Circa1865

The Confederate States held nearly 261,000 Northern soldiers in their prisons of which 22,526 died in captivity; Northern prisons held 200,000 Southerners of which 26,500 died – the higher percentage is the latter. Southern authorities provided food to prisoners equal to the meager rations for soldiers while Northern prisons were surrounded by bountiful fields and harvests.

Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com

“This Savage and Cold-Blooded Idea”

“John M. Daniel, from the Richmond Examiner, 25 November 1863:

“The Yankee policy with respect to the exchange of prisoners has been clearly exposed. It is based upon the simple principle that our men are intrinsically worth more than theirs, and that if they continue to hold our prisoners and to allow their own to remain in our hands they will be the gainers. Such, in fact, is the whole scheme of the war. If, by dint of superior numbers and a lavish expenditure of blood, they can inflict such losses upon the South as to render it incapable of further resistance, their point, I think, is gained . . . “

While this savage and cold-blooded idea is at the bottom of their reasoning, they are aware that it is necessary to cloak their purposes under as decent a veil as they can find. It will not do to tell their soldiers, or the classes from which they expect to recruit their armies, that they regard them merely as fighting animals, to be used sparingly, or sacrificed wantonly, according to the varying necessities of the case.

It would be ruinous, frankly, to avow that they are delighted to retain a certain number of Confederates in prison at the expense of an equal or even greater number of their own men. An excuse must be found which will throw the odium of refusing exchange upon the Confederacy. Yankee ingenuity, unhampered by the restraints of an adherence to truth, can easily accomplish this . . .

We have sought to carry out the cartel of exchange in good faith. Let us not allow the Yankees to take advantage of their own wrong, and, while they avoid the odium attaching to the desertion of their own prisoners, retain the advantage of neutralizing thousands of our soldiers.

Gladly would the Yankee Government, in order to deprive us of their services, agree to lodge [our soldiers] at the Fifth Avenue or the Metropolitan, and to feed them upon turtle soup and champagne. It would be a vastly cheaper way of disposing of them than maintaining armies of hirelings to oppose them in the field . . . “

(Empire of the Owls, Reflections on the North’s War Against Southern Secession, H.V. Traywick, Jr., Dementi Milestone Publishing, 2013, pp. 253-254)