and I think the gentleman from New York
fell into a little of the same line. Of that I
shall speak again. The gentleman from
Georgia goes on to say that—

The atrocities of Andersonville do not begin
to compare with the atrocities of Elmira,
the atrocities both at Andersonville and at
of Camp Douglas, of Fort Delaware; and of all
Elmira the Confederate authorities stand ac-
quitted.

Mr. HILL. I certainly said no such thing. I stated distinctly that I brought no charge of crime against anybody. But I also stated distinctly that according to the gentleman's logic that result followed. Mr. BLAINE. But that is not the reportspeech at all. Mr. HILL. I stated distinctly that I was following the gentleman's logic.

from Massachusetts, [Mr. SEELYE,] who ad-
dressed the House last evening. He sees
and appreciates the magnitude of the crime
laid at the door of Jefferson Davis, and he
clearly pointed out that neither the gentle-
man from New York nor the gentleman from
Georgia had palliated or dared to palliate
the crimes with which I charged him. But
he is bothered by the scruple that because
we are permitted to punish for participancy
in insurrection or rebellion we cannot make
any discrimination or distinction. Why, the
honorable gentleman must have forgotten that
this is precisely what we have been doing ever
since the disability was imposed. We first
removed the disabilities from the least offen-ed
sive class; then in the next list we removed
those next in order of guilty participancy,
and so on, until in 1872 we removed the
disability from all, except the Army and Na-
vy officers, members of Congress, and heads
of Departments. Why, sir, are we not as
much justified to day in excepting Jefferson
Davis as we were in 1872 in excepting the
seven hundred and fifty of whom he consti-
tutes one? Therefore I beg to say to my
honorable friend, whose co-operation I crave,
that that point is res adjudicata by a hun-
dred acts upon the statute-book. We are
entirely competent to do just what is pro-
posed in my amendment.

Mr. BLAINE. I am quoting the gentleman's speech as he delivered it. I quote it as it appeared in the Daily Chronicle and the Associated Press report. I do not pretend to be bound by the version which may appear hereafter, because I observed that the gentleman from New York [Mr. Cox] spoke one speech and published another, [great laughter,] and I suppose the gentleman from Georgia will do the same. I admit that the gentleman has a difficult role to play. He has to harmonize himself with the great Northern Democracy and keep himself in high line as a Democratic candidate for Senator from Georgia; and it is a very diffi

The "barn-burner Democrats" in 1853 tried
very hard to adhere to their anti-slavery
principles in New York and still support the
Pierce administration; and Mr. Greeley,
with that inimitable humor which he pos-
sessed, said that they found it a very hard road
to straddle, like a militia general on parade
on Broadway, who finds it an almost impos-
sible task to follow the music and dodge the
omnibuses. [Laughter.] And that is what
the gentleman does. The gentleman tries
to keep step to the music of the Union and
dodge his fire-eating constituency in Georgia.
[Great laughter.]

Now, Mr. Speaker, on the question of the treatment of our prisoners and on the great question as to who was to blame for break-cult thing to reconcile the two. [Laughter.] ing exchange, the speech of the honorable gentleman from Ohio [Mr. GARFIELD] has left me literally nothing to say. He exhausted the subject. His speech was unanswerable, and I undertake to say that as yet no gentleman has answered one fact that he alleged-no gentleman in this House can answer one fact presented by him. I shall not therefore at any length dwell upon that. But in connection with one point in history there is something which I should feel it my duty, not merely as a member of the Republican party which upheld the administration that conducted the war, but as a citizen of the American Union, to resist and resent, and that is, the allegatious that were made in regard to the manner in which Confederate prisoners were treated in the prisons of the Union. The gentleman from Georgia

says:

I have also proved that with all the horrors you have made such a noise about as occurring

at Andersonville, greater horrors occurred in the prisons where our troops were held.

Then here is another quotation:

We know our prisoners suffered in Federal hands, and we know how if we chose to tell. Fort Delaware and other places with their Thousands of our poor men came home from fingers frozen off, with their toes frozen off, with their teeth fallen out.

