As to the torture endured by the scurvy patients, the shooting of prisoners by the guards on the parapets, the smashing of their skulls with revolvers by officers of the prison, such misfortunes are incident to prison life, and neither the Government nor the Republican party can be held responsible for them.
The weather on January 1st was the most intensely cold I ever experienced; and from all parts of the prison came intelligence of prisoners frozen to death. One died in one of my companies. He was reported to me, and I placed my hand on the corpse; it was frozen. This is the first time I have mentioned it. I cannot say that he froze to death.
John A. Bateson,
We have a long
STATEMENT OF JOHN J. VAN-ALLEN,
of Watkins, Schuyler county, New York, from which we make the following extract:
Late in the fall of 1864, and when the bitter sleets and biting frosts of winter had commenced, a relief organization was improvised by some of the generous ladies and gentlemen of the city of Baltimore for the purpose of alleviating the wants of those confined in the Elmira Prison, where there were then several thousand prisoners.
I had the honor to be appointed by that organization to ascertain the needs of the prisoners, to distribute clothing, money, etc., as they might require. I had formerly lived at Elmira, where I studied my profession, but then (as now) I resided at this place, twenty miles distant from Elmira, where I have resided for nearly twenty-five years, and was well known at Elmira.
As soon as appointed I journeyed to that delightful paradise for Confederate prisoners (according to Walker, Tracy and Platt), and stated the object of my visit to the commanding officer, and asked to be permitted to go through the prison in order to ascertain the wants of the prisoners, with the request that I might distribute necessary blankets, clothing, money, medicines, etc.
He treated me with consideration and kindness, and informed me that they were very destitute of clothing and blankets; that not one-half of them had even a single blanket; and that many were nearly naked, the most of them having been captured during the hot summer months with no other than thin cotton clothes, which in most instances were in tatters. Yet he stated that he could not allow me to enter the prison gate or administer relief, as an order of the War Department rendered him powerless. I then asked him to telegraph the facts to the War Department and ask a revocation or modification of the order, which he did; and two or three days were thus consumed by me in a fruitless endeavor
