Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1864-10-20

lot to become prisoners We have suffered patiently
and are still willing to suffer, BY doing benefit
the country but we would most respectfully beg leave to
say that we are not willing to suffer to further the ends OF
any party or clique to the derment of honor
ismies. and our country and we would beg that this
anair be explained to that may continue to hold
the Government in that respect which necessary to
make good citizen and soldier"
In further evidence Of the little care taken by
the commission to make their statements authentic
and trustworthy, we may note the fact that they
aver, after reciting frequent cases in which our
prisoners were shot in Richmond for looking
out Of the windows of their prisons, for trans
crossing " the dead lines" marked for their con-
fnement, that "no such order was ever given in
any United States station" Whether such cor
der" was ever given in any United States station
we cannot say, but that prisoners have been shot
and killed for looking out of the Old Capitol pri-
son is fact known to every body in Washington,
and might have been known to the commission if
they had taken the trouble to make inquiries on
the subject before making their averments.
Complaint is made that our prisoners are not
properly supplied with medicines in the Southern
hospitals, but no reference is made to the fact that
in consequence of the stringency of our blockade,
the entire population of the South is suffering for
doctor in charge Of our prisoners at Andersonville
has nothing in the way Of medicine but camphor,
whiskey, and decoction of some kind of bark !"
If there be any virtue in drugs and indictments
their absence may partly explain the distressing
and unprecedented mortality at this and other pr-
sons of the South.
AS if they did not wish to leave any doubt as to
the bias under which they have digested their &C.
emulation of facts, the commission proceed, at
the end Of their report, to point its political and
social moral by tracing the barbarities of the in
surgents to ga too positive denial of humanity to
another race and too positive contempt for .
portion Of their own race"
Now, it may be entirely just to instance the ex-
istence of slavery at the South as one element of
this inquiry, but why are all other explanatory
causes ignorel-such as the irritations produced
by an alpervading sense Of suffering from the de-
solating presence Of our armies among the South
ern people, the notifications left by disappointed
hopes, and the exasperations caused by dsappoint-
cd ambition? AS has been we'll said by another,
"The passions generated by factious and usurpiDg
ambition and lust of power engaged in desperate
enterprises, and in an iron rule, subordinating to
their guilty aims the apprehensions, the preju-
dices, and even all the hottest sentiments of an
isolated and misguided people, and sticking at
nothing in the terrible game for success or infa
my-to hint no more, these well-known passions
8 open to the view of philosophic observer trea-
sury of causes for the horrid drama unfolded in
this narrative fully ample for the suggestion Of
theory adequate to all the phenomena. But the
existence and the development of such passions
and their just results confined to no era, no
social condition, no country, and no section"
In evidence of this truth we might refer the
commission to statement found on page 266 of
their report where Private Tracy, in his deposi.
ton respecting the suferings of our unhappy pri-
soners at Andersonville, says:
at is melancholy and Notifying fact that of our
trials from At Belle Isle and Ander
sonvle there were among US gang OF desperate men,
ready to prey on their fellows Not only thefts and rob-
beries but epen murders committed. Affairs became
serious Of Camp Sumter that appeal made to
Gen. Winder, who authorized arrest and trial by
criminal court Eightysiz arrested and sir
proceedings effected marked change for tie better"
Will the Commission pretend that "the thefts
and robberies and even murders" which were COM
mitted by some of our own imprisoned soldiers on
their companions in captivity were the result Of
slavery? In the face of such statements, contain
ed in their own exposition, the commission convict
themselves of preconceived opinions and Of very
inadequate notions respecting the multiform mo-
tves of human depravity They have zeal which
is highly laudable, but every philosophical reader
can perceive that it is not according to knowledge
in its defective analysis of the lying at the
basis of the terrible phenomena they were called
to consider.
We venture to suggest that they are equally rash
when they proceed to implicate the whole Southern
people in responsibility for all that is wanton in the
outrages committed by the agents of the South
ern Government on our prisoners Of war. They
clearly pass as much beyond the bounds of proba-
bility as of the function prescribed for them in
their inquiry when they tell US, at PIP. 9293, that
=" every one who carefully weighs the testimony
must come to this very conclusion, that aohole
people, as we'll factious, rebeious, and usurped
Government have united in not being thoughtlessly
and inconsiderately, but consciously and purpo,ely
cruel and that other theory will cover" the facts