post hospital at that post. There is no objection to their transfer to De Camp Hospital, Davids Island. WM. F. EDGAR, Surg., U. S. Army, Acting Medical Director, Dept. of the East. HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF, Lieut. Col. C. T. CHRISTENSEN, New Orleans, La., June 20, 1865. Asst. Adjt. Gen., Department of the Gulf, New Orleans, La. : COLONEL: So far as at present practicable, at a meeting with Major Szymanski this morning, the business of the office of agent of exchange of the Military Division of West Mississippi is closed. The papers and property pertaining to the office I have the honor to send to your care. The interview of this morning leaves the business thus: Federal prisoners all released and exchanged, excepting 1,111, who were recently sent to Benton Barracks on parole. Lists of deaths in Trans Mississippi Department of Federal prisoners up to date inclosed. No effects turned over to me. However, Major Szymanski informs me that there is a small sum of money to be accounted for. Before leaving Shreveport he requested that any further information in regard to deaths be forwarded to him, that he might be enabled to account properly for all prisoners; if deceased, their effects. At any future time I shall be glad to furnish any further information in my power in reference to the business of the office. I should have stated that the money accruing from the sale of fifty bales of cotton is in the hands of Provost-Marshal-General Starring, to be expended under the associate supervision of himself and Major Szymanski for the benefit of Louisiana prisoners. am, colonel, very respectfully, your obedient servant, WM. MCE. DYE, Colonel and Late Agent of Exchange, Mil. Div. of West Miss. SPECIAL ORDERS, HDQRS. DEPARTMENT OF THE MISSOURI, * * * * * 5. Col. J. H. Baker, provost-marshal-general, will at once cause the prisoners confined at the military prison at Alton, Ill., to be removed to Gratiot Street Prison, Saint Louis, Mo. All quartermaster's, commissary, ordnance and medical stores will be turned over to the chiefs of the respective staff departments. On vacating the prison at Alton & guard of one officer and five men will be left to take charge of public buildings and property. The Commissary-General of Prisoners will be notified that the further use of the military prison at Alton, Ill., is not required. As soon as the provisions of this order have been complied with notice to that effect will be given to these headquarters. By command of Major-General Dodge: J. W. BARNES, Commissary-General of Prisoners and Asst. Adjt. Gen. HEADQUARTERS TENTH ARMY CORPS, General HEATH, Commanding Cavalry: GENERAL: I spoke to General Schofield on the subject presented by you this morning. He said his memory of the correspondence between Governor Vance and General Johnson was so indistinct that he did not feel justified in writing the letter requested. The papers had been sent to Washington and could not be referred to. He stated that the impression made upon his mind was that General Johnson made every effort to ameliorate the condition of our prisoners; that he did what he could do in the face of the authorities to whom he was responsible, and acted in the most humane and kindly way. He stated that General Johnson] promised to give him a written statement of the facts in connection with the treatment of our prisoners. This he had not received. He thought that this statement, forwarded to Washington with a request for copies of his correspondence with Governor Vance, would meet with a favorable consideration and would result in having him furnished with the desired official copies. Yours, &c., A. AMES, Brevet Brigadier-General. FORT LAFAYETTE, June 21, 1865. His Excellency ANDREW JOHNSON, President of the United States : Mr. PRESIDENT: I have the honor to petition to you for a pardon and for the restoration to me of the rights of a citizen of the United States. As my confinement here precludes me from the necessary information as to the rules and regulations to which this petition should conform, I trust that it may not be rejected for informality. I am anxious to do all that may be essential to obtain a pardon, and the enjoyment of civil and political rights, to take the oath of allegiance, and in good faith to assume, maintain, and observe all the duties and obligations of a citizen of the United States, and if any special form be necessary to this petition I have the honor to request that either by means of a parole or otherwise I may be permitted to ascertain and comply with it. While unwilling to advert to others whose antecedents or present positions may be analogous to mine, or to suggest comparisons between relative claims to executive consideration or clemency, I deem it proper to state frankly certain circumstances of my own case. I am now over fifty years of age, and from the casting of my first vote to the secession of my State my political life, as exemplified in faith, words, and acts, was devoted to the maintenance of the Union. No man was more ardently attached to or evinced his attachment more consistently than myself, within my limited sphere of action. I was never a member of a convention or of the Legislature of my State, and never advised or counseled her secession. When first elected to the U. S. Senate, an honor