The National tribune., 1907-11-28
JUSTICE TO THE Ex-pRIsoNERs.


with the greatest reason. that they have
been treated with the utmost neglect
and injustice. All other classes of vet
Grams have been heard by Congress. and
allowances made for the special hard
ships of which they complain. The
manned soldiers, the blind, the deaf
and similar classes have had special
pensions and consideration. The eX-
prisoners of war have been now knock
ing at the doors of Congress for fully
score of years, and tho they have SEEM
| ed frequently near the realization OF
! their hopes, the bills for their relief
have every time been shunted aside in
mentioned. Their hearts have become
sick almost to the point of despair.
Meritorious as all these other classes
undoubtedly are, their merits do not
surpass those of the men who endured
| Imprisonment in the Southern torture
pens. No class of soldiers braved great
er dangers nor suffered more. Only
part of the army braved and suffered as
much. For example, Andersonville
proper lasted scarcely more than four
months, and yet one out of every tour
soldiers who set foot in that spot of
lamentations and death died before he
repassed the prison gates. How many
men who had their constitutions broken
down in. Andersonville and died subse-
quently in Salisbury Millen, Savannah,
Charleston and Florence or on the road
to those prisons only the Recording
Angel knows. Our memory of those
fearful days is that whenever a train
loaded with prisoners stopped for the
night there were dead men to be found
on every car. When we camped in the
pine woods for the night the place of
every squad was marked the next morn
ing by dead man, and so it went on in
all our journeyings between the prisons.
Probably the mortality was greater in
the other prisons than 1t was in Ander-
|sonville, for the reason that Anderson
vile was the first to which the most of
the prisoners We're sent, and they were
later transferred to others. Consequent
ly while many might have been able to
last thru two or three months Of An
dersonville they succumbed when they
were taken to another prison.
When we say that Andersonville sub
|stantially lasted not over four months
we should explain that prior to the mid
die of May, 1864, there were only a few
thousand men in the prison, and they
had room then to move about, and the
IL cJ,a of ~
some protection. Active operations be-
gan both on Grants and Sherman's
fronts on the 5th of May, 1864, prison.
ers began to be brought in in great
numbers, and in June the pen was
densely packed. Atlanta fell on the 1st
Of the prisoners, which operation began
Sept 7. BY the middle of September
all who were able to be moved were
taken out. Therefore, it may be said
that Andersonville lasted from the mid
die of May until the middle of Septem-
Der, four months.
1t must be kept in mind that the men
who were brought to Andersonvilie We're
not raw recruits from a camp of in
struction, nor weakIings from a hospi-
tai They were men in the full vigor of
life, as they were at the front with their
commands and doing their full duty
They must have been strong, vigorous
men to have been at the front, gun in
hand. The weaklings of their regiments
were all at the rear in hospital or else
where. When we repeat that these
strong men succumbed so rapidly to the
hardships of the prison that within four
months one out of every four of them
was actually dead, we have an unmis-
taxable basis for estimating how terrible
the sufferings of all must have been. III
this terrible mortality prevailed it also
necessarily follows that the men who
escaped with their lives had their con-
stitutions so injured that they never
afterward recovered
This is the whole story in a nutshell,
and to thinking men needs no ampIif-
cation or demonstration. The $4,000
graves in the National Cemetery at An
Jacksonville are there for undeniabIe
proof. No other arguments should be
those 1900 graves at AndersonviIle.
with the 1900 at Salisbury and 1000
at Florence to show at once the Justice
| of Congress making special legislation
for the men who endured and survived
all the horrors which those graves rep
resent
An INpnRTA MI nu,crcrnN