quarrel relations with that fine-natured
gentleman, and if Lee had not been too strongly entrenched in the hearts
of his countrymen to make any interference with him unwise, even for the
President. Davis had, however, managed to interfere very seriously with
the operations of men like Beauregard, Sidney Johnson, Joseph Johnston,
and other commanders whose continued leadership was most important for
the Confederacy. It was the obstinacy of Davis that had protracted the
War through the winter and spring of 1865, long after it was evident
from the reports of Lee and of the other commanders that the resources
of the Confederacy were exhausted and that any further struggle simply
meant an inexcusable loss of life on both sides. As a Northern soldier
who has had experience in Southern prisons, I may be excused also from
bearing in mind the fearful responsibility that rests upon Davis for the
mismanagement of those prisons, a mismanagement which caused the death
of thousands of brave men on the frozen slopes of Belle Isle, on the
foul floors of Libby and Danville, and on the rotten ground used for
three years as a living place and as a dying place within the stockade
at Andersonville. Davis received from month to month the reports of the
conditions in these and in the other prisons of the Confederacy. Davis
could not have been unaware of the stupidity and the brutality of
keeping prisoners in Richmond during the last winter of the War when the
lines of road still open were absolutely inadequate to supply the troops
in the trenches or the people of the town. Reports were brought to Davis
more than once from Andersonville showing that a large portion of the
deaths that were there occurring were due to the vile and rotten
condition of the hollow in which for years prisoners had been huddled
together; but the appeal made to Richmond for permission to move the
stockade to a clean and dry slope was put to one side as a matter of no
importance. The entire authority in the matter was in the hands of Davis
and a word from him would have remedied some of the worst conditions. He
must share with General Winder, the immediate superintendent of the
prisons, the responsibility for the heedless and brutal
mismanagement,--a mismanagement which brought death to thousands and
which left thousands of others cripples for life.

As a result of the informal word given by Lincoln, it was generally
understood, by all the officers, at least, in charge