of those interested by their own showing to deceive, and who resort for their witnesses to a class of men who are thus described by an authority in your own country whom neither you nor they, on this subject, at least, dare discredit. The editor of the New York Times, speaking of the character of the recruits sent to your army on the James River in Virginia, as substitutes for drafted men, and from information derived from a correspondent with the Federal army at City Point, describes them as wretched vagabonds, depraved in morals, or decrepit in body, without courage, self-respect, or conscience. . . . They desert when put on picket duty, they skulk in action, and are dirty, disorderly, thievish, and incapable in camp, and pass most of their time on barrels tied up to trees, or bucked and gagged.' Of such materials is your army in Virginia, and from such materials your Sanitary Commission could be at no loss for witnesses in their dramatic development.' You will find this agreeable picture of your own troops in the New York Times of January 6th, 1865.

"To its further discredit, I know that the batch of prisoners whose emaciated forms supplied the materials for its pictorial illustrations, were the sick brought from the hospitals in Richmond under the cruel policy of your Government to make no exchanges except of the sick. Your Sanitary Commission might, and with as good grace and as much fairness, have the patients in the worst form of disease from your public charities, exhibited in photograph as evidence of inhuman treatment at such hospitals. But it is waste of time to attempt to refute these calumnious imputations. Those to whom they are addressed in your country do not desire to be undeceived. When first propagated, some year or two ago, pains were taken in the South, through the aid of disinterested and impartial observers, to have the real condition of prisoners at the South enquired into and laid before the world. Their statements were in true keeping with what was the acknowledged duty of a humane and Christian people, and in accordance with the established rules of civilized warfare. The rations allowed to prisoners were the same in quantity and quality as those given to our own soldiers in the field; nor was there any

scarcity with the former which was not shared equally by our own soldiers.

"What my own countrymen are suffering in your Northern prisons we are seldom allowed to know; but even since the receipt of your letter we have some striking evidence of what their condition is, in the teeth of the statement of your Sanitary Commission, as to the treatment of our prisoners at the North. I would refer you on this head to a letter from Joseph Taylor, of a Louisiana regiment, addressed to Lord Wharncliffe, and published in the Evening Standard at London, dated at Barnsley (England), January 5th, 1865, brought out by Mr. Seward's late letter, in which he permits himself to say that prisoners of war at the North are suffering no privations, and that appeal for relief or charity at home or abroad is unnecessary. Taylor speaks from an experience of several months in Fort Deleware;' the prisoners then averaged there from 6,000 to 7,000. The rations were always irregular, sometimes two ounces of meat per day, sometimes none. Soup was given at times, but such stuff that the most robust stomach could not take it; the consequences were that a large proportion of the men were reduced almost to skeletons.' He says that the prisoners were worse treated when guarded by the militia than when by the regular soldiers,' and adds: The cruelties practiced by the former were such as would scarcely be believed, even if the work of savages; that the relief proposed by your lordship and friends would have been the means of saving life I have not the slightest doubt.'

"This man, it appears by a note of the editor, resides in Barnsley, was taken prisoner at Gettysburg, was confined in Fort Delaware for seven months, and released on terms that he would give aid in no form to the Confederates and would leave the country.

"Again, I refer you to a letter published in the New York Daily News of January 3, dated at Chicago, December 27. The editor vouches for the writer as a lady of unquestionable veracity, great purity of character, and true Christian charity.'

She speaks of the condition of prisoners, 6,000 to 8,000 in number, confined at 'Rock Island,' and says that the allowance

to each man has been one small loaf of bread — it takes three to make a pound and a piece of meat two inches square per day. This was the ration; lately it has been reduced, and they are trapping rats and mice for food, actually to save life; many of them are nearly naked, barefooted, bareheaded, and without bed-clothes; each day their number growing less by death — their only merciful visitor.' She adds that charitable persons have sent supplies of clothing to these prisoners, but they have not been permitted to reach them.' Again, please refer to a letter from three of the surgeons, prisoners of war at Johnson's Island, dated November 16, and addressed to the colonel commanding the post, published in the New York Daily News, January 7. It concludes thus: It is our solemn conviction that if the inmates of this prison are compelled to subsist for the winter upon this reduced ration of 10 ounces less than health demands and 6 ounces less than Colonel Hoffman's order allows, all must suffer the horrors of continued hunger, and many must die from the most loathsome diseases.' Again, in the same paper, on the 5th page, is an article headed Treatment of Prisoners of War,' a communication alleged by the editor to be from one of our most respectable citizens, whose address is in our possession.'

