ical man to prescribe. At large in the camp the prisoner fared still worse; a slice of bread and salt meat was given him for his breakfast, a poor hatched-up, concocted cup of soup, so called, and a slice of miserable bread, was all he could obtain for his coming meal; and hundreds of sick, who could in nowise obtain medical aid died, "unknelled, uncoffined and unknown." I have in nowise drawn on the imagination, and the facts as stated can be attested by the staff of medical officers who labored at the Elmira prison for the Rebel soldiers.
We could multiply such statements as are given above almost indefinitely.
We have the diary of the prison experience of Rev. L. W. Allen (a prominent Baptist minister of Virginia), the diary of Captain Robert E. Park, of Georgia, the narrative of Benjamin Dashiels, of Colonel Snowden Andrews' Maryland Artillery, who was most inhumanly punished at Fort Delaware for refusing to give the names of friends in Maryland who were secretly ministering to the suffering prisoners, and a number of other MSS., which all go to prove the points we have made. Indeed, it would be a very easy task to compile from MSS. in our possession several large volumes on the cruelties of Federal prisons. But we cannot now go into this subject more fully. Nor can we now even touch upon the cruelties practiced towards civil prisoners who were arrested by the United States authorities on mere suspicion, and treated with the utmost rigor without even the forms of a trial.
We have on our shelves no less than eight volumes giving detailed accounts of these false imprisonments, besides a number of MS. accounts, and we may at some future time let our readers hear "the tinkle of Mr. Seward's little bell."
But we cannot now give more space to the treatment received by Confederates in Northern prisons. We think we have fairly met Mr. Blaine's "issue," and that we have shown by incontrovertible testimony that Confederate prisoners were cruelly treated in Northern prisons, and that they did not "receive the same rations and clothing as Union soldiers." And we have traced this cruel treatment directly to the Federal authorities who were constantly slandering the Confederate Government.
We now pass to a further discussion of the
EXCHANGE QUESTION,
for after all this is the real gist of the whole matter. The Govern-
