shot through the heart. Age 16. He had never been absent an hour from his post during his connection with the army, and was buried on the battle-field. His commanding officer, writing to his friends, bore grateful testimony to his soldierly faithfulness and courage.

JOHN W. PETERS, Fourteenth Regiment R. I. V. Died of disease, at Fort Jackson, La., August 24, 1864.

CHARLES J. TOSSETT, Fourteenth Regiment R. I. V. Died of disease, at Fort Jackson, La., November 20, 1864. CHESTER H. HALLAM, Fourteenth Regiment R. I. V. Died of disease, at Fort Jackson, La., March 1, 1865.

XIII.

IN REBEL PRISONS.

"For I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; Naked, and ye clothed me not; Sick and in prison, and ye visited me not.

"Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me."

THE

“HE saddest memories of all the war are awakened by the names,- Andersonville, Libby, Belle Isle, Florence, Salisbury, Charleston. They are the names of prison pens, so hideous and foul, where the treatment was one of such systematized and unrelenting cruelty, that before them the cheek still blanches, and the heart of every patriot is stirred with emotions he cannot trust to utterance. The story of the inhumanity with which they were managed, of the brutality, sickness, disease, starvation, and death that were inseparable from life in them, makes one shudder who is obliged to look even now into their history.

The public were slow in coming to any realizing sense of the barbarity of the rebel authorities as displayed in the ar rangement and conduct of these fearful prisons, but every returned prisoner brought back his tale of suffering, and soon Congress itself instituted an official inquiry, which though failing to reach the public ear, substantiated, in the facts developed, the worst reports that had become current. The thorough rousing of the nation, however, to all the

unutterable barbarities to which our prisoners were subjected, was due to the report of the "Committee of Investigation," appointed by the United States Sanitary Commission. This committee was carefully selected, and embraced those in whom the public could place entire confidence. The names of those composing it were as follows: Ellerslie Wallace, M. D., Hon. J. I. Clark Hare, and Rev. Treadwell Walden, of Philadelphia; Valentine Mott, M. D., LL. D., Edward Delafield, M. D., and Governeur M. Wilkins, Esq., of New York. The narrative of the report was written by a former Norwich resident, still held in loving and honored remembrance, - Rev. Treadwell Walden, Rector of Christ Church, from 1857 to 1863. It was admirably arranged; the history, based on the irrefutable testimony taken, was calmly and dispassionately related, and as might have been anticipated, the impression produced was most profound and wide-reaching. On its publication, it had an immense circulation in this country, and was extensively read in Europe, startling the whole civilized world by the facts it established, and the appalling details it made public. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote to Mr. Walden concerning the facts embodied in the report, "Their interest is terrible; the world will shudder and sicken as it reads them.

. . I shall read in it at times, and when I can read without cursing and swearing. . . . To palliate these infernal savagisms, to call them barbarisms, is a compliment at the expense of barbarism, to which they are not entitled."

Many other equally earnest and strongly worded testimonies were received from prominent men throughout the country, which together with the unprecedented demand for the report, and its vast circulation in various forms, showed that its purpose was attained, and that the public heart was deeply touched, and the mind of the nation convinced. The preparation of this report cost the writer

much time and labor, and to the admirable and wise accomplishment of his work, was due the lasting and needed good of which it was unquestionably productive.

Among those who contributed testimony, based on personal experience and observation, was Lieutenant-colonel Charles Farnsworth, of this city. His letters were of great interest; his evidence on points of fact emphatic, exposing clearly the sufferings and horrors incident to life in Libby and Belle Isle.

Indeed, when the true state of things in these southern prisons became publicly known, the marvel was that so many of those incarcerated survived the fearful ordeal.

When the subject was brought before Congress, by the report of "the Committee on the Conduct of the War," which confirmed the fact that the most unparalleled atrocities had been inflicted upon Union prisoners, some advocated a system of strict retaliation. This was, however, decidedly negatived. In reference to the facts, which some even at this time (1865, Jan.) affected to gloss over, Senator Foster, in his place in the Senate, thus emphatically, and yet with characteristic carefulness, spoke: "I am astonished that any intelligent man should express a doubt, whether our prisoners in the hands of the rebels, from the first day of the war, have been treated barbarously, inhumanly, and that this treatment continues to the present time. Who are our opponents? They are a band of insurgents, robbers, traitors, malefactors on land, and pirates on the deep, and because such men descend to what would disgrace savages in the treatment of prisoners, not disgracing any National name, for they have no National name to disgrace, shall we who are citizens of the United States of America, cach man feeling that he has a part of the National honor to sustain, do that which disgraces them? No, Mr. President, no, no." Mr. Lincoln, when the report of these rebel barbarities

came to him, authenticated beyond a doubt, nobly said, when urged to retaliate, "I never can, I never can starve men like that."

The facts are such as are too painful to be dwelt upon, but they cannot be forgotten or overlooked. They stand rather to point the moral of that system of human bondage, which so largely debauched the consciences of those who had aught to do with it, and made millions of our fellow countrymen willing to embroil a peaceful and happy country in civil war, for the purpose of establishing a separate confederacy, whose "corner stone should be slavery." This prison treatment is the last hideous monument of unrelieved terror and shame, that will memorialize with eternal infamy the slaveholders' rebellion. No picture of torture or misery was ever presented by a civilized people to the world, comparable to this, the treatment of our defenseless prisoners by the rebels. And now that enough years have passed to abate the immediate enmities and bitternesses occasioned by this unprecedented strife, the impartial historian reluctantly touching upon this dark chapter, cannot make of it other than an unrelieved tale of needless and wicked barbarism, of cruelty so inhuman and persistent, of deliberate and systematized inhumanity, which in savages would not have been palliated.

The number of Union prisoners held in the South during the rebellion, was one hundred and twenty-six thousand nine hundred and forty (126,940). Of this number twentytwo thousand five hundred and seventy-six died or were starved to death. For the only complete roll of the prisoners who perished at Andersonville, the nation is indebted to Private Dorance Atwater, of Plymouth, in this State. Two hundred and ninety Connecticut soldiers are known to have lost their lives in this worst of the prisons of the South.

In some or all of these accursed prison-pens Norwich