Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1867-08-02
Raking up Old Matters.

The House of Representatives have ap-
pointed q committee to inquire into the
treatment of Union prisoners during the
war We had thought that nothing re-
mained to be said, sung, written, or illus
trated upon this subject. The book k-makers,
play writer's and highly imaginative artists
of pictorial weeklies long ago abandoned
the vein. The ''horrors of Andersonville"
have passed into history. There have been,
probably, hundred separate accounts
written Of the privations and sufferings of
Oursoldiers at thatprison penned by menwho
saw and experienced what they described.
Then there is the record of the Wirz trial.
What new light can a Congressional CON-
mittce shed on the theme ? All that they
can do is to cross-examine the men who
have already testified, and elicit stories
with which the people of the North have
been crammed to repletion. 1t is there
fore proper for us to look into the motive
which suggests the raking up of this old
matter. It is not to provide new facts
for history, for the historian already
has ten times the material that he
wants. The resolution says nothing
about furnishing any one found guilty of
the ill-treatmeDt of Union prisoners and
it is not probable that, at this late day,
that would be attempted. Tue only object
of the inquiry that we can discern, is to
ories of the North towards the South en-
gendered by the war. This could be done
to some extent by the sessions of such a
committee at Washington, with power to
summon witnesses from all parts of the
Union, and having their tiresome proceed
ings minutely reported by telegraph to
some hundreds of newspapers. This would
be about as easy a method as could be con-
trived to rouse the dormant ill-wiil of the
Northern people towards their old antagon-
lists. That truth-naked, unvarnished truth
is not the object of the inquiry, is proved
by the refusal of the House to order an in
Yestigation of 'sthe treatment of Confeder-
ate prisoners in the camps and prisons of
the United States, and why the cartel was
discontinued" &c. Yet the two inquiries
are but branches of one subject they are
so correlated that one cannot be clearly
made without the other.
The Confederates have their songs, pic
lures, newspapers and books, not so nu-
merous as ours, but forming mass of ma
terial for history fully as trustworthy and
the burden of their testimony is, that the
Confederate prisoners suffered very badly
in some of the Northern camps. If the ra-
tiOns were scantier, the protection against
the inclemency of the weather more insult
fcient, and the general treatment of cap
tives more cruel, apparently, in the South
than in the North, the Southern apologists
have a ready explanation of it. They say
that their own soldiers were famished, half
naked and dying when sick or wounded,
for want of medicines, and that the North
ern prisoners were no worse provided for.
They also say that at any time the Confed-
crate authorities would have been glad to
exchange fifty thousand prisoners, whom
they could not afford to keep, for the same
number of their own men incarcerated at
the North. Upon the refusal of the Uni
ted States government to make this eX-
change, they fasten the blame and disgrace
of the Andersonville horrors. That is
point that should be investigated if the
committee would get at the truth Their
dlsinclination to look at that side of the
picture reveals their motive.
disappointment of a committee to in
vestigate the circumstances of the Lincoln
assassination is another move, apparently.
for effect. The trial of Mrs. Surratt, Payne,
Herold, Atzerodt and the rest, and the tri-
al of John FL. Surratt, now going on, have
left, and will leave, no important material
TACT for the Congressional committee to
gather up. They have no facilities which
the sharp-witted lawyers who conducted
the prosecution in the past and present tri-
ais have not had. But they can, if they
choose, by abandoning the rules and safe
6uaIu' ol regular legal Trial, making the
whole thing &c parte, and conducting the
inquiry for the qualification of personal or
political hostility, throw suspicious of a
completely in the great crime upon whom
soever they please-from President John
son downward. That they have some no.
ton of trying to drag in "many persons
noId1ng nigh positions of power and au-
thority appears from the phraseology of
the resolution. If this is their deliber-
ate purpose, we may be sure that witnesses
will not be wanting, who will fall in with
the humor of the committee. The effect of
all this, operating through the Northern
press, will be to revive, in measure, sus-
Pclons and dislikes towards individuals in
the North, and to rekindle animosity to-
wards the people of the South, who proba-
Dly Will be shown before the Congressional
tribunal, to have been accomplices, to
greater or less degree, in the assassination
Of Mr.. Lincoln.
The radicals who, for the want of new
and genuine grievances to make capital ont
OF, are obliged to resort to these hackney
ed sources of sensation, will be disappoint-
ed, we trust. in their expectations Of lash
ing the people into the old state of excite
ment from which they are rapidly subsid-
T. u