Mr. HILL.

to answer.
The gentleman will allow me
I said that these things were
necessary incidents of the horrors of all
prisons.

Mr. BLAINE. But the gentleman states
that that was a fact? I do not understand
him to back down from that assertion?
Mr. HILL. No, sir. I saw it with my own

And I could not but admire the "our" and the "your" with which the gentleman conducted the whole discussion. It ill comported with his later profession of Unionism. It was certainly flinging the shadow of a dead Confederacy a long way over the dial | eyes. of the National House of Representatives;

Mr. BLAINE. Now, the gentleman from

Mr. COX. the gentleman.

Mr. BLAINE. Now the gentleman takes. his side among the great defenders of Andersonville, and states there has been nothing made out against Andersonville except upon ex parte statements.

Now, Mr. Speaker, while I do not wish to be interrupted, I would like, by a nod, if the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. HILL] will be good enough to tell me--for he is a well-· practiced lawyer and I am not one at all; and when witnesses are in doubt they are allowed time to reflect and refresh their

whether he recollects having introduced this resolution into the Confederate Senate. Mr. HILL. Which?

Mr. BLAINE. The following:

Mr. COX. Go on with your talk; you are getting used up on this side. [Laughter.] Mr. BLAINE. The gentleman from New York stated that "he had it on the authority of sixty and odd gentlemen here, many of them having been in the service of the Confederacy during the war, that no order was issued at anytime in the South relative to pris-memory-I ask him to tell me after reflection oners who were taken by the South as to rations or clothing that did not apply equally to their own soldiers, and that any ex parte statements taken by that humbug committee on the conduct of the war could not controvert the facts of history.' The gentleman therefore stands up here as denying. the atrocities of Andersonville. He seconds the gentleman from Georgia and gives the weight of whatever may be attached to his word to denying that fact. Now, the gentleman himself did not always talk so. I have here a debate that occurred on the 21st of December, 1864, in which, while the proposition was pending in the House for retaliation, the gentleman, then from Ohio, said:

it does not follow that because the rebels have made brutes and fiends of themselves that we should do likewise.

Mr. COX. That is good sense.

Mr. BLAINE. "There is," he says, "a certain law of retaliation in war, I know; but," continued the gentleman, "no man will stand up here and say, after due deliberation, that he would reduce these prisoners thrust into our hands into the same condition exhibited by these skeletons, these pictures, there anatomies brought to our attention and laid upon the desks of members of Congress." Then the gentleman says: "It does not follow because our prisoners

Senator Hill, of Georgia, introduced the following resolution in the Confederate Congress in October, 1862: "That every person pretending to be a soldier or officer of the United States who shall be captured on the soil of the ary, 1863, shall be presumed to have entered Confederate States after the first day of Januthe territory of the Confederate States with intent to incite insurrection and to abet murder; and, unless satisfactory proof be adduced to the contrary before the military court be fore which the trial shall be had, he shall suf fer death. And this section shall continue in ham Lincoln, dated Washington, September force until the proclamation issued by Abra22, 1872, shall be rescinded."

Did the gentleman introduce that resolution?

Mr. HILL. Do you want an answer?
Mr. BLAINE. Yes.

Mr. HILL. I will say this: I state precisely and frankly, as I stated to the gentleman day before yesterday, that I do not recollect being the author of that resolution. I have no doubt the resolution was introduced, and I will state this: that at the time there was a belief in the ConfederacyMr. BLAINE. I did not yield for a speech. I only wanted to know that.

*

* * *

Mr. Speaker, what does this mean? What did the gentleman from Georgia mean when, from the committee on the judiciary, he introduced the following:

2. Every white person who shall act as a commissioned or non-commissioned officer, the Confederate States, or who'shall arm, orcommanding negroes or mulattoes against ganize, train, or prepare negroes or mulattoes

committed perjury, and I would like to address the gentleman a question that he can answer when he gets the floor.

Mr. HILL. Will you not allow me to answer it now?

gentleman from Georgia [Mr. HILL] protested against them. They were known to the Confederate Congress; they were known at the doorway of your Senate and along the corridors of your Capitol. The honorable and venerable gentleman in my eye at this moment who served in the Confederate Congress, and who had before served in the Senate of the United States, himself brought them to the attention of the Confederate Congress, and I class him with great gladness among those whose humanity was never quenched by the fires of the rebellion. I allude to Hon. Henry S. Foote.

