Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 edition. Excerpt: ...Federal prisoners of war confined in Southern prisons. This whole petition recited a bold, broad lie; a mean, deliberate, malicious slander on the brave people and government of the South. It was then a well-known fact, and at this day proven beyond question, that the Confederate Government was willing and anxious to exchange prisoners of war, but the powers at Washington, and General U. S. Grant, refused to make exchange, and rejected all offers for exchange made to them by the Confederate authorities. In fact, the United States authorities even refused to send transports and get their sick and wounded men--prisoners of war--that our government offered them at any time they would send transports. It further can be said, without fear of contradiction, that, at the time this petition for retaliation was before the United States Senate, President Lincoln and all his officials had full knowledge thatthe Confederate Government was feeding to its prisoners of war the same rations the Confederate soldier received in the field. What more could our government do? What more could be demanded of them? The late Senator Sumner offered a substitute for the Lane resolution of retaliation, which can be found in the United States Senate Reports, 186465. It reads: "Be it resolved, That the treatment of our "officers and soldiers in Rebel prisons is cruel, "savage, and heartrending beyond all precedent; "that it is shocking to morals; that it is an offence "against human nature itself; that it adds new guilt "to the great crime of rebellion, and constitutes an "example from which history will turn with sorrow "and digust. "Resolved, That any attempted imitation of "Rebel barbarism in the treatment of...