The Portland daily press., 1876-02-03
The Rebel Prison Pens.
More Evidences of Barbarity.
To the Editor of the Press.

Every political error may be forgiven, even if
1t has proceeded so far as to lead to overt trea,
son and armed rebellion. But if we forgive
deliberate, malignant. fehdisb cruel murders,
the forgiveness ought certainly to be limited; it
ought not to restore the offender to our full con-
fdence, nor to his full privileges. Feeling this,
am impelled from moral, not political mo-
tives, to call yo1r attention (apropos to Ex-
Speaker Blaine's SPECIFY to the accompanying
extracts from report of the Rev. f. N. Knapp
read to the Sanitary Commission, April 20,
1865. l have known Mr.. Knapp most init
mately for 50 years be is free from partisan
rancor, is man of sound. clear Judgment, is
very slow to condemn even those who fight
against him or his views; and always ready to
give the accused the benefit of doHbt For
this reason this Sanitary Document SO has had,
ior ten years past, great effect upon my mind.
PORTLAND, Feb. 1, 1876. TIL.
MIR. Knapp prefaces his report by letter of
Dr. q. r. Agnew, of the Sanitary Commits
sion, who writes:
The returned prisoners sent into
wilmington numbered nearly 5000. Some
1000 OF the less famished have gone North.
zen. ABBOTT, who received our poor fellows in
the exchange, has Just told me that language
would utterly fail to describe their condition.
Filth, rags, nakedness, starvation, were per-
sonihed in their condition. Many of the men
were IN a state of mind resembling idiocy, un-
able to tell their names, and lost to all sense
Oh modesty, unconscious of their nakedness
and personal condition. Some of them moving
about ON their hands and knees, unable to
stand upon their gangrenous feet, looking up
IKE hungry dogs, beseeching the observer for a
bite of bread or sup of water. Some of them
hltcned along on their hands and buttocks,
pushing gangrenous feet, literally reduced to
bone and shreds, before them. Others leaned
upon slaves, and glared from sunken ewes
through the parchment-like shts of their open
eyellds into space, without having the power
70 nx an Intelligent gaze upon passing objects.
Others glggled and smirked, and hobbled like
starved idiots; while some adamantine figures
WaiKed erect, as though they meant to move
the skeleton hoIneward so long as vitality
enough remained to enable them to do so. To
see the men who remain here in hospital would
move heart as hard and cold as marble. Their
CONDITION IS that OF men who have for months
suffered chronic starvation. Their arms and
legs look like coarse reeds with bulbous Joints
Their faces look as though skilful taxdermst
had drawn tanned skin over the bare skull, and
Inen placed false eyes in the 0rbita cavities
They defy description. II would take pen
expert in the use of every term known to the
anatomist and the physician to begin to expose
their fearful condition. May God in his inf
this horrid thingr'
"On Sunday, April I'd, arrived at Whining
ton, North Carolina, having left Washington in
response to the call made by Dr. Agnew in his
letter OF March Goth, describing the wretch
edness and destltution of the $500 or
1000 Union prisoners who had just been
brought into Wilmington exchanged or
paroled from the rebel prisons. When /
reached Wilmington, all but 300 of these
Union prisoners had been sent North: and
those who remained had been made in all re-
spects clean and comfortable, as had been those
who had gone on shipboard /"
Among the men VINO still remained at Will
mlngton, although they were surrounded by
comforts, and their appearance had of course,
been entirely changed from what il was at first,
there was, in the seventy gangrenous limbs
(dry gapgrene froIu frost or exposuren) OF men
gathered IN one hospital, the saddest and most
striking evidence have yet seen of the malig-
ers by the enemy"
"On Friday, April 7th, left City Point, up
on the Sanitary Tug Boat. ''Gov. Curtin
which was starting with stores for Richmond
Friday evening"
Saturday morning, after passing by the
smoking ruins. and getting sight of Libby
Prison" and "Belle Isle,"-each bound in
son Hospital one of the principal hospitals of
the place, mile and half or two miles from
the city; and here saw that which, by cop-
trast, made me feel ten-fold more fully than
ever before now great had been the DarDarltV
OF that system of starvation and exposure by
which the rebels, with slow and terrible death,
had killed off our men, their Prisoners of War;
found at that rebel hospital the evidence of
thorough organization and wise system-a
large generosity in all the provisions for the
comfort of their patients: and testimony prov
Ing the fact that, as a general thing, there had
been no lack OF supplies there, but usually an
abundance of all needed stores. As looked
on these well ordered methods, and the liberal
provision which had long been made by the
rebels at that hospital, located within less than
cannon-shot distance of Belle Isle, 1 felt that
the thin screen of ignorance or of inability"
with which some persons still seek TO temper
the barbarity of the rebels, must be at once
and utterly swept away, leaving the inhuman
cruelty OF this slow murder to stand out clearly,
and It's true nature to be recognized: viz
means systematically arranged and adopted,
under deliberate plan, as an engine of scar,
whereby to thin our ranks by death, precisely
as the bayonet is used in battle,-except that
the bayonet is connected with bravery, while
this instrument of death is the weapon Of cow
ardice. For what could stand in stronger con-
trast with the boasted chvalry of the South, or
with the undoubted valor of her soldiers in the
held, than this resort to process of starving
defenceless men by thousands, showing that
5he spirit OF slavery, which fomented and has
guided this rebellion, is not only oppressive but
base; since bravery-that virtue which all men
praise-dies out under system that creates
and thrlyes upon brutality and ungoverned
passions? What, therefore, if not this mean
est and most cruel method of getting rid Of a
dreaded foe, should forever be branded as
coeoardiee?
Jackson Hospital, as established and con-
iucted by the rebels, was excellent; in some
respects, few military hospitals of our own sur
pass it. 1t was excellent in its general plan of
in its location and its arrange
nent OF buildings; in its administration; in its
thorough policing; in the exceeding cleanliness
If its bedding, and in the very liberal provision
made by the Rebel Government for the Hos
,ital Fund.-
Mr.. Knapp then described the hospital ia
ietail, fully iustfyiDg these general praises;
md making the contrast between it and Belle
Isle damning evidence that the misery at the
after place, the Libby and Andersonville was
known to and permitted by the general Con-
iederate government at Richmond,