The Herrers of being taken prisoner — terrible treatment of Confederate prisoners.
So many statements have been published by our returned prisoners of war that the public is pretty well prepared to hear of any atrocity committed by the Federates upon the brave men who are to unfortunate as to fall into their hands. The Jackson (Miss.) Appeal, however, has an account of the treatment of the Confederates taken on the retreat of Gen. Pemberton from Tallahatchie which will, we think, convince the Southern people that they have not yet heard the half of the brutality practised upon their sons and brothers who are captured by the hated foe. The account says:‘ They were congregated together in small rooms, (sized and appropriated for the purpose,) confined to their narrow limits closely, without sufficient room even to lie down compelled to drag out the wears days monotonously and starvingly — refused permission to speak even with their own officers captured with them; urged upon and influenced by every available agency to take the oath of allegiance to the United States of America; be retched by Abolition preachers with filthy harangues on the evils of slavery and the wrongs done the poor man by the rich, attempting thus to extinguish the fires of patriotism. Hunger, cruelty, and fanaticism were concentrated together to secure a cowardly advantage. They were allowed nothing to eat, except such as was demanded for them by the captors from the citizens of Oxford, to whom it was tauntingly said (after robbing their premises of all that could be found beforehand) that they ought to feed their his throne.
’ The citizens of Oxford (where the prisoners were brought) experienced she or savage warfare. Old citizens and woman were fired at in their own doors by the vandal soldiery.--Children were shot at in crossing the yard. Houses were searched and desolated — relies of the past and absent were utterly shattered, and the sanctity of the family altar and fireside were invaded without the warning of a moment. Finclosures were torn down and burned, and for forty miles around houses stood naked to the view, and cattle trampled where the rose bloomed.
The prisoners were at last forwarded northward They were marched on foot thirty miles, to Holly Springs, without food of any sort till the next day. The treatment there was similar to that at Oxford — probably worse. And so through all the changes.
After being kept on the Mississippi river twenty-five days, crowded to suffocation, half fed, and extorted upon even to the article of medicine, with disease and death around and among them, they were at last landed at the old State penitentiary at Alton, Illinois. So gloomily did the prospect affect them that more than a hundred plunged from the boat into the Mississippi in the dead of winter, and, amid volleys of musket bails sent after them, and the contending elements around them made their desperate way to shore, preferring to risk death to the prospect of the life before them.
Their treatment at Alton was inhuman and barbarous. Hundreds were confined in the main building, which was open, break, and desolate, and so comfortless and dreary were the quarters that the open doors of the calls were taken advantage of as at least affording some protection from the winter winds. Men were compelled to remain in bed through the day because of no possible hope of warmth otherwise. They perished from neglect and cold. The smallpox, which was prevalent when they were brought there and thrown among it, swept them off by twenties. Several days — from the 20th of January to the 10th of February--the deaths averaged fifteen every twenty four hours. A cumulated diseases of every shape fastened itself upon the exhausted system, and death was a matter of course. And even then the wooden coffin was but a mockery, for one served for eleven bodies, as seen and marked by a dozen witnesses. Earth was their only wrapping.
The vermin, too, were terrible. The hospitals were alive with the creeping mass, adding new horrors to the tormented sufferers, from which there was no relief.
Men were dragged out on any pretext and confined for days in a dungeon, without food; and, with arms manacled and limbs shackled, could only wait in suffering the whimsical release of the prisoner. It needed not the evidence of guilt to convict, nor even the charge of cooperative complicity. The mere fact of abortive measures of escape by some sufficed to sentence all others that could be suspiciously connected with them. The condition of release was the disclosure of plots to escape, which had never been made. The fact of prisoners being held by bayonets and stonewalls was ignored, and the prisoner was asked to hold himself and others. He was asked to betray friends to enemies, or suffer with them. The dampness of the dunge on was preferable to this, and the penally paid without a murmur.
All articles of clothing not actually on the person were seized and held as contraband. This term was of extra ordinary extensiveness, which varied with the whims of the searcher. It was assumed to decide on the necessary amount of clothing requisite. The claimed surplus was retained. Men were even left threadbare of decent apparel.--Pocket knives of the pan-blade order, were considered dangerous and held — and so were bibles. Both were contraband.
Money was seized and held, and only a part returned. If it was attempted to be hid and was afterwards discovered by search, it was declared forfeited. The pretext was that it might be used to bribe sentinels.
Prisoners were told threateningly of the improbability of exchange — the likelihood of extreme punishment — urged to take the oath and prejudiced by interest — and hundreds were thus influenced to do as was suggested. In short all that inhumanity, barbarity, crusty, cowardice and treachery could devise, were brought to bear to accomplish base purposes. The of principle and dignity was degrading even to infamy.
