1864.]  GHBISTIAMrrT  AIQ>  BABBABTSM.  411

floored,  oeiled,  and  ttrengtheiied,  so  iar  m  the  owners  had  meaDB,  with
sticks  and  pieces  of  board,  and  some  of  them  are  provided  with  fir^
places  and  chimneys.  It  would  seem  that  there  were  cases,  during  the
long  rains,  where  the  house  would  become  the  grave  of  its  owner  bj
fidling  upon  him  in  the  night .  •  •  •  During  thirteen  long  months  they
knew  neither  shelter  nor  protection  from  the  changeable  skies  above,

nor  the  pitiless,  unfeeling  earth  beneath

''Think  of  thirty  thousand  men  penned  by. dose  stockade  upon  twenty*
dx  acres  of  ground,  from  which  every  tree  and  shrub  had  been  uproot*
ed  for  fuel  to  cook  their  scanty  food,  huddled  like  cattle,  without  shelter
or  blanket,  half  clad  and  hungry,  with  the  dewy  night  setting  in  afier  a
day  of  autumn  rain.  The  hilltop  would  not  hold  them  all,  the  valley
was  filled  by  the  swollen  brook.  Seventeen  feet  from  the  stockade  ran
the  &tal  dead-line,  beyond  which  no  man  might  step  and  live.  What
did  they  do  ?  I  need  not  ask  where  did  they  go,  for  on  the  face  of  the
whole  earth  there  was  no  place  but  this  for  them.  But  where  did  they
place  themselves  ?    How  did  they  live  ?    Ay !  how  did  they  die  ?  "

Twelve  thousand  nine  hundred  and  ninety  graves  are  num-
bered on  the  neighboring  hiUside,  —  tlie  starved  and  murdered
of  thirteen  months,  —  one  thousand  per  month,  thirty-three  per
day !  Murdered  by  Jeff  Davis,  Bobert  E.  Lee,  James  Seddon,
and  John  0.  Breckenridge !  Murdered  under  official  sanction,
in  accordance  with  premeditated  design.  Davis,  Lee,  Seddon,
and  Breckenridge  noay  not  have  issued  orders  to  starve  the  pris-
oners ;  but  if  cognizant  of  any  inhumanity,  it  was  in  the  power
of  Davis  to  stop  it,  and  of  Lee,  as  conmiander-in-chief  of  the
army,  as  also  of  Sodden,  and  after  him  Breckenridgo,  secretaries
of  war.  A  word  from  either  of  these  officials  would  have  se-
cured humane  treatment.
