A strong point illustrating the position that the sickness among the prisoners was from causes which the Confederate authorities could not control, is the fact that the Confederate guard, officers and surgeons were attacked by the same maladies, and that the deaths among them were about as numerous, in proportion to their numbers, as among the prisoners themselves. Dr. Jones states in his report, that the deaths among the Confederates at Andersonville from typhoid and malarial fevers were more numerous than among the prisoners, and Dr. Stevenson makes the following statement:
"The guards on duty here were similarly affected with gangrene and scurvy. Captain Wirz had gangrene in an old wound, which he had received in the battle of Manassas, in 1861, and was absent from the post (Andersonville) some four weeks on surgeon's certificate. [In his trial certain Federal witnesses swore to his killing certain prisoners in August, 1864, when he (Wirz) was actually at that time absent on sick leave in Augusta, Georgia.] General Winder had gangrene of the face, and was forbidden by his surgeon (I. H. White) to go inside the stockade. Colonel G. C. Gibbs, commandant of the post, had gangrene of the face, and was furloughed under the certificate of Surgeons Wible and Gore, of Americus, Georgia. The writer of this can fully attest to the effects of gangrene and scurvy contracted whilst on duty there; their marks will follow him to his grave. The Confederate graveyard at Andersonville will fully prove that the mortality among the guards was almost as great in proportion to the number of men as among the Federals."
Again:
"For a period of some three months (July, August and September, 1864), Captain Wirz and those few faithful medical officers of the post were engaged night and day in ministering to the wants of the sick and dying, and caring for the dead. So arduous were their duties that many of the medical officers were taken sick and had to abandon their post. In fact the pestilence assumed such fearful proportions that Medical Director S. H. Stout could hardly induce such medical men as could be spared from the pressing wants of the service (Georgia at this time was one vast hospital) to go to Andersonville.
"It was this horrible condition of the captives that prompted Colonel Ould, the Confederate Commissioner of Exchange, to make his repeated efforts in the interest of humanity to get the Federal Government (as they had refused all further exchanges) to send medicines, supplies of clothing, &c. (offering to pay for them in gold or cotton), for the exclusive use of the Federal prisoners, to be dispensed, if desired, by Federal surgeons sent for that purpose."
