbed the parapets of the earthworks, and gloated and made merry over
+the scene of suffering. They threw crusts of bread over the palisades to
+see the starving wretches struggle for the morsel of life.</p>
+
+<p>They even reviled the condition of the dying. This surpasses the ferocity,
+the depravity, the wickedness of gladiatorial times. &#8220;The fury of women
+when once excited,&#8221; says the French historian, &#8220;soon rises to profanation
+and excess.&#8221; When the love of humanity vanishes from our breasts, it is
+the death of nature.</p>
+
+<p>There were, however, a few noble exceptions to those strange acts of
+delight in cruelty; and the deeds of kindness of a few women in other
+parts of the South shine with increased brilliancy from the terrible
+contrast.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXI.</p>
+
+<p>Several of the papers of the South openly and unhesitatingly approved of
+the methods of their prison depletion, and gloated over the fearful
+destitution and mortality.</p>
+
+<p>The Macon &#8220;Telegraph and Confederate,&#8221; only the day before the surrender
+of the city to the Federal forces, justified the atrocities at
+Andersonville; and the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>Richmond &#8220;Examiner&#8221; exclaimed, &#8220;Let the Yankee
+prisoners be put where the cold weather and scant fare will thin them out
+in accordance with the laws of nature.&#8221; There were, however, noble
+exceptions to the general exhibition of ferocity; and several officers of
+the rebel army did declare that the condition of affairs at Andersonville
+was a &#8220;reproach to them as a nation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The author, who served for five years in the Federal armies of Virginia,
+of the South, and the South-west, and whose opportunities for observation
+and inquiry were extensive, does not believe General Lee to be implicated
+in these outrages. It is true that Lee might have openly and boldly
+protested against the barbarities, and gained thereby the admiration and
+the blessing of mankind; but he knew full well that the remonstrance would
+have fallen upon the cold ear of the implacable executive with no more
+effect and weight than when the snow-flake falls upon the Alps.</p>
+
+<p>The Virginian struggled to hold his own against the selfish and jealous
+ambition of the remorseless Mississippian.</p>
+
+<p>To have participated in the revolting cabal of cruelty, there was required
+the baseness of political intrigue, and to this depth the soldier never
+sank.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXII.</p>
+
+<p>To charge an entire people with barbarity, because its rulers sanction
+crime, and a vile and venal press applaud the motives and the deeds,
+should not be maintained without long deliberation. &#8220;History has the right
+of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> suspecting without evidence, but never of accusing without proof.&#8221; The
+rank and file of the rebel army were drawn from the classes of poor
+whites, who were essentially rural in their populations, and who possessed
+some trace of the morals and the natural sentiments of generosity that
+belong to people who cultivate the earth. Although their instincts were
+modified by the contact of slave labor, they never sank so low in the
+social scale&mdash;to that level of the vile populace of the Roman or medieval
+times, when the crimes of the emperors were applauded. These men on the
+battle-field exhibited feelings of humanity; and it was only under the
+direction of their leaders that they became unkind and ferocious.</p>
+
+<p>It was the leaders who were responsible for the crimes of the sedition;
+and what of humanity could be expected from men degenerated in blood? What
+of noble intelligence could be looked for from mental faculties long since
+degraded? What evidence of a Christian spirit could be hoped for from men
+who had openly perverted or denied all the divine precepts, upon which
+revolve the well-being of the human race? &#8220;If we had triumphed,&#8221; says one
+of its apostles, at this late day of forgiveness and repentance&mdash;&#8220;if we
+had triumphed, I should have favored stripping them naked. Pardon! They
+might have appealed for pardon, but I would have seen them damned before I
+would have granted it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When Suwarrow forced his way by the sword into the heart of Poland,
+dividing the realm, devastating the land, and destroying multitudes of
+people, he offered blasphemous thanks to Heaven for victories obtained
+over men fighting in the sacred cause of liberty, and for all the human
+heart holds dear.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XXIII.</p>
+
+<p>To judge correctly of the magnitudes of these immolations, these crimes,
+history must wait for a calmer period, when prejudice shall have relaxed
+its hold upon the understanding, and when time shall have rolled up its
+accumulated materials of accusation and denial, of proof and exoneration.
+At present we can form some idea of their designs, and the degree of the
+implacability of their souls, from the evidence already placed before us,
+as we measure inaccessible heights by the awful shadows which they
+project.</p>
+
+<p>Pity appears to have been with them only a vain, fleeting emotion, if the
+soul was disturbed at all; and whenever an act of humanity was displayed,
+there seems to have been the secret motive of gain at work. In defining
+the natural sentiments of pity, they would have declared them the
+illusions of the imagination.</p>
+
+<p>The brutalizing scenes of Slavery had modified and affected their natural
+feelings, as the gladiatorial combats and exposures of the Christians to
+the attacks of infuriated wild beasts had inspired the vile populace of
+Rome with the love of blood and cruelty.</p>
+
+<p>When these men, with sonorous rhetoric, proclaimed themselves as the
+guiding minds of the republic, the patrons, the judges of the correct
+ideas and principles of civilization,&mdash;when they arrogated to themselves
+the appearance of the wisdom of Laced&aelig;mon with the politeness of
+Athens,&mdash;they forgot or despised those cardinal virtues of society,
+&#8220;justice and truth&mdash;these are the first duties of man; humanity,
+country&mdash;these his first affections.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XXIV.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I fear,&#8221; writes the rebel War Clerk, observing from his secure position
+in the war office, &#8220;I fear this government in future times will be
+denounced as a cabal of bandits and outlaws, making and executing the most
+despotic decrees.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Whether this system of the reduction of prisoners was devised by the
+executive, or his immediate advisers, time may reveal. But of this we may
+remain positive, that the crime belongs to that little faction of
+Breckinridge Democrats who ruled the Confederacy as they pleased, and of
+which Davis was the recognized leader. Wirz was only the De Vargas and
+Winder the Alva of the arranged system. Neither is there any doubt that
+the power of affording relief was clearly within the control of the
+executive. This power was not withheld from want of audacity, for the man
+who dared place in power, in spite of remonstrance, men who jeopardized
+the existence of the Confederacy, and who openly disgraced its honor,
+certainly had sufficient courage to perform a common act of humanity, and
+relieve the sufferings of tortured prisoners, if such had been his
+inclination.</p>
+
+<p>No; there was a system, and &#8220;systems are brutal forces.&#8221; &#8220;What are your
+laws and theories,&#8221; said Danton, brutally, to Gensonn&eacute;, &#8220;when the only law
+is to triumph, and the sole theory for the nation is the theory of
+existence.&#8221;&mdash;&#8220;Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you
+extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great
+pillars of morality. This, too, we find confirmed by matter of fact.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> How
+many hopeful heirs-apparent to grand empires, when in possession of them,
+have become such monsters of lust and cruelty as are a reproach to human
+nature!&#8221;&mdash;&#8220;Ambition brings to men dissimulation, perfidy, the art of
+feigning the language and sentiments which lay at the bottom of the heart;
+of measuring their hate and their friendship only by their interests and
+circumstances; and above all, the perfidious science of composing their
+features, rather than correct and govern their principles.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The wills of bad men are their laws, and brute strength their logic.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXV.</p>
+
+<p>It is only distance in time that separates and distinguishes the Caligulas
+of history, the early, medieval, and present periods. History exhibits the
+first as the undisguised monster of atrocity. The last, overshadowed by
+the mantle of the law, stands but partially revealed.</p>
+
+<p>To the perverted imaginations of the first the senate presented no force
+of resistance. To the petulant asperity, the abuse of power of the last,
+the doubtful liberties of the people imposed certain restrictions, which
+led to the resort of narrow and malignant minds&mdash;secrecy and concealment.</p>
+
+<p>Nature had not cast him in the mould of those statesmen who sacrifice all
+personal feelings for the public good, and who willingly yield up their
+lives to advance the noble work of true civilization. Obstinacy with him
+was firmness; cunning, depth; resistance to humane feelings, resolution.
+Envy, hatred, murmurs, were braved with inflexible determination when
+pursuing his plans of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> favoritism, or defending his tools of oppression
+and cruelty against the voice of nature and outraged liberty.</p>
+
+<p>There are some men who appear to be destined for the instruction of the
+world, as the abettors and satellites of despotism, who cannot or who do
+not recognize the difference between interest or conscience; who desire to
+debase mankind, that they may appear above the common level of humanity,
+conscious of their incapability of lifting themselves up by virtue and by
+nobility of action.</p>
+
+<p>This man was the incarnation of the spirit of Slavery; he could have
+exclaimed, with Barnave, &#8220;Perish the colonies rather than a principle.&#8221;
+This man was, for the time being, the entire incorporation of the
+sedition&mdash;its principles, its passions, its impulses, its cruelties.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There are abysses which we dare not sound, and characters we desire not
+to fathom, for fear of finding in them too great darkness, too much
+horror.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This man, so calm, so dignified, so wise in his exterior, could not find
+sufficient generosity in his soul, although the representative of five
+millions of men, to say to these armies of suffering prisoners, * * *
+<i>indignus C&aelig;saris ir&aelig;</i>&mdash;unworthy of the anger of C&aelig;sar.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXVI.</p>
+
+<p>What have the wretches to offer in atonement for these outrages upon
+nature, these violations of the spirit and majesty of the law, from which
+they now claim protection?</p>
+
+<p>Will the blood of these living monsters expiate the martyrdom of the host
+of dead heroes? No!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>Will it give ease or bring congratulation to the broken and aching hearts
+who yet revere the memory of the thirty thousand victims? Never!</p>
+
+<p>The divine spirit of liberty would protest against the defilement of her
+sacred altars with the foul blood of such filthy and depraved sacrifices.</p>
+
+<p>Let the gates of the prison open, and these men stand forth to the full
+gaze of offended mankind, assassins and murderers as they are.</p>
+
+<p>Vengeance does not belong to the human race.</p>
+
+<p>There are times in the history of men when human invectives are without
+force. &#8220;There are deeds of which no men are judges, and which mount,
+without appeal, direct to the tribunal of God.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOOK_EIGHTH" id="BOOK_EIGHTH"></a>BOOK EIGHTH.</h2>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">I.</p>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">Certain</span> branches of the human family present physical peculiarities and
+aptitudes for certain climates which others do not. The one thrives and
+arrives at perfection, whilst the other languishes and dies.</p>
+
+<p>Floras and Faunas have well-defined limits of latitude, beyond which they
+decline and become extinct, and in some countries we observe certain
+limitations as to longitudes. &#8220;There are tropical trees that become shrubs
+in our zone, and the flowers of our meadows have their types in the
+tapering trunks of other climes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>How rapidly the beautiful varieties of domestic animals deteriorate and
+disappear when removed from the localities and conditions in which they
+attained their excellence. The handsome Swiss cattle when carried to the
+plains of Lombardy, and the remarkable varieties of the English herds when
+removed to Central France, quickly lose their characteristics of form and
+superiority. Under the tropics the sheep loses its silken fleece, and the
+noble qualities of the dog greatly change.</p>
+
+<p>Even the insect world changes greatly in every twelve degrees of latitude,
+and an alteration, almost total, appears in double the space.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>The influence of climate and locality, which exercises so positive a power
+in the vegetable kingdom and animal reign, affects man likewise, and would
+be as distinctly marked were it not resisted by the forces of the
+intelligence. We find under certain parallels of latitude more energy of
+mind and greater activity of body than at others; we observe this more
+distinctly with particular races or varieties than with others, thus
+indicating that all have not the same aptitudes: again, through a
+combination of organic and social laws, types adapted to certain pursuits
+spring up in every civilized country, these types distinct from either
+varieties or species. We also see the sharp characteristics of races, when
+migrating, become less distinct, and mixtures increase, and the inferior
+races disappear, like &#8220;the elementary language or the primitive forms of
+the social state.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The observed limit of range of the Hindoo and the African, in the Old
+World, is not beyond 30&deg; of the equator, and in a lower latitude than 36&deg;
+the European colonies have never prospered, never succeeded, in their
+attempts for empire. Where now are the countless hosts of Romans, Gauls,
+and Vandals that have occupied Northern Africa in past times? The
+ethnologist of to-day cannot discover a feature, hardly a trace even, of
+the language of the conquerors remaining among the present tribes of
+occupation. Even the Roman has vanished, and the only vestige of the
+Carthaginian and Numidian is shown by the scattered and diminished
+Bergers. These varieties contended with the climate, and were gradually
+absorbed by the stronger native tribes.</p>
+
+<p>The Mongols once held Central Europe, the Goths<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> ruled Italy. Where are
+they? There is no longer Vandalic blood in Africa or Gothic blood in
+Italy.</p>
+
+<p>In later times the strong, the fierce and dauntless Northmen held the
+Sicilies, and as the incorruptible Varingar guarded and upheld with their
+fearless swords the waning empire of the effeminate Greeks at the
+Dardanelles. Where are they and their descendants? The only traces are
+seen among the tombstones at Palermo, or in the Runic inscriptions which
+they sacrilegiously sculptured with their long blades of steel upon the
+flanks of the marble lion of the Pir&aelig;us.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">II.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1600 hardly a European family could be found along the
+headlands and indentations of the coast which form the southern limit of
+the Slave States of America.</p>
+
+<p>Since that time the countless multitudes of the red men who inhabited the
+forests of these lands have disappeared, and other races from an older
+world and other climes have taken their places, increasing in numbers with
+as great rapidity as the other declined.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen here the swarthy sons of Nubia, under the fostering care of
+Slavery, or under the mysterious and unexplained influences of climate,
+increase with such rapidity, that the ratio for the last decade (previous
+to the war), if continued for a century, would give a black population of
+more than forty millions. Strange spectacle in the movement of races!</p>
+
+<p>Here we see, almost during the memory of living men,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> a distinct race
+disappear, and a new nation of totally opposite character rise up, as if
+by magic, in their vanishing footsteps. How prophetic was the speech of
+the Indian chief to his tribe, when he beheld with dismay the steady
+progress of the white men who lived upon the cereals! &#8220;I say, then,&#8221;
+exclaimed the red man, &#8220;to every one who hears me, before the trees above
+our heads shall have died of age, before the maples of the valley cease to
+yield us sugar, the race of the sowers of corn will have extirpated the
+race of flesh-eaters.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">III.</p>
+
+<p>This rate of increase observed among the blacks of our Slave States is not
+seen among the population of the West India Islands, where singular
+oscillations are exhibited, and the statistics of the past two centuries
+have inclined two of the most eminent European statisticians to assert
+that in a century the negro will nearly have disappeared from these
+islands.</p>
+
+<p>Observations at Martinique and Guadaloupe certainly warrant the inference.
+In Cuba the blacks decreased four or five thousand during the period of
+1804 to 1817.</p>
+
+<p>This decrease or stand-still in the progress of the race in these regions
+may have been caused by conditions, moral or physical, wholly within the
+control of man.</p>
+
+<p>There are animals who will not propagate and continue their species whilst
+in a state of servitude, and it is reasonable to believe that the same
+moral causes affect the condition of enslaved mankind. Naturalists have
+shown how the evils of Slavery degrade animals, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> Buffon has pointed
+out the deep and conspicuous impressions it has made upon the camel.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">IV.</p>
+
+<p>Since the discovery and forcible entrance of the golden Empire of Mexico,
+and the display of her marvellous mineral treasures by the bold Cortez and
+his companions, we have seen a constant stream of the Spaniards and the
+affiliated nations of the Latin race pouring across the Atlantic to the
+new worlds which were given to the house of Castile and Leon by the
+sublime genius of the Genoese, following the stars and the traditions of
+the Northmen.</p>
+
+<p>Wealth and the baseless fabrics of martial glory were the alluring objects
+of this migrating column of men.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hast thou gold?&#8221; exclaimed they to the Mexican princes. &#8220;I and my
+companions have a malady which is only cured by gold.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After these four centuries of occupation of the elevated plains and
+table-lands of Mexico, where the mean temperature does not exceed 77&deg;
+Fahrenheit, and where the mildness of climate, the wealth of a wonderful,
+prolific nature, excite the ambition and the cupidity of men; and after
+the long efforts at colonization, in which the parent country was almost
+exhausted by the drain of her best blood,&mdash;Spain finds that the
+predictions of Dr. Knox are rapidly being realized, and that only 600,000
+Europeans and their hybrid descendants, and but 8000 Spaniards of pure
+blood, can be found of all the numberless hosts that have embarked for
+these lands. Spain halts, and reflects<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> upon this report of her scientific
+commission, which shows a decrease of one half since the estimate of
+Humboldt, in 1793; whilst France, always blind to reason whenever the
+eagles of glory desire to expand their wings, persists in her useless
+occupation of Algeria, where Gaul has again and again vainly endeavored to
+rear her colonies in times past; and she now attempts to unfurl her
+standards and establish her institutions on those Mexican shores where the
+blood and energy of a stronger and better adapted people have been
+expended in vain. Idle effort! The elements of nature are stronger than
+the will of men; neither do they give way to the desires or attacks of
+human ambition.</p>
+
+<p>There are geographical boundaries which races cannot pass in pursuit of
+wealth or the dreams of ambition. A single generation will not determine
+the law of expansion and decay.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">V.</p>
+
+<p>In this connection it will be proper to glance over the past, among those
+phenomena which men have observed, and those laws which the Creator has
+thus far revealed to us for guidance in the procession of races or the
+march of intellect.</p>
+
+<p>In the mysteries of the material world everything is governed by fixed and
+positive laws. Not a flower appears in the field to gladden the hearts of
+men but what rises up with invariable structure, and blooms at definite
+periods. Not a sparrow falls to the earth but in accordance with Nature&#8217;s
+law. Not a star shines in the firmament but in unison with the great and
+illimitable designs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> of God. Everywhere do we observe harmony in space, in
+movement; everywhere visible signs of a beneficent, protecting Creator. It
+is the same with the enormous forms of living animals as with the
+insignificant shapes of the insect world: all play their part in the
+problem of Nature. Size is nothing with the Creator; form is nothing.
+Perchance</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">&#8220;the poor beetle, that we tread upon,</span><br />
+In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great<br />
+As when a giant dies.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VI.</p>
+
+<p>History indicates mysterious laws in the progress of the typical stocks of
+the human families; and it shows, in the colonization of the past, how
+frail are human calculations in migration and settlement unless based upon
+science. &#8220;It is not unknown to me,&#8221; said the Roman soldier, two thousand
+years ago, when about to attack the remnant of the army of Brennus, that
+had passed over into Asia Minor, and conquered the land by the fierceness
+of their attack, and the terror of their name,&mdash;&#8220;it is not unknown to me,&#8221;
+said Manlius, &#8220;that of all the nations inhabiting Asia, the Gauls have the
+highest reputation as soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A fierce nation, after overrunning the face of the earth with its arms,
+has fixed its abode in the midst of a race of men the gentlest in the
+world. Their tall persons; their long, red hair; their vast shields, and
+swords of enormous length; their songs also when they are advancing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> to
+action; their yells and dances, and the horrid clashing of their arrows
+while they brandish their shields in a peculiar manner practised in their
+original country,&mdash;all these are circumstances calculated to strike
+terror. But let Greeks, and Phrygians, and Carians, who are unaccustomed
+to and unacquainted with these things, be frightened by such. The Romans,
+long acquainted with Gallic tumults, have learned the emptiness of their
+parade. Our forefathers had to deal with genuine native Gauls; but they
+are now a degenerate, a mongrel race, and in reality what they are named,
+Gallogrecians. Just so is the case of vegetables, the seeds not being so
+efficacious for preserving their original constitution as the properties
+of the soil and climate in which they may be reared, when changed, are
+towards altering it. The Macedonians who settled at Alexandria, in Egypt,
+or in Seleucia, or Babylonia, or in any other of their colonies scattered
+over the world, have sunk into Syrians, Parthians, or Egyptians.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What trace do the Tarentines retain of the hardy, rugged discipline of
+Sparta? Everything that grows in its own natural soil attains the greater
+perfection: whatever is planted in a foreign land, by a gradual change in
+its nature degenerates into a similitude to that which affords it nurture.
+Brutes retain for a time, when taken, their natural ferocity; but after
+being long fed by the hands of men, they grow tame. Think ye then that
+Nature does not act in the same manner in softening the savage tempers of
+men? Do you believe these to be of the same kind that their fathers and
+grandfathers were?</p>
+
+<p>* * * &#8220;By the very great fertility of the soil, the very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> great mildness
+of the climate, and the gentle dispositions of the neighboring nations,
+all that barbarous fierceness which they brought with them has been quite
+mollified.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And finally the Romans themselves, in spite of their sanitary measures,
+became from year to year more alien in blood from the genuine stock of
+Romulus and Remus, until the distinctive characters of the conquerors of
+the earth finally disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>The Latins, Sabines, and primitive Etruscans pressed constantly upon them
+with the irresistible force of destiny. When Scipio &AElig;milianus was
+interrupted in the forum by this mongrel populace, he exclaimed, &#8220;Silence,
+false sons of Italy! Think ye to scare me with your brandished hands, ye
+whom I led myself in bonds to Rome?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When the fierce and hardy Northmen descended into Southern Europe, they
+carried along with their laws a chastity and a reserve that excited
+universal surprise. But these virtues were not of long continuance there;
+the climate and the customs of the new society soon warmed their frozen
+imaginations, and their laws by degrees relaxed, and their manners even
+more than their laws.</p>
+
+<p>The giants of the North many times swept down over the plains of Italy,
+and regenerated with fresh and pure blood the puny breeds of degenerate
+Rome, but they have since disappeared, and their descendants are no longer
+to be found in these countries.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">VII.</p>
+
+<p>In relation to the futile efforts of Spain in Mexico, the ethnologist Knox
+exclaims, &#8220;Neither climate, nor <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>government, nor external influences ever
+alter race. They may and they do affect them, and in time destroy them,
+but they never give rise to a new race. In half a century the dreams of
+Humboldt, of Canning, of Guizot, and other profound statesmen, have come
+to a close, and Nature once more, as I long ago predicted, asserts her
+rights.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Naturalists, from Hippocrates to Buffon, have believed that climate, heat
+and cold, dryness and humidity, the qualities and abundance of
+nourishment, have power to modify men and animals, but &#8220;neither climate,
+nor government, nor external circumstances ever give rise to a new race.&#8221;
+The generous qualities once gone, are departed forever, and their loss can
+rarely be retrieved. Where is the instance of a fallen man, class, or
+nation?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The history of nations,&#8221; writes the Registrar-General of England,&mdash;&#8220;the
+history of nations on the Mediterranean or the plains of the Euphrates and
+Tigris, the deltas of the Indies and Ganges, and the rivers of China,
+exhibits the great fact: the gradual descent of race from the highlands,
+their establishment on the coasts, in cities sustained and refreshed for a
+season by emigration from the interior&mdash;their degradation in successive
+generations under the influence of the unhealthy earth, and their final
+ruin, effacement, or subjugation by new races of conquerors. The causes
+that destroy individual men lay cities waste, which, in their nature, are
+immortal, and silently undermine eternal empires.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;<br />
+An hour may lay it in the dust: and when<br />
+Can man its shattered splendors renovate,<br />
+Recall its virtues back, and vanquish time and fate?&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">VIII.</p>
+
+<p>During this period of two centuries of colonization the European races
+have attempted to perpetuate their families upon these lands in question.
+They brought with them strong physical forces, and a high degree of mental
+cultivation. Mental strength will endure extremes of climate to a singular
+degree, but even this gradually yields to cosmic influences. It is a
+well-observed law of Nature that man must be organized in harmony with the
+condition of climate, otherwise he perishes. This scale of the strength of
+resisting opposing forces depends greatly upon the purity of the blood and
+the cultivation of the mind, whose remarkable powers of resisting disease
+have been observed and pointed out by Malte-Brun, Goethe, Kant, and other
+philosophers.</p>
+
+<p>Europeans may visit and remain for limited periods in almost every portion
+of the globe. The deadly miasms of Central America, the pestilential
+atmospheres of Central Africa, and the frozen mists of either pole, are
+braved by the inquiring travellers of the civilized races, but not with
+impunity.</p>
+
+<p>Intelligent and educated men may live for a while as gentlemen of leisure,
+in the midst of malarial climates, almost without perceptible effect, but
+the moment they apply their forces to the cultivation of the earth, Nature
+asserts her rights.</p>
+
+<p>Yet during the period of the rich man, whilst he lives without physical
+labor, in ease, contemplation, and contentment, degeneration is slowly but
+surely taking place. The law of fecundity proves it, as with the Mamelukes
+in Egypt, as observed by Volney.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>The English race loses its energy, according to Farr, in two or three
+generations in the lowlands of the West India Islands and in Southern
+Asia. The Duke of Wellington believed that every English family in Lower
+Bengal would die out in the third generation.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">IX.</p>
+
+<p>The laws of nature as regards influences of climate, food, and society,
+have operated less upon the condition of the rich slaveholder than the
+poorer white, who has struggled for existence, contending with the poverty
+of sterile or abandoned soils, and the hostile influences of climate, and
+the sneer of the slave and his master. The rich man has resisted the
+opposing forces of the elements with less apparent changes, whilst the
+poor man has succumbed to the influences and sadly degenerated, but the
+poor white still possesses the rough nobility and majesty of natural man,
+whilst the rich slaveholder, with his perverted ideas of honor, virtue,
+and justice, has gained the merited contempt of mankind. For the one,
+civilization has the sympathetic feeling of compassion; from the other,
+Nature herself recoils in horror.</p>
+
+<p>This degeneration of the poor white is no mystery. Their poverty of blood
+and weakness of mind were not engendered by the insalubrity of climate,
+nor even by the sterility of the soil alone. Deny to any race, class, or
+community free social condition, freedom of thought, the expansion of the
+mind, the liberty of political and religious ideas, and it is sure to
+degenerate, and in time to perish.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>The doctrine of Adam Smith and the theory of Malthus as to the fatal
+necessity of starvation, are in some measure correct, but they are
+mistaken in the view that human fecundity tends to get the start of the
+means of subsistence, for on the contrary it keeps pace with it.</p>
+
+<p>We find that the fishes in the lakes, and the wolves in the forests,
+increase in exact ratio to the amount of food furnished. Nature regulates
+the fecundity of animals and human beings when society neglects it.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">X.</p>
+
+<p>The influences of climate, of food, of temperature, of domesticity upon
+the variation of species is well known. These mediate and external causes
+act with more vigor when the immediate and internal causes favor the
+effect. &#8220;All the mechanism of the formation of varieties,&#8221; says Flourens,
+&#8220;turns upon these two internal causes&mdash;the tendency of the species to
+vary, and the transmission of the acquired variations.&#8221; Cultivated plants
+and domesticated animals, when deprived of the modifying influence of man,
+return to the state of nature, and undergo new modifications, alterations,
+degenerations, even so far as to disguise and conceal the primitive type.</p>
+
+<p>A few generations suffice to restore a variety to the primitive stock
+without retaining any of the organic elements which would debase it.</p>
+
+<p>The more the influence of civilized man makes itself felt, the more the
+superior species overpower, absorb, or modify the inferior species.</p>
+
+<p>The more rude the people and the less polished their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> societies, the more
+powerful and rapid will be the influences of climate. Civilized men are
+continually exercising their talents to conform their conditions to the
+necessities of the time and place, and by their ingenuity remedy the
+defects, and by the resisting powers of a cultivated and occupied mind
+resist many of the morbid influences of climate. But plants and animals
+succumb at once if not protected by man.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XI.</p>
+
+<p>During the more than two centuries of occupation of these southern lands
+there appear sufficient data to form, perhaps, some definite ideas of the
+success or failure of colonization, and the vague and doubtful process of
+acclimation. These evidences, thus far, are decidedly in favor of the
+black man. For he has multiplied with astonishing rapidity, and preserved
+his physical forces, and during this long and brutalizing term of his
+servitude he has not exhibited the ferocity of his master, save when
+hunted down like the beasts of prey, as in Hayti; neither has he sunk so
+low in the scale of true humanity as those who have held him in bondage.</p>
+
+<p>The hungry and maimed soldier of the republic, escaping from the murderous
+prison-dens of the rebels, always found a crust of bread, a protecting
+shelter, and a kind word from the humblest and most oppressed of these
+beings.</p>
+
+<p>Never were they betrayed by the black man, although the reward was large.
+Never were they denied assistance, although the penalty was death.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>Although history seems to forbid, we are not of that class of men who
+maintain that there are inferior races, intended by nature for servitude;
+for we believe that every race contains the elements of greatness, and
+that there is a common destiny to all. And we cherish the idea that there
+is a better future even for the black man among the civilized nations of
+the earth. The singular aptitude of the black man for music, which is the
+language of the soul; his deep, sincere, immovable veneration for the
+precepts, the faith, the hope of Christianity, do not indicate a race lost
+to the nobler impulses, or to the benign influences of civilization, nor a
+people abandoned and accursed by Providence. God has gifted every living
+creature with the instinct of self-preservation; he has endowed all
+animated creatures of the human form with the love of the beautiful, with
+the desire of developing and perfecting their innate powers, and of
+leaving on earth some act, some memorial worthy of imitation or
+remembrance. He who declines to help his fellow-creature in the struggle
+for social existence, in the effort for happiness, knowledge, and
+immortality, is less than a man.</p>
+
+<p>The problem of civilization is left mostly to the free will of men, and
+God blasts and crumbles into dust only those nations who have abused the
+gifts and privileges of nature, and who, when arriving at the height of
+prosperity and power, have disregarded and despised those principles of
+morality and religion which form the true base of all society. How all the
+noble aspirations may be crushed and the instincts perverted; how from a
+species of voluntary insanity, by our own fierce passions, and by a
+strange<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> desire of mutual destruction, men rush on to contest and to ruin,
+is well illustrated by the past of the slave faction.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XII.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident that the black man has not deteriorated during his sojourn
+in these countries; on the contrary, he has improved in physique: the
+repulsive Congo type has changed, and the Circassian features appear. It
+is the result of the law of contact and example; it is the effect of
+civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Has the white man gained in similar ratio? Go to the cotton fields and
+rice lands, and learn a lesson from the instructive contrast of the gaunt
+and apathetic white laborer, with the sturdy, well-developed, lively
+black. You will then observe that these vast alluvial lands, which rank in
+richness and fertility with the best on the globe, must be consigned to
+waste by reason of insalubrity, if not cultivated by races of men who are
+congenial to the soil and climate. There is no white race who can
+cultivate these lands, and enjoy life and establish society with any
+duration. Malaria would forbid, if other conditions were favorable.</p>
+
+<p>The littoral lands of the lower tier of Slave States, which are composed
+of post tertiary and alluvial soils, tertiary sands and secondary chalk
+marls, can be tilled in safety and with economy and with gain only by the
+black man. Below the upper terraces and the slopes of the mountain ranges
+of the northern limits of these States, where we find the primary and
+metamorphic rocks and their debris, the white laborer cannot descend
+without<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> contending with the full force of his nature, with disease,
+degeneration, and premature death.</p>
+
+<p>There are now in the States of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and
+Louisiana thirty millions of acres of arable land yet belonging to the
+United States, unsold and unoccupied. In all England there are but seven
+million acres of uncultivated land.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XIII.</p>
+
+<p>Malaria, that curse of the Circassian race, which is the chief source of
+the inefficiency and mortality of their efforts of colonizations in
+semi-tropical climes, exerts but little influence upon the negroes, and
+hence they are admirably qualified for the occupation of pestilential
+soils.</p>
+
+<p>It appears from the statistics of the English that remittent and
+intermittent fevers, which prove the great source of inefficiency and
+mortality among the white troops in tropical climes, exert comparatively
+but little influence upon the blacks.</p>
+
+<p>The writer has observed the fatal effects of the pernicious fevers upon
+the white inhabitants of the low coasts of Georgia and South Carolina, and
+has seen men perish in a single night from the deadly action of the
+miasms, whilst the negroes were unaffected.</p>
+
+<p>During the English expedition up the Nile nearly all the whites were
+prostrated by fevers, and none of the native blacks were affected. After
+the French landed at Vera Cruz the yellow fever found great numbers of
+victims among the Europeans; but according to the report of the
+inspector-general, Regnaud, not one of the 600<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> negro soldiers and sailors
+from the West Indies, though hard at work there, were attacked, or rather
+not one of them died. There are hundreds of similar examples to illustrate
+the theory.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot escape the mephitism of the soil. So long as we respire the air,
+so long shall we receive into the system the deleterious vapors by the
+respiratory apparatus, which is the most perfect of the absorbing agents:
+the time of effect is determined only by the health, the strength, and
+vigor of our forces. The destroying elements may take effect at once, or
+they may be resisted for a long, though definite period of time. Malaria
+alone has a wide range among the causes of human misery, and it is
+believed to cause more than half of the mortality of the human families on
+the globe.</p>
+
+<p>Its deadly action, in depopulating cities and provinces, is well attested
+in history, and its effect upon the intellectual expansion is still more
+marked; sadness, languor, paludal cachexia, scrofulous, deformed, and
+short-lived offspring, are among its train of evils. In the Roman states
+alone, sixty thousand perish every year from this paludal influence. These
+deltas of the Southern States are among the greater miasmatic foyers of
+the world, and are as deadly in their miasms as the Campagna of Italy or
+the Sunderbunds of Hindostan.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XIV.</p>
+
+<p>There are many reasons to induce the belief, that if properly directed,
+the blacks may attain distinction in social life and progress, and a
+higher degree of perfection<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> in physical development. The skeleton of the
+negro is firmer and heavier, the bones being larger and thicker than that
+of any other race; but physiologists observe that the muscular development
+does not correspond to the strong dimensions of the frame. This deficiency
+of nature may be explained by the want of proper nutrition, or to physical
+causes within human control, for all proportions in nature are harmonious.
+Two of the most admirable boxers that have appeared in the British arena
+were blacks, and the dark, swarthy hue of the famous wrestler, Marseilles,
+reminds how common is the tinge of African blood in South France, Spain,
+and Italy.</p>
+
+<p>While statistics appear to exhibit the physical superiority of the blacks
+in the low countries, they also prove how prone to pulmonary disease are
+they when migrating to the uplands, or higher latitudes, and how fearful
+the mortality. Thus Nature, it seems, offers serious barriers to their
+progress, and boundaries within which they must confine themselves or
+perish.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XV.</p>
+
+<p>It has been urged that the intermingling of the freed blacks with the
+whites in these States will produce a variety of people more vicious, and
+less willing to be controlled by the social laws, than either pure race.</p>
+
+<p>Of this there is but little danger, as ethnology will show. There will not
+be, under any ordinary circumstances, any intermingling of the two races,
+for the law of ethnic repugnance is too great. The strong ethnic
+antipathies will keep them apart. The possibility of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> intermixture of
+families and races so widely remote is as rigidly limited as the law of
+chemical proportions, and the absorption of the minor quantity is
+inevitable. Give both races the same field for expansion in these States,
+and the white race will soon find itself in the minority, both of numbers
+and in physical strength; for, according to natural laws, the stronger
+blood always absorbs the weaker when there is unobstructed action, and
+especially when climate favors vastly one of the contending types.</p>
+
+<p>There are to-day four or five times as many centenarians among the blacks
+as there are among the whites of the cotton regions.</p>
+
+<p>In consideration of this subject of miscegenation, let us review the
+phenomena that have been brought to light by the naturalists who have
+studied hybridity among animals, and recall a few facts from history to
+support the experimentalists.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XVI.</p>
+
+<p>In the animal world, in the wild state, hybrids are rarely if ever
+produced, and it is only from the experiments of the naturalists that the
+law of hybridity has been explained.</p>
+
+<p>We see the bipartites appear, when two kindred species mix together under
+the influence of man, these animals partaking of the qualities of both.
+The horse and the ass; the ass, zebra, and hermione; the wolf and the dog;
+the dog and the jackal; the goat and the ram; the deer and the axis, &amp;c.,
+unite and breed; but these artificial species are not durable, and they
+have only limited fecundity. &#8220;The mongrels of the dog and the wolf are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+sterile from the third generation. The mongrels of the jackal and the dog
+are so from the fourth. Moreover, if we unite these mongrels to one of the
+two primitive species, they soon revert completely and totally to that
+species.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The mongrel of the dog and jackal contains more of the jackal than the
+dog. It has the straight ears, the pendent tail; it does not bark; it is
+wild. It is more jackal than dog. This is the first product of the crossed
+union of the dog with the jackal. I continue to unite the successive
+produce, from generation to generation, with one of the two primitive
+roots,&mdash;with that of the dog, for example.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The mongrel of the second generation does not bark yet, but it has the
+ears pendent at the tip: it is less wild.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The mongrel of the third generation barks: it has pendent ears, raised
+tail: it is no longer wild. The mongrel of the fourth generation is
+entirely dog. Four generations, then, have sufficed to restore one of the
+two primitive types&mdash;the dog type; and four generations suffice also to
+restore the other type&mdash;the jackal type. Thus, when the mongrels produced
+from the union of two distinct species unite together, either become soon
+sterile, or they unite with one of the two primitive stocks, and they soon
+revert to this stock; in no case do they yield what may be called a new
+species, that is, an intermediate, durable species.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whether, then, we consider the external causes,&mdash;the succession of time,
+years, ages, revolutions of the globe, or internal causes,&mdash;that is to
+say, the crossing of the species, the species do not alter, do not change,
+nor pass from one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> to the other; the species is fixed.&#8221; Such are the
+conclusions of the admirable efforts of Flourens.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The imprint of each species,&#8221; says Buffon, &#8220;is a type, the principal
+features of which are engraved in characters ineffaceable, and permanent
+forever; but all the accessory touches vary; no individual perfectly
+resembles another.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XVII.</p>
+
+<p>Among the human families, the law of hybridity, which has been pointed out
+so clearly by Flourens, has also its fixed and inflexible rules; these
+rules have not been so well studied with men as with animals, but it is
+believed to have its limit at the seventh generation. At all events, the
+experiments of human hybridism, and acclimation in strange latitudes, have
+always in time ended in disaster; and that such will always be the fate of
+the attempted union of different races in unfavorable climes, have been
+the views of Humboldt, of Canning, of Guizot, and other profound
+statesmen. We observe among the races in savage life a natural repugnance
+to unite: as for instance, the negroes and the fairer people of the
+Philippine and Polynesian Isles show no disposition to unite; and though
+living side by side, in the same country, for a long period, they have not
+produced an intermediate race. Neither do the Eskimos nor the Red Men,
+neither do the Caffres nor the Hottentots mix, for in the state of nature
+the law of ethnic repugnance is supreme. It is only in the artificial and
+depraved states of society that hybrids appear, and their existence is of
+short and fixed duration.</p>
+
+<p>The apparent duration and perfection of the Coulouglis,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> the bipartates of
+the Bergers and Turks, may be an exception to the general rule. But the
+results of the mingling of human families, widely separated, is generally
+very decided.</p>
+
+<p>The Creoles, produced by the African with the Spaniard, Italian, and the
+Southern French, possess considerable durability, but disease and
+degeneration soon appear when the black mingles with the blood and humors
+of the more northern nations. With all these mixtures there is a profound
+characteristic, which constitutes the unity, identity, and reality of the
+species, which is, continuous fecundity; and this characteristic never
+varies: it is immutable. The mulattoes live less time than the black or
+the white race, and their offspring perish readily, and are rarely
+prolific, except when united with stronger individuals of either primitive
+type, to which they soon return.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XVIII.</p>
+
+<p>The blacks have been too degraded to more than conceive of liberty, too
+debased to think of resistance to the forces that crushed them, and they
+have neither observed, nor sought for opportunities, to throw off their
+chains and sweep over the lands, like a destroying element, with the
+accumulated wrongs of centuries. Yet there were black men among them who
+were capable of high cultivation. The long contact with the superior white
+race had recast the faculties of their mind, and had altered perceptibly
+the rugged contour of their forms and features.</p>
+
+<p>The writer observed with wonder in the regiment of black men which formed
+part of the column of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>desperate assault upon Fort Wagner, beautiful
+heads, whose classic and regular outlines recalled the finest of the
+antique.</p>
+
+<p>We believe with the writer in the &#8220;Revue des Deux Mondes,&#8221; that contact
+with the white races has given the negro the lines of the Caucasian form,
+and that the Congo type can disappear or become greatly modified.</p>
+
+<p>These changes in the typical form, which we have since observed elsewhere,
+appear to have taken place sometimes without the admixture of the blood of
+the whites.</p>
+
+<p>That the black men in the United States army fought well, no one will
+deny; that they conducted themselves admirably in the murderous assaults
+at Fort Wagner, or under the destroying fire at Olustee, and in many other
+conflicts, every one possessed of any candor will admit. When we consider
+the degradation whence they suddenly rose, and the steadiness and
+firmness, and the manly bearing they exhibited after the few lessons of
+military training, we are compelled to render thanks to them for their
+efforts in the struggle for national existence, and to admit the
+probability of their attaining that degree of intelligence, wisdom, and
+virtue which distinguish the true citizen. That these men will attain the
+standard of intellect of the Caucasian, we neither expect nor believe; but
+we do maintain, that in the nature of every race, however debased by
+prejudice, and the avarice of superior society, there exists the element
+of honesty, virtue, truth, and a horror of wrong, which may be developed
+and turned to the good of all society, in repelling and resisting the
+force of machination, the intrigue which arises from <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>disappointed
+ambition, or the insatiable lust of more favored and less considerate
+classes.</p>
+
+<p>No one acquainted with the history of the commerce of human beings will
+wonder at the present condition of the blacks, or that they have not risen
+in the scale of social and intellectual advancement. For, looking back to
+the primitive ages we may see how the human species have been depressed in
+servitude, and how the very same families, who carried the arts and
+sciences to celestial limits, were affected by this influence. Persons of
+the same blood and inheritance as the best families of Greece and Rome,
+were often reduced to slavery, and they sank rapidly under its debasing
+effects. They were tamed like the black man of the South; &#8220;like brutes, by
+the stings of hunger and the lash; and their education was so conducted as
+to render them commodious instruments of labor for their possessors. This
+degradation of course depressed their minds, restricted the expansion of
+their faculties, stifled almost every effort of genius, and exhibited them
+to the world as beings endued with inferior capacities to the rest of
+mankind. But for this opinion there appears to have been no foundation in
+truth or justice. Equal to their fellow-men in natural talents, and alike
+capable of improvement, any apparent or real difference between them and
+some others must have been owing to the mode of education, to the rank
+they were doomed to occupy, and to the treatment they were appointed to
+endure.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After all, the world appears to be a vast arena, where the good and the
+bad are gathered together, and men are left to their own efforts, whether
+to rise up in that scale<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> of intelligence and virtue which conducts to
+immortality, or to grovel deeper into the depths of degradation, where
+there is nothing but death and annihilation. The vault of heaven grows in
+immensity as we gaze into its limitless expanse, whilst the shadows and
+attractions of earth fade away from view, or allure only those who have
+forsaken nature.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XVIII.</p>
+
+<p>Have the European races advanced in these latitudes in strength of mind
+and body with equal ratio as the black man? We think not. Let us consider.</p>
+
+<p>The qualities of plants and vegetables are often affected by external
+influences, so as to assume different characters, and the impressions upon
+the leaves and the fruits are distinctly marked. These alterations,
+degenerations, and modifications may disguise the primitive type so far
+that it is no longer recognizable. We observe these properties among all
+organic bodies, among those of the animal and as well as of the vegetable
+world. The vine and its golden extracts are very much dependent upon these
+influences.</p>
+
+<p>The exquisite bouquet, the soul-inspiring qualities of the best varieties
+of wine, cannot be acquired by the efforts of man at pleasure; without the
+generous nature of the soil, the rays of sunlight, and the inspiring
+breezes of favored localities and climes, the extract of the pressed grape
+is without that flavor and force which warm into life the brilliancy of
+the imagination, the nobility of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>There is also a marked effect of soil and climate upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> the odor of
+plants, and in their narcotic constituents. Does not the same law affect
+man?</p>
+
+<p>The Italian violets grow sweeter as we climb the Alpine slopes; the
+mignonette blooms with greater perfection and perfume as we approach the
+shores of the lowlands of the Mediterranean. We find the finest types of
+the human race among the uplands and the mountains; below, on the low
+coasts and river margins, where pestilences are generated, the physical
+and mental forces do not fully expand, and we find there neither liberty,
+virtue, nor science.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Rusdorf, in his work on the influence of European climate, regards the
+temperate zone as the brain-making region, and attempts to prove it by
+physiological deductions. The brain of the Caucasian, he says, determines
+the superiority over the other races, and it is the standard of the
+organism. This, he maintains, is produced by the richness of albumen in
+the blood, which is also dependent upon the oxygen of pure air. The
+extensive observations of the English Registrar-General show indisputably
+that the elevation of the soil exercises as decided an influence on the
+English race as it does on the native races of other climes and soils.
+They also show that the finest animals are raised in the healthiest
+districts. We see that certain heights above the plains are remarkably
+exempt from maladies which devastate nations inhabiting lower levels.
+Cholera, remittent fever, yellow fever, and plague, disappear at
+well-defined degrees of elevation.</p>
+
+<p>At Vera Cruz, and along its latitude, the yellow fever vanishes at the
+height of three thousand feet above the Gulf shores.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>The Prussian, in his &#8220;Medicinische Geographie,&#8221; appears to indicate with
+great degree of certainty the limits and altitudes of the three zones,
+into which he classifies the catarrhal, the dysenteric, and the scrofulous
+diseases. The scrofulous zone ceases at an altitude of two thousand feet
+above the level of the sea, and here, he says, there is no pulmonary
+consumption, scrofula, cancer, or typhus fever. &#8220;It is,&#8221; says Babinet,
+&#8220;the climate of each country which permits or arrests the development of
+the human race, which, joined with the industry of populations, imposes
+limits to the numerical force of each meteorological district, and which
+subsists four million of men in fertile Belgium, which is no more than a
+small fraction of the territory of France, whilst Siberia can with
+difficulty nourish a part of that number with an extent which is
+twenty-six times that of France.&#8221; &#8220;All over the world, physical
+circumstances,&#8221; exclaims Draper, &#8220;control the human race.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XIX.</p>
+
+<p>It is vain to assert that the atmospheres of the maritime or the low
+levels do not affect the physical and mental condition of men; and after
+all, Fontenelle was right when he maintained, in a curious paradox, that
+inspiration is a barometer that varies, which mounts to genius or descends
+to absurdity, according to the inconstancy of the weather; that there are
+unhealthy countries, full of mists, winds, tempests, that never produce
+clear understandings; and, on the contrary, there are lands with beautiful
+skies and fields filled with sunlight and roses which give out flashes of
+divine light.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>Nearly all of the Grecian lyrists were born in the enchanting climates,
+and among the beautiful scenes of the Asiatic shore or the isles of the
+&AElig;gean Sea. Most of the eminent men of Italy rose from similar
+inspirations, which Michael Angelo observed when speaking of Vasari in
+terms of admiration. Historians say that the sun was never softer, the
+heavens brighter, the roses more prolific, the winds more perfumed, than
+in the dawn of the eighteenth century, which produced that &#8220;wild garland
+of beautiful women who recalled by their graces, their genius, the
+courtesans of Greece,&#8221; which gave birth to those philosophers who gave a
+new impetus to liberty and religion.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XX.</p>
+
+<p>According to some writers, the unequal distribution of solar heat over the
+earth is the cause of marked differences in national character; others
+refer the distinctive effects to the quality of the air they breathe.
