It is a historical fact that in the early part of 1864, shortly
after the battles of the wilderness, certain high officials of the
Federal government decided that it was more economical to stop the
exchange of prisoners of war entirely.
The policy of non-exchange was understood to be based on the
following facts:
That a soldier counted for more in the Confederate army then acting
on the defensive; that many of the Andersonville prisoners were men
whose term of service had already expired, that all of them were
disabled by starvation and exposure, and unfit for further service,
while every Confederate was able-bodied and “in for the war” so
that an exchange would have been a gratuitous strengthening of the
armies of the Confederacy, which, at the same time, would have
prevented the prisoners held in the South from falling into the
hands of Sherman.
August 14th, 1864, General Grant telegraphed to General Butler:
“It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons, not to exchange
them, but it is humane to those left in the ranks to fight our
battles. If we now commence a system of exchange which liberates
all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on till the whole South
is exterminated. If we hold those captured, they count for more
than dead men.”
In accordance with General Grant’s opinion General Butler then
wrote a letter in reply to General Ould’s proposals of exchange.
In his famous Lowell speech, Butler said: “In this letter these
questions were argued justly, as I think, not diplomatically, but
obtrusively and demonstratively, not for the purpose of furthering
an exchange of prisoners, but for the purpose of preventing
and stopping the exchange, and furnishing a ground on which we
could stand.” The men who languished at Andersonville and other
Confederate prisons, played, in their sufferings and death, an
active part in the termination of the war.
This part was not so stirring as charging on guns or meeting in the
clash of infantry lines. But as the victims of a policy, dictated
by the emergency of a desperate condition of affairs, their
enforced, long continued hardships and sufferings made it possible
for the Union generals and their armies to decide the deplorable
struggle so much sooner, and to terminate the existence of the
Confederacy by the surrender at Appomatox. No soldier or seaman, in
this or any other country, ever made such personal sacrifices or
endured such hardships and privations as those who fell into the
hands of the Confederates during the late war. The recital of their
sufferings would be scarcely believed were they not corroborated by
so large a number of unimpeachable witnesses on both sides.
Colonel C. T. Chandler’s C. S. A. report on Andersonville, dated
Aug. 5, 1864, in which he said: “It is difficult to describe the
horrors of the prison, which is a disgrace to civilization,” was
endorsed by Col. R. H. Chilton, Inspector General C. S. A., as
follows: “The condition of the prisoners at Andersonville is a
reproach to us as a nation.”
The sixty thousand graves filled by the poor victims of the several
prisons, tells a story that cannot be denied or misunderstood.
When we consider the hardships and privations to which these men
were subjected, the wonder is not that so many died, but that any
survived. We submit, it is hardly possible that any man who was
subjected to the hardships and inhuman treatment of a Confederate
prison for even two or three months only, could come out any other
than permanently disabled. Statistics show that of those who were
released, nearly five per cent. died before reaching home. In a few
instances there was a roll kept of thirty to fifty of those men
who, when released, were able to travel home alone, and it is now
found that nearly three-fourths of the number have since died.
The roll of the Andersonville Survivors Association shows that
during the year 1880, the number of deaths averaged sixteen and
one-third per cent. of the total membership, showing an increase of
five per cent. over the death rate of 1879.
But few of the most fortunate of these survivors will live to see
the age of fifty, and probably within the next ten years the last
of them will have passed away.
Congress has from time to time enacted laws most just and liberal
(or that were intended to be so,) toward the men who were disabled
in the late war, but a large majority of the prison survivors are
excluded from a pension under these laws. This comes partly from
the unfriendly spirit in which the pension department has been
administered for the last six years, and partly from the peculiar
circumstances surrounding their several cases.
Many paroled prisoners, on reaching the Union lines were at once
sent home on furlough, without receiving any medical treatment.
The most of these were afterwards discharged under General Order
No. 77, dated War Department, Washington, D. C., April 28th,
1865, because physically unfit for service, and hence there is no
official record whatever as to their disease.
If one of those men applies for a pension, he is called upon to
furnish the affidavit of some army surgeon who treated him after
his release and prior to discharge, showing that he then had the
disease on which he now claims a pension. For reasons stated, this
is impossible. The next thing is a call to furnish an affidavit
from some doctor who treated the man while at home on furlough, or
certainly immediately following his final discharge, showing that
he was then afflicted with identical disease on which pension is
now claimed. This is generally impossible, for many reasons.
In most cases the released prisoner felt it was not medicine he
wanted, but the kindly nursing of mother or wife, and nourishing
food. So no doctor was called, at least for some months after
reaching home. In the instances where the doctor was called, not
infrequently he cannot now be found, cannot swear that the soldier
had any particular disease for the first six months after reaching
home, as he was a mere skeleton from starvation, and it required
months of careful nursing before he had vitality enough for a
disease to manifest itself.
Then again in many cases the poor victim has never suffered from
any particular disease, but rather from a combination of numerous
ills, the sequence of a wrecked constitution commonly termed by
physicians, “General Debility.” But the commissioner refuses to
grant a pension on disease save where the proof is clear and
positive of the contracting of a particular disease while in the
service, of its existence at date of final discharge, and of its
continuous existence from year to year for each and every year, to
present date.
In most cases it is impossible for a prison survivor to furnish any
such proof, and hence his application is promptly rejected. Besides
these, there are hundreds of other obstacles in the way of the
surviving prisoner of war who applies for a pension. One thing is,
he is called upon to prove by comrades who were in prison with him,
the origin and nature of his disease, and his condition prior to
and at the time of his release. This is generally impossible, as he
was likely to have but few comrades in prison with whom he was on
intimate terms, and these, if not now dead, cannot be found, they
are men without sufficient knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and
not one out of a hundred could conscientiously swear to the origin
and diagnosis of the applicant’s disease. Is it not ridiculous for
the government to insist upon such preposterous evidence? Which,
if produced in due form, is a rule drawn up by the applicant’s
physican, and sworn to by the witness—“_cum grano salis_,”—and in
most cases amounts to perjury for charity’s sake.
Hence, it will be seen the difficulties surrounding the prison
survivor who is disabled and compelled to apply for a pension are
so numerous and insurmountable as to shut out a very large majority
of the most needy and deserving cases from the benefits of the
general pension laws entirely.
We claim, therefore, that as an act of equal justice to these men,
as compared with other soldiers, there ought to be a law passed
admitting them to pensions on record or other proof of confinement
in a confederate prison for a prescribed length of time—such as
Bill 4495—introduced by the Hon. J. Warren Keifer, M. C., of Ohio
provides for. And if this bill is to benefit these poor sufferers
any, it must be passed speedily, as those who yet remain will, at
best, survive but a few years longer.
This measure is not asked as a pencuniary compensation for the
personal losses these men sustained, as silver and gold cannot be
weighed as the price for untold sufferings, but it is asked that
they may be partly relieved from abject want, and their sufferings
alleviated to some extent by providing them with the necessaries of
life, for nearly all of them are extremely poor, consequent on the
wreck of their physical and mental powers.