conferred without my knowledge or request, I received, though known to be a Democrat, the vote of the Whig party in the Legislature, because, among other considerations, I was known to be opposed to disunion in any form, and I can appeal with confidence to the record of my ten years' service in that body, no less to the personal knowledge of my colleagues there, among whom I have the honor to include yourself and Governor Seward, to show that no word or sentiment of disloyalty to the Union ever escaped me. Florida, by a convention of her people, formally seceded, and at the command of the convention, through her Governor, I withdrew from the Senate, an act which, in view of its causes and attendant circumstances, was the most painful of my career, and retired to private life. Such having been my political status up to the withdrawal of my State from the Union, I never was aud never can be regarded as a leader of secession. When the political success of the Republican party culminated in the election of Mr. Lincoln the conviction of the Southern mind that it would pursue a course of unjust, unequal, and class legislation toward the South, as well with regard to other vital interests as to those of slavery, and that submission would equally disgrace, demoralize, and impoverish her people, kindled and sustained the fires of revolution. Educated and trained in love and reverence for the Union as the ark of political safety, I dreaded the perils of secession, and believed that ample remedies for all political evils or wrongs, present and prospective, could be more justly, wisely, and advantageously secured in the Union than out of it. Whatever might be the argument in favor of secession, as a remedy consistent with the theory of our Constitution and Government and the teachings of some of the laborers upon both, I could only regard it as another name for revolution, and to be justified only as a last resort from intolerable oppression. Hence looked anxiously to the committee of thirteen appointed by the Senate to consider and report upon sectional difficulties and the means of adjustment, and next to the love of the Union and the fraternal feeling which I believed prevailed in every section of the country, for some basis of compromise. When the committee failed to report either words or grounds of concord-and in my judgment then, as now, this failure was rather due to its organization than to the subject before it and after South Carolina had seceded, I still hoped and believed that the dread arbitrament of blood would be averted, and to this end I exhausted every effort and argument at my command. Learning with no less astonishment than grief at Washington that armed bands of Alabamians and Floridians had assembled at Pensacola (my place of residence) to attack Fort Pickens, and knowing that such a step would precipitate the country into civil war, whose horrors I dreaded, and determined to omit nothing in my power to preserve peace and facilitate reconciliation, I addressed by telegraph the most urgent remonstrance against it to the officer in command, and had the good fortune thus to avert a dire calamity. For my interference in this matter, no less than for my opposition to disunion, I endured the bitter hostility of leading men in my own State. I was residing at Pensacola when, upon the organization, provisionally, of the Confederacy, I received a message from President Davis that my services were required at Montgomery. Upon his repeated and urgent request I accepted the office of Secretary of the Navy, and upon the change of Government in February, 1862, I presented and requested the acceptance of my resignation, which President Davis declined. Though opposed to secession, I nevertheless regarded the commands of my State as decisive of my path of duty, and I followed where she led. She had repeatedly honored me beyond, far beyond, my merits, by her confidence and favor, and I had accepted her confideuce with ample knowledge of her claims to State sovereignty. I will not further advert to the Confederacy than to say that in my judg ment it contained the fruitful elements of its own destruction, and that now, with all the field before me, recognizing its death as the will of Almighty God, I regard and accept His dispensation as decisive of the questions of slavery and secession. Your large views and patriotic labors for the organization of the Southern States, and their restoration to the Union as States, entitle you to the gratitude which a generous people will not fail to evince. If permitted, I would-as would many others whose positions are similar to mine-be glad to aid, so far as a private citizen, by precept and example, might, in conforming my State to her new status under the policy which you have adopted. Though not called upon to notice, for the purpose of repelling them before you, charges indirectly made against me, I trust that the general interest felt in the subject referred to may justify my. doing so in this instance. Several newspapers have copied a statement ascribed to Mr. Foote, once a member of the Confederate Congress, that U. S. prisoners were designedly treated with inhumanity by the Confederate Government, and that their treatment was the result of a plan approved by the Cabinet. Having no means of knowing whether Mr. Foote, in