As opposed to the Yankee prison commandants that blocked such shipments from getting to the Confederate prisoners?
You haven't shown that such shipments existed. I thought the south was starving and that's why federal prisoners were half starved?
It would have unfair for the government to let shipments of food get through the lines to rebel detainees when the policy of the Richmond government was to deliberately starve Union POW's so as to pressure Washington into a return to the exchange cartels, wouldn't it?
Walt
Captain George W. Nelson, Hanover Artillery (VA), CSA, prisoner at Fort Pulaski:
Not only were blankets and clothing not issued, but we were not allowed to receive what friends had sent us. We had only so much fuel as was needed for cooking. Can a more miserable state of existence be imagined than this? Starved almost to the point of death, a prey to disease, the blood in the veins so thin that the least cold sent a shiver through the whole frame!...Add to this the knowledge on our part that a few steps off were those who lived in plenty and comfort!
Captain Moses J. Bradford, 10th Missouri Infantry, CSA, prisoner at Fort Pulaski:
My health is very bad, I am very weak. We have been living on 10 ounces of meal and 4 ounces of Baker's Bread, and have only that per day. This is 15 days on it...O how I wish I had such as my dogs used to have...If you have not sent the money or things that [I] wrote to you for, you need not do so for we are not permitted to receive anything without permission of General Wessell.
Captain Henry Dickson, 2nd Virginia Cavalry, CSA, prisoner at Fort Pulaski:
Just think, you New England philanthropists, of four cooking stoves to quarters 200 yards long; over 100 windows without glass; the thermometer far below freezing; many of us sick, some without a single blanket, many with but one; all of us in threadbare clothes; ... prohibited from receiving money, clothes or food from our friends. Will your historians of this war admit that such things occurred in the United States?"