New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1879-10-29
POLITICAL.
AndersoEsille Not Forgotten.

POLITICAL.
AnlersoEyille Not Forgotten.
The reunion of the survivors Of An
Jacksonville and othc. Southern prisons,
which was held at Toledo recently, viii
bring home to many families the men,
cry Of those who persisted, not in bat
tie. but by q system of torture beside
which the smothering in the Black
Hole of Calcutta seems almost mer-
ciful.
As early as the first part Of the year
1864 stories, too horrible to believe,
began to be spread abroad through the
North, to the effect that Union prison.
ers of war had been starved, frozen
and killed by filth in the rebel prisons
in the South. One and another sur
vivor found his way back home, cadav-
erous, hollow-eyed, shrunk to the very
shreds of a man, and told his story Of
the sufferings in the rebel prison
camps. At length, in May of that
year, the United States Sanitary Com
mission, of which DR.. Bellows was
President, appointed Commission of
Inquiry, consisting of DR.. Valentine
Mott, DR.. Edward Delaield, Gouyern-
cur Morris Wilkins, Esq, Professor
Ellerslie Wallace, Judge Hare and the
Rev. Treadwell Walden, to visit the
prisoners and, ascertain the facts as to
the alleged barbarities. Their report
was made in September, 1864, accom-
panied by written evidence upon which
it was based.
The commissioners first visited the
two extensive hospitals at Annapolis,
where over 3, 900 of the returned captives
had been brought, in every conceivable
form. of suffering, direct from Libby
Prison, Belle Isle, and two or three
other Southern military stations, and
from there they went to Baltimore,
where there were some hundreds of
others in an equally dreadful condition.
Photographs were taken of numbers of
these diseased and emaciated men, but
they only half told the horrible tale.
"The best picture" says the report,
g cannot convey the reality, nor create
that startling and sickening sensation
which is felt at the sight Of a human
skeleton, with the skin drawn tightly
over its skull and ribs and limbs, weakly
turning and moving itself, as if still a
living man!
"And this was the reality.
'sIt is strange to find Hercules i'll
bones; to see the immense hands and
feet Of a young giant pendant from
limbs thinner than child's, and that
could be SPAWNED with the thumb and
finger! Equally strange and horrible
was it when the surgeon
lifted the covering from poor, half
unconscious creature, to see the stom-
ach fallen in, deep as basin, and
the bone protruding through a blood.
red hole on the hip. y The men
in Baltimore looked like the man Just
left in Annapolis. Perhaps it was partly
the shaven head, the sunken eyes, the
drawn mouth, the pinched and pallil
features-partly, doubtless, the grayish,
blighted skin, rough to the touch as the
skin of shark. But there was some
thing else !; an expression in the eyes
and countenance Of desolateness, look
of settled melancholy, as if they had
passed through . period of physical and
mental agony which had driven the
smile from their faces forever"
The details of barbarism and cruelty
which are set forth in this report have
been familiar to the American people
for fifteen years and yet, in reading
over the terrible record, it seems past
belief that such things could have been
done by men who are now living in tho
world. The " horrors of the middle
passage on the slave-ships could
hardly be worse than the suffering Of
our soldiers at the Libby and Belle
Isle, and, worst of all, at Anderson
vile, where over $4,000 miserable
wretches, who were stalwart SOL
diers when taken in battle, were
confined in a field of twenty-five acres,
of which six acres in the middle were a
foul swamp, without a tree, or tent,
or a board Of any kind to shelter them
from the weather, robbed of their cloth
ing and left to go half naked, and many
of them entirely naked with no water
for any purpose, except the black liquid
of the swamp and the sluggish brook,
loaded with impurities from another
swamp above, that ran through it; fed
with a daily ration of eight ounces of
corn bread (the cob being ground with
the kerneD and generally sour, and two
ounces of condemned pork, offensive in
appearance and smell, with two table,
spoonfuls of rice twice week in place
of the pork, and two Of molasses about
twice a month. What wonder that with
such a diet, and with such exposure,
dysentery, and scurvy, and rheuma-
tism, and gangrcne, and pneumonia,
and fevers, and all the tribe of diseases
that walk in the footsteps of famine and
filth, carried off to the dead-pit over
one hundred and thirty victims day,
bringing the death-rate up to the fright
full figure of one hundred and fifty per
cent. per annum? What wonder that
strong men, starved down to skeletons,
became subject to insane decisions, and
dreamed of gorgeous banquets as soon
rs their eyes were closed in sleep?
What wonder that hundreds fell into a
state Of idiocy,. while other hundreds
lnsanely rushed near the dead-line that
their suferings might be ended by the
shot of a rebel guard?
Another generation, busted with its
own concerns, may forget the story of
the most horrible atro21ies that have
disgraced modern warfare among any
people, civilized or savage; but so long
as we see the survivors Of Andersonville
among us in their annual reunions, we
are sure to remember, with shame and
indignation, the crime committed bY
men Of our own race and country Ghs
cag0 Inter-O Ocean.
Result Of the Chisholm Trial.
The Chisholm trial resulted, exactly
as we supposed it would, in the acquit-
tai Of Henry J. Gully, indicted for the
murder Of Judge Chisholm and Cornelia
The jury dared not bring in any other
verdict. # they had brought in yer
dict of guilty some Of them would he