Lee's Ignorance

Testimony given by Confederates themselves, confirm the statements made by the prisoners. So early as September, 1862, Augustus R. Wright, chairman of a committee of the Confederate house of representatives, made a report on the prisons at Richmond confining Union captives, to George W. Randolph, then the Confederate Secretary of War, in which report it was said that the state of things was "terrible beyond description;" that "the committee could not stay in the room over a few seconds;" that a change must be made, and that "the committee makes the report to the Secretary of War, and not to the House, because, in the latter case, it would be printed, and, for the honor of the nation, such things must be kept secret." In December, 1863, Henry S. Foote, a member of the Confederate House of Representatives, offered a resolution for the appointment of a committee of inquiry concerning the alleged ill-treatment of Union prisoners. His humane resolution was voted down. In the course of his remarks in its favor, Mr. Foote read testimony which, he said, was on record in the Confederate War Department, to prove that the charges of cruelty were true. Referring to Northrup, the Confederate Commissary-General, he said: "This man has placed our government in the attitude charged by the enemy, and has attempted to starve the prisoners in our hands." He cited an elaborate report made by the Commissary-General to the Secretary of War (Seddon), in which he used this significant language: "For the subsistence of a human Yankee carcase, a vegetable diet is the most proper," the terrible meaning of which is obvious. Foote, also, in a letter written at Montreal, in the spring of 1865, concerning the escape of Streight and his men from Libby Prison, by mining, declared "that a government officer of respectability" told him "that a systematic scheme was on foot for subjecting these unfortunate men to starvation." He further declared that Northrup's proposition was "endorsed by Seddon, the Secretary of War," who said substantially in that endorsement, that "the time had arrived for retaliation upon the prisoners of war of the enemy." In that letter Foote proved (1) that the starving of Union prisoners was known to the Confederate authorities; (2) that the Confederate Commissary-General proposed it; (3) that the Confederate Secretary of War approved and officially endorsed it; (4) that the Confederate of Exchange knew it; and (5) that the Confederate House of Representatives knew of it, and endeavored to prevent an investigation. Foote said the positive proof was in the War Department. A greater portion of these documents were burned when the Confederate Government fled from Richmond. Such is the testimony of one of the legislators of the Confederacy, who, it may be presumed, knew, personally, the facts of the case. And it is a matter of record, that a committee of the "United States Christian Commission," appeared before the lines of Lee's army and sought access to the Union prisoners in Richmond and on Belle Isle, in the James River there, to afford them relief, with the understanding that similar commissions would be allowed to visit Confederate captives. But they were not allowed to pass, because, as Confederate witnesses testify, the authorities at Richmond dared not let the outside world know, from competent witnesses, the horrible truths which such a visit would have revealed. But General Robert E. Lee (whose family resided on Franklin street in Richmond, from the rear gallery of whose residence he could, with his fieldglass, have looked into the faces of the starving and freezing prisoners on Belle Isle, and who, after the autumn of 1863, was never a hundred miles from that city) testified before the National "Committee on Reconstruction," in February, 1866, that he was not aware of any bad treatment suffered by Union prisoners--not aware that any of them died of cold and starvation--that no report was ever made to him of the sad condition of Union prisoners anywhere--that he never knew who was in command at Andersonville, Salisbury, and other gathering-places of Union prisoners, until after the war, and that he "knew nothing in the world" of the alleged cruelties about which complaints had been made!

When the starvation plan had succeeded in reducing forty thousand Union prisoners to skeletons, generally no better for service than so many dead men, a proposition was made by the Confederate authorities for a resumption of exchanges. Again humanity took precedence of expediency, and these poor creatures in Confederate prisons were exchanged for as many prisoners who had been well fed and otherwise comfortably provided for in the North. This was attested by the Confederate Commissioner of Exchange, who, in a letter to General Winder, from City Point, where exchanges had been resumed, said exultingly: "The arrangement I have made works largely in our favor. We get rid of a set of miserable wretches, and receive some of the best material I ever saw."