Impartial history will give to the memory of these men a place among the
records of useless murder.
The law of parole was all-sufficient to prevent their return to service,
and their absence from the fields of campaign would have been of no
material weight with the prolific North.
But the intent of their captors was cruelty; and they strove to reduce the
numbers, and to intimidate the courage, of the Federal soldiers, by acts
of savage barbarity, as the relentless Tartar hoped to terrify the Hindoos
into the profession of Mohammedanism by sacrificing multitudes, and
deluging whole countries in blood.
To deny the criminality is, as Lamartine says of the massacres of
September, "to belie the right of feeling of the human race. It is to deny
nature, which is the morality of instinct. There is nothing in mankind
greater than humanity. It is not more permissible for a government than
for a man to commit murder. If a drop of blood stains the hand of a
murderer, oceans of gore do not make innocent the Dantons. The magnitude
of the crime does not transform it into virtue. Pyramids of dead bodies
rise high, it is true, but not so high as the execration of mankind."