tendered to him unconditionally, from that prison in the South which, above all others, they charged to have been the scene of unusual suffering. The inference is irresistible that this officer felt that it would be dangerous to his official character to relieve the Confederacy of the burthen of supporting these prisoners, although he and his countrymen affected to believe that we were slowly starving them to death. The policy at Washington was to let Federal prisoners starve, if the process involved the Confederates in a similar catastrophe—and "fired the Northern heart."
I have introduced more of my personal movements and actions into this recital than is agreeable or apparently in good taste, but it has been unavoidable in making the narrative consecutive and intelligible, and I trust will be pardoned, even if appearing to transcend the bounds of becoming modesty. In the absence of all my official papers relating to these subjects (which I presume were taken to Washington after I surrendered them, and are still there, unless it was deemed policy to destroy them when Captain Wirz was on trial), I have not been able to go into many minute details that might add interest to the statement, but nothing, I think, to the leading fact—that the United States refused an unconditional delivery of so many of its own men, inmates of that prison (Andersonville), which they professed then to regard as a Confederate slaughter-pen and place of intentional diabolical cruelties inflicted on the sick and helpless. Was this course not a part of a policy of deception for "firing the Northern heart?" Impartial history will one day investigate and answer this question. And there we may safely leave it, with a simple record of the facts.
Very truly, your friend,
J. D. Imboden.
The above documents seem to us to show beyond all controversy that whatever suffering existed at Andersonville (and it is freely admitted that the suffering was terrible), resulted from causes which were beyond the control of the Confederate Government, and were directly due to the cold-blooded, cruel policy of the Federal authorities, which not only refused to exchange prisoners, but rejected every overture to mitigate their sufferings.
The Federal Government has had possession of the Confederate archives for now nearly eleven years. The Confederate leaders and their friends have been denied all access to those archives, while partisans on the other side have ransacked them at will in eager search for every sentence which could be garbled out of its connection to prove the charges made, with reckless disregard of the truth, against the "Rebel crew." It is fair to presume that those records contain no stronger proof of "Rebel cruelty to prisoners" than has already been brought to light, while some of us are fondly hoping
