as long Consul-General at
Paris. Cook studied five or six years in Germany, France, and Italy,
then was for eight or ten years assistant professor in German at
Harvard, and afterwards for two years, until his untimely death,
professor in the same department at the Institute of Technology in
Boston. In addressing a Sunday-school in Brooklyn, 1871, I unexpectedly
lighted upon Captain Tiemann doing good work as a teacher. Captain
Gardner continued for many months a model military officer in
Georgia.[15] I remained in the service a full year, often on
courts-martial, military commissions, and "reconstruction" duty.

* * * * *

As already described, the condition of the enlisted men strongly
contrasted with ours. The Report of the Confederate Inspector of Prisons
now on file in the _War Records_ of our government, though the reports
of his subordinate officers are significantly missing, covers the few
months next preceding January, 1865. It sharply censures the immediate
prison authorities, stating, as the result of the privations, that the
deaths at Danville were at the rate of about five per day! I think they
were more numerous in January and February. None of my battalion were
there, but at Salisbury three-sevenths of them died in less than three
months!

It is hard to refrain from the expression of passionate indignation at
the treatment accorded to our non-commissioned officers and privates in
those southern hells. For years we were accustomed to ask, "In what
military prison of the north, in what common jail of Europe, in what
dungeon of the civilized or savage world, have captives taken in
war--nay, condemned criminals--been systematically exposed to a
lingering death by cold and hunger? The foulest felon--his soul black
with sacrilege, his hands reeking with parricide--has enough of food, of
clothing, of shelter; a chair to sit in, a fire to warm him, a blanket
to hide his nakedness, a bed of straw to die on!"

But listen a moment to the other side. Alexander H. Stephens,
Vice-President of the Confederacy, afterwards for eight years a
representative in our Congress, a man of unquestioned integrity, shows
in his _War between the States_ (pub. 1868-70) by quotation from the
Report of our then Secretary of War (July 19, 1866) that only 22,576
Federal prisoners died in Confederate hands during the war, whilst
26,436 Confederate prisoners died in Federal hands. He shows also from
the Un