Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

‘ [181] remain at large, under similar conditions, within the Confederacy, and all have been furnished with rations for their subsistence, such as are allowed to our own troops. It is only since the news has been received, of the treatment of the prisoners taken on the Savannah, that I have been compelled to withdraw those indulgences, and to hold the prisoners taken by us, in strict confinement. A just regard to humanity, and to the honor of this Government, now requires me to state, explicitly, that, painful as will be the necessity, this Government will deal out to the prisoners held by it, the same treatment, and the same fate, as shall be experienced by those captured on the Savannah; and if driven to the terrible necessity of retaliation, by your execution of any of the officers, or crew of the Savannah, that retaliation will be extended so far, as shall be requisite to secure the abandonment of a practice, unknown to the warfare of civilized men, and so barbarous, as to disgrace the nation which shall be guilty of inaugurating it.’

Shortly before the conviction of the Savannah prisoners, a seaman named Smith, captured on board the privateer Jefferson Davis, was tried, and convicted of piracy, in Philadelphia. There were fourteen of these men, in all, and the following order from Mr. Benjamin, the Acting Secretary of War of the Confederate States, to General Winder, in charge of Federal prisoners, in Richmond, will show how much in earnest President Davis was, when he wrote the above letter to President Lincoln:—

Sir:—You are hereby instructed to choose, by lot, from among the prisoners of war, of highest rank, one who is to be confined in a cell appropriated to convicted felons, and who is to be treated, in all respects, as if such convict, and to be held for execution, in the same manner as may be adopted by the enemy for the execution of the prisoner of war, Smith, recently condemned to death in Philadelphia.

You will, also, select thirteen other prisoners of war, the highest in rank of those captured by our forces, to be confined in cells, reserved for prisoners accused of infamous crimes, and will treat them as such, so long as the enemy shall continue so to treat the like number of prisoners of war, captured by them at sea, and now held for trial in New York as pirates.

‘As these measures are intended to repress the infamous attempt now made by the enemy, to commit judicial murder on prisoners of war, you will execute them, strictly, as the mode best calculated to prevent the commission of so heinous a crime.’