+Arbuthnot maintains that air not only fashions the body, but has also had
+great influence in forming language; that the close, serrated method of
+speaking of Northern nations was due to coldness of the climate, and
+hesitation of opening the mouth; whilst the sweet, sonorous phrases of
+temperate climes, like those of the Mediterranean, were due to the
+mildness of climate, where the vocal organs could be exposed without
+danger. &#8220;It is incontestable,&#8221; also writes Alfred Maury, in his &#8220;Earth and
+Man,&#8221; &#8220;that climate has upon the mode of government a considerable
+influence, because it exercises an immediate effect upon the character of
+individuals. In the warm countries,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> under an enervating atmosphere, where
+all inclines to effeminacy and idleness, the soul has not that energy and
+that force of will necessary to a people who wish to be free. Under a
+severe and cold climate, to the contrary, the character acquires more of
+energy, and the body more of activity. The passions are less violent, and
+leave to the reason a freer exercise. In the hot climes the instincts are
+impetuous, and they pass from an extreme of dejection to a state of
+exaltation which produces revolutions, insurrections, but which do not
+establish the independence. For, to the contrary, these violent crises
+introduce retaliation; and in the sanguinary conflicts, the power of an
+individual, although tyrannical, appears as a benefit, or is accepted as a
+necessity.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXI.</p>
+
+<p>The anger of the European has always raged with undefinable fury, when
+once aroused, in these southern latitudes, and especially in the regions
+in question. The spirit is the same, whether we review the cruel and
+useless extermination of the Indians in Cuba or Florida; the massacres of
+the Mexicans by the merciless Spaniards; the internecine slaughter of the
+French, English, and Spaniards along the coasts of South Carolina,
+Georgia, and Florida; the extermination of whole tribes, like the
+Yemassee, or the forced removal of the red men from the broad lands of
+their birthplace and inheritance. All show the implacable depth of his
+avarice or his ire. It was not merely the honor of subjugation, of
+conquering strange races, that was the object of the politics, and that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+excited the emulation of these iron-mailed and iron-hearted men and their
+descendants: it seems to have been an irresistible desire to immolate
+human races, to glut with blood that thirst for destruction which arises
+from depraved and burning hearts.</p>
+
+<p>It was the same spirit, under the mask of avarice, that tore the
+well-behaved Creeks and Cherokees from the homes of their ancestors, and
+banished them to the prairies of the West; that hunted down the last
+Seminole in the everglades of Florida, where there are to-day twenty
+millions of acres of land unsold and unoccupied.</p>
+
+<p>It was the same spirit that, in later times, recklessly and ruthlessly
+destroyed, at Camp Sumter, an army of freemen, under the pretence of
+treating them as prisoners of war.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXII.</p>
+
+<p>Yet this depraved fury does not appear to have been natural to the soil,
+climate, or the native races, as observed by the early navigators;
+although Ponce de Leon received his death-wound from them when he sought
+the fountain of youth in the everglades of Florida, and De Soto
+encountered fierce opposition from the red men of the forest when he
+pursued his way towards the Appalachian mountains in search of the mines
+of gold. But nevertheless the Europeans were treated almost always with
+kindness whenever they approached the Indian with good intentions.</p>
+
+<p>Contrast the present time and the people with the period and the natives
+when the great Navigator discovered the adjacent isles. &#8220;Nature is here,&#8221;
+he exclaims, &#8220;so <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>prolific, that property has not produced the feelings of
+avarice or cupidity. These people seem to live in a golden age, happy and
+quiet, amid open and endless gardens, neither surrounded by ditches,
+divided by fences, nor protected by walls. They behave honorably towards
+one another, without laws, without books, without judges. They consider
+him wicked who takes delight in harming another. This aversion of the good
+to the bad seems to be all their legislation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>These people with natural sentiments have passed away, and new races, with
+strange and repulsive ideas, have taken their place. &#8220;Like the statue of
+Glaucus, that time, the sea, the storms have so disfigured that it
+resembles less a god than a ferocious beast, the human soul, altered in
+the bosom of society by a thousand causes rising without cessation, by the
+acquisition of a multitude of creeds and errors, by the changes produced
+in the constitution of bodies by the continual shock of passions, has
+caused a change in appearance almost unrecognizable; and we sooner find,
+instead of the being acting always by certain and invariable principles,
+instead of that celestial and majestic simplicity in which the Creator has
+left his impress, the deformed contrast of the understanding in delirium,
+and of the passion which pretends to reason.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXIII.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever society forms and sustains itself, there must be adopted certain
+rules and laws to maintain it.</p>
+
+<p>These seemingly arbitrary laws represent the interests, the passions, and
+opinions of those who establish them,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> and they differ widely, according
+to the nature of the men and the climate which they inhabit.</p>
+
+<p>The inhabitants of hot climes and the cold zones present strange contrasts
+in their natural ideas of justice, as well as in instincts and appetites.
+The Turk regards intemperance as a crime, and polygamy as a virtue. The
+Englishman looks upon the one with complaisance, but regards the other
+with horror. Thus reason yields to physical force, or to the differences
+of climate; and what men call virtue in one clime, loses its force and
+beauty in another. Yet there are natural laws older than the empires of
+force or reason; more ancient than society itself; more powerful and
+sublime than the passions and interests of men. These laws of kindness, of
+mercy, of friendship, like elementary language, come from divination.</p>
+
+<p>Nature has planted certain instincts in the bosoms of all the different
+races of the globe alike; and these become developed according to
+cultivation, or debased according to degrading influences. The good of
+society may define the measure between good and evil, but it cannot
+extinguish the principles, or obliterate the sharply defined distinctions.
+The will of the Creator has manifested itself clearly in the workings of
+the natural world, if it has not been revealed to us in those tablets
+which fell from the skies.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXIV.</p>
+
+<p>The benign influences of society, the exercise of politeness and reason,
+inspire polished and agreeable manners; yet, in the midst of these, we
+find men who think barbarity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> to be one of their rights; and they abuse
+their fellow-creatures without pretext, and commit murder without
+necessity, which is a degree of ferocity below that of the carnivorous
+animals; for they destroy life only when impelled by the motives of
+hunger. Societies of men are institutions of nature, and they are founded
+upon the principles of mutual obligations. Society relapses into barbarism
+when the golden rule of &#8220;doing as we would be done by&#8221; is violated; when
+individual liberty is lost; and when man treats his fellow-man as property
+under the right of force, and therefore without legal relations.
+Constitutions are the indices of the education and the aspiration of
+nations, and they keep pace with the onward march of intelligence. These
+become altered and modified, as the intellect and hearts of men expand;
+and it is nothing but bigotry that believes in the inviolability, the
+perfection of the doctrines and tenets of men in the present or the past.
+The wise man, says the old proverb, often changes his opinion, the fool
+never.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXV.</p>
+
+<p>Slavery appears to be coeval with war; and war is as ancient as the human
+race. Plutarch believed that there had been a time, a golden age, when
+there were neither masters nor slaves. The human mind, at the time when
+Plutarch wrote, was almost controlled by the empire of force. The
+selfishness and superstition of society fettered the nobility of nature,
+and healthy reason could not assume its rightful sway.</p>
+
+<p>The depth of the philosophical reasoning, the degree of humanity of one of
+the brightest periods of antiquity,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> may be comprehended from the
+&#8220;Politics&#8221; of Aristotle, when he says, &#8220;To the Greeks belongs dominion
+over the barbarians, because the former have the understanding requisite
+to rule, the latter, the body only to obey. For the slave, considered
+simply as such, no friendship can be entertained, but it may be felt for
+him, as he is a man.&#8221; Some of the ancient nations, the most enthusiastic
+in the dreams of liberty, were the most savage and stern in their laws
+concerning their slaves; and they adhered to their brutal doctrines in
+defiance of nature with singular tenacity. The right of life and death
+over the slave was one of the fundamental principles of the society of the
+Athenians, Lacedemonians, Romans, and Carthaginians.</p>
+
+<p>Strange condition of society among men who cultivated the arts and
+sciences so successfully! Yet it does not appear that any legislator
+attempted to abrogate servitude.</p>
+
+<p>Stranger still that the glorious period of the reign of democracy at
+Athens should not have brought with it the universal freedom of men, when
+liberty was the divine ideal of its aspirations.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXVI.</p>
+
+<p>Not until the star of Christianity rose above the horizon of the pagan and
+superstitious world, softening the hearts of men and revealing to them a
+new life, did Slavery vanish from among refined and generous societies,
+under the charter, <i>Pro amore Dei, pro mercede anim&aelig;</i>. And never has it
+reappeared, except among those nations who have become debased from
+avarice, or depraved by ambition. When cupidity allows fanaticism to blind
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> mind with the belief that savages or negroes can be more easily
+converted to Christianity whilst in slavery than in freedom, then there is
+an end to social progress. Yet such were the ideas of Louis XIII. when he
+consigned the negroes of his colonies to Slavery. And such has been the
+creed of the slaveholders and breeders of America. The monstrous doctrine
+imposed itself upon the understandings of the slave faction, as the
+superstitions of the false prophets have fettered and crushed the minds of
+the pagan nations. It has debased their natural sentiments, as well as it
+has depressed and perverted their natural talents and virtues. &#8220;In the
+same manner,&#8221; said Longinus, &#8220;as some children always remain pygmies,
+whose infant limbs, fettered by the prejudices and habits of servitude,
+are unable to expand themselves, or to attain that well-proportioned
+greatness which we admire in the ancients, who, living under a popular
+government, wrote with the same freedom as they acted.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXVII.</p>
+
+<p>We may learn from the history of the past, if we will not accept the data
+of the present, how climate, food, domesticity, or recognized customs of
+society may alter the minds and dispositions of men; how they may
+gradually build up governments, founded upon monstrous ideas, and yet in
+unison with the compunctions of their conscience. Ascribe the origin to
+any cause you will, it does not alter the revolting facts, nor lessen the
+repulsiveness of the absurdity, nor the enormity of the crime. Volney
+believed &#8220;that the social institutions called<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> Government and Religion
+were the true sources and regulators of the activity or indolence of
+individuals and nations; that they were the efficient causes which, as
+they extend or limit the natural or superfluous wants, limit or extend the
+activity of all men. A proof that their influence operates in spite of the
+difference of climate and soil is, that Tyre, Carthage, and Alexandria
+formerly possessed the same industry as London, Paris, and Amsterdam; that
+the Buccaneers and the Malayans have displayed equal turbulence and
+courage with the Normans, and that the Russians and Polanders have the
+apathy and indifference of the Hindoos and the Negroes. But, as civil and
+religious institutions are perpetually varied and changed by the passions
+of men, their influence changes and varies in very short intervals of
+time. Hence it is that the Romans commanded by Scipio resembled so little
+those governed by Tiberius, and that the Greeks of the age of Aristides
+and Themistocles were so unlike those of the time of Constantine.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Volney observes that &#8220;the moral character of nations, taken from that of
+individuals, chiefly depends on the social state in which they live; since
+it is true that our actions are governed by our civil and religious laws,
+and since our habits are no more than a repetition of those actions, and
+our character only the disposition to act in such a manner under such
+circumstances, it evidently follows that these must essentially depend on
+the nature of the government and religion.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Says Addison, &#8220;In all despotic governments, though a particular prince may
+favor arts and letters, there is a natural degeneracy of mankind, as you
+may observe from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> Augustus&#8217;s reign, how the Romans lost themselves by
+degrees, until they fell to an equality with the most barbarous nations
+that surrounded them. Look upon Greece under its free states, and you
+would think its inhabitants lived in different climates and under
+different heavens from those at present, so different are the geniuses
+which are formed under Turkish slavery and Grecian liberty.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Besides poverty and want, there are other reasons that debase the minds
+of men who live under Slavery, though I look on this as the principal. The
+natural tendency of despotic powers to ignorance and barbarity, though not
+insisted upon by others, is, I think, an unanswerable argument against
+that form of government, as it shows how repugnant it is to the good of
+mankind and the perfection of human nature, which ought to be the great
+end of all civil institutions.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Liberty should reach every individual of a people, as they all share one
+common nature; if it only spreads among particular branches there had
+better be none at all, since such a liberty only aggravates the misfortune
+of those who are deprived of it, by setting before them a disagreeable
+subject of comparison.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The pride of Athens,&#8221; writes Mirabeau, &#8220;and the jealousy of the Greeks,
+banished forever the liberty of those countries, so long fortunate.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Such is and always was our world, covered from time to time with
+conquerors and slaves, because the conquering, in forging the irons of the
+unhappy, with which they bound them, sharpen those which must bind them in
+turn.</p>
+
+<p>Such is and always will be man, from time to time despot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> and slave, for
+man, denaturalized by servitude, becomes readily the most ferocious of
+animals if he escapes an instant from oppression. There is but one step
+from the despot to the slave, from the slave to the despot, and the chain
+becomes them alike.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXVIII.</p>
+
+<p>There are strange forces constantly at work: civilizations spring up,
+disappear, and sometimes, but rarely, return again after a sleep of ages:
+it seems as though genius laid fallow for a period, like the golden
+grains.</p>
+
+<p>The Greek mind teaches the Arabs under the Caliphs of Bagdad and Cordova,
+and in turn the Arabian influence instructs the reviving European mind
+after the dark ages. The fall of Constantinople crushed the Greek mind
+completely. The genius and the &#8220;godlike men&#8221; of Rome vanished under the
+influence of the strong blood of the Goths, and the flourishing nations of
+the African shore have yielded so completely to physical and moral causes,
+that we justly doubt the story of their magnificence, their power, their
+intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>We see the effete races infused with the fresh blood; the vigorous juices
+of the Scandinavians march forward with unparalleled pace to the triumphs
+of reason and philosophy. The pure, warm, healthy vitality of the North
+recalls to life the exact sciences, the laws of reasoning, and philosophy,
+and &aelig;sthetics, which, arising from Grecian genius, had slumbered for a
+thousand years.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XXIX.</p>
+
+<p>In the slave lands of America a high order of intellect was proclaimed;
+but when analysis approached, it sank into mediocrity, or vanished into
+dust, like the forms in the ancient tombs when exposed to the light of
+heaven. Slavery has produced nothing but horror. The flashes of light that
+have burst forth through its mists have been the expiring efforts of
+genius. Here the sciences have always languished and declined to take
+root, for they are the offspring of genius and reason. The arts never
+appeared, for the spirit of imitation never arose. To cultivate the
+sciences, there is need of exalted desire, which comes from healthy and
+prosperous races or from celestial fire. Here there was the barbarity of
+ignorance; the only desires were to increase the enormities of their
+crimes, by the spread and general adoption of Slavery, and to conceal its
+proportions and influences beneath a cloud of mental darkness, which is
+frightful to contemplate, when placed in comparison with intelligent
+communities like New England, Belgium, and Prussia.</p>
+
+<p>They thought to perpetuate an aristocratic power, and transmit the
+inheritance of Slavery as a blessing, but they forgot that in the
+formation of happy nations and states humanity forms the broad base; they
+forgot that ambitious and avaricious families quickly degenerate and
+disappear completely from the earth. The vicissitudes of political life
+hasten that decline which is commenced by riches and rank, when supported
+by morbid ideas and sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>The noble families of Athens and Corinth, the patrician<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> body at Rome,
+vanished so rapidly as to excite the surprise of the nations they
+governed. The names of the descendants of the founders of Venice, written
+in the Libro di Oro, are no longer to be found among the living in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>The same law is silently at work in our times.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXX.</p>
+
+<p>The inequalities of the earth&#8217;s surface are like the rugosities of the
+human brain: the depths of the one contain the richest and most
+inexhaustible treasures of mineral wealth, as the wrinkles of the other
+collect the stores of mental lore. As the surface of the brain becomes
+less marked and rugged, the strength and scope of the mind vanish, and
+approach the standard of the lower animals; and likewise, as the elevated
+lands of the earth shrink in form, and sink into the level of the plain,
+so the characters of the races who inhabit them lose force and elevation.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the minds of men are the reflections of the beauties and
+sublimities of nature. Sometimes men become degraded, and nature then does
+not inspire.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXXI.</p>
+
+<p>The lofty and diversified mountain range, or system of ranges, known as
+the Appalachian or Alleghany, rises or reappears in the State of New York,
+midway between the Atlantic coast and the shores of those fresh-water
+seas, Erie and Ontario. It then stretches down <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>south-westward, with its
+adjacent spurs, through the great States of Pennsylvania and Virginia;
+then, dividing, it forms, with its eastern range, the western and northern
+limit of North and South Carolina and Georgia; and with the western it
+intersects Tennessee, forming that beautiful basin known among the white
+men as East Tennessee, but among the traditions of the red men as the
+Garden of the Manitou&mdash;their God. In Northern Alabama, the separated
+ranges seemingly unite; and passing southward, towards the central portion
+of the State, the mountain summits gradually contract, and finally sink
+into the level of the great alluvial plains, which stretch away, without
+undulation, to the shores of the Gulf. These huge masses of rock,
+dislocated and elevated like the Vosges and the Hartz Mountains at the
+close of the carboniferous or devonian period of the earth&#8217;s age, contain,
+with the adjacent and connecting bands,&mdash;which are composed of the
+silurian, primitive, and metamorphic ledges,&mdash;most of the accessible
+mineral wealth of the republic. And the collective beds of iron, coal,
+marble, zinc, copper, and gold are unsurpassed in similar extent and
+richness by the mines of any country of the known world, with the
+exception of those wonderful deposits of ores and minerals among the
+unexplored and almost inaccessible recesses and plateaus of the Sierra
+Nevada or the Andes.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of the northern extremity of this mountain group, these
+mines of natural wealth may be said to have been unexplored. Below the
+rich and populous State of Pennsylvania, the hum of human industry ceases;
+for we then pass into the paralyzing shadow of Slavery. This Slavery
+forbade the development of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> earth&#8217;s treasures, as well as the
+enlightenment of the minds of the poor and ignorant whites. The forges of
+Vulcan would have hammered out and broken into fragments the chains of
+that bondage which not only oppressed the fettered blacks, but debased,
+with its corroding influence, the competing labor of the white man.</p>
+
+<p>The slaveholders concealed this immense natural wealth from the eyes of
+science from motives of policy; and rather than incur the hazard of
+revolution, by educating the masses of their own people, they preferred to
+neglect their natural advantages, and to send to distant and even foreign
+lands the products of their fields and their system, to be worked up into
+the marvellous fabrics of human ingenuity and skill. This same State of
+Virginia, which is the real gateway to the empires of the West, and which
+is not surpassed in natural physical advantages by any equal extent of
+territory on the globe, is the most ignorant of all of the States of the
+republic. Ninety thousand of its native-born free people, over twenty
+years of age, before the war could not read nor write; whilst sterile and
+stormy Maine, with her cold lands and colder skies, contained but two
+thousand of the same class, out of a population more than half as great.
+And New England, with a population of almost three times as great as the
+free people of Virginia, is ashamed by the number of seven thousand
+illiterate natives past the age of twenty. Who will wonder at the display
+of barbarity and audacity when the statistics of education and ignorance
+are exhibited? &#8220;Education and liberty,&#8221; says Mirabeau, &#8220;are the bases of
+all social harmony and all human prosperity.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Which can civilization curse the most, London or <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>Amsterdam? the Dutch who
+introduced Slavery, or the English who thought Virginia a good place to
+&#8220;colonize aristocratic stupidity,&#8221; and who sent colonists, who were,
+according to the historian, &#8220;fitter to breed a riot than to found a
+colony.&#8221; The condition of the present day shows how rigidly the first
+instructions have been observed and enforced. &#8220;Thank God,&#8221; writes one of
+its early governors to the English Privy Council, &#8220;thank God there are no
+free schools or printing, and I hope we shall not have any these hundred
+years! for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the
+world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best
+government. God keep us from both!&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXXII.</p>
+
+<p>And so these mines, and fields, and forests, remain to the present day,
+unsurveyed, unexplored and unknown, save to a few wanderers of science.</p>
+
+<p>In Northern Alabama, where the terminating slopes of this upheaval of
+rocks disappear beneath the level of the vast cotton fields, which number
+their acres by the million, there appear enormous deposits of iron ore, of
+extraordinary richness and depth, lying in juxtaposition with
+corresponding beds of limestones and coal.</p>
+
+<p>Here is alone sufficient material for the iron fingers and forges and the
+steam power to fabricate the vegetable growths, the harvests of the vast
+and fertile plains of the entire South, and to build up with enduring form
+those great and thriving cities which are seen in the dim vista of the
+future of the Mississippi Valley, with its hundred<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> millions of people.
+These elevations, when denuded of their immense primeval forests of pine
+and oak, will be covered with constant verdure, affording sure sustenance
+to numberless flocks and herds of kine, which will require less care than
+the cattle of the plains of Texas or the pampas of Peru, since Nature,
+with her caverns and narrow valleys, will afford shelter from the
+destructive storms of winter and the chilling blasts of spring.</p>
+
+<p>Between the two great spurs of the divided mountain range which encompass
+the head-waters and tributaries of the Tennessee, appears the garden spot
+of the Republic: the soils, enriched by the decomposition of the blue
+limestones, are here of great strength and endurance; the innumerable
+streams are of sufficient force and volume to satisfy the wants of
+industry and mechanics, whilst the lofty mountains, which rise to the
+height of seven thousand feet above the ocean, with their broad and
+impressive shadows, temper the atmospheres, so that the body can labor and
+the mind expand.</p>
+
+<p>To the natural beauties of the landscape art has yet added nothing: from
+the teeming harvests of the valleys, from the massive ledges of minerals,
+man has yet detracted nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Nature here is almost inexhaustible.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder that the dying Indian returns to the region of the Hiwassee to
+end his days on earth, impelled by an irresistible desire to behold once
+more the wonders and beauties of natural scenery, which are preserved
+among the fading traditions of the tribes that have been banished to the
+far off western frontiers.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XXXIII.</p>
+
+<p>From beneath the eastern aspect of the mountains of Alabama, a broad belt
+of metamorphic rocks bursts forth, and trends to the north-eastward,
+following the mountain ranges in almost parallel lines through the States
+of Georgia, South and North Carolina, and disappearing in Virginia beneath
+the waters of the Potomac. These lands of decomposed mica and talcose
+schists contain throughout their broad extent particles of gold; and some
+of the narrow and circumscribed fields are unsurpassed in their
+undeveloped richness by any of the known gold fields of similar extent in
+the world. These auriferous soils, owned or controlled by the slaveholder,
+have yielded, by the superficial scratchings and washings of the slave and
+the poor white, during the period since the discovery of the precious
+metal, about forty millions of dollars. There are not less than one
+hundred millions more within the reach and grasp of skilled and determined
+labor.</p>
+
+<p>Along beside, and traversing through and through these golden rocks and
+sands, occur immense bands of itacolumite, known, from its flexibility, as
+the elastic sandstone. They stretch from Alabama to the interior of North
+Carolina, bursting forth now as great flexible bands of stone, and then
+bulging out as entire mountains. This singular formation is the same that
+has been recognized in Brazil, Ural Mountains, and Hindostan, as the
+matrix of the diamond; and here, nearly one hundred of the precious gems
+of fine water have been picked up from the earth, from time to time, by
+the careless observer.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XXXIV.</p>
+
+<p>This upheaval of the earth&#8217;s surface, reminding the geographer of the
+Italian peninsula, vaguely perhaps in form, in natural fertility and in
+purity of climate, is destined to play an important part in the future
+advancement of the Republic. For here is the heart of the eastern portion
+of the continent, geographically, climatologically, and mineralogically.
+Here Nature is too prolific to be long neglected by the cupidity or the
+ambition of men, when the barriers and obstructions of inquiry and
+settlement, which have been reared against the advance and design of
+civilization by the Slave Faction, shall have been removed. When the tide
+of European emigration, which steadily brings to the New World the pure
+blood and youth of races, turns its stream of industrial life towards
+these valleys, mountain slopes, and terraces; when the laws of
+alimentation are understood and properly observed; when the spire of the
+school-house rises in the vista of every landscape, or points the way at
+every cross-road,&mdash;then we may expect to see a new variety of the human
+race appear, possessed of remarkable physical strength and beauty, and
+whose ideas and efforts, typical of the healthy and developed mind, will,
+like the influences of New England and Scandinavia, give fresh impulse and
+impress to the civilizations of the earth.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center">XXXV.</p>
+
+<p>Races of men&mdash;nations&mdash;even the lesser communities, during the periods of
+their social existence, erect monuments, or leave, unwillingly sometimes,
+traces of their progress, their advancement, their culture, as memorials
+for the admiration, or as the objects of horror for the contempt, of
+future generations.</p>
+
+<p>The gigantic pyramids and sphinxes of Egypt tell of the civilization of
+their extinct founders; the airy and graceful columns, with the wonderful
+sculptures of the Parthenon, disclose the degree of the perfection and the
+delicacy of the Greek mind. Rome, though long since vanished from among
+the nations of the earth, has left the impress of her force, grandeur, and
+wisdom in those laws which now direct the tribunals of men; the lofty and
+colossal structures of the temples of the Rhine are the emblems of faith
+as well as the masterpieces of the Gothic heart and intellect; even the
+mysterious and history-forgotten Druids have left their rude reminiscences
+in those weird circles of enormous and cyclopean rocks, beyond which all
+is darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Thus men perpetuate their memories among the annals of the earth. But
+after their long period of existence and progress, what have the Slave
+Faction left for the historian to contemplate with satisfaction? for an
+attentive world to study, imitate, and admire? What beyond this appalling
+cloud of ignorance have they left as legacy to the poor white? What
+besides misery, violence, and crime have they bequeathed to the black man?
+With what treasures, in the estimation of mankind, have they <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>enriched
+themselves, or left as inheritance to their degenerate offspring?</p>
+
+<p>The history of this remorseless party, its selfish and sordid aims, its
+cruel results, will always find place among the annals of civilized man so
+long as the noblest acts of men are admired, and so long as the dark deeds
+of cruelty appall and overshadow our better nature. Thermopyl&aelig;, Marathon,
+and the holy sites where Liberty has struggled for existence, and where
+men have risen above the trammels of their earthly natures, will be
+remembered no longer than this field of blood and torture among the
+obscure forests of Georgia.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">XXXVI.</p>
+
+<p>Who will say that Nature and Liberty were the genii who directed the
+labors of the leaders of the Rebellion?</p>
+
+<p>Soil, climate, hereditary traditions, and customs of society, give to a
+people the fierceness and gentleness of character, as well as the
+perfection of mind and body. This fatal Stockade, with the silent mound of
+earth which contains its harvest of death, is a fair and just exponent of
+the bigoted and selfish policy that struck down the Flag of the Republic;
+of that cruel and unearthly spirit which has despised all the &#8220;attachments
+with which God has formed the chain of human sympathies,&#8221; and which,
+without a tear of remorse, has strewn the Atlantic Ocean with a broad
+pathway of human bones!</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p class="center">NOTES.</p>
+
+<p>Since the close of the war, and since the time when the sketch of the
+graveyard was taken, Colonel Moore, of the U. S. Quartermaster&#8217;s
+Department, has been to Andersonville, under orders from the Secretary of
+War, and arranged the cemetery in a very acceptable manner. All of the
+stakes were removed, and neat head-boards placed instead, with the names
+of the dead properly painted in black letters. The ground has been cleared
+up by this efficient officer, and the cemetery carefully laid out into
+walks, adorned with flowers and trees. Colonel Moore, in his report to the
+Quartermaster-General, writes the following account:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The dead were found buried in trenches, on a site selected by the rebels,
+about three hundred yards from the stockade. The trenches varied in length
+from fifty to one hundred and fifty yards. The bodies in the trenches were
+from two to three feet below the surface, and in several instances, where
+the rain had washed away the earth, but a few inches. Additional earth
+was, however, thrown upon the graves, making them of still greater depth.
+So close were they buried, without coffins, or the ordinary clothing to
+cover their nakedness, that not more than twelve inches were allowed to
+each man. Indeed, the little tablets marking their resting-places,
+measuring hardly ten inches in width, almost touch each other. United
+States soldiers, while prisoners at Andersonville, had been detailed to
+inter their companions; and by a simple stake at the head of each grave,
+which bore a number corresponding with a similarly numbered name upon the
+Andersonville hospital record, I was enabled to identify, and mark with a
+neat tablet, similar to those in the cemeteries at Washington, the number,
+name, rank, regiment, company, and date of death of twelve thousand four
+hundred and sixty-one graves; there being but four hundred and fifty-one
+that bore the sad inscription, &#8216;Unknown U. S. Soldier.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>Extract from letters of the rebel Senator Foote, dated Montreal, June 21,
+1865.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Touching the Congressional report referred to, I have this to say: A
+month or two anterior to the date of said report, I learned from a
+government officer of respectability, that the prisoners of war then
+confined in and about Richmond were suffering severely from want of
+provisions. He told me, further, that it was manifest to him that a
+systematic scheme was on foot for subjecting these unfortunate men to
+starvation; that the Commissary-General, Mr. Northrup (a most wicked and
+heartless wretch), had addressed a communication to Mr. Seddon, the
+Secretary of War, proposing to withhold meat altogether from military
+prisoners then in custody, and to give them nothing but bread and
+vegetables; and that Mr. Seddon had indorsed the document containing this
+communication affirmatively. I learned, further, that by calling upon
+Major Ould, the commissioner for exchange of prisoners, I would be able to
+obtain further information upon the subject. I went to Major Ould
+immediately, and obtained the desired information. Being utterly unwilling
+to countenance such barbarity for a moment,&mdash;regarding, indeed, the honor
+of the whole South as concerned in the affair,&mdash;I proceeded without delay
+to the hall of the House of Representatives, called the attention of that
+strangely constituted body to the subject, and insisted upon an immediate
+committee of investigation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>As to the capacity of the bakery, any one can make his own estimates from
+the plan given. The foreman of the government bakery at Nashville, gives
+his views in the following note:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;<span class="smcap">Sir</span>: Our system in wheaten flour bread is, five men bake six ovens
+full in the twelve hours; one oven full, 36 pans; 9 loaves (18
+rations) in each pan; 36 pans &times; 18 = 648 &times; 6 ovens full = 3888 &times; 2
+(for twenty-four hours) = 7776 rations: this is done by two ovens. Say
+six men on each oven (any more would be in the way), two and a half
+hours to knead and bake each oven full (almost impossible), ten ovens
+full in the twelve hours in the day time (two ovens five times full in
+the twelve hours), ten ovens full in the twelve hours in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>night
+time, each oven full 40 pans, 12 rations in each (20 oz. of corn
+bread); 40 pans &times; 12 = 480 &times; 10 for day&#8217;s work = 4800 + 4800 for night
+work = 9600 rations in the twenty-four hours.</p>
+
+<p>Sir, all the above are in the extreme.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Most respectfully,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">John Witherspoon</span>, Foreman U. S. Bakery.&#8221;</span></p></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>The hospital register gives the following data as to the number of
+prisoners present during each month, the number treated medically, and the
+average number of deaths:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td align="center" class="btrdoub">Month.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btrdoub">Number of<br />Prisoners.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btrdoub">Number in<br />Hospital.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btdoub">Average<br />Daily Deaths.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="btr">February, 1864</td>
+    <td class="btr" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">1,600</span></td>
+    <td class="btr" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">33</span></td>
+    <td class="bt" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">..</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">March,<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">4,603</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">909</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">9</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">April,<span style="margin-left: 2.65em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">7,875</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">870</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">19</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">May,<span style="margin-left: 2.75em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">13,486</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">1,190</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">23</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">June,<span style="margin-left: 2.75em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">22,352</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">1,605</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">40</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">July,<span style="margin-left: 3em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">28,689</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">2,156</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">56</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">August,<span style="margin-left: 1.75em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">32,193</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">3,709</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">99</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">September, "</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">17,733</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">3,026</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">89</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">October,<span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">5,885</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">2,245</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">51</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">November,<span style="margin-left: .4em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">2,024</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">242</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center">16</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">December,<span style="margin-left: .5em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">2,218</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">431</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">5</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">January, 1865</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">4,931</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">595</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">6</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">February,<span style="margin-left: .75em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">5,195</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">365</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">5</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bbrdoub">March,<span style="margin-left: 1.65em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="bbrdoub" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">4,800</span></td>
+    <td class="bbrdoub" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">140</span></td>
+    <td class="bbdoub" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">3</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The greatest number of deaths, on any single day, was on the 23d of
+August, 1864, and was 127, or one death every eleven minutes.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>The fact of the employment of blood-hounds is too notorious to admit of
+doubt. Many packs of dogs were kept, and a profitable business was done in
+the catching of escaped prisoners. Ben Harris was seen to receive pay for
+the capture of sixty prisoners, at thirty dollars apiece. That some of the
+pursued were killed in the forests during the pursuit, there is no doubt
+in the writer&#8217;s mind, from the evidence offered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>The following table was collated from the hospital records of the prison,
+and is believed, by the writer and clerks who were employed at the rebel
+office, to be quite correct:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td align="center" class="btrdoub">Month.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btrdoub">Deaths<br />in<br />Hospital.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btrdoub">Deaths<br />in<br />Stockade.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btrdoub">Deaths in <br />Small Pox<br />Hospital.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btdoub">Total.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="btr">February, 1864</td>
+    <td class="btr" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.75em;">1</span></td>
+    <td class="btr" align="center">..</td>
+    <td class="btr" align="center">..</td>
+    <td class="bt" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 2.25em;">1</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">March,<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">262</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">15</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">5</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">282</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">April,<span style="margin-left: 2.65em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">471</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">71</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">34</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">576</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">May,<span style="margin-left: 2.75em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">633</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">65</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">10</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">70</span>8</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">June,<span style="margin-left: 2.75em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">1,041</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">150</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">10</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">1,201</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">July,<span style="margin-left: 3em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">1,119</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">614</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">5</span></td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">1,738</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">August,<span style="margin-left: 1.75em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">1,489</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">1,592</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">..</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">3,081</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">September, "</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">1,255</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">1,423</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">..</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">2,678</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">October,<span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">1,294</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">301</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">..</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">1,595</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">November,<span style="margin-left: .4em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">494</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">..</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">..</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">494</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">December,<span style="margin-left: .5em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">166</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.75em;">2</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">..</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">168</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">January, 1865</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">191</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.75em;">8</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">..</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">199</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">February,<span style="margin-left: .75em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">147</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">..</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">..</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">147</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">March,<span style="margin-left: 1.65em;">"</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">100</span></td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">..</td>
+    <td class="br" align="center">..</td>
+    <td class="dent" align="center"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">100</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Total</td>
+    <td class="btr" align="center">8,663</td>
+    <td class="btr" align="center">4,241</td>
+    <td class="btr" align="center">64</td>
+    <td class="bt" align="center">12,968</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="btr" colspan="4">Hung in stockade for crime</td>
+    <td align="center" class="bb"><span style="margin-left: 2.25em;">6</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bbrdoub" colspan="4"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Total deaths as registered</span></td>
+    <td class="bbdoub" align="center">12,974</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The hospital records show that 17,873 patients were registered, and that
+823 of these were exchanged, and about 25 took the oath of allegiance,
+leaving 17,048 to be accounted for, giving a mortality of seventy-six per
+cent. Besides the registered dead, there were some who perished by the
+falling of the excavations in the stockade, and others destroyed by hounds
+and hunters in the forests.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>The meteorological tables and the vegetal charts of Blodgett will give the
+rain-fall of this region in comparison with the other districts of the
+United States.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>The following table, which was compiled by the author from the official
+records of the British army, gives the number of soldiers who were killed
+in action, or afterwards perished from their wounds, in many of the great
+battles of the British empire:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td align="center" class="btrdoub">Year.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btrdoub">Battles.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btrdoub">Total Strength<br />engaged.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btdoub">Estimated<br />Deaths.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" class="btr">1809.</td>
+    <td class="btr">Talavera,</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btr">22,100</td>
+    <td align="center" class="bt">1,445</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" class="br">1811.</td>
+    <td class="br">Albuera,</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">9,000</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="dent">1,358</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" class="br">1812.</td>
+    <td class="br">Salamanca,</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br">30,500</td>
+    <td align="center" class="dent"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">770</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" class="br">1813.</td>
+    <td class="br">Vittoria,</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br">42,000</td>
+    <td align="center" class="dent"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">890</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" class="br">1815.</td>
+    <td class="br">Ligny,</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br">...</td>
+    <td align="center" class="dent">...</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" class="br">..</td>
+    <td class="br">Quatre Bras,</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br">...</td>
+    <td align="center" class="dent">...</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" class="br">..</td>
+    <td class="br">Wavre,</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br">49,900</td>
+    <td align="center" class="dent">3,245</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" class="br">..</td>
+    <td class="br">Waterloo,</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br">...</td>
+    <td align="center" class="dent">...</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" class="br">..</td>
+    <td class="br">New Orleans,</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">6,000</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="dent"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">625</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center" class="bbr">1854.</td>
+    <td class="bbr">Crimea,</td>
+    <td align="center" class="bbr">...</td>
+    <td align="center" class="bb">4,595</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="3" class="bbrdoub"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Total number of deaths from wounds</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="bbdoub"><span style="margin-left: -.5em;">12,928</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">STATISTICS FROM THE CENSUS REPORTS OF 1860.</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Georgia.</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td align="center" class="btrdoub">Counties.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btrdoub">Corn,<br />bushels.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btrdoub">Wheat,<br />bushels.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btrdoub">Cotton,<br />bales.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btrdoub">Potatoes,<br />bushels.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btdoub">Peas and<br />Beans, bush.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="btr">Macon.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btr"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">313,906</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="btr">22,312</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btr">10,248</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btr"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">86,000</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="bt"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">37,836</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Lee.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">319,653</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="br"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">2,250</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="br">14,445</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">60,000</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="dent"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">34,599</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Sumter.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">386,892</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="br"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">8,396</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="br">14,423</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">92,234</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="dent"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">12,483</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bbr">Dougherty.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="bbr"><span style="margin-left: .75em;">356,812</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="bbr"><span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">553</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="bbr"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">9,580</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="bbr"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">56,310</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="bb"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">23,061</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bbrdoub"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Total.</span></td>
+    <td class="bbrdoub" align="center">1,377,263</td>
+    <td class="bbrdoub" align="center">33,511</td>
+    <td class="bbrdoub" align="center">48,696</td>
+    <td class="bbrdoub" align="center">294,544</td>
+    <td class="bbdoub" align="center">108,019</td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td align="center" class="btrdoub">Counties.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btrdoub">Land improved,<br />acres.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btrdoub">Land unimproved,<br />acres.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btdoub">Number of<br />Slaves.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="btr">Macon.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="btr"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">88,353</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="btr">108,176</td>
+    <td align="center" class="bt"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">4,865</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Lee.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">85,840</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="br">113,172</td>
+    <td align="center" class="dent"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">4,947</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="br">Sumter.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br">102,327</td>
+    <td align="center" class="br">160,742</td>
+    <td align="center" class="dent"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">4,890</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bbr">Dougherty.</td>
+    <td align="center" class="bbr"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">91,470</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="bbr"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">99,048</span></td>
+    <td align="center" class="bb"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">6,079</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="bbrdoub"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Total.</span></td>
+    <td class="bbrdoub" align="center">367,990</td>
+    <td class="bbrdoub" align="center">481,138</td>
+    <td class="bbdoub" align="center">20,781</td></tr></table>
+
+<p><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>There were, in 1860, nearly 600,000 cattle and swine in the State of
+Florida alone, whilst Maine had but 200,000 at the same time. Georgia and
+Alabama had together, in 1860, 5,000,000 of cattle and swine, and they
+produced during the same year more than 60,000,000 bushels of corn,
+4,000,000 bushels of wheat, and 13,000,000 bushels of potatoes. All New
+England, during the same period, produced but 1,000,000 bushels of wheat
+and 9,000,000 bushels of corn, although containing a million more people
+than Georgia and Alabama.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>The following is a copy of the order relating to the treatment of the
+rebel prisoners in the hands of the United States authorities. Contrast it
+with the rebel barbarities.</p>
+
+<p class="center">A.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="padding-right: 6em;"><span class="smcap">Office of Commissary General of Prisoners</span>,</span><br />
+<span style="padding-right: 10em;"><span class="smcap">Washington</span>, April 20, 1864.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">[<i>Circular.</i>]</p>
+
+<p>By authority of the War Department, the following Regulations will be
+observed at all stations where prisoners of war and political or state
+prisoners are held. The Regulations will supersede those issued from this
+office July 7, 1861:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I. The Commanding Officer at each station is held accountable for the
+discipline and good order of his command, and for the security of the
+prisoners; and will take such measures, with the means placed at his
+disposal, as will best secure these results. He will divide the prisoners
+into companies, and will cause written reports to be made to him of their
+condition every morning, showing the changes made during the preceding
+twenty-four hours, giving the names of the &#8220;joined,&#8221; &#8220;transferred,&#8221;
+&#8220;deaths,&#8221; &amp;c. At the end of every month, Commanders will send to the
+Commissary General of Prisoners a Return of Prisoners, giving names and
+details to explain &#8220;alterations.&#8221; If rolls of &#8220;joined&#8221; or &#8220;transferred&#8221;
+have been forwarded during the month, it will be sufficient to refer to
+them on the return, according to forms furnished.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>II. On the arrival of any prisoners at any station, a careful comparison
+of them with the rolls which accompany them will be made, and all errors
+on the rolls will be corrected. When no roll accompanies the prisoners,
+one will immediately be made out, containing all the information required,
+as correct as can be, from the statements of prisoners themselves. When
+the prisoners are citizens, the town, county, and State from which they
+come will be given on the rolls, under the headings Rank, Regiment, and
+Company. At stations where prisoners are received frequently, and in small
+parties, a list will be furnished every fifth day&mdash;the last one in the
+month may be for six days&mdash;of all prisoners received during the preceding
+five days. Immediately on their arrival, prisoners will be required to
+give up all arms and weapons of every description, of which the Commanding
+Officer will require an accurate list to be made. When prisoners are
+forwarded for exchange, duplicate parole rolls, signed by the prisoners,
+will be sent with them, and an ordinary roll will be sent to the
+Commissary General of Prisoners. When they are transferred from one
+station to another, an ordinary roll will be sent with them, and a copy of
+it to the Commissary General of Prisoners. In all cases, the officer
+charged with conducting prisoners will report to the officer under whose
+order he acts the execution of his service, furnishing a receipt for the
+prisoners delivered, and accounting by name for those not delivered; which
+report will be forwarded, without delay, to the Commissary General of
+Prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>III. The hospital will be under the immediate charge of the senior Medical
+Officer present, who will be held responsible to the Commanding Officer
+for its good order and the proper treatment of the sick. A fund for this
+hospital will be created, as for other hospitals. It will be kept separate
+from the fund of the hospital for the troops, and will be expended for the
+objects specified, and in the manner prescribed, in paragraph 1212,
+Revised Regulations for the Army of 1863, except that the requisition of
+the Medical Officer in charge, and the bill of purchase, before payment,
+shall be approved by the Commanding Officer. When this &#8220;fund&#8221; is
+sufficiently large, it may be expended also for shirts and drawers for the
+sick, the expense of washing clothes, articles for policing purposes, and
+all articles and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> objects indispensably necessary to promote the sanitary
+condition of the hospital.</p>
+
+<p>IV. Surgeons in charge of hospitals where there are prisoners of war will
+make to the Commissary General of Prisoners, through the Commanding
+Officer, semi-monthly reports of deaths, giving names, rank, regiment, and
+company; date and place of capture; date and cause of death; place of
+interment, and number of grave. Effects of deceased prisoners will be
+taken possession of by the Commanding Officer&mdash;the money and valuables to
+be reported to this office (see note on blank reports), the clothing of
+any value to be given to such prisoners as require it. Money left by
+deceased prisoners, or accruing from the sale of their effects, will be
+placed in the Prison Fund.</p>
+
+<p>V. A fund, to be called &#8220;The Prison Fund,&#8221; and to be applied in procuring
+such articles as may be necessary for the health and convenience of the
+prisoners, not expressly provided for by General Army Regulations, 1863,
+will be made by withholding from their rations such parts thereof as can
+be conveniently dispensed with. The Abstract of Issues to Prisoners, and
+Statement of the Prison Fund, shall be made out, commencing with the month
+of May, 1864, in the same manner as is prescribed for the Abstract of
+Issues to Hospital and Statement of the Hospital Fund (see paragraphs
+1209, 1215, and 1246, and Form 5, Subsistence Department, Army
+Regulations, 1863), with such modifications in language as may be
+necessary. The ration for issue to prisoners will be composed as follows,
+viz.:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td valign="top">Hard Bread,</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
+    <td>14 oz. per one ration, or<br />18 oz. Soft Bread one ration.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Corn Meal,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>18 oz. per one ration.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Beef,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>14<span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2.25em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Bacon or Pork,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>10<span style="margin-left: 1.25em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2.25em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Beans,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td><span style="margin-left: .5em;">6 qts. per 100 men.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Hominy or Rice,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td><span style="margin-left: .5em;">8</span> lbs.<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2.25em;">"</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sugar,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>14<span style="margin-left: .75em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2.25em;">"</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>R. Coffee,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td><span style="margin-left: .5em;">5</span> lbs. ground, or 7 lbs. raw, per 100 men.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Tea,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>18 oz. per 100 men.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Soap,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td><span style="margin-left: .5em;">4</span><span style="margin-left: .75em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2.25em;">"</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>Adamantine Candles,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td><span style="margin-left: .5em;">5</span> Candles per 100 men.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Tallow Candles,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td><span style="margin-left: .5em;">6</span><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2.75em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2.25em;">"</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Salt,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td><span style="margin-left: .5em;">2</span> qts.<span style="margin-left: 2.9em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2.25em;">"</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Molasses,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td><span style="margin-left: .5em;">1</span> qt.<span style="margin-left: 3.25em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2.25em;">"</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Potatoes,</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>30 lbs.<span style="margin-left: 3em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2.25em;">"</span></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>When beans are issued, hominy or rice will not be. If at any time it
+should seem advisable to make any change in this scale, the circumstances
+will be reported to the Commissary General of Prisoners for his
+consideration.</p>
+
+<p>VI. Disbursements to be charged against the Prison Fund will be made by
+the Commissary of Subsistence, on the order of the Commanding Officer; and
+all such expenditures of funds will be accounted for by the Commissary, in
+the manner prescribed for the disbursements of the Hospital Fund. When in
+any month the items of expenditures on account of the Prison Fund cannot
+be conveniently entered on the Abstract of Issues to Prisoners, a list of
+the articles and quantities purchased, prices paid, statement of services
+rendered, &amp;c., certified by the Commissary as correct, and approved by the
+Commanding Officer, will accompany the Abstract. In such cases it will
+only be necessary to enter on the Abstract of Issues the total amount of
+funds thus expended.</p>
+
+<p>VII. At the end of each calendar month, the Commanding Officer will
+transmit to the Commissary General of Prisoners a copy of the &#8220;Statement
+of the Prison Fund,&#8221; as shown in the Abstract of Issues for that month,
+with a copy of the list of expenditures specified in preceding paragraph,
+accompanied by vouchers, and will indorse thereon, or convey in letter of
+transmittal, such remarks as the matter may seem to require.</p>
+
+<p>VIII. The Prison Fund is a credit with the Subsistence Department, and at
+the request of the Commissary General of Prisoners may be transferred by
+the Commissary General of Subsistence in the manner prescribed by existing
+Regulations for the transfer of Hospital Fund.</p>
+
+<p>IX. With the Prison Fund may be purchased such articles, not provided for
+by regulations, as may be necessary for the health and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> proper condition
+of the prisoners, such as table furniture, cooking utensils, articles for
+policing, straw, the means for improving or enlarging the barracks or
+hospitals, &amp;c. It will also be used to pay clerks and other employees
+engaged in labors connected with prisoners. No barracks or other
+structures will be erected or enlarged, and no alterations made, without
+first submitting a plan and estimate of the cost to the Commissary General
+of Prisoners, to be laid before the Secretary of War for his approval; and
+in no case will the services of clerks or of other employees be paid for
+without the sanction of the Commissary General of Prisoners. Soldiers
+employed with such sanction will be allowed 40 cents per day when employed
+as clerks, stewards, or mechanics; 25 cents a day when employed as
+laborers.</p>
+
+<p>X. It is made the duty of the Quartermaster, or, when there is none, the
+Commissary, under the orders of the Commanding Officer, to procure all
+articles required, and to hire clerks or other employees. All bills for
+service or for articles purchased will be certified by the Quartermaster,
+and will be paid by the Commissary on the order of the Commanding Officer,
+who is held responsible that all expenditures are for authorized purposes.</p>
+
+<p>XI. The Quartermaster will be held accountable for all property purchased
+with the Prison Fund, and he will make a return of it to the Commissary
+General of Prisoners at the end of each calendar month, which will show
+the articles on hand on the first day of the month; the articles
+purchased, issued, and expended during the month; and the articles
+remaining on hand. The return will be supported by abstracts of the
+articles purchased, issued, and expended, certified by the Quartermaster,
+and approved by the Commanding Officer.</p>
+
+<p>XII. The Commanding Officer will cause requisitions to be made by his
+Quartermaster for such clothing as may be absolutely necessary for the
+prisoners, which requisition will be approved by him, after a careful
+inquiry as to the necessity, and submitted for the approval of the
+Commissary General of Prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>The clothing will be issued by the Quartermaster to the prisoners, with
+the assistance and under the supervision of an officer detailed for the
+purpose, whose certificate that the issue has been made in his presence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+will be the Quartermaster&#8217;s voucher for the clothing issued. From the 30th
+of April to the 1st of October, neither drawers nor socks will be allowed,
+except to the sick. When army clothing is issued, buttons and trimmings
+will be taken off the coats, and the skirts will be cut so short that the
+prisoners who wear them will not be mistaken for United States soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>XIII. The Sutler for the prisoners is entirely under the control of the
+Commanding Officer, who will require him to furnish the prescribed
+articles, and at reasonable rates. For this privilege the Sutler will be
+taxed a small amount by the Commanding Officer, according to the amount of
+his trade, which tax will be placed in the hands of the Commissary to make
+part of the Prison Fund.</p>
+
+<p>XIV. All money in possession of prisoners, or received by them, will be
+taken charge of by the Commanding Officer, who will give receipts for it
+to those to whom it belongs. Sales will be made to prisoners by the Sutler
+on orders on the Commanding Officer, which orders will be kept as vouchers
+in the settlement of the individual accounts. The Commanding Officer will
+procure proper books in which to keep an account of all moneys deposited
+in his hands, these accounts to be always subject to inspection by the
+Commissary General of Prisoners, or other inspecting officer. When
+prisoners are transferred from the post, the moneys belonging to them,
+with a statement of the amount due each, will be sent with them, to be
+turned over by the officer in charge to the officer to whom the prisoners
+are delivered, who will give receipts for the money. When prisoners are
+paroled, their money will be returned to them.</p>
+
+<p>XV. All articles sent by friends to prisoners, if proper to be delivered,
+will be carefully distributed as the donors may request; such as are
+intended for the sick passing through the hands of the Surgeon, who will
+be responsible for their proper use. Contributions must be received by an
+officer, who will be held responsible that they are delivered to the
+person for whom they are intended. All uniform, clothing, boots, or
+equipments of any kind for military service, weapons of all kinds, and
+intoxicating liquors, including malt liquors, are among the contraband
+articles. The material for outer clothing should be gray, or some dark
+mixed color, and of inferior quality. Any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> excess of clothing, over what
+is required for immediate use, is contraband.</p>
+
+<p>XVI. When prisoners are seriously ill, their nearest relatives, being
+loyal, may be permitted to make them short visits; but under no other
+circumstances will visitors be admitted without the authority of the
+Commissary General of Prisoners. At those places where the guard is inside
+the enclosure, persons having official business to transact with the
+Commander or other officer will be admitted for such purposes, but will
+not be allowed to have any communication with the prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>XVII. Prisoners will be permitted to write and to receive letters, not to
+exceed one page of common letter paper each, provided the matter is
+strictly of a private nature. Such letters must be examined by a reliable
+non-commissioned officer, appointed for that purpose by the Commanding
+Officer, before they are forwarded or delivered to the prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>XVIII. Prisoners who have been reported to the Commissary General of
+Prisoners will not be paroled or released except by authority of the
+Secretary of War.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">W. Hoffman</span>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Col. 3d Infantry, Commissary General of Prisoners.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p class="center">NOTE.</p>
+
+<p class="note">The publishers have the names of all of those soldiers who perished at
+Andersonville, the date of death, and the number of their graves; and they
+contemplate publishing the list hereafter, if sufficient encouragement is
+offered.</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>Address</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td><td>LEE &amp; SHEPARD,</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td><td>149 Washington Street, Boston.</td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+
+<p class="note">The Illustrations were drawn by the author from sketches upon the spot,
+and from photographs which were taken by the rebels during the occupation
+of the prison. The figures are by Charles A. Barry, Esq., and the engraving by Henry Marsh, Esq.</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td><small>NUMBER</small></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td>View from Main Gate (from rebel photograph)</td><td align="right"><a href="#frontis">2</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td>Vignette</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">III.</td><td>Bird&#8217;s-eye View of Stockade</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IV.</td><td>View of Officers&#8217; Stockade</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">V.</td><td>View of Interior of the Prison</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VI.</td><td>View of Graveyard (from rebel photograph)</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VII.</td><td>View of Dead Line (from rebel photograph)</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VIII.</td><td>View of Gates</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IX.</td><td>View of Mud Huts</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">X.</td><td>View of Burial (from rebel photograph)</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XI.</td><td>View of Bakery</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XII.</td><td>View of Kitchen</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XIII.</td><td>View of Blood-hound Hut</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XIV.</td><td>View of Utensils used by the Prisoners</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XV.</td><td>Map of Georgia</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_17">18</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XVI.</td><td>Plan of Andersonville</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_21">20</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XVII.</td><td>Plan of Prison</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_51">50</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XVIII.</td><td>Plan of Bakery</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_62">60</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>INDEX.</h2>
+
+<table width="65%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">Page</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#BOOK_FIRST">BOOK FIRST.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Introduction. Description of Andersonville: Locality, Arrangement, and Construction of the Camp.</i></td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_7">7-28</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#BOOK_SECOND">BOOK SECOND.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Descriptive: the Number of Prisoners compared with the Armies of
+Alexander and Napoleon. The Dead compared with the Losses of the British Soldiers at Waterloo, Crimea, Spain, Mexican War, &amp;c.</i></td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_28">28-40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#BOOK_THIRD">BOOK THIRD.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Describes at length the Stockade, with all the Arrangements, with Comparisons, Ratio of Density, &amp;c.</i></td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_40">40-68</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#BOOK_FOURTH">BOOK FOURTH.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Relates to the Alimentation of the Prisoners, with Comparisons with
+the Dietaries of Foreign Armies, Hospitals, Prisons, Scarcity of Food in the Prison, Abundance of Food in the Country, &amp;c.</i></td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_68">68-99</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#BOOK_FIFTH">BOOK FIFTH.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Review of the Hospital&mdash;its Arrangement and Results.</i></td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_99">99-113</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#BOOK_SIXTH">BOOK SIXTH.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Relates to the Mortality as compared with that of our Armies and Prisons, also with Foreign Armies, Prisons, and Hospitals, &amp;c.</i></td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_113">113-142</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#BOOK_SEVENTH">BOOK SEVENTH.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Relates to the Legal Right of Death over the Captive, with the Views of the Ablest Writers of Past Times, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Mirabeau,
+&amp;c. The Treatment of Prisoners of War by the Rebels contrasted with Usages of Civilized Nations. Regulations of the
+United States. Letter of General Butler on the Exchange of Prisoners. Complicity of Jeff Davis, &amp;c., &amp;c.</i></td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_142">142-194</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#BOOK_EIGHTH">BOOK EIGHTH.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Review of the Physical and Moral Causes,&mdash;Climatological, Ethnological, Social, &amp;c.,&mdash;that have led to the Degeneration of the
+White Race in the South, and the consequent Degree of Perversity and Barbarity, &amp;c.</i></td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_194">194-242</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><a href="#APPENDIX">APPENDIX.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>Notes. Statistical Tables. General Orders of the United States in Reference to Treatment of their Prisoners.</i></td>
+    <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_243">243-254</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Martyria, by Augustus C. Hamlin
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,7675 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Martyria, by Augustus C. Hamlin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Martyria
+       or Andersonville Prison
+
+Author: Augustus C. Hamlin
+
+Release Date: October 21, 2011 [EBook #37813]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTYRIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
+Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE MAIN GATE. Taken from rebel photographs of
+the prison when it contained thirty-five thousand men. Original picture in
+possession of the author.]
