THE IMMORTAL SIX HUNDRED
"The fate of war has placed you prisoners in my hands, and I will treat you as prisoners. I feel it my bounded duty to fight men who have raised their unhallowed hands against their country's flag. But I will try and treat you as men, since you have fallen into my hands, and this will be my duty so long as you obey the rules and orders laid down for the government of this prison camp."
But he did not keep his word. He treated us like animals, and he did not intend to treat us like men when he said he would do so. He violated every promise he ever made us, both in the spirit and letter; there was nothing this fellow left undone to make us uncomfortable and annoy us; he never let one opportunity pass to show his hatred for the South and her soldiers. And yet in our six hundred prisoners were the sons and grandsons of ancestors who had helped to make American history and consecrate the American flag, when probably the
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