Page:The Immortal Six Hundred.djvu/32

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THE IMMORTAL SIX HUNDRED


has been proven to have been a very paradise in comparison to Camp Chase, Rock Island, Elmira, and other Yankee prisons.

The treatment meted to the six hundred Confederate officers, prisoners of war, confined on Morris Island, S. C, by the United States Secretary of War, is a blot upon the escutcheon of the United States that can never be blotted out nor removed. It was cowardly, it was inhuman, and cruel. The names of the men responsible for this cruelty must be written—and they will be written—upon history's blacklists of cruel men. Stanton, Foster, and Halleck, are names that must always cast a shadow upon the days of 1861-65.

There can be no excuse given for cruelty. There is no justification for it under the laws of God or man, and it has never been proven, yet, that the Confederate authorities treated or allowed to be treated harshly or unkindly Union prisoners of war. The stories told of cruelties to Union soldiers in Confeder-


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