+
+
+
+
+  MARTYRIA;
+
+  OR,
+
+  ANDERSONVILLE PRISON.
+
+
+  BY AUGUSTUS C. HAMLIN.
+  LATE MEDICAL INSPECTOR U. S. ARMY, ROYAL ANTIQUARIAN, ETC.
+
+
+  _Illustrated by the Author._
+
+
+  BOSTON:
+  LEE AND SHEPARD.
+  1866.
+
+
+
+
+  Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
+  A. C. HAMLIN,
+  In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Maine.
+
+
+  Cambridge Press
+  DAKIN AND METCALF.
+
+  STEREOTYPED AT THE
+  BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.
+
+
+
+
+  TO THE MEMORY OF THE MEN
+  WHO STEADILY UPHELD THE CAUSE OF CIVIL LIBERTY,
+  AND WHO PREFERRED LINGERING DEATH,
+  IN THE MIDST OF UNPARALLELED PRIVATIONS AND HORRORS,
+  RATHER THAN DISHONOR AND DENIAL OF THEIR BIRTHRIGHTS,
+  _THIS BOOK_
+  IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+
+The author presents for review neither style nor language: he offers
+simply the story of the wrong and the heroism, the cause and effect, as it
+rises in his mind.
+
+Neither does he, at this late date, seek to rekindle the smouldering
+embers of hate and conflict, nor, Antony-like, attack persons under the
+recital of the wrongs. Vengeance does not belong to the human race. There
+are times in the history of men when human invectives are without force.
+"There are deeds of which men are no judges, and which mount, without
+appeal, direct to the tribunal of God."
+
+AUGUSTUS CHOATE HAMLIN.
+
+BANGOR, September, 1866.
+
+
+
+
+MARTYRIA.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+                      "They never fail who die
+  In a great cause.    *      *      *      *
+  They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts
+  Which overpower all others, and conduct
+  The world at last to freedom."
+                                        _Byron._
+
+
+I.
+
+History weighs the social institutions of men in the scale of Humanity.
+Time, slowly but surely, accumulates the evidence which relates to their
+materials. It calmly but firmly unveils the statues which men erect as
+their principles, and with "that retributive justice which God has
+implanted in our very acts, as a conscience more sacred than the fatalism
+of the ancients," lays bare the secret springs of action which have
+prompted the deeds of heroism or baseness, of virtue or crime.
+
+Nations are political institutions, and like the system of nature, which
+is governed by positive and fixed laws, so they likewise are swayed and
+directed by mysterious forces, and influenced and moulded into form by
+those external circumstances which are greatly within the control of man.
+Their rise and decadence is in direct ratio to the nature and integrity of
+their customs, the structure of their social fabrics, the vigor of the
+spirit of independence which animates their thoughts, or the strength of
+the despotism which consumes their vitals. "Liberty brings benedictions in
+spite of nature, and in defiance of the same nature tyranny brings
+maledictions. Slavery has always produced only villany, vice, and misery."
+
+Men cannot perpetuate a creed or a system that is not founded on the
+eternal principles of justice and virtue, no more than they can control
+the elements--no more than they can remove or obliterate those
+geographical boundaries, beyond which the human races cannot pass in
+pursuit of the forms of wealth or the dreams of ambition.
+
+The Belgian, who has studied so long and so faithfully the laws of
+metaphysics, exclaims, "All those things which appear to be left to the
+free will, the passions, or the degree of intelligence of men, are
+regulated by laws as fixed, immutable, and eternal as those which govern
+the phenomena of the natural world!"
+
+
+II.
+
+Along the southern tier of the great States which form the American
+Republic, whose gigantic structure and almost supernatural vigor already
+overshadow and animate the older civilizations of the world, we observe
+vast extents of level and alluvial lands and deltas, or "rather a series
+of littoral bands of remarkable disposition," which the ocean left when
+receding from the mountain shores of the interior to its present limits,
+or which slowly and gradually emerged from their watery bed in the
+upheavals during the long intervals of the earth's ages.
+
+This immense territory, stretching from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, and
+hardly broken throughout this long distance by undulations of the soil,
+embraces more than six hundred thousand square miles--an extent greater
+than that of France and the States of the Germanic Confederation combined.
+Eight millions of human souls inhabit the one, whilst one hundred millions
+people the other. Ignorance and brutality darken the one, intelligence and
+humanity illuminate the other.
+
+
+III.
+
+The proximity of the sea, the configuration of the soil, the presence or
+absence of mountains, affect the growth and character of nations, and
+leave their impress upon their institutions. Climate and purity of blood
+complete the determination in the problem of life, the progress and degree
+of development. Upon these external causes also depend, in a great
+measure, the vigor of the imagination, the sentiment of the grand and the
+beautiful, the vivacity and purity of the soul.
+
+The cold breezes of the temperate zones conduce men to wisdom, reason, and
+philosophy. The enervating atmospheres of hot climes incline the mind and
+body to repose, and often pervert the notions of natural justice. In the
+one, the mind is ever delighted and refreshed by the varying scenes of
+nature; in the other, the forms of the mournful and the terrible alone
+excite the imagination.
+
+
+IV.
+
+We have seen these lands occupied for more than two centuries by the
+emigrants from European countries; we have seen the reckless adventurer,
+the noble exile, the fugitive from justice, the outcast of society,
+blended together here in the experiment of colonization.
+
+The form is still the same, for form is always more persistent than
+material in organic life, but the sterling and generous qualities of the
+primitive stock have greatly changed.
+
+We have seen in these lands Slavery--that relic of barbarism, that
+leprosy, the foulest that ever preyed upon the vitals of any
+state--transplanted by that accursed Dutch ship, under the guise of
+Humanity, flourish, increase, and assume, during this brief period, the
+proportions of a despotism so powerful, so tenacious, as to defy and
+resist, almost successfully, the entire strength and resources of the
+Republic, enriching the slave faction with enormous wealth, but debasing
+and deteriorating the morals, the blood of the poor and non-slaveholding
+whites.
+
+This increase of three millions of black men were held in bondage as human
+cattle by a few thousand white men. To these unfortunate creatures society
+extended no generosity, no consideration, but what reduced them still
+lower in the scale of organized beings, and chained them more closely in
+the sordid and selfish interests of their remorseless masters. To teach
+the black man to read, even the light of the divine Gospel, was a matter
+of fine, and imprisonment, and sometimes death.
+
+
+V.
+
+Seeking to perpetuate this atrocious system, this right of brute force
+over the helpless black, and establish a despotism with Slavery as its
+basis, the arrogant faction boldly took up arms against the Republic.
+"When Fortune," says the Latin historian, "is determined upon the ruin of
+a people, she can so blind them as to render them insensible to danger,
+even of the greatest magnitude."
+
+Their appeals to arms were in the name of justice and glory, but they were
+without the echo of liberty and humanity. They summoned the masses of poor
+whites, whom they had degraded below the level of the slave, to rise and
+fight for their liberties, which were as empty as the winds of the desert.
+There were no liberties, no privileges for the poor whites, but to curse
+poverty and question God's providence.
+
+The individual desires of the few had usurped and swallowed up the rights
+of society. There was no society but the relation between the black man
+and his master. The law, order, and force were all within the control of
+the rich slaveholder.
+
+The masses were either their tools, or too abject to be considered as
+dangerous; too ignorant to be feared as seditious, too poor to be regarded
+as anything more than trash, below the level and the value of the negro.
+This condition of the poor whites was the result of physical, political,
+and moral causes, long and silently at work.
+
+
+VI.
+
+The pretence for strife was resistance to oppression, and the extension
+and perfection of liberty to the masses; yet they impelled the people to
+passion, without mingling a single truth with the illusions with which
+they decorated their standards. Whilst they talked of the independent
+spirit of the new government, and the glory of resisting the oppressive
+policy of the invaders, every act and edict gathered closer and stronger
+the bonds which degraded and burdened the poor white.
+
+The owner of seven slaves was exempt from the hazard of battle, but
+poverty and starvation of family were no causes of exemption for the
+non-slaveholder.
+
+The real design, concealed by the strife, was the foundation of an empire
+of gigantic and seductive form, radiant and glittering with the splendid
+architecture of aristocratic sovereignty, but without reason or
+conscience.
+
+The resolve was to control the production of the principal staples of
+industry and trade, and subject the commercial world to their caprices.
+
+Thus they preferred the intoxications of conquest, the gratifications of
+lust, to the triumphs of true civilization, to the congratulations of a
+redeemed race. They cared not for reputation among the nations of the
+earth, nor immortality, nor renown; and they neglected or despised those
+happy stars which, now and then, conduct men and races to glory. "Glory
+belongs to the God in heaven; upon the earth it is the lot of virtue, and
+not of genius--of that virtue which is useful, grand, beneficent,
+brilliant, heroic."
+
+
+VII.
+
+Revolutions almost always spring from the noble and generous enthusiasm of
+youth; but seditions arise from the vulgar and ignoble crowd, or from the
+outcast few, who would, for wealth, sacrifice all that honor and nature
+hold dear; or for the meaner gratifications of self-aggrandizement, would
+crumble into dust, and scatter to the winds of the earth, the noblest
+institutions and laws of mankind. Who will say that this resort to arms
+was an insurrection of justice in favor of the weak, or that it was a
+revolt of nature against tyranny?
+
+The agitations of revolutions stir up the innermost natures of men, and
+from the revelations out of the depths appear the extreme qualities of the
+soul, elevated or debased, according to the inspirations from Heaven or
+the influence of a vile cause.
+
+What rays of intellectual light, what flashes of genuine eloquence, burst
+forth during the tempestuous times of this period to illumine their
+progress or define the glory of their future? When the minds and
+imaginations of men are moved in civil war, they betray, in spite of
+themselves, the nobility or meanness of their cause. Even the ignorant,
+says Quintilian, when moved by the violent passions, do not seek for what
+they are to say. It is the soul alone that renders them eloquent. Only the
+hoarse clamors for revenge, or the hollow laugh against the remonstrance
+of humanity, do we hear from their tribunals and halls of legislation.
+Fatuity possessed their minds, and rather than not succeed in their
+designs, the leaders would have preferred a dreary solitude to the best
+interests of humanity, or, like Erostratus, they would have rather burned
+down the temple of liberty itself.
+
+  "Pejus deteriusque tyrannide sive injusto imperio, bellum civile."
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Civil liberty is again triumphant, but at what a sacrifice of human life!
+What a deluge of blood has been poured over nature's fields, where the
+contending armies have struggled together! A half a million of lives have
+been yielded up in this the nation's sacrifice.
+
+"The tree of Liberty," said Barere, "is best watered with the blood of
+tyrants;" but how few among this immense host of victims were the
+originators of the sedition! The merciless schemers of bloody and cruel
+wars rarely expose their precious lives to the chances of combat.
+
+During the existence of the slave system, and the long period of its
+progress, what has it produced to enrich the heritage of the human mind?
+Where are the holy and pure traditions, the bright recollections?
+
+Neither wisdom nor philosophy has appeared, nor those arts which serve to
+form the "happy genius of nations." There are countries where the march of
+ideas is accelerated only by the force of selfish passions; and
+philanthropy, that true index of civilization, only appears when it is
+required by mercantilism or political ambition. The aims and influences of
+commercial and political life can debase and destroy the noblest impulses.
+"It is a grand and beautiful spectacle," exclaims the eloquent Rousseau,
+"to see man issue forth out of nothingness, as it were, by his own proper
+efforts, to dissipate, by the light of his reason, the shadows in which
+nature had enveloped him, to elevate himself even above himself, to glance
+with his spirit even into the celestial regions, to pass, with the stride
+of a giant, even as the sun, through the vast expanse of the universe, and
+what is still greater and more difficult, to enter one's self, and study
+there man, and to understand his nature, his duties, and his end."
+
+
+IX.
+
+Civilization claims to introduce the elements of peace, happiness, and
+prosperity into the structure of society, and to transform the sword and
+the spear into the harmless implements of husbandry; yet with a swifter
+pace the engines of war increase, man thirsts as fiercely for the blood of
+his fellow-man, and the dormant spirit of destruction is as ready to
+illume the torch, as in the reckless times of past history. Even in this
+enlightened age we are constantly reminded of the truth and force of the
+remark of Hannibal: "No great state can long remain at rest. If it has no
+enemies abroad, it finds them at home; as overgrown bodies seem safe from
+external injuries, but suffer grievous inconveniences from their own
+strength."
+
+The motives of self-aggrandizement by force of arms appear to be innate in
+human nature. We see men maintaining monstrous ideas. We see great armies
+singularly swayed by single minds, in defiance of truth and reason. The
+soldiers of Catiline fought to the last gasp, and perished to a man,
+embracing the eagle of Marius--"Marius, who sprang from the dust the
+expiring Gracchi flung towards heaven," and who first dared attack the
+aristocratic nobility, and defend the down-trodden rights of the oppressed
+plebeian. There are mysterious laws, which seem to regulate the expansion
+and the decay of the human families. There are unseen forces which now and
+then impel vicious men to their own destruction.
+
+
+X.
+
+ANDERSONVILLE--a name which has been stamped so deeply by cruelty into the
+pages of American history--is one of those miserable little hamlets, of a
+score of scattered and dilapidated farm-houses, which relieve the monotony
+of the wide and dreary level of sand plains, which, covered with immense
+forests, interspersed with fens, marshes, corn and cotton fields, stretch
+away, in unbroken surface, from Macon down to the Florida shores. The
+plantations, which were tilled by slave labor, are almost concealed in the
+recesses of the forests, so thickly wooded is the country. Here and there
+only, where the savannas are of unusual fertility, do the cleared lands
+give a wide and extended view of the landscape, but the primeval pines
+everywhere hide the distant horizon.
+
+[Illustration: J. H. Bufford's lith. Boston, Mass.]
+
+The song of the laborer rarely disturbs the silence, which is oppressive.
+Song is the impulsive outburst of a heart filled with joy and hope. The
+slave has neither. His voice is the cry of anguish, of a soul burdened and
+crushed, and is more like the moan of the winds than the accents of
+civilized man.
+
+The physical aspect of the white inhabitant indicates the local
+impressions and inspirations--listless and apathetic in look, lank and
+haggard in form. There are countries, there are even limited localities,
+where the moral and mental faculties expand in accordance with external
+impressions. The laws of beauty and deformity are regulated by the
+condition and circumstances of the outward world to a remarkable degree.
+
+The landscape, the sunshine, and the luxuriance at Corinth and Athens gave
+rise to the most beautiful flowers of art and love, and to that wonderful
+type of human beauty, which the world has since lost; but the rugged and
+stern defiles of the mountains of Calabria, of Albania, and the dreary
+marsh fens of the Campagna, or of the Netherlands, still produce
+characters that rival in ferocity the hyenas of the desert.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nature appears to have selected for man the sites where are performed the
+noble acts which charm and enlighten the mind, or the dark deeds which
+cause men to ponder and regret the frailty of their organization. "It
+seems that the instincts of war conduct from age to age the armies of
+successive empires to the same rendezvous of contest, and that geography
+has laid off in advance certain fields of battle, as a sort of arena for
+these great immolations of humanity." "Hungary," said Sobieski, "is a
+clump of earth, which, if squeezed, would give out but human blood." The
+name and look of Andersonville will always be synonymous with and
+suggestive of cruelty.
+
+
+XI.
+
+At the distance of eight hundred paces from the railway which connects the
+town with Central Georgia on the north and the Gulf of Mexico on the
+south, appears the Prison Stockade, which was located by the Winders of
+the Rebel army, at the suggestion of Howell Cobb, in 1863, and occupied
+for its specific purpose in February, 1864.
+
+It is situated about fifty miles south of Macon, and its position on the
+geographical map is defined by longitude 7 deg. 30' west from Washington,
+latitude 32 deg. 10' north of the equator, corresponding in the western
+hemisphere to the central region of Algiers.
+
+A dense forest of primeval trees covered the spot which was selected by
+the engineers when they marked out the line of the prison. The massive
+pines were levelled by the strong arms of several hundred negro slaves,
+and when their branches were cut away, they were placed side by side,
+standing upright in the deep ditches, which were excavated with
+regularity, and in parallel lines, north and south, east and west. Thus
+were formed the boundaries of the palisade, wherein nearly forty thousand
+human beings were to be herded at one time. The surface of the earth
+was cleared completely away, so as to give full play to the elements of
+destruction.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF THE STOCKADE as the rebels left it.--Page 19.]
+
+Neither shade nor shelter was there to protect from the storm, or from the
+merciless rays of an almost tropical sun. Not a tree nor a shrub was left
+there to cast a shadow over the arid and calcined earth. There was simply
+a rampart of logs, rising from fifteen to eighteen feet in height above
+the surface of the ground. This rampart measured at first ten hundred and
+ten feet in length by seven hundred and seventy-nine feet in width, and
+was surrounded, at a distance of sixty paces, by another palisade of rough
+logs more than twelve feet in height. It was afterwards lengthened, in the
+autumn of 1864, to sixteen hundred and twenty feet.
+
+This enormous structure still stands there, with its giant walls of trees,
+undisturbed.
+
+  *    *    *     "May none those marks efface,
+  For they appeal from tyranny to God."
+
+
+XII.
+
+A small stream of water, which arose in two branches scarcely a thousand
+paces distant, in bogs and fens whose bitterness and impurities continued
+with the current, passed through the central portion of the enclosed space
+with sufficient volume to supply the wants of many thousand men, if it had
+been properly received, protected, and economized.
+
+During the summer many springs burst forth from the soil on either bank of
+the stream within the prison; but the water, neglected by the military
+guards, soon became defiled by the feet and grime of the prisoners, and
+then this portion of the enclosure, embracing several acres, was
+transformed into a deep and horrible mire, quivering with those disgusting
+forms of organic life which are produced by putrid and decaying matter.
+The stench would have corroded the surface of adamant.
+
+Within the two lines of palisades, and on the western side, was erected
+the single bakery which was to furnish the munition bread for the
+prisoners. Upon the hill to the northward, at the distance of two hundred
+paces from the outer line, was strangely placed the building which was
+known as the _kitchen_. The reason why this cookery was placed so far from
+water, and the direct line of communication with the main gate, the
+projectors alone can tell. Consider the enormous weight of provisions and
+water which full rations to even ten thousand men would require daily.
+Consider, then, the distance from the railway depot, the circuitous route
+to the entrance of the prison, the mode, and inefficient transportation,
+and you will have an idea of the ignorance, the carelessness, the
+perversity or wilfulness, or call it what you will, which prevailed here
+in the prison system, if system it can be termed.
+
+
+XIII.
+
+To the south, on the high land which overlooked the prison and its
+appendages, was erected the two-story building which served as quarters
+and offices for the officers and clerks. Along the same elevated ridge
+were located the well-built huts of the guards, who were selected
+from the Confederate Reserves of Georgia, under the command of Howell
+Cobb, and numbered from three to five thousand men. Farther to the west,
+along the same airy and commanding ridge, and close to the track of the
+railway, appears the large two-story wooden buildings, which were built
+and arranged, carefully and comfortably, for the sick of the rebel guards.
+
+[Illustration: _PLAN OF PRISON GROUNDS_ ANDERSONVILLE
+
+_Measured by Dr. Hamlin Copy right secured_]
+
+
+XIV.
+
+To the south-east, and at the distance of a stone's throw from the prison,
+were placed the few miserable and decayed tents which were to serve as
+hospitals, in mockery of science and humanity.
+
+To-day the traces of this useless philanthropy have passed away, but the
+results are fearfully shown in the field to the northward, where thirteen
+thousand soldiers sleep in death,--the harvest of one short year! "Here,"
+said one of the surgeons to the inquirer, "death might be predicted with
+almost absolute certainty."
+
+Here came a medical officer of the highest rank in the Rebel army, and one
+of the most eminent _savans_ of the South, to study the physiology and
+philosophy of starvation. The notes of that fearful clinic are preserved,
+and may some future day startle the scientific world with their clearness,
+their candor, their positive evidence of the cause of death. Thus the
+scalpel silences the argument, the reasoning of sophistry.
+
+That there was scarcity of medicines, and all of those delicacies known to
+the cultivated or luxurious taste, there can be no doubt. Neither the
+country, nor the desires of the people, produced or favored their
+production; but let us thank Heaven there is proof that there were some
+among the medical officers in whom the virtues of the heart were not
+entirely reversed, who did protest against the needless deficiencies and
+the system of treatment.
+
+The sufferings here were less poignant than in the pen; for nature always
+comes to the relief of dying mortals, and tempers the pangs of
+dissolution.
+
+Food was demanded, but it was wanting. Shelter and the pure air of heaven
+were prayed for by gasping men; even these, too, were wanting. Yet close
+by rose the gigantic pines, of the growth of centuries, standing in all
+the grandeur of the primeval forests, and offering to the disordered
+vision and senses of the dying wretches grateful shades, cool bowers, or
+the images of home, and the forms of the well-loved, as the faint and
+sinking traveller beholds them in the far-off mirage of the desert.
+
+
+XV.
+
+The dense pine forests on either side still attest the luxuriant growth,
+which was regarded at the time of its selection as the finest timbered
+land of all Georgia. These immense pines are even yet so near as to cast
+their lengthened shadows, at morning and evening, over the accursed area
+where so many noble men perished for want of shelter from the heat of the
+noonday sun, the chilling dews of evening, and the frequent rain. The
+shade temperature of this place sometimes rose to the height of 105 deg., even
+110 deg. Fahrenheit. The sun temperature within the stockade must have
+risen to 120 deg. and upwards, for the height of the walls prevented the free
+circulation of the air. The heat of this region during the days of summer
+is unusually great.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF OFFICERS' STOCKADE, with rebel camps and hospitals
+in the distance.--Page 21.]
+
+Its elevation above the tide level is only about three hundred feet; and
+the hot blasts from the burning surface of the Gulf of Mexico, which is
+only about one hundred and fifty miles distant, sweep up over it
+northward, without being deviated or modified by ranges of mountains. The
+intervening country is unbroken, from distance to distance, by the
+undulation of the soil, and resembles more the level of a wide, green sea
+than the usual configurations of the solid earth. It bears the reputation
+of being unhealthy, and it is not strange; for there are certain isolated
+local climates which are absolutely pestilential, as we observe in the
+detached mountain groups and table lands of India and Southern Europe. Its
+isothermal line passes through Tunis and Algiers, and the hyetal charts
+show it to be one of the most humid regions in America.
+
+Fifty-five inches of rain fall here annually, whilst Maine, with her
+constant fogs, receives but forty-two and England but thirty-two.
+
+Was it possible for human life to endure these extremes of heat, rendered
+still more positive by exposure to the damp and chilly dews of the nights
+of southern latitude? It is a well-known fact, that neither men nor
+animals can labor or expose themselves with impunity to the rays of the
+noonday sun of tropical climes. Man, of all terrestrial animals, is the
+least supplied with natural protectives.
+
+
+XVI.
+
+Around this ill-fated spot were stretched a cordon of connected
+earthworks, which completely enveloped the palisades, and commanded, with
+seventeen guns, every nook and corner of the enclosure. The forts were
+well constructed, and provided against the chances of sudden and desperate
+assaults. The cannon were well mounted, and placed in barbette and
+embrasure. Lunettes and redoubts covered all the approaches to the two
+great gates.
+
+Several regiments of the rebel reserves constantly occupied the forts and
+trenches, and guarded closely every avenue. Escape was impossible.
+
+
+XVII.
+
+To preside over this assemblage, with its arranged, premeditated, and
+atrocious system, were selected men well known for their energy of purpose
+and their ferocity of soul, and who hoped, like the Parthian, that cruelty
+might seem to the eye of man a warlike spirit. Winder has already been
+summoned to his God, without affording to the tribunals of men the
+opportunity to judge of his justification or his shame. The wretched Wirz,
+arraigned and convicted by the most overwhelming evidence, has since paid
+the severest penalty which the majesty of violated law can exact on earth.
+
+The instincts of nature always demand a certain respect for the memory of
+the dead, no matter how the death may take place. But shall this shield
+for the executioner obstruct justice, or reverence and admiration for the
+remembrance of the virtues of the nobler victims? Let us bring to light,
+and praise the heroism of noble men, even if we violate and break to
+pieces the sacred mausoleums where a thousand criminals lie buried.
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+The dispositions of man depend greatly upon the associations of his early
+life. The youthful and pliant organization is easily impressed by the
+natural scenes of birthplace and childhood, and the effect of the views of
+the savage mountain gorges, the dark and gloomy forests, or the distant
+landscape, smiling in the rays of the sun, and decorated with the most
+beautiful works of human industry, are felt hereafter in the labors and
+conceptions of manhood. Men sometimes are but the living reflections of
+the savage scenes among which they have been reared, and seldom do we see
+them arise from that immense and world-wide mass of fallen humanity to
+cherish anew, to maintain the noble principles of this earthly life, and
+lead the willing world to the true worship of the Creator.
+
+Wirz was born among the glorious mountains of Switzerland, where the lofty
+and dazzling peaks of eternal snow, pointing upwards into the clear vault
+of heaven, impress the human mind with sublimity, or where the deeper
+glens sadden the heart and blast the aspiring imagination.
+
+It seems that the natural impressions made upon this man in this beautiful
+country were of an earthly and sordid character, for he has always
+exhibited, in his wanderings in pursuit of fortune, the reckless and
+degraded soul of a mercenary.
+
+Seeking gain in the New World, he turned up in the Slave States when the
+revolt was determined upon, and without reluctance, offered his services
+to the frantic and savage horde. Although a Swiss and republican by birth
+and inheritance, he does not hesitate between liberty and despotism. The
+principles of political dogmas do not agitate him; it is the desire for
+money, and an insatiate thirst for blood, blasting the natural heart with
+cruel and remorseless passions, that led him blindly and swiftly to ruin.
+The fatal plunge taken, and there was no return. The compunctions of
+humanity passed over his seared and unfeeling conscience, with no more
+effect than when the waves surge over the huge rocks which form the bed of
+the deepest ocean.
+
+He was selected for the fatal position by the brutal Winder, who first
+observed him among the unfortunate prisoners of the first disastrous
+battle of the republic. What should recommend him, then, to the notice of
+this inhuman officer, can be easily conjectured by the survivors of the
+prisons of that period. Cruelty then was pastime, it afterwards became a
+law. It was then that some of the chivalry, after the manner of the tribes
+of Abyssinia and Eastern Africa, made glorious trophies of the skulls and
+the bones of their antagonists who had fallen in battle.
+
+This man appeared at times kind and humane, and his voice had the accents
+of benevolence; but when excited, natural sentiments recoiled with horror
+at the depth and extent of his imprecations. This assumed gentleness of
+disposition is of but little weight among the examples of history.
+
+"I have often said," writes Montaigne, "that cowardice is the mother of
+cruelty, and by experience have observed that the spite and asperity of
+malicious and inhuman courage are accompanied with the mantle of feminine
+softness." The ensanguined Sylla wept over the recital of the miseries he
+himself had caused.
+
+That daily murderer, the tyrant of Pheres, forbade the play of tragedy,
+lest the citizens should weep over the misfortunes of Hecuba and
+Andromache.
+
+The beautiful eyes of the Roman maidens glistened with tears at the
+imaginary sufferings of the inanimate marbles of Niobe and Laocoon, yet
+how remorselessly they gave the signal of death to the defeated gladiator
+on the arena of the Colosseum!
+
+The warm, generous, natural impulses of the heart soon become affected,
+impaired, and even reversed by brutal associations.
+
+Circumstances develop greatly the characters of men, and they sometimes
+rise to true greatness, or sink into baseness, according to the law of
+effect, of contact, and example.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SECOND.
+
+
+I.
+
+  "Plus in carcere spiritus acquirit, quam caro amittit."--_Tertullian._
+
+  "Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!
+  Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
+  For there thy habitation is the heart--
+  The heart which love of thee alone can bind:
+  And when thy sons to fetters are consigned--
+  To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
+  Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
+  And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind."
+                                        _Prisoner of Chillon._
+
+
+Within the deadly shadows of this enormous palisade were assembled and
+confined together at one time during the hot months of 1864, more than
+thirty-five thousand soldiers, of the various armies of the United
+States--more men than Alexander led across the Hellespont to the conquest
+of Asia; more men than followed Napoleon in those glorious campaigns over
+the bright fields of Northern Italy, where every helmet caught some beam
+of glory.
+
+Here were men of all conditions, birth, and fortune--some of the best
+blood and sap of the republic.
+
+The strong-limbed lumbermen from the forests of Maine, the tall, gigantic
+men from the mountains of Pennsylvania, the hunters of the great
+prairies of the West,--those men of wonderful courage and endurance,--the
+artisan from the workshop, the student from his books, the lawyer from the
+forum, the minister from the pulpit, the child of wealth, and the poor
+widow's only son, were collected here in this field of torture.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF INTERIOR OF THE PRISON, with the quagmire and
+crowds of huts and men beyond. From rebel photographs.--Page 29.]
+
+They were men in the prime of life--young, vigorous, and active--when they
+surrendered themselves as prisoners of war. And as prisoners, they were
+entitled to the care and treatment acknowledged by the general laws and
+usages of civilized nations, and expected even more from those who boasted
+of having revived the generosity and chivalric tone of the feudal ages.
+Besides justice to all men, we owe special grace and benignity to those
+who come into our power from the hazard of battle. However degraded the
+suppliant may be, there is always some commerce between them and us, some
+bond of mutual relation.
+
+Why these men did not receive that respect which true courage always
+accords to the vanquished brave, why they did not receive even that atom
+of compassion which belongs to the nature of man, and which is seen even
+among the lower animals, history, which loves to avenge the weak and
+oppressed, and which affords to all men, to all nations, the opportunity
+for their justification, their vengeance, their glory, will surely exhibit
+in burning characters of horror and shame. There are men even now who
+would sanctify the acts of cruelty of the rebellion over the very ashes of
+this the nation's sepulchre. There are men even now who would outrage
+virtue, and deify the crime. There are men living, like those of the
+past, but not forgotten iron age, possessed of that remorseless fury,
+that implacable hatred, which nothing could arrest, nothing could disarm,
+and which could no more receive a sentiment of compassion than that
+sophistry which allowed outrage and death to the tender and guiltless
+child of Sejanus.
+
+  "Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens, tantum spectaturus occidat."
+
+
+II.
+
+The intention which directed the formation of this vast camp was Cruelty.
+The system which governed, or rather the want of system which neglected,
+each department, whether hospital or commissariat, meant Death. The
+evidence against the leaders of the Confederacy is not wanting, neither is
+it obscure. It is true that most of the witnesses have perished, or are
+fast passing prematurely away; but the chain of circumstantial evidence is
+so connected, so apparent, that, unless the faith of humanity changes,
+that voice, which Tacitus calls "the conscience of the human race," will,
+until the end of time, overwhelm with withering scorn the memory of these
+men as the assassins of sedition, rather than the heroes and saints of a
+just revolution.
+
+We may search history in vain for a parallel in modern times.
+Civilization, in its known vicissitudes, cannot point out a spectacle so
+horrible.
+
+The massacre, in hot blood, of the Tartars of the Crimea by Potemkin, will
+not compare with this slow, merciless, implacable process of murder by
+starvation, and violation of those hygienic laws upon which the principle
+of life depends. The fusilades of that saturnalia of blood, the French
+Revolution, which swept away whole generations, had the pomp of military
+executions, which threw a gleam of brilliancy over the scene, and gave
+momentary enthusiasm to the victims. Those great immolations of the
+Saracens and Persians by the Tartars were as rapid as the cimeters could
+flash. "The fury of ideas," says Lamartine, "is more implacable than the
+fury of men; for men have heart, and opinion none. Systems are brutal
+forces, which bewail not even that which they crush."
+
+"See," said Timour to the learned men of Aleppo, "I am but half a man, and
+yet I have conquered Irak, Persia, and the Indies." "Render glory,
+therefore, to God," replied the Mufti of Aleppo, "and slay no one." "God
+is my witness," said, with apparent sincerity, the destroyer of so many
+millions of men, "that I put no one to death by a premeditated will; no, I
+swear to you I kill no one from cruelty, but it is you who assassinate
+your own souls."
+
+
+III.
+
+The world has never seen such a display of courage and devotion as was
+exhibited by the intelligent masses of the freemen of the North, when the
+liberties of the great republic were menaced by the fierce gestures of the
+slave faction and their misguided supporters.
+
+Men of all classes, forsaking home, kindred, and property, rushed to
+present a living barrier to the impetuous march of the enraged and
+misguided horde that pressed on with almost resistless fury, and
+threatened to overwhelm and destroy the noblest fabric of the enlightened
+mind. At last the carnage of battle has ceased. Nature smiles again, and
+rapidly obliterates the marks of the ravages left upon her green fields,
+where the huge and desperate armies have swayed and struggled in deadly
+conflict. The emblems of civil liberty are again restored, the fasces
+replaced; and it now becomes the country to arouse itself from the depths
+of apathy, and revive those sentiments of tenderness and gratitude which
+nature everywhere bestows upon the memory of those who upheld the cause of
+liberty, and fell in its defence.
+
+
+IV.
+
+To understand fully the determined character, the steadfast loyalty, of
+these brave and unfortunate men, we must consider at length the details of
+this enclosure, with its hungry, emaciate, filthy mass of humanity, whence
+arose a stench of death so powerful as to be perceived at the distance of
+a league--the burning sky, the array of instruments of torture, the
+manifest design of cruelty.
+
+The suffering wretch had only to pronounce the magic words, "Allegiance to
+the Rebel cause," and his sufferings and misery were at an end. The huge
+gates flew open, and with grim smiles, the enfeebled and tottering
+apostate was welcomed as an accession to the southern ranks.
+
+But the republic was safe here, and the sacred fire of its altars burned
+steadily through all the horrors and noxious vapors of this hell on
+earth.
+
+Strange to relate, that out of the seventeen thousand registered sick,
+there is record of only about _twenty-five_ who accepted the offers to
+save their lives, and took the oath of the rebels. Is it not wonderful
+that this great number of men should thus, in silence, brave the horrors
+by which they were surrounded, and remain firm in their convictions of
+right and wrong? An entire army perished, rather than deny the country
+which gave them birth! They would no more surrender their principles, than
+their homes and altars, as ransoms for their lives.
+
+Has the world's history a parallel to this devotion?
+
+  "But these are deeds which should not pass away,
+  And names that must not wither, though the earth
+  Forgets her empires with a just decay."
+
+
+V.
+
+Heroism in the damp and noxious prisons, where the noble qualities of the
+mind are shaken and swayed by the sufferings of the body, is far different
+from that which is displayed upon the battle-field, amid the glittering
+and inspiring pomp of war.
+
+The men at Thermopylae fought in the shadows of the soul-inspiring
+mountains, and beheld, through the charm of distance, their homes and the
+beautiful valleys they had sworn to defend. The Decii saw the shining
+swords of their enemies when they rushed into battle, and the dying nobly
+and the glory made all fear of death but of little weight.
+
+Here, instead of bright and glorious banners and the flash of arms, the
+long array of men eager for the contest, and the songs, the shouts of
+defiance, there was a vast ditch, crowded with living beings of scarce the
+human form, haggard and unnatural in appearance--a sea of red and fetid
+mud, trampled and defiled by the immense throng. Instead of the white
+tents and canopies of military encampments, there were the ragged blankets
+vainly stretched over upright sticks; there were the holes in the earth,
+the burrows in the sand, like the villages of the rats of the great
+prairies of the West. They were more like the dens of the beasts of the
+desert than habitations for human beings.
+
+No Christian hand ever penetrated to their depths to aid the sick and
+suffering inmates, to nourish the hungry and console the dying, save one
+Romish priest; and in spite of the horrors and dangers of the place, he
+was faithful to his trust. Noble man! you have proved by these acts that
+humanity is not a mendacious idol, and that devotion to humanity is not a
+mere matter of gain and self-aggrandizement.
+
+More than four thousand human beings perished in these excavations!
+
+It seemed as though vengeance was prolonged beyond death itself.
+
+  "Where was thine AEgis, Pallas, that appalled
+  Stern Alaric and Havoc on their way?"
+
+
+VI.
+
+Life here was brief. The victims, as they entered the gate, were appalled
+at the horrors that were presented to them in this living sepulchre.
+Nature seemed to have abandoned the struggle early, and the young men
+passed, with rapid pace, from youth--that youth so rich in its future--to
+manhood, from manhood to old age. Neither prudence nor philosophy could
+protect them from the grievous influences of the morbid conditions to
+which they were exposed. The delicate and noble faculties were blunted and
+destroyed. Some perished at once, almost as quickly as though struck by
+the lightning of heaven, whilst others lingered, according to the strength
+of the hidden resources, the reserved and superabundant powers of youth.
+
+Among the few survivors of the present day we can learn of the fearful
+struggle between life and death, by the gray hairs, the impassive
+features, from which the smile of youth has fled forever, the feeble and
+tottering steps of the man who has prematurely arrived at his limit of
+earthly existence.
+
+The integrity and character exhibited by these men, in the midst of these
+tortures, is unsurpassed.
+
+It was the same morale that immortalized the armies of Italy and Moreau,
+that covered with splendor the heroes of Sparta and Rome, and proved
+incontestably the superiority of the volunteer over the mercenary regular.
+The wretched men died in silence, or with the name of home or the loved
+ones on their lips, and adjuring their comrades to stand firm in defence
+of their faith, their country, their God. "My treatment here is killing
+me, mother; but I die cheerfully for my country." They died as the wounded
+French died at Jemappes, with the delirium and exaltation of patriotism,
+uttering at the last moment some of the strains of the songs of freedom,
+and the names of country and liberty. "Thus the enthusiasm of the combat
+prolonged or reproduced itself, and survived even in their agony."
+
+The sufferings of these men, wasting, putrefying, dying daily by scores,
+by hundreds, without touching the remorseless hearts of the
+prison-keepers, recall to mind those monsters which history points out as
+rising now and then from out the wreck of social order. It was one of the
+results of Slavery, for Slavery weakens the natural horror of blood.
+
+Cruelty is naturally progressive, for it engenders the fear of a just
+revenge. New cruelties succeed, until extermination becomes the rule and
+ends the scene.
+
+"To hate whom we have injured is a propensity of the human mind," says
+Tacitus.
+
+
+VII.
+
+At the distance of about five hundred paces northwestward from the
+stockade, in a little field which is almost overshadowed by the
+surrounding pines, appear a multitude of stakes standing upright in the
+earth, in long and regular lines.
+
+Upon every one of these fragments of boards figures have been carelessly
+scratched by an iron instrument; and they run up to the appalling number
+of almost thirteen thousand! Each stick represents a dead man,--a
+hero,--and this multitude of branchless and leafless trunks reminds us
+rather of a blasted vineyard than of a cemetery arranged for the human
+dead.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF THE GRAVEYARD, with its thirteen thousand victims,
+as the rebels left it. Taken from rebel photographs in possession of the
+author.--Page 37.]
