Part 10

15. Military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government, or of peculiar danger to the captor; it allows of all destruction of property, and obstruction of the ways and channels of traffic, travel, or communication, and of all withholding of sustenance or means of life from the enemy; of the appropriation of whatever an enemy's country affords necessary for the safety and subsistence of the army, and of such deception as does not involve the breaking of good faith, either positively pledged regarding agreements entered into during the war, or supposed by the modern law of war to exist. Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another and to God.

16. Military necessity does not admit of cruelty,--that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or revenge,--nor of maiming or wounding, except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. It does not admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of the wanton devastation of a district. It admits of deception, but disdains acts of perfidy; and, in general, military necessity does not include any act of hostility which renders the return to peace unnecessarily difficult.

27. The law of war can no more wholly dispense with retaliation than can the law of nations, of which it is a branch; yet civilized nations acknowledge retaliation as the sternest feature of war. A reckless enemy often leaves to his opponents no other means of securing himself against the repetition of barbarous outrage.

28. Retaliation will, therefore, never be resorted to as a measure of mere revenge, but only as a means of protective retribution, and cautiously and unavoidably; that is to say, retaliation shall only be resorted to after careful inquiry into the real occurrence and the character of the misdeeds that may demand retribution.

33. It is no longer considered lawful--on the contrary it is held to be a serious breach of the law of war--to force the subjects of the enemy into the service of the victorious government, except the latter should proclaim, after a fair and complete conquest of the hostile country or district, that it is resolved to keep the country, district, or place permanently as its own, and make it a portion of its own country.

49. A prisoner of war is a public enemy, armed or attached to the hostile army for active aid, who has fallen into the hands of the captor, either fighting or wounded, on the field or in the hospital, by individual surrender or by capitulation.

52. No belligerent has the right to declare that he will treat every captured man in arms, of a levy en masse, as a brigand or bandit. * * *

56. A prisoner of war is subject to no punishment for being a public enemy, nor is any revenge wreaked upon him by the intentional infliction of any suffering, or disgrace by cruel imprisonment, want of food, by mutilation, death, or any other barbarity.

57. So soon as a man is armed by a sovereign government, and takes the soldier's oath of fidelity, he is a belligerent; his killing, wounding, or other warlike acts are no individual crime or offence. * * *

67. The law of nations allows every sovereign government to make war upon another sovereign state, and therefore admits of no rules or laws different from those of regular warfare regarding the treatment of prisoners of war, although they may belong to the army of a government which the captor may consider as a wanton and unjust assailant.

The use of poison in any manner, be it to poison wells, or food, or arms, is wholly excluded from modern warfare. He that uses it puts himself out of the pale of the laws and usages of war.

71. Whoever intentionally inflicts additional wounds on an enemy already wholly disabled, or kills such an enemy, or who orders or encourages soldiers to do so, shall suffer death if duly convicted, whether he belongs to the army of the United States, or is an enemy captured after having committed his misdeed.

72. Money and other valuables on the person of a prisoner, such as watches or jewelry, as well as extra clothing, are regarded by the American army as the private property of the prisoners, and the appropriation of such valuables or money is considered dishonorable, and is prohibited.

74. A prisoner of war, being a public enemy, is the prisoner of the government and not of the captor. No ransom can be paid by a prisoner of war to his individual captor or to any officer in command. The government alone releases captives, according to rules prescribed by itself.

75. Prisoners of war are subject to confinement or imprisonment, such as may be deemed necessary on account of safety, but they are to be subjected to no other intentional suffering or indignity. The confinement and mode of treating a prisoner may be varied during his captivity, according to the demands of safety.

76. Prisoners of war shall be fed upon plain and wholesome food whenever practicable, and treated with humanity. They may be required to work for the benefit of the captor's government, according to their rank and condition.

77. A prisoner of war who escapes, may be shot or otherwise killed in his flight, but neither death nor any other punishment shall be inflicted upon him, simply for his attempt to escape, which the law of war does not consider a crime. Stricter means of security shall be used after an unsuccessful attempt at escape. * * *

109. The exchange of prisoners of war is an act of convenience to both belligerents. If no general cartel has been concluded it cannot be demanded by either of them. No belligerent is obliged to exchange prisoners of war. A cartel is voidable as soon as either party has violated it.

