The Life of Jefferson Davis

    “Respectfully, your obedient servant,
    “ROBERT OULD,
    “Agent of Exchange.”

To this humane proposition no answer was ever made. It is needless to depict the alleviation of misery which its adoption would have secured. Can there be but one interpretation of the motives of those who rejected this noble offer? These propositions are indeed extraordinary, in view of the obloquy heaped upon the Confederate authorities for their alleged indifference to the health and comfort of their prisoners. Most noticeable, however, is the invitation extended to the Federal authorities to investigate, and report to the world, the treatment and condition of Federal soldiers in Southern prisons.

But this is far from completing the evidence which convicts the Federal Government of a purpose to trade upon the sufferings of their prisoners, and thus inflame the resentment of the North during the war, and shows the malignant purpose of a faction to establish a foul libel upon the South in the mind of posterity. On the 10th of August, 1864, Commissioner Ould wrote as follows:

“Major John E. Mulford, Assistant Agent of Exchange—

“Sir: You have several times proposed to me to exchange the prisoners respectively held by the two belligerents, officer for officer, and man for man. The same offer has also been made by other officials having charge of matters connected with the exchange of prisoners. This proposal has heretofore been declined by the Confederate authorities, they insisting upon the terms of the cartel, which required the delivery of the excess on either side upon parole. In view, however, of the very large number of prisoners now held by each party, and the suffering consequent upon their continued confinement, I now consent to the above proposal, and agree to deliver to you the prisoners held in captivity by the Confederate authorities, provided you agree to deliver an equal number of Confederate 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. I shall be happy to hear from you as speedily as possible, whether this arrangement can be carried out.

    “Respectfully, your obedient servant,
    “ROBERT OULD,
    “Agent of Exchange.”

It will be seen that the Confederate authorities, by this proposition, consented to waive all previous questions, to concede every point to the enemy, that could facilitate the release from captivity of its own soldiers and those of the North. As an inducement to action by the Federal authorities, this letter was accompanied by a statement exhibiting the mortality among the prisoners at Andersonville. Receiving no reply, Commissioner Ould made the same proposition to General Hitchcock, in Washington. The latter making no response, application was made again to Major Mulford, who replied as follows:

“Hon. R. Ould, Agent of Exchange—

“Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of to-day, requesting answer, etc., to your communication of the 10th inst., on the question of the exchange of prisoners, to which, in reply, I would say, I have no communication on the subject from our authorities, nor am I yet authorized to make any.

    “I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
    “JOHN E. MULFORD,
    “Assistant Agent of Exchange.”

Nothing could exceed the generosity of this offer. When it was made, the North had a large excess of prisoners. By this arrangement every Federal soldier would have been released from captivity, while a large surplus of Confederates would have remained in the enemy’s hands. The brutal calculation of the Federal authorities was that an exchange would add so many thousands of muskets to the depleted ranks of the Confederacy, and would, besides, deprive them of every pretext for the manufacture of chapters of “rebel barbarities.”

It was known to the world that the means of subsistence in the South was so reduced – chiefly through the cruel warfare waged by the North – that Confederate soldiers were then subsisting upon a third of a pound of meat, and a pound of indifferent meal or flour each day. Upon such rations, half naked, thousands of them barefooted, Confederate soldiers were exposed to sufferings unexampled in history. How could it be possible, under such circumstances, to prevent suffering among the prisoners? Military prisons, under the most favorable circumstances, are miserable enough, but the Federal prisoners in the South were compelled to endure multiplied and aggravated miseries, imposed by the condition of the South – shared by their captors, and by the women and children of the country which they invaded. But what possible palliation can there be for the guilt of a Government which willfully subjected its defenders to horrors which it so blazoned to the world? Declaring that “rebel pens” were worse than Neapolitan prisons and Austrian dungeons, the Federal authorities yet persistently rejected offers of exchange.

There could be no more forcible presentation of the question than that made by President Davis:

“In the meantime a systematic and concerted effort has been made to quiet the complaints in the United States of those relatives and friends of the prisoners in our hands, who are unable to understand why the cartel is not executed in their favor, by the groundless assertion that we are the parties who refuse compliance. Attempts are also made to shield themselves from the execration excited by their own odious treatment of our officers and soldiers now captive in their hands, by misstatements, such as that the prisoners held by us are deprived of food. To this last accusation the conclusive answer has been made, that, in accordance with our laws and the general orders of the department, the rations of the prisoners are precisely the same, in quantity and quality, as those served out to our own gallant soldiers in the field, and which have been found sufficient to support them in their arduous campaign, while it is not pretended by the enemy that they treat prisoners by the same generous rule. By an indulgence, perhaps unprecedented, we have even allowed the prisoners in our hands to be supplied by their friends at home with comforts not enjoyed by the men who captured them in battle, In contrast to this treatment, the most revolting inhumanity has characterized the conduct of the United States towards prisoners held by them. One prominent fact, which admits no denial nor palliation, must suffice as a test: The officers of our army – natives of southern and semi-tropical climates, and unprepared for the cold of a northern winter – have been conveyed for imprisonment, during the rigors of the present season, to the most northern and exposed situation that could be selected by the enemy. There, beyond the reach of comforts, and often even of news from home and family, exposed to the piercing cold of the northern lakes, they are held by men who can not be ignorant of – even if they do not design – the probable result. How many of our unfortunate friends and comrades, who have passed unscathed through numerous battles, will perish on Johnston’s Island, under the cruel trial to which they are subjected, none but the Omniscient can foretell. That they will endure this barbarous treatment with the same stern fortitude that they have ever evinced in their country’s service, we can not doubt. But who can be found to believe the assertion that it is our refusal to execute the cartel, and not the malignity of the foe, which has caused the infliction of such intolerable cruelty on our own loved and honored defenders?”

Since the war, Commissioner Ould has given testimony of the most conclusive character. While the subject of the treatment of prisoners was pending in Congress, during the past summer, he wrote the following letter. It will be observed that he offers to prove his statements by the testimony of Federal officers.

    “Washington, July 23, 1867.

“To the Editors of the National Intelligencer—

“I respectfully request the publication of the following letter, received by me from Colonel Robert Ould, of Richmond. It will be perceived that it fully sustains my statement in the House, with the unimportant exception of the number of prisoners offered to be exchanged, without equivalent, by the Confederate authorities.

    “Very respectfully,
    “CHARLES A. ELDRIDGE.”

    “Richmond, July 19, 1867.

“Hon. Charles A. Eldridge—

“My Dear Sir: I have seen your remarks as published. They are substantially correct. Every word that I said to you in Richmond is not only true, but can be proved by Federal officers. I did offer, in August, to deliver the Federal sick and wounded, without requiring equivalents, and urged the necessity of haste in sending for them, as the mortality was terrible. I did offer to deliver from ten to fifteen thousand at Savannah without delay. Although this offer was made in August, transportation was not sent for them until December, and during the interval, the mortality was perhaps at its greatest height. If I had not made the offer, why did the Federal authorities send transportation to Savannah for ten or fifteen thousand men? If I made the offer, based only on equivalents, why did the same transportation carry down for delivery only three thousand men?

“Butler says the offer was made in the fall (according to the newspaper report), and that seven thousand were delivered. The offer was made in August, and they were sent for in December. I then delivered more than thirteen thousand, and would have gone to the fifteen thousand if the Federal transportation had been sufficient. My instructions to my agents were to deliver fifteen thousand sick and wounded, and if that number of that class were not on hand, to make up the number by well men. The offer was made by me in pursuance of instructions from the Confederate Secretary of War. I was ready to keep up the arrangement until every sick and wounded man had been returned.

“The three thousand men sent to Savannah by the Federals were in as wretched a condition as any detachment of prisoners ever sent from a Confederate prison.

“All these things are susceptible of proof, and I am much mistaken if I can not prove them by Federal authority. I am quite sure that General Mulford will sustain every allegation here made.

    “Yours truly,
    “R. OULD.

“P. S. – General Butler’s correspondence is all on one side, as I was instructed, at the date of his letters, to hold no correspondence with him. I corresponded with Mulford or General Hitchcock.

    “R. OULD.”

In another letter, written about the same time, Colonel Ould thus invites investigation:

“General Mulford will sustain every thing I have herein written. He is a man of honor and courage, and I do not think will hesitate to tell the truth. I think it would be well for you to make the appeal to him, as it has become a question of veracity.”

But though President Davis and Colonel Ould are known by thousands of people, North and South, to be men of unimpeachable truthfulness, and though no honorable enemy would question their statements, we can not hope that their testimony will make headway against the intolerant prejudices and passions of faction. General B. F. Butler is doubtless sufficiently orthodox, and, besides, his testimony is voluntary. Says this exponent of latter-day “loyalty:”

“The great importance of the question; the fearful responsibility for the many thousands of lives which, by the refusal to exchange, were sacrificed by the most cruel forms of death; from cold, starvation, and pestilence of the prison-pens of Raleigh and Andersonville, being more than all the British soldiers killed in the wars of Napoleon; the anxiety of fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, wives, to know the exigency which caused this terrible – and perhaps as it may have seemed to them useless and unnecessary – destruction of those dear to them, by horrible deaths, each and all have compelled me to this exposition, so that it may be seen that these lives were spent as a part of the system of attack upon the rebellion, devised by the wisdom of the General-in-Chief of the armies, to destroy it by depletion, depending upon our superior numbers to win the victory at last.