+
+I have seen many of the rarest sculptures in civilized lands, where art
+has lavished and exhausted its powers to awaken sympathy for the dead, but
+have met with none that moved my heart more impressively than the brief,
+vague inscriptions, the rude memorials of this silent and neglected field,
+where sleep an entire army of freemen, who preferred lingering death
+rather than allegiance to a rebel and wicked faction.
+
+Beneath the red clods of this field, thickly as the leaves of autumn, are
+stretched side by side a number of men more numerous than all of the
+American soldiers who perished by disease and casualty of battle during
+the Mexican war--more than all of the British soldiers who were killed, or
+perished from their wounds, on the bloody fields of the Crimea, the
+desperate struggles at Waterloo, the four great battles in
+Spain,--Talavera, Salamanca, Albuera, Vittoria,--and also the sanguinary
+contest at New Orleans. All these losses of the sons of the British empire
+do not build up a hecatomb of the human dead so high, so vast, so red, as
+this one single link of the great chain of wrong that stretched from
+Virginia to Texas.
+
+There is no battle-field on the face of the globe, known to the antiquary,
+where so many soldiers are interred in one group as are gathered together
+in the broad trenches of this neglected field among the pine forests of
+Georgia. What a gathering is this! What a monument of the incarnation of
+political lust, of the reckless desperation, the implacability of the
+depraved human heart, when resolved upon cruelty! The world does not
+offer, among all of her extant memorials, a more terrible, a more
+impressive comment upon the ambition, the power, the glory of mankind.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Respect to the dead is an instinct of nature; and to leave the remains of
+a fallen comrade upon the field, unhonored, is repugnant even to the red
+men of the forest. How much more, then, does a civilized nation, of high
+degree, owe to the memory of its brave defenders! Will it now forget the
+noble sacrifice of its sons amid the debasing influences of commerce and
+manufacture? Shall these sticks, which mark the nation's sacrifice,
+moulder into dust, and with their brief inscriptions be swept away by the
+winds of the world, and all traces of this heroism, this martyrdom, lost?
+
+Here is something required more than brief, hollow, human gratitude, and a
+sonorous, perishable epitaph.
+
+Whatever rises above the level of this plain to commemorate for future
+ages the devotion of the men who sleep beneath, should be of lasting
+material, and as colossal as the gigantic proportions of the republic
+itself: or the field should be levelled and swept, and every
+distinguishing sign blended and effaced, and the true altar of memorial
+erected in the hearts of all men who believe and revere those eternal
+principles of love, justice, truth.
+
+Liberty has but one inscription to offer, and that is the noble lines
+which were traced on the dungeon wall in the blood of the noblest and
+purest of the Girondins: "_Potius mori quam foedari_"--Death rather than
+dishonor.
+
+
+IX.
+
+Impartial history will give to the memory of these men a place among the
+records of useless murder.
+
+The law of parole was all-sufficient to prevent their return to service,
+and their absence from the fields of campaign would have been of no
+material weight with the prolific North.
+
+But the intent of their captors was cruelty; and they strove to reduce the
+numbers, and to intimidate the courage, of the Federal soldiers, by acts
+of savage barbarity, as the relentless Tartar hoped to terrify the Hindoos
+into the profession of Mohammedanism by sacrificing multitudes, and
+deluging whole countries in blood.
+
+To deny the criminality is, as Lamartine says of the massacres of
+September, "to belie the right of feeling of the human race. It is to deny
+nature, which is the morality of instinct. There is nothing in mankind
+greater than humanity. It is not more permissible for a government than
+for a man to commit murder. If a drop of blood stains the hand of a
+murderer, oceans of gore do not make innocent the Dantons. The magnitude
+of the crime does not transform it into virtue. Pyramids of dead bodies
+rise high, it is true, but not so high as the execration of mankind."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THIRD.
+
+
+I.
+
+Let us now examine and consider, with impartial eye, the Stockade in
+detail--the locality, the hospital, the dietary, and, in fact, all that
+relates to the condition of life in this region; reviewing at length the
+laws which regulate the animal economy, and judging of cause and effect
+with that spirit which Bacon calls the "_prudens quaestio_."
+
+In selecting new grounds for the habitations of human families, whether in
+large or limited numbers, particular care must always be observed,
+especially in warm climes, or where malarial influences are known to
+prevail. In the selection of places for the encampment of troops, the
+problem is still more difficult to treat, on account of the general
+dyscrasial condition of the soldier; and oftentimes far more skill and
+prudence are required than in the choosing of a field for battle.
+
+How many a noble regiment have we seen impaired in its effective strength,
+and robbed of its glorious future, by the injudicious encampment, where
+vain and ignorant officers have sacrificed the health and morale of their
+men to please their fanciful ideas as to military etiquette--the form of
+shelter, the position, and the regularity of the prescribed lines of
+encampment!
+
+In one of the last campaigns of Europe, when all the resources which
+modern wealth could afford were lavished with unsparing hand, there was a
+useless and preventible loss of life, that recalled the most disastrous
+epidemics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
+
+War is one of the natural laws for the demolition of the human race, and
+we see the spirit of destruction silently at work among friends as well as
+foes. The supreme commands seem mysteriously to be placed in the hands of
+men who can cause the greatest devastation and sacrifice of life; who
+march their columns steadily to the deadly and murderous assault when
+there is no occasion for it; who encamp their troops in pestilential
+lowlands, when the healthy heights offer safer and better accommodations.
+
+  "Nobilitas cum plebe perit, lateque vagatur ensis."
+
+
+II.
+
+It is a melancholy fact, attested by the distinguished Marshal Saxe, that
+the military men of modern times are far less informed than the great
+generals of antiquity in the profound knowledge of public hygiene, and
+especially of that which relates to the economy of armies. We can admire,
+but hardly improve, the physical education imposed upon the volunteers of
+Sparta and the legionaries of Rome; and we have not surpassed their
+scientific, yet rude alimentation, by which they marched over immense
+distances with rapidity, and preserved their vigor and morale. From the
+extant documents of the ancients, from Xenophon or Vegetius, it is shown
+that their acquaintance with whatever related to clothing, encampment,
+food, the graduation of exercises, and the employ of forces, was of the
+highest character.
+
+The effects of high and low lands, of good and bad water, on the diseases,
+energy, character, and intellect of man, have been sketched in a masterly
+manner by Hippocrates.
+
+The exposure of a few hours to malignant influences may impair the
+strength of an army to such a degree as to thwart the most skilful plans,
+the wisest combinations for vigorous campaigns, as, for instance, the
+Walcheren expedition of the English, the Neapolitan campaign of France,
+when her army was reduced from twenty-eight thousand to four thousand
+effective men, in one hundred hours, from an injudicious encampment at
+Baie, or when Orloff lost his army in Paros, or, still later, the disaster
+to the splendid division of the French army under Espinasse, in the fatal
+Dobrutscha.
+
+Armies have been lost, the fate of empires decided, by the violation or
+neglect of the simple rules of hygiene; and all through the blood-stained
+pages of military history do we observe examples, from the time when
+Scipio lost the battle of Trebbia, or when Bajazet threw away his vast
+empire on the plains of Angora, down to Kunersdorf, when the impetuosity
+of Frederick the Great would not allow rest to his men or horses.
+
+
+III.
+
+In 1863 the depots near Richmond became so crowded by the Federal
+prisoners that it became a matter of serious consideration to the rebel
+authorities how to guard them, and attempt to feed them and the regiments
+guarding them. Then the idea was conceived of forming a Great camp in the
+Gulf States, in a locality fruitful in grain, and in a position secure
+from raids from the Federal cavalry. Several locations were examined, but
+none pleased the selecting officer, until he had examined the site at
+Andersonville, to which he conceived a particular fancy. There were places
+in this section of the country where pure water could be obtained in
+abundance, but these spots were not so readily accessible, and wood was
+not so plenty and handy as at this. There was another consideration in the
+public view of its selection, that it was in the heart of the best
+corn-producing region at that time in Georgia, and easy access could be
+had with the everglades of Florida, where herds of half wild cattle roamed
+at will.
+
+It is not the belief of the writer, although there are many facts to
+warrant such an inference, that the selection was made with the view of
+deliberately destroying the prisoners openly, and without reserve, for
+there were other localities far more pestilential than this; and yet, on
+the other hand, there were also many situations infinitely more salubrious
+and easy of access. There was in reality not much reflection in the
+matter. The selectors thought only of the geographical and strategical
+position; they cared not for its topography or its meteorology.
+
+They consulted only their convenience. The idea of the preservation of the
+lives of their unfortunate prisoners never troubled their minds, never
+disturbed their conscience. They would build a safe and secure pen, and if
+God, in his infinite and mysterious mercy, chose to summon from earth any
+of the hapless wretches, they would not consider themselves as accountable
+for the premature deaths. Such was their reasoning. Such was their
+philosophy. Such was their conscience. The exult of Winder, when asserting
+that he was doing more for the Confederacy than a dozen regiments at the
+front, and the exclamation of Howell Cobb, when pointing to the ten
+thousand graves, "That is the way I would do for them," were perhaps the
+bravado of the southern slaveholder. Even at this late date we can find
+men, of some tenderness, in this vicinity, who have reasoned their weak
+minds into the idea and belief that no harm was ever done or intended; and
+even if it can be proved, then the Federals only received what they
+deserved, and no more than their own sons in the prisons of the North
+endured.
+
+Such was the conscience of the Pharisee.
+
+Such was the remark made to the writer by a southern gentleman over the
+graves of the victims.
+
+
+IV.
+
+The topographical features of the site are not particularly objectionable
+for an encampment of a few hundred men.
+
+The northern and southern banks incline sufficiently towards the stream in
+the centre to allow of proper drainage. The stream itself furnished water
+in sufficient volume to provide for the wants of ten thousand men, if it
+had been turned from its channel above the stockade, and introduced into
+the prison by simple sluices. But to this important item there was not the
+least attention paid.
+
+To preface the analysis of this stockade, &c., we may wisely review the
+remarks of the late Dr. Jackson, the chief medical officer of the British
+army.
+
+
+V.
+
+"A necessity occurs in war, on many occasions, which leaves no option of
+choice in occupying posts of an unhealthy character: but there is,
+unfortunately, an authority, derived from example and the sanction of
+great names, which directs the military officer, when under no military
+necessity, to fix his encampment on grounds which are unhealthy in
+themselves, or which are exposed by position to the influence of noxious
+causes, which are carried from a distance.
+
+"Such advice proceeds from the desire to act on a presumption of
+knowledge, which cannot be ascertained, rather than to act by the
+experience of facts, which man is qualified to observe and verify.
+
+"It is consonant with the experience of military people, in all ages and
+in all countries, that camp diseases most abound near the muddy banks of
+large rivers, near swamps, and ponds, and on grounds which have been
+recently stripped of their woods. The fact is precise: but it has been set
+aside to make way for an opinion.
+
+"It was assumed, about half a century since, by a celebrated army
+physician, that camp diseases originate from causes of putrefaction, and
+that putrefaction is connected radically with a stagnant condition of the
+air. As streams of air usually proceed along rivers, with more certainty
+and force than in other places, and as there is evidently a more certain
+movement of air, that is, more winds, on open grounds than among woods and
+thickets, this sole consideration, without any regard to experience,
+influenced opinion, and gave currency to the destructive maxim, that the
+banks of rivers, open grounds, and exposed heights, are the most eligible
+situations for the encampment of troops. They are the best ventilated:
+they must, if the theory be true, be the most healthy. The fact is the
+reverse. But demonstrative as the fact may be, fashion has more influence
+than multiplied examples of fact, experimentally proved.
+
+"Encampments are still formed in the vicinity of swamps, or on grounds
+which are newly cleared of their woods, in obedience to theory, and
+contrary to fact. The savage, who acts by instinct, or who acts directly
+from the impressions of experience, has in this instance the advantage
+over the philosopher, who, reasoning concerning causes he cannot know, and
+acting according to the result of his reasonings, errs and leads others
+astray by the authority of his name.
+
+"The savage feels, and acting by the impression of what he feels, instead
+of fixing his habitation on the exposed bank of large rivers, unsheltered
+heights, or grounds newly cleared of their woods, seeks the cover of the
+forests, even avoids the streams of air which proceed from rivers, from
+the surface of ponds, or from lands newly opened to the sun. The rule of
+the savage is a rule of experience, founded in truth, and applicable to
+the encampment of troops, even of civilized Europeans.
+
+"In accordance with this principle, it is almost uniformly true, _caeteris
+paribus_, that diseases are more common, at least more violent, in broken,
+irregular, and hilly countries, where the temperature is liable to sudden
+changes, and where blasts descend with fury from the mountains, than in
+large and extensive inclined plains, under the action of equal and gentle
+breezes only. From this fact, it becomes an object of the first
+consideration, in choosing ground for encampments, to guard against the
+impression of strong winds, on their own account, independently of their
+proceeding from swamps, rivers, and noxious soils.
+
+"In countries covered with woods, abundantly supplied with straw, and
+other materials applicable to the purpose of forming shelter, it is, upon
+the whole, better to raise huts and construct bowers than to carry canvas.
+The individual is exercised by labor, and as his mind is employed in
+contriving and executing something for self-accommodation, he is furnished
+with a daily opportunity of renewing the pleasure. The mode of hutting,
+here recommended, effectually precludes the evils arising from those
+contaminations of air in which contagion is generated--an evil which often
+arises in tents, and is carried about with an army in all its movements in
+the field."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The view of the ancients in regard to the encampment of troops may be
+understood from the counsel of Vegetius: "Ne aridis et sine opacitate
+arborum campis, aut collibus ne sine tentoriis aestate milites
+commorentur."
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+As we have remarked before, the site of the prison was covered with trees
+when its outlines were traced and surveyed by the rebel engineers. These
+trees, felled to the ground, were hewn, and matched so well on the inner
+line of the palisades as to give no glimpse of the outer world across the
+space of the dead line, which averaged nineteen feet in width, and which
+was defined by a frail wooden railing about three feet in height, from
+fifteen to twenty-five feet distant from the palisades.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+This line of stockade rose from fifteen to eighteen feet above the surface
+of the ground, while the outer line of logs, which was erected about sixty
+paces distant from the inner line, was formed of the rough trunks of
+pines, and projected twelve feet above the earth. The original stockade
+measured but ten hundred and ten feet in length, and seven hundred and
+eighty-three feet in width; and within this space were jammed together,
+for several months, from twenty-two thousand to thirty-five thousand men,
+thus giving a superficial area to each man, when the prison contained
+thirty thousand prisoners, but seventeen square feet, after deducting the
+nineteen feet average for the dead line, and the quagmire, three hundred
+feet in width. This measurement would allow for thirty-five thousand men
+but fifteen square feet of area, or less than two square yards to each
+person, or more than twenty times the density of Liverpool. This was all
+the space that was afforded before the enlargement, and this reckoning
+does not include roads or by-paths for communication among the prisoners.
+
+Seventeen and a half square feet of earth are allowed for the coffin's
+length in the field of sepulchres. There were here to be seen twelve acres
+of living men, packed together like the immense shoals of fish in the
+ocean, but like nothing that has life on the earth, not even the
+ant-fields. The ratio of density was equivalent to more than sixteen
+hundred thousand people to the square mile. The densest portion of East
+London has the great number of one hundred and sixty thousand to the
+square mile.
+
+
+VII.
+
+In the month of August the stockade was lengthened six hundred and ten
+feet, by what influence or from what cause it is unknown; but nevertheless
+it was enlarged to the length of sixteen hundred and twenty feet,--thus
+making the entire area sixteen hundred and twenty by seven hundred and
+eighty-three feet. This enlargement was a salutary movement on a small
+scale, but it only prolonged the sufferings of the victims. The thirty
+thousand men had now twenty-two acres, minus the dead line and marsh, or
+thirty square feet per man, or three and a half square yards. There were
+actually, during this month, thirty-five thousand men within the prison,
+and some authorities give me as high as thirty-six thousand. This density
+is enormous, and cannot be tolerated by animal life in any climate, in any
+latitude, of the world. There must be space for organic life to develop
+and maintain itself, otherwise it perishes. To give a correct idea of the
+crowded condition of this pen, we do not know where to turn for example.
+The great cities of civilized lands do not even approximate in their ratio
+of populations.
+
+The relation of density, in the three great divisions of London, give
+thirty-five, one hundred and nineteen, and one hundred and eighty square
+yards to each inhabitant. The densest portion of Liverpool, with its lofty
+and immense brick ranges of buildings, swarming with industrial life,
+gives more than eighty square feet to each person. The early Roman camps,
+which are a marvel to military men, and the closest known to military
+science, gave to the ordinary legion three hundred and sixty-seven
+square feet of area to each man. The plans of Polybius give two hundred
+and thirty square feet to each soldier of the consular army of two
+legions, numbering nearly eighteen thousand men, and the descriptions of
+Hyginus give similar ratios.
+
+[Illustration: _PLAN OF PRISON GROUNDS_ ANDERSONVILLE
+
+_Measured by Dr. Hamlin Copy right secured_
+
+J. H. BUFFORD'S LITH BOSTON.]
+
+The encampments of the United States infantry afford, in the most
+restricted portion (between stacks of arms and kitchens), two hundred and
+forty-four square feet per man, or seventeen hundred and thirty-one square
+feet per man for the whole camp.
+
+The space allowed by law for barracks alone is fifty-four square feet for
+each soldier, reckoned on the basis of a full complement of men. The rules
+of the rebel army concerning camps are the same as those of the
+regulations of the United States army.
+
+The United States prison at Elmira contained six thousand men, and
+extended over forty acres. The other prisons, at Chicago, Johnson's
+Island, Point Lookout, and Fort Delaware, were provided with spacious
+exercise grounds, and furnished with covered barracks, built of proper
+form, and fitted up with the required conveniences of life. Belle Isle,
+which held ten thousand prisoners, had but six acres, and no shelter, no
+conveniences whatever.
+
+Andersonville, which contained over thirty thousand prisoners, had in the
+stockade, before enlargement, but eighteen acres in all, and but twelve
+acres for the use of the prisoners, minus the dead line and the marsh.
+
+The prison at Dartmoor, in England (which was a paradise in comparison
+with Andersonville), where our prisoners were held in captivity by the
+English during the last war, furnished two hundred to three hundred
+square feet to every prisoner in the barracks, besides allowing spacious
+yards, where the prisoners were permitted to exercise daily. There were
+there seven large two-story stone buildings, each one hundred and eighty
+feet in length. Five thousand prisoners enclosed within twenty acres of
+land at Dartmoor, thirty thousand in twelve acres, or thirty-five thousand
+in twenty-two acres, at Andersonville.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+The timbers composing the stockade were of entire trunks of pines, massive
+and solid, and measuring from one to three feet in diameter. They were
+sunk into the earth for about five or six feet, and held in position at
+the top by long, slender pines, nailed on the outer side by large iron
+spikes. There were but two gates for this vast prison, and but two
+corresponding apertures in the outer palisade. These gates were
+constructed of massive timbers, and protected by a strong porch, occupying
+a base of about thirty feet square. These were always strongly guarded, to
+prevent the sudden rush of masses of men. At intervals of about one
+hundred feet, were erected detached and covered platforms, upon the outer
+side of the palisades, which, overlooking the summit of the wall, and the
+enclosure beyond, served as sentry boxes. The sentries, perched
+buzzard-like on the wall, could observe, from their high positions, at all
+times, the actions, the motions of the uncovered prisoners, and with their
+rifles shoot down the offending prisoner, whether he stood talking with
+his comrades, in the centre of the space, or whether he approached the
+sacred precincts of the dead line.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Sometimes they threw down their unconsumed fragments of bread to the
+hungry men. Sometimes they were hurled with curses; rarely were they
+thrown from feelings of compassion. Yet there were some kind-hearted men
+here, in the degrading position of the sentry box, who viewed the scene
+with affright, and who wept bitterly over the awful torture and sacrifice
+of life.
+
+The author, travelling on foot among the mountains and forests of Northern
+Georgia, after peace was declared, found these evidences of humane feeling
+among the letters preserved in the humble cabins of the poor whites. That
+unoffending men were shot down without warning, there is no doubt
+whatever; that men, weary of torture, staggered to the dead line, and
+calmly, joyfully received the fatal shot, there is positive evidence.
+
+
+IX.
+
+The trees were all removed from the enclosure, and with the specific
+intent of cruelty, as was openly stated by the brutal builders. They
+should have no shade, it was said, and no shade had the wretched men but
+what was cast by the few ragged and rotten blankets and shelter tents that
+the prison examiners passed by as utterly worthless in their examination
+and search for articles of value, whether watches, bank notes, hats,
+shirts, and even shoes. There were men who, robbed at the outer gates,
+entered the prison almost naked. This system of robbery was open and
+audacious, and it is said that the only prisoners who escaped spoliation
+were those who were taken from Sherman when Atlanta fell, and when
+consternation prevailed at the prison in consequence. It is positively
+stated that it was sanctioned by Wirz and Winder. At all events, two men,
+by the names of Hume and Duncan, robbed the prisoners systematically, and
+appropriated the packages sent to the prisoners, from the United States,
+to such an extent that few if any articles ever reached the poor men to
+whom the boxes of food and clothing were sent.
+
+These blankets and rags were vainly stretched over sticks, to form the
+semblance of a habitation, wherever the earth gave firm foothold, even
+along the borders of the pestilential marsh. Those who were destitute of
+even these shreds of cloth, dug with their hands holes in the earth,
+after the example of wild beasts, or with the slimy water from the brook
+they built up, with handfuls of mud, little cabins over hollows scooped
+out from below the surface of the ground, and as rude as the clumps of
+earth, which that lowest degree of the human form--the Digger
+Indian--inhabits.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+These may be seen at the present day, looking like the lodges of the
+beaver, or the mounds of the marmots of the prairies, and half concealed
+by those wild, useless, and noxious weeds which linger in, and cling to
+the footsteps of man, as he wanders in his migrations over the
+uncultivated lands of the globe.
+
+Sometimes the heavy rains washed away the roofs of mud, inundating the
+occupants beneath. Some of the poor wretches had not the strength to lift
+up the incumbent mass of earth, and perished miserably in their dens.
+There are now in these demolished excavations the bones of some of our
+fellow-citizens, unknown and unhonored. The cry of distress was so
+constant that few heeded the smothered moan. The stumps of the fallen
+trees were grubbed up by the knives and fingers of the prisoners for
+firewood to warm themselves with, or to cook their scanty food; even the
+roots were followed down deep into the earth, for the purpose of obtaining
+the means of warmth which were almost entirely denied them by the prison
+keepers.
+
+
+X.
+
+There is no excuse for this wanton exposure to the vicissitudes of the
+climate, for the forests adjoining were immense in their extent, and
+thousands of the suffering men offered, begged to go and obtain material
+to build sheds or huts to protect them from the inclemency of the weather.
+Neither parole was allowed for this purpose, nor real attempts made to
+obtain the building tools. To show the force of the argument that the
+rebels had not sufficient aid, and that it would have been dangerous to
+have paroled any of these prisoners, there is the fact that there were
+several large steam saw-mills in the vicinity, and they could have easily
+afforded, in few weeks, all the lumber required for the purpose of
+shelter.
+
+Was it recklessness, was it perversity, or was it malice aforethought,
+that withheld from the prisoners the means of shelter? The few sheds that
+were erected were not commenced until late in the term of its
+occupation, too late to render much service. They were merely roofs of
+boards, placed upon posts, at the distance of seven feet from the ground.
+There were neither sides nor partitions to these sheds, and they were not
+required during the hot months.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF THE MANNER IN WHICH THE DEAD WERE INTERRED.
+
+The bodies were laid in rows of one hundred to three hundred, and after
+the earth was thrown over them a stake was thrust down to mark the place
+of burial. This view is taken from a rebel photograph.--Page 57.]
+
+Pity was not a virtue that was recognized here: the noble impulses of the
+heart were reversed, and the natural instincts perverted.
+
+The dead bodies of the thousands who perished within the stockade, without
+medical attendance, were dragged forth, without care, and thrown
+promiscuously into the common field-carts, which, with their carelessly
+heaped-up burdens, proceeded to the trenches, where the dead heroes were
+laid in long lines, side by side, two or three hundred in a trench, and
+then a stick was thrust into the ground, at the head of each man, to
+indicate the place of burial. For the care observed in the burial of the
+dead after the carts arrived at the cemetery, and the preserving of the
+records of the victims, and the place, we are indebted to our own men, who
+were paroled especially for the purpose.
+
+The only solicitude observed by the rebels during or after interment of
+their victims, was shown by the civil engineer or surveyor of the town. He
+thought that so much animal matter should not go entirely to waste, and so
+commenced to plant grape vines over the mounds of the decomposing dead.
+
+To show the utter want of decency which ruled all things connected with
+the prison, it is stated by positive eye-witnesses that the same carts
+that transported the dead, went forth (without being cleansed of their
+reeking and disgusting filth), to the shambles and the depots for the
+meat and corn for the living prisoners.
+
+
+XI.
+
+An eminent statistician has stated that mortality is in direct ratio to
+the density of population, and that superficial area is as essential to
+health as cubic space. To the writer's mind, the overcrowding of the men,
+and their exposure to the variations of heat and cold, the influence of
+moisture, and the foul emanations of the infected soil, were sufficient to
+cause great destruction of human life; and when combined with the
+deficient dietary, the imagination can hardly conceive of a better field
+for disease and death than the condition of this swarming pen. All the
+elements and combinations of physical destructiveness were here in full
+play. "Losses by battle," says Sir Charles Napier, "sink to nothing,
+compared with those inflicted by improperly constructed barracks, and the
+jamming of soldiers--no other word is sufficiently expressive."
+"Diseases," states the French Inspector Baudens, "slay more men than steel
+or powder, and it is often easy to prevent them by a few simple hygienic
+precautions."
+
+In all campaigns where the care of the soldier is left to the military
+man,--who is educated for destruction, and has not been taught in the
+economy of life,--we see in the mortuary and non-efficient lists a
+disgraceful and culpable array of thoughtless routine, vulgar prejudices,
+and systems. In our Military Academies the elements and the means of
+destruction are taught, but not a law unfolded that relates to the
+principles of health, strength, and life. To alleviate the burden of the
+military list by sanitary measures is an idea unheard of, or at least
+unnoticed. "For these works," writes Chadwick, in his papers on "Economy,"
+"a special training is needed for our military engineers, whose present
+peculiar training is only for old works for war, and for those
+imperfectly,--works for the maintenance of the health of an army being
+necessary means to the maintenance of its military strength.
+
+"The one-sided character of the common training of our military engineers
+was displayed in the Crimea, in the proved need of a sanitary commission
+to give instruction for the selection and the practical drainage of proper
+sites for healthy encampments, for the choice collection and the proper
+distribution of wholesome water, for the construction of wholesome huts,
+and the proper shelter and treatment of horses as well as men."
+
+
+XII.
+
+In this enclosure, during a period of twelve months, from five thousand to
+thirty-six thousand human beings ate, slept, and drank, whilst the piles
+of filth were constantly accumulating, and the germs of infection silently
+at work. There was no regularity in the arrangement of the interior. Men
+collected in groups in the day time, and they lay in rows, like swine, at
+night.
+
+The stream, which with little ingenuity could have been turned to a
+blessing for the prison, was allowed to be obstructed by the heaps of
+grime; and enlarging its area, it assisted in forming the extensive
+quagmires, which were several acres in extent. So little care was
+observed for the comfort or the health of the prisoners, that all the
+washings of the bakery, all the filth of the out-houses of the workmen,
+were allowed to pass down and mingle with the current of the stream only
+thirty feet above the point of entrance into the stockade. The traveller
+can observe to-day that this malicious act of refined cruelty, or fatal
+error in hygiene, was really perpetrated.
+
+Besides this, the drains of the camp and the town above emptied themselves
+into this stream which supplied the prison with water.
+
+
+XIII.
+
+The bakery was located on the west side of the stockade, about equidistant
+from either line of palisade. It was of rough boards, and but one story in
+height. Its interior disclosed two rooms, one of which communicated with
+the two ovens, which were built of common brick. These two ovens--fourteen
+feet in length by seven feet in width, and with one kneading-trough
+fifteen feet long, and less than three feet in width--supplied the
+prisoners with all the bread they obtained; and so far the writer has not
+learned that there was any other source of supply.
+
+These same ovens, kept red hot, and worked night and day, to the fullest
+capacity, by the commissary bakers of the United States service, could not
+have produced but eight thousand rations of white bread, and but nine
+thousand six hundred rations of corn bread. This is the extreme limit; and
+regarded by the workmen, who have made the calculations, as almost an
+impossibility. The ordinary capacity of this establishment was probably
+about four or five thousand rations of corn bread. This quantity, divided
+daily among thirty thousand men, would give but a small morsel to each
+one; and this gives the appearance of truth to the statement, that from
+two to six ounces of corn bread were furnished as rations to the
+prisoners.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Ask a survivor of this prison treatment, if perchance you can find one,
+how he preserved his life, and he will tell you, "By eating the rations of
+the dying." Ten thousand men were sick or dying in this enclosure at one
+time.
+
+After the carts, with their scanty burdens of food, had passed into the
+prison, and distributed their contents, ten or fifteen thousand of the
+haggard and starving men might be seen collected together in the central
+portion of the prison trading with each other. Some of the poor
+wretches would be offering a handful of peas for a knot of wood no
+larger than the human fist, in order that they might cook their allowance;
+others offering, in barter, their remnants of clothing--a cap, or a shoe,
+or anything they possessed--for a morsel of food.
+
+[Illustration: _PLAN OF PRISON BAKERY_ ANDERSONVILLE Ga.]
+
+The little knots of wood above mentioned had a standard value of fifty
+cents; yet there were immense forests all around, and within sight on
+every side.
+
+
+XIV.
+
+There appears to have been but one kitchen for this vast assemblage, and
+that strangely situated--far in rear of the outer palisade, away from
+water-course or spring. The soil to-day does not present traces of a
+much-travelled road from its doorway to the main gate, distant about one
+third of a mile by the route taken. Consider the enormous weight of
+provisions which should have passed over this road when the prison
+contained more than twenty thousand men. This kitchen was a plain
+one-story shed, built of rough boards, one hundred feet in length, and
+less than fifty feet in width. It contained in the interior two
+medium-sized ranges, and four boilers of fifty gallons' capacity each. The
+capacity indicated does not by far equal the cooking apparatus which is
+required and furnished to the Lincoln and Harewood Hospitals, of
+Washington, for twelve hundred men.
+
+It is the opinion of the writer, who is familiar with the amount of
+cooking apparatus required by large hospitals and camps, that this
+kitchen, with its implements, could not, in the course of twenty-four
+hours, by constant relays of industrious workmen, have furnished cooked
+rations to more than five thousand men. There may have been other
+arrangements for cooking in the open air; but there are no longer any
+traces of such operations, nor has the writer any evidence that such was
+the case.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+XV.
+
+Upon the banks of the same stream, and near the railroad station, was
+erected the stockade which was intended for the confinement of the
+officers; but it was abandoned, after few weeks' occupation, partly from
+motives of prudence and in fear of revolt in keeping officers near so
+great a number of the rank and file of the army, and partly from the
+unfortunate selection of the locality. The officers were removed to Macon,
+and were confined there in the cotton sheds during a long period. This
+pen, known as the officers' stockade, was built of pine-tree palisades,
+fifteen feet high, and measured one hundred and ninety-five feet in length
+by one hundred and eight feet in width, and was provided with a shed in
+the interior forty-five feet long by twenty-seven feet wide, and also with
+a walk, suspended on the outside of the palisade, for the use of the
+sentries. The location and the provisions of this stockade were worse and
+more dangerous than even the main prison.
+
+
+XVI.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+On the pathway to the graveyard, not far from the prison, and in open
+sight, was built the hut where the bloodhounds were kept, always ready to
+track and pursue the fugitives, who were so fortunate as to escape by
+evading the vigilance of the guards, or by the slow and dangerous process
+of tunnelling beneath the palisades. The system of pursuit was so perfect,
+the dogs so numerous and well trained, that it was very rarely that any
+one escaped, and then it was only by the kind intervention of the black
+man.
+
+There were but nine bloodhounds kept here, but there were more than fifty
+dogs, kept in relays, along the route of escape, extending from the town
+to the city of Macon, fifty miles distant. The names of these inhuman
+wretches, who kept and hunted with these hounds, are known to the writer,
+the places of their residence, the number of their animals, and the price
+they received for each hapless victim overpowered by their dogs. These
+packs of hounds were generally accompanied by dogs of fierce and
+determined courage, to seize and hold the object pursued until the hunters
+arrived. The ordinary bloodhound of these regions is cowardly from
+degeneration, and dare not face the look, nor disregard the voice of man,
+and until the catch-dogs arrive and dash in, and lead the way, they bay
+and show their teeth from safe distances; but the victim once disabled,
+they tear and rend the living limbs without reluctance. The bloodhound is
+said, when in a state of tranquillity, to be the most affectionate of all
+the canine race, but when once excited, he no longer recognizes the blood
+of his master from that of the stranger. That many men were pursued, and
+caught, and paid for by the rebel authorities, at the price of thirty
+dollars a head, there is abundant proof; that men were disabled, and torn
+wantonly by the hounds, and afterwards died of their wounds, the writer
+has positive proof. That Federal soldiers were overpowered and destroyed
+in the forests by the dogs, and their brutal owners, there is evidence.
+
+It did not shock the civil communities of the South to hear of the use of
+the bloodhounds to pursue and maim men of their own race and nation, for
+in every locality, for a long period past, it had been the custom to rear
+and train dogs to catch the hapless slave who had incurred the rage of his
+master, and vainly sought to escape from his fury in the obscure recesses
+of the tangled forests.
+
+Usage, by long repetition, had blunted the natural sympathies, so that
+hate readily excused the difference in class and color.
+
+
+XVII.
+
+The bloodhounds here used appear to have been of a degenerate breed, and
+to have lacked the great strength, the invincible determination, which the
+true race possesses. The bloodhounds introduced into Cuba, to exterminate
+the Indians, were ferocious and powerful animals. From these the present
+stock in Southern Georgia were probably descended, and during three
+centuries of change, have gradually lost their nobler qualities, but have
+preserved the form. The true bloodhound is taller than the fox-hound, and
+stronger in his make. His color is of a reddish brown, shaded here and
+there with darker tints. His muzzle and jaws wide and strong, and the
+frame firmly knit. His scenting power is extraordinary, and from time
+immemorial his services have been made use of in tracking wounded animals
+or fugitives from justice.
+
+  "Soon the sagacious brute, his curling tail
+  Flourished in air, low bending, plies around
+  His busy nose, the steaming vapor snuffs
+  Inquisitive, nor leaves one turf untried,
+  Till, conscious of the recent stains, his heart
+  Beats quick; his snuffing nose, his active tail
+  Attest his joy: then with deep, opening mouth,
+  That makes the welkin tremble, he proclaims
+  Th' audacious felon: foot by foot he marks
+  His winding way, while all the listening crowd
+  Applaud his reasonings, o'er the watery ford,
+  Dry sandy heaths, and stony, barren hills;
+  O'er beaten paths, with men and beasts disdained,
+  Unerring he pursues, till at the cot
+  Arrived, and seizing by his guilty throat
+  The caitiff vile, redeems the captive prey."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK FOURTH.
+
+
+I.
+
+Animals eat that they may live. Man eats, not only that he may live, but
+that he may gather strength, and fulfil his high destiny on earth.
+
+When God gave form and animation to the dust of the earth, and man
+appeared, he did not intend that the sustenance of life should be left to
+chance or to careless selection. This intent of the Creator is revealed in
+the study of the organic world, where wonderful varieties and productions
+are offered to the appetite of man, in order that the "force of the
+universe may glow within his veins," and that the faculties of his mind
+may so expand that he may behold and comprehend the works and designs of
+his Maker.
+
+Food, next to the purity of the air, determines the degree of the physical
+well-being; it gives the beauty of contour to the form; it builds up the
+marvellous structure of the brain; the ravishing smile of the features,
+the sublimity of thought, depend alike in great measure upon the benign
+influence of food.
+
+It not only gives to nations their characteristics of strength and
+solidity, but it bestows upon society more of grace and refinement than
+philosophy is willing to allow.
+
+
+II.
+
+The question of alimentation with the civil laborer, exposed to healthy
+influences of properly distributed air and sunlight, and to the regular
+motions of a well-conducted life, is easy of solution to the inquiring
+mind.
+
+But when it relates to the soldier, subjected to strange and unhealthy
+influences, the explanations involve much study, care, and research.
+
+In the natural condition of man it is easy to determine how much food will
+support life and sustain physical exertion. The dietaries of the public
+institutions of different countries, the experiments of physiologists, and
+the records of history give the data with sufficient clearness. As to the
+amount of food required daily to repair the waste and wants of the human
+organism, much depends upon the degree of muscular exertion and nervous
+excitation, as well as the temperature of the season. In the alimentation
+of armies scientific principles must not be disregarded. Food must be
+considered as force; it must contain, not only material, but power. The
+strength of men, says Baron Liebig, is in direct ratio to the plastic
+matter in their food.
+
+In determining the absolute quantities of nutrient substances required by
+the system, Lehman observes that there are three magnitudes especially to
+be considered.
+
+The first is the quantity requisite to prevent the animal from sinking by
+starvation. The second is that which affords the right supply of
+nourishment for the perfect accomplishment of the functions, and the last
+is that which indicates the amount of nutrient matter which may, under
+the most favorable circumstances, be subjected to metamorphosis in the
+blood. No one of the four classes, the carbohydrates, the fats, the
+albuminous matters, and the salts, will answer the purpose alone, but all
+must be employed together, and this invariable proportion according to the
+local, and, therefore, variable waste of the system. These considerations
+indicate how complicated the problem is.
+
+
+III.
+
+Life is an action; the principle of life, whatever may be its nature, is
+eminently and visibly a principle of excitation, of impulsion, a motive
+power.
+
+"It is taking a false idea of life," says Cuvier, "to consider it as a
+simple link which binds the elements of the living body together, since,
+on the contrary, it is a power which moves and sustains them unceasingly."
+
+These elements do not for an instant preserve the same relation and
+connection; or, in other words, the living body does not for an instant
+keep the same state and composition. "This law," adds Flourens, "does not
+affect alone the muscles, viscera, and tissues, but there is a continual
+mutation of all the parts composing the bone." These views have been
+substantiated by the extended experiments of Chossat, of Von Bibra, and a
+host of experimentalists, showing how positive and decided are the changes
+in the material composition of the body, and especially the constitution
+of even the bone from the influence of food.
+
+
+IV.
+
+"It is from the blood that life derives the principles which maintain and
+repair it. The more vigorous, plastic, and rich in nutritive material, so
+much the more life increases and manifests itself, so much the quicker the
+reparatory processes restore a lesion to its natural condition.
+
+"The blood owes its vivifying properties to the presence of oxygen, which
+it receives by the respiratory organs; but that nourishing fluid, to
+complete its physiological _role_, needs to receive combustible and
+organizable material."
+
+These Protean principles of the healthy blood form one fifth of its
+weight.
+
+Oxygen unites with the carbon of the food in the blood of animals;
+carbonic acid is formed and heat evolved. When the atmosphere is vitiated,
+the oxygenating processes are diminished in ratio to the vitiation.
+
+The experiments of Seguin, Crawford, and De la Roche show that in a
+vitiated and highly heated atmosphere the blood is not thoroughly
+decarbonized, thereby deranging the nervous system, and affecting the
+animal functions as well as the mental faculties. The blood is subject to
+incessant variations. The more feeble the respiration the less rich it is.
+Man absorbs twenty to thirty quarts of oxygen every hour. The pure air is
+a real food, and is as necessary for the development and repair of the
+physical force as the more solid forms of matter. Nine ounces of carbon
+are consumed every day, and the phenomenon of the expired carbonic acid
+has its maxima and minima during the day, like the regular variations of
+the barometer or the tides of the ocean.
+
+
+V.
+
+The great nervous prostration and the lack of energy which were observed
+among the prisoners, were not due entirely to climate. The activity of the
+nervous mechanism depends greatly upon the supply and purity of the
+arterial blood. It is the same with the nerve fibres as with the nerve
+centres, but in less degree. We observe that the exaltation and depression
+of the nervous power are within the control of man by the administration
+of certain drugs, or respiration of appropriate gases. The accumulation of
+bile or urea in the blood diminishes the nerve energy. Many physiologists
+enumerate moral depressions among the principal causes of epidemics; and
+this opinion is not strange when we consider how completely the system is
+under control of the nervous influence, and how much the supply of oxygen
+and blood to the organs and tissues depend upon the nervous power; and how
+much, moreover, the integrity of the nervous system depends upon the
+purity of the blood.
+
+In the process of starvation, during the struggle for life, the hidden
+forces in reserve--the superabundant muscle, fat, tissues, even the
+brain-substance--are gradually absorbed. The volume of blood may remain
+the same, but the vivifying particles which circulate in the vital stream
+are rapidly consumed by the wants of the wasting economy, and disappear.
+And when these hematic globules are lessened to a certain limit below the
+normal proportion death ensues. Vierodt has discovered that the limit of
+this singular law is 52 per 1000 for the dog, and about 60 per 1000 for
+some other species of the mammalia. The physiologists have shown how the
+vivifying principles acquire vigor through the blood discs, and how these,
+when absorbing pure oxygen through the pulmonary circulation, contribute
+to the development of muscular fibre and the nervous material. Mammals and
+birds, when deprived of food, die in ten to twenty days, losing from one
+third to one half of their weight.
+
+
+VI.
+
+In determining the nutritive value of aliments by the study of their
+chemical composition, we cannot adhere strictly to the results furnished
+by analysis. For, says Baron Liebig, we cannot reckon upon results in the
+human stomach with the same regularity as we would in the alembics of our
+laboratories.
+
+Physiologists divide alimentary substances into two classes: the
+nitrogenous, which, according to Dumas, supply the demands of
+assimilation, and the non-nitrogenous, which are called by Liebig
+respiratories, from furnishing the products consumed by respiration.
+Neither the one nor the other will alone support life indefinitely, and
+when one or the other decreases below well-defined limits, health
+declines, and finally life becomes extinct from inanition.
+
+Milne Edwards gives, as the mean amount of these two classes, required for
+all climates, not less than three hundred and fifteen grains of nitrogen
+and thirty-three hundred and fifty grains of carbon in the twenty-four
+hours. These views are adopted by most physiologists; yet the analyses of
+Schlossberger and Kemp indicate that the idea of estimating the value of
+food by the quantity of nitrogen it contains is a fallacious one.
+
+The beautiful experiments of Bernard and the modern physiologists have
+unfolded many of the laws that regulate digestion and assimilation. Yet
+the human researches in the great arcana of nature are extremely limited,
+in comparison with the vast range of physical phenomena, and every day we
+are reminded of the remarks of Boerhaave to his students: "Let all these
+heroes of science meet together; let them take bread and wine, the food
+which forms the blood of man, and by assimilation contributes to the
+growth of the body; let them try by all their art, and assuredly they will
+not be able from these materials to produce a single drop of blood,--so
+much is the most common act of nature beyond the utmost efforts of the
+most extended science."
+
+The composition of the typical food of nature is revealed to us in the
+analysis of human milk.
+
+
+VII.
+
+The need of varied food is apparent to the casual observer, and it is well
+proven in the immortal work of Cabanis. "The experience of civilized life
+has shown," says Professor Horsford, in his admirable pamphlet on the
+marching ration of armies, "that the human organism requires, to maintain
+it in health, both organic and inorganic food.
+
+"Of the organic, it needs nitrogenous food for the support of the vital
+tissues for work; and saccharine, or oleaginous food, for warmth. Of the
+inorganic, it needs phosphates for the bones, brain, muscles, and blood;
+and salt for its influence on the circulation and the secretions, and for
+various purposes where soda is required for a base; and doubtless both
+phosphates and salt for many offices as yet imperfectly understood. 'A man
+may be starved by depriving him of phosphates and salt, just as
+effectively as by depriving him of albumen or oil.' (Dalton's Physiology.)
+
+"The salts of potassa, magnesia, and iron, of manganese, silica, and
+fluorine, are always present, and perform services of greater or less
+obvious moment in the animal economy. These organic and inorganic
+substances are essential, but they are not all that are needed. Man,
+especially when compelled to exhausting labor, requires beverages and
+condiments. He wants coffee, or tea, or cocoa; or, in the absence of
+these, he may feel a craving for wine or spirits. He wants salt, pepper,
+and vinegar. To preserve a sound body, then, there are required organic
+and inorganic food, beverages, and condiments."
+
+"A mixed food," says another writer, "which varies from time to time,
+seems to be essential; and there can be no doubt that the changes which
+physicians have recognized in the nature of the predominating diseases,
+from century to century, are connected with changes which have taken place
+in the nature of the diet. Excess of oil, albumen, and starch produce
+liability to arthritic, bilious, and rheumatic affections; a deficiency of
+oleaginous materials, scrofula, &c."
+
+
+VIII.
+
+In attempting to form a proper estimate of the alleged ration furnished by
+the rebels to their prisoners at Andersonville, we will endeavor to arrive
+at just conclusions by comparing the known quantities with the dietaries
+of long-established hospitals, prisons, and the ration of armies of
+different periods of history.
+
+The effects of food upon the civil prisoners, both of the long and short
+term, have been carefully studied by Christison, Liebig, Barral, and
+Edwards; and it is conclusively shown by their statistics of the prisons
+of Europe how much food will keep the prisoners in athletic condition when
+exposed to healthy influences. The quantity of food required depends upon
+the wants of the system and the quality of food consumed. Some articles
+are far more nutritious than others, and are far less bulky; for instance,
+the rice eaters of China, the potato and milk consumers of Ireland, eat
+enormously, compared with the beef-eating people.
+
+But rarely will a less quantity than seventeen ounces suffice for the
+animal economy, and not then, even, unless it is the concentrated essences
+and principles of carefully selected grains, and healthy meat from cattle
+killed in their native pastures, like the scientific ration correctly
+proposed by Professor Horsford. This ration is intended to enable armies
+to change their base with intervals of more than a month, and to assist
+raiding parties to perform long journeys without relying for subsistence
+on the doubtful and difficult forage along the route, or on the distant
+depots at the point of departure.
+
+A handful of the ripe, golden grains, roasted and mixed with a little
+sugar, with a few ounces of beef dried from the meat of healthy cattle
+killed instantly, will sustain the power of life wonderfully. This is
+shown by the mountaineers of the Cordilleras, of the Andes, and the Rocky
+Mountains.
+
+It was substantially the same ration that enabled the Romans to traverse
+countries far remote from their main depots of supplies, and the Greeks to
+advance across, with safety, the immense arid deserts of Asia. Any of our
+splendidly equipped and fed armies of modern times would perish in a few
+days along the route where Xenophon and his immortal ten thousand passed
+with safety, and without much loss.
+
+
+IX.
+
+The mode of rationing the Roman armies, and the manner in which the
+supplies were obtained and preserved, is well shown in the extant writings
+of those times. Besides the allowance of wheat daily,--one to two
+pounds,--the Roman soldiers often received a ration of pork, mutton,
+legumes, cheese, oil, salt, wine, and vinegar. With the grain, a
+porridge-pot, a spit, the casque for a cup, and with vinegar to mix with
+their water,--which formed the regulation drink posea, or acetum,--they
+marched rapidly, and retained their extraordinary vigor in the midst of
+pestilential regions. Every soldier carried his own food for a given
+length of time, which was from eight to twenty-eight days. "_Cibo cum
+suo._" Hence Josephus wrote, the Roman soldier is laden like a mule. This
+food was always of the best quality; and the wheat was always carefully
+selected by a commission appointed for the purpose, as we may learn from
+the inscription on the column of Trajan. This wheat was not always eaten
+raw; but was oftener roasted, and crushed upon a stone.
