without scruple or mercy. The responsibility of the lives lost at Andersonville rests, since July, 1864, on General Meredith, Commissary-General of Prisoners, and (chiefly) on Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War. No one of sound head or heart would now hold the Northern people responsible for these things. The blood is on the skirts of their then rulers; and neither Mr. Garfield nor Mr. Blaine can change the record.
I never heard that there was any particular "suffering" at Libby or Belle Isle, and do not believe there was. Crowded prisons are not comfortable places, as our poor fellows found at Fort Delaware, Johnson's Island, &c.
I have at this late day no means of refreshing my memory in regard to the general orders on the subject of prison treatment, but this as a general fact I do know, that Mr. Davis' humanity was considered to be a stronger sentiment with him than public justice, and it was a common remark that no soldier capitally convicted was ever executed, if the President reviewed the record of his conviction. He was always slow to adopt the policy of retaliation for the barbarities inflicted by local commanders on the other side. The controversy between General Winder and Colonel Chandler was never brought to an investigation, for the reasons mentioned above. What the result of that investigation would have been no one can now tell; but I will say in reference to this true old patriot and soldier—a genial man, whose zeal was sometimes ahead of his discretion—that if he was, at Andersonville, the fiend pretended by the "bloody shirt" shriekers, he had in his old age changed his nature very suddenly. I never saw any reason to consider Colonel Chandler's report wilfully injurious to General Winder, and supposed that it was the result of those misunderstandings which not unfrequently spring up between an inspecting officer and a post commander when the former begins to find fault.
I have written hastily. In minor details, the lapse of twelve years may render my memory inaccurate, but of the general accuracy of the narrative I have given, as lying in my own knowledge or reported to me by those whose names I have mentioned, I vouch without hesitation.
R. G. H. Kean.
We have also a
LETTER FROM SECRETARY SEDDON,
dated March 27th, 1876, from which we give the following extract:
"Unfortunately, during my imprisonment after the war, nearly all the papers and memoranda I had connected with the administration of the War Department were destroyed, and I have had so little satisfaction in dwelling upon the sad sacrifices and sufferings that attended and resulted from the futile though glorious efforts
