The National tribune., 1885-12-17

Millen, Ga. Atlanta, Ga.
Cahaba, Ala. Mobile, Ala.
Montgomery, Ala. Camp Ford, Tex.
Vicksburg, Miss.
War Departments figures ought to be at
least doubled. The Department itself ad-
mits that, taking the percentage of deaths in
prisons from which it obtained reports, and
applying the same to those from which it
has none, there is every reason to believe
that at least AZ, 200 prisoners perished while
in the hands of the rebels.
That this is a moderate estimate is shown
by certain facts in the history of Anderson
vile. The average imprisonment of those
confined there was not over q months. The
pen received its first inmates Feb a. 1864,
but the prison did not really begin to fill up
before the middle of May, when prisoners
began to arrive in great numbers from the
columns which had moved against Richmond
and Atlanta on the Sd of May. Atlanta fell
on the I'd of September, and on the 7th the
Confederate authorities began to rush the
prisoners away so that they would be out of
reach of Sherman. BY the middle of the
month nearly everybody who could walk
had been taken elsewhere. Thus it will be
4Ia{41 41a itv Of ho
were only in Andersonville for some period
between the middle of May and the middle
of September, making an average stay of
each man much less than four months, or
about q months as previously stated. Yet,
in this short time, of eoery three men who so
much as set foot an AadersonUiHe, one died.
From first to last there were about $4,000
prisoners put into the stOckade, and, as the
table above shows, there are nearly 14,0O0
graves there.
This is not the worst. The men who were
taken to Andersonville were sturdy veterans
from the active, fighting armies. Thousands
of them had stamina enough to live through
the warm months at Andersonville, bat they
succumbed to the chill rains and exposures
of the others pens to which they were re-
moved in September That is, Andersonville
broke them down, but the deadly work
completed during the Fall and Winter at
Charleston, Florence and Salisbury. Had it
not been for the transfer, the appalling
fact would have confronted us that two out
of every three men imprisoned in Anderson
vile died there within six months They
did actually die there OF somewhere else, but
their being scattered prevents the statistics
taking the startling form the figures would
have had had the bulk of the prisoners spent
the Fall and Winter of 1864 in Anderson
vile instead of in prisons in the Carolinas.
The position that this statement supports
conclusively is that ever man who was
prisoner of war in any of the Southern
slaughter pens, and who shared in an expert
ence of hardships that killed two out of
three of his companions must have endured
irreparable physical strains that have
brought about, or greatly fastened, his final
breaking down; that no man could have
passed scatheless through such an ordeal,
and that every man who did so had his
bodily powers so weakened that any dis
ability from which he now suffers is directly
traceable to the hardships he suffered there,
and the Government should, in justice, pen
sion him on a scale proportioned to the
length Of his Imprisonment and his disability.