Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1867-08-23
Treatment of PrisOners-A Com.
ParisOn between EImira and
AnderAOuVilIe. lF ..f4 be- ,.. ~.

4
The statements in regard to the prison
mortality at Andersonville and Elmira,
by a former rebel prisoner, confined in the
Emira pen in the year 1864, deserve to be
carefully read
RICHMOND, VA, August IA.
To the Editor of the World: 'A
SIR: have Just seen in city paper a
paragraph credited to the World alleging
that among the confederate prisoners at
| Elmira, during the last four or five months
of the use of that prison, the deaths
only amounted to few individuals
out OF many thousand prisoners. l
left there on the 11th OF October. 1854; but
] if the impression desired to be produced is
that the general mortality at that pen was
| slight, L can contradict it from the record.
During portion of the period of my In
carceration in the Elmira pen it was my
duty to receive from the Surgeons Office
each morning the reports of the deaths of
the preceding day, and embody them in an
official report to be signed by the CON-
\ nahdant of the prison, and forwarded to
j the ncommandaut of the post. j entered
each morning in diary which now lies
before me, the number of reported deaths,
and the facts demonstrate that in as healthy
a location as there is in New York, with
i every remedial appliance in abundance,
with no epidemic, and with great boast
of humanity, the deaths were relatively
larger than among the Federal prisoners
at Andersonville among famished
people, whose quartermaster could not
furnish shelter to its soldiers, and
whose surgeons were without the
commonest medicines tor the sick
The record shows that at Andersonville,
between the 1st of February and 1st of Au-
gust, 1864, out of $4,000 prisoners, 5000, or
one-sixth, died, a fearful rate unquestion-
ably. But the official report of the Elmira
pen shows that during the month of Sep
tember, 1854, which was the first month
I after the quota of that prison was made
up, out of less than nine. thousand Jfue hun
dred prisoners, the deaths were three hundred
| and eiqltty- siI. In other words, the average
mortality at Andersonville during that pc
riod was one-thirty-sixth of the whole per
mouth, while at EImira it was one ttventy-
Etfth of the whole. At Elmira it was four
Iper cent. at Andersonville less than uree
per cent.
gYour informant speaks of but nine deaths
l believe Il have mislaid the paper), dur.
ing three or four months at Elmira. Per-
haps, the official record will show more
than three times more deaths on single
day of my rceratinn-September 20
1864. e.
| Another item which I gather from my
7 diary will indicate the manner in which
the medical officer at Elmira discharged
his functions. The hospitals began to be
filled in the latter part of August with OBJ
| stinate cases of scurvy. Men became COW
4 cred with fearful sores, many lost their
teeth, and many others became cripples,
and will die cripples from that cause. The
lcommandant of the post ordered a report
to be made of all the scorbutic cases in
prison, grave and trifling, and on the
morning of Sunday, Sept. IL, the lists were
added up, when it was found that of $500
prisoners examined, eighteen hundred ana
seventy were tainted with scurvy.. H
The Federal Government, as one of its
measures of reconstruction, is officially anG
Iexpensively engaged in traducing the
Southern people, and the facility, with
4 which it procures all necessary evidence,
| whether the object he to hang or to ca
lumuiate, warrants the belief that we shall
have a couple of volumes year for the
rest of the century, demonstrating the bar
/ barity of the rebels. Against so admirable
1 a system of manufacturing evidence, it is,
of course, idle to oppose the feeble efforts
of individuals, but / regard the duty none
the less binding on such of US as know the
truth to declare it; and hope that through.
i out the Southern States, intelligent ano
credible men are now putting into authen-
tic form the evidences of Federal outrages
the exploits of the Shermans and Sheri-
ldans, and Milroys and Buffers, one day tC
| be published by general subscription of oul
1 people, that the world may judge between
us and the spoon thieves, the furniture
] thieves, the barn-burners, the bummers
and the brutes who too often wore the uni
forms of the Federal army. A. M. b.