Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1865-02-03
Retaliation.


Shall we retaliate This is a question
now being discussed, hot only by the peo-
pie, but also with much spirit in Congress.
We refer of course TO the most barbarous
and inhuman treatment OF our prisoners by
the rebels. We snswer enphaticalIy, yes.
We confess to have been slow in arriving
al this conclusion. The idea of slowly tor
turing men to death may have originated
with the savages, and even they only tor
tured their victims day or few hours,
butt has been left to the nineteenth CEN
fury aud to the Shareholders rebellion to
bring this Internal system to perfection, by
the slow process of starvation, by which
men are made to suffer for months the
most agonizing of human pain. We wish
to hear no more of that sickly sentiment
atty that eve cannot afford 10 degrade
ourselves to the level of the rebels in such
barbarism III the time has come when
we cannot afford to be just to our own
brave heroes, then we had better give up
the contest. But no such time has come.
If it was'right for us to retaliate when they
put our colored soldiers at work on their
entertainments, it is equally so in this case.
Besides our retaliation, as carried out by
Gen. Butler at the Dutch Gap Canal, was
thoroughly effectual and so we believe it
wilfbe in this case. Reduce the rations
OF all rebel prisoners in our hands to one
quarter or one sixteenth as they have our
men, or 10 none at all, as they have our
men many times, who have not received a
morsel for forty. eight hours. This portion
of the history Of this war will be for all
future time the blacklist page, and would
have disgraced the Dark Ages. If any
oue had doubts on this subject before, they
ought not to now since we have the unani-
nous testimony of all the prisoners ex-
changed this last fall, and still later of some
two or three newspaper correspondents
who have just escaped, as one of them
truly said, Out of the jaws of death, out
Of the gates of hell
Mr.. Albert d. Richardson, we'll known
and able correspondent of the Boston
Journal, N. Y. Tribune and other papers,
is the person referred to above, and gave
his testimony before the war committee at
Washington on Monday last. He was at
Salisbury, n. c., which was scene of
cruelty and horror. Some of our men sold
their shoes from their feet and coats from
their backs to obtain little food. Our
men often lamented intensely for want of
bread and shelter. Wood plenty and near,
and yet the inhuman fiends would not per-
NIT our men to get it to protect them from
cold. We make the following extract from
Mr.. Richardson's testimony:
son November %, many of the prison.
ers had been without food for forty-eighi
hours and were desperate, without any
matured plan. A few Of them said, We
may as well die in one way as another; lei
US break out of this horrible place" Some
of them wrested the guns from a relief Of
fifteen rebel soldiers, just entering the yard
killing two who resisted, and wounding five
or six others, and attempted to open the
fence, but they had neither adequate tool:
or concert of action. BefFe they could
effect breach, every gun Of the garrison
was turned on them, the field pieces opened
with grape and canister, and they soon dis
persed to their quarters. In five minute:
from its beginning the attempt was quellec
and hardly prisoner was to be seen in thu
yard. The rebels killed in all sixteen anc
wounded sixty. Not one-tenth of the pris
oners had taken part in the attempt, an,
many of them were ignorant of it unit
they heard the guns.
Deliberate, cold blooded murders o
peaceable men, where there was no pre-
tence that they were breaking prison reg
ulations, were very frequent. Our live
were never safe for one moment. An,
sentinel, at any Tina of day or night, coul,
deliberately shoot down any prisoner, o
fire into group of prisoners, black o
white, and would never be taken off hi
post for IT."
From CANApA.-The Canadians still