the camp. Thousands had no shelter of any kind. It was before the eyes of the people of Richmond. The President and Cabinet, with the Congress and Senate of the confederacy were within few minutes' walk of it.

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The men having been stripped in part of their clothing, deprived of their money, which is the common charge, without shelter along that bleak river, often enveloped in its pestilential fog, with but a little fire here and there, while thousands who cannot approach, are shivering around, or trying to keep their blood in circulation by keeping themselves in motion day and night. The severity of the frost of last winter was so great, that nearly all the ice houses around and down the James river were filled. Thousands of men trying like hogs to get together in such numbers as to keep themselves warm, the outer ones occasionally changing place with some more favored, at different hours of the night; in other cases the outside ones frozen to death. An occurrence of almost every day during the winter. No amount of clothing will keep a man warm who is deprived of food.

STATEMENT OF J M'ILVAINE.

"I belong to the ninth Maryland; was taken prisoner at Charlestown, Virginia, October 18, 1863; marched to Staunton 24th, 'there until Monday 26th; about 9 A. M. took cars for Richmond; got there about daybreak 27th; marched to tobacco warehouse, stayed to November 1, about 1 o'clock; about 450 were in the cellar. The ground was wet all the time from a hydrant which leaked on the ground. The warehouse was four stories high, full of prisoners; bars in the windows, but no glass. Got wheat bread about size of a rusk twice a-day with a piece of meat not equal to one-fourth of our rations, and the bread not equal to two hard tack. The meat stunk so we could hardly take it. The guards used to hallo in to us-'Yankees, how does horse meat eat?'

"To Belle Island November 1. No shelter of any kind; nothing but naked earth until last of January, when five hundred went away. We got into an old tent which sheltered us from the wind, but not from the rain. Our overcoats, blankets, shoes

and dress coats and money were taken from us at Charlestown as soon as we were taken. Over one thousand dollars was taken from our regiment. They said when we were paroled they would give it back, but they never gave a dollar, and said they never would; they would do just as our government did.

About ten thousand were there at Christmas. In each corner of the square, holes were dug for drinking water. The ground was so low that water came at about one and a half feet from the top of the ground. During the day so many were allowed to go outside of the ditch next to the river about twenty to thirty feet, but a great many of the men were not able who were suffering from diarrhoea. The gates were closed about sun down. Sometimes the water in these holes out of which we were to drink would be as filthy as in holes of a barn-yard.

"The first month we got one piece of corn bread and such meat as we got in the warehouse. After that no meat, corn bread twice a day, unless some of the guard reported us, then we could get only one piece and sometimes none. The average

of deaths must have been twenty to thirty a day, and they have laid unburied for days, five men lay unburied for nine days."

STATEMENT OF REV. W. II. TIFFANY.

Rev. William H. Tiffany, M. E. church, Charlton, Saratoga county, N. Y., as delegate chaplain of the United States Christian Commission, on the Blackstone; W. C. Berry, of Stamford, Conn., Captain. Left Fortress Monroe November 8th, in company with the fleet of seventeen vessels, for Savannah. There were no prisoners on the Blackstone going south. Saw on the George Leary, a lot of about four to five hundred, who seemed in good spirits and condition, and apparently well clothed. We arrived at Hilton Head on the we left it on November 20, arrived at Venus point eight or nine miles northeast of Savannah, in river that evening; on 21st we loaded five hundred and sixty-five of our men. Col. Mulford

said, as we had no berths, he would give us the best of the returning prisoners. There were at least twenty in the first stages of fever, and fit subjects for the hospital, yet all walked on board. There were six or seven we feared could not live, but by careful nursing they were brought to Annapolis and carried ashore. After we had landed our men, we went out to the Atlantic which drew too much water to get to the dock, and took her men. There seemed about the same number of men; of these there were seven who had died on the passage, one died while we were carrying him to the wharf, and two appeared to be dying as they were carried ashore. The prisoners on board the Atlantic appeared in a pitiable condition, while fifty or sixty carried on an upper deck were in a horrible condition, living, dying skeletons, filthy with vermin, and nearly, if not quite a dozen naked and with no covering but the blanket furnished by our government. Of the fifty or sixty, they were mostly so weak that I had to lift their heads to get them in a different position. One of these asked me to help him to turn over, the bones had worn through his skin. Part of the crew of the B. helped me to put on shirts and drawers, furnished by the Christian Commission, on those naked.

The fifty or sixty did not speak harshly or vindictively, but sadly and mournfully of their cruel treatment by the South. In regard to food they were kept on short allowance on the most trifling excuse and persecuted in various ways. Some of them had money which they hid in their bread and meat. When a young mân from Norwich, Conn., came on board the Blackstone at Savannah, he said he had eaten nothing but raw salt meat for several days, had a terrible diarrhoea, and wanted some food suitable to his case.

Of the captain, W. C. Berry, the mate, George G. Fletcher, steward, Philip Collaman, and the three engineers, Joseph J. Illingworth, John Illingworth and Timothy Leary, and the crew generally, too much could not be said of their kindness, sympathy and generosity towards these men.