“The loyal mourners will doubtless derive solace from this fact, and appreciate all the more highly the genius which conceived the plan and the success won at so great a cost.”

The New York Tribune will also be accepted as competent authority. Referring to the occurrences of 1864, the Tribune editorially says:

“In August the rebels offered to renew the exchange, man for man. General Grant then telegraphed the following important order: ‘It is hard on our men, held in Southern prisons, not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. Every man released on parole or otherwise becomes an active soldier against us at once, either directly or indirectly. If we commence a system of exchange which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on till the whole South is exterminated. If we hold those caught, they amount to no more than dead men. At this particular time, to release all rebel prisoners North would insure Sherman’s defeat, and would compromise our safety here.’”

Here is even a stronger statement from a Northern source:

    “New York, August 8, 1865.

“Moreover, General Butler, in his speech at Lowell, Massachusetts, stated positively that he had been ordered by Mr. Stanton to put forward the negro question to complicate and prevent the exchange… Every one is aware that, when the exchange did take place, not the slightest alteration had occurred in the question, and that our prisoners might as well have been released twelve or eighteen months before as at the resumption of the cartel, which would have saved to the Republic at least twelve or fifteen thousand heroic lives. That they were not saved is due alone to Mr. Edwin M. Stanton’s peculiar policy and dogged obstinacy; and, as I have remarked before, he is unquestionably the digger of the unnamed graves that crowd the vicinity of every Southern prison with historic and never-to-be-forgotten horrors.

“I regret the revival of this painful subject, but the gratuitous effort of Mr. Dana to relieve the Secretary of War from a responsibility he seems willing to bear, and which merely as a question of policy, independent of all considerations of humanity, must be regarded as of great weight, has compelled me to vindicate myself from the charge of making grave statements without due consideration.

“Once for all, let me declare that I have never found fault with any one because I was detained in prison, for I am well aware that that was a matter in which no one but myself, and possibly a few personal friends, would feel any interest; that my sole motive for impeaching the Secretary of War was that the people of the loyal North might know to whom they were indebted for the cold-blooded and needless sacrifice of their fathers and brothers, their husbands and their sons.

    “JUNIUS HENRI BROWNE.”

Now, what is the “inexorable logic” of this train of evidence? Either the calumnies against the South stand self-convicted, or those who have uttered them show themselves to have been worse fiends than they pretend to believe the Confederate authorities to have been.

But can a candid world credit the charge of cruelty against the South? Honorable enemies, even, will scorn the allegation of torture, of designedly inflicting suffering upon helpless men, against a people who, within the past six years, have so honorably illustrated the American name. Brave men are never cruel – cowards only delight in torture of the helpless. Cruelty to prisoners would be inconsistent not only with the known generosity of the Southern character, but with that splendid courage which the North will not dishonor itself by calling in question.

Until the suspension of the cartel, the Federal prisoners, even at the risk of their recapture, were kept in Richmond convenient for exchange. Confederate prisoners, on the other hand, were hurried to the Northern frontier, where the rigor of the climate alone subjected them to the most cruel sufferings. Driven by the course of the Federal Government, respecting the subject of exchange, the Confederate authorities selected a site for the quartering of prisoners, whom it was impossible to subsist in Richmond or its neighborhood. Andersonville was selected, in accordance with an official order contemplating the following objects: “A healthy locality, plenty of pure, good water, a running stream, and, if possible, shade trees, and in the immediate neighborhood of grist and saw-mills.” Such were the “horrors of Andersonville,” which the world has been urged to believe the Confederate Government selected with special view to the torment and death of prisoners.

The terrible mortality among the prisoners at Andersonville was not due either to starvation or to the unhealthiness of the locality. Federal soldiers were unaccustomed to the scanty and indifferent diet upon which the Confederates were fed, and which caused the death of thousands of delicate youths in the Southern armies. By this single fact may be explained much of the mortality at Andersonville. When to scurvy and other fatal forms of disease, produced by inadequate and unwholesome diet, are added the mental sufferings, which are peculiarly the lot of a prisoner, the despondency, and, in the case of the Andersonville prisoners, the despair occasioned by the refusal of their own Government to relieve them, we have abundant explanation of the most shocking mortality.

But the statement that the mortality of Andersonville was in excess of that of all other military prisons, is a willful falsehood. We present the following extracts from a letter to the New York World, by a gentleman, whose integrity will be vouched for by thousands of the best people in Virginia: