Fayetteville observer. [volume] (Fayetteville, Tenn.) 1850-1966, 1867-08-01
The Treatment Of Rebel
Prisoners by the Union
Authorities.
FEMALE COLLEGE, !
HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA, J
Tuesday. June Is. 1867.


! HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA, I;
| Tuesday, June Is, 1867.
To the Editor of the Ne,e York Times:
Ny attention has been called
to an article in your paper of the
3lst ult., in which replying to
some remarks of the Richmond
Enquirer in regard to the treat
ment of prisoners, it is said:
"Nobody on either side ever
pretended for a moment that reb-
ell prisoners ever died in our hands,
or even seriously suffered for lack
of food or clothing or shelter
No such charges have ever been
made"
Will you then permit such
charges to be made through your
columns? l was captured in
October, 1868, and spent six
months in Camp Morton. In
March, 1864, + was removed to
Fort Delaware, where l remained
until June, 1865. The winter
of 1864 is well known to have
been intensely cold.
Many rebel prisoners, to my
own knowledge, spent that win
ter without a blanket, and in the
the scant and ragged summer
clothing worn when captured
The barracks were the old cattle
sheds used when the prison was a
fair ground, and open enough for
the winter winds to sweep through
freely. Scores of the men in the
dead of winter slept in these
sheds, upon bare ground, without
covering, huddling together like
hogs to keep from freezing.
1t is well known to hundreds
now living that several died, ac-
tually frozen to death, while a
large number were SO badly frost
bitten as to be famed for life.
During the larger portion of
the time the hospital arrange
ments were shamefully deficient,
and by many of the surgeons and
attendants the sick were not on
ly grossly neglected, but most in
humanity treated.
Men barely able to crawl through
weakness from insufficient food
and disease consequent upon ex-
posure, were forced in the sever
est winter weather, to stand at
roll call for two and often three
or more hours in line, like sol
diers on dress parade, and cursed
like brutes or beaten over the
heads with sabres or clubs, and
sometimes shot at for moving a
little to keep from freezing. In
several instances prisoners were
shot on the most frivolous pre-
texts. A quiet orderly man, an
Englishman, named Coats, belong
ing to my division, was murdered |
in cold blood, by private in the |
Invalid Corps, named Baker, who |
was on guard.
Instead of being tried and pun
ished, Baker, though private,
was sent next morning into camp |
to take charge as Sergeant Of our |
division, in which position he
heaped upon the defenceless men
every indignity that SO inhuman
a wretch could devise.
At the very time that such an
outcry was raised about the NOR
tality among Northern soldiers in
Southern prisons, the inmates of
Camp Morton knew the mortality
there in proportion to the number of
men, to be several per cent. greater.
At Fort Delaware our barracks
were more comfortable, but the
rations were miserably insufficient,
and prisoners who could not pro-
cure money from friends, with
which to procure extra supplies
from the suffers, suffered the
oangs of hunger night and day,
and were reduced to skeletons,
md eaten up by scurvy from
,canty and unwholesome food,
ell ready victims to disease, and
lied by hundreds.
At the close Of the war, of
.bout 1000 men in one pen, full
y one.half, if not three-fourths,-
we're but walking skeletons, hum
lreds of them ruined for life with
'curvy. ]