HUMANE POLICY OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.
At an early period in the present contest the Confederate Government recognized their obligation to treat prisoners of war with humanity and consideration. Before any laws were passed on the subject, the Executive Department provided such prisoners as fell into their hands with proper quarters and barracks to shelter them, and with rations the same in quantity and quality as those furnished to the Confederate soldiers who guarded these prisoners. They also showed an earnest wish to mitigate the sad condition of prisoners of war, by a system of fair and prompt exchange—and the Confederate Congress co-operated in these humane views. By their act, approved on the 21st day of May, 1861, they provided that "all prisoners of war taken, whether on land or at sea, during the pending hostilities with the United States, shall be transferred by the captors from time to time, and as often as convenient, to the Department of War; and it shall be the duty of the Secretary of War, with the approval of the President, to issue such instructions to the Quartermaster-General and his subordinates as shall provide for the safe custody and sustenance of prisoners of war; and the rations furnished prisoners of war shall be the same in quantity and quality as those furnished to enlisted men in the army of the Confederacy." Such were the declared purpose and policy of the Confederate Government towards prisoners of war—and amid all the privations and losses to which their enemies have subjected them, they have sought to carry them into effect.
RATIONS AND GENERAL TREATMENT.
Our investigations for this preliminary report have been confined chiefly to the rations and treatment of the prisoners of war at the Libby and other prisons in Richmond and on Belle Isle. This we have done because the publications to which we have alluded refer chiefly to them, and because the "Report No. 67" of the Northern Congress plainly intimates the belief that the treatment in and around Richmond was worse than it was farther South. That report says: "It will be observed from the testimony, that all the witnesses who testify upon that point state that the treatment they received while confined at Columbia, South Carolina, Dalton, Georgia, and other places, was far more humane than that they received at Richmond, where the authorities of the so-called Confederacy were congregated."Report, p. 3.
The evidence proves that the rations furnished to prisoners of war, in Richmond and on Belle Isle, have been never less than those furnished to the Confederate soldiers who guarded them, and have at some seasons been larger in quantity and better in quality than those furnished to Confederate troops in the field. This has been, because until February, 1864, the Quartermaster's Department furnished the prisoners, and often had provisions or funds when the
