Part 33 (1/2)
In March, 1863, this same Confederate Congress enacted the following order to regulate the impressment of negroes for army purposes:
”SEC. 9.--Where slaves are impressed by the Confederate Government, to labor on fortifications, or other public works, the impressment shall be made by said Government according to the rules and regulations provided in the laws of the States wherein they are impressed; and, in the absence of such law, in accordance with such rules and regulations not inconsistent with the provisions of this act, as the Secretary of War shall from time to time prescribe; _Provided_, That no impressment of slaves shall be made, when they can be hired or procured by the owner or agent.
”SEC. 10.--That, previous to the 1st day of December next, no slave laboring on a farm or plantation, exclusively devoted to the production of grain and provisions, shall be taken for the public use, without the consent of the owner, except in case of urgent necessity.”
Thus it is apparent that while the Confederate Government was holding aloft the black flag, even against the Northern Phalanx regiments composed of men who were never slaves, it was at the same time engaged in enrolling and conscripting slaves to work on fortifications and in trenches, in support of their rebellion against the United States, and at a period when negro troops were not accepted in the army of the United States.
Soon after the admission of negroes into the Union army, it was reported to Secretary Stanton that three negro soldiers, captured with the gunboat ”Isaac Smith,” on Stone river, were placed in close confinement, whereupon he ordered three confederate prisoners belonging to South Carolina to be placed in close confinement, and informed the Confederate Government of the action. The Richmond _Examiner_ becoming cognizant of this said:
”It is not merely the pretension of a regular Government affecting to deal with 'rebels,' but it is a deadly stab which they are aiming at our inst.i.tutions themselves; because they know that, if we were insane enough to yield this point, to treat black men as the equals of white, and insurgent slaves as equivalent to our brave white soldiers, the very foundation of slavery would be fatally wounded.”
Several black soldiers were captured in an engagement before Charleston, and when it came to an exchange of prisoners, though an immediate exchange of all captured in the engagement had been agreed upon, the confederates would not exchange the negro troops. To this the President's attention was called, whereupon he issued the following order:
”EXECUTIVE MANSION, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, July 30th, 1863.
”It is the duty of every government to give protection to its citizens, of whatever color, cla.s.s, or condition, and especially to those who are duly organized as soldiers in the public service. The law of nations and the usages and customs of war, as carried on by civilized powers, permit no distinction as to color in the treatment of prisoners of war, as public enemies. To sell or enslave any captured person, on account of his color, and for no offense against the laws of war, is a relapse into barbarism, and a crime against the civilization of the age. The government of the United States will give the same protection to all its soldiers; and if the enemy shall enslave or sell any one because of his color, the offense shall be punished by retaliation upon the enemy's prisoners in our possession.
It is therefore ordered that for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed, and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on public works, and continued at such labor until the other shall be released and receive the treatment due to a prisoner of war.
”ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
”By order of the Secretary of War.
”E. D. TOWNSEND, a.s.s't. Adjt.-General.”
However, this order did not prevent the carrying out of the intentions of the confederate President and Congress.
The saddest and blackest chapter of the history of the war of the Rebellion, is that which relates to the treatment of Union prisoners in the rebel prison pens, at Macon, Ga., Belle Island, Castle Thunder, Pemberton, Libbey, at and near Richmond and Danville, Va., Cahawba, Ala., Salisbury, N. C., Tyler, Texas, Florida, Columbia, S. C., Millen and Andersonville, Ga. It is not the purpose to attempt a general description of these modern charnel houses, or to enter into a detailed statement of the treatment of the Union soldiers who were unfortunate enough to escape death upon the battle-field and then fall captive to the confederates. When we consider the fact that the white men who were engaged in the war upon both sides, belonged to one nation, and were Americans, many of whom had been educated at the same schools, and many--very many--of them members of the same religious denominations, and church; not a few springing from the same stock and loins, the atrocities committed by the confederates against the Union soldiers, while in their custody as prisoners of war, makes their deeds more shocking and inhuman than if the contestants had been of a different nationality.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TERRIBLE FIGHT WITH BLOODHOUNDS.
The 1st South Carolina Regiment was attacked by the Confederates with bloodhounds, at Pocaralago Bridge, Oct. 23rd, 1862. The hounds rushed fiercely upon the troops, who quickly shot or bayoneted them and exultingly held aloft the beasts that had been so long a terror to the negro race.]
