770 NortH Caronina Troops, 1861-’65.

should ever be called to witness the like again! At the train
they received refreshments from the hands of several citi-
zens. About 2,800 started to march to Greensboro. A great
many who started were unable to make the march. Besides
the stragglers, two hundred were left at Lexington and five
hundred the next day, were abandoned on the road. About
one thousand failed on the way.

I have failed to mention that three or four hundred negroes
were brought to the prison, and were treated precisely as the
other prisoners of war.

After this general delivery about 500 were confined, some
of them from Sherman’s army, and were hurried to Charlotte
just. in time to escape Stoneman’s raiders in April (1865).
The day that Stoneman captured Salisbury his prisoners were
penned in the very same stockade which had so long enclosed
the hordes of Federal captives. All the buildings and the

stockade were burned by Stoneman’s orders on the night of.

12 April. A number of his men had been imprisoned there,
and doubtless some of them were in the detail to which was
assigned the avenging torch.

Having written thus frankly of the dark history of this
great reservoir of misery and death, I now.ask, “Who is to
blame?” And I answer in the very words of two escaped
prisoners, newspaper correspondents, who published their
prison experience after their return to the North.

ESCAPED PRISONERS BLAMED EDWIN M. STANTON.

Mr. Richardson says:

‘The government held a large excess of prisoners and the rebels were
anxious to exchange man for man, but our authorities acted upon the
cold-blooded theory of Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, that we
could not afford to give well-fed, rugged men for invalids and skeletons—
that returned prisoners were infinitely more valuable to the rebels than
to us, because their soldiers were inexorably kept in the army, while
many of ours, whose term of service had expired, would not re-enlist.”

Mr. Brown writes:

‘* As soon as Mr. Richardson and myself reached our lines we deter-
mined to visit Washington, even before returning to New York, to see
what could be done for the poor prisoners we had left behind, and de-
termine what obstacles there had been in the way of an exchange. We
were entirely free. We owed nothing to the rebels or to the government

SALISBURY PRISON. 14

for our release. We had obtained our own liberty, and were very glad
of it. for we believed our captives had been so unfairly, not to say inhu-
manely, treated at Washington that we were unwilling to be indebted
to the authorities of that city for our emancipation. We went to Wash-
ington, deferring everything else to move in the matter of prisoners, and
did what we thought most effective for the end we had in view. During
our sojourn there we made it our special business to inquire into the
causes of the detention of Union prisoners in the South, although it was
known that they were being deliberately starved and frozen by the
rebels. We particularly endeavored to learn who was responsible for
the murder—for it was nothing else—of thousands of our brave soldiers;
and we did learn. There was but one answer to all our questions, and
that was, Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War. Although he knew the
exact condition of affairs in the rebel prisons, he always insisted that we
could not afford to exchange captives with the South; that it was not
policy. Perhaps it was not; but it was humanity, and possibly that is
almost as good as policy in other eyes than Mr. Stanton’s. After our
departure from Washington, such a storm was raised about the Secreta-
ry’s ears—such a tremendous outside feeling was created—that he was
compelled to make an exchange. .

‘The greater part of the Northern prisoners have now been released,
I believe, but there was no more reason why they should have been pa-
roled or exchanged since February than there was ten or twelve months
ago. No complications, no obstacles had been removed in the mean-
time. Our prisoners might just as well have been released a year since
as a month since, and if they had been, thousands of lives would have
been saved to the republic, not to speak of those near and dear ones who
were materially and spiritually dependent upom them.

‘‘Dreadful responsibility for some one; and that some one, so far as I
can learn. is the Secretary of War. I hope I may be in error, but cannot
believe lam. If Iam right, heaven forgive him! for the people will
not. The ghosts of the thousands needlessly sacrificed heroes will haunt
him to his grave.”’

As these extracts are against the officers of their own gov-
ernment, one, if not both, written when the storm had lulled
and the mind was capable of dispassionate reflection and
judgment, we, of course, must accept them as true. They
agree with and corroborate the opinion of all well-informed
persons at the South—thus making it the verdict of the jury
of the millions North and South, that Edwin M. Stanton, and
not the authorities of the Confederacy, is guilty of the delib-
erate destruction of thousands of Federal and Confederate
captives whom he would not permit to be exchanged.

Why, then, all this unrelenting bitterness—this blood-
thirsty, inexorable vengefulness towards the South? Im-
partial history will show that in the article of prisons, she
was “more sinned against than sinning.” It is known by all
who choose to know the truth, that stern necessity and insup-
portable national misfortunes occasioned the sufferings of