119. Prisoners of war may be released from captivity by exchange and under certain circumstances, also by parole.

120. The term parole designates the pledge of individual good faith and honor to do, or to omit doing, certain acts after he who gives his parole shall have been dismissed wholly or partially from the power of the captor.

121. The pledge of the parole is always an individual but not a private act.

133. No prisoner of war can be forced by the hostile government to parole himself, and no government is obliged to parole prisoners of war, or to parole all captured officers, if it paroles any. As the pledging of the parole is an individual act, so is paroling, on the other hand, an act of choice on the part of the belligerent.

XI.

From the evidence obtained from different sources, and from the results, it may be properly reasoned that there was a secret and fixed intent on the part of the cabal at Richmond to weaken the Federal armies by destroying the prisoners by starvation and exposure.

The open robbery of all the captives, the neglect of the commissariat when there was no excuse, the refusal to remedy atrocious evils, all betray malice and design. That intrepid and humane officer, Colonel Chandler, made complaint of this prison, in his Inspection Report, as early as July 5, 1864, when he uses the following language: "No shelter whatever, nor materials for constructing any, had been provided by the prison authorities, and the ground being entirely bare of trees, none is within reach of the prisoners; nor has it been possible, from the overcrowded state of the enclosure, to arrange the camp with any system. Each man has been permitted to protect himself as best he can, by stretching his blanket, or whatever he may have about him, on such sticks as he can procure. Of other shelter there has been none. There is no medical attendance within the stockade. Many (twenty yesterday) are carted out daily who have died from unknown causes, and whom the medical officers have never seen. The dead are hauled out by the wagon-load, and buried without coffins, their hands, in many instances, being first mutilated with an axe in the removal of any finger-rings they may have. Raw rations have to be issued to a very large portion, who are entirely unprovided with proper utensils, and furnished so limited a supply of fuel they are compelled to dig with their hands in the filthy marsh before mentioned for roots, &c. No soap or clothing have ever been issued. After inquiry, the writer is confident that, with slight exertions, green corn and other anti-scorbutics could readily be obtained. The present hospital arrangements were only intended for the accommodation of ten thousand men, and are totally insufficient, both in character and extent, for the present need,--the number of prisoners being now more than three times as great. The number of cases requiring medical treatment is in an increased ratio. It is impossible to state the number of sick, many dying within the stockade whom the medical officers have never seen or heard of till their remains are brought out for interment."

Later reports were made by this inspector, and they were forwarded to the rebel executive, indorsed by the assistant-secretary of war, Campbell, that this condition was a reproach to the Confederates as a nation. But not the least notice was taken of these startling and heart-rending revelations, in which Winder was denounced as a murderer from the statements made by Winder himself. The wretch and the system of treatment were denounced by Stephens of South Carolina, by Foote of Tennessee; yet no response was obtained from the secretary of war, or from the executive, Davis. When Breckenridge became secretary of war, shortly before the downfall of the rebellion, the brave Chandler demanded that some notice, some action, should be taken on the reports he had submitted months before, or he would resign his commission; for his honor and humanity were involved.

What action was taken, if any there was, is not known to the writer. The thanks of the South, the kind wishes of all who honor the warm and generous impulses of our better nature, are due to the noble Chandler, who had the courage, the temerity, to expose the suffering condition at Andersonville, and to denounce the authors again and again at the peril of his life.

It is known to the writer that Surgeons Bemis and Fluellen, of the rebel army medical staff, inspected the condition of the prison, and protested against the cruel management.

One of the chief medical officers of the rebel army of the South informed the author that the medical men at this prison were without any influence whatever; and although the prison was within his department for a time, he had no more voice or influence in its management than the man in the moon; and that everything relating to the prison was _controlled and devised by the authorities at Richmond_.

The refusal or the neglect of the rebel authorities, to whom these reports were submitted, to take notice of or remedy the exposed evils, is a tacit acknowledgment and approval of the system at work.

XII.

Northrop, the rebel commissary-general, whom Foote denounced in the rebel Congress as a monster, and incompetent, urged the secretary of war, Seddon, to reduce the rations to gruel and bread, in retaliation for alleged abuses to the rebel prisoners in our hands. Seddon declined to do it openly, on account of the technicalities of the law; but Northrop took the measure quietly into his own hands, and withheld meat so often and so long from the prisoners near Richmond as to call forth a yell of remonstrance from even the inhuman Winder.

