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?"
I would be surprised if Georgia plantations and farms didn't have food at the end of harvest. There were families and slaves to feed until next spring or summer. It was not like you could go down to the nearest Safeway or WinnDixie and buy a month's worth of food. Destroy the food stored for winter and you leave a people starving.
Perhaps the Federal soldier who wrote your material didn't gather anything but what his troops needed, but I don't think that was the case in general.
From The Augusta Chronicle:
In their route they [Sherman's troops]destroyed, as far as possible, all mills, cribs, and carried off all stock, provisions, and negroes, and when their horses gave out they shot them. At Canton they killed over 100. ... All along their route the road was strewn with dead horses, Farmers having devoted a large share of their attention to syrup making, there is a large quantity of cotton ungathere in the field, which was left by Federals, but there is not a horse or ox in the country, hence the saving of corn will be a difficult matter. At Madison, they broke open Oglesby's office and carried off all his medicines. ... The Federals expressed great astonishment at the rich country through which they were passing.On going to McCradle's place he [a Georgia legislator]found his fine house and ginhouse burned, every horse and mule gone, and in his lot 100 dead horses, that looked like good stock, that were evidently killed to deprive the planters of them.
...No farm on the road to the place, and as far as we hear from toward Atlanta, escaped their brutal ravages.
They ravaged the country below there to the Oconee River. The roads were strewn with the debris of their progress. Dead horses, cows, sheep, hogs, chicken, corn, wheat, cotton, books, paper, broken vessels, coffee mills, and fragments of nearly every species of property strewed the wayside.
...They gutted every store, and plundered more or less of everything. ... Many families have not a pound of meat or peck of meal or flour.
Sounds like the scenes of Federal plunder in Gods and Generals.
The War Department policy was to treat rebel detainees the same way that Union POW's were known to be treated. So what?
Walt