Dr. A. Chapel, Surgeon in charge at West building hospital, and whom we saw at the boat when a load of our men arrived, wrote to Mr. Wade, chairman of the committee on part of the war as follows:

"BALTIMORE, May 26, 1864.

"I am very sorry that your committee could not have seen those cases when first received. No one from these pictures (photographs) can form a true estimate of their condition then. Not one in ten was able to stand alone; some of them were so covered and eaten by vermin, that they nearly resembled cases of small pox, and so emaciated that they were really living skeletons, and hardly that, as the result shows, forty out of one hundred and four have died up to this date.

"If there has been anything so horrible, so fiendish, as this wholesale starvation, in the history of this satanic rebellion, I have failed to note it. Better the massacres at Lawrence, Fort Pillow and Plymouth, than to be thus starved to death by inches, through long and weary months. I wish I had possessed the power to compel all the northern sympathizers with this rebellion, to come in and look upon the work of the chivalrous sons of the hospitable and sunny south, when these skeletons were first received here. A rebel colonel, a prisoner here, who stood with sad face looking on as they were received, finally shook his head and walked away, apparently ashamed that he held any relation to men who could be guilty of such deeds."

To the individual testimony of one from Belle Island, one from Libby, with the observation of Mr. Tiffany, we give the paper drawn up by our officers at Charleston, pleading on behalf of the prisoners at Andersonville.

To the President of the United States : "For some time past there has been a concentration of prisoners from all points of the Rebel territory to the State of Georgia-the commissioned officers being confined at Macon and the enlisted men at Andersonville. Recent movements of the Union troops, under General Sherman, have compelled the removal of prisoners to other points, and it is now understood that they will be removed to Savannah, Columbus and Charleston. No change of this kind holds out any prospect of re

lief to our poor men. Indeed, as the localities selected are far more unhealthy, there must be an increase of suffering."

"Colonel Hill, Provost Marshal General of Confederate States, at Atlanta, stated to one of the undersigned that there were thirty-five thousand prisoners at Andersonville, and by all accounts from the United States prisoners who have been confined there, the number is not overstated by him. These thirty-five thousand are confined in a field of some thirty acres, enclosed by a board fence, heavily guarded. About one-third have various kinds of indifferent shelter. The rest, without any, are exposed to the rains and storms, the cold dews of the night, and the more terrible effects of the sun, with almost tropical fierceness, upon their unprotected heads. This mass of men jostle and crowd each other up and down the limits of their enclosure by day, and at night lie upon the naked earth, with only the clothing they had when they came, few having blankets."

Upon entering the prison every one is deliberately stripped of money and other property, and as no clothing or blankets are ever supplied to their prisoners, the condition of soldiers just from an active campaign can be easily imagined. Thousands are without pants or coats, and hundreds even without a pair of drawers to cover their nakedness."

To these men is issued three-fourths of a pound of bread or meal, and oneeighth of a pound of meat per day. Upon this the prisoner must live or die. The meal often unsifted and sour-the meat North would be consigned to a soap barrel. By this they are barely holding life together. To the starvation and exposure add the sickness by which, on an average, one hundred die daily." "Of twelve of us', said one, who were captured, six died and four are in the hospital. I never expect to see them again. There are but two of us left.' In 1862, at Montgomery, Alabama, under more favorable circumstances, where the prisoners were protected by sheds, one hundred and fifty to two hundred were sick from diarrhoea and chills out of seven hundred. This per cent. would give seven thousand at Andersonville."

The blood of the martyrs, it is said, was the seed of the church, but not more truly so than such men will prove the sowing afresh in the hearts of the people of this nation and the world, the seeds of liberty. Little have we felt personally so as to be able to prize the inheritance which our fathers bought for us.

We lo k on these horrors, in the cruel treatment of our men, as next to impossible--as if they had never been endured before-and indeed it is seldom that such treatment has ever been bestowed on men; particularly by those who pretend to civilization and christianity.

A young man on a flag-of-truce boat, connected with the Sanitary Commission, gave us an extract from a report which one of our paroled men had found in Richmond, which showed that in the hospitals of our men at Richmond, out of two thousand seven hundred and seventy-nine in hospitals, in January, February and March, one thousand three hundred and ninety-six had died. But laying aside all other statements or calculations, and all editorials commending cruel treatment towards our prisoners, let one single fact speak. The Richmond Examiner" of November 10, 1864, says:

“Since the establishment of the prison post at Andersonville, Georgia, last Spring twelve thousand of the Yankee prisoners held there have died and been buried there, and this mortality existed among a body of prisoners at no time exceeding forty thousand."

That is, such has been the neglect or brutality on the part of the Rebel authorities that nearly one-third of our men have died in their hands.

L. L. Key, who acted as chief of police at Andersonville on the execution, says—“ When I arrived there were some 4,000 prisoners—but

the number increased, till in September there were 32,000 to 35,000. In August and September the deaths were from 75 to 125 per day.

