Staunton spectator and vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1896-1916, 1909-09-03
SOME SCRAPS OF HISTORY.

In the Century Magazine for Sep
TENDER there is photograph of a cele-
brated statue by Bella Pratt, sculptor
of celebrety, now coming more and
more into public notice and favor.
The statue referred to is ''The Boy
Prisoner OF Apdersonville, and has
been erected in the National cemetery
at Andersonville, Ca, to commemorate
the lives and suffeFings of Union SOL
diers confined in that prison who died
there
The idea in the statue is that boy
of Is OF the finest mould, handsome,
generous, brave no doubt, indeed beau
tiful in person and character, typified
| the soldies who died in that prison.
The North would fain have the world
believe their death came from Confed-
crate brutality and studied neglect, in
deed from deliberate starvation and
cruelty. This story we will not discuss
further than to say, that the statue is
a play upon the Imagination, and in no
wise true to TACT. There was little need
of any Union soldier dying in Con-
federate prison. The Confederate gov
eminent had neutrality-suspicious. and
medicines for the captured. 1t had not
by far sufficient for its own soldiers in
the ZELDA and the sick and wounded in
hospitals, but the truth as to how
short we were in both could not safely
be disclosed lest it injured our cause.
Still offers of exchange were made over
and over again, only to be refused by
Northern authorities. They had no
claim On these men as soldiers. Their
time Of enlistment had usually eXpir-
ed. 1t was said tnat they would in
most cases not re-enlist, having had
enough of war. But every Confeder-
ate soldier exchanged would go back
into the army, they said, and thus ex-
change would be giving the South a
new army. Why there was so much
patriotism on the Southern, and so lit
tie on the Northern side, we leave
others to explain. Then again the
South asked that provisions and medi-
cine be sent and the contributions
should be faithfully given to the pris-
oners. But knowing how they, the
North, treated contributions sent to
Confederate prisoners, and protesting
to have no faith in the sincerity of
these promises, refused this mode of
preserving the lives of their prisoners,
and let them die there neglected, I'M
wept and unsung.
The brutality of such a course was
damned throughout the North at the
time, but damning of President Lin
coin and Stanton the War Secretary,
was like singing psalms to dead mule
it never softened their nature nor caus-
ed them to fight the war fairly. 1t
may here be remarked that notwith-
standing the North had fewer of our
men as prisoners than we had of theirs,
greater per cent. of ours died IN their
prisons than of theirs in our prisons.
They had plenty, when our soldiers
starved.
The erection of this statue is part of
the great work that is going on year in
and year out by Northern people, and
by the government itself, to make the
Southern people appear to posterity as
the most cruel, heartless, depraved
creatures that have lived on American
soil, to make posterity joyful at theiI
killing, and sorrowful that any escap.
ed. Yet when we contrast ''Y ankee''
cruelty with "Rebel' cruelty, the first
overshadows the second as the noun
tain towers above the molehille. Never
until driven to desperation by North
J ern cruelty, did the South retaliate OF
forget the rules Of war. Andersonville
prison is painted as the one great black
spot of the Confederacy, the Black
Hole of Calcutta, in all Northern par
tisan history. When the Statue of
Liberty was giveu by the French to
the United States and erected in New
York harbor, all visitars going inside
of it were greeted with huge picture
telling of Andersonville. Wirz, the
keeper of Andersonville, was hung by
drum head court martial as part OF
the -bellum, reconstruction orgies,
when human victims were fed into the
NAV of frenzied, implacable rabble,
and this hanging has never been justi-
fed. He, however, served as scape
goat for governmental indifference.
The difference between the Southern
and Northern soldiers may be drawn
from their observance of the laws of
war toward the helpless, and the care
shown by the Confederate soldier for
private property in Pennsylvania,
when Gen. Lee advanced on Gettys-
burg. His conduct there can safely be
contrasted with the conduct of Sher-
man and Sheridan in their marches
through Southern territory. Nothing
in modern warfare parallels the action
of the National government when it
placed on board of one of its vessels in
Charleston Harbor 700 young Confed-
crate soldiers, mostly officers, and
pushed them up under the guns Of
their own, the Confederate forts, that
they might either be killed or the fort
captured, by reason of the refusal of
those in charge of the fort to fire on
their own men. The conception of this
idea must blacken every character con-