The policy of
enlisting negroes renders it harder for prisoners. So does the emancipation
proclamation. The government having enlisted negroes, it is bound by laws of
war and all honorable considerations to protect them as soldiers. To do
otherwise would be dishonorable, cowardly, pernicious. Their enlistment more
excited the unreasonable hatred of Southerners toward the North. The only way
they can punish the North for what they deem insulting, is through their
military prisons and they open their vials of wrath on "Lincoln hirelings,"
as they call us, who are wholly in their power. But the ever present fear of
retaliation, man for man, men would be slain by hundreds, lined up and shot
after being brought beyond the seat of war. As it is they come as near as they
dare without displaying the black flag. Exchange was blocked last fall because
Rebel authority disregards the negro as a man. That has long been a civil code
of Slavedom. They adhere to it with a vengeance when he appears in arms against
slavery. He is saved from slaughter if captured, on the theory that he is
property, a theory in practice here for 100 years, or more. If any are escaped
slaves they are to be returned to masters or used for war purposes
indefinitely. If free they are appropriated as laborers, never exchanged, and
if their war succeeds he can be sold. Hence the case of a white man is worse
than that of a colored. He is deemed deserving of death because his government
puts whites and blacks on an equality. The slave codes of the South, written
and unwritten are in force, emphasized by the war power. This cruel and absurd
animus of "Southern civilization," this unrighteous despotism, is of
long standing. It is unquestioned by Southerners; woe be to him who disregarded
it during the long arbitrary reign of Slave Kings. The mass accept it as right
which is equivalent to thinking it right, and as men think so they are. Hence
the critical situation of the white war prisoners at this time. We are wholly
at the mercy of this cruel spirit which has transformed the South into a foe of
everybody antagonistic to their customs and laws
Shall Lincoln recall
his emancipation proclamation for the reason which as surely exists as we are
at war? It makes it the deadliest war of any century. Nor should the policy of
allowing negroes to fight for liberty be recalled. Shall free men cower and
longer concede the injustices of this hell-born slave power? Indeed not. That
is the issue-deadly issue to be fought to death. How well do I remember the
word passed along the lines at Mine Run and other places last fall and winter:
"No exchange of prisoners, men, remember." The same word sounded
along the lines in the fiery ordeals in the Wilderness. The die was cast. We
fought with it before our eyes. Who does not now realize its import? Davis
seeks to supercede the laws of war with his old slave code. Soon after
Lincoln's emancipation Davis notified his Congress that he proposed to turn
commissioned officer's thereafter over to State authorities in States where
captured to be punished under State laws providing for criminals engaged in
inciting civil insurrection. That is his disposition, overlooking the fact that
codes made to hang "abolition fanatics" can not be safely applied to
war prisons in a state of war, where the States he represents are belligerents
fighting for independence and asking for foreign recognition. Davis'
blood-thirsty fanaticism for slavery, supercedes the intelligence he has been
supposed to have and displays his savage inhumanity, thus seeking excuse to
hang all U. S. officers.
[Note.—January 12,
1863, Davis, in a message to the Confederate Congress, said: "I shall,
unless you, in your wisdom, deem some other course more expedient, deliver to
the several State authorities all commissioned officers of the United States
that may hereafter be captured by our forces in any of the States embraced in
the proclamation, that they may be dealt within accordance with the laws of
those States providing for the punishment of criminals engaged in inciting
servile insurrection." Confederate War Records now at Washington. The same
records show that in May, 1863, the Confederate Congress in its
"wisdom," passed a law embodying the above suggestion, but confining
its operation to commissioned officers of negro regiments. Negro soldiers, when
captured, by its provisions were to be delivered to authorities of States where
captured, to be disposed of according to the laws of those States. This law was
never repealed, so that, as a legal proposition, any officer of a negro
regiment who became a prisoner was liable to be hanged, as John Brown was at
Harper's Ferry. The records also show that the prisoner problem was much
discussed early in the war. A Yankee caught in slave States to "free
niggers" prior to the war could be safely hanged under slave codes.
Shallow minds, like Davis, assumed that it could still be done, others saw that
having gone to war in the spirit that enacted the codes, they had barred
themselves from exercising that sacred function. Some said make Uncle Sam feed
them at his own expense though they be kept in the South. Others said starve
them; others give them poor bread and water; others, break their legs and turn
them loose. Some said make them build railroads or work in other ways to boost
the Slave Confederacy.]
SOURCE: John Worrell
Northrop, Chronicles from the Diary of a War Prisoner in Andersonville
and Other Military Prisons of the South in 1864, pp. 95-7