When the prisoners at Belle Isle--numbering from eight to thirteen thousand--were deprived of meat,--from the incompetency or the wilfulness of the commissary-general,--for a fortnight at a time, the secretary of war refused to allow compassionate parties to buy cattle in the neighborhood of the city, and bring them to the prison, stating that Northrop had informed him that the prisoners fared as well as the soldiers.

And in pursuance of this diabolical plan of starvation, orders were given, in December, by the rebel war department, that no more supplies should be received from the United States for the prisoners, for which no apology or reason was ever given.

Winder was denounced by members of Congress; but Davis tools no notice, because he was his personal friend. Seddon took sides with Northrop, and would not allow Captain Warner to buy cattle for the prisoners around Richmond, as he offered to do, and relieve their sufferings.

The postmaster-general wanted to kill the prisoners taken in raiding; and Seddon, the secretary of war, stated that he was always in favor of fighting under the black flag.

When Chandler made his report, Cobb was writing that all was going on well at the prison. Colonel Persons, who was the first commander, and relieved by Winder, applied for an injunction against the prison as a nuisance. No compassion, humanity, or decency was observed in the demand for the process: it was simply a nuisance, and dangerous to the health of the surrounding region. No plea was made that thousands were being murdered there.

XIII.

It is known, and proved beyond "cavil of a doubt," that the prisoners were robbed of all articles of value, even hats, coats, blankets, and shoes, and that no attempt was made to restore them, or to supply any deficiency that arose from this rapacious dishonesty.

In striking contrast with this "barbarism of slavery," notice the treatment in our own prisons, where all needful clothing and blankets were issued to the rebel prisoners, whenever their circumstances required it; and during the period of rebellion, a vast quantity of coats, blankets, stockings, shirts, and drawers were supplied by the quartermaster's department. Thirty-five thousand articles of clothing were issued in eight months to the rebel prisoners at Fort Delaware alone. Of the many thousand rebel wounded and sick prisoners in our hands, who have been under the observation of the writer during the war, all, without exception, were treated with kindness, and the wants of all supplied in the same manner as with our men.

In the Dartmoor prison, the British allowed to each of our men a hammock, a blanket, a horse rug, and a bed containing four pounds of flocks; and every eighteen months one woollen cap, one yellow jacket, one pair of pantaloons, and one waistcoat of the same material as allowed to the British army; and also, every nine months, one pair of shoes, and one shirt. The prison was inspected by the chief surgeon of England, and whenever complaint was made by the prisoners, the admiralty sent officers of high rank to investigate the causes of complaint. The officers of the prison hulks in England behaved generally with kindness and humanity to our men, as is shown by the records of the captivity.

But even this treatment, humane as it appears when compared with the rebel system, was less generous than that bestowed by the Algerine pirates upon our sailors captured by them. The captives in Algiers received good and abundant vegetable food, and were lodged in airy places.

XIV.

This system of barbarity of the rebels towards their prisoners having become known to the United States government, efforts were made to ameliorate the condition of the suffering men, but without avail.

Measures of retaliation were entertained by Congress, in hopes of effecting a change by the clamors from the rebel prisoners themselves, and the following resolutions were introduced by Mr. Wade, of Ohio, but they were not adopted:--

JOINT RESOLUTION, advising Retaliation for the Cruel Treatment of Prisoners by the Insurgents.

_Whereas_, It has come to the knowledge of Congress that great numbers of our soldiers, who have fallen as prisoners of war into the hands of the insurgents, have been subjected to treatment unexampled for cruelty in the history of civilized war, and finding its parallels only in the conduct of savage tribes; a treatment resulting in the death of multitudes by the slow but designed process of starvation, and by mortal diseases occasioned by insufficient and unhealthy food, by wanton exposure of their persons to the inclemency of the weather, and by deliberate assassination of unoffending men; and the murder, in cold blood, of prisoners after surrender; and, whereas a continuance of these barbarities, in contempt of the laws of war, and in disregard of the remonstrances of the national authorities, has presented to us the alternative of suffering our brave soldiers thus to be destroyed, or to apply the principle of retaliation for their protection: Therefore,

