Litchfield enquirer., 1868-09-10
GRANT OR SEYMOUR

of some good reasons. vi the answer should be-G'aaaL Ibeg asnow that soy- l moar is the Southern candidate; and that his election would involve a re- assertion Of State Rights, general reppdiation of the governmentsecurities- which, by crippljng the Savings Banks, would reach the pock- cts Of the poor man as yell as the rich nlan ;-and t general renewal 5f tha rebe l. lion itself. Seymour would put into his cabinet such men as Floyl, 1oombs &c, l and probably Jeff Davis llkaseE; aad thesa men would engineer the |army and navy into the service of tho south, as they did 1 under Buchanan, aud ! We should have southern ''restoratiqn;f in full, as they understand tue word, insl lading even s!a- 1 very.
 Those are tolerably godl reasons for vo- ting for Grant and Colfa1, Some others oc- cur to us. We think, for instance, what might happen again to Northern men if the war should be renewed, ,and now and then ono of 1 our soldiers should be made prisoner. Do our readers remember how northern men were treated in southern prisons? We have recently boen reading the Congress sional Report, in eight volumes, on the Conduct of the War; and the testimony taken by the committee OH the treatment of prisoners. is good thing to be remem- bered, just now when we are entering into contest where ds6ss would iBSsll'rma iRB,sl make 2 few extracts.
 Notba,sez F. Pa!nser. taken prisoner at Bull Run, testified as to the treatment oi prisoners in Richmond:
 Question. there any mon shot o1 abused while there in prison?
 Ansager.-Fiye were shot. One as he was hanging his blanket out of the window to air. Three others were shot while look. ing out of a window. One had been near the window to get some water, as he re- turned, he came just in range of the win dow, about ten feet from it, and he was shot by the sentry; the bullet went through his body and lodged in another mans arm. His name was Tibbets, of the New York 27th regiment.
 Question. was he shot.
 Aa1secer.-So the sentry could say he had 'killed d-d Yankee"
 Question. What was done with the sentry?
 Aaswer. was put in guard house for five days and then promoted.
 Gen. Jaaaes B. Ricketls, was also & priso- ner. He testified as to shooting prisoners
 "A number Of our men were shot. On one occasion,a sentry outside tho room res. ted his musket on the windoW-sill while he capped it. While drawing back the hammer it escaped from his fingers the gun went of, killing one man and wound ing another.
 Question.-Did you think it was done in- tentionally?
 Amssuer: did think so. The gun was pointed right at tho man, instead of being turned up toward the ceiling. 0
 Doctor Wns. F. ts,ca1ns, of Brooklyn. N. Y. Surgeon of the 14th Regiment \. Y. State militia testified:
 'I will tell you how Doctor Ferguson of N. Y. was treated. He was taking his am bulance for the wounded when he was fir ed into. He took of his green sash to show his calling. A party rode up and asked him who he was? He told them. They said they would take parting shot at him, anyway. They shot him in the leg He was then made prisoner and laid in an ambulance. As they drove along, his spun would catch in the tail-board, causing him such agony that he screamed. An officer rode up to him and placed his pistol at the doctors head, saying he would shoot hiH, If he screamed again. Da,siel Bir5y Jr., of Washington testi- tifed, d,-''That he saw the bodies of north ern soldiers from which the bones had been removed; and he added, on the testimony of @ Mrs. Butler, that the rebel soldiers cut out and boiled the bones of the dead, to make rings and drum sticks. One rebel soldier from New Orleans had a skull which he said he was going to have mounted and made into punch-bowl and would drink out of 1t On the day he was married. One of the Commission inquired of the witness if any bone in mans body was long enough to make drum-stick, and he an- swered. yes. the flower leg bone, the shin bone.'"
 Other witnesses testified to the refusal, by the rebel officers, to allow imprisoned northern surgeons to perform surgical op- erations on northern soldiers; but kept them idle while apothecaries' clerks in the rebel service were set to amputating limbs of northern soldiers; and that the work was so bunglingly and horribly performed that the men died from the operation,
 Others, again, testify to the cruelties practiced on prisoners in Richmond, by starving, exposure Sc. but these details are so far behind what afterward took place at Andersonville and elsewhere, that they are not worth recording here. The testimony from which VIC have made these brief ex- tracts, was taken early in 1862 dis closes the facts of 1S61-the first year of the war. The rebels had not then fairly ssgot their hands in" at the art of torturing and murdering prisoners; hence, the de- tails presented in this Congressional Re- port, are hardly premonitory symtoms of the horrors that followed.
 We have aidenough to suggest to our readers, what they will do well to remem- Der. And we would advise them to keep in mind this one fact: that the election of Seymour would be long step on the di- rect road to Andersonyille. Is there Copperhead in the land who dares deny that? It is. however, useless to ask the