That the dietary of the prisoners was far from being adequate to their
wants there is no doubt, and it only remains to be determined whether this
deficiency arose from design, from ignorance, or from real scarcity of
food.
We have very serious doubts as to the truth of the statements that there
was a scarcity of food in this vicinity during the time of the occupation
of the prison.
At the time of its selection the region was considered to be the richest
in cereals of all the Southern States.
In times previous it had proved to be fertile, and during the progress of
the war the slave labor was undisturbed by the Federal troops. It is shown
by their own statistics that in 1860 the four counties near the prison,
and along the line of railroad, produced nearly fourteen hundred thousand
bushels of corn, thirty-three thousand bushels of wheat, three hundred
thousand bushels of potatoes, and more than one hundred thousand bushels
of beans and peas, besides forty-eight thousand bales of cotton. It is
highly probable that these quantities were doubled, if not trebled and
quadrupled during the succeeding years of the war, when the planting of
cotton was forbidden by rebel ukase, and all energy and labor were turned
to the production of food. There were in these four counties alone more
than twenty thousand slaves.
In the south of Georgia, in the wire-grass region, were great numbers of
cattle roaming at will, and the numbers in the everglades of Florida were
so vast, that two old steamboat captains offered to furnish the rebel
government, at this very period, with half a million pounds of salt beef,
along the railroads in Florida. Governor Watts wrote from Alabama in
April, 1864, that there were ten million pounds of bacon accessible in
that State. In September of the same year, Mr. Hudson, of the adjoining
State of Alabama, offered to deliver to the rebel government half a
million pounds of bacon in exchange for the same quantity of cotton.
The rebel war clerk, in his diary at Richmond, wrote, March 17, 1864, "It
appears that there is abundance of grain and meat in the country;" and
again, July 3, 1864, he notes down, "Our crop of wheat is abundant, and
the harvest is over."
According to the census of 1860, there were in Florida more than six
hundred thousand cattle and swine, and more than five millions in Georgia
and Alabama. These two States produced during the same year more than
sixty million bushels of corn and thirteen million bushels of potatoes.
(Vide Appendix.)