Cleveland morning leader. [volume] (Cleveland [Ohio]) 1854-1865, 1864-11-15
The Treatment Of Rebel and Union


The Treatment Of Rebel and Union
Prisoners.
When history with her impartial pen
recites the story Of these times, she viii
chronicle the treatment which has been
bestowed upon the Union and rebel prison
ers in the North and South. On the one
hand, it will be proven that the most
christian care has been shown in the North
toward all rebel prisoners who have fallen
into our hands. Their quarters have been
we'll selected and arranged, their iood
abundant and nourishing, their hospital
care equally as good as that given to our
own men, their means of exercise ample
and well adapted to health. On the other
hand it will be proven that the Union sol
diers, so unfortunate as to fall into the
hands of barbarous foe, have been sys-
tematically &c bbed, starved, confined to the
dresriest and most dismal quarters, denied
opportunity for exercise and cleanliness
and health-tortured into their graves. 1t
little becomes Davis, therefore, in his re-
cent message to the rebel Congress, to
make the following statement;
The solicitude of the Government for
the relief of our captive fellow-citizens has
known no abatement; but has, on the con-
trary, been still more deeply evoked by
the additional sufferings to which they
have been wantonly subjected, by depriv
alton of adequate food, clothing and fuel,
which they were not even permitted to
purchase from the prison suttlers. Finding
that the enemy attempted to excuse their
barbsrous treatment by the unfounded al
legation thst it was retslistOry for like
conduct on our part, an offer was made by
us with a view TO ending all preteIt for
such recriminatiOns, or pretended retalis-
tion.
This attempt to make capital in the
South and in Europe by most infamous
false representation of the case cannot
avail him anything. The recent investga-
tions by men of high social standing in the
North, such as DR.. Mott, DR.. Delaheld and
Judge Hare, as to the mode of treating
prisoners, both rebel and Union, disproves
the assertion of Davis. In their report Of
the manner in which rebel prisoners have
been treated, they say: They are pro-
vided with the best white wheat bread,
beside fresh and salt meat, three times a
dag in abundant measure" This has been
the custom invariably, rebel prisoners re-
ceiving the same rations as our own sol
diers, until recently, they having been re-
stricted somewhat in consequence of the
barbsrous treatment of our men in the
South. The Commission appointed to In
quire into the treatment of prisoners Of
war also reports concerning Libby, as good
as any Southern prison, if not better:
The rooms. are one hundred feet long by
forty broad. In six Of these rooms twelve
hund red United States officers of al
grad es, from the Brigadier General to The
Second Lieutenant, we're confined fol
many months; and this was all the space
that was allowed them in which to cook
eat, wash, sleep, and take exercised il
seems incredible. Ten feet by two werI
all that could be claimed by each man
hardly enough tomessure his length hupon
and even this was further abridged by the
room necessarily taken for cooking, wash
ing and clothes drying.
These are irreprcssiblo facts that no arti
Of Davis can deny. History will prove
where the guilt of cruelty lies.