Reports of the Committee on the Conduct of the War Part 72

By the chairman:

Question. Is not that one of the symptoms attendant upon starvation, that men are likely to become deranged or idiotic?

Answer. Yes, sir; more like derangement than what we call idiocy.

By Mr. Gooch:

Question. Can those men whose arms you bared and held up to us--mere skeletons, nothing but skin and bone--can those men recover?

Answer. They may; we think that some of them are in an improving condition. But we have to be extremely cautious how we feed them. If we give them a little excess of food under these circ.u.mstances they would be almost certain to be seriously and injuriously affected by it.

Question. It is your opinion, you have stated, that these men have been reduced to this condition by want of food?

Answer. It is; want of food and exposure are the original causes. That has produced diarrhoea and other diseases as a natural consequence, and they have aided the original cause and reduced them to their present condition. I should like the country and the government to know the facts about these men; I do not think they can realize it until the facts are made known to them. I think the rebels have determined upon the policy of starving their prisoners, just as much as the murders at Fort Pillow were a part of their policy.

Rev. J. T. Van Burkalow, sworn and examined.

By the chairman:

Question. What is your connexion with this hospital?

Answer. I am the chaplain of the hospital.

Question. How long have you been acting in that capacity?

Answer. I have been connected with the hospital in that capacity ever since the 20th of October, 1862.

Question. What has been your opportunity of knowing the condition of our returned prisoners?

Answer. I have mingled with them and administered unto them ever since they have been here, night and day. I have written, I suppose, something like a hundred letters for them to their relatives and friends, since they arrived here.

Question. Have you attended them when they were dying?

Answer. Yes, sir.

Question. And conversed with them about their condition, and the manner in which they have been brought to that condition?

Answer. Yes, sir; I have.

Question. Please tell us what you have ascertained from them.

Answer. The general story I have gotten from them was to the effect that when captured, and before they got to Richmond, they would generally be robbed of their clothing, their good United States uniforms, even to their shoes and hats taken from them, and if anything was given to them in place of them, they would receive only old worn-out confederate clothing. Sometimes they were sent to Belle Isle with nothing on but old pants and shirts. They generally had their money taken from them, often with the promise of its return, but that promise was never fulfilled.

They were placed on Belle Isle, as I have said, some with nothing on but pants and shirts, some with blouses, but they were seldom allowed to have an overcoat or a blanket. There they remained for weeks, some of them for six or eight weeks, without any tents or any kind of covering.

Question. What time of the year was this?

Answer. All along from September down to December, as a general thing, through the latter part of the fall. There they remained for weeks without any tents, without blankets, and in many instances without coats, exposed to the rain and snow, and all kinds of inclement weather.

And where some of them had tents, they were old worn-out army tents, full of holes and rents, so that they are very poor shelters indeed from the storms. I have been told by several of them that several times, upon getting up in the morning, they would find six or eight of their number frozen to death. There are men here now who have had their toes frozen off there. They have said that they have been compelled to get up during the night and walk rapidly back and forth to keep from dying from the cold.

Question. What do they say in regard to the food furnished them?

Answer. They represent that as being very little in quant.i.ty, and of the very poorest quality, being but a small piece of corn-bread, about three inches square, made of meal ground very coa.r.s.ely--some of them suppose made of corn and cobs all ground up together--and that bread was baked and cut up and sent to them in such a manner that a great deal of it would be crumbled off and lost. Sometimes they would get a very small piece of meat, but that meat very poor, and sometimes for days they would receive no meat at all. And sometimes they would receive a very small quant.i.ty of what they call rice-water--that is, water with a few grains of rice in it.

Question. You have heard their statements separately?

Answer. Yes, sir.

Question. Do they all agree in the same general statement as to their treatment?

Answer. Yes, sir; they do.

Question. How were they clothed when they arrived here?

Answer. They were clothed very poorly indeed, with old worn-out filthy garments, full of vermin.

Question. What was their condition and appearance as to health when they arrived here?

Answer. They looked like living skeletons--that is about the best description I can give of them--very weak and emaciated.

Question. Have you ever seen men at any time or place so emaciated as these are--so entirely dest.i.tute of flesh?

Answer. I think I have a few times, but very rarely; I have known men to become very emaciated by being for weeks affected with chronic diarrhoea, or something of that kind. But the chronic diarrhoea, and liver diseases, and lung affections, which those men now have, I understand to have been superinduced by the treatment to which they have been subjected; their cruel and merciless treatment and exposure to inclement weather without any shelter or sufficient clothing or food, reducing them literally to a state of starvation.

Question. Could any of them walk when they arrived here?

Answer. I think there was but one who could make out to walk; the rest we had to carry into the hospitals on stretchers.

By Mr. Odell:

Question. Did these men make these statements in their dying condition?

Answer. Yes, sir.

By the chairman:

Question. Were the persons who made these statements conscious of approaching dissolution?

Answer. Yes, sir; I know of no particular cases where they spoke of these things when they were right on the borders of death; but they made them before, when they were aware of their condition.

Question. So that you have no reason to doubt that they told the exact truth, or intended to do so?