Horrible as were the horrors of the revolution, and terribly as they did suffer, there is nothing to compare in magnitude with this destruction, and the animus of it bears out the statement of a Captain who saw a man treated so badly that he remonstrated with the Surgeon and guard, saying, that if they did not treat them better they would kill them. To which the Surgeon replied, with an oath, "That is what we want to do."

Let us compare this with English treatment of our fathers-1776 to 1782-the men who suffered--whose lives were worn out inch by inch in the prison ships of hollow-hearted. sanctimonious, selfish England. No parallel has been seen since in this country until this imprisonment. of Libby, Belle Island, Andersonville, &c.

"The story of the prisons in the city of New York, and the prison ships in the Wallabocht bay, during the war for our independence, was the darkest in the history of the Revolutionary struggle. War, at all times dreadful. here assumed its most fearful character. Occasional acts of inhumanity and cowardly brutality committed in the heat of battle when the thirst for blood is whetted by its indulgence, may be excused, as the temporary triumph of passion and vengeance over reason and humanity; but for the cold, calculating cruelty, regularly adopted, and steadily pursued towards our unfortunate countrymen, there was no excuse. The voice of civilization and humanity cried out against it, and the results proved that an insulted Providence frowned upon it with fearful indignation.

Savage nations sometimes put their prisoners to death, but this has never been openly practiced by the civilized nations of the earth. The custom of the cultivated nations of antiquity, of selling their prisoners into slavery, met the most positive reprobation in the begining of the feudal ages, and the system of ransom, which was then adopted, yielded, early in the seventeenth century, to the more liberal and humane policy of exchange of prisoners under cartels. Until that exchange took place the law of nations as well as the principles of humanity required the belligerent parties to provide proper accomodations for their prisoners and to supply them with healthy food, and in case of sickness with proper medical attendance. How England observed these rules in the case of our imprisoned countrymen the civilized nations of the world may judge.

"The battle of Brooklyn, and the capture of Fort Washington, in the Fall of 1776, put the British in possession of nearly four thousand prisoners, and by the arrest of citizens supposed to sympathize with the patriots they soon increased the number to five thousand. Our enemies were now compelled to adopt the system of parole, or to turn all the public and other large buildings in New York into prisons for their reception. Their feelings of humanity as well as their cowardly policy led them to adopt the latter course. The churches and sugar houses and prisons were crowded with the unfortunate patriots to such an extent, in some instances, that there was not space for them to lie down to rest. Among them they threw their own criminals-vile wretches gathered from the purlieus of their large cities, as if they were fit asso

ciates for men whose only crime had been love of country and liberty. But this moral pestilence did not suffice to gratify their malice; for in these crowded prisons they scattered the seeds of disease and death. The prisoners were poorly fed on worm-eaten bread and peas, and putrid beef, which not unfrequently they were compelled to eat in its raw state; and the more surely to accomplish the objects contemplated, those sick with small-pox and infectious fevers were left among them unattended, without medicines to relieve them or water to cool their parched lips. Denied the light and air of Heaven, and starved by their inhuman keepers, and broken-hearted by the supplications and groans of their distressed kindred and countrymen, they sickened and died, and were thrown like dogs into their native soil, unless it happened to be the good pleasure of Cunningham, their infamous jailor, to march them out under the cover of midnight darkness to the gallows and the

grave.

"These executions were thus conducted. A guard was despatched from the Provost, about half past twelve at night, to the Barrack-street and the neighborhood of the upper barracks, to order the people to shut their window shutters and put out their lights, forbidding them at the same time to presume to look out of their windows and doors, on pain of death; after which the unfortunate prisoners were conducted, gagged. just behind the upper barracks, and hung without ceremony, and buried by the black pioneer of the Provost. Thus about two hundred and sixty American prisoners were murdered without cause, and in violation of every law, human and divine.

While these horrid deeds and instruments of destruction went on in the city, vessels which they had previously converted into prison ships, at Gravesend bay, were now removed to the Hudson and East rivers, where they were anchored for the same purposes. The soldiers taken prisoners on Long Island, and confined in these vessels, were transferred to the prisons in New York, to make room for the marine prisoners, now rapidly accumulating.

About October 20th, 1776, the Whitby, a large transport, was removed to the Wallabocht bay, and moored opposite Remsen's Mill.” She was the first prison ship in this bay, and was crowded with prisoners when she arrived. Many prisoners from the army, and citizens arrested on suspicion were confined in her, which was not the case with the other prison ships. She was said to be the most sickly of all the hulks, and the only prison ship in the bay until 1777; and during two months in the Spring of that year, the entire beach, between the ravine and Demser's Dock, was filled with graves; and before the first day of May, the ravine itself was filled with the remains of the hundreds who died from pestilence, or were starved to death in this dreadful prison.

"May, 1777, two more ships came, and the Whitby's prisoners were transferred to them; but they were almost as sickly as the other. No exchanges took place, but death made room for the early arrivals. On Sunday afternoon, after the middle of October, 1777, one of these vessels was burned, many prisoners perishing in the flames. Another burnt in February, 1778.

These were succeeded by the Good Hope, Scorpion, Prince of Wales, John, Falmouth, Hunter, Stromboli and Old Jersey; all of