Franklin Repository

The leaders of the rebellion, defeated at every point, have resolved in their desperation to exhaust inhumanity in their death-struggle. Never before in the history of civilized warfare, has such a record of brutality been made as has recently marked the career of the insurgents; and now they openly acknowledge it before the world, and plead in extenuation of it their purpose to compel the government to accept their theory of the war; their views of the status of soldiers, and their system for the exchange of prisoners. They now hold some 13,000 Union prisoners--many of them private citizens, arrested and imprisoned without even the pretence that they were spies, or on any other ground subject to capture and confinement by the rules of war. yet they are crowded into loathsome prisons; subjected to the most barbarous treatment at the hands of low officials; fed, as a rule, on most unwholesome food and often insufficient in quantity; and denied almost every article essential to their comfort. Our military prisoners often fare worse, if possible, and the testimony from all sources is concurrent, that they are dying by hundreds from actual starvation, and from disease engendered by the habitual atrocities practiced in every conceivable shape upon them by the subordinate rebel officers.

Our government has exhausted its efforts to effect a just and equitable exchange of prisoners, but without success. It has generously offered to postpone the questions in dispute as to negro troops; officers of negro troops, and the alleged return to service, without authority, of the rebels captured at Vicksburg; and exchange man for man and officer for officer until one side or the other should be without prisoners; but this proposition has been declined by the rebel authorities. the last offer made by our government was to exchange 10,000 men, which would leave but few in rebel hands; but they rejected it, and they stand before the world to-day as holding thousands of prisoners of war--recognized by all civilized nations as entitled to humane treatment--for no other reason, than to coerce our government into a partial recognition of the Southern Confederacy in order to rescue our brave soldiers from the horrors of rebel brutality. When the government proposed to send rations to our suffering heroes, the rebel officers quibble first upon one point and then upon another, and finally reject the needed provisions entirely; and when the benevolence of private individuals and christian and sanitary associations demands access to their deadly prisons, they dare not openly reject the proffered humanity, but they deny all agents admission to our prisoners, and manage by arbitrary official regulations to defeat measurably if not wholly the relief intended.

Finding, however, that our government cannot be driven from its just purpose, we have hope now that the exchange of prisoners will soon be resumed by the rebels, and that citizen prisoners will shortly be at liberty. The brilliant victory of Gen. Grant at Chattanooga is an argument in favor of the early exchange, and of the humane treatment of prisoners, that can scarcely be unheeded at Richmond. It opens to our army the very heart of Georgia and a most vital point of the remnant of the bogus Confederacy; and unless non-combatants are speedily discharged by the rebels, Gen. Grant has abundance of material in Georgia, in the persons of chivalric planters, to make the rebel authorities glad to recognize the propriety of adhering to the dictates of humanity in the treatment of prisoners. We do not doubt that, unless the exchange of prisoners shall be speedily resumed by the rebels, Gen. Grant will commence such retaliatory measures as must operate like magic upon the rebel leaders. He will not imitate their barbarous vengeance by starving prisoners, or confining them in loathsome prisons to die an hundred deaths by wasting disease; but he doubtless will take prominent rebel citizens and hold them as hostages for our non-combatants now imprisoned without any charges against them whatever; and if necessary to carry retaliation still further, he can, by the accepted rules of war, inflict any punishment upon hundreds of his prisoners lately captured, as they are in the rebel service in insolent violation of their parole at Vicksburg, and their lives are thus forfeited.

There is one chapter of rebel atrocity in this war that remains to be written, and we hazard little in saying that when it shall be truthfully portrayed, all other atrocities of the war will pale before it. We refer to their treatment of our negro troops. The rebel leaders have steadily refused to recognize negro troops or their officers as entitled to the treatment of prisoners of war. Various acts of assembly of the insurgent States; an act of the rebel Congress, and several proclamations of Jeff Davis, alike condemn them to the ignominious death of the felon; and it is feared that in many instances they have fulfilled their threatened vengeance. Notwithstanding, their various laws and proclamations, they have not dared to fulfill them so far as to execute officers of negro troops; for they well know that such inhuman butchery could not escape our notice, and when once known, they are well convinced that retaliation would come in the name of Justice and take eye for eye and tooth for tooth with terrible certainty. But our government has no information, and can get none, of the negro soldiers captured by the rebels. Every effort has been made, officially and otherwise, to ascertain the fate of our negro troops captured, but as yet no evidence of their existence can be found. There have been some hundreds captured. At Milliken's Bend, where two negro regiments, by matchless heroism, saved Gen. Grant's lines of communication, a few were captured--principally wounded men; at Banks' unsuccessful assault on Port Hudson, where they won immortal honor by their bravery, many of their wounded and some not wounded fell into the enemy's hands; in Gen. Strong's fatal assault upon Battery Gregg, near Charleston, many of his wounded negro troops were taken, and in various skirmishes and battles in Louisiana and on the Gulf, negro soldiers have been made prisoners by the rebels; and since their capture our government has never heard of them! Earnest and persistent inquiries have been made by our officers at every point; but all efforts have failed to elicit any information respecting them. The government is well convinced that they have been either brutally murdered, or what is equally revolting, sold into slavery. The fearful reckoning to come upon the rebels from the rebels from this cause has doubtless made them resort to every possible pretext to prevent the exchange of prisoners; for the issue touching negro troops must be met as soon as a general exchange is effected, and they dread to face the government and the world on their own record of inhumanity. But they cannot long delay this terrible retribution. Our government is bound by every consideration of duty; by its plighted faith to its soldiers, regardless of color, to vindicate their rights and avenge their wrongs; and there is no alternative but to demand and take life for life until exact justice is measured out to the remorseless murderers, and humanity is taught them through their fears since it cannot reach them through their conceptions of justice. To this fearful necessity our government is driven by the persistent atrocities of the leaders of this causeless, this wicked war; and when the day of avenging justice comes, we may hope for some measure of humanity thenceforth on the part of the foes of the Republic.