The English soldiers who lashed the Sepoys to the mouths of their cannon, and then fired the pieces, thus cruelly murdering the captured rebels, offered the plea, in mitigation of their crime, and as an excuse for violating the rules of war, that their subjects were not of a civilized nation, and did not themselves adhere to the laws governing civilized nations at war with each other. But no such plea can be entered in the case of the confederates, who starved, shot and murdered 80,000 of their brethren in prison pens, white prisoners of war. If such treatment was meted to those of their own color and race, as is related by an investigating committee of Senators, what must have been the treatment of those of another race,--whom they had held in slavery, and whom they regarded the same as sheep and horses, to be bought and sold at will,--when captured in battle, fighting against them for the Union and their own freedom?
The report of the Congressional Committee furnishes ample proof of the barbarities:
38TH CONGRESS, } {REP. COM.
_1st Session._ } {_No. 68._
”IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.
”_Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct and Expenditures of the War._
”On the 4th inst., your committee received a communication of that date from the Secretary of War, enclosing the report of Colonel Hoffman, commissary general of prisoners, dated May 3, calling the attention of the committee to the condition of returned Union prisoners, with the request that the committee would immediately proceed to Annapolis and examine with their own eyes the condition of those who have been returned from rebel captivity. The committee resolved that they would comply with the request of the Secretary of War on the first opportunity. The 5th of May was devoted by the committee to concluding their labors upon the investigation of the Fort Pillow ma.s.sacre. On the 6th of May, however, the committee proceeded to Annapolis and Baltimore, and examined the condition of our returned soldiers, and took the testimony of several of them, together with the testimony of surgeons and other persons in attendance upon the hospitals. That testimony, with the communication of the Secretary of War, and the report of Colonel Hoffman, is herewith transmitted.
”The evidence proves, beyond all manner of doubt, a determination on the part of the rebel authorities, deliberately and persistently practiced for a long time past, to subject those of our soldiers who have been so unfortunate as to fall in their hands to a system of treatment which has resulted in reducing many of those who have survived and been permitted to return to us in a condition, both physically and mentally, which no language we can use can adequately describe. Though nearly all the patients now in the Naval Academy hospital at Annapolis, and in the West hospital, in Baltimore, have been under the kindest and most intelligent treatment for about three weeks past, and many of them for a greater length of time, still they present literally the appearance of living skeletons, many of them being nothing but skin and bone; some of them are maimed for life, having been frozen while exposed to the inclemency of the winter season on Belle Isle, being compelled to lie on the bare ground, without tents or blankets, some of them without overcoats or even coats, with but little fire to mitigate the severity of the winds and storms to which they were exposed.
”The testimony shows that the general practice of their captors was to rob them, as soon as they were taken prisoners, of all their money, valuables, blankets, and good clothing, for which they received nothing in exchange except, perhaps, some old worn-out rebel clothing hardly better than none at all. Upon their arrival at Richmond they have been confined, without blankets or other covering, in buildings without fire, or upon Belle Isle with, in many cases, no shelter, and in others with nothing but old discarded army tents, so injured by rents and holes as to present but little barrier to the wind and storms; on several occasions, the witnesses say, they have arisen in the morning from their resting-places upon the bare earth, and found several of their comrades frozen to death during the night, and that many others would have met the same fate had they not walked rapidly back and forth, during the hours which should have been devoted to sleep, for the purpose of retaining sufficient warmth to preserve life.
”In respect to the food furnished to our men by the rebel authorities, the testimony proves that the ration of each man was totally insufficient in quant.i.ty to preserve the health of a child, even had it been of proper quality, which it was not. It consisted usually, at the most, of two small pieces of corn-bread, made in many instances, as the witnesses state, of corn and cobs ground together, and badly prepared and cooked, of, at times, about two ounces of meat, usually of poor quality, and unfit to be eaten, and occasionally a few black worm-eaten beans, or something of that kind. Many of your men were compelled to sell to their guards, and others, for what price they could get, such clothing and blankets as they were permitted to receive of that forwarded for their use by our government, in order to obtain additional food sufficient to sustain life; thus, by endeavoring to avoid one privation reducing themselves to the same dest.i.tute condition in respect to clothing and covering that they were in before they received any from our government. When they became sick and diseased in consequence of this exposure and privation, and were admitted into the hospitals, their treatment was little if any, improved as to food, though they, doubtless, suffered less from exposure to cold than before. Their food still remained insufficient in quant.i.ty and altogether unfit in quality. Their diseases and wounds did not receive the treatment which the commonest dictates of humanity would have prompted. One witness, whom your committee examined, who had lost all the toes of one foot from being frozen while on Belle Isle, states that for days at a time his wounds were not dressed, and they had not been dressed for four days when he was taken from the hospital and carried on the flag-of-truce boat for Fortress Monroe.