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The Prisoner of War, and How Treated: Containing a History of Colonel Steight's Expedition to the Rear of Bragg's Army, in the Spring of 1863, and a Correct Account of the Treatment and Condition of the Union Prisoners of War ...
The Prisoner of War, and How Treated: Containing a History of Colonel Steight's Expedition to the Rear of Bragg's Army, in the Spring of 1863, and a Correct Account of the Treatment and Condition of the Union Prisoners of War ...
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"The Prisoner of War, and How Treated:Containing a History of Colonel Steight's Expedition to the Rear of Bragg's Army, in the Spring of 1863, and a Correct Account of the Treatment and Condition of the Union Prisoners of War ... and History of Andersonville Prison Pen"
The preparation of this work was first contemplated, and partly executed, while I was confined in the rebel prisons of the South; and with the intention of publishing it immediately after my release or escape from captivity. But the sudden collapse of the military power of the people arrayed in armed rebellion against the Government, following soon thereafter, at first determined me to forego the publication of a work, which I conceived might possibly tend to keep alive the embers of discord between us and our Southern foes, and as far as in me lie, consign to oblivion the memory of their wicked deeds, and forget the sufferings and wrongs of myself and fellow captives. Subsequent events, however, have shown that our late enemies are not possessed of the same spirit of kindly feeling and friendship that we have extended to them. Moreover, that the leaders among them have, under the dissembling guise of repentance, sought the pardon and confidence of the nation—which, by force of arms, in four years of bloody war, they failed to dismember—that they might, with the wily arts of the politician, accomplish its destruction.
Believing that subserviency to the demands of those lately leadiug the armed hosts arrayed against us, by the slave Oligarchy, and the wholesale and indiscriminate pardon extended them by our Chief Magistrate, will, at no distant day, render fruitless the glorious work accomplished by our noble armies, and vain the gallant deeds and heroic sufferings of the brave men of whom they were composed, I send forth to the public this volume; which, without pretensions to literary merit, breathes the dying moans and starving wails of twenty thousand Union soldiers, whose shroudless and uncoffined bodies moulder beneath the sod, adjacent to the rebel prisons in which they were tortured to death, trusting that whatever influence it may exercise will aid in bringing the guilty leaders of treason to just punishment, for their enormous crimes against humanity.
"Without any aspirations whatever, to literary notoriety, I have endeavored to give a plain, unvarnished narrative of facts and incidents of prison life, as they occurred, under my own observation, during twenty-two months in various rebel prisons. I have added, also, the statements of several other Union prisoners, who stand ready to vouch for the same with their affidavits. In this recital of the terrible woe of our soldiers who were prisoners.of war, I do not wish it to be understood that I charge the mass of the Southern people with complicity in the inhuman treatment they received. Jeff. Davis, Robert E. Lee, and other rebels high in authority, and the monsters whom they placed in immediate command of the prisoners, are alone responsible, and on their heads let just and condign punishment fall.
The preparation of this work was first contemplated, and partly executed, while I was confined in the rebel prisons of the South; and with the intention of publishing it immediately after my release or escape from captivity. But the sudden collapse of the military power of the people arrayed in armed rebellion against the Government, following soon thereafter, at first determined me to forego the publication of a work, which I conceived might possibly tend to keep alive the embers of discord between us and our Southern foes, and as far as in me lie, consign to oblivion the memory of their wicked deeds, and forget the sufferings and wrongs of myself and fellow captives. Subsequent events, however, have shown that our late enemies are not possessed of the same spirit of kindly feeling and friendship that we have extended to them. Moreover, that the leaders among them have, under the dissembling guise of repentance, sought the pardon and confidence of the nation—which, by force of arms, in four years of bloody war, they failed to dismember—that they might, with the wily arts of the politician, accomplish its destruction.
Believing that subserviency to the demands of those lately leadiug the armed hosts arrayed against us, by the slave Oligarchy, and the wholesale and indiscriminate pardon extended them by our Chief Magistrate, will, at no distant day, render fruitless the glorious work accomplished by our noble armies, and vain the gallant deeds and heroic sufferings of the brave men of whom they were composed, I send forth to the public this volume; which, without pretensions to literary merit, breathes the dying moans and starving wails of twenty thousand Union soldiers, whose shroudless and uncoffined bodies moulder beneath the sod, adjacent to the rebel prisons in which they were tortured to death, trusting that whatever influence it may exercise will aid in bringing the guilty leaders of treason to just punishment, for their enormous crimes against humanity.
"Without any aspirations whatever, to literary notoriety, I have endeavored to give a plain, unvarnished narrative of facts and incidents of prison life, as they occurred, under my own observation, during twenty-two months in various rebel prisons. I have added, also, the statements of several other Union prisoners, who stand ready to vouch for the same with their affidavits. In this recital of the terrible woe of our soldiers who were prisoners.of war, I do not wish it to be understood that I charge the mass of the Southern people with complicity in the inhuman treatment they received. Jeff. Davis, Robert E. Lee, and other rebels high in authority, and the monsters whom they placed in immediate command of the prisoners, are alone responsible, and on their heads let just and condign punishment fall.
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