through their agent, Judge Ould, made frequent and tireless efforts to get the United States Government, through their agent, General Butler, to exchange. But no, the Federal authorities would not hear to it; but acting on the avowed and promulgated idea that the South, being blockaded, could not recruit her armies from foreign lands, while to the North the whole of Europe was opened, they cruelly determined not to exchange, so as to detain our soldiers from again fighting them, well knowing that even then we had made our last conscription (17 to 50 years), and when those we had were killed up or in prison we would of course be over-powered. This was their cold-blooded, brutal policy; and closely did they stick to it, even till we were almost literally wiped out, while the men they had fighting us were in most part hired substitutes, drafted men, and foreign hirelings.
PRINCIPAL CAUSE OF MORTALITY.
Farther, as to the mortality among the prisoners, let it be remembered that a majority of the deaths caused in our prisons was for want of proper medicines, which we did not have and could not get, except by blockade-running. Had the Federal Government any of the milk of human kindness in its composition, it would have acceded to our earnest request to take cotton in exchange for drugs to administer to their own dying soldiers. Their immense manufactories were lying idle for want of cotton, while we had it but could not use it. But as these self-same drugs and medicines would also be applied to the relief of our own sick soldiers, they determined it would be to their advantage to let all die alike, knowing the South could get no more men to supply the places of the sick, the dying, and those they had imprisoned, so refused all overtures. After using every effort and exhausting every argument to get an exchange, we proposed—as we had no medicines and could get none, except what we accidentally ran in through the blockade from Europe (they being declared contraband, and always confiscated whenever captured by the blockading fleet) we proposed to turn over to them all their sick, without requiring man for man, but giving them absolutely up, if the United States would only send vessels for transporting them. This was done at Camp Lawton (Millen, Georgia), after the prison was removed from Andersonville for greater security.
EXTRACTS FROM AN OFFICER'S DIARY.
From the private journal of a Confederate officer high in command, both at Andersonville and other Southern prisons, I glean the annexed facts, the first bearing directly upon the foregoing: "At one time an order came to Camp Lawton to prepare 2,000 men for exchange. The order from Richmond was to select first the wounded, next the oldest prisoners and the sickly, filling up with healthy men according to date. This party went first to Savannah,