+
+                    "Frugesque receptas
+  Et torrere parant flammis et frugere saxo."
+
+With all of these arrangements and movements, there was method even as to
+the time of taking food. The soldier ate twice a day, and at appointed
+hours--at the sixth hour, "Prandium;" and at the tenth hour, "Vesperna."
+
+
+X.
+
+The requirements of the system differ greatly, according to the degree of
+heat, the purity of the air, and the degree of physical exercise. What
+suffices at the equator would be but a morsel at the pole. What sustains
+the quiet student would starve the active athlete.
+
+When Volney spoke in surprise of the few ounces required to sustain the
+Bedouin, he forgot the purity of the air of the desert, as well as the
+indolent life of the Arab.
+
+When we offer as example the frugal diet of Cornaro, which was twelve
+ounces of solid food, with fourteen ounces of wine, daily, we must
+remember that the celebrated man lived a life of moderation, avoided bad
+air, and guarded against the extremes of heat and cold.
+
+The data of Frerichs, the observations of Sir John Sinclair, and the
+determinations of Professor Horsford, show that eighteen ounces of
+properly selected food may sustain life; and they also show that the
+nutrient substances must be of known value.
+
+
+XI.
+
+In forming our ideas as to the required amount of food necessary to
+healthy vigor, we will not attempt to analyze the magnitudes of Lehman,
+nor accept the statement of Chossat, that the animal body loses daily
+about one twenty-fourth of its weight by the metamorphosis of tissue; but
+will again examine the diet tables of the prisons, hospitals, and armies
+of Europe, leaving the reader to form his own conclusions.
+
+The distinguished physiologist, Milne Edwards, maintains that the food
+must contain three hundred and fifteen grains of nitrogen and three
+thousand three hundred and fifty grains of carbon, otherwise the animal
+economy loses force, and gradually deteriorates. The data of Frerichs give
+the same views, and they accord with the observations of the ten years'
+study of the regimens of the prisons of Scotland. Dumas, in his
+calculations of the ration of the French army, gives as its equivalent
+three hundred and thirty-five grains of nitrogen and four thousand nine
+hundred and fifty grains of carbon.
+
+In the prisons and hospitals of England, Scotland, France, and Germany,
+the dietaries furnish from seventeen to twenty-eight ounces of nitrogenous
+and carbonaceous food.
+
+For a time, the solid ration of the prisons of Scotland was reduced to
+seventeen ounces, but the prisoners lost weight. In the public
+institutions of England we find the total quantity of solid food to be as
+follows: The British soldier receives in home service 45 ounces; the
+seaman of the Royal navy 44 ounces; convicts 54 ounces; male pauper 29
+ounces; male lunatic 31 ounces. The full diet of the hospitals of London
+furnish from 25 to 31 ounces of solid food, besides from one to five pints
+of beer daily. The Russian soldier has about 50 ounces; the Turkish more
+than 40 ounces; the French nearly 50 ounces; the Hessian 33 ounces; the
+Yorkshire laborer 50 ounces; United States navy 50 ounces; and the soldier
+of the United States army about 50 ounces, of solid food.
+
+
+XII.
+
+The food allowed to the prisoners at Andersonville, according to the
+statements of the prisoners and other witnesses, was from two to four
+ounces of bacon, and from four to twelve ounces of corn bread daily;
+sometimes a half pint to a pint of bean, pea, or sweet potato soup, of
+doubtful value. Vegetables were unknown. Thus giving a total weight of
+solid food, per diem, of six to sixteen ounces of solid food. The amount
+was not constant: some days the prisoners were entirely without food, as
+was the case at Belle Isle and Salisbury. Neither was the deficiency
+afterwards made good. The amount given was oftener less than ten ounces
+than more.
+
+The contrast furnished by the dietaries of our own military prisons, of
+those of the British hulks (so much cursed during the last war), or by the
+food given by the Algerine pirates to their prisoners and slaves, gives
+rise to terrible convictions as to the regard the rebel authorities placed
+upon the lives of their prisoners. The United States allowed to the rebel
+prisoners held by them thirty-eight ounces of solid food at first; but
+afterwards, in June, 1864, they reduced the ration to thirty-four and a
+half ounces per day. The range of articles composing the ration was the
+same as with our own troops, the exception being in the weight in bread.
+In the Dartmoor prison in England, where our men were confined by the
+English, when taken prisoners during the last war, and of which so much
+cruelty has been alleged, the authorities allowed to the prisoners for the
+first five days in the week 24 ounces of coarse brown bread, 8 ounces of
+beef, 4 ounces of barley, 1/3 ounce of salt, 1/3 ounce of onions, and 16
+ounces of turnips daily (or more than 50 ounces of solid food); and for
+the remaining two days the usual allowance of bread was given with 16
+ounces of pickled fish. The daily allowance to our men, at the Melville
+Island prison, at Halifax, during the last war, was 16 ounces of bread, 16
+ounces of beef, and one gill of peas; the American agent furnishing
+coffee, sugar, potatoes, and tobacco. The allowance on the noted Medway
+hulks was 8 ounces of beef, 24 ounces of bread, and one gill of barley,
+daily, for five days; and 16 ounces of codfish, 16 ounces potatoes, or 16
+ounces of smoked herring, the remaining two days of the week. Furthermore,
+in addition to these generous allowances of the British people, it can be
+said that the quality of the food was almost always excellent.
+
+The writer, with one exception, knows of no dietary to compare with that
+adopted, or made use of without the formality of adoption, by the rebel
+authorities in the treatment of their prisoners.
+
+This exception is found in ancient history, which Plutarch has handed down
+to us. The Athenians, captured at the siege of Syracuse, were placed in
+the stone quarries of Ortygia, and fed upon one pint of barley and half a
+pint of water daily. Most of them perished from this treatment.
+
+
+XIII.
+
+The corn bread furnished was made, according to the evidence, from corn
+and the cob, ground up together, and sometimes mixed with what is called
+in the south cow peas. It varied from four to twelve ounces in weight
+daily, generally from four to eight ounces. A pound (of sixteen ounces) of
+corn bread contains, according to chemical analysis, two thousand eight
+hundred grains of carbon and one hundred and twenty-one grains of
+nitrogen, and therefore the highest quantity of corn bread furnished, say
+twelve ounces, afforded but two thousand one hundred grains of carbon and
+ninety grains of nitrogen, leaving a deficiency, according to the
+physiologists, of more than twelve hundred grains of carbon and two
+hundred grains of nitrogen, to be supplied by the two or four ounces of
+doubtful bacon.
+
+That the bacon could not furnish this deficiency must be apparent to the
+scientific observer. The quantity of bread alone, required to furnish the
+desired amount of carbon and nitrogen, would have been over three pounds
+daily, which quantity the prisoners did not have.
+
+Milne Edwards, after treating at length the subject of alimentation, and
+offering many examples, arrives at the conclusion that the mean quantity
+of bread and meat required to sustain the life of man, consists of sixteen
+ounces of bread and thirteen ounces of beef daily. This conclusion is
+sustained by most of the experimentalists, and if lesser quantities are
+used, they must be of choice selections. A small loaf of bread made of
+flour, ground from ripe, healthy wheat, will accomplish more for nutrition
+than two or three larger loaves, baked of damaged and unripe grain; and
+likewise it is with meat: half a pound of beef from cattle killed
+instantly in their native pastures, when the flesh retains all its natural
+juices and sweetness, is worth more for the support of the system than two
+or three pounds of beef from animals that have been fasted and terrified,
+and have thereby lost, in a very great measure, their nutritious
+qualities.
+
+The flesh of mammalia undergoes a great change in its nutritive qualities
+by reason of fasting, disturbance of sleep, and long-continued suffering,
+resulting in its becoming not only worthless, but deleterious.
+
+
+XIV.
+
+Vegetable substances alone will not sustain life for a great length of
+time in every climate, but there is a vast difference between the wants of
+man at the equator and his necessities at the pole.
+
+Nature requires for the working of her plans materials of diverse natures:
+neither the oil, nor starch, nor sugar, will sustain life alone. Chemical
+analysis and physiological history point out to us how positive is the
+law which fixes the component parts of grains and plants, and how
+imperative the necessity of adjusting in alimentation these forms of
+nutritive matter, which spring up on every side in profusion, and offer
+endless variety to the wants of man.
+
+There must be harmony of certain principles; there must be union of
+starch, of gluten, and fat, to complete the process of digestion and
+assimilation. To feed a patient upon arrow-root, tapioca, or sago, and the
+like, is to consign him to certain death. Instinct impels us sometimes to
+make use of articles which our habits have thrown aside.
+
+
+XV.
+
+It appears from the reasoning of Baron Liebig, that when we replace the
+flesh and bread of ordinary diet by juicy vegetables and fruits, the blood
+is beyond all doubt altered in its chemical character, the alkaline
+carbonates being substituted for the phosphoric acid and alkaline
+phosphates, which are supposed to exert a disturbing influence in so many
+diseases, especially typhoid and inflammatory affections. The gluten of
+grain, and the albumen of vegetable juices, are identical in composition
+with the albumen of blood, but there are varieties of wheat, the ashes of
+which are in quantity and in relative proportion of the salts the same as
+those of boiled and lixiviated meats, and it cannot be maintained that
+bread made of such flour would, if it were the only food taken, support
+life permanently.
+
+The experiments of the French academicians, show that dogs fed
+exclusively on white bread, made from the sifted flour, died in forty
+days; but when fed on black bread (flour with the bran), they lived
+without disturbance of health. Bread should always be made of grains grown
+in healthy places, and should contain the entire seed, with the exception
+of the husk; then it will realize the idea of Paracelsus: "When a man eats
+a bit of bread, does he not therein consume heaven and earth, and all of
+the heavenly bodies, inasmuch as heaven by its fertilizing rain, the earth
+by its soil, and the sun by its luminous and heat-giving rays, have all
+contributed to its production, and are all present in the one substance?"
+
+Desiccated vegetables, which have lost the water of vegetation and other
+gaseous elements, which chemistry thus far has been unable to discover,
+cannot adequately replace the fresh articles; the particular principle,
+the water of vegetation, can no more be restored to them than the dust of
+the crushed quartz can be recrystallized by the simple addition of water.
+
+
+XVI.
+
+In the alimentation of armies bread is the basal element. If it be poor,
+the whole system of the commissariat is deranged. History shows that it is
+the most important item in the feeding of soldiers, and that many a
+campaign, since the disaster to the army of Belisarius at Methon, has been
+lost in consequence of the quality of its munition bread.
+
+France allows to her soldiers 26 ounces of bread, England 24, Belgium 28,
+Sardinia 26, Spain 23, Prussia 32, Austria 32, Turkey 33, United States
+22, _Rebel Prisons_ 4 _to_ 12 _ounces_!
+
+The quantity of corn meal allowed to the rebel soldiers by the rebel
+government was about one and one-third pounds daily: this would give about
+28 ounces of bread, allowing 30 per cent. of water, which is the rule
+among bakers; at least it is the average quantity established by the civil
+tax commission of Paris. Besides the corn meal they had six ounces of
+bacon, and peas, and rice. This ration was sufficient to preserve life, as
+it has been shown by the condition of the rebel armies; the bread alone
+contained 4900 grains of carbon, and 210 grains of nitrogen, without the
+aid of bacon or the peas. The bread alone has an excess of 1600 grains of
+carbon, and a deficiency only of about 100 grains of nitrogen, which was
+readily supplied by the bacon and other articles. Corn bread is one of the
+chief articles of diet in the Southern States, and it is likewise used
+extensively in the South of Europe. It makes heavy bread unless carefully
+prepared and mixed with flour, and when mixed with the cob it often
+produces a laxative effect, the degree of which depends greatly upon the
+quantity the meal contains. When properly prepared with milk and the usual
+ingredients, it becomes an agreeable and nutritious article of diet, but
+carelessly handled, it is disagreeable to the palate and difficult to
+digest.
+
+The bread furnished to the prisoners was simply mixed with salt and the
+dirty water from the brook, or the foul spring in the rear of the bakery,
+and then dried in the heat of the oven. That bad effects arose from such a
+quality of bread cannot be doubted; the injurious influences of impure
+water in panification have been pointed out by Boussingault, in a paper
+presented to the French Academy in 1857.
+
+It is the common saying in the Southern States, where the use of wheaten
+bread is comparatively rare, that a bushel of corn contains more nutriment
+than a bushel of wheat. Yet the southern wheat is superior to the northern
+varieties, and is richer in the azotized, glutinous principles so
+essential to the formation of blood and muscle. Vermicelli and macaroni
+can be made only from the best southern wheat.
+
+Of the varieties of Indian corn in America, the yellow flinty corn is
+reckoned the sweetest and most nutritive; the white corn of the South
+makes the fairest, but considerably the weakest flour. We do not find
+special fault with the coarsely ground meal, provided the cob is not
+included, for Mayer has pointed out, in discarding the commercial bran we
+throw away fourteen times as much phosphoric acid as there is in superfine
+flour. In this bran are contained most of the layers of gluten, in which
+are lodged the phosphates and the companion nitrogenous compounds--the
+sources of living tissues. The nutritious Graham bread is an example; also
+the pumpernickel of Westphalia, the black bread of Russia, the coarse
+oatmeal of Scotland, contain all the gluten, all the phosphates and
+nitrogenous compounds, as well as the starch of the grains. Such was the
+bread that Celsus considered as equal to flesh in its capacity of
+nourishing.
+
+
+XVII.
+
+Fresh meat was rarely furnished to the prison, according to the reports
+and statements of witnesses, and we should doubt that it was furnished at
+all, if it were not for the number of sections of the horns of cattle
+which are strewn about the enclosure, and which the prisoners had used for
+drinking dishes; still, many of these horns may have been taken from the
+cattle killed for the guards.
+
+That the issue of fresh beef would have been beneficial to the men, there
+is no doubt; in fact, the experiment at Jamaica, which continued twenty
+years, proves it; for the troops who were fed with a larger allowance of
+fresh meat suffered far less from dysentery than any of the troops of the
+West India islands. There is always great difficulty in preserving the
+good qualities of fresh meat in hot climes, and, on the other hand, the
+use of salt meat in the same regions is apt to engender scorbutic
+disorders. Whenever putrefactive fermentation begins with any kind of
+meat, or any recently living nitrogenized substance, catalytic action
+takes place, ammonia is evolved, and the product is no longer pleasant to
+the taste or nutritious to the system. Food, when even exposed to vitiated
+air, becomes deteriorated in quality, just as good flour is rendered
+worthless by mixture with the damaged fungoid grain. Butchers' meat on the
+average affords but thirty-five per cent. of real nutritive matter, at
+least such was the opinion presented to the French Minister of the
+Interior by Vauquelin and Percy. Accepting this determination, we may form
+some idea of the relative value of the scanty allowance of the doubtful
+beef furnished to the prisoners, if it was furnished at all.
+
+That bacon was furnished, there is no doubt; neither has the quantity been
+underrated by the sufferers themselves, as we shall presently see. And
+there is no reason why the quality should not have been most excellent,
+unless it had been selected for the purposes of cruelty. There is evidence
+that it was sometimes of very bad quality; but that it was generally and
+systematically selected to disgust the prisoners, we are unwilling to
+believe, although we have evidence that rotten bacon was furnished by
+contractors, and the fact boasted of by them. The influence and effect of
+this decomposed food may be surmised by the following remark of Donovan:
+"Flesh contains the elements of some of the most deadly poisons that are
+found even in the vegetable kingdom; a slight change in their mode of
+combination, or of the ratio of their quantities, may convert nutriment
+into a source of death."
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+There is another very important item to be considered in the dietary of
+this prison, and that is the quality and quantity of the water furnished
+for potable purposes. "Water," says Milne Edwards, "is an aliment, as well
+as sugar and fibrine; for it is indispensable for the nutrition of the
+body, and, by whatever means it arrives in the economy, its _role_ is
+always the same."
+
+The water consumed in the prison was obtained from the brook, and from the
+few wells or springs within the stockade. The volume of water in the brook
+was quite sufficient to furnish all the drinking water desired, if it had
+been introduced into the stockade by means of sluices. As it was, the
+course of the stream was left to nature, and no effort made to prevent its
+defilement by the camps situated farther up, or by the bake-house located
+close by. All the camps on the declivities about Andersonville were
+drained into this stream. Some few wells were sunk in the prison which
+yielded scanty supplies, and there were also a few springs undefiled; but
+the quality of water everywhere was surface water, tinged and tainted with
+the impurities of the soil and the infections of the collected filth. The
+thirst, which was excessive among the prisoners, could only be slaked by
+drinking the impure waters. Yet a very little care on the part of the
+rebel authorities would have increased the comfort of the prisoners in
+this respect, and prevented the loss of life to a very considerable
+degree.
+
+"The preservation of potable water," writes Felix Jacquot, "is certainly
+one of the capital points of hygiene."
+
+"I am sometimes disposed to think," states Dr. Letheby, the health officer
+of London, "that impure water is before impure air as one of the most
+powerful causes of disease." In cold climates slight impurities in the
+drinking water are not of vital importance; but in the tropics, and the
+adjacent regions, the least decayed vegetable or animal matter renders it
+injurious and unpalatable, and often is the determining cause of disease,
+especially enteric, to a fearful degree.
+
+
+XIX.
+
+During the months of June, July, August, and September, 1864, there was an
+aggregate number of prisoners of about twenty-eight thousand for each
+month. To supply this vast number of men with bread would have been
+ordinarily no easy task, requiring, as it would have done, twenty-eight
+thousand rations of bread daily, or eight hundred and forty thousand
+rations monthly. We have shown that the bakery could not have furnished
+more than ninety-six hundred rations of corn bread, of the United States
+weight of twenty ounces, or ninety-six hundred rations daily, or two
+hundred and eighty-eight thousand rations monthly, and probably furnished
+but five thousand rations daily, or one hundred and fifty thousand rations
+monthly. If this deficiency of a half a million of rations existed, how
+can it be explained?
+
+Was munition bread brought from a distance to supply the deficiency? When
+and whence, we will ask?
+
+During the period embracing the months of July, August, and September,
+1864, the rebel commissary furnished, according to his statements, two
+hundred and twenty-three thousand bushels of corn meal, and thirty-seven
+hundred bushels of flour for the prison.
+
+There was, during this time (ninety-two days), a monthly aggregate of
+twenty-nine thousand prisoners, who required twenty-nine thousand rations
+of corn meal daily; or, multiplied by ninety-two days, two million six
+hundred and sixty-eight thousand rations for the period of three months;
+or, allowing the same weight as the rebel ration, we have 2,668,000 x
+1-1/3 = 3,567,333 pounds of corn meal, or seventy-one thousand one
+hundred and forty-six bushels, allowing fifty pounds to the bushel. If we
+now estimate the rebel garrison to have been four thousand in the
+aggregate, we will have for the requirements, 4000 x 92 x 1-1/2 = 552,000
+pounds of meal, or ten thousand one hundred and ninety bushels, which
+gives, as total for the prison and garrison, eighty-one thousand two
+hundred and eighty-six bushels of corn meal.
+
+Yet the commissary states that he sent two hundred and twenty-three
+thousand bushels, or almost three times as much as the quantity required.
+This is a strange statement to make, as we shall endeavor to show.
+
+The rebel ration allowed by their law gave thirty-seven and a half pounds
+of corn meal, three pounds of rice, or five pounds of peas, ten pounds of
+bacon, salt, &c., monthly, of twenty-eight days, or about twenty ounces of
+meal daily, and about six ounces of bacon. We have, as an aggregate number
+of men for the above period (prisoners and guards), 29,000 + 4000 x 92 =
+3,036,000 men, requiring, according to law, three million seven hundred
+and ninety-five thousand pounds of corn meal. Now the commissary states
+that he furnished 226,700 bushels of corn meal and flour; or, multiplied
+by 50 pounds = 11,335,000 pounds, thus giving to each man more than three
+and one-fifth pounds of meal and flour; or, allowing the usual per cent.
+of water, more than four pounds of bread. That these men had sixty-eight
+ounces of corn bread apiece, or that they could have eaten it if they had
+been furnished that quantity, is not for a moment to be considered. This
+analysis betrays the falsity of the commissary's statement, and
+invalidates the remainder of his accounts.
+
+It cannot be said that this meal was to be stored for future use, for it
+is well known that corn meal will not keep in this climate but for a few
+days without fermentation taking place. There is, again, another serious
+item to be considered in connection with this statement. Why should this
+overplus, of more than seven millions of pounds of meal, be sent to this
+prison, when the army of Virginia was calling loudly for grain? The
+statement and the figures indicate simply a foolish desire to cover up
+deficiencies, and that too in a very hasty manner.
+
+
+XX.
+
+The same commissary states that he sent, during the same period of time,
+three hundred and thirty-nine thousand pounds of bacon, or five million
+four hundred and twenty-four thousand ounces. This will give thirty-six
+hundred and eighty-four pounds of bacon each day of the ninety-two days;
+and, after allowing six ounces per man to the rebel garrison, we shall
+have remaining but two thousand pounds to be divided among the twenty-nine
+thousand prisoners, or about one and one seventh ounces of bacon to each
+man. Thus the account of the commissary, if true, proves that the
+statement of the prisoners, that they received but two to four ounces of
+bacon daily, was correct.
+
+If the full amount of bacon had been allowed, there would have been
+required, at the rate of six ounces per man, ten thousand eight hundred
+and seventy-five pounds daily, whereas there was in reality but two
+thousand pounds, leaving a deficiency of more than eight thousand pounds
+daily. If fresh beef had been allowed at the same rate as the bacon, there
+would have been required ten thousand eight hundred and seventy-five
+pounds daily, or a herd of thirty of the native cattle, allowing three
+hundred and sixty pounds net weight to each carcass. If the full ration of
+one pound of fresh beef had been furnished, there would have been required
+more than one hundred and twenty of the same class of cattle daily.
+
+
+XXI.
+
+That the dietary of the prisoners was far from being adequate to their
+wants there is no doubt, and it only remains to be determined whether this
+deficiency arose from design, from ignorance, or from real scarcity of
+food.
+
+We have very serious doubts as to the truth of the statements that there
+was a scarcity of food in this vicinity during the time of the occupation
+of the prison.
+
+At the time of its selection the region was considered to be the richest
+in cereals of all the Southern States.
+
+In times previous it had proved to be fertile, and during the progress of
+the war the slave labor was undisturbed by the Federal troops. It is shown
+by their own statistics that in 1860 the four counties near the prison,
+and along the line of railroad, produced nearly fourteen hundred thousand
+bushels of corn, thirty-three thousand bushels of wheat, three hundred
+thousand bushels of potatoes, and more than one hundred thousand bushels
+of beans and peas, besides forty-eight thousand bales of cotton. It is
+highly probable that these quantities were doubled, if not trebled and
+quadrupled during the succeeding years of the war, when the planting of
+cotton was forbidden by rebel ukase, and all energy and labor were turned
+to the production of food. There were in these four counties alone more
+than twenty thousand slaves.
+
+In the south of Georgia, in the wire-grass region, were great numbers of
+cattle roaming at will, and the numbers in the everglades of Florida were
+so vast, that two old steamboat captains offered to furnish the rebel
+government, at this very period, with half a million pounds of salt beef,
+along the railroads in Florida. Governor Watts wrote from Alabama in
+April, 1864, that there were ten million pounds of bacon accessible in
+that State. In September of the same year, Mr. Hudson, of the adjoining
+State of Alabama, offered to deliver to the rebel government half a
+million pounds of bacon in exchange for the same quantity of cotton.
+
+The rebel war clerk, in his diary at Richmond, wrote, March 17, 1864, "It
+appears that there is abundance of grain and meat in the country;" and
+again, July 3, 1864, he notes down, "Our crop of wheat is abundant, and
+the harvest is over."
+
+According to the census of 1860, there were in Florida more than six
+hundred thousand cattle and swine, and more than five millions in Georgia
+and Alabama. These two States produced during the same year more than
+sixty million bushels of corn and thirteen million bushels of potatoes.
+(Vide Appendix.)
+
+
+XXII.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+As to the arrangement for the distribution of the food, there was but
+little attention paid to system. The prisoners were ordered to arrange
+themselves into squads of two hundred and ninety men, and these squads
+were then subdivided into three messes. None of these messes appear to
+have been properly supplied with utensils to receive and distribute their
+food. Every prisoner was obliged to take care of himself, and all around
+the area of the stockade may be seen at the present day remains of bent
+pieces of tinned iron, the rudely-fashioned little tub, and sections of
+the horns of cattle which the poor prisoners had worked up with their
+knives, and utilized for their necessities. Civilized men would never have
+resorted to these primitive, rough, and slovenly means, if they had been
+supplied with the ordinary utensils. At certain hours carts, laden with
+the corn bread and bacon, were driven into the enclosure, and the rations
+were distributed right and left. When soup was made, it was brought in
+pails, and the prisoners received it in their horn cups, wooden tubs, or
+as best they could. No drink was allowed but the water from the brook,
+whose ripples were like the river Lethe, for they contained the elements
+of oblivion and death.
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+It is evident to the writer that the quantity of food furnished to the
+prisoners was far from being adequate to support animal life, and from
+this deficiency alone he can explain to his satisfaction the enormous loss
+of life. The admirable experiments of Boussingault and the French
+academicians show how the increase of weight in the feeding of animals is
+in direct proportion to the amount of plastic constituents in the daily
+supply of food, and how positive is the law which regulates the animal
+economy. Again, we can form some idea of the positive effects of the
+horrible condition of the prison, and of the extremes of heat and moisture
+upon the feeble digestion and assimilation, by the experiments of Claude
+Bernard, who shows how these functions may be disturbed by external
+influences, and how agony even causes the disappearance of sugar in the
+hepatic organ, and how fear disturbs the glucogenic process. There is
+connected with inanition a singular tendency to decomposition and
+putridity, alike in the blood and viscera. The system left unnourished
+rapidly wastes, and its vitality soon lessens to a degree beyond recovery.
+This degree depends upon the forces in reserve, which belongs especially
+to youth; middle age is less liable to impressions, but when once
+affected, has less support from the system. The rapidity with which the
+dead decomposed immediately after death, astonished the observing surgeon.
+
+The prevailing diarrhoea and scorbutic condition were the results of the
+want of food and the combined influences of the bad air and water, and not
+the primary causes of the feebleness and death.
+
+The effect of the want of food first appears in loss of color--wasting
+away of the form, diminution of strength, vertigo, relaxation of the
+system of the viscera as well as of the muscles, diarrhoea appears, and
+rapidly closes the struggle of the natural forces for life.
+
+A few days, or a few weeks, according to the initial condition, is
+sufficient to test the tenacity of the powers of life. Death always takes
+place whenever the diminution of the total weight of the body reaches
+certain limits, which is from 40/100 to 50/100 of the usual weight. We
+observe this law to be quite positive and regular with the lower animals,
+with whom the effect of starvation has been well studied, and the limit of
+loss, compatible with life, found to be 40/100 for mammals and 50/100 for
+birds.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK FIFTH.
+
+    "Les Hopitaux. C'est ici que l'humanite en pleurs accuse les forfaits
+    de l'ambition."
+
+
+I.
+
+The Hospital is the recognized type of mercy, in its broadest range of
+benevolence, tenderness, and compassion, all over the countries of the
+earth, wherever the noble sentiments of nature have force. It is one of
+the emblems of the great religion of civilization. It is coeval with
+Christ, for it appeared among the institutions of men in definite shape
+only after the establishment of Christianity; and to its true exalting
+effects upon the dispositions of men, the Christian religion owes in great
+measure its rapid progress among the barbarous and pagan nations of the
+earth.
+
+In earlier times public charity was rare or impulsive among the civil
+communities. It was only the suffering and disabled defenders of the
+general service who were cared for at the expense of the state, as at the
+Prytaneum among the Athenians, or the numerous asylums which munificent
+Rome erected to the brave men who carved out with their strong arms and
+their blades of steel the colossal forms of her glory and grandeur. The
+magnificent ruins of Italica, which sheltered the disabled veterans and
+heroes of Africanus, look down at the present day over the vast and
+fertile plains of the Guadalquivir, to reproach later and higher
+civilizations with neglect and ingratitude.
+
+
+II.
+
+But it is to the beneficent and sublime influences of Christianity that
+are to be attributed the noble institutions of the present day, where the
+suffering and infirm receive the attentions of science and the
+consolations of humanity.
+
+Never among civilized nations are they profaned for the purposes of
+cruelty, never defiled by murder under the mask of philanthropy.
+
+Enlightened communities vie with each other in self-sacrifice in the great
+and heroic labor of devotion to suffering mortality. It is the
+distinguishing degree of difference in their excellence, their refinement,
+their religion.
+
+It is the last thought and reflection of the dying man, who, in dividing
+his worldly material with charity and benevolence, hopes to be kindly
+remembered on earth. It is the first dawning idea of childhood, with its
+infant hands filled with roses and garlands of flowers to relieve the
+pains of human suffering, or adorn the pale features of the departed.
+
+To delight in human misery is the last degree of earthly degradation and
+perversity. The mockery of the agony of death belongs only to the fiends
+of hell and their baser imitators.
+
+
+III.
+
+Not until some time after the occupation of the prison did the care and
+condition of the sick attract the attention and excite the solicitude of
+the prison-keepers. Then a space was selected to the eastward, and almost
+adjoining the stockade, and here were pitched the decayed and dilapidated
+tents which were to form the hospital.
+
+The exact size of the space is not known, the boundaries having
+disappeared since the evacuation; but the tents were arranged, it is said,
+with some degree of regularity, and the collection was surrounded by a
+fence, which served only to obstruct the circulation of free air, which
+was of vital importance; and besides, the fence was of no service whatever
+as protection against the escape of the inmates, as they were before
+admission generally far too feeble to make even an effort.
+
+The actual amount of accommodation furnished is not known. By some it is
+stated that there were nothing whatever but a few rotten tent flies; by
+others, and among them one of the surgeons, it is narrated that there were
+tents to cover one thousand men, and three large kettles to provide for
+their cooking, and nothing more. Yet the records show that there were
+nearly four thousand men at one time in this hospital. This distribution
+of the means for the protection and sustenance of life is too terrible to
+be believed. Let us overlook it, for there is sufficient for execration
+elsewhere, without turning to the more revolting violation and desecration
+of one of the sanctuaries of civilization.
+
+Beneath these tent covers there was neither straw, nor mattresses, nor
+bunks: there was simply the bare earth, with no protection but what was
+afforded by the rotten canvas, the scanty clothing, the ragged blanket,
+which the hapless sufferer might possess. Many of the unfortunate men who
+perished here had neither shelter nor clothing. The rapacity of the
+captors had taken the remnants of the rags left by the fury of battle. For
+this want of shelter, and couches to protect and rest the weary limbs,
+there is no excuse, and there can be none; for in the adjoining forests
+there were immense quantities of timber accessible, and easy of conversion
+into manufacture, and the extremities of the boughs of the long-leaved or
+Southern pine afforded the means of making comfortable and healthy beds.
+
+There were then within the stockade many thousands of men accustomed to
+the use of the axe, the adze, the saw, and the plane, who would have in
+few days fashioned implements of steel out of the useless scraps of
+railway iron lying at the depot, and transformed the forest into vast,
+even magnificent buildings, replete with the comforts, the conveniences of
+advanced art. There were artisans here, of education and ingenuity, who
+could have formed out of the very dust of the place edifices as beautiful
+and wonderful to the imagination and understanding as the reality was
+repulsive and strange.
+
+
+IV.
+
+The guards furnished themselves with comfortable huts, arranged with the
+common conveniences, and their bunks were suspended above the contact of
+the treacherous ground. Their invalids were well cared for also in the
+large hospital which was erected expressly for the garrison, and which
+consisted of two large two-story wooden buildings, admirably arranged,
+with the conveniences proper to the service. The kitchen, the dispensary,
+the ventilation, and the general arrangement, showed that scientific care
+and forethought had been observed there.
+
+The hospital system of the rebels was quite complete, and most of their
+hospitals throughout the country were well constructed and equipped; and
+some of them were models of neatness, comfort, and scientific arrangement.
+
+The garrison hospital at Andersonville offers a terrible contrast to the
+open space, the wretched agglomeration, which the rebel authorities called
+a hospital for the prisoners.
+
+It is true that the commanding officers were compelled, from some unknown
+pressure,--whether the sense of shame, or dictate from Richmond,--to order
+and commence the erection, at a late date, of a new hospital stockade.
+This was to consist of a high palisade, about one thousand feet in length,
+with twenty-two open sheds erected in the interior; but it was never
+finished, nor occupied, and it remains to-day as it was left by the rude,
+black artisans, one of the evidences of either remorse or reluctant
+obedience to the lingering sense of natural compassion of its senseless
+and heartless rulers.
+
+
+V.
+
+In the organization of a hospital the most important parts are the system
+of nursing and the supply and cooking of food; when these are observed,
+much exposure to the elements can be endured.
+
+Pestilences are retarded, and sometimes completely checked, in their
+destructive career when opposed by generous alimentation and sympathetic
+care; and the vital powers,--the _vis medicatrix naturae_,--rally their
+mighty strength for renewed effort. We have for instance the great and
+marked change in the healthy condition and the mortality of the British
+army before Sebastopol in the spring of 1856, when England poured out
+lavishly her treasures, and sent men of scientific ability to correct the
+well-nigh fatal errors of hygiene which were committed by her military
+men.
+
+We have also another instance in the check of a devastating pestilence at
+New Orleans, as observed and mentioned by Dr. Cartwright. "As soon as a
+generous public diffused the comforts of life among the seventy thousand
+destitute emigrant population of New Orleans, last summer, the pestilence,
+which was sweeping into eternity three hundred a day, immediately began to
+disappear, before frost or any other change in the weather, its artificial
+fabric being broken down by the beneficent hand of the American people."
+
+
+VI.
+
+Here there appears to have been neither system, nor order, nor humanity.
+The chances of recovery were far less than the certainty of death. In
+reality, it was almost certain death; for only twenty-four out of the
+hundred who entered ever returned to the prison again. Those patients who
+possessed sufficient strength helped themselves to what was at hand, and
+what was afforded by the meagre dietary; those who had not, folded their
+arms and died.
+
+Medical men went through the formality of prescribing for the dying men,
+but with formulae whose ingredients were unknown to them.
+
+Some of these surgeons gloated over the distresses of their fellow-men,
+and delighted in the awful destruction of life which was branding with
+eternal infamy the manhood of their nation.
+
+Others turned and wept, for humanity was not extinct. Those tears have in
+part blotted out and redeemed the fearful inscriptions in that record of
+the events of life which form the history of the human race.
+
+It is not known that woman ever visited these precincts from feelings of
+compassion, and offered to console the last moments of the dying. We do
+know that they gazed upon the scene from a distance, but with what emotion
+history wisely makes no note.
+
+In Catholic countries we observe the hospitals attended by nuns, sisters
+of mercy and charity, all eager to labor in behalf of humanity. Besides
+these, the deaconesses of the Rhine and the beguines of Flanders have
+acquired an imperishable record in history for their philanthropic
+efforts. "There is nothing," says Voltaire, "nobler than the sight of
+delicate females sacrificing beauty, youth, often wealth and rank, to
+devote themselves to the relief of human miseries under the most revolting
+forms." We have seen in our own time, in the hospitals of the Federal
+armies, a devoted band of self-sacrificing women striving to perform
+their part in the great work of philanthropy. Here woman never appeared.
+There were, in reality, only the vivid impressions of horror, complaints,
+groans, delirium, and the agony of death.
+
+More than eight thousand of our men perished miserably in this neglected
+and iniquitous spot.
+
+Men were seen here in all stages of idiocy and imbecility from the effects
+of starvation. They were seen asking for bones to gnaw to relieve the
+pangs of hunger. Compassion never will believe that this request was made
+by dying mortals, and that too in a hospital, which is regarded among men
+as the holy institution of society, and even by infuriated combatants as
+the only sacred precinct on the brutal fields of war.
+
+The same wail of distress was heard on the plains of Texas, and along the
+military lines of Virginia.
+
+Thus the black flag, threatened by the rebel cabinet, was hoisted. Without
+the courage to proclaim their intentions openly and boldly upon the
+battle-field, they exhibited them in as sure, but different form, in the
+management of their prisons.
+
+
+VII.
+
+The stories relating to vaccination with poisonous matter are doubtless
+untrue. That there were disastrous effects from vaccination is probably
+correct, but they must have been the results of accident. Similar
+consequences have been observed in civil communities, in armies, and in
+hospitals. Serious results have been noticed by the writer in our own
+armies and hospitals.
+
+Vaccine matter is extremely liable to decomposition; and when heated, even
+by the warmth of the body, fermentation arises, and by catalytic action
+putrefaction results, forming a positive poison. That the directors of
+this hospital should resort to such means for the destruction of human
+life is not at all probable, for the process required labor: and besides,
+the wretched invalids died with sufficient rapidity without the
+intervention of this new art of malice.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+In all military hospitals, food is to be regarded as the principal
+medicament. With good food, the results of surgery may be foretold with
+tolerable certainty, and the obstructions to the medical treatment lessen
+greatly or disappear. Without the aid of pure, healthful, life-giving
+aliment, the duration of animal life is always brief when exposed to
+vicious and hostile influences.
+
+The ration used here, or the system of dietary, was not constant; neither
+do we know sufficiently well the quantity, or quality, or variety, to form
+a true and candid estimate of its value in sustaining the physical
+strength, or repairing the waste and metamorphose of the organs and
+tissues of the system.
+
+We know, however, that it was supposed to be bacon, flour, and corn
+bread--rarely fresh meat; and vegetables were almost unknown. The only
+vegetables and delicacies were either obtained in exchange, at exorbitant
+rates, for the little currency which the prisoners had managed to secrete
+among their rags, or they were now and then introduced stealthily by a
+few of the humane surgeons at the peril of their lives. Persons whose
+systems are weakened by want of proper food, by exhaustion from excessive
+labor, or exposure, or disease, require a great variety of articles from
+which to select the substances which a depraved but instinctive palate
+often craves. Food which would disgust the healthy appetite, will not
+quicken into action the debilitated and flickering sensation of taste.
+During an enfeebled condition, loathsome morsels become injurious; for
+digestion is clearly at the command of the mind, and is often checked by
+its caprices.
+
+
+IX.
+
+The effect of gentle care and kindly sympathy is more felt, more marked in
+the military hospitals, than in the civil. Home is farther away, and the
+sense of loneliness which all invalids experience is far more oppressive.
+Here it is that woman's influence is the strongest, and her sweet
+disposition, her friendly, compassionate smile, seems to prolong life, and
+put to flight the advancing shadows of death. "It is not medicine," says
+Charles Lamb; "it is not broth and coarse meats served up at stated hours
+with all the hard formality of a prison; it is not the scanty dole of a
+bed to lie on which a dying man requires from his species. Looks,
+attentions, consolations, in a word, sympathies, are what a man most needs
+in this awful close of human sufferings. A kind look, a smile, a drop of
+cold water to a parched lip--for these things a man shall bless you in
+death."
+
+With soldiers, these little attentions have great effect; partly from the
+law of contrast with the roughness of their every-day occupations and
+life, and partly from the rarity of such influences. And finally, when
+grim Death appears, there is with them a singular philosophy, calmness,
+and resignation. The writer has observed this upon many battle-fields, and
+in the hospitals far removed. Rarely do we hear lamentations, regrets, and
+shrieks for help: the conscious man folds his arms, and resigns himself to
+his inward thoughts, thinking, perhaps, of
+
+  "His native hills that rise in happier climes,
+  The grot that heard his song of other times,
+  His cottage home, his bark of slender sail,
+  His glassy lake, and broomwood blossomed vale."
+
+
+X.
+
+The forms of disease observed here were simple, and they seldom exhibited
+positive indications, or, rather, the immediate effects and influences of
+malaria. Neither of the four great pestilential diseases
+appeared--cholera, yellow fever, plague, or remittent fever.
+
+The diseases treated, or noted down rather upon the hospital register,
+were generally the different forms of inanition, or of exhaustion of the
+powers of life by the absorption of noxious vapors, or by the exposure
+when in feeble condition to the extremes of heat and moisture.
+
+The mortality among the patients removed to this place was perfectly
+appalling. Nearly eight hundred men out of every thousand perished. Yet
+this might have been foretold from the horrible condition, the
+pre-arranged destitution of the hospital. Besides carefully selected
+food, pure and dry air is indispensable for the recovery of a diseased
+condition, and damp and vitiated air is sure to retard improvement, or to
+induce complications.
+
+Neither food nor healthy atmosphere were afforded.
+
+The symptoms of the patients indicated the want of food, and were not in
+reality the signs of actual disease. And the post-mortems made at this
+hospital revealed the absence of lesion, save those consequent upon
+starvation or prolonged suffering.
+
+The minutes of this clinic are very extensive and particular, and they
+exhibit in overwhelming proof the cause of death.
+
+Life was prolonged to the last degree of the natural vitality, and among
+the phenomena observed, the law of muscular irritability, as discovered
+and explained by Brown-Sequard, was well illustrated. There was no
+cadaveric rigidity; for the want of nutrition, the vitiated atmosphere,
+the exposure to the vicissitudes of climate, had weakened and utterly
+destroyed all nervous power. Immediately after the cessations of the
+functions of life, putrefaction appeared and progressed with great
+rapidity.
+
+
+XI.
+
+In discussing the rate of mortality of this hospital, we cannot with
+propriety assume a standard for comparison, for nowhere can we turn to
+analyze results from similar causes. We may, perhaps, take the data and
+statistics of our own military prisons, but the contrasts are too fearful
+for credulity. We will consider these at length, with other comparisons,
+in the next Book.
+
+"The truth is in the facts, and not in the spirit that judges them."
+
+
+XII.
+
+The want of system cannot be charged to the fault of the organization of
+the rebel Bureau of Medicine, for that was well arranged and strictly
+governed.
+
+It may partly be ascribed to the general carelessness of the officers in
+charge, and partly to the desire of the rulers that the numbers of
+prisoners should decrease, and consequently their labors should diminish,
+no matter how, nor how quickly.
+
+That there were men in charge of the patients who were destitute of all
+moral scruples, of all refined and humane sentiments, there can be no
+doubt, but there were a few men who did not partake of the general madness
+of the spirit of destruction, and who exhibited a tender regard for the
+sufferings of their fellow-men. The names of Thornberg and Head will
+always be preserved as among the only few redeeming acts in the story of
+the great wrong. The sympathy of these men was undisguised, and when
+protest failed to produce kindly impressions, or to bring alleviation to
+misery, they secretly sought to succor the dying men from their own scanty
+store at the peril of their lives.
+
+Dr. Head was not only threatened with death by the brutal Wirz, but he was
+actually imprisoned for a short time for giving to the dying some
+vegetables which he had gathered from his little garden. "Sire," said the
+noble Surgeon Larry to Napoleon, "it is my avocation to prolong life, and
+not to destroy it."
+
+Let no man attempt to recall the scenes that took place in this wretched
+enclosure, which was falsely called a hospital; let no man attempt to lift
+the veil of darkness which now obscures the acts or the animus which
+governed and directed this mockery of philanthropy, for the human mind
+already staggers under the load of horror which is imposed by the events
+of every-day life, and advanced civilization has no desire to renew the
+recollection of the atrocities of the dark ages.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SIXTH.
+
+    "To die, is the common lot of humanity. In the grave, the only
+    distinction lies between those who leave no trace behind and the
+    heroic spirits who transmit their names to posterity."--_Tacitus._
+
+
+I.
+
+It is always difficult to determine the natural duration of life, or the
+death-rate for any locality or any class of people, since the range of
+circumstances that affect the health of men and animals is so vast, that
+it requires great research, powers of analysis and comparison; so
+extensive a knowledge of the phenomena and the laws of life, that few men
+have the courage to attack, or the ability to comprehend and solve the
+complex problem.
+
+In our estimations we must consider what is due to the agencies of the
+natural world, such as geology, meteorology, and the like, as well as to
+age, constitution, temperament, anterior professions, and morbid
+predispositions, also the exaltation and demoralization of moral action.
+
+"We see," says Buffon, "that man perishes at all ages, while animals
+appear to pass through the period of life with firm and steady pace." The
+great naturalist shows how the passions, with their attendant evils,
+exercise great influence upon the health, and derange the principles
+which sustain us; how often men lead a nervous and contentious life, and
+that most of them die of disappointment. Buffon is right, and the English
+statistics show us that the duration of life is generally in proportion to
+its happiness and regularity, and that miserable lives are soon
+extinguished.
+
+Hope sometimes forsakes the stoutest hearts, and with hope disappears the
+mainspring of earthly life.
+
+
+II.
+
+In deciding upon the causes of the excessive mortality at Andersonville,
+there is not much obscurity to contend with. But we must admit that there
+must have been some mortality, for there is a determined duration of life
+for every species of animal; and we must also allow that under the most
+favorable circumstances, the death-rate of soldiers encamped in this
+unhealthy locality would have been far beyond the normal limit.
+
+From calculations based upon the most accurate and extensive observations
+made in England for a long series of years, it was determined that a
+mortality of less than two per cent. per annum for all ages might be
+assumed as a fair average rate of deaths in a population where sanitary
+measures were properly attended to.
+
+It is noticed by eminent observers, that the mean rate for Europe is about
+three per cent.; which is regarded as excessive, being about double of
+what is estimated as the natural ratio.
+
+Our distinguished statistician, Dr. Edward Jarvis, remarks that the
+mortality of two per cent. in England includes all ages--infancy as well
+as the last decades of life; and he states that the proper rates for
+comparison are those of the males in England of the military age, which is
+observed to be less than one per cent.
+
+He shows that the death-rate of the soldier in England is less than one
+per cent., and also considers the stated mortality of three per cent. for
+the continent of Europe as much too high. The mortality on the continent
+is greater than in England, and greater in England than in Scotland.
+
+In times of peace, the mortality of soldiers is not much greater than that
+of the civil laborers; but during campaigns no limit can properly be
+given, for the vicissitudes are so rapid, and the exposures so varied,
+that the chances of life and death cannot be estimated with fairness, or
+with any degree of certainty. But when encampments are arranged, and
+occupied for any considerable length of time, the possibilities and
+probabilities of health may then be considered with propriety.
+
+
+III.
+
+These chances and these causes of general mortality depend upon the
+atmospheric influences, the mephitism of the soil, the density of the
+population, and the excellence of the food and shelter, as well as upon
+the natural vigor and strength of the individual.
+
+Some classes of human beings have greater tenacity of life than others,
+but all are affected by vicious influences, and yield sooner or later to
+the elements of destruction. "Everything in the animal economy is
+regulated by fixed and positive laws."
+
+"We live on our forces," says Galen: "as long as our forces are sound, we
+can resist everything; when they become weak, a trifle injures us." The
+truth of this remark is well illustrated in the life of the soldier, whose
+health is in exact ratio to the condition in which he is placed. And his
+mode of existence, the combined influence of food, exposure, and the
+training of mind and body, give a peculiar character, which requires, when
+disabled, special modification of treatment, and a particular kind of
+experience. The ancient physiologists distinguished two kinds, or rather
+two provisions of strength--the forces in reserve and the forces in use;
+or, as they said, "Vires in posse et vires in actu;" or, as Barthez
+describes it, the radical forces and the acting forces.
