Inhuman Treatment of Prisoners.
No chapter in the history of the civil war in this country is more terrible than that which records the cruelty and neglect, systematically inflicted by the rebel authorities upon the Union soldiers in their hands as prisoners of war. The treatment of these unfortunate men, who were heartlessly deprived of the necessaries of life, would be incredible, were it not abundantly substantiated by testimony that cannot be doubted. The secrets of the prison house are coming to light. Official documents found in Richmond since its capture prove that the barbarities practised upon our soldiers, against which the rebel surgeons professionally protested, were part of a settled plan, and deliberately sanctioned by the authorities at Richmond. It is heart-rending to read the records of the results of this inhuman treatment, in the tens of thousands left to die the lingering death of starvation, and in the perhaps worse condition of those who have been spared to be exchanged. Dr. C. R. Agnew, a distinguished physician of New York, and one of the standing Committee of the United States Sanitary Commission, gives this testimony to the condition of the returned prisoners sent to Wilmington, N. C.: "Filth, rags, nakedness, starvation were personified in their condition. Many of the men were in a state of mind resembling idiocy, unable to tell their names, and lost to all sense of modesty, unconscious of their nakedness and personal condition; some of them moving about on hands and knees, unable to stand on their gangrenous feet, looking up like hungry dogs, beseeching the observer for a bite of bread or a cup of water. Some of them hitched along on their hands and buttocks, pushing gangrenous feet, literally reduced to bone and shreds, before them. Others leaned upon staves, and glared from sunken eyes through the parchment-like slits of their open eyelids into space, without having the power to fix an intelligent gaze upon passing objects. Others giggled and smirked and hobbled like starved idiots; while some adamantine figures walked erect, as though they meant to move the skeleton homewards, so long as vitality enough remained to enable them to do so. "To see the men who remain here in hospital would move a heart as hard and cold as marble. Their condition is that of men who have for months suffered chronic starvation. Their arms and legs look like coarse reeds with bulbous joints. Their faces look as though a skillful taxidermist had drawn tanned skin over the bare skull, and then placed false eyes in the orbital cavities. They defy description. It would take a pen expert in the use of every term known to the anatomist and the physician to expose their fearful condition. Many of them cannot muster physical power enough to bite a hard cracker, or stomach to digest beef or pork. Many, alas, will go to the cemetery to lengthen the lines of graves now so long. May God in his infinite mercy forgive the creatures who have done this horrid thing."