Narrative of Privations and Sufferings of United States Officers & Soldiers While Prisoners of War in the Hands of the Rebel Authorities (Classic Reprint)

Reports of Cruelties in tiie Beginning of the War Mutual Kecrimination of North and South Later and more Authentic I leports Heart-rending; Condition of licturned Prisoners Tlie Cougress, ional I uquirv The Sanitary Commission Appoints a Commission of Inquiry Kange of the Investigation Visit of the Commmissioners to Annapolis and Baltimore Appearance of the Returned Prisoners Living Skeletons Testimony Taken The Claim of the Rebel Government and People Tlie Humane Principles of Modern Warfare. Ever since the outbreak of the war, tlie country has been full of painful rumors concerning the treatment of prisoners of war by the rebel authorities. Every returned prisoner has brought his tale of suffering, astonishing his neighborhood with an account of cruelty and barbarity on the part of the enemy. Innumerable nai Tatives have also been published and widely circulated. The public have been made very uneasy by these reports. One class have accepted them as true ;another have felt them to be exaggerated ;still another have pronounced them wliolly false, fictions purposely made and scattered abroad to inflame the people against their enemies, and doing great injustice to the South. On the other hand, rumors have crossed the border, of an outraged public sentiment in tlie South, precisely on the same a(;count: reports abounding there of cruelty and barbarity to the rebel soldiers in our hands. It has been repeatedly announced that whatever restrictions or privations have been suffered by Nort!ii rn men in Southern prisons, were in retaliation for these. In the beginning of such a prodigious contest, as this has proved to be, breaking out in tiie midst of a peoilc unai. customed to war, and (ui(e removed from extensive military traditions and examples, it was natural that many irregularities should have occurred, and m:iny usages of warfare been disregarded on botli
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)