+
+The young soldier, supported by this buoyancy of the unknown force of
+life, recovers from terrible shocks and disasters to his system, while the
+old man, fatigued and exhausted by the great and protracted labors of
+active campaigns, feels that he has the hidden resources--the reserved and
+superabundant powers of youth--no longer.
+
+
+IV.
+
+"The atmospheric influences, the mephitism of the soil, and the inhabited
+locality, are the three principal conditions of the causes of general
+mortality," says Pringle.
+
+He should have added food; for diet, of all external causes, affects the
+condition of the human race more than any other. Those who have observed
+the mortality curve follow the harvests in Ireland and Germany, and
+noticed how strangely the number of the dead corresponded to the
+scantiness of food, and those who have experimented with the feeding of
+domesticated animals, will agree with me on this point.
+
+Let us review these three great principles of destruction, as laid down by
+the distinguished European authority, and apply them in the explanations
+of the mortality at Andersonville.
+
+
+V.
+
+It has been observed by medical men, from the time of Hippocrates down to
+the present day, that the effects of a heated atmosphere, saturated with
+moisture, are very injurious, and exceedingly prolific of disease.
+
+Air at 32 deg. of Fahrenheit, according to Leslie, contains, when saturated
+with moisture, 1/160 of its weight of water; at 59 deg., 1/80; at 86 deg., 1/40;
+at 113 deg., 1/20; its capacity for moisture being doubled by each increase of
+27 deg. of Fahrenheit.
+
+The degree of heat within the stockade sometimes rose to beyond 110 deg.
+Fahrenheit, and the degree of humidity was correspondingly as great. That
+moisture exerts more influence in the production of disease than any other
+meteorological condition, is well observed in every-day life. M. Bossi
+found, in his investigations, that the extreme and constant humidity of
+the atmosphere affected the barometer of health very markedly, and he
+established the following ratio of mortality for the different regions:
+The ratio for mountains and elevated regions he observed to be one in
+thirty-eight; on the banks of rivers, one in twenty-six; on the level
+plains, sown with grain, one in twenty-four, and in parts interspersed
+with pools and marshes, one in twenty.
+
+
+VI.
+
+The influence and value of pure and healthy air may be seen in the
+simplest physiological observations.
+
+Animal life is fed and sustained by respiration, as well as vegetable
+life. It is from the blood that animal life derives the materials and
+forces which maintain it, and we have seen how this owes its vivifying
+properties, in a great measure, to the oxygen which it receives from the
+respiratory organs, and how its power is in direct ratio to the purity of
+the air breathed. A vitiated atmosphere manifests itself at once in the
+nutritive powers of the vital stream; and the more feeble the respiration,
+the less rich the blood. This "oxygen enters by the lungs into the blood,
+and with the blood flows on and circulates through the body; it also
+enters partly into the composition of the tissues, so that it is a real
+food, and it is as necessary to the construction of the human body as the
+other forms of food which are usually introduced into the stomach."
+
+The weight of oxygen, says Professor Johnston, taken up by the lungs,
+exceeds considerably that of all the dry, solid food which is introduced
+into the stomach of a healthy man.
+
+Man consumes one hundred gallons of air every hour, ordinarily with
+eighteen respirations per minute, and two hundred and six cubic feet of
+air is the minimum for the preservation of health. The minimum allowed to
+the English hospitals by artificial ventilation is twenty-two hundred
+cubic feet the hour. The patients of St. Guy's receive four thousand cubic
+feet of fresh air every hour. The quantity required by the sick is
+enormous, to compensate the products of respiration, and all the
+deleterious evaporations of the locality where they are placed, and all
+other effluvia of diverse natures. In the Hospital Lariboissaire, at
+Paris, where about fifteen hundred cubic feet of air are furnished by
+machinery every hour, a taint is perceptible in the atmosphere: and Morin,
+in his experiments at Hospital Beaujon, thought that two thousand cubic
+feet were hardly sufficient. Dr. Sutherland believes four thousand feet to
+be necessary. The quantity, however, is nothing compared to quality. The
+quality is of the highest importance. The air must contain the vivifying
+properties of its normal constitution, or it loses force, and death must
+ensue. The source of animal heat is in the mutual chemical action of the
+oxygen and the constituents of the blood conveyed by the circulation. When
+the atmosphere is impure the oxidating processes are much diminished. We
+receive into our lungs about one hundred gallons of air per hour, and from
+this we absorb about five gallons of oxygen, or about one twentieth of the
+volume of air inspired.
+
+"The essential and fundamental condition of all respiration is the
+reciprocal action of the nourishing fluid, and a medium containing
+oxygen." Dumas believes that oxygen is necessary to the conservation of
+the vitality and proper structure of the globules of the blood; also that
+the integrity of these organisms is one of the essential conditions to the
+arterialization of the nourishing stream.
+
+Milne Edwards, also, maintains that the great absorbing powers of the
+blood exist in the globules. The normal number of these globules is one
+hundred and twenty-seven out of the thousand component parts of the blood;
+but they vary according to the barometer of health; sometimes they are
+observed in disease to descend to sixty-five. Vierodt has shown how a
+certain limit in the number of blood globules in the mammalia cannot be
+passed in the descending scale without death taking place. Simon and
+others have also shown how a careful and nutritious regimen may increase
+these globules in the blood of the consumptive, bringing them up from
+sixty-four to even one hundred and forty-four.
+
+The blood of man is the richest of all the mammalia, and it contains,
+according to Berzelius, three times as many hydrochlorates as the blood of
+the ox.
+
+Its richness depends upon the species and individual, and also upon the
+degree of health, it varying according to the condition of the person.
+
+"A diseased pathological condition causes a diminution in the proportion
+of active principles of the nourishing fluid, and especially in fibrine,
+of which the abundance is allied to the most important activity of the
+vital work in some parts of the organism." "The blood," says Dr. Jones,
+"is not only distributed by innumerable channels through every recess of
+the body; the blood is not only the source of all the elements of
+structure; the blood not only furnishes the materials for all the
+secretions and excretions, and for all the chemical changes,--but the
+blood is in turn affected by the physical and chemical changes of every
+vessel, of every nerve, of every organ and texture of the body. It is
+evident then that the constitution of the blood will depend upon the food,
+upon the vigor and perfection of the organs of digestion, respiration,
+circulation, secretion, and excretion; upon the vigor and perfection of
+the nervous system, and of all the organs and apparatus; and upon the
+correlation of the physical, vital, and nervous forces. The character of
+the blood will then vary with the animal; with the organ and tissue
+through which it is circulating; with the age, sex, temperament, race,
+diet, previous habits, occupation, and previous diseases; with the soil
+and climate; and with the relative states of the activity of the forces."
+
+
+VII.
+
+Thus it appears how important is the function of respiration, and how
+vital the necessity for pure air.
+
+Pure dry air contains about 21 gallons of oxygen, and 79 gallons of
+nitrogen out of 100, and about one gallon of carbonic acid out of 2500.
+Man will consume, on the average of 20 respirations a minute, or 1200
+respirations the hour, about 20 pounds of air, and give off 2-1/2 pounds
+or more of carbonic acid, besides half a pound of watery vapor, per diem,
+or, according to Andral and Gavaret, 22 quarts of carbonic acid per hour.
+We have shown in the chapter on Alimentation how this process of
+respiration affects the nutrition, and how serious the results of its
+disturbance. The purer the air, the more perfect the type of men and
+animals. This was understood by the ancients, and they established their
+most famous schools for gladiatorial training at Capua and Ravenna.
+
+The same law is observed at the present day by the admirers of the
+race-horse. The purity of the air gives purity to the blood, and the blood
+builds up the system in like proportion of excellence.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Fifteen hundred cubic inches, or twenty-two quarts, of carbonic acid are
+expired from the lungs every hour, and thrown off into the surrounding
+atmosphere. Besides this, Sequin found that 18 grains of organized matter
+were thrown off per minute from the body in the form of insensible
+perspiration,--7 grains by the lungs, and 11 grains by the skin. Hence we
+may form some idea of the rapid corruption of the air in this stockade,
+where 30,000 men were breathing at one time. The foul and heavy vapors
+could not rise above the palisades unless a strong breeze prevailed; and
+even then they became so offensive as almost to extinguish life, like the
+deadly air of the Grotta del Cane. The exhalations from putrescent animal
+surfaces are always specifically heavier than the upper warm strata in the
+confined spaces where men are crowded together, such as the wards of
+hospitals. We find, according to Professor Graham, the vitiated air to be
+composed somewhat as follows: Phosphoretted hydrogen, sulphuretted
+hydrogen, carbonic acid, carburetted hydrogen, cyanogen with its
+compounds. The first gas is always recognized where the diseases of the
+internal organs are present, especially affections of the liver, stomach,
+bowels, and in fever and dysentery; and we observe the blackening of the
+lead plaster, &c., when the second is present. Stupor, headache, and
+sleepiness betray the presence of the other three gases. The diffusion of
+each gas is always inversely as the square root of the density of such
+gases.
+
+The density is thus, air being regarded as 1000:--
+
+  Phosphuretted hydrogen,              1240
+  Sulphuretted     "                   1170
+  Carburetted      "                    559
+  Carbonic acid,                       1524
+  Cyanogen,                            1806
+
+
+IX.
+
+The report of the British Parliament Commission gives the following data
+in this important question: "The amount of carbonic acid in the air is
+about 1/2000 or .0005; the amount expired is about 1/12, or .083. Respired
+air contains 1/10 or 1 of carbonic acid, and this must be diluted ten
+times to make the air safe. Thus, 1/10 / 10/1 = 1/100, or .01; and this
+again divided by 10, or 1/100 / 10/1 = 1/1000 or .001, gives the amount of
+ventilation needed to reduce the air to that state of purity that only
+1/1000 more of carbonic acid should be added to the air, when it would be
+represented by .0015 instead of .0005."
+
+Observing this rule, and taking 300 cubic feet as the air respired for the
+24 hours, to dilute it ten times it must be mixed with ten times the bulk,
+or 3000 cubic feet--the space to be allowed for each individual; but if it
+is wished to keep up a pure air, it must be mixed with ten times this bulk
+again, or 30,000 cubic feet, which shows the ventilation needed to
+maintain an atmosphere nearly pure; or there must be admitted into the
+space of 3000 cubic feet nearly 21 cubic feet per minute of fresh air by
+ventilation, if the man in it is to breathe an atmosphere which shall
+contain only three times more of carbonic acid than the air he breathes
+originally contained; or again, 300 cubic feet, 3000, and 30,000, mark the
+requirements of one individual, in 24 hours, for respiration, space, and
+ventilation. On a calm day, when there were no strong breezes to change
+the air of the stockade, the entire quantity of air in the old stockade,
+allowing the palisades to be on the average 20 feet high, could be
+exhausted in 20 minutes by the 30,000 men respiring 300 cubic inches per
+minute. This is not a proper estimate to offer; but it will give a just
+idea of the rapid and fearful vitiation of the air that took place within
+the enclosure.
+
+Vierodt shows how rapidly carbonic acid increases when foul air is
+breathed, and Lehman proves the rapid disengagement of the gas in moist
+atmospheres.
+
+Symptoms of uneasiness manifest themselves when the air contains from
+6/1000 to 7/1000 carbonic acid, and when the proportion amounts to ten
+parts to 100 of air, death ensues. "This effect is visible upon vegetables
+also, and many of them are extremely susceptible of impurities in the air,
+and very slight modifications in the proportion of its constituents are
+more or less prejudicial to their growth." But plants, like animals, vary
+in regard to the delicacy of their constitutions, some being much more
+susceptible than others.
+
+In warm climes the respiration becomes slower, and in consequence there
+is less of carbon burned and less oxygen absorbed; but on the other hand
+the functions of the skin become vastly increased, the bilious secretions
+become more active, and the excess of carbon is eliminated by this
+channel.
+
+That we expire more carbonic acid in a warm, moist atmosphere, and less in
+a cold, dry climate, is shown by the exhilaration of our spirits on a fine
+frosty morning.
+
+No wonder that men lost their reason in this prison, for the blood no
+longer reddened from the imperfect arterialization, and burdened the brain
+with its effete matter, paralyzing and clogging up the delicate filaments
+and the narrow channels of thought and life.
+
+We have seen that the blood is subject to incessant variations in its
+precise chemical constitution; a free atmosphere, well supplied,
+oxygenates and destroys the numerous impurities that tend to lurk in the
+system and develop disease.
+
+Bichat shows, in his researches on life and death, how the black and
+carbonized blood disturbs the functions of the brain and acts like a
+narcotic poison, causing the heart finally to cease its throbbings.
+
+These miasms and poisons floated about the enclosure where there was not
+the least sign of vegetable organism to absorb and convert them. As they
+passed into the systems of the prisoners they became the cause of disease,
+decrepitude, and death.
+
+
+X.
+
+Vitiated air is one of the most subtile and powerful of poisons, and it
+seems to affect soldiers more than any other class of persons, and its
+consequences have been commented upon by most of the military
+writers,--from Xenophon among the Greeks, Vegetius among the Romans, down
+to those of the present time. Cavalry horses have been observed to suffer
+deterioration and death from the same cause.
+
+Ague and fever, states Dr. Johnson, "two of the most prominent features of
+the malarious influences, are as a drop of water in the ocean when
+compared with the other, but less obtrusive, but more dangerous maladies
+that silently disorganize the vital structure of the human fabric under
+the influence of this deleterious and invisible poison."
+
+One fourth of the sailors of the English navy are sent home invalided
+every year, and one tenth of them die from the effects of foul air of
+their cabins. "Two thirds of the pulmonary diseases which desolate England
+are induced by this cause." Baudelocque long ago pointed out its
+influences in the etiology of scrofula.
+
+It is really the same influence observed by Magendie, and not contradicted
+to the present day, that putrid blood, brain, bile, or pus, when laid on
+flesh wounds, produce in animals, after a longer or shorter interval,
+vomiting, languor, and death. The same results and phenomena are observed
+in the inspiration of bad air; the most terrible forms of fever arise from
+the overcrowding of people in confined and limited spaces. Most of the
+zymotic diseases enter by the lungs, which are the principal absorbing
+agents.
+
+The breathing in of foul air, loaded with perceptible and putrid animal
+and vegetable emanations, gives rise to those zymotici, the ideas of which
+originated with Hippocrates, and to which the distinguished Liebig has
+since given form and prominence.
+
+Not only is animal life disturbed and destroyed, but we observe that
+vegetables even are affected by the same or similar causes; that they are
+extremely susceptible of impurities in the air, and that the rapidity and
+vigorous appearance of their growth are affected whenever there is very
+slight modification in the healthy proportions of the atmosphere. Again,
+we see how seeds, when placed in elementary oxygen, germinate with extreme
+rapidity, and soon decay, thus indicating how the presence of nitrogen in
+the natural air restrains the force of the other element.
+
+
+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, and sometimes 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 2-1/2 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 were improved, 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 month out of 36,000
+prisoners, 1/36. At Elmira it was 386 per month, out of 9500, or 1/25 of
+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 diarrhoea and dysentery, and
+only seventy deaths from fever. It appears from the official data of the
+Surgeon-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
+manoeuvres 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 diarrhoea and scurvy, and
+that three thousand more died from dysentery and unknown causes. Two
+hundred and fifteen thousand cases of diarrhoea 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 diarrhoea 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 was
+neither 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 diarrhoea, 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 diarrhoea 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, raged unchecked. 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 is MURDER: 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.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SEVENTH.
+
+    "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 an enemy'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, and dictated 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 the right 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 "divine _lese
+majeste_." "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.,
+that Tiberius 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,
+Sec. 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 sustenance
+or 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 contrary it 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 the captor'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 so limited 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 was _controlled 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. Seddon declined 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 of
+pantaloons, 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:--
+
+    JOINT RESOLUTION, advising Retaliation for the Cruel Treatment of
+    Prisoners by the Insurgents.
+
+    _Whereas_, It has come to the knowledge of Congress that great numbers
+    of our soldiers, who have fallen as prisoners of war into the hands
+    of the insurgents, have been subjected to treatment unexampled for
+    cruelty in the history of civilized war, and finding its parallels
+    only in the conduct of savage tribes; a treatment resulting in the
+    death of multitudes by the slow but designed process of starvation,
+    and by mortal diseases occasioned by insufficient and unhealthy food,
+    by wanton exposure of their persons to the inclemency of the weather,
+    and by deliberate assassination of unoffending men; and the murder, in
+    cold blood, of prisoners after surrender; and, whereas a continuance
+    of these barbarities, in contempt of the laws of war, and in disregard
+    of the remonstrances of the national authorities, has presented to us
+    the alternative of suffering our brave soldiers thus to be destroyed,
+    or to apply the principle of retaliation for their protection:
+    Therefore,
+
+    _Resolved_, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
+    States of America, in Congress assembled, That, in the judgment of
+    Congress, it has become justifiable and necessary that the President
+    should, in order to prevent the continuance and recurrence of such
+    barbarities, and to insure the observance by the insurgents of the
+    laws of civilized war, resort at once to measures of retaliation.
+    That, in our opinion, such retaliation ought to be inflicted upon the
+    insurgent officers now in our hands, or hereafter to fall into our
+    hands, as prisoners; that such officers ought to be subjected to like
+    treatment practised towards our officers or soldiers in the hands of
+    the insurgents, in respect to quantity and quality of food, clothing,
+    fuel, medicine, medical attendance, personal exposure, or other mode
+    of dealing with them; that, with a view to the same ends, the
+    insurgent prisoners in our hands ought to be placed under the control
+    and in the keeping of officers and men who have themselves been
+    prisoners in the hands of the insurgents, and have thus acquired a
+    knowledge of their mode of treating Union prisoners; that explicit
+    instructions ought to be given to the forces having the charge of such
+    insurgent prisoners, requiring them to carry out strictly and promptly
+    the principles of this resolution in every case, until the President,
+    having received satisfactory information of the abandonment by the
+    insurgents of such barbarous practices, shall revoke or modify said
+    instructions. Congress do not, however, intend by this resolution to
+    limit or restrict the power of the President to the modes or
+    principles of retaliation herein mentioned, but only to advise a
+    resort to them as demanded by the occasion.
+
+Mr. Sumner offered the following Resolutions as a substitute for the
+Resolution of the Committee:--
+
+    _Resolved_, That retaliation is harsh always, even in the simplest
+    cases, and is permissible only where, in the first place, it may
+    reasonably be expected to effect its object, and where, in the second
+    place, it is consistent with the usages of civilized society; and
+    that, in the absence of these essential conditions, it is a useless
+    barbarism, having no other end than vengeance, which is forbidden
+    alike to nations and to men.
+
+    _Resolved_, That the treatment of our officers and soldiers in rebel
+    prisons is cruel, savage, and heart-rending beyond all precedent; that
+    it is shocking to morals; that it is an offence against human nature
+    itself; that it adds new guilt to the great crime of the rebellion,
+    and constitutes an example from which history will turn with sorrow
+    and disgust.
+
+    _Resolved_, That any attempted imitation of rebel barbarism in the
+    treatment of prisoners would be plainly impracticable, on account of
+    its inconsistency with the prevailing sentiments of humanity among us;
+    that it would be injurious at home, for it would barbarize the whole
+    community; that it would be utterly useless, for it could not affect
+    the cruel authors of the revolting conduct which we seek to overcome;
+    that it would be immoral, inasmuch as it proceeded from vengeance
+    alone; that it could have no other result than to degrade the national
+    character and the national name, and to bring down upon our country
+    the reprobation of history; and that, being thus impracticable,
+    useless, immoral, and degrading, it must be rejected as a measure of
+    retaliation, precisely as the barbarism of roasting or eating
+    prisoners is always rejected by civilized powers.
+
+    _Resolved_, That the United States, filled with grief and sympathy for
+    cherished citizens, who, as officers and soldiers, have become the
+    victims of Heaven-defying outrage, hereby declare their solemn
+    determination to put an end to this great iniquity by putting an end
+    to the rebellion of which it is the natural fruit; that to secure this
+    humane and righteous consummation, they pledge anew their best
+    energies and all the resources of the whole people, and they call upon
+    all to bear witness that, in this necessary warfare with barbarism,
+    they renounce all vengeance and every evil example, and plant
+    themselves firmly on the sacred landmarks of Christian civilization,
+    under the protection of that God who is present with every prisoner,
+    and enables heroic souls to suffer for their country.
+
+
+XV.
+
+The pathetic letter, which was composed by the suffering and dying men at
+Andersonville, and addressed to the President in August, 1864, and
+forwarded by the prisoners who were sent to Charleston, led to renewed
+efforts on the part of the United States government; but no notice was
+taken by the rebel authorities of the plea in behalf of humanity. The
+following letter is said to be the one sent to the President:--
+
+    _The Memorial of the Union Prisoners confined at Andersonville,
+    Georgia, to the President of the United States._
+
+    CONFEDERATE STATES PRISON,
+    CHARLESTON, S. C., Aug., 1864.
+
+    TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
+
+    The condition of the enlisted men belonging to the Union armies, now
+    prisoners to the Confederate rebel forces, is such that it becomes our
+    duty, and the duty of every commissioned officer, to make known the
+    facts in the case to the government of the United States, and to use
+    every honorable effort to secure a general exchange of prisoners,
+    thereby relieving thousands of our comrades from the horror now
+    surrounding them.
+
+    For some time past there has been a concentration of prisoners from
+    all parts of the rebel territory to the State of Georgia--the
+    commissioned officers being confined at Macon, and the enlisted men at
+    Andersonville.
+
+    Recent movements of the Union armies under General Sherman have
+    compelled the removal of prisoners to other points, and it is now
+    understood that they will be removed to Savannah, Georgia, and
+    Columbus and Charleston, South Carolina. But no change of this kind
+    holds out any prospect of relief to our poor men. Indeed, as the
+    localities selected are far more unhealthy, there must be an increase
+    rather than a diminution of suffering.
+
+    Colonel Hill, provost-marshal general Confederate States army, at
+    Atlanta, stated to one of the undersigned that there were thirty-five
+    thousand prisoners at Andersonville, and by all accounts from the
+    United States soldiers who have been confined there, the number is not
+    overstated by him. These thirty-five thousand are confined in a field
+    of some thirty acres, enclosed by a board fence, heavily guarded.
+    About one third have various kinds of indifferent shelter, but upwards
+    of thirty thousand are wholly without shelter, or even shade of any
+    kind, and are exposed to the storms and rains which are of almost
+    daily occurrence, the cold dews of the night, and the more terrible
+    effects of the sun striking with almost tropical fierceness upon their
+    unprotected heads. This mass of men jostle and crowd each other up and
+    down the limits of their enclosure in storms or sun, and others lie
+    down upon the pitiless earth at night with no other covering than the
+    clothing upon their backs, few of them having even a blanket.
+
+    Upon entering the prison every man is deliberately stripped of money
+    and other property, and as no clothing or blankets are ever supplied
+    to their prisoners by the rebel authorities, the condition of the
+    apparel of the soldiers, just from an active campaign, can be easily
+    imagined. Thousands are without pants or coats, and hundreds without
+    even a pair of drawers to cover their nakedness.
+
+    To these men, as indeed to all prisoners, there are issued three
+    quarters of a pound of bread or meal, and one eighth of a pound of
+    meat, per day. This is the entire ration, and upon it the prisoner
+    must live or die. The meal is often unsifted and sour, and the meat
+    such as in the North is consigned to the soap-maker. Such are the
+    rations upon which Union soldiers are fed by the rebel authorities,
+    and by which they are barely holding on to life. But to starvation,
+    and exposure to sun and storm, add the sickness which prevails to a
+    most alarming and terrible extent. On an average, one hundred die
+    daily. It is impossible that any Union soldiers should know all the
+    facts pertaining to this terrible mortality, as they are not paraded
+    by the rebel authorities. Such statement as the following, made by
+    ---- ----, speaks eloquent testimony. Said he, "Of twelve of us who
+    were captured, six died, four are in the hospital, and I never expect
+    to see them again. There are but two of us left."
+
+    In 1862, at Montgomery, Alabama, under far more favorable
+    circumstances, the prisoners being protected by sheds, from one
+    hundred and fifty to two hundred were sick from diarrhoea and chills
+    out of seven hundred. The same percentage would give seven thousand
+    sick at Andersonville.
+
+    It needs no comment, no efforts at word-painting, to make such a
+    picture stand out boldly in most horrible colors.
+
+    Nor is this all. Among the ill-fated of the many who have suffered
+    amputation in consequence of injuries received before capture, sent
+    from rebel hospitals before their wounds were healed, there are
+    eloquent witnesses of the barbarities of which they are victims. If to
+    these facts is added this, that nothing more demoralizes soldiers and
+    develops the evil passions of man than starvation, the terrible
+    condition of Union prisoners at Andersonville can be readily imagined.
+    They are fast losing hope and becoming utterly reckless of life.
+
+    Numbers, crazed by their sufferings, wander about in a state of
+    idiocy; others deliberately cross the "dead line," and are
+    remorselessly shot down.
+
+    In behalf of these men we most earnestly appeal to the President of
+    the United States. Few of them have been captured, except in the front
+    of battle, in the deadly encounter, and only when overpowered by
+    numbers. They constitute as gallant a portion of our armies as carry
+    our banners anywhere. If released, they would soon return to again do
+    vigorous battle for our cause. We are told that the only obstacle in
+    the way of exchange is the status of enlisted negroes captured from
+    our armies, the United States claiming that the cartel covers all who
+    serve under its flag, and the Confederate States refusing to consider
+    the colored soldiers, heretofore slaves, as prisoners of war.
+
+    We beg leave to suggest some facts bearing upon the question of
+    exchange, which we would urge upon this consideration. Is it not
+    consistent with the national honor, without waiving the claim that the
+    negro soldiers shall be treated as prisoners of war, to effect an
+    exchange of the white soldiers? The two classes are treated
+    differently by the enemy. The whites are confined in such prisons as
+    Libby and Andersonville, starved and treated with a barbarism unknown
+    to civilized nations. The blacks, on the contrary, are seldom
+    imprisoned. They are distributed among the citizens, or employed on
+    government works. Under these circumstances they receive enough to
+    eat, and are worked no harder than they have been accustomed to be.
+    They are neither starved nor killed off by the pestilence in the
+    dungeons of Richmond and Charleston. It is true they are again made
+    slaves; but their slavery is freedom and happiness compared with the
+    cruel existence imposed upon our gallant men. They are not bereft of
+    hope, as are the white soldiers, dying by piecemeal. Their chances of
+    escape are tenfold greater than those of the white soldiers, and their
+    condition, in all its lights, is tolerable in comparison with that of
+    the prisoners of war now languishing in the dens and pens of
+    secession.
+
+    While, therefore, believing the claims of our government, in matters
+    of exchange, to be just, we are profoundly impressed with the
+    conviction that the circumstances of the two classes of soldiers are
+    so widely different that the government can honorably consent to an
+    exchange, waiving for a time the established principle justly claimed
+    to be applicable in the case. Let thirty-five thousand suffering,
+    starving, and enlisted men aid this appeal. By prompt and decided
+    action in their behalf, thirty-five thousand heroes will be made
+    happy. For the eighteen hundred commissioned officers now prisoners we
+    urge nothing. Although desirous of returning to our duty, we can bear
+    imprisonment with more fortitude if the enlisted men, whose sufferings
+    we know to be intolerable, were restored to liberty and life.
+
+
+XVI.
+
+The threatening manoeuvres of Sherman alone caused the rebel authorities
+to diminish the number of inmates of this stockade, and thereby lessen the
+dangers of recapture, and remove the temptation to the United States
+authorities to make an effort for their rescue. It has been stated that
+the rebels were anxious to exchange prisoners, man for man, and that the
+obstructions were caused by the Federal authorities, and that Mr. Stanton,
+in particular, was responsible for the stoppage of exchange and the
+consequent death of so many thousands of our fellow-citizens detained in
+the rebel prisons.
+
+General Hitchcock, the United States commissioner of exchange, however,
+denies most emphatically that Mr. Stanton was any way responsible for the
+refusal to make exchanges, man for man, officer for officer, according to
+grade, and he makes the following statement: "At no instance within my
+knowledge did Mr. Stanton refuse to acquiesce in any proposition looking
+to that result. There is not in my office, nor have I ever seen such a
+proposition from a rebel commissioner or the rebel authorities. Nor have I
+any reason to believe that any such proposition was ever made by Judge
+Ould, or any of his superiors, except in a letter from Judge Ould
+addressed to Major Mulford, which fell into the hands of Major-General
+Butler. This is true, emphatically, as a protection against the
+accusations levelled at Mr. Stanton. * * * * * Mr. Stanton has not only
+been willing, but anxious to make exchanges referred to, as I have
+abundant means of showing by indisputable documents, the aim and purpose
+of Judge Ould was to draw from us all of the rebel prisoners held in
+exchange for white troops of the United States held as prisoners in the
+South, persistently refusing to exchange colored troops to a very late
+date; when, to carry a special purpose, he receded so far as to agree to
+exchange free colored men, leaving the general principle where it was on
+his side against the just claims of a large body of colored prisoners held
+in the South."
+
+
+XVII.
+
+The following letter from General Butler to the rebel commissioner of
+exchange will throw some light upon the subject, and give an idea as to
+whom the blame of non-exchange and non-intercourse belongs:--
+
+    _Letter of Major-General Butler, United States Commissioner of
+    Exchange, to Colonel Ould, the Confederate Commissioner._
+
+    HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF VIRGINIA AND NORTH}
+    CAROLINA, IN THE FIELD, AUGUST, 1864.        }
+
+    HON. ROBERT OULD, _Commissioner of Exchange_.
+
+    SIR: Your note to Major Mulford, assistant agent of exchange, under
+    date of 10th August, has been referred to me.
+
+    You therein state that Major Mulford has several times proposed "to
+    exchange prisoners respectively held by the two belligerents--officer
+    for officer, and man for man," and that "the offer has also been made
+    by other officials having charge of matters connected with the
+    exchange of prisoners," and that "this proposal has been heretofore
+    declined by the Confederate authorities." That you now "consent to the
+    above proposition, and agree to deliver to you (Major Mulford) the
+    prisoners held in captivity by the Confederate authorities, provided
+    you agree to deliver an equal number of officers and men. As equal
+    numbers are delivered from time to time they will be declared
+    exchanged. This proposal is made with the understanding that the
+    officers and men on both sides who have been longest in captivity will
+    be first delivered, where it is practicable."
+
+    From a slight ambiguity in your phraseology, but more perhaps from the
+    antecedent action of your authorities, and because of your acceptance
+    of it, I am in doubt whether you have stated the proposition with
+    entire accuracy.
+
+    It is true, a proposition was made both by Major Mulford and myself,
+    as agent of exchange, to exchange all prisoners of war taken by either
+    belligerent party, man for man, officer for officer, of equal rank, or
+    their equivalents. It was made by me as early as the first of the
+    winter of 1863-4, and has not been accepted. In May last I forwarded
+    to you a note, desiring to know whether the Confederate authorities
+    intended to treat colored soldiers of the United States army as
+    prisoners of war. To that inquiry no answer has yet been made. To
+    avoid all possible misapprehension or mistake hereafter as to your
+    offer now, will you now say whether you mean by "prisoners held in
+    captivity" colored men, duly enrolled, and mustered into the service
+    of the United States, who have been captured by the Confederate
+    forces; and if your authorities are willing to exchange all soldiers
+    so mustered into the United States army, whether colored or otherwise,
+    and the officers commanding them, man for man, officer for officer?
+
+    At the interview which was held between yourself and the agent of
+    exchange on the part of the United States at Fortress Monroe, in March
+    last, you will do me the favor to remember the principal discussion
+    turned upon this very point; you, on behalf of the Confederate
+    government, claiming the right to hold all negroes who had heretofore
+    been slaves, and not emancipated by their masters, enrolled and
+    mustered into the service of the United States, when captured by your
+    forces, not as prisoners of war, but upon capture to be turned over to
+    their supposed masters or claimants, whoever they might be, to be held
+    by them as slaves.
+
+    By the advertisements in your newspapers, calling upon masters to come
+    forward and claim these men so captured, I suppose that your
+    authorities still adhere to that claim--that is to say, that whenever
+    a colored soldier of the United States is captured by you, upon whom
+    any claim can be made by any person residing within the States now in
+    insurrection, such soldier is not to be treated as a prisoner of war,
+    but is to be turned over to his supposed owner or claimant, and put at
+    such labor or service as that owner or claimant may choose, and the
+    officers in command of such soldiers, in the language of a supposed
+    act of the Confederate States, are to be turned over to the governors
+    of States, upon requisitions, for the purpose of being punished by the
+    laws of such States for acts done in war in the armies of the United
+    States.
+
+    You must be aware that there is still a proclamation by Jefferson
+    Davis, claiming to be chief executive of the Confederate States,
+    declaring in substance that all officers of colored troops mustered
+    into the service of the United States were not to be treated as
+    prisoners of war, but were to be turned over for punishment to the
+    governors of States.
+
+    I am reciting these public acts from memory, and will be pardoned for
+    not giving the exact words, although I believe I do not vary the
+    substance and effect.
+
+    These declarations on the part of those whom you represent yet remain
+    unrepealed, unannulled, unrevoked, and must therefore be still
+    supposed to be authoritative.
+
+    By your acceptance of our proposition, is the government of the United
+    States to understand that these several claims, enactments, and
+    proclaimed declarations are to be given up, set aside, revoked, and
+    held for nought by the Confederate authorities, and that you are ready
+    and willing to exchange, man for man, those colored soldiers of the
+    United States, duly mustered and enrolled as such, who have heretofore
+    been claimed as slaves by the Confederate States, as well as white
+    soldiers?
+
+    If this be so, and you are so willing to exchange these colored men
+    claimed as slaves, and you will so officially inform the government of
+    the United States, then, as I am instructed, a principal difficulty in
+    effecting exchanges will be removed.
+
+    As I informed you personally, in my judgment it is neither consistent
+    with the policy, dignity, or honor of the United States, upon any
+    consideration, to allow those who, by our laws solemnly enacted, are
+    made soldiers of the Union, and who have been duly enlisted, enrolled,
+    and mustered as such soldiers, who have borne arms in behalf of this
+    country, and who have been captured while fighting in vindication of
+    the rights of that country, not to be treated as prisoners of war, and
+    remain unchanged and in the service of those who claim them as
+    masters; and I cannot believe that the government of the United States
+    will ever be found to consent to so gross a wrong.
+
+    Pardon me if I misunderstand you in supposing that your acceptance of
+    our proposition does not in good faith mean to include all the
+    soldiers of the Union, and that you still intend, if your acceptance
+    is agreed to, to hold the colored soldiers of the Union unexchanged,
+    and at labor or service, because I am informed that very lately,
+    almost contemporaneously with this offer on your part to exchange
+    prisoners, and which seems to include _all_ prisoners of war, the
+    Confederate authorities have made a declaration that the negroes
+    heretofore held to service by owners in the States of Delaware,
+    Maryland, and Missouri are to be treated as prisoners of war, when
+    captured in arms in the service of the United States.
+
+    Such declaration that a part of the colored soldiers of the United
+    States were to be prisoners of war, would seem most strongly to imply
+    that others were not to be so treated, or, in other words, that the
+    colored men from the insurrectionary States are to be held to labor
+    and returned to their masters, if captured by the Confederate forces
+    while duly enrolled and mustered into and actually in the armies of
+    the United States.
+
+    In the view which the government of the United States takes of the
+    claim made by you to the persons and services of these negroes, it is
+    not to be supported upon any principle of national and municipal law.
+
+    Looking upon these men only as property upon your theory of property
+    in them, we do not see how this claim can be made, certainly not how
+    it can be yielded. It is believed to be a well-settled rule of public
+    international law, and a custom and part of the laws of war, that the
+    capture of movable property vests the title to that property in the
+    captor, and therefore where one belligerent gets into full possession
+    property belonging to the subjects or citizens of the other
+    belligerent, the owner of that property is at once divested of his
+    title, which rests in the belligerent government capturing and holding
+    such possessions. Upon this rule of international law all civilized
+    nations have acted, and by it both belligerents have dealt with all
+    property, save slaves, taken from each other during the present war.
+
+    If the Confederate forces capture a number of horses from the United
+    States, the animals are claimed to be, and, as we understand it,
+    become the property of the Confederate authorities.
+
+    If the United States capture any movable property in the rebellion, by
+    our regulations and laws, in conformity with international law and the
+    laws of war, such property is turned over to our government as its
+    property. Therefore, if we obtain possession of that species of
+    property known to the laws of the insurrectionary States as slaves,
+    why should there be any doubt that that property, like any other,
+    vests in the United States?
+
+    If the property in the slave does so vest, then the _jus disponendi_,
+    the right of disposing of that property, vests in the United States.
+
+    Now, the United States have disposed of the property which they have
+    acquired by capture in slaves taken by them, i.e., by emancipating
+    them, and declaring them free forever; so that, if we have not
+    mistaken the principles of international law and the laws of war, we
+    have no slaves in the armies of the United States. All are free men,
+    being made so in such manner as we have chosen to dispose of our
+    property in them which we acquired by capture.
+
+    Slaves being captured by us, and the right of property in them thereby
+    vested in us, that right of property has been disposed of by us by
+    manumitting them, as has already been the acknowledged right of the
+    owner to do to his slave. The manner in which we dispose of our
+    property while it is in our possession certainly cannot be questioned
+    by you. Nor is the case altered if the property is not actually
+    captured in battle, but comes either voluntarily or involuntarily from
+    the belligerent owner into the possession of the other belligerent.
+
+    I take it no one would doubt the right of the United States to a drove
+    of Confederate mules or a herd of Confederate cattle which should
+    wander or rush across the Confederate lines into the lines of the
+    United States army. So it seems to me, treating the negro as property
+    merely, if that piece of property passes the Confederate lines, and
+    comes into the lines of the United States, that property is as much
+    lost to its owner in the Confederate States as would be the mule or
+    ox, the property of the resident of the Confederate States, which
+    should fall into our hands.
+
+    If, therefore, the privilege of international law and the laws of war
+    used in this discussion are correctly stated, then it would seem that
+    the deduction logically flows therefrom in natural sequence, that the
+    Confederate States can have no claim upon the negro soldiers captured
+    by them from the armies of the United States because of the former
+    ownership of them by their citizens or subjects, and only claim such
+    as result, under the laws of war, from their captor merely.
+
+    Do the Confederate authorities claim the right to reduce to a state of
+    slavery free men, prisoners of war captured by them? This claim our
+    fathers fought against under Bainbridge and Decatur, when set up by
+    the Barbary Powers on the northern shore of Africa, about the year
+    1800,--and in 1864 their children will hardly yield it upon their own
+    soil.
+
+    This point I will not pursue further, because I understand you to
+    repudiate the idea that you will reduce free men to slaves because of
+    capture in war, and that you base the claim of the Confederate
+    authorities to re-enslave our negro soldiers, when captured by you,
+    upon the _jus postliminii_, or that principle of the law of nations
+    which inhabilitates the former owner with his property taken by an
+    enemy when such property is recovered by the forces of his own
+    country. Or, in other words, you claim that, by the laws of nations
+    and of war, when property of the subjects of one belligerent power,
+    captured by the forces of the other belligerent, is recaptured by the
+    armies of the former owner, then such property is to be restored to
+    its prior possessor, as if it had never been captured; and, therefore,
+    under this principle, your authorities propose to restore to their
+    masters the slaves which heretofore belonged to them which you may
+    capture from us.
+
+    But this postliminary right under which you claim to act, as
+    understood and defined by all writers on national law, is applicable
+    simply to _immovable property_, and that, too, only after complete
+    resubjugation of that portion of the country in which the property is
+    situated, upon which this right fastens itself. By the laws and
+    customs of war, this right has never been applied to _movable_
+    property. True it is, I believe, that the Romans attempted to apply it
+    to the case of slaves; but for two thousand years no other nation has
+    attempted to set up this right as ground for treating slaves
+    differently from other property.
+
+    But the Romans even refused to re-enslave men captured from opposing
+    belligerents in a civil war, such as ours unhappily is.
+
+    Consistently, then, with any principle of the law of nations, treating
+    slaves as property merely, it would seem to be impossible for the
+    government of the United States to permit the negroes in their ranks
+    to be re-enslaved when captured, or treated otherwise than as
+    prisoners of war.
+
+    I have forborne, sir, in this discussion, to argue the question upon
+    any other or different ground of right than those adopted by your
+    authorities in claiming the negro as property, because I understand
+    that your fabric of opposition to the government of the United States
+    has the right of property in man as its corner-stone. Of course, it
+    would not be profitable in settling a question of exchange of
+    prisoners of war to attempt to argue the question of abandonment of
+    the very corner-stone of their attempted political edifice. Therefore
+    I have admitted all the considerations which should apply to the negro
+    soldier as a man, and dealt with him upon the Confederate theory of
+    property only.
+
+    I unite with you most cordially, sir, in desiring a speedy settlement
+    of all these questions, in view of the great suffering endured by our
+    prisoners in the hands of your authorities, of which you so feelingly
+    speak. Let me ask, in view of that suffering, why you have delayed
+    eight months to answer a proposition which by now accepting you admit
+    to be right, just, and humane, allowing that suffering to continue so
+    long? One cannot help thinking, even at the risk of being deemed
+    uncharitable, that the benevolent sympathies of the Confederate
+    authorities have been lately stirred by the depleted condition of
+    their armies, and a desire to get into the field, to affect the
+    present campaign, the hale, hearty, and well-fed prisoners held by the
+    United States in exchange for the half-starved, sick, emaciated, and
+    unserviceable soldiers of the United States now languishing in your
+    prisons. The events of this war, if we did not know it before, have
+    taught us that it is not the northern people alone who know how to
+    drive sharp bargains.
+
+    The wrongs, indignities, and privations suffered by our soldiers would
+    move me to consent to anything to procure their exchange, except to
+    barter away the honor and faith of the government of the United
+    States, which has been so solemnly pledged to the colored soldiers in
+    its ranks.
+
+    Consistently with national faith and justice we cannot relinquish this
+    position. With your authorities it is a question of property merely.
+    It seems to address itself to you in this form: Will you suffer your
+    soldier, captured in fighting your battles, to be in confinement for
+    months rather than release him by giving for him that which you call a
+    piece of property, and which we are willing to accept as a man?
+
+    You certainly appear to place less value upon your soldier than you do
+    upon your negro. I assure you, much as we of the North are accused of
+    loving property, our citizens would have no difficulty in yielding up
+    any piece of property they have in exchange for one of their brothers
+    or sons languishing in your prisons. Certainly there could be no doubt
+    that they would do so, were that piece of property less in value than
+    five thousand dollars in Confederate money, which is believed to be
+    the price of an able-bodied negro in the insurrectionary States.
+
+    Trusting that I may receive such a reply to the questions propounded
+    in this note as will tend to a speedy resumption of the negotiations
+    in a full exchange of all prisoners, and a delivery of them to their
+    respective authorities,
+
+      I have the honor to be,
+          Very respectfully,
+              Your obedient servant,
+                  BENJAMIN F. BUTLER,
+
+    _Major-General and Commissioner of Exchange_.
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+The wretched "material" exchanged for healthy rebel soldiers called forth
+a note of joy from the rebel commissioner, Ould. The exchanged Federal
+soldiers were half-naked, "living skeletons," covered with filth and
+vermin; and nearly all of them were unfit for service or labor, and most
+of them physically ruined for the remainder of their lives. The
+flag-of-truce boats of the different parties presented terrible contrasts.
+On the one were to be seen feeble, emaciated, ragged, filthy, and dying
+men from the rebel prisons; whilst on the other were the rebels returning
+from our prisons, well clad in our uniforms, strong and healthy from the
+abundance of food. We returned men who had been well treated, and who were
+then ready to take the field again; whilst we received in turn abused and
+decrepit soldiers, who were so much reduced and weakened that few,
+comparatively, ever again returned to service. Along the entire line of
+prison stockades, from Belle Isle in Virginia to Prison Tyler in Texas,
+the same story is told of fiendish cruelty.
+
+More than thirty thousand of our soldiers have undoubtedly perished
+during, or in consequence of the barbarities of their prison life in the
+South. To ascertain the precise number will be a difficult task, for many
+of the returned prisoners have died since they have left the service; but
+when we consider the number of prisons, and the long period of occupation,
+we think that the estimate of thirty thousand is not too high.
+
+
+XIX.
+
+When General Stoneman made his attempt to rescue the prisoners, Winder
+issued the order No. 13, which stamps the brute with infamy beyond
+redemption. In this order, which has been preserved, Winder commanded the
+officers in charge of the artillery to open their batteries, loaded with
+grape-shot, as soon as the Federals approached within seven miles, and to
+continue the slaughter until every prisoner was exterminated. Similar
+threats were made all along the line of the prison stockades in North
+Carolina and in Virginia. "Was the prison mined," said Colonel Farnsworth
+to Turner, the jailer of Libby Prison, "when General Kilpatrick approached
+Richmond to attempt to rescue the prisoners?" "Yes," was the brutal reply;
+"and I would have blown you all to Hades before I would have suffered you
+to be rescued." Twelve hundred men blown into atoms at one explosion!
+Thirty thousand men to be torn into shreds by the iron bullets of the
+cannon! Contrast the orders of these chivalric men with that of Aboukere,
+the chief of a reputed barbarous horde of Bedouins of the desert:--
+
+"Warriors of Islam! attend a moment, and listen well to the precepts which
+I am about to promulge to you for observation in times of war. Fight with
+bravery and loyalty. Never use artifice or perfidy towards your enemies.
+Do not mutilate the fallen. Do not slay the aged, nor the children, nor
+the women. You will find upon your route men living in solitude, in
+meditation, in the adoration of God: do them no injury, give them no
+offence."
+
+In which are the evidences the most positive of a fraternal religion and
+an advanced civilization?
+
+
+XX.
+
+Even women and young girls came from distances to view the spectacle. They
+climbed the parapets of the earthworks, and gloated and made merry over
+the scene of suffering. They threw crusts of bread over the palisades to
+see the starving wretches struggle for the morsel of life.
+
+They even reviled the condition of the dying. This surpasses the ferocity,
+the depravity, the wickedness of gladiatorial times. "The fury of women
+when once excited," says the French historian, "soon rises to profanation
+and excess." When the love of humanity vanishes from our breasts, it is
+the death of nature.
+
+There were, however, a few noble exceptions to those strange acts of
+delight in cruelty; and the deeds of kindness of a few women in other
+parts of the South shine with increased brilliancy from the terrible
+contrast.
+
+
+XXI.
+
+Several of the papers of the South openly and unhesitatingly approved of
+the methods of their prison depletion, and gloated over the fearful
+destitution and mortality.
+
+The Macon "Telegraph and Confederate," only the day before the surrender
+of the city to the Federal forces, justified the atrocities at
+Andersonville; and the Richmond "Examiner" exclaimed, "Let the Yankee
+prisoners be put where the cold weather and scant fare will thin them out
+in accordance with the laws of nature." There were, however, noble
+exceptions to the general exhibition of ferocity; and several officers of
+the rebel army did declare that the condition of affairs at Andersonville
+was a "reproach to them as a nation."
+
+The author, who served for five years in the Federal armies of Virginia,
+of the South, and the South-west, and whose opportunities for observation
+and inquiry were extensive, does not believe General Lee to be implicated
+in these outrages. It is true that Lee might have openly and boldly
+protested against the barbarities, and gained thereby the admiration and
+the blessing of mankind; but he knew full well that the remonstrance would
+have fallen upon the cold ear of the implacable executive with no more
+effect and weight than when the snow-flake falls upon the Alps.
+
+The Virginian struggled to hold his own against the selfish and jealous
+ambition of the remorseless Mississippian.