_Resolved_, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That, in the judgment of Congress, it has become justifiable and necessary that the President should, in order to prevent the continuance and recurrence of such barbarities, and to insure the observance by the insurgents of the laws of civilized war, resort at once to measures of retaliation. That, in our opinion, such retaliation ought to be inflicted upon the insurgent officers now in our hands, or hereafter to fall into our hands, as prisoners; that such officers ought to be subjected to like treatment practised towards our officers or soldiers in the hands of the insurgents, in respect to quantity and quality of food, clothing, fuel, medicine, medical attendance, personal exposure, or other mode of dealing with them; that, with a view to the same ends, the insurgent prisoners in our hands ought to be placed under the control and in the keeping of officers and men who have themselves been prisoners in the hands of the insurgents, and have thus acquired a knowledge of their mode of treating Union prisoners; that explicit instructions ought to be given to the forces having the charge of such insurgent prisoners, requiring them to carry out strictly and promptly the principles of this resolution in every case, until the President, having received satisfactory information of the abandonment by the insurgents of such barbarous practices, shall revoke or modify said instructions. Congress do not, however, intend by this resolution to limit or restrict the power of the President to the modes or principles of retaliation herein mentioned, but only to advise a resort to them as demanded by the occasion.

Mr. Sumner offered the following Resolutions as a substitute for the Resolution of the Committee:--

_Resolved_, That retaliation is harsh always, even in the simplest cases, and is permissible only where, in the first place, it may reasonably be expected to effect its object, and where, in the second place, it is consistent with the usages of civilized society; and that, in the absence of these essential conditions, it is a useless barbarism, having no other end than vengeance, which is forbidden alike to nations and to men.

_Resolved_, That the treatment of our officers and soldiers in rebel prisons is cruel, savage, and heart-rending beyond all precedent; that it is shocking to morals; that it is an offence against human nature itself; that it adds new guilt to the great crime of the rebellion, and constitutes an example from which history will turn with sorrow and disgust.

_Resolved_, That any attempted imitation of rebel barbarism in the treatment of prisoners would be plainly impracticable, on account of its inconsistency with the prevailing sentiments of humanity among us; that it would be injurious at home, for it would barbarize the whole community; that it would be utterly useless, for it could not affect the cruel authors of the revolting conduct which we seek to overcome; that it would be immoral, inasmuch as it proceeded from vengeance alone; that it could have no other result than to degrade the national character and the national name, and to bring down upon our country the reprobation of history; and that, being thus impracticable, useless, immoral, and degrading, it must be rejected as a measure of retaliation, precisely as the barbarism of roasting or eating prisoners is always rejected by civilized powers.

_Resolved_, That the United States, filled with grief and sympathy for cherished citizens, who, as officers and soldiers, have become the victims of Heaven-defying outrage, hereby declare their solemn determination to put an end to this great iniquity by putting an end to the rebellion of which it is the natural fruit; that to secure this humane and righteous consummation, they pledge anew their best energies and all the resources of the whole people, and they call upon all to bear witness that, in this necessary warfare with barbarism, they renounce all vengeance and every evil example, and plant themselves firmly on the sacred landmarks of Christian civilization, under the protection of that God who is present with every prisoner, and enables heroic souls to suffer for their country.

XV.

The pathetic letter, which was composed by the suffering and dying men at Andersonville, and addressed to the President in August, 1864, and forwarded by the prisoners who were sent to Charleston, led to renewed efforts on the part of the United States government; but no notice was taken by the rebel authorities of the plea in behalf of humanity. The following letter is said to be the one sent to the President:--

_The Memorial of the Union Prisoners confined at Andersonville, Georgia, to the President of the United States._

CONFEDERATE STATES PRISON, CHARLESTON, S. C., Aug., 1864.

TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

The condition of the enlisted men belonging to the Union armies, now prisoners to the Confederate rebel forces, is such that it becomes our duty, and the duty of every commissioned officer, to make known the facts in the case to the government of the United States, and to use every honorable effort to secure a general exchange of prisoners, thereby relieving thousands of our comrades from the horror now surrounding them.

For some time past there has been a concentration of prisoners from all parts 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 armies under General Sherman have compelled the removal of prisoners to other points, and it is now understood that they will be removed to Savannah, Georgia, and Columbus and Charleston, South Carolina. But no change of this kind holds out any prospect of relief to our poor men. Indeed, as the localities selected are far more unhealthy, there must be an increase rather than a diminution of suffering.