THE IMMORTAL SIX HUNDRED
niggers, Confederate deserters, Union scallawags, and such people, whose word should not have been taken by any decent man without corroboration; yet Gen. J. G. Foster, U. S. A., commanding Department of the South, headquarters, Hilton Head, S. C, accepted the word of these creatures without question, and inflicted upon helpless prisoners of war cruelties that would have shamed Nero.
There never were any Union prisoners of war under fire of their own guns in any part of the South; there were never any prisoners of war treated with harshness or cruelty by order of the Confederate Government authorities; but on the contrary all was done to lessen the burden of prison life that could be done by the Richmond government, and men of the highest rank in the United States Army attest this fact. The cruelty charged against the South is as false as the tongues that utter it, and it has been proven false time and time again. Even Andersonville, that much maligned prison,
14
