[326]
2. If these regulations were violated in individual instances, and if subordinates were sometimes cruel to prisoners, it was without the knowledge or consent of the Confederate Government, which always took prompt action on any case reported to them.
3. If the prisoners failed to get their full rations, and had those of inferior quality, the Confederate soldiers suffered in precisely the same way, and to the same extent, and it resulted from that system of warfare adopted by the Federal authorities, which carried desolation and ruin to every part of the South they could reach, and which in starving the Confederates into submission brought the same evils upon their own men in Southern prisons.
4. The mortality in Southern prisons (fearfully large, although over three per cent. less than the mortality in Northern prisons), resulted from causes beyond the control of our authorities — from epidemics, &c., which might have been avoided, or greatly mitigated, had not the Federal Government declared medicines “contraband of war” --refused the proposition of Judge Ould, that each Government should send its own surgeons with medicines, hospital stores, &c., to minister to soldiers in prison — declined his proposition to send medicines to its own men in Southern prisons, without being required to allow the Confederates the same privilege — refused to allow the Confederate Government to buy medicines for gold, tobacco or cotton, which it offered to pledge its honor should be used only for Federal prisoners in its hands — refused to exchange sick and wounded — and neglected from August to December, 1864, to accede to Judge Ould's proposition to send transportation to Savannah and receive without equivalent from ten to fifteen thousand Federal prisoners, notwithstanding the fact that this offer was accompanied with a statement of the utter inability of the Confederacy to provide for these prisoners, and a detailed report of the monthly mortality at Andersonville, and that Judge Ould, again and again, urged compliance with his humane proposal.
5. We have proven, by the most unimpeachable testimony, that the sufferings of Confederate prisoners, in Northern “prison pens,” were terrible beyond description — that they were starved in a land of plenty — that they were frozen where fuel and clothing were abundant — that they suffered untold horrors for want of medicines, hospital stores and proper medical attention — that they were shot by sentinels, beaten by officers, and subjected to the most cruel punishments upon the slightest pretexts — that friends at the North were refused the privilege of clothing their nakedness or feeding