Mr. BLAINE. No, sir; not now. Suppose you inaugurate a great war if the Republican party retains power, and you and all these gentlemen, who sympathize with you upon this floor, and who had taken an oath to bear true allegiance to the Government of the United States, and that you took that oath without mental reservation, then revolt against the country; what would that be? Would it have any relation to perjury? My time is running and I have very little But, Mr. Speaker, you see the effect of the left. I confess and I say it to the gentlespeeches of the gentleman from Georgia. man from Georgia with no personal unkindThey are very tremendous down there. The ness-I confess that my very blood boiled, very earth quakes under him. One of his if there was anything of tradition, of memoorgans says: ry, of feeling, it boiled, when I heard the gentleman, with his record, which I have read, seconded and sustained by the gentlemau from New York, arraigning the administration of Abraham Lincoln, throwing ob

We assert without fear of contradiction that Mr. HILL in his bitter denunciation of scalawags and carpet-baggers has deterred thousands of them from entering the ranks of the radical party. They dare not do so for fear of social ostracism, and to-day the white popu-loquy and slander upon the grave of Edwin lation of Georgia are unanimous in favor of the Democratic party.

And when he can get the rest of the States to the same standard he is for war.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman cannot, by withholding his speech here and revising it and adapting it to the northern Democracy, erase his speeches in Georgia. I have quoted from them. I have quoted from Democratic papers. There is no accusation that there is any perversion in Republican papers or that he was misrepresented. But the gentleman deliberately states that in a certain contingency of the Republican party having power he is for war; and I undertake here to say that, in all the mad, hot wrath in the Thirtysixth Congress that precipitated the revolt in this country there is not one speech to be found that breathes a more determined rebellion against lawful authority or a guiltier readiness to resist it than the speech of the gentleman from Georgia.

M. Stanton, and demanding that Jefferson Davis should be restored to full citizenship in this country. Ah! that is a novel spectacle; the gentleman from Georgia does not know how novel; the gentleman from New York ought to know. The gentleman from Georgia does not know and he cannot know how many hundred thousands of northern bosoms were lacerated by his course.

Mr. HILL. I never said it, Mr. BLAINE; you are mistaken.

Mr. BLAINE. Oh, no; you accused the administration of Mr. Lincoln with breaking the cartel and violating the honor of the Government, and a thousand other things; the speech as published in the papers show it. And as soon as he made it the gentleman from New York run to him in hot haste to congratulate him, sympathizing, I suppose, with the assault.

Mr. HILL. Upon that subject I read nothing but published letters and documents, and of northern origin at that.

Mr. Speaker, I have not much time left. I said briefly in my first speech that God Mr. BLAINE. I repeat, that proposition forbid I should lay at the door of the South- strikes-I might say almost terror into northern people, as a people, these atrocities. ern hearts; that here, in an American Conrepeat it. I lay no such charge at their gress, the gentleman who offered that resodoor. Sir, I have read in this "ex parte hum-lution in the Confederate Congress, who in bug report" that there were deep movements his campaign for a seat in this House comes among the Southern people about these atrocities; that there was a profound sensibility. I know that the leading officers of the Confederacy protested against them; I know that many of the subordinate officers protested against them. I know that an honorable gentleman from North Carolina, now representing his State in the other end of the Capitol, protested against them. But I have searched the records in vain to find that the

here breathing threatenings and slaughter, who comes here telling you that in a certain contingency he means war, advising his people to be ready for it-that gentleman, profaning the very altar of patriotic liberty with the speech that sends him here, arraigning the Administration that conducted the war and saved the Union--that gentleman asks us to join with him in paying the last full measure of honor that an American

9.

Congress can pay to the arch enemy of the
Union, the arch-fiend of the rebellion.

ment there was no honor in it-none whatever. The gentleman has got enough of General Grant by this time, I hope.

