Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1867-07-02
The Trealment of Rebel Prisoner o
by the Union Authorities.
FEMALE OoLERGR HUNTsyILLE, Ala
Tuesday June IS, lS67\

Tuesday, June Is, 1S67.}
sTotte EditorQf dae Nesc York Times: g I,
My attention has been called to an article
in your paper Of the 3lst ult, In which, re-
plying to some remarks of the Richmond
Endlirsr in 7 regard = 70 the treatment OF pris-
Nobody on either side ever pretended
for moment that rebel prisoners ever died
in our hands or even seriously suffered for
lack of food or clothing or shelter. No
such charge has ever been made. .',lL.Z.lzs
VIII you then permit such charges to be
made through your columns p / was cap
turedin October, 1863, and spent six months
in Camp Morton. In March, 1854, was
removed to Fort Delaware, where 1 re-
: lAained until June, 1865. The winter OF
2 1854 Is well known to have been intensely
severe. 5.st ~ = 'aalaa "a
Many rebel prisoners, to my own knowl-
edge, spent that wiuber without q blanket,
and in the scant and ragged summer cloth
ing worn when captured. The barracks
were the old cattle sheds used when the
prison was fair ground, and open enough
I for the winter winds to sweep through
freely. Scores of the men in. the dead of
: winter slept In these sheds, upon the bare
ground, without covering, huddling to-
gether like hogs to keep from freezing.
It Is well known to hundreds now living
that several died, actually frozen to death,
while large number were so badly FROST
bitten as to be famed for life. =
During the larger portion of the time the
hospital arrangements were shamefully de-
ficient, and by many of the surgeons and
attendants the sick were not only grossly
neglected but most inhumanly treated.
~ Men barely able to crawl through weak
ness from insufficient food and disease
consequent upon exposure, were forced, in
the severest Winter weather to stand at roll
call for two and often three or more hours
in line, like soldiers on dress parade, and
cursed like brutes or beaten over the heads
with sabers or clubs, and sometimes shot at
for moving little to keep from freezing.
In several instances prisoners were shot on
the most frivolous pretexJs. A quiet order
ly man, an Englishman named Coats, be-
longing to my division, was murdered in
cold blood by private in the Invalid Corps
named Baker, who was on guard. ef
Instead of being tried and punished,
Baker, though a private, was sent next
morning into camp to take charge as Ser
geant of our division, in which position he
heaped upon the defenceless men every
indiguity that so inhuman wretch could
devise. IN -r-s--. g. e - .s .. .s.--@-- -..
At the very time that such an outcry was
raised about. the mortality among North
ern' soldiers in Southern prisons, the in
mates of Camp Morton knew the mortality
then in proportion to the number of men
to be several per cent. reater.
At Fort Delaware our barracks were
more comfortable, but the rations were
zniserably insufficient, and prisoners who
could not obtain money from friends with
which TO procure extra supplies from the
suffers, Suffered the pangs of hunger night
and day., and reduced to skeletons, and eat
en- up by scurvy from scanty and unwhole-
some food, fell ready victims to disease,
and died by hundreds. =. -....>
At the close of the war, of about 1000
men in one pen, fully one-half if not three
fourths, were but walking skeletons, hun
dreds of them ruined for life with scurvy. /
1t was daily occurrence for large num-
bers of the men to be beaten over the head
with bludgeons, or kept for hours tied up |
by the thumbs in most agonizing torture. |
A Dutch Lieutenant DietZ, i'm charge of
our pen, was for weeks in the habit of COM
ing in with a large cowhide and lashing
the men most unmercifully-in one in- |
stance cutting cash in the face of an AL |
albanian named Pardue, in which your
finger could have been laid.
It was no uncommon thing for the guards,
upon the slightest pretext, to fire into che
quarters in which were 300 or 400 men,
and several prisoners were needlessly and
recklessly killed by them. ~
The above, and the half has not been
told, are plain, unexaggerated facts which
can be substantiated by most unquestiOn-
able testimony, and for the truth of which
L pledge my character and reputation as
minister of the gospel -
{ request the insertion of this as an act of
Justice. 7s--.HfFq Cr-c j. G. WILSON, 4
President of Huntsville Female College.
This letter comes from a source SO re-
spectacle and responsible, and its state
ments are SO specific. that we have no hesi-
tation in publishing it. Our Government
has no excuse for inhumanity to the pris-
oners it captured during the war, and its
honor is involved in Furnishing with just
severity all Instances of such cruelty on
the part of its agents as are specified above.
I'd. Times. =. --..-.-..-l as