The wretched "material" exchanged for healthy rebel soldiers called forth
a note of joy from the rebel commissioner, Ould. The exchanged Federal
soldiers were half-naked, "living skeletons," covered with filth and
vermin; and nearly all of them were unfit for service or labor, and most
of them physically ruined for the remainder of their lives. The
flag-of-truce boats of the different parties presented terrible contrasts.
On the one were to be seen feeble, emaciated, ragged, filthy, and dying
men from the rebel prisons; whilst on the other were the rebels returning
from our prisons, well clad in our uniforms, strong and healthy from the
abundance of food. We returned men who had been well treated, and who were
then ready to take the field again; whilst we received in turn abused and
decrepit soldiers, who were so much reduced and weakened that few,
comparatively, ever again returned to service. Along the entire line of
prison stockades, from Belle Isle in Virginia to Prison Tyler in Texas,
the same story is told of fiendish cruelty.
More than thirty thousand of our soldiers have undoubtedly perished
during, or in consequence of the barbarities of their prison life in the
South. To ascertain the precise number will be a difficult task, for many
of the returned prisoners have died since they have left the service; but
when we consider the number of prisons, and the long period of occupation,
we think that the estimate of thirty thousand is not too high.