Posted on 11/21/2023 6:16:42 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
We have received full files of Richmond papers to Nov. 16, with the Memphis-Atlanta (Ga.) Appeal of Nov. 11, and extract the following interesting intelligence:
From the Richmond Enquirer, Nov. 16.
The Dispatch has thought it right, not with a view of satisfying our enemies, nor of stopping their slanders, (for that cannot be done,) but in order to vindicate the character of the Confederate Government in the eyes of its own people first, and of the civilized world afterward, so soon as our protests can reach it, to formally refute those horrible stories now so rife in the Yankee Press, of the cruel sufferings inflicted on the prisoners of war in Richmond. The Dispatch justly concludes that this outcry has been raised for two purposes: First, to justify our enemies in savage acts of pretended retaliation upon Confederate prisoners in their hands, whom they refuse to exchange under false pretexts; and, second, to "blow up the declining war spirit." Preparatory to their next determined effort to capture Richmond, they desire to rouse a feeling of horror and indignation against us at the thought of the abominable crimes and atrocities or the "doomed city," which may give in their next advance the zeal of a crusade, or of those expeditions formerly made by European nations against the pirates of Algiers. They burn to apply the torch to the four corners of Richmond, and to let loose the thirteen thousand prisoners to all the wildest excesses that ever were perpetrated on a sacked city given over to massacre and pillage.
"We have made inquiries upon the subject, which satisfy us that all is done for the support and comfort of the Yankee multitude which the Confederate Government is capable of doing.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
First session: November 21, 2015. Last date to add: May 2025.
Reading: Self-assigned. Recommendations made and welcomed.
Posting history, in reverse order
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Link to previous New York Times thread
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4198100/posts
From the South: Treatment of Our Prisoners – 2-3
Averill’s Cavalry Expedition: Operations in West Virginia – 3-4
From Tennessee: Rosecrans and Thomas – 4-5
Rosecrans to Burnside – 5
News from Washington: Our Special Washington Dispatches – 5
Army of the Potomac: The Skirmishing on Wednesday – 7
Later from Charleston: Rebel Reports of Another Naval Engagements – 8
The Richmond Sufferers Relieved: Large Arrivals of Supplies – 8
The Gettysburgh Celebration – 8-9
Later from New-Orleans: Complete Success of the Texas Expedition – 9
Later from East Tennessee: Fighting Still Goin On at Knoxville – 9
Editorial: The Immediate Future – 9-10
Editorial: Women’s Work and Wages – 10
A Pleasant State of Things – 10
It’s simple
Don’t invade
Stay up north
Leave us alone
Don’t become a prisoner of war
Problem solved
The number of prisoners swelled in 1863 after the exchange programs ended.
-————Wiki-—————
Death rates
The overall mortality rates in prisons on both sides were similar, and quite high. Many Southern prisons were located in regions with high disease rates, and were routinely short of medicine, doctors, food and ice. Northerners often believed their men were being deliberately weakened and killed in Confederate prisons, and demanded that conditions in Northern prisons be equally harsh, even though shortages were not a problem in the North.[10]
I read that Wirtz of Andersonville problems with the POWs was due to incompetence. He gave the pows axes to chop wood, but forgot to put axe blades on the wood. The union POW camps were pretty bad, too. And the Union did not have the excuse of a blockade.
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