Suppose Jefferson Davis is not pardoned'; suppose he is not amnestied. Oh! you can- Now in regard to the relative number of not have a centennial year without that! No prisoners that died in the North and the man on this side has ever intimated that South respectively, the gentleman underJefferson Davis should be refused pardon on took to show that a great many more prisaccount of any political crimes; it is too oners died in the hands of the Union authorlate for that; it is because of a personalities than in the hands of the rebels. I have crime. had conversations with surgeons of the Army

If you ask that there may be harmonious about that, and they say that there were and universal rejoicing over every forgiven a large number of deaths of rebel prisonman, release all your criminals; set freeers, but that during the latter period of the every man who has been sentenced for piracy or for murder by your United States courts; proclaim the jubilee indeed.

Mr. HEREFORD. And the whisky convícts!

war they came into our hands very much exhausted, ill-clad, ill-fed, diseased, so that they died in our prisons of diseases that they brought with them. And one eminent surgeon said, without wishing at all to be quoted in this debate, that the question was

Mr. BLAINE. Mr. Speaker, that reminds me of one thing which in the haste and pres-not only what was the condition of the prissure of my hour I might have forgotten. The gentleman from Georgia aimed to be very humorous about General Grant, and said that the logic which I had presented the other day in regard to Jefferson Davis made General Grant responsible for McDonald and Joyce. The gentleman might have thought that he was witty, but I could not see it.

oners when they came to us, but what it was when they were sent back. Our men were taken in full health and strength; they came back wasted and worn-mere skeletons. The rebel prisoners, in large numbers, were, when taken, emaciated and reduced; and General Grant says that at the time such superhuman efforts were made for exchange Mr. HILL. I know you could not. there were 90,000 men that would have reMr. BLAINE. It was not so witty as the enforced your armies the next day,prisoners remarks of the gentleman from New York, in our hands who were in good health and [Mr. Cox.] It was more grim. If Jefferson ready for fight. This consideration sheds Davis, the moment the crimes of Anderson-a great deal of light on what the gentleman ville had been brought to his attention, had arraigned the offenders with all competent authority, and had issued an order that "no guilty man should escape," there would be some little consistency in the gentleman's position. It was therefore ill-conceived levity, and in very bad taste, for the gentleman to introduce General Grant's name in that

connection.

But I am authorized, if the gentleman desires it--not authorized especially to mention it here, but I mention it on the authority of General Grant, whom the gentleman from Georgia impugned in connection with the exchange of prisoners-——

Mr. HILL. No, sir.

Mr. BLAINE. To say that one thing touching the exchange of prisoners was that the Davis government observed no honor in regard to it; and General Grant states that the brigade of Carter L. Stephenson, that was dislodged at Chattanooga, was made up of paroled prisoners from Vicksburg, and that Stephenson himself was one of them. He states that the paroled prisoners of one day in front of his line were taken the next. But in stating this he was careful to say that, as to Lee and the two Johnstons and Pemberton, and the other leading Confederate generals, their word was honor itself; but that for the Davis executive govern

states.

The gentleman from Illinois [Mr. HURL-
BUT] puts a letter into my hands. I read it
without really knowing what it may show:
CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA,
WAR DEPARTMENT,

Richmond, Virginia, March 21, 1863.
MY DEAR SIR: If the exigencies of our army

require the use of trains for the transportation

of corn, pay no regard to the Yankee prisoners. I would rather they should starve than our own people suffer.

I suppose I can safely put it in writing: "Let them suffer." The words are memorable, and it is fortunate that in this case they can be applied properly and without the intervention of a lying quartermaster.

ROBERT OULD.

Very truly, your faithful friend,
Colonel A. C. MYERS.

That is a good piece of literature in this connection. Mr Ould, I believe, was the rebel commissioner to exchange. When the gentleman from Georgia next takes the floor I want him to state what excuse there was for ordering the Florida artillery, in case General Sherman's army got within seven miles of Andersonville, to fire on that stockade.

Mr. HILL. That was just to keep your Army from coming. That is all.

Mr. BLAINE. Upon this point letters have flowed in upon me-letters which, without pretending to any extraordinary