Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1865-02-09

proposition from Washinton, with honest .
purpose2
Ii is announced that we are sending
blankets end food to our prisoners in the 1
South. Will 1t require four years more of I
bitter but uniform experience to teach US
that in all such mutual arrangements the
Rebels have US at a disadvantage; because, r,
while we may keep engagements, they
always break them when self-interest reqni-
res it2 Even IT they carried out the
arrangement in good faith, our prisoners
are nearly all far in the interior With the
utmost endeavors, by telcgraphing TO and
fro and stimulating negligent agents, it
requires from twenty-five to- forty days to
send little package from Richmond to
Salisbury by exposes. The Winter would
be long past before blanket or a pound Of
food could reach the prisoners, and at the
present rate of mortality aud enlistment in
the Rebels army, how many would be left?
Probably some ftbe supplies wi reach the
prisoners. 1t is morally certain that large
portion Of them will 60 to repleDish the i'm
poverisbcd Quartermaster and Commissary |
Departments of the Rebel army. No reli-
gious bigot in the days of the Inquisition
was ever more true to the injunction mo
faith with Yankees" Why, have known |
our Government, month after month, con-
tinue to send by its truce boats tuns and
tuns of valuable private boxes for prisoners,
while the Rebels, not satisfied with their
usual practice of stealing portion undcr
the rose, upon some frivolous pretext or
other were openly con6scating every pound
of them. At the same time, as am as
sured the returning truce boats were load
ed down with boxes sent to Rebel prisoners
from their friends in the South, and cur
own express lines crowded with supplies
from their sympathizers in the North
And | can only regard the recent announce
ment that we may send private boxes to
friends and relatives in the South as a cruel
delusion One box in six or ten may reach
its destination; but the rest will supply Off
GERS and hangers-on in Richmond, and
thieves along the Southern railroads gener-
ally, with coffee and sugar at no expense
whatever, unless the leopard has changed
his spots since the 18th Of December.
There is a proposition before Congress to
place the Rebels Se hold under the charge
of returned prisoners from the South. IRE
turned prisoners" means anybody. There
must be at least fifty thousand Of them in
our military service. Men might be select
ed from them to command our military
prisons, who would treat the inmates with
even more lenity than is now extended to
. Il
both abroad and from the Rebels, OF retail
ating, without any real retaliation. Or of.
6cers might be selected who would be guilty
of the same undiscriminating cruelties that
are now practiced upon our own soldiers
who would starve. and freeze, and shoot in
cold blood. That would be precisely one of
the really inhuman and unchristian things
; which we cannot afford to do.
have witnessed during the war good
many scenes which have thrilled my heart;
but since that day when heard the bells
in Mobile ring jubilantly, and the cannon
thunder forth the joy of Treason at the fall
of Sumter the best thing | have seen was
in the West, upon steamboats, conveying
the wounded from the field of Shish to
Northern hospitals. Their long cabins were
crowded with cots, where Rebel and Union
, soldiers were lying side by side, receiving
the same comforts and the same mnistra
tons The ladies of Cincinnati, Chicago
and ST. Louis, with untiring patience, were
} washing wounds, combing matted locks
> cooling fevered brews, filling the places o
, absent mothers and sisters, even to thei
Q performed the most grateful and the mos
4, repulsive duties of the hospital for frienC
, and foe alike, They forgot that the Rebel
Q were enemies and remembered that the!
8 were sufferers. How gloriously it contrast
n ed with the treatment received by our pris
y oners in the South
5 When peace sits smiling our hills once more,'
what shall we look back to with more pleas
y uIc than to The labors of those blessed wo
? men2 | have no fears that we can treat ou
I prisoners in general-especially the privat
y soldiers-too kindly. l have no fears tina
n it will do any harm even to investigate tn
!. condition of our military prisons, to correc
Q abuses and punish cruelties, If any exist. =
y And there seems to be some law of natur
T by which corrupt and cruel men often grav
q itate into positions Of authority about pris
u ons the world over.
Q But where is the remedy we seek? b,
q lieve there are two, and only two adequat
>, ones. The first is an immediate general ez
u change-not an exchange at the usual rat
u of official business, which will leave half {
o our prisoner, to die before it reaches ther
:, but one which shall return to US all tn
y Salisbury sufferers within two weeks, an
- every prisoner in the South within a montl
70 The other is an immediate special reta
's iation, not upon the Rebel private soldier
10 es of the South, who were never special
N hostile to u.s. who are falling of, more an
% more rapidly, from the support of the wa
III who are our only sure and trustworth
es pcacemakers. Retaliation upon them woul
as be unavailipg as well as undeserved: I'll
ID Richmond authorities care nothing f
" them, except as they represent musket
a. and often treat them almost rs barbarous
O. as they do our prisoners.
d. The Rebel officers are our effective mat
rial. Hurt them aud Richmond shrieks.
RS Almost to a man, they belong to that ella
d. which brought on the war, which c0ntro
BY the war, aud which, in spite Of all the whit
I'D winged messengers between Bangor ar
ng Oregon, will continue the war, just as lou
lie as they can keep any considerable armies
re the field. Submission, for them, mea
20. extermination as men, but as the co
If trolling political and social Power of ii
aw South. They will fight now just as ca
,st nesiy as ever-nst with their old, con6de
expectation of early and complete succes
ry but with logged, desperate, Micawbe
ID, like hope that, as in the past, SO in the {
lat ture, at the hour of their EXTREMIST nee
Die something will turn up in their favor. L
q our Government, for example, be able
~. say to Jeif. Davis: 1--WE have selected fro
ed your officers 10 our hands the equivalent,