+
+To have participated in the revolting cabal of cruelty, there was required
+the baseness of political intrigue, and to this depth the soldier never
+sank.
+
+
+XXII.
+
+To charge an entire people with barbarity, because its rulers sanction
+crime, and a vile and venal press applaud the motives and the deeds,
+should not be maintained without long deliberation. "History has the right
+of suspecting without evidence, but never of accusing without proof." The
+rank and file of the rebel army were drawn from the classes of poor
+whites, who were essentially rural in their populations, and who possessed
+some trace of the morals and the natural sentiments of generosity that
+belong to people who cultivate the earth. Although their instincts were
+modified by the contact of slave labor, they never sank so low in the
+social scale--to that level of the vile populace of the Roman or medieval
+times, when the crimes of the emperors were applauded. These men on the
+battle-field exhibited feelings of humanity; and it was only under the
+direction of their leaders that they became unkind and ferocious.
+
+It was the leaders who were responsible for the crimes of the sedition;
+and what of humanity could be expected from men degenerated in blood? What
+of noble intelligence could be looked for from mental faculties long since
+degraded? What evidence of a Christian spirit could be hoped for from men
+who had openly perverted or denied all the divine precepts, upon which
+revolve the well-being of the human race? "If we had triumphed," says one
+of its apostles, at this late day of forgiveness and repentance--"if we
+had triumphed, I should have favored stripping them naked. Pardon! They
+might have appealed for pardon, but I would have seen them damned before I
+would have granted it!"
+
+When Suwarrow forced his way by the sword into the heart of Poland,
+dividing the realm, devastating the land, and destroying multitudes of
+people, he offered blasphemous thanks to Heaven for victories obtained
+over men fighting in the sacred cause of liberty, and for all the human
+heart holds dear.
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+To judge correctly of the magnitudes of these immolations, these crimes,
+history must wait for a calmer period, when prejudice shall have relaxed
+its hold upon the understanding, and when time shall have rolled up its
+accumulated materials of accusation and denial, of proof and exoneration.
+At present we can form some idea of their designs, and the degree of the
+implacability of their souls, from the evidence already placed before us,
+as we measure inaccessible heights by the awful shadows which they
+project.
+
+Pity appears to have been with them only a vain, fleeting emotion, if the
+soul was disturbed at all; and whenever an act of humanity was displayed,
+there seems to have been the secret motive of gain at work. In defining
+the natural sentiments of pity, they would have declared them the
+illusions of the imagination.
+
+The brutalizing scenes of Slavery had modified and affected their natural
+feelings, as the gladiatorial combats and exposures of the Christians to
+the attacks of infuriated wild beasts had inspired the vile populace of
+Rome with the love of blood and cruelty.
+
+When these men, with sonorous rhetoric, proclaimed themselves as the
+guiding minds of the republic, the patrons, the judges of the correct
+ideas and principles of civilization,--when they arrogated to themselves
+the appearance of the wisdom of Lacedaemon with the politeness of
+Athens,--they forgot or despised those cardinal virtues of society,
+"justice and truth--these are the first duties of man; humanity,
+country--these his first affections."
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+"I fear," writes the rebel War Clerk, observing from his secure position
+in the war office, "I fear this government in future times will be
+denounced as a cabal of bandits and outlaws, making and executing the most
+despotic decrees."
+
+Whether this system of the reduction of prisoners was devised by the
+executive, or his immediate advisers, time may reveal. But of this we may
+remain positive, that the crime belongs to that little faction of
+Breckinridge Democrats who ruled the Confederacy as they pleased, and of
+which Davis was the recognized leader. Wirz was only the De Vargas and
+Winder the Alva of the arranged system. Neither is there any doubt that
+the power of affording relief was clearly within the control of the
+executive. This power was not withheld from want of audacity, for the man
+who dared place in power, in spite of remonstrance, men who jeopardized
+the existence of the Confederacy, and who openly disgraced its honor,
+certainly had sufficient courage to perform a common act of humanity, and
+relieve the sufferings of tortured prisoners, if such had been his
+inclination.
+
+No; there was a system, and "systems are brutal forces." "What are your
+laws and theories," said Danton, brutally, to Gensonne, "when the only law
+is to triumph, and the sole theory for the nation is the theory of
+existence."--"Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you
+extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great
+pillars of morality. This, too, we find confirmed by matter of fact. How
+many hopeful heirs-apparent to grand empires, when in possession of them,
+have become such monsters of lust and cruelty as are a reproach to human
+nature!"--"Ambition brings to men dissimulation, perfidy, the art of
+feigning the language and sentiments which lay at the bottom of the heart;
+of measuring their hate and their friendship only by their interests and
+circumstances; and above all, the perfidious science of composing their
+features, rather than correct and govern their principles."
+
+The wills of bad men are their laws, and brute strength their logic.
+
+
+XXV.
+
+It is only distance in time that separates and distinguishes the Caligulas
+of history, the early, medieval, and present periods. History exhibits the
+first as the undisguised monster of atrocity. The last, overshadowed by
+the mantle of the law, stands but partially revealed.
+
+To the perverted imaginations of the first the senate presented no force
+of resistance. To the petulant asperity, the abuse of power of the last,
+the doubtful liberties of the people imposed certain restrictions, which
+led to the resort of narrow and malignant minds--secrecy and concealment.
+
+Nature had not cast him in the mould of those statesmen who sacrifice all
+personal feelings for the public good, and who willingly yield up their
+lives to advance the noble work of true civilization. Obstinacy with him
+was firmness; cunning, depth; resistance to humane feelings, resolution.
+Envy, hatred, murmurs, were braved with inflexible determination when
+pursuing his plans of favoritism, or defending his tools of oppression
+and cruelty against the voice of nature and outraged liberty.
+
+There are some men who appear to be destined for the instruction of the
+world, as the abettors and satellites of despotism, who cannot or who do
+not recognize the difference between interest or conscience; who desire to
+debase mankind, that they may appear above the common level of humanity,
+conscious of their incapability of lifting themselves up by virtue and by
+nobility of action.
+
+This man was the incarnation of the spirit of Slavery; he could have
+exclaimed, with Barnave, "Perish the colonies rather than a principle."
+This man was, for the time being, the entire incorporation of the
+sedition--its principles, its passions, its impulses, its cruelties.
+
+"There are abysses which we dare not sound, and characters we desire not
+to fathom, for fear of finding in them too great darkness, too much
+horror."
+
+This man, so calm, so dignified, so wise in his exterior, could not find
+sufficient generosity in his soul, although the representative of five
+millions of men, to say to these armies of suffering prisoners, * * *
+_indignus Caesaris irae_--unworthy of the anger of Caesar.
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+What have the wretches to offer in atonement for these outrages upon
+nature, these violations of the spirit and majesty of the law, from which
+they now claim protection?
+
+Will the blood of these living monsters expiate the martyrdom of the host
+of dead heroes? No!
+
+Will it give ease or bring congratulation to the broken and aching hearts
+who yet revere the memory of the thirty thousand victims? Never!
+
+The divine spirit of liberty would protest against the defilement of her
+sacred altars with the foul blood of such filthy and depraved sacrifices.
+
+Let the gates of the prison open, and these men stand forth to the full
+gaze of offended mankind, assassins and murderers as they are.
+
+Vengeance does not belong to the human race.
+
+There are times in the history of men when human invectives are without
+force. "There are deeds of which no men are judges, and which mount,
+without appeal, direct to the tribunal of God."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK EIGHTH.
+
+
+I.
+
+Certain branches of the human family present physical peculiarities and
+aptitudes for certain climates which others do not. The one thrives and
+arrives at perfection, whilst the other languishes and dies.
+
+Floras and Faunas have well-defined limits of latitude, beyond which they
+decline and become extinct, and in some countries we observe certain
+limitations as to longitudes. "There are tropical trees that become shrubs
+in our zone, and the flowers of our meadows have their types in the
+tapering trunks of other climes."
+
+How rapidly the beautiful varieties of domestic animals deteriorate and
+disappear when removed from the localities and conditions in which they
+attained their excellence. The handsome Swiss cattle when carried to the
+plains of Lombardy, and the remarkable varieties of the English herds when
+removed to Central France, quickly lose their characteristics of form and
+superiority. Under the tropics the sheep loses its silken fleece, and the
+noble qualities of the dog greatly change.
+
+Even the insect world changes greatly in every twelve degrees of latitude,
+and an alteration, almost total, appears in double the space.
+
+The influence of climate and locality, which exercises so positive a power
+in the vegetable kingdom and animal reign, affects man likewise, and would
+be as distinctly marked were it not resisted by the forces of the
+intelligence. We find under certain parallels of latitude more energy of
+mind and greater activity of body than at others; we observe this more
+distinctly with particular races or varieties than with others, thus
+indicating that all have not the same aptitudes: again, through a
+combination of organic and social laws, types adapted to certain pursuits
+spring up in every civilized country, these types distinct from either
+varieties or species. We also see the sharp characteristics of races, when
+migrating, become less distinct, and mixtures increase, and the inferior
+races disappear, like "the elementary language or the primitive forms of
+the social state."
+
+The observed limit of range of the Hindoo and the African, in the Old
+World, is not beyond 30 deg. of the equator, and in a lower latitude than 36 deg.
+the European colonies have never prospered, never succeeded, in their
+attempts for empire. Where now are the countless hosts of Romans, Gauls,
+and Vandals that have occupied Northern Africa in past times? The
+ethnologist of to-day cannot discover a feature, hardly a trace even, of
+the language of the conquerors remaining among the present tribes of
+occupation. Even the Roman has vanished, and the only vestige of the
+Carthaginian and Numidian is shown by the scattered and diminished
+Bergers. These varieties contended with the climate, and were gradually
+absorbed by the stronger native tribes.
+
+The Mongols once held Central Europe, the Goths ruled Italy. Where are
+they? There is no longer Vandalic blood in Africa or Gothic blood in
+Italy.
+
+In later times the strong, the fierce and dauntless Northmen held the
+Sicilies, and as the incorruptible Varingar guarded and upheld with their
+fearless swords the waning empire of the effeminate Greeks at the
+Dardanelles. Where are they and their descendants? The only traces are
+seen among the tombstones at Palermo, or in the Runic inscriptions which
+they sacrilegiously sculptured with their long blades of steel upon the
+flanks of the marble lion of the Piraeus.
+
+
+II.
+
+In the year 1600 hardly a European family could be found along the
+headlands and indentations of the coast which form the southern limit of
+the Slave States of America.
+
+Since that time the countless multitudes of the red men who inhabited the
+forests of these lands have disappeared, and other races from an older
+world and other climes have taken their places, increasing in numbers with
+as great rapidity as the other declined.
+
+We have seen here the swarthy sons of Nubia, under the fostering care of
+Slavery, or under the mysterious and unexplained influences of climate,
+increase with such rapidity, that the ratio for the last decade (previous
+to the war), if continued for a century, would give a black population of
+more than forty millions. Strange spectacle in the movement of races!
+
+Here we see, almost during the memory of living men, a distinct race
+disappear, and a new nation of totally opposite character rise up, as if
+by magic, in their vanishing footsteps. How prophetic was the speech of
+the Indian chief to his tribe, when he beheld with dismay the steady
+progress of the white men who lived upon the cereals! "I say, then,"
+exclaimed the red man, "to every one who hears me, before the trees above
+our heads shall have died of age, before the maples of the valley cease to
+yield us sugar, the race of the sowers of corn will have extirpated the
+race of flesh-eaters."
+
+
+III.
+
+This rate of increase observed among the blacks of our Slave States is not
+seen among the population of the West India Islands, where singular
+oscillations are exhibited, and the statistics of the past two centuries
+have inclined two of the most eminent European statisticians to assert
+that in a century the negro will nearly have disappeared from these
+islands.
+
+Observations at Martinique and Guadaloupe certainly warrant the inference.
+In Cuba the blacks decreased four or five thousand during the period of
+1804 to 1817.
+
+This decrease or stand-still in the progress of the race in these regions
+may have been caused by conditions, moral or physical, wholly within the
+control of man.
+
+There are animals who will not propagate and continue their species whilst
+in a state of servitude, and it is reasonable to believe that the same
+moral causes affect the condition of enslaved mankind. Naturalists have
+shown how the evils of Slavery degrade animals, and Buffon has pointed
+out the deep and conspicuous impressions it has made upon the camel.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Since the discovery and forcible entrance of the golden Empire of Mexico,
+and the display of her marvellous mineral treasures by the bold Cortez and
+his companions, we have seen a constant stream of the Spaniards and the
+affiliated nations of the Latin race pouring across the Atlantic to the
+new worlds which were given to the house of Castile and Leon by the
+sublime genius of the Genoese, following the stars and the traditions of
+the Northmen.
+
+Wealth and the baseless fabrics of martial glory were the alluring objects
+of this migrating column of men.
+
+"Hast thou gold?" exclaimed they to the Mexican princes. "I and my
+companions have a malady which is only cured by gold."
+
+After these four centuries of occupation of the elevated plains and
+table-lands of Mexico, where the mean temperature does not exceed 77 deg.
+Fahrenheit, and where the mildness of climate, the wealth of a wonderful,
+prolific nature, excite the ambition and the cupidity of men; and after
+the long efforts at colonization, in which the parent country was almost
+exhausted by the drain of her best blood,--Spain finds that the
+predictions of Dr. Knox are rapidly being realized, and that only 600,000
+Europeans and their hybrid descendants, and but 8000 Spaniards of pure
+blood, can be found of all the numberless hosts that have embarked for
+these lands. Spain halts, and reflects upon this report of her scientific
+commission, which shows a decrease of one half since the estimate of
+Humboldt, in 1793; whilst France, always blind to reason whenever the
+eagles of glory desire to expand their wings, persists in her useless
+occupation of Algeria, where Gaul has again and again vainly endeavored to
+rear her colonies in times past; and she now attempts to unfurl her
+standards and establish her institutions on those Mexican shores where the
+blood and energy of a stronger and better adapted people have been
+expended in vain. Idle effort! The elements of nature are stronger than
+the will of men; neither do they give way to the desires or attacks of
+human ambition.
+
+There are geographical boundaries which races cannot pass in pursuit of
+wealth or the dreams of ambition. A single generation will not determine
+the law of expansion and decay.
+
+
+V.
+
+In this connection it will be proper to glance over the past, among those
+phenomena which men have observed, and those laws which the Creator has
+thus far revealed to us for guidance in the procession of races or the
+march of intellect.
+
+In the mysteries of the material world everything is governed by fixed and
+positive laws. Not a flower appears in the field to gladden the hearts of
+men but what rises up with invariable structure, and blooms at definite
+periods. Not a sparrow falls to the earth but in accordance with Nature's
+law. Not a star shines in the firmament but in unison with the great and
+illimitable designs of God. Everywhere do we observe harmony in space, in
+movement; everywhere visible signs of a beneficent, protecting Creator. It
+is the same with the enormous forms of living animals as with the
+insignificant shapes of the insect world: all play their part in the
+problem of Nature. Size is nothing with the Creator; form is nothing.
+Perchance
+
+        "the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
+  In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great
+  As when a giant dies."
+
+
+VI.
+
+History indicates mysterious laws in the progress of the typical stocks of
+the human families; and it shows, in the colonization of the past, how
+frail are human calculations in migration and settlement unless based upon
+science. "It is not unknown to me," said the Roman soldier, two thousand
+years ago, when about to attack the remnant of the army of Brennus, that
+had passed over into Asia Minor, and conquered the land by the fierceness
+of their attack, and the terror of their name,--"it is not unknown to me,"
+said Manlius, "that of all the nations inhabiting Asia, the Gauls have the
+highest reputation as soldiers.
+
+"A fierce nation, after overrunning the face of the earth with its arms,
+has fixed its abode in the midst of a race of men the gentlest in the
+world. Their tall persons; their long, red hair; their vast shields, and
+swords of enormous length; their songs also when they are advancing to
+action; their yells and dances, and the horrid clashing of their arrows
+while they brandish their shields in a peculiar manner practised in their
+original country,--all these are circumstances calculated to strike
+terror. But let Greeks, and Phrygians, and Carians, who are unaccustomed
+to and unacquainted with these things, be frightened by such. The Romans,
+long acquainted with Gallic tumults, have learned the emptiness of their
+parade. Our forefathers had to deal with genuine native Gauls; but they
+are now a degenerate, a mongrel race, and in reality what they are named,
+Gallogrecians. Just so is the case of vegetables, the seeds not being so
+efficacious for preserving their original constitution as the properties
+of the soil and climate in which they may be reared, when changed, are
+towards altering it. The Macedonians who settled at Alexandria, in Egypt,
+or in Seleucia, or Babylonia, or in any other of their colonies scattered
+over the world, have sunk into Syrians, Parthians, or Egyptians.
+
+"What trace do the Tarentines retain of the hardy, rugged discipline of
+Sparta? Everything that grows in its own natural soil attains the greater
+perfection: whatever is planted in a foreign land, by a gradual change in
+its nature degenerates into a similitude to that which affords it nurture.
+Brutes retain for a time, when taken, their natural ferocity; but after
+being long fed by the hands of men, they grow tame. Think ye then that
+Nature does not act in the same manner in softening the savage tempers of
+men? Do you believe these to be of the same kind that their fathers and
+grandfathers were?
+
+* * * "By the very great fertility of the soil, the very great mildness
+of the climate, and the gentle dispositions of the neighboring nations,
+all that barbarous fierceness which they brought with them has been quite
+mollified."
+
+And finally the Romans themselves, in spite of their sanitary measures,
+became from year to year more alien in blood from the genuine stock of
+Romulus and Remus, until the distinctive characters of the conquerors of
+the earth finally disappeared.
+
+The Latins, Sabines, and primitive Etruscans pressed constantly upon them
+with the irresistible force of destiny. When Scipio AEmilianus was
+interrupted in the forum by this mongrel populace, he exclaimed, "Silence,
+false sons of Italy! Think ye to scare me with your brandished hands, ye
+whom I led myself in bonds to Rome?"
+
+When the fierce and hardy Northmen descended into Southern Europe, they
+carried along with their laws a chastity and a reserve that excited
+universal surprise. But these virtues were not of long continuance there;
+the climate and the customs of the new society soon warmed their frozen
+imaginations, and their laws by degrees relaxed, and their manners even
+more than their laws.
+
+The giants of the North many times swept down over the plains of Italy,
+and regenerated with fresh and pure blood the puny breeds of degenerate
+Rome, but they have since disappeared, and their descendants are no longer
+to be found in these countries.
+
+
+VII.
+
+In relation to the futile efforts of Spain in Mexico, the ethnologist Knox
+exclaims, "Neither climate, nor government, nor external influences ever
+alter race. They may and they do affect them, and in time destroy them,
+but they never give rise to a new race. In half a century the dreams of
+Humboldt, of Canning, of Guizot, and other profound statesmen, have come
+to a close, and Nature once more, as I long ago predicted, asserts her
+rights."
+
+Naturalists, from Hippocrates to Buffon, have believed that climate, heat
+and cold, dryness and humidity, the qualities and abundance of
+nourishment, have power to modify men and animals, but "neither climate,
+nor government, nor external circumstances ever give rise to a new race."
+The generous qualities once gone, are departed forever, and their loss can
+rarely be retrieved. Where is the instance of a fallen man, class, or
+nation?
+
+"The history of nations," writes the Registrar-General of England,--"the
+history of nations on the Mediterranean or the plains of the Euphrates and
+Tigris, the deltas of the Indies and Ganges, and the rivers of China,
+exhibits the great fact: the gradual descent of race from the highlands,
+their establishment on the coasts, in cities sustained and refreshed for a
+season by emigration from the interior--their degradation in successive
+generations under the influence of the unhealthy earth, and their final
+ruin, effacement, or subjugation by new races of conquerors. The causes
+that destroy individual men lay cities waste, which, in their nature, are
+immortal, and silently undermine eternal empires.
+
+  "A thousand years scarce serve to form a state;
+  An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
+  Can man its shattered splendors renovate,
+  Recall its virtues back, and vanquish time and fate?"
+
+
+VIII.
+
+During this period of two centuries of colonization the European races
+have attempted to perpetuate their families upon these lands in question.
+They brought with them strong physical forces, and a high degree of mental
+cultivation. Mental strength will endure extremes of climate to a singular
+degree, but even this gradually yields to cosmic influences. It is a
+well-observed law of Nature that man must be organized in harmony with the
+condition of climate, otherwise he perishes. This scale of the strength of
+resisting opposing forces depends greatly upon the purity of the blood and
+the cultivation of the mind, whose remarkable powers of resisting disease
+have been observed and pointed out by Malte-Brun, Goethe, Kant, and other
+philosophers.
+
+Europeans may visit and remain for limited periods in almost every portion
+of the globe. The deadly miasms of Central America, the pestilential
+atmospheres of Central Africa, and the frozen mists of either pole, are
+braved by the inquiring travellers of the civilized races, but not with
+impunity.
+
+Intelligent and educated men may live for a while as gentlemen of leisure,
+in the midst of malarial climates, almost without perceptible effect, but
+the moment they apply their forces to the cultivation of the earth, Nature
+asserts her rights.
+
+Yet during the period of the rich man, whilst he lives without physical
+labor, in ease, contemplation, and contentment, degeneration is slowly but
+surely taking place. The law of fecundity proves it, as with the Mamelukes
+in Egypt, as observed by Volney.
+
+The English race loses its energy, according to Farr, in two or three
+generations in the lowlands of the West India Islands and in Southern
+Asia. The Duke of Wellington believed that every English family in Lower
+Bengal would die out in the third generation.
+
+
+IX.
+
+The laws of nature as regards influences of climate, food, and society,
+have operated less upon the condition of the rich slaveholder than the
+poorer white, who has struggled for existence, contending with the poverty
+of sterile or abandoned soils, and the hostile influences of climate, and
+the sneer of the slave and his master. The rich man has resisted the
+opposing forces of the elements with less apparent changes, whilst the
+poor man has succumbed to the influences and sadly degenerated, but the
+poor white still possesses the rough nobility and majesty of natural man,
+whilst the rich slaveholder, with his perverted ideas of honor, virtue,
+and justice, has gained the merited contempt of mankind. For the one,
+civilization has the sympathetic feeling of compassion; from the other,
+Nature herself recoils in horror.
+
+This degeneration of the poor white is no mystery. Their poverty of blood
+and weakness of mind were not engendered by the insalubrity of climate,
+nor even by the sterility of the soil alone. Deny to any race, class, or
+community free social condition, freedom of thought, the expansion of the
+mind, the liberty of political and religious ideas, and it is sure to
+degenerate, and in time to perish.
+
+The doctrine of Adam Smith and the theory of Malthus as to the fatal
+necessity of starvation, are in some measure correct, but they are
+mistaken in the view that human fecundity tends to get the start of the
+means of subsistence, for on the contrary it keeps pace with it.
+
+We find that the fishes in the lakes, and the wolves in the forests,
+increase in exact ratio to the amount of food furnished. Nature regulates
+the fecundity of animals and human beings when society neglects it.
+
+
+X.
+
+The influences of climate, of food, of temperature, of domesticity upon
+the variation of species is well known. These mediate and external causes
+act with more vigor when the immediate and internal causes favor the
+effect. "All the mechanism of the formation of varieties," says Flourens,
+"turns upon these two internal causes--the tendency of the species to
+vary, and the transmission of the acquired variations." Cultivated plants
+and domesticated animals, when deprived of the modifying influence of man,
+return to the state of nature, and undergo new modifications, alterations,
+degenerations, even so far as to disguise and conceal the primitive type.
+
+A few generations suffice to restore a variety to the primitive stock
+without retaining any of the organic elements which would debase it.
+
+The more the influence of civilized man makes itself felt, the more the
+superior species overpower, absorb, or modify the inferior species.
+
+The more rude the people and the less polished their societies, the more
+powerful and rapid will be the influences of climate. Civilized men are
+continually exercising their talents to conform their conditions to the
+necessities of the time and place, and by their ingenuity remedy the
+defects, and by the resisting powers of a cultivated and occupied mind
+resist many of the morbid influences of climate. But plants and animals
+succumb at once if not protected by man.
+
+
+XI.
+
+During the more than two centuries of occupation of these southern lands
+there appear sufficient data to form, perhaps, some definite ideas of the
+success or failure of colonization, and the vague and doubtful process of
+acclimation. These evidences, thus far, are decidedly in favor of the
+black man. For he has multiplied with astonishing rapidity, and preserved
+his physical forces, and during this long and brutalizing term of his
+servitude he has not exhibited the ferocity of his master, save when
+hunted down like the beasts of prey, as in Hayti; neither has he sunk so
+low in the scale of true humanity as those who have held him in bondage.
+
+The hungry and maimed soldier of the republic, escaping from the murderous
+prison-dens of the rebels, always found a crust of bread, a protecting
+shelter, and a kind word from the humblest and most oppressed of these
+beings.
+
+Never were they betrayed by the black man, although the reward was large.
+Never were they denied assistance, although the penalty was death.
+
+Although history seems to forbid, we are not of that class of men who
+maintain that there are inferior races, intended by nature for servitude;
+for we believe that every race contains the elements of greatness, and
+that there is a common destiny to all. And we cherish the idea that there
+is a better future even for the black man among the civilized nations of
+the earth. The singular aptitude of the black man for music, which is the
+language of the soul; his deep, sincere, immovable veneration for the
+precepts, the faith, the hope of Christianity, do not indicate a race lost
+to the nobler impulses, or to the benign influences of civilization, nor a
+people abandoned and accursed by Providence. God has gifted every living
+creature with the instinct of self-preservation; he has endowed all
+animated creatures of the human form with the love of the beautiful, with
+the desire of developing and perfecting their innate powers, and of
+leaving on earth some act, some memorial worthy of imitation or
+remembrance. He who declines to help his fellow-creature in the struggle
+for social existence, in the effort for happiness, knowledge, and
+immortality, is less than a man.
+
+The problem of civilization is left mostly to the free will of men, and
+God blasts and crumbles into dust only those nations who have abused the
+gifts and privileges of nature, and who, when arriving at the height of
+prosperity and power, have disregarded and despised those principles of
+morality and religion which form the true base of all society. How all the
+noble aspirations may be crushed and the instincts perverted; how from a
+species of voluntary insanity, by our own fierce passions, and by a
+strange desire of mutual destruction, men rush on to contest and to ruin,
+is well illustrated by the past of the slave faction.
+
+
+XII.
+
+It is evident that the black man has not deteriorated during his sojourn
+in these countries; on the contrary, he has improved in physique: the
+repulsive Congo type has changed, and the Circassian features appear. It
+is the result of the law of contact and example; it is the effect of
+civilization.
+
+Has the white man gained in similar ratio? Go to the cotton fields and
+rice lands, and learn a lesson from the instructive contrast of the gaunt
+and apathetic white laborer, with the sturdy, well-developed, lively
+black. You will then observe that these vast alluvial lands, which rank in
+richness and fertility with the best on the globe, must be consigned to
+waste by reason of insalubrity, if not cultivated by races of men who are
+congenial to the soil and climate. There is no white race who can
+cultivate these lands, and enjoy life and establish society with any
+duration. Malaria would forbid, if other conditions were favorable.
+
+The littoral lands of the lower tier of Slave States, which are composed
+of post tertiary and alluvial soils, tertiary sands and secondary chalk
+marls, can be tilled in safety and with economy and with gain only by the
+black man. Below the upper terraces and the slopes of the mountain ranges
+of the northern limits of these States, where we find the primary and
+metamorphic rocks and their debris, the white laborer cannot descend
+without contending with the full force of his nature, with disease,
+degeneration, and premature death.
+
+There are now in the States of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and
+Louisiana thirty millions of acres of arable land yet belonging to the
+United States, unsold and unoccupied. In all England there are but seven
+million acres of uncultivated land.
+
+
+XIII.
+
+Malaria, that curse of the Circassian race, which is the chief source of
+the inefficiency and mortality of their efforts of colonizations in
+semi-tropical climes, exerts but little influence upon the negroes, and
+hence they are admirably qualified for the occupation of pestilential
+soils.
+
+It appears from the statistics of the English that remittent and
+intermittent fevers, which prove the great source of inefficiency and
+mortality among the white troops in tropical climes, exert comparatively
+but little influence upon the blacks.
+
+The writer has observed the fatal effects of the pernicious fevers upon
+the white inhabitants of the low coasts of Georgia and South Carolina, and
+has seen men perish in a single night from the deadly action of the
+miasms, whilst the negroes were unaffected.
+
+During the English expedition up the Nile nearly all the whites were
+prostrated by fevers, and none of the native blacks were affected. After
+the French landed at Vera Cruz the yellow fever found great numbers of
+victims among the Europeans; but according to the report of the
+inspector-general, Regnaud, not one of the 600 negro soldiers and sailors
+from the West Indies, though hard at work there, were attacked, or rather
+not one of them died. There are hundreds of similar examples to illustrate
+the theory.
+
+We cannot escape the mephitism of the soil. So long as we respire the air,
+so long shall we receive into the system the deleterious vapors by the
+respiratory apparatus, which is the most perfect of the absorbing agents:
+the time of effect is determined only by the health, the strength, and
+vigor of our forces. The destroying elements may take effect at once, or
+they may be resisted for a long, though definite period of time. Malaria
+alone has a wide range among the causes of human misery, and it is
+believed to cause more than half of the mortality of the human families on
+the globe.
+
+Its deadly action, in depopulating cities and provinces, is well attested
+in history, and its effect upon the intellectual expansion is still more
+marked; sadness, languor, paludal cachexia, scrofulous, deformed, and
+short-lived offspring, are among its train of evils. In the Roman states
+alone, sixty thousand perish every year from this paludal influence. These
+deltas of the Southern States are among the greater miasmatic foyers of
+the world, and are as deadly in their miasms as the Campagna of Italy or
+the Sunderbunds of Hindostan.
+
+
+XIV.
+
+There are many reasons to induce the belief, that if properly directed,
+the blacks may attain distinction in social life and progress, and a
+higher degree of perfection in physical development. The skeleton of the
+negro is firmer and heavier, the bones being larger and thicker than that
+of any other race; but physiologists observe that the muscular development
+does not correspond to the strong dimensions of the frame. This deficiency
+of nature may be explained by the want of proper nutrition, or to physical
+causes within human control, for all proportions in nature are harmonious.
+Two of the most admirable boxers that have appeared in the British arena
+were blacks, and the dark, swarthy hue of the famous wrestler, Marseilles,
+reminds how common is the tinge of African blood in South France, Spain,
+and Italy.
+
+While statistics appear to exhibit the physical superiority of the blacks
+in the low countries, they also prove how prone to pulmonary disease are
+they when migrating to the uplands, or higher latitudes, and how fearful
+the mortality. Thus Nature, it seems, offers serious barriers to their
+progress, and boundaries within which they must confine themselves or
+perish.
+
+
+XV.
+
+It has been urged that the intermingling of the freed blacks with the
+whites in these States will produce a variety of people more vicious, and
+less willing to be controlled by the social laws, than either pure race.
+
+Of this there is but little danger, as ethnology will show. There will not
+be, under any ordinary circumstances, any intermingling of the two races,
+for the law of ethnic repugnance is too great. The strong ethnic
+antipathies will keep them apart. The possibility of the intermixture of
+families and races so widely remote is as rigidly limited as the law of
+chemical proportions, and the absorption of the minor quantity is
+inevitable. Give both races the same field for expansion in these States,
+and the white race will soon find itself in the minority, both of numbers
+and in physical strength; for, according to natural laws, the stronger
+blood always absorbs the weaker when there is unobstructed action, and
+especially when climate favors vastly one of the contending types.
+
+There are to-day four or five times as many centenarians among the blacks
+as there are among the whites of the cotton regions.
+
+In consideration of this subject of miscegenation, let us review the
+phenomena that have been brought to light by the naturalists who have
+studied hybridity among animals, and recall a few facts from history to
+support the experimentalists.
+
+
+XVI.
+
+In the animal world, in the wild state, hybrids are rarely if ever
+produced, and it is only from the experiments of the naturalists that the
+law of hybridity has been explained.
+
+We see the bipartites appear, when two kindred species mix together under
+the influence of man, these animals partaking of the qualities of both.
+The horse and the ass; the ass, zebra, and hermione; the wolf and the dog;
+the dog and the jackal; the goat and the ram; the deer and the axis, &c.,
+unite and breed; but these artificial species are not durable, and they
+have only limited fecundity. "The mongrels of the dog and the wolf are
+sterile from the third generation. The mongrels of the jackal and the dog
+are so from the fourth. Moreover, if we unite these mongrels to one of the
+two primitive species, they soon revert completely and totally to that
+species.
+
+"The mongrel of the dog and jackal contains more of the jackal than the
+dog. It has the straight ears, the pendent tail; it does not bark; it is
+wild. It is more jackal than dog. This is the first product of the crossed
+union of the dog with the jackal. I continue to unite the successive
+produce, from generation to generation, with one of the two primitive
+roots,--with that of the dog, for example.
+
+"The mongrel of the second generation does not bark yet, but it has the
+ears pendent at the tip: it is less wild.
+
+"The mongrel of the third generation barks: it has pendent ears, raised
+tail: it is no longer wild. The mongrel of the fourth generation is
+entirely dog. Four generations, then, have sufficed to restore one of the
+two primitive types--the dog type; and four generations suffice also to
+restore the other type--the jackal type. Thus, when the mongrels produced
+from the union of two distinct species unite together, either become soon
+sterile, or they unite with one of the two primitive stocks, and they soon
+revert to this stock; in no case do they yield what may be called a new
+species, that is, an intermediate, durable species.
+
+"Whether, then, we consider the external causes,--the succession of time,
+years, ages, revolutions of the globe, or internal causes,--that is to
+say, the crossing of the species, the species do not alter, do not change,
+nor pass from one to the other; the species is fixed." Such are the
+conclusions of the admirable efforts of Flourens.
+
+"The imprint of each species," says Buffon, "is a type, the principal
+features of which are engraved in characters ineffaceable, and permanent
+forever; but all the accessory touches vary; no individual perfectly
+resembles another."
+
+
+XVII.
+
+Among the human families, the law of hybridity, which has been pointed out
+so clearly by Flourens, has also its fixed and inflexible rules; these
+rules have not been so well studied with men as with animals, but it is
+believed to have its limit at the seventh generation. At all events, the
+experiments of human hybridism, and acclimation in strange latitudes, have
+always in time ended in disaster; and that such will always be the fate of
+the attempted union of different races in unfavorable climes, have been
+the views of Humboldt, of Canning, of Guizot, and other profound
+statesmen. We observe among the races in savage life a natural repugnance
+to unite: as for instance, the negroes and the fairer people of the
+Philippine and Polynesian Isles show no disposition to unite; and though
+living side by side, in the same country, for a long period, they have not
+produced an intermediate race. Neither do the Eskimos nor the Red Men,
+neither do the Caffres nor the Hottentots mix, for in the state of nature
+the law of ethnic repugnance is supreme. It is only in the artificial and
+depraved states of society that hybrids appear, and their existence is of
+short and fixed duration.
+
+The apparent duration and perfection of the Coulouglis, the bipartates of
+the Bergers and Turks, may be an exception to the general rule. But the
+results of the mingling of human families, widely separated, is generally
+very decided.
+
+The Creoles, produced by the African with the Spaniard, Italian, and the
+Southern French, possess considerable durability, but disease and
+degeneration soon appear when the black mingles with the blood and humors
+of the more northern nations. With all these mixtures there is a profound
+characteristic, which constitutes the unity, identity, and reality of the
+species, which is, continuous fecundity; and this characteristic never
+varies: it is immutable. The mulattoes live less time than the black or
+the white race, and their offspring perish readily, and are rarely
+prolific, except when united with stronger individuals of either primitive
+type, to which they soon return.
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+The blacks have been too degraded to more than conceive of liberty, too
+debased to think of resistance to the forces that crushed them, and they
+have neither observed, nor sought for opportunities, to throw off their
+chains and sweep over the lands, like a destroying element, with the
+accumulated wrongs of centuries. Yet there were black men among them who
+were capable of high cultivation. The long contact with the superior white
+race had recast the faculties of their mind, and had altered perceptibly
+the rugged contour of their forms and features.
+
+The writer observed with wonder in the regiment of black men which formed
+part of the column of the desperate assault upon Fort Wagner, beautiful
+heads, whose classic and regular outlines recalled the finest of the
+antique.
+
+We believe with the writer in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," that contact
+with the white races has given the negro the lines of the Caucasian form,
+and that the Congo type can disappear or become greatly modified.
+
+These changes in the typical form, which we have since observed elsewhere,
+appear to have taken place sometimes without the admixture of the blood of
+the whites.
+
+That the black men in the United States army fought well, no one will
+deny; that they conducted themselves admirably in the murderous assaults
+at Fort Wagner, or under the destroying fire at Olustee, and in many other
+conflicts, every one possessed of any candor will admit. When we consider
+the degradation whence they suddenly rose, and the steadiness and
+firmness, and the manly bearing they exhibited after the few lessons of
+military training, we are compelled to render thanks to them for their
+efforts in the struggle for national existence, and to admit the
+probability of their attaining that degree of intelligence, wisdom, and
+virtue which distinguish the true citizen. That these men will attain the
+standard of intellect of the Caucasian, we neither expect nor believe; but
+we do maintain, that in the nature of every race, however debased by
+prejudice, and the avarice of superior society, there exists the element
+of honesty, virtue, truth, and a horror of wrong, which may be developed
+and turned to the good of all society, in repelling and resisting the
+force of machination, the intrigue which arises from disappointed
+ambition, or the insatiable lust of more favored and less considerate
+classes.
+
+No one acquainted with the history of the commerce of human beings will
+wonder at the present condition of the blacks, or that they have not risen
+in the scale of social and intellectual advancement. For, looking back to
+the primitive ages we may see how the human species have been depressed in
+servitude, and how the very same families, who carried the arts and
+sciences to celestial limits, were affected by this influence. Persons of
+the same blood and inheritance as the best families of Greece and Rome,
+were often reduced to slavery, and they sank rapidly under its debasing
+effects. They were tamed like the black man of the South; "like brutes, by
+the stings of hunger and the lash; and their education was so conducted as
+to render them commodious instruments of labor for their possessors. This
+degradation of course depressed their minds, restricted the expansion of
+their faculties, stifled almost every effort of genius, and exhibited them
+to the world as beings endued with inferior capacities to the rest of
+mankind. But for this opinion there appears to have been no foundation in
+truth or justice. Equal to their fellow-men in natural talents, and alike
+capable of improvement, any apparent or real difference between them and
+some others must have been owing to the mode of education, to the rank
+they were doomed to occupy, and to the treatment they were appointed to
+endure."
+
+After all, the world appears to be a vast arena, where the good and the
+bad are gathered together, and men are left to their own efforts, whether
+to rise up in that scale of intelligence and virtue which conducts to
+immortality, or to grovel deeper into the depths of degradation, where
+there is nothing but death and annihilation. The vault of heaven grows in
+immensity as we gaze into its limitless expanse, whilst the shadows and
+attractions of earth fade away from view, or allure only those who have
+forsaken nature.
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+Have the European races advanced in these latitudes in strength of mind
+and body with equal ratio as the black man? We think not. Let us consider.
+
+The qualities of plants and vegetables are often affected by external
+influences, so as to assume different characters, and the impressions upon
+the leaves and the fruits are distinctly marked. These alterations,
+degenerations, and modifications may disguise the primitive type so far
+that it is no longer recognizable. We observe these properties among all
+organic bodies, among those of the animal and as well as of the vegetable
+world. The vine and its golden extracts are very much dependent upon these
+influences.
+
+The exquisite bouquet, the soul-inspiring qualities of the best varieties
+of wine, cannot be acquired by the efforts of man at pleasure; without the
+generous nature of the soil, the rays of sunlight, and the inspiring
+breezes of favored localities and climes, the extract of the pressed grape
+is without that flavor and force which warm into life the brilliancy of
+the imagination, the nobility of the soul.
+
+There is also a marked effect of soil and climate upon the odor of
+plants, and in their narcotic constituents. Does not the same law affect
+man?
+
+The Italian violets grow sweeter as we climb the Alpine slopes; the
+mignonette blooms with greater perfection and perfume as we approach the
+shores of the lowlands of the Mediterranean. We find the finest types of
+the human race among the uplands and the mountains; below, on the low
+coasts and river margins, where pestilences are generated, the physical
+and mental forces do not fully expand, and we find there neither liberty,
+virtue, nor science.
+
+Dr. Rusdorf, in his work on the influence of European climate, regards the
+temperate zone as the brain-making region, and attempts to prove it by
+physiological deductions. The brain of the Caucasian, he says, determines
+the superiority over the other races, and it is the standard of the
+organism. This, he maintains, is produced by the richness of albumen in
+the blood, which is also dependent upon the oxygen of pure air. The
+extensive observations of the English Registrar-General show indisputably
+that the elevation of the soil exercises as decided an influence on the
+English race as it does on the native races of other climes and soils.
+They also show that the finest animals are raised in the healthiest
+districts. We see that certain heights above the plains are remarkably
+exempt from maladies which devastate nations inhabiting lower levels.
+Cholera, remittent fever, yellow fever, and plague, disappear at
+well-defined degrees of elevation.
+
+At Vera Cruz, and along its latitude, the yellow fever vanishes at the
+height of three thousand feet above the Gulf shores.
+
+The Prussian, in his "Medicinische Geographie," appears to indicate with
+great degree of certainty the limits and altitudes of the three zones,
+into which he classifies the catarrhal, the dysenteric, and the scrofulous
+diseases. The scrofulous zone ceases at an altitude of two thousand feet
+above the level of the sea, and here, he says, there is no pulmonary
+consumption, scrofula, cancer, or typhus fever. "It is," says Babinet,
+"the climate of each country which permits or arrests the development of
+the human race, which, joined with the industry of populations, imposes
+limits to the numerical force of each meteorological district, and which
+subsists four million of men in fertile Belgium, which is no more than a
+small fraction of the territory of France, whilst Siberia can with
+difficulty nourish a part of that number with an extent which is
+twenty-six times that of France." "All over the world, physical
+circumstances," exclaims Draper, "control the human race."
+
+
+XIX.
+
+It is vain to assert that the atmospheres of the maritime or the low
+levels do not affect the physical and mental condition of men; and after
+all, Fontenelle was right when he maintained, in a curious paradox, that
+inspiration is a barometer that varies, which mounts to genius or descends
+to absurdity, according to the inconstancy of the weather; that there are
+unhealthy countries, full of mists, winds, tempests, that never produce
+clear understandings; and, on the contrary, there are lands with beautiful
+skies and fields filled with sunlight and roses which give out flashes of
+divine light.
+
+Nearly all of the Grecian lyrists were born in the enchanting climates,
+and among the beautiful scenes of the Asiatic shore or the isles of the
+AEgean Sea. Most of the eminent men of Italy rose from similar
+inspirations, which Michael Angelo observed when speaking of Vasari in
+terms of admiration. Historians say that the sun was never softer, the
+heavens brighter, the roses more prolific, the winds more perfumed, than
+in the dawn of the eighteenth century, which produced that "wild garland
+of beautiful women who recalled by their graces, their genius, the
+courtesans of Greece," which gave birth to those philosophers who gave a
+new impetus to liberty and religion.
+
+
+XX.
+
+According to some writers, the unequal distribution of solar heat over the
+earth is the cause of marked differences in national character; others
+refer the distinctive effects to the quality of the air they breathe.
+Arbuthnot maintains that air not only fashions the body, but has also had
+great influence in forming language; that the close, serrated method of
+speaking of Northern nations was due to coldness of the climate, and
+hesitation of opening the mouth; whilst the sweet, sonorous phrases of
+temperate climes, like those of the Mediterranean, were due to the
+mildness of climate, where the vocal organs could be exposed without
+danger. "It is incontestable," also writes Alfred Maury, in his "Earth and
+Man," "that climate has upon the mode of government a considerable
+influence, because it exercises an immediate effect upon the character of
+individuals. In the warm countries, under an enervating atmosphere, where
+all inclines to effeminacy and idleness, the soul has not that energy and
+that force of will necessary to a people who wish to be free. Under a
+severe and cold climate, to the contrary, the character acquires more of
+energy, and the body more of activity. The passions are less violent, and
+leave to the reason a freer exercise. In the hot climes the instincts are
+impetuous, and they pass from an extreme of dejection to a state of
+exaltation which produces revolutions, insurrections, but which do not
+establish the independence. For, to the contrary, these violent crises
+introduce retaliation; and in the sanguinary conflicts, the power of an
+individual, although tyrannical, appears as a benefit, or is accepted as a
+necessity."
+
+
+XXI.
+
+The anger of the European has always raged with undefinable fury, when
+once aroused, in these southern latitudes, and especially in the regions
+in question. The spirit is the same, whether we review the cruel and
+useless extermination of the Indians in Cuba or Florida; the massacres of
+the Mexicans by the merciless Spaniards; the internecine slaughter of the
+French, English, and Spaniards along the coasts of South Carolina,
+Georgia, and Florida; the extermination of whole tribes, like the
+Yemassee, or the forced removal of the red men from the broad lands of
+their birthplace and inheritance. All show the implacable depth of his
+avarice or his ire. It was not merely the honor of subjugation, of
+conquering strange races, that was the object of the politics, and that
+excited the emulation of these iron-mailed and iron-hearted men and their
+descendants: it seems to have been an irresistible desire to immolate
+human races, to glut with blood that thirst for destruction which arises
+from depraved and burning hearts.
+
+It was the same spirit, under the mask of avarice, that tore the
+well-behaved Creeks and Cherokees from the homes of their ancestors, and
+banished them to the prairies of the West; that hunted down the last
+Seminole in the everglades of Florida, where there are to-day twenty
+millions of acres of land unsold and unoccupied.
+
+It was the same spirit that, in later times, recklessly and ruthlessly
+destroyed, at Camp Sumter, an army of freemen, under the pretence of
+treating them as prisoners of war.
+
+
+XXII.
+
+Yet this depraved fury does not appear to have been natural to the soil,
+climate, or the native races, as observed by the early navigators;
+although Ponce de Leon received his death-wound from them when he sought
+the fountain of youth in the everglades of Florida, and De Soto
+encountered fierce opposition from the red men of the forest when he
+pursued his way towards the Appalachian mountains in search of the mines
+of gold. But nevertheless the Europeans were treated almost always with
+kindness whenever they approached the Indian with good intentions.
+
+Contrast the present time and the people with the period and the natives
+when the great Navigator discovered the adjacent isles. "Nature is here,"
+he exclaims, "so prolific, that property has not produced the feelings of
+avarice or cupidity. These people seem to live in a golden age, happy and
+quiet, amid open and endless gardens, neither surrounded by ditches,
+divided by fences, nor protected by walls. They behave honorably towards
+one another, without laws, without books, without judges. They consider
+him wicked who takes delight in harming another. This aversion of the good
+to the bad seems to be all their legislation."
+
+These people with natural sentiments have passed away, and new races, with
+strange and repulsive ideas, have taken their place. "Like the statue of
+Glaucus, that time, the sea, the storms have so disfigured that it
+resembles less a god than a ferocious beast, the human soul, altered in
+the bosom of society by a thousand causes rising without cessation, by the
+acquisition of a multitude of creeds and errors, by the changes produced
+in the constitution of bodies by the continual shock of passions, has
+caused a change in appearance almost unrecognizable; and we sooner find,
+instead of the being acting always by certain and invariable principles,
+instead of that celestial and majestic simplicity in which the Creator has
+left his impress, the deformed contrast of the understanding in delirium,
+and of the passion which pretends to reason."