6

"It refers to the prisoners on Rock Island, and states that those who refuse to enlist in the Federal service are kept on starvation rations, and are often reduced to rats, dogs, putrid meat, and other repulsive food picked out of slops.'

I would

"It contains, too, a letter of one of the prisoners, giving the reason why he enlisted with the enemy. He says: You will say that I had better have died than dishonor myself. have said so, too, a year ago, but no one who has not been placed as I have been placed should judge me harshly. I had lingering starvation before me from day to day, from week to week, until I scarcely knew what I was doing. I was dying by inches. To escape a loathsome death, I enlisted; but it is expressly stated in my enlistment that I am not to fight against my own people.' The communication to the Daily News concludes as follows: It is horrible truth that there are now in our military prisons nearly fifty thousand prisoners of war undergoing the tortures of

protracted starvation, denied all relief from without, even the purchasing with their own money the food essential to life and health.'

"These cumulative proofs may explain the reason why Mr. Seward refused to allow an agent from England to visit the military prisons at the North as preliminary to the proper dispensation of the large fund contributed by English benevolence for the relief of those confined in them; but in view of their privation and want, what can excuse, before the Christian world, his refusal to allow that relief to reach them in any form?

"And now, to close this reply, already too long: tell your Sanitary Commission, if they be really in earnest to bring relief to their countrymen alleged to be suffering as prisoners in the Confederate States, to address themselves to their own government, by whose act alone those prisoners remain in confinement.

"Let your government renew the system of exchanges under existing cartels which they have for more than two years fraudulently evaded. At the commencement of the war your government affected to consider those of my countrymen who fell into their hands as traitors worthy only a traitor's doom, nor was it until the balance of prisoners was largely on the Confederate side that a system of exchanges was agreed to. Though a large creditor, the Confederate Government framed a cartel on the most liberal basis, and by a solemn convention between the two governments that cartel was adopted. It provided for the release of all prisoners on parole ten days after their capture, and an immediate exchange to follow; the excess on either side to remain on parole for future exchange. In July, 1863, after the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the balance of prisoners, for the first time, was against the Confederates, and from that time forth, under all manner of subterfuges, your government refused exchanges on the basis of the cartel. All these facts are set forth in the correspondence between Robert Ould, Confederate Agent of Exchange, with your General Meredith, Major Mulford, and Major-General Hitchcock, at various times Federal Agents of Exchange, commencing in October, 1863, and ter

minating August 31st, 1864, published in the papers at Richmond and reproduced in those at New York. That correspondence shows how earnestly and persistently the Confederate Government sought to obtain by exchanges the mutual release of all prisoners

consenting even to waive the strict terms of the cartel when the balance of prisoners was against the Confederates and how persistently and by what fraudulent evasions your Government refused. And thus it has resulted that, at last accounts, there were some sixty thousand of your countrymen prisoners of war in the Confederate States and remaining there solely because of the refusal of your Government to receive them back. This monstrous and cruel policy on their part can have but one solution. It was known that every man sent back to us would at once return to the field, whilst on your side the term of enlistment of far the major part of the prisoners had expired, and of the rest, few had any further stomach for the fight. If your Sanitary Commission, therefore, is sincere in its denunciation of the Confederate authorities for their alleged maltreatment of their countrymen prisoners of war, with what execration should they visit their own Government for thus inhumanly and voluntarily abandoning them to their captivity?

"I am, sir, your obedient servant,

"J. M. MASON. "P. S.-I shall commit this correspondence to the press in London.

"J. M. M."

For important and fuller facts relating to the prisoners of war referred herein, see my Official Report to the Louisville Confederate Reunion held in 1900, to be found in our Official Minutes and in the August, 1900, issue of the Confederate Veteran published at Nashville, Tenn.

I have in my possession a pamphlet entitled: "The Horrors of Andersonville Rebel Prison. Trial of Henry Wirz by General N. P. Chipman, Judge Advocate of the Wirz Military Commission." It is a most remarkable contribution in many respects, but had I known its contents prior to my Louisville Report