"Plus in carcere spiritus acquirit, quam caro amittit."--_Tertullian._
"Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart--
The heart which love of thee alone can bind:
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned--
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind."
_Prisoner of Chillon._
Within the deadly shadows of this enormous palisade were assembled and
confined together at one time during the hot months of 1864, more than
thirty-five thousand soldiers, of the various armies of the United
States--more men than Alexander led across the Hellespont to the conquest
of Asia; more men than followed Napoleon in those glorious campaigns over
the bright fields of Northern Italy, where every helmet caught some beam
of glory.
Here were men of all conditions, birth, and fortune--some of the best
blood and sap of the republic.
The strong-limbed lumbermen from the forests of Maine, the tall, gigantic
men from the mountains of Pennsylvania, the hunters of the great
prairies of the West,--those men of wonderful courage and endurance,--the
artisan from the workshop, the student from his books, the lawyer from the
forum, the minister from the pulpit, the child of wealth, and the poor
widow's only son, were collected here in this field of torture.
[Illustration: VIEW OF INTERIOR OF THE PRISON, with the quagmire and
crowds of huts and men beyond. From rebel photographs.--Page 29.]
They were men in the prime of life--young, vigorous, and active--when they
surrendered themselves as prisoners of war. And as prisoners, they were
entitled to the care and treatment acknowledged by the general laws and
usages of civilized nations, and expected even more from those who boasted
of having revived the generosity and chivalric tone of the feudal ages.
Besides justice to all men, we owe special grace and benignity to those
who come into our power from the hazard of battle. However degraded the
suppliant may be, there is always some commerce between them and us, some
bond of mutual relation.
Why these men did not receive that respect which true courage always
accords to the vanquished brave, why they did not receive even that atom
of compassion which belongs to the nature of man, and which is seen even
among the lower animals, history, which loves to avenge the weak and
oppressed, and which affords to all men, to all nations, the opportunity
for their justification, their vengeance, their glory, will surely exhibit
in burning characters of horror and shame. There are men even now who
would sanctify the acts of cruelty of the rebellion over the very ashes of
this the nation's sepulchre. There are men even now who would outrage
virtue, and deify the crime. There are men living, like those of the
past, but not forgotten iron age, possessed of that remorseless fury,
that implacable hatred, which nothing could arrest, nothing could disarm,
and which could no more receive a sentiment of compassion than that
sophistry which allowed outrage and death to the tender and guiltless
child of Sejanus.
"Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens, tantum spectaturus occidat."