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+Wherever society forms and sustains itself, there must be adopted certain
+rules and laws to maintain it.
+
+These seemingly arbitrary laws represent the interests, the passions, and
+opinions of those who establish them, and they differ widely, according
+to the nature of the men and the climate which they inhabit.
+
+The inhabitants of hot climes and the cold zones present strange contrasts
+in their natural ideas of justice, as well as in instincts and appetites.
+The Turk regards intemperance as a crime, and polygamy as a virtue. The
+Englishman looks upon the one with complaisance, but regards the other
+with horror. Thus reason yields to physical force, or to the differences
+of climate; and what men call virtue in one clime, loses its force and
+beauty in another. Yet there are natural laws older than the empires of
+force or reason; more ancient than society itself; more powerful and
+sublime than the passions and interests of men. These laws of kindness, of
+mercy, of friendship, like elementary language, come from divination.
+
+Nature has planted certain instincts in the bosoms of all the different
+races of the globe alike; and these become developed according to
+cultivation, or debased according to degrading influences. The good of
+society may define the measure between good and evil, but it cannot
+extinguish the principles, or obliterate the sharply defined distinctions.
+The will of the Creator has manifested itself clearly in the workings of
+the natural world, if it has not been revealed to us in those tablets
+which fell from the skies.
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+The benign influences of society, the exercise of politeness and reason,
+inspire polished and agreeable manners; yet, in the midst of these, we
+find men who think barbarity to be one of their rights; and they abuse
+their fellow-creatures without pretext, and commit murder without
+necessity, which is a degree of ferocity below that of the carnivorous
+animals; for they destroy life only when impelled by the motives of
+hunger. Societies of men are institutions of nature, and they are founded
+upon the principles of mutual obligations. Society relapses into barbarism
+when the golden rule of "doing as we would be done by" is violated; when
+individual liberty is lost; and when man treats his fellow-man as property
+under the right of force, and therefore without legal relations.
+Constitutions are the indices of the education and the aspiration of
+nations, and they keep pace with the onward march of intelligence. These
+become altered and modified, as the intellect and hearts of men expand;
+and it is nothing but bigotry that believes in the inviolability, the
+perfection of the doctrines and tenets of men in the present or the past.
+The wise man, says the old proverb, often changes his opinion, the fool
+never.
+
+
+XXV.
+
+Slavery appears to be coeval with war; and war is as ancient as the human
+race. Plutarch believed that there had been a time, a golden age, when
+there were neither masters nor slaves. The human mind, at the time when
+Plutarch wrote, was almost controlled by the empire of force. The
+selfishness and superstition of society fettered the nobility of nature,
+and healthy reason could not assume its rightful sway.
+
+The depth of the philosophical reasoning, the degree of humanity of one of
+the brightest periods of antiquity, may be comprehended from the
+"Politics" of Aristotle, when he says, "To the Greeks belongs dominion
+over the barbarians, because the former have the understanding requisite
+to rule, the latter, the body only to obey. For the slave, considered
+simply as such, no friendship can be entertained, but it may be felt for
+him, as he is a man." Some of the ancient nations, the most enthusiastic
+in the dreams of liberty, were the most savage and stern in their laws
+concerning their slaves; and they adhered to their brutal doctrines in
+defiance of nature with singular tenacity. The right of life and death
+over the slave was one of the fundamental principles of the society of the
+Athenians, Lacedemonians, Romans, and Carthaginians.
+
+Strange condition of society among men who cultivated the arts and
+sciences so successfully! Yet it does not appear that any legislator
+attempted to abrogate servitude.
+
+Stranger still that the glorious period of the reign of democracy at
+Athens should not have brought with it the universal freedom of men, when
+liberty was the divine ideal of its aspirations.
+
+
+XXVI.
+
+Not until the star of Christianity rose above the horizon of the pagan and
+superstitious world, softening the hearts of men and revealing to them a
+new life, did Slavery vanish from among refined and generous societies,
+under the charter, _Pro amore Dei, pro mercede animae_. And never has it
+reappeared, except among those nations who have become debased from
+avarice, or depraved by ambition. When cupidity allows fanaticism to blind
+the mind with the belief that savages or negroes can be more easily
+converted to Christianity whilst in slavery than in freedom, then there is
+an end to social progress. Yet such were the ideas of Louis XIII. when he
+consigned the negroes of his colonies to Slavery. And such has been the
+creed of the slaveholders and breeders of America. The monstrous doctrine
+imposed itself upon the understandings of the slave faction, as the
+superstitions of the false prophets have fettered and crushed the minds of
+the pagan nations. It has debased their natural sentiments, as well as it
+has depressed and perverted their natural talents and virtues. "In the
+same manner," said Longinus, "as some children always remain pygmies,
+whose infant limbs, fettered by the prejudices and habits of servitude,
+are unable to expand themselves, or to attain that well-proportioned
+greatness which we admire in the ancients, who, living under a popular
+government, wrote with the same freedom as they acted."
+
+
+XXVII.
+
+We may learn from the history of the past, if we will not accept the data
+of the present, how climate, food, domesticity, or recognized customs of
+society may alter the minds and dispositions of men; how they may
+gradually build up governments, founded upon monstrous ideas, and yet in
+unison with the compunctions of their conscience. Ascribe the origin to
+any cause you will, it does not alter the revolting facts, nor lessen the
+repulsiveness of the absurdity, nor the enormity of the crime. Volney
+believed "that the social institutions called Government and Religion
+were the true sources and regulators of the activity or indolence of
+individuals and nations; that they were the efficient causes which, as
+they extend or limit the natural or superfluous wants, limit or extend the
+activity of all men. A proof that their influence operates in spite of the
+difference of climate and soil is, that Tyre, Carthage, and Alexandria
+formerly possessed the same industry as London, Paris, and Amsterdam; that
+the Buccaneers and the Malayans have displayed equal turbulence and
+courage with the Normans, and that the Russians and Polanders have the
+apathy and indifference of the Hindoos and the Negroes. But, as civil and
+religious institutions are perpetually varied and changed by the passions
+of men, their influence changes and varies in very short intervals of
+time. Hence it is that the Romans commanded by Scipio resembled so little
+those governed by Tiberius, and that the Greeks of the age of Aristides
+and Themistocles were so unlike those of the time of Constantine."
+
+Volney observes that "the moral character of nations, taken from that of
+individuals, chiefly depends on the social state in which they live; since
+it is true that our actions are governed by our civil and religious laws,
+and since our habits are no more than a repetition of those actions, and
+our character only the disposition to act in such a manner under such
+circumstances, it evidently follows that these must essentially depend on
+the nature of the government and religion."
+
+Says Addison, "In all despotic governments, though a particular prince may
+favor arts and letters, there is a natural degeneracy of mankind, as you
+may observe from Augustus's reign, how the Romans lost themselves by
+degrees, until they fell to an equality with the most barbarous nations
+that surrounded them. Look upon Greece under its free states, and you
+would think its inhabitants lived in different climates and under
+different heavens from those at present, so different are the geniuses
+which are formed under Turkish slavery and Grecian liberty.
+
+"Besides poverty and want, there are other reasons that debase the minds
+of men who live under Slavery, though I look on this as the principal. The
+natural tendency of despotic powers to ignorance and barbarity, though not
+insisted upon by others, is, I think, an unanswerable argument against
+that form of government, as it shows how repugnant it is to the good of
+mankind and the perfection of human nature, which ought to be the great
+end of all civil institutions."
+
+"Liberty should reach every individual of a people, as they all share one
+common nature; if it only spreads among particular branches there had
+better be none at all, since such a liberty only aggravates the misfortune
+of those who are deprived of it, by setting before them a disagreeable
+subject of comparison."
+
+"The pride of Athens," writes Mirabeau, "and the jealousy of the Greeks,
+banished forever the liberty of those countries, so long fortunate."
+
+Such is and always was our world, covered from time to time with
+conquerors and slaves, because the conquering, in forging the irons of the
+unhappy, with which they bound them, sharpen those which must bind them in
+turn.
+
+Such is and always will be man, from time to time despot and slave, for
+man, denaturalized by servitude, becomes readily the most ferocious of
+animals if he escapes an instant from oppression. There is but one step
+from the despot to the slave, from the slave to the despot, and the chain
+becomes them alike.
+
+
+XXVIII.
+
+There are strange forces constantly at work: civilizations spring up,
+disappear, and sometimes, but rarely, return again after a sleep of ages:
+it seems as though genius laid fallow for a period, like the golden
+grains.
+
+The Greek mind teaches the Arabs under the Caliphs of Bagdad and Cordova,
+and in turn the Arabian influence instructs the reviving European mind
+after the dark ages. The fall of Constantinople crushed the Greek mind
+completely. The genius and the "godlike men" of Rome vanished under the
+influence of the strong blood of the Goths, and the flourishing nations of
+the African shore have yielded so completely to physical and moral causes,
+that we justly doubt the story of their magnificence, their power, their
+intelligence.
+
+We see the effete races infused with the fresh blood; the vigorous juices
+of the Scandinavians march forward with unparalleled pace to the triumphs
+of reason and philosophy. The pure, warm, healthy vitality of the North
+recalls to life the exact sciences, the laws of reasoning, and philosophy,
+and aesthetics, which, arising from Grecian genius, had slumbered for a
+thousand years.
+
+
+XXIX.
+
+In the slave lands of America a high order of intellect was proclaimed;
+but when analysis approached, it sank into mediocrity, or vanished into
+dust, like the forms in the ancient tombs when exposed to the light of
+heaven. Slavery has produced nothing but horror. The flashes of light that
+have burst forth through its mists have been the expiring efforts of
+genius. Here the sciences have always languished and declined to take
+root, for they are the offspring of genius and reason. The arts never
+appeared, for the spirit of imitation never arose. To cultivate the
+sciences, there is need of exalted desire, which comes from healthy and
+prosperous races or from celestial fire. Here there was the barbarity of
+ignorance; the only desires were to increase the enormities of their
+crimes, by the spread and general adoption of Slavery, and to conceal its
+proportions and influences beneath a cloud of mental darkness, which is
+frightful to contemplate, when placed in comparison with intelligent
+communities like New England, Belgium, and Prussia.
+
+They thought to perpetuate an aristocratic power, and transmit the
+inheritance of Slavery as a blessing, but they forgot that in the
+formation of happy nations and states humanity forms the broad base; they
+forgot that ambitious and avaricious families quickly degenerate and
+disappear completely from the earth. The vicissitudes of political life
+hasten that decline which is commenced by riches and rank, when supported
+by morbid ideas and sentiments.
+
+The noble families of Athens and Corinth, the patrician body at Rome,
+vanished so rapidly as to excite the surprise of the nations they
+governed. The names of the descendants of the founders of Venice, written
+in the Libro di Oro, are no longer to be found among the living in Italy.
+
+The same law is silently at work in our times.
+
+
+XXX.
+
+The inequalities of the earth's surface are like the rugosities of the
+human brain: the depths of the one contain the richest and most
+inexhaustible treasures of mineral wealth, as the wrinkles of the other
+collect the stores of mental lore. As the surface of the brain becomes
+less marked and rugged, the strength and scope of the mind vanish, and
+approach the standard of the lower animals; and likewise, as the elevated
+lands of the earth shrink in form, and sink into the level of the plain,
+so the characters of the races who inhabit them lose force and elevation.
+
+Sometimes the minds of men are the reflections of the beauties and
+sublimities of nature. Sometimes men become degraded, and nature then does
+not inspire.
+
+
+XXXI.
+
+The lofty and diversified mountain range, or system of ranges, known as
+the Appalachian or Alleghany, rises or reappears in the State of New York,
+midway between the Atlantic coast and the shores of those fresh-water
+seas, Erie and Ontario. It then stretches down south-westward, with its
+adjacent spurs, through the great States of Pennsylvania and Virginia;
+then, dividing, it forms, with its eastern range, the western and northern
+limit of North and South Carolina and Georgia; and with the western it
+intersects Tennessee, forming that beautiful basin known among the white
+men as East Tennessee, but among the traditions of the red men as the
+Garden of the Manitou--their God. In Northern Alabama, the separated
+ranges seemingly unite; and passing southward, towards the central portion
+of the State, the mountain summits gradually contract, and finally sink
+into the level of the great alluvial plains, which stretch away, without
+undulation, to the shores of the Gulf. These huge masses of rock,
+dislocated and elevated like the Vosges and the Hartz Mountains at the
+close of the carboniferous or devonian period of the earth's age, contain,
+with the adjacent and connecting bands,--which are composed of the
+silurian, primitive, and metamorphic ledges,--most of the accessible
+mineral wealth of the republic. And the collective beds of iron, coal,
+marble, zinc, copper, and gold are unsurpassed in similar extent and
+richness by the mines of any country of the known world, with the
+exception of those wonderful deposits of ores and minerals among the
+unexplored and almost inaccessible recesses and plateaus of the Sierra
+Nevada or the Andes.
+
+With the exception of the northern extremity of this mountain group, these
+mines of natural wealth may be said to have been unexplored. Below the
+rich and populous State of Pennsylvania, the hum of human industry ceases;
+for we then pass into the paralyzing shadow of Slavery. This Slavery
+forbade the development of the earth's treasures, as well as the
+enlightenment of the minds of the poor and ignorant whites. The forges of
+Vulcan would have hammered out and broken into fragments the chains of
+that bondage which not only oppressed the fettered blacks, but debased,
+with its corroding influence, the competing labor of the white man.
+
+The slaveholders concealed this immense natural wealth from the eyes of
+science from motives of policy; and rather than incur the hazard of
+revolution, by educating the masses of their own people, they preferred to
+neglect their natural advantages, and to send to distant and even foreign
+lands the products of their fields and their system, to be worked up into
+the marvellous fabrics of human ingenuity and skill. This same State of
+Virginia, which is the real gateway to the empires of the West, and which
+is not surpassed in natural physical advantages by any equal extent of
+territory on the globe, is the most ignorant of all of the States of the
+republic. Ninety thousand of its native-born free people, over twenty
+years of age, before the war could not read nor write; whilst sterile and
+stormy Maine, with her cold lands and colder skies, contained but two
+thousand of the same class, out of a population more than half as great.
+And New England, with a population of almost three times as great as the
+free people of Virginia, is ashamed by the number of seven thousand
+illiterate natives past the age of twenty. Who will wonder at the display
+of barbarity and audacity when the statistics of education and ignorance
+are exhibited? "Education and liberty," says Mirabeau, "are the bases of
+all social harmony and all human prosperity."
+
+Which can civilization curse the most, London or Amsterdam? the Dutch who
+introduced Slavery, or the English who thought Virginia a good place to
+"colonize aristocratic stupidity," and who sent colonists, who were,
+according to the historian, "fitter to breed a riot than to found a
+colony." The condition of the present day shows how rigidly the first
+instructions have been observed and enforced. "Thank God," writes one of
+its early governors to the English Privy Council, "thank God there are no
+free schools or printing, and I hope we shall not have any these hundred
+years! for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the
+world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best
+government. God keep us from both!"
+
+
+XXXII.
+
+And so these mines, and fields, and forests, remain to the present day,
+unsurveyed, unexplored and unknown, save to a few wanderers of science.
+
+In Northern Alabama, where the terminating slopes of this upheaval of
+rocks disappear beneath the level of the vast cotton fields, which number
+their acres by the million, there appear enormous deposits of iron ore, of
+extraordinary richness and depth, lying in juxtaposition with
+corresponding beds of limestones and coal.
+
+Here is alone sufficient material for the iron fingers and forges and the
+steam power to fabricate the vegetable growths, the harvests of the vast
+and fertile plains of the entire South, and to build up with enduring form
+those great and thriving cities which are seen in the dim vista of the
+future of the Mississippi Valley, with its hundred millions of people.
+These elevations, when denuded of their immense primeval forests of pine
+and oak, will be covered with constant verdure, affording sure sustenance
+to numberless flocks and herds of kine, which will require less care than
+the cattle of the plains of Texas or the pampas of Peru, since Nature,
+with her caverns and narrow valleys, will afford shelter from the
+destructive storms of winter and the chilling blasts of spring.
+
+Between the two great spurs of the divided mountain range which encompass
+the head-waters and tributaries of the Tennessee, appears the garden spot
+of the Republic: the soils, enriched by the decomposition of the blue
+limestones, are here of great strength and endurance; the innumerable
+streams are of sufficient force and volume to satisfy the wants of
+industry and mechanics, whilst the lofty mountains, which rise to the
+height of seven thousand feet above the ocean, with their broad and
+impressive shadows, temper the atmospheres, so that the body can labor and
+the mind expand.
+
+To the natural beauties of the landscape art has yet added nothing: from
+the teeming harvests of the valleys, from the massive ledges of minerals,
+man has yet detracted nothing.
+
+Nature here is almost inexhaustible.
+
+No wonder that the dying Indian returns to the region of the Hiwassee to
+end his days on earth, impelled by an irresistible desire to behold once
+more the wonders and beauties of natural scenery, which are preserved
+among the fading traditions of the tribes that have been banished to the
+far off western frontiers.
+
+
+XXXIII.
+
+From beneath the eastern aspect of the mountains of Alabama, a broad belt
+of metamorphic rocks bursts forth, and trends to the north-eastward,
+following the mountain ranges in almost parallel lines through the States
+of Georgia, South and North Carolina, and disappearing in Virginia beneath
+the waters of the Potomac. These lands of decomposed mica and talcose
+schists contain throughout their broad extent particles of gold; and some
+of the narrow and circumscribed fields are unsurpassed in their
+undeveloped richness by any of the known gold fields of similar extent in
+the world. These auriferous soils, owned or controlled by the slaveholder,
+have yielded, by the superficial scratchings and washings of the slave and
+the poor white, during the period since the discovery of the precious
+metal, about forty millions of dollars. There are not less than one
+hundred millions more within the reach and grasp of skilled and determined
+labor.
+
+Along beside, and traversing through and through these golden rocks and
+sands, occur immense bands of itacolumite, known, from its flexibility, as
+the elastic sandstone. They stretch from Alabama to the interior of North
+Carolina, bursting forth now as great flexible bands of stone, and then
+bulging out as entire mountains. This singular formation is the same that
+has been recognized in Brazil, Ural Mountains, and Hindostan, as the
+matrix of the diamond; and here, nearly one hundred of the precious gems
+of fine water have been picked up from the earth, from time to time, by
+the careless observer.
+
+
+XXXIV.
+
+This upheaval of the earth's surface, reminding the geographer of the
+Italian peninsula, vaguely perhaps in form, in natural fertility and in
+purity of climate, is destined to play an important part in the future
+advancement of the Republic. For here is the heart of the eastern portion
+of the continent, geographically, climatologically, and mineralogically.
+Here Nature is too prolific to be long neglected by the cupidity or the
+ambition of men, when the barriers and obstructions of inquiry and
+settlement, which have been reared against the advance and design of
+civilization by the Slave Faction, shall have been removed. When the tide
+of European emigration, which steadily brings to the New World the pure
+blood and youth of races, turns its stream of industrial life towards
+these valleys, mountain slopes, and terraces; when the laws of
+alimentation are understood and properly observed; when the spire of the
+school-house rises in the vista of every landscape, or points the way at
+every cross-road,--then we may expect to see a new variety of the human
+race appear, possessed of remarkable physical strength and beauty, and
+whose ideas and efforts, typical of the healthy and developed mind, will,
+like the influences of New England and Scandinavia, give fresh impulse and
+impress to the civilizations of the earth.
+
+
+XXXV.
+
+Races of men--nations--even the lesser communities, during the periods of
+their social existence, erect monuments, or leave, unwillingly sometimes,
+traces of their progress, their advancement, their culture, as memorials
+for the admiration, or as the objects of horror for the contempt, of
+future generations.
+
+The gigantic pyramids and sphinxes of Egypt tell of the civilization of
+their extinct founders; the airy and graceful columns, with the wonderful
+sculptures of the Parthenon, disclose the degree of the perfection and the
+delicacy of the Greek mind. Rome, though long since vanished from among
+the nations of the earth, has left the impress of her force, grandeur, and
+wisdom in those laws which now direct the tribunals of men; the lofty and
+colossal structures of the temples of the Rhine are the emblems of faith
+as well as the masterpieces of the Gothic heart and intellect; even the
+mysterious and history-forgotten Druids have left their rude reminiscences
+in those weird circles of enormous and cyclopean rocks, beyond which all
+is darkness.
+
+Thus men perpetuate their memories among the annals of the earth. But
+after their long period of existence and progress, what have the Slave
+Faction left for the historian to contemplate with satisfaction? for an
+attentive world to study, imitate, and admire? What beyond this appalling
+cloud of ignorance have they left as legacy to the poor white? What
+besides misery, violence, and crime have they bequeathed to the black man?
+With what treasures, in the estimation of mankind, have they enriched
+themselves, or left as inheritance to their degenerate offspring?
+
+The history of this remorseless party, its selfish and sordid aims, its
+cruel results, will always find place among the annals of civilized man so
+long as the noblest acts of men are admired, and so long as the dark deeds
+of cruelty appall and overshadow our better nature. Thermopylae, Marathon,
+and the holy sites where Liberty has struggled for existence, and where
+men have risen above the trammels of their earthly natures, will be
+remembered no longer than this field of blood and torture among the
+obscure forests of Georgia.
+
+
+XXXVI.
+
+Who will say that Nature and Liberty were the genii who directed the
+labors of the leaders of the Rebellion?
+
+Soil, climate, hereditary traditions, and customs of society, give to a
+people the fierceness and gentleness of character, as well as the
+perfection of mind and body. This fatal Stockade, with the silent mound of
+earth which contains its harvest of death, is a fair and just exponent of
+the bigoted and selfish policy that struck down the Flag of the Republic;
+of that cruel and unearthly spirit which has despised all the "attachments
+with which God has formed the chain of human sympathies," and which,
+without a tear of remorse, has strewn the Atlantic Ocean with a broad
+pathway of human bones!
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+Since the close of the war, and since the time when the sketch of the
+graveyard was taken, Colonel Moore, of the U. S. Quartermaster's
+Department, has been to Andersonville, under orders from the Secretary of
+War, and arranged the cemetery in a very acceptable manner. All of the
+stakes were removed, and neat head-boards placed instead, with the names
+of the dead properly painted in black letters. The ground has been cleared
+up by this efficient officer, and the cemetery carefully laid out into
+walks, adorned with flowers and trees. Colonel Moore, in his report to the
+Quartermaster-General, writes the following account:--
+
+"The dead were found buried in trenches, on a site selected by the rebels,
+about three hundred yards from the stockade. The trenches varied in length
+from fifty to one hundred and fifty yards. The bodies in the trenches were
+from two to three feet below the surface, and in several instances, where
+the rain had washed away the earth, but a few inches. Additional earth
+was, however, thrown upon the graves, making them of still greater depth.
+So close were they buried, without coffins, or the ordinary clothing to
+cover their nakedness, that not more than twelve inches were allowed to
+each man. Indeed, the little tablets marking their resting-places,
+measuring hardly ten inches in width, almost touch each other. United
+States soldiers, while prisoners at Andersonville, had been detailed to
+inter their companions; and by a simple stake at the head of each grave,
+which bore a number corresponding with a similarly numbered name upon the
+Andersonville hospital record, I was enabled to identify, and mark with a
+neat tablet, similar to those in the cemeteries at Washington, the number,
+name, rank, regiment, company, and date of death of twelve thousand four
+hundred and sixty-one graves; there being but four hundred and fifty-one
+that bore the sad inscription, 'Unknown U. S. Soldier.'"
+
+Extract from letters of the rebel Senator Foote, dated Montreal, June 21,
+1865.
+
+"Touching the Congressional report referred to, I have this to say: A
+month or two anterior to the date of said report, I learned from a
+government officer of respectability, that the prisoners of war then
+confined in and about Richmond were suffering severely from want of
+provisions. He told me, further, that it was manifest to him that a
+systematic scheme was on foot for subjecting these unfortunate men to
+starvation; that the Commissary-General, Mr. Northrup (a most wicked and
+heartless wretch), had addressed a communication to Mr. Seddon, the
+Secretary of War, proposing to withhold meat altogether from military
+prisoners then in custody, and to give them nothing but bread and
+vegetables; and that Mr. Seddon had indorsed the document containing this
+communication affirmatively. I learned, further, that by calling upon
+Major Ould, the commissioner for exchange of prisoners, I would be able to
+obtain further information upon the subject. I went to Major Ould
+immediately, and obtained the desired information. Being utterly unwilling
+to countenance such barbarity for a moment,--regarding, indeed, the honor
+of the whole South as concerned in the affair,--I proceeded without delay
+to the hall of the House of Representatives, called the attention of that
+strangely constituted body to the subject, and insisted upon an immediate
+committee of investigation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As to the capacity of the bakery, any one can make his own estimates from
+the plan given. The foreman of the government bakery at Nashville, gives
+his views in the following note:--
+
+    "SIR: Our system in wheaten flour bread is, five men bake six ovens
+    full in the twelve hours; one oven full, 36 pans; 9 loaves (18
+    rations) in each pan; 36 pans x 18 = 648 x 6 ovens full = 3888 x 2
+    (for twenty-four hours) = 7776 rations: this is done by two ovens. Say
+    six men on each oven (any more would be in the way), two and a half
+    hours to knead and bake each oven full (almost impossible), ten ovens
+    full in the twelve hours in the day time (two ovens five times full in
+    the twelve hours), ten ovens full in the twelve hours in the night
+    time, each oven full 40 pans, 12 rations in each (20 oz. of corn
+    bread); 40 pans x 12 = 480 x 10 for day's work = 4800 + 4800 for night
+    work = 9600 rations in the twenty-four hours.
+
+    Sir, all the above are in the extreme.
+
+      Most respectfully,
+        JOHN WITHERSPOON, Foreman U. S. Bakery."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The hospital register gives the following data as to the number of
+prisoners present during each month, the number treated medically, and the
+average number of deaths:--
+
+  ===============================================================
+                      |  Number of   | Number in  |    Average
+        Month.        |  Prisoners.  | Hospital.  | Daily Deaths.
+  --------------------+--------------+------------+--------------
+  February, 1864      |     1,600    |       33   |     ..
+  March,     "        |     4,603    |      909   |      9
+  April,     "        |     7,875    |      870   |     19
+  May,       "        |    13,486    |    1,190   |     23
+  June,      "        |    22,352    |    1,605   |     40
+  July,      "        |    28,689    |    2,156   |     56
+  August,    "        |    32,193    |    3,709   |     99
+  September, "        |    17,733    |    3,026   |     89
+  October,   "        |     5,885    |    2,245   |     51
+  November,  "        |     2,024    |      242   |     16
+  December,  "        |     2,218    |      431   |      5
+  January, 1865       |     4,931    |      595   |      6
+  February,  "        |     5,195    |      365   |      5
+  March,     "        |     4,800    |      140   |      3
+  ===============================================================
+
+The greatest number of deaths, on any single day, was on the 23d of
+August, 1864, and was 127, or one death every eleven minutes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fact of the employment of blood-hounds is too notorious to admit of
+doubt. Many packs of dogs were kept, and a profitable business was done in
+the catching of escaped prisoners. Ben Harris was seen to receive pay for
+the capture of sixty prisoners, at thirty dollars apiece. That some of the
+pursued were killed in the forests during the pursuit, there is no doubt
+in the writer's mind, from the evidence offered.
+
+The following table was collated from the hospital records of the prison,
+and is believed, by the writer and clerks who were employed at the rebel
+office, to be quite correct:--
+
+  ===============================================================
+                   |  Deaths   |  Deaths   |  Deaths in |
+       Month.      |    in     |    in     |  Small Pox | Total.
+                   | Hospital. | Stockade. |  Hospital. |
+  -----------------+-----------+-----------+------------+--------
+  February, 1864.  |       1   |      ..   |      ..    |      1
+  March,     "     |     262   |      15   |       5    |    282
+  April,     "     |     471   |      71   |      34    |    576
+  May,       "     |     633   |      65   |      10    |    708
+  June,      "     |   1,041   |     150   |      10    |  1,201
+  July,      "     |   1,119   |     614   |       5    |  1,738
+  August,    "     |   1,489   |   1,592   |      ..    |  3,081
+  September, "     |   1,255   |   1,423   |      ..    |  2,678
+  October,   "     |   1,294   |     301   |      ..    |  1,595
+  November,  "     |     494   |      ..   |      ..    |    494
+  December,  "     |     166   |       2   |      ..    |    168
+  January,  1865.  |     191   |       8   |      ..    |    199
+  February,  "     |     147   |      ..   |      ..    |    147
+  March,     "     |     100   |      ..   |      ..    |    100
+                   +-----------+-----------+------------+--------
+    Total          |   8,663   |   4,241   |      64    | 12,968
+  -----------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
+  Hung in stockade for crime                            |      6
+                                                        +--------
+    Total deaths as registered                          | 12,974
+  ===============================================================
+
+The hospital records show that 17,873 patients were registered, and that
+823 of these were exchanged, and about 25 took the oath of allegiance,
+leaving 17,048 to be accounted for, giving a mortality of seventy-six per
+cent. Besides the registered dead, there were some who perished by the
+falling of the excavations in the stockade, and others destroyed by hounds
+and hunters in the forests.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The meteorological tables and the vegetal charts of Blodgett will give the
+rain-fall of this region in comparison with the other districts of the
+United States.
+
+The following table, which was compiled by the author from the official
+records of the British army, gives the number of soldiers who were killed
+in action, or afterwards perished from their wounds, in many of the great
+battles of the British empire:--
+
+  =====================================================
+            |             | Total Strength  | Estimated
+    Year.   |  Battles.   |    engaged.     |  Deaths.
+  ----------+-------------+-----------------+----------
+    1809.   | Talavera,   |    22,100       |   1,445
+    1811.   | Albuera,    |     9,000       |   1,358
+    1812.   | Salamanca,  |    30,500       |     770
+    1813.   | Vittoria,   |    42,000       |     890
+    1815.   | Ligny,      |       ...       |     ...
+      ..    | Quatre Bras,|       ...       |     ...
+      ..    | Wavre,      |    49,900       |   3,245
+      ..    | Waterloo,   |       ...       |     ...
+      ..    | New Orleans,|     6,000       |     625
+    1854.   | Crimea,     |       ...       |   4,595
+  ----------+-------------+-----------------+---------
+    Total number of deaths from wounds      |  12,928
+  ====================================================
+
+
+STATISTICS FROM THE CENSUS REPORTS OF 1860.
+
+GEORGIA.
+
+  =================================================================
+             |  Corn,   |  Wheat, | Cotton,|Potatoes,| Peas and
+   Counties. | bushels. | bushels.| bales. | bushels.| Beans, bush.
+  -----------+----------+---------+--------+---------+-------------
+  Macon.     |  313,906 |  22,312 | 10,248 |  86,000 |  37,836
+  Lee.       |  319,653 |   2,250 | 14,445 |  60,000 |  34,599
+  Sumter.    |  386,892 |   8,396 | 14,423 |  92,234 |  12,483
+  Dougherty. |  356,812 |     553 |  9,580 |  56,310 |  23,061
+             |----------+---------+--------+---------+-------------
+    Total.   | 1,377,263|  33,511 | 48,696 | 294,544 | 108,019
+  =================================================================
+
+  ==========================================================
+             |Land improved, | Land unimproved, | Number of
+   Counties. |    acres.     |      acres.      |  Slaves.
+  -----------+---------------+------------------+-----------
+  Macon.     |    88,353     |     108,176      |   4,865
+  Lee.       |    85,840     |     113,172      |   4,947
+  Sumter.    |   102,327     |     160,742      |   4,890
+  Dougherty. |    91,470     |      99,048      |   6,079
+             |---------------+------------------+-----------
+    Total.   |   367,990     |     481,138      |  20,781
+  ==========================================================
+
+There were, in 1860, nearly 600,000 cattle and swine in the State of
+Florida alone, whilst Maine had but 200,000 at the same time. Georgia and
+Alabama had together, in 1860, 5,000,000 of cattle and swine, and they
+produced during the same year more than 60,000,000 bushels of corn,
+4,000,000 bushels of wheat, and 13,000,000 bushels of potatoes. All New
+England, during the same period, produced but 1,000,000 bushels of wheat
+and 9,000,000 bushels of corn, although containing a million more people
+than Georgia and Alabama.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following is a copy of the order relating to the treatment of the
+rebel prisoners in the hands of the United States authorities. Contrast it
+with the rebel barbarities.
+
+
+A.
+
+  OFFICE OF COMMISSARY GENERAL OF PRISONERS,}
+  WASHINGTON, April 20, 1864.               }
+
+[_Circular._]
+
+By authority of the War Department, the following Regulations will be
+observed at all stations where prisoners of war and political or state
+prisoners are held. The Regulations will supersede those issued from this
+office July 7, 1861:--
+
+I. The Commanding Officer at each station is held accountable for the
+discipline and good order of his command, and for the security of the
+prisoners; and will take such measures, with the means placed at his
+disposal, as will best secure these results. He will divide the prisoners
+into companies, and will cause written reports to be made to him of their
+condition every morning, showing the changes made during the preceding
+twenty-four hours, giving the names of the "joined," "transferred,"
+"deaths," &c. At the end of every month, Commanders will send to the
+Commissary General of Prisoners a Return of Prisoners, giving names and
+details to explain "alterations." If rolls of "joined" or "transferred"
+have been forwarded during the month, it will be sufficient to refer to
+them on the return, according to forms furnished.
+
+II. On the arrival of any prisoners at any station, a careful comparison
+of them with the rolls which accompany them will be made, and all errors
+on the rolls will be corrected. When no roll accompanies the prisoners,
+one will immediately be made out, containing all the information required,
+as correct as can be, from the statements of prisoners themselves. When
+the prisoners are citizens, the town, county, and State from which they
+come will be given on the rolls, under the headings Rank, Regiment, and
+Company. At stations where prisoners are received frequently, and in small
+parties, a list will be furnished every fifth day--the last one in the
+month may be for six days--of all prisoners received during the preceding
+five days. Immediately on their arrival, prisoners will be required to
+give up all arms and weapons of every description, of which the Commanding
+Officer will require an accurate list to be made. When prisoners are
+forwarded for exchange, duplicate parole rolls, signed by the prisoners,
+will be sent with them, and an ordinary roll will be sent to the
+Commissary General of Prisoners. When they are transferred from one
+station to another, an ordinary roll will be sent with them, and a copy of
+it to the Commissary General of Prisoners. In all cases, the officer
+charged with conducting prisoners will report to the officer under whose
+order he acts the execution of his service, furnishing a receipt for the
+prisoners delivered, and accounting by name for those not delivered; which
+report will be forwarded, without delay, to the Commissary General of
+Prisoners.
+
+III. The hospital will be under the immediate charge of the senior Medical
+Officer present, who will be held responsible to the Commanding Officer
+for its good order and the proper treatment of the sick. A fund for this
+hospital will be created, as for other hospitals. It will be kept separate
+from the fund of the hospital for the troops, and will be expended for the
+objects specified, and in the manner prescribed, in paragraph 1212,
+Revised Regulations for the Army of 1863, except that the requisition of
+the Medical Officer in charge, and the bill of purchase, before payment,
+shall be approved by the Commanding Officer. When this "fund" is
+sufficiently large, it may be expended also for shirts and drawers for the
+sick, the expense of washing clothes, articles for policing purposes, and
+all articles and objects indispensably necessary to promote the sanitary
+condition of the hospital.
+
+IV. Surgeons in charge of hospitals where there are prisoners of war will
+make to the Commissary General of Prisoners, through the Commanding
+Officer, semi-monthly reports of deaths, giving names, rank, regiment, and
+company; date and place of capture; date and cause of death; place of
+interment, and number of grave. Effects of deceased prisoners will be
+taken possession of by the Commanding Officer--the money and valuables to
+be reported to this office (see note on blank reports), the clothing of
+any value to be given to such prisoners as require it. Money left by
+deceased prisoners, or accruing from the sale of their effects, will be
+placed in the Prison Fund.
+
+V. A fund, to be called "The Prison Fund," and to be applied in procuring
+such articles as may be necessary for the health and convenience of the
+prisoners, not expressly provided for by General Army Regulations, 1863,
+will be made by withholding from their rations such parts thereof as can
+be conveniently dispensed with. The Abstract of Issues to Prisoners, and
+Statement of the Prison Fund, shall be made out, commencing with the month
+of May, 1864, in the same manner as is prescribed for the Abstract of
+Issues to Hospital and Statement of the Hospital Fund (see paragraphs
+1209, 1215, and 1246, and Form 5, Subsistence Department, Army
+Regulations, 1863), with such modifications in language as may be
+necessary. The ration for issue to prisoners will be composed as follows,
+viz.:--
+
+  Hard Bread,           { 14 oz. per one ration, or
+                        { 18 oz. Soft Bread one ration.
+
+  Corn Meal,              18 oz. per one ration.
+  Beef,                   14  "   "   "
+  Bacon or Pork,          10  "   "   "
+  Beans,                   6 qts. per 100 men.
+  Hominy or Rice,          8 lbs.  "   "
+  Sugar,                  14  "    "   "
+  R. Coffee,               5 lbs. ground, or 7 lbs. raw, per 100 men.
+  Tea,                    18 oz. per 100 men.
+  Soap,                    4  "   "   "
+  Adamantine Candles,      5 Candles per 100 men.
+  Tallow Candles,          6   "      "   "
+  Salt,                    2 qts.     "   "
+  Molasses,                1 qt.      "   "
+  Potatoes,               30 lbs.     "   "
+
+When beans are issued, hominy or rice will not be. If at any time it
+should seem advisable to make any change in this scale, the circumstances
+will be reported to the Commissary General of Prisoners for his
+consideration.
+
+VI. Disbursements to be charged against the Prison Fund will be made by
+the Commissary of Subsistence, on the order of the Commanding Officer; and
+all such expenditures of funds will be accounted for by the Commissary, in
+the manner prescribed for the disbursements of the Hospital Fund. When in
+any month the items of expenditures on account of the Prison Fund cannot
+be conveniently entered on the Abstract of Issues to Prisoners, a list of
+the articles and quantities purchased, prices paid, statement of services
+rendered, &c., certified by the Commissary as correct, and approved by the
+Commanding Officer, will accompany the Abstract. In such cases it will
+only be necessary to enter on the Abstract of Issues the total amount of
+funds thus expended.
+
+VII. At the end of each calendar month, the Commanding Officer will
+transmit to the Commissary General of Prisoners a copy of the "Statement
+of the Prison Fund," as shown in the Abstract of Issues for that month,
+with a copy of the list of expenditures specified in preceding paragraph,
+accompanied by vouchers, and will indorse thereon, or convey in letter of
+transmittal, such remarks as the matter may seem to require.
+
+VIII. The Prison Fund is a credit with the Subsistence Department, and at
+the request of the Commissary General of Prisoners may be transferred by
+the Commissary General of Subsistence in the manner prescribed by existing
+Regulations for the transfer of Hospital Fund.
+
+IX. With the Prison Fund may be purchased such articles, not provided for
+by regulations, as may be necessary for the health and proper condition
+of the prisoners, such as table furniture, cooking utensils, articles for
+policing, straw, the means for improving or enlarging the barracks or
+hospitals, &c. It will also be used to pay clerks and other employees
+engaged in labors connected with prisoners. No barracks or other
+structures will be erected or enlarged, and no alterations made, without
+first submitting a plan and estimate of the cost to the Commissary General
+of Prisoners, to be laid before the Secretary of War for his approval; and
+in no case will the services of clerks or of other employees be paid for
+without the sanction of the Commissary General of Prisoners. Soldiers
+employed with such sanction will be allowed 40 cents per day when employed
+as clerks, stewards, or mechanics; 25 cents a day when employed as
+laborers.
+
+X. It is made the duty of the Quartermaster, or, when there is none, the
+Commissary, under the orders of the Commanding Officer, to procure all
+articles required, and to hire clerks or other employees. All bills for
+service or for articles purchased will be certified by the Quartermaster,
+and will be paid by the Commissary on the order of the Commanding Officer,
+who is held responsible that all expenditures are for authorized purposes.
+
+XI. The Quartermaster will be held accountable for all property purchased
+with the Prison Fund, and he will make a return of it to the Commissary
+General of Prisoners at the end of each calendar month, which will show
+the articles on hand on the first day of the month; the articles
+purchased, issued, and expended during the month; and the articles
+remaining on hand. The return will be supported by abstracts of the
+articles purchased, issued, and expended, certified by the Quartermaster,
+and approved by the Commanding Officer.
+
+XII. The Commanding Officer will cause requisitions to be made by his
+Quartermaster for such clothing as may be absolutely necessary for the
+prisoners, which requisition will be approved by him, after a careful
+inquiry as to the necessity, and submitted for the approval of the
+Commissary General of Prisoners.
+
+The clothing will be issued by the Quartermaster to the prisoners, with
+the assistance and under the supervision of an officer detailed for the
+purpose, whose certificate that the issue has been made in his presence
+will be the Quartermaster's voucher for the clothing issued. From the 30th
+of April to the 1st of October, neither drawers nor socks will be allowed,
+except to the sick. When army clothing is issued, buttons and trimmings
+will be taken off the coats, and the skirts will be cut so short that the
+prisoners who wear them will not be mistaken for United States soldiers.
+
+XIII. The Sutler for the prisoners is entirely under the control of the
+Commanding Officer, who will require him to furnish the prescribed
+articles, and at reasonable rates. For this privilege the Sutler will be
+taxed a small amount by the Commanding Officer, according to the amount of
+his trade, which tax will be placed in the hands of the Commissary to make
+part of the Prison Fund.
+
+XIV. All money in possession of prisoners, or received by them, will be
+taken charge of by the Commanding Officer, who will give receipts for it
+to those to whom it belongs. Sales will be made to prisoners by the Sutler
+on orders on the Commanding Officer, which orders will be kept as vouchers
+in the settlement of the individual accounts. The Commanding Officer will
+procure proper books in which to keep an account of all moneys deposited
+in his hands, these accounts to be always subject to inspection by the
+Commissary General of Prisoners, or other inspecting officer. When
+prisoners are transferred from the post, the moneys belonging to them,
+with a statement of the amount due each, will be sent with them, to be
+turned over by the officer in charge to the officer to whom the prisoners
+are delivered, who will give receipts for the money. When prisoners are
+paroled, their money will be returned to them.
+
+XV. All articles sent by friends to prisoners, if proper to be delivered,
+will be carefully distributed as the donors may request; such as are
+intended for the sick passing through the hands of the Surgeon, who will
+be responsible for their proper use. Contributions must be received by an
+officer, who will be held responsible that they are delivered to the
+person for whom they are intended. All uniform, clothing, boots, or
+equipments of any kind for military service, weapons of all kinds, and
+intoxicating liquors, including malt liquors, are among the contraband
+articles. The material for outer clothing should be gray, or some dark
+mixed color, and of inferior quality. Any excess of clothing, over what
+is required for immediate use, is contraband.
+
+XVI. When prisoners are seriously ill, their nearest relatives, being
+loyal, may be permitted to make them short visits; but under no other
+circumstances will visitors be admitted without the authority of the
+Commissary General of Prisoners. At those places where the guard is inside
+the enclosure, persons having official business to transact with the
+Commander or other officer will be admitted for such purposes, but will
+not be allowed to have any communication with the prisoners.
+
+XVII. Prisoners will be permitted to write and to receive letters, not to
+exceed one page of common letter paper each, provided the matter is
+strictly of a private nature. Such letters must be examined by a reliable
+non-commissioned officer, appointed for that purpose by the Commanding
+Officer, before they are forwarded or delivered to the prisoners.
+
+XVIII. Prisoners who have been reported to the Commissary General of
+Prisoners will not be paroled or released except by authority of the
+Secretary of War.
+
+  W. HOFFMAN,
+  Col. 3d Infantry, Commissary General of Prisoners.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+The publishers have the names of all of those soldiers who perished at
+Andersonville, the date of death, and the number of their graves; and they
+contemplate publishing the list hereafter, if sufficient encouragement is
+offered.
+
+  Address
+
+  LEE & SHEPARD,
+  149 Washington Street, Boston.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+The Illustrations were drawn by the author from sketches upon the spot,
+and from photographs which were taken by the rebels during the occupation
+of the prison. The figures are by Charles A. Barry, Esq., and the
+engraving by Henry Marsh, Esq.
+
+  NUMBER                                                 PAGE
+
+      I. View from Main Gate (from rebel photograph)        2
+
+     II. Vignette                                           7
+
+    III. Bird's-eye View of Stockade                       19
+
+     IV. View of Officers' Stockade                        21
+
+      V. View of Interior of the Prison                    29
+
+     VI. View of Graveyard (from rebel photograph)         37
+
+    VII. View of Dead Line (from rebel photograph)         48
+
+   VIII. View of Gates                                     53
+
+     IX. View of Mud Huts                                  55
+
+      X. View of Burial (from rebel photograph)            57
+
+     XI. View of Bakery                                    61
+
+    XII. View of Kitchen                                   63
+
+   XIII. View of Blood-hound Hut                           64
+
+    XIV. View of Utensils used by the Prisoners            96
+
+     XV. Map of Georgia                                    18
+
+    XVI. Plan of Andersonville                             20
+
+   XVII. Plan of Prison                                    50
+
+  XVIII. Plan of Bakery                                    60
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+  BOOK FIRST.
+
+  _Introduction. Description of Andersonville: Locality,
+  Arrangement, and Construction of the Camp._                     7-28
+
+
+  BOOK SECOND.
+
+  _Descriptive: the Number of Prisoners compared with the
+  Armies of Alexander and Napoleon. The Dead compared with
+  the Losses of the British Soldiers at Waterloo, Crimea,
+  Spain, Mexican War, &c._                                       28-40
+
+
+  BOOK THIRD.
+
+  _Describes at length the Stockade, with all the
+  Arrangements, with Comparisons, Ratio of Density, &c._         40-68
+
+
+  BOOK FOURTH.
+
+  _Relates to the Alimentation of the Prisoners, with
+  Comparisons with the Dietaries of Foreign Armies,
+  Hospitals, Prisons, Scarcity of Food in the Prison,
+  Abundance of Food in the Country, &c._                         68-99
+
+
+  BOOK FIFTH.
+
+  _Review of the Hospital--its Arrangement and Results._        99-113
+
+
+  BOOK SIXTH.
+
+  _Relates to the Mortality as compared with that of our
+  Armies and Prisons, also with Foreign Armies, Prisons,
+  and Hospitals, &c._                                          113-142
+
+
+  BOOK SEVENTH.
+
+  _Relates to the Legal Right of Death over the Captive,
+  with the Views of the Ablest Writers of Past Times,
+  Rousseau, Montesquieu, Mirabeau, &c. The Treatment of
+  Prisoners of War by the Rebels contrasted with Usages of
+  Civilized Nations. Regulations of the United States. Letter
+  of General Butler on the Exchange of Prisoners. Complicity
+  of Jeff Davis, &c., &c._                                     142-194
+
+
+  BOOK EIGHTH.
+
+  _Review of the Physical and Moral Causes,--Climatological,
+  Ethnological, Social, &c.,--that have led to the Degeneration
+  of the White Race in the South, and the consequent Degree
+  of Perversity and Barbarity, &c._                            194-242
+
+
+  APPENDIX.
+
+  _Notes. Statistical Tables. General Orders of the United
+  States in Reference to Treatment of their Prisoners._        243-254
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Martyria, by Augustus C. Hamlin
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-14 20:08:52 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-14 20:08:52 -0700
commit	2fac43543afceb8640dfb5792733e61bffdefdec (patch)
tree	943454103c35d8910e9d00d88f15c4f2f0ab4ad3