fact, made this statement, I desire only to say that neither directly nor indirectly had I any connection whatever with the custody or treatment of prisoners; that I was never consulted with reference to their custody or treatment; never advised upon it, and have no knowledge that the subject in any form was submitted to the Cabinet. Though claiming no merit for having, as means and opportunities were afforded to me, extended to U. S. prisoners acts of kindness and consideration, evidences of which may be submitted to you by my friends, I must plead the erroneous statement referred to as my apology for alluding to them. With great respect, I have the honor to be, your obedient servant, S. R. MALLORY. HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH, Brig. Gen. L. THOMAS, Adjutant-General U. S. Army, Washington, D. C. : GENERAL: I have the honor to state that in view of the feeble health of Mr. Trenholm, late rebel Secretary of the Treasury, and the fact that he has performed many acts of kindness to Union prisoners, I have ordered him to be released from close confinement in Fort Pulaski and have paroled him to reside within the corporate limits of the city of Columbia, S. C. He will be forthcoming whenever he is wanted.* Very respectfully, your obedient servant, Q. A. GILLMORE, Major-General, Commanding. NEW YORK, June 21, 1865. MEDICAL INSPECTOR GENERAL U. S. ARMY: COLONEL: In compliance with the inclosed order, † dated Washington, June 17, 1865, instructing me to investigate the causes of mortality *For correspondence relating to arrest of Mr. Trenholm not published in this series, see Series I, Vol. XLVII, Part III. + Omitted. among the prisoners at Hart's Island, I have the honor to report that 2,027 prisoners were received April 7 from City Point; 794 prisoners were received April 10 from New Berne; 592 prisoners were received April 11 from City Point. Of the whole 3,413 prisoners, 1,847 have been under medical treatment and 217 deaths have occurred, amounting to 11.7 per cent. of the sick or 6.3 per cent. of all the prisoners. The principal diseases were: Pneumonia, 107 cases, 45 deaths, 42 per cent.; chronic diarrhea, 321 cases, 71 deaths, 22 per cent.; scurvy, 51 cases, 1 death; measles, 23 cases, no deaths primarily; smallpox, 21 cases, 1 death; erysipelas, 18 cases, 1 death. Some of the cases of pneumonia were sequela of the measles, and if so reported would diminish very materially the percentage of mortality from the former. Of 588 treated in April, 41 deaths, there were hospital accommodations for 72. Of 724 treated in May, 112 deaths, there were hospital accommodations for 165. Of 535 treated in June, 64 deaths, there were hospital accommodations for 115. From the above it will be seen that the hospital accommodation was insufficient. Six hospital tents outside the prison ward, containing 48 beds, and such beds as could be spared in the post hospital (111 in all having been treated at the latter), and 25 sent at different times to the general hospital at Davids Island, comprise all the hospital beds which have been available. The remainder of the cases were treated in the prison barracks, a portion being set apart for the purpose, but without the extra diets and comforts afforded those sick in the hospital proper. It is asserted that this has had little influence upon the mortality, the gravest cases being transferred to hospital and a few of those retained in barracks being fatal. It is fair to presume, however, that the absence of proper accommodation, hospital diet, and comforts in the incipient stages of disease may have given a subsequently fatal tendency to cases which under other circumstances would have recovered. The chief cause of the mortality, however, is to be found in the fact that large numbers of the prisoners arrived at the depot broken down in advanced stages of the disease; some, in fact, moribund and others past all hope from treatment. The New Berne detachment, captured chiefly in the Carolinas, were nearly all broken down on arrival. It is said that less than 100 of them could be considered as well men, or even in fair health. The surgeon then in attendance having been relieved, more precise information on this point is not now available, but it is certain that the largest percentage of sickness and mortality occurred in that detachment. The largest proportion of deaths, as seen above, occurred from chronic diarrhea, brought with them, and pneumonia, which began to appear a few days after their arrival. The few cases of smallpox (more properly varioloid) did not begin to show themselves until after vaccination had been nearly completed. The men being poorly clad, the weather wet and cold, and the barracks provided with no other bedding than such as the prisoners brought with them, the pneumonia cases developed rapidly and the reduced vitality of the patients favored a typhoid type of that disease, increased, probably, to some extent by the crowded and unventilated condition of the barracks. These appear, by measurement, to have afforded but 102 cubic feet of air space to each man, and with no other ventilation than that afforded by the doors and windows on one side. Quite recently openings for ventilation have been made upon the other side of the barracks, it constituting the outer wall of the prison inclosure. |