Treatment of prisoners of War.
It is good to receive instruction from our enemies, and to follow their example when it is manifestly for our benefit. Recent reports from Missouri state that some fifty of our soldiers, captured by the enemy in some skirmish, have been put to work to construct fortifications. Our authorities ought forth with to follow this example. As mere retaliation, there would be ample justification for the measure. But there would also be a great balance of advantage to us, inasmuch as we now have as prisoners fully five of their soldiers for every one of ours which they hold; and the superiority of numbers of paroled prisoners is not less in our favor. It would be a great saving of money to convert 8,000 or more idle and expensive prisoners to profitable laborers, either in our coal mines, or at different mechanical employments in our different States-prisons.Another reform would serve to save much expense, and which also would be in imitation of the designed practice of the enemy, if they had been as successful in making captives at Bull Run and Manassas, as the results were opposite. This is to use hand-cuffs and chains for the safe transportation of prisoners, instead of soldiers as guards sufficiently numerous to prevent the escape of men subjected to no other mode of constraint and confinement. In the transportation of the Yankee prisoners, they are conveyed in first-class passenger cars, and as much at their case as any voluntary and full-paying passengers. And to prevent their otherwise perfect facility for escape, they are attended and guarded by about half as many of our soldiers, as the number of prisoners. This involves a great cost of passage-money, and also loss of military service of the numerous guards. If the prisoners were hand cuffed, and so connected in couples, and as many couples as filled a car were connected by a small chain, or linked rod of iron, two armed guards would serve to secure 50 prisoners.--The hardships to them would be inconsiderable for the short time required for a journey, and ought not to be deemed unreasonably oppressive for mercenaries or fanatics, who have invaded our soil without just cause or provocation, and have carried on the aggressive war not as soldiers, but as plunderers, house burners, wanton destroyers of immovable property, negro-stealing, and, in some cases, ravishers and murderers.
