General of Subsistence was ordered to provide for the sustenance of prisoners of war. According to General Orders No. 159, Adjutant and Inspector-General's office, 'Hospitals for prisoners of war are placed on the same footing as other Confederate States hospitals in all respects, and will be managed accordingly.'
"The Federal prisoners were removed to southwestern Georgia in the early part of 1864, not only to secure a place of confinement more remote than Richmond and other large towns from the operations of the United States forces, but also 'to secure a more abundant and easy supply of food.' As far as my experience extends, no person who had been reared on wheat bread, and who was held in captivity for any length of time, could retain his health and escape either scurvy or diarrhœa, if confined to the Confederate ration (issued to the soldiers in the field and hospital) of unbolted corn meal and bacon. The large armies of the Confederacy suffered more than once from scurvy; and as the war progressed, secondary hemorrhage and hospital gangrene became fearfully prevalent from the deteriorated condition of the systems of the troops, dependent on the prolonged use of salt meat; and but for the extra supplies received from home, and from the various State benevolent institutions, scurvy and diarrhœa and dysentery would have been still farther prevalent.
"It was believed by the citizens of the Southern States that the Confederate authorities desired to effect a continuous and speedy exchange of prisoners of war in their hands on the ground that the retention of these soldiers in captivity was a great calamity, not only entailing heavy expenditure of the scanty means of subsistence, already insufficient to support their suffering, half-starved, half-clad and unpaid armies, struggling in the field with overwhelming numbers, and embarrassing their imperfect and dilapidated lines of communication, but also as depriving them of the services of a veteran army, fully equal to one-third the number actively engaged in the field; and the history of subsequent events have shown that the retention in captivity of the Confederate prisoners was one of the efficient causes of the final and complete overthrow of the Confederate Government. * * * * It is my honest belief that if the exhausted condition of the Confederate Government—with its bankrupt currency—with its retreating and constantly diminishing armies—with the apparent impossibility of filling up the vacancies by death and desertion and sickness, and of gathering a guard of reserves of sufficient strength to allow of the proper enlargement of the military prison and with a country torn and bleeding along all its borders—with its starving women and children and old men, fleeing from the desolating march of contending armies, crowding the dilapidated and overburdened railroad lines, and adding to the distress and consuming the poor charities of those in the interior, who were harassed by the loss of sons and brothers and husbands, and by the fearful visions of starvation and undefined misery—could be fully realized,
