Thus many brave and good boys passed from this life while in these prisons, in a most wretched condition. I am at a loss to decide what words to use, in order to express to the reader in a mild form the sad scenes witnessed in some of our comrades’ dying hours, in the prisons, during the winter of 1863 and 1864. The condition of our sick and helpless comrades I partly described in former pages, and here I will merely describe a scene in my unvarnished language, which will probably cover hundreds of cases. One day while I was walking through a crowded part of the prison pen I saw a fellow-prisoner—apparently a young man—lying on the ground. He appeared to me as if he were in a helpless condition. His face was pale where it was not black from prison filth, hair long and matted, clothing thin and torn, arms bare nearly to the elbows, and other parts of the body exposed, caused by worn-out clothing. He looked more like a skeleton than a living man. He was lying upon the bare ground, which was perhaps slightly frozen. As I stated before, the prison pen was entirely destitute of anything which could be placed between his poor, chilled body and the ground. We were all helpless, as far as making him comfortable. This boy was undoubtedly of the class mentioned in former lines, honest, patriotic, and loved by his home relatives and friends. He was now in a destitute and dying condition, with no mother, father, sister or brother to comfort him, to soothe his fevered brow, and to whom he could communicate his last dying words. In some instances similar to this case the last feeble words of the dying man to a comrade would be: “Tell my folks that I died for my country”; and in a feeble voice give the last good-bye.
Who was responsible for the intense sufferings and destruction of Union soldiers confined in southern military prisons during the War of the Rebellion from 1861 to 1865? is a question sometimes asked. I am not able to answer that question fully, but can give only my opinion in some respects, and certify to what I saw and know in regard to it. I believe that a large majority of the people of the South would not have permitted the cruel treatment of our soldiers in their prisons, if they could have prevented it, but they were powerless. The men in authority in the Confederacy were many of them responsible for our cruel treatment.