Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 01.djvu/153

This page has been validated.
Treatment of Prisoners During the War.
145


The treatment of Brigadier-General J. H. Morgan and his officers were brutal and ignominious in the extreme. It will be found stated in the depositions of Captain M. D. Logan, Lieutenant W. P. Crow, Lieutenant-Colonel James B. McCreary and Captain B. A. Tracey, that they were put in the Ohio Penitentiary and compelled to submit to the treatment of felons. Their beards were shaved and their hair was cut close to the head. They were confined in convicts' cells and forbidden to speak to each other. For attempts to escape, and for other offences of a very light character, they were subjected to the horrible punishment of the dungeon. In mid-winter, with the atmosphere many degrees below zero, without blanket or overcoat, they were confined in a cell without fire or light, with a fœtid and poisonous air to breathe, and here they were kept until life was nearly extinct. Their condition on coming out was so deplorable as to draw tears from their comrades. The blood was oozing from their hands and faces. The treatment in the St. Louis prison was equally barbarous. Captain William H. Sebring testifies: "Two of us—A. C. Grimes and myself—were carried out into the open air in the prison yard, on the 25th of December, 1863, and handcuffed to a post; here we were kept all night in sleet, snow and cold. We were relieved in the day time, but again brought to the post and handcuffed to it in the evening, and thus we were kept all night until the 2d of January, 1864. I was badly frost-bitten and my health was much impaired. This cruel infliction was done by order of Captain Byrnes, Commandant of Prisons in St. Louis. He was barbarous and insulting to the last degree."

OUR PRISONERS PUT INTO CAMPS INFECTED WITH SMALL-POX.

But even a greater inhumanity than any we have mentioned was perpetrated upon our prisoners at Camp Douglas and Camp Chase. It is proved by the testimony of Thomas P. Holloway, John P. Fennell, H. H. Barlow, H. C. Barton, C. D. Bracken and J. S. Barlow, that our prisoners in large numbers were put into "condemned camps," where small-pox was prevailing, and speedily contracted this loathsome disease, and that as many as forty new cases often appeared daily among them. Even the Federal officers who guarded them to the camp protested against this unnatural atrocity; yet it was done. The men who contracted the disease were removed to a hospital about a mile off, but the plague was already introduced, and continued to prevail. For a period of more than twelve months the disease was constantly in the camp; yet our prisoners during all this time were continually brought to it, and subjected to certain infection. Neither do we find evidences of amendment on the part of our enemies, notwithstanding the boasts of the "Sanitary Commission." At Nashville, prisoners recently captured from General Hood's army, even when sick and wounded, have been cruelly deprived of all nourishment suited to their condition; and other prisoners from the same army have been carried into the infected Camps Douglas and Chase.