ing to hear General Winder's explanations, Mr. Seddon sent Judge Ould to tell the Federal Agent of Exchange of the reported suffering of the Federal prisoners, and to urge the acceptance of his humane proposition, that if they would not exchange or allow their own surgeons to come to their relief, or allow the Confederate Government to buy medicines for them, they would at least send transportation to Savannah and receive their sick without any equivalent. And since the Federal Government turned a deaf ear to all of these appeals, are they not responsible before God and at the bar of history for every death that ensued?
If it could be proven beyond all doubt that the officers at Andersonville were the fiends incarnate that Northern hatred pictures them to be, there is not one scintilla of proof that the Government at Richmond ordered, approved or in any way countenanced their "atrocities." It is not, therefore, necessary for our purpose that we should go into any
DEFENCE OF GENERAL WINDER.
And yet, as an act of simple justice to the memory of this officer, we give the following letters:
Mr. W. S. Winder, Baltimore:
Dear Sir—Your letter reached me some two weeks since, and I have been prevented by serious indisposition from giving it an early reply.
I take pleasure in rendering my emphatic testimony to relieve the character and reputation of your father, the late General John H. Winder, from the unjust aspersions that have been cast upon them in connection with the treatment of the Federal prisoners under his charge during our late civil war.
I had, privately and officially, the fullest opportunity of knowing his character, and judging his disposition and conduct towards the Federal prisoners; for those in Richmond, where he was almost daily in official communication with me, often in respect to them, had been some time under his command before, in large measure from the care and kindness he was believed to have shown to them, he was sent South to have the supervision and control of the large number there being aggregated.
His manner and mode of speech were perhaps naturally somewhat abrupt and sharp, and his military bearing may have added more of sternness and imperiousness; but these were mere superficial traits, perhaps, as I sometimes thought, assumed in a manner to disguise the real gentleness and kindness of his nature.
I thought him marked by real humanity towards the weak and helpless—such as women and children, for instance—by that spirit
