Page:The Immortal Six Hundred.djvu/183

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THE IMMORTAL SIX HUNDRED


Really, it seemed like the elements had joined hands with Stanton and Foster to destroy us. There can be no claim set up by the Federal authorities and General Foster, commanding Department of the South, that the ration given us was the best that could be done for us. If such claim is made, it is false, for I do know that the storehouse of the fort contained commissary stores going to waste, while we human beings were being starved to death. The treatment of our prisoners of war by General Foster, U. S. A., was the refinement of cruelty. God grant I may never be again subjected to such cruelty, nor witness such infamous barbarity, as that inflicted upon the six hundred Confederate officers at Fort Pulaski. It was shocking to look upon these poor, helpless prisoners of war, starved until they became walking skeletons; and some of the six hundred were wounded men, whose wounds had not yet healed over. Why they were not exchanged with those at Hilton Head I do not know. Hunger


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