relieve them.
If I may anticipate as much wisdom as ought to characterize
the gentlemen on the other side of the House, this may be the
last time that amnesty need be brought to the attention of Con
gress. I desire, therefore, to place on record precisely what the
Republican party has done in this matter. I wish to place it
there as an imperishable record of liberality and magnanimity
and mercy far beyond that which has ever before been shown
in the world s history by conqueror to conquered.
I entered Congress at the same time with the gentleman from
Pennsylvania [Mr. Randall], while the hot flame of war was yet
raging, when the Union was rocking to its foundations, and when
no man knew whether we were to have a county or not. I
think the gentleman from Pennsylvania would have been sur
prised when he and I were novices in the Thirty-eighth Con
gress, if he had been told that before our joint service ended
we should see sixty-one gentlemen, who were then in arms
against us, admitted to the privileges of membership in this
body, and all by the grace and magnanimity of the Republican
party. When the war ended, according to the universal usage
of nations, the Government, then under the exclusive control
of the Republican party, had the right to determine what should
be the political status of the people who had suffered defeat.
Did the Republicans, with full power in their hands, inaugurate
any measure of persecution? Did they set forth on a career
of bloodshed and vengeance ? Did they take the property of
the Southern people who had rebelled ? Did they deprive any
man of his civil rights?
Not at all. Instead of a general and sweeping condemnation,
the Republican party placed in the Fourteenth Amendment to
the Constitution only this exclusion :
"That no person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or
elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military,
under the United States or under any State, who, having previously taken
an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or
as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer
of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have
engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or com
fort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of
each House, remove such disability."
152 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS.
It has been variously estimated that this section at the time
of its original insertion in the Constitution included from four
teen to thirty thousand persons. As nearly as I can gather the
facts of the case, it included about eighteen thousand men in
the South. It did not apply to the hundreds of thousands
or millions, if you please who had been engaged in the attempt
to destroy this Government. It held under disability only
those who, in joining the rebellion, had violated a special and
peculiar and personal oath to support the Constitution of the
United States. It was limited to these.
That disability, Mr. Speaker, was hardly placed upon the
South before we began in this hall and in the other wing of the
Capitol, when more than two-thirds of the members in each
branch were Republicans, to remit it, and the very first bill
removed the disability from 1,578 citizens of the South. The
next bill removed it from 3,526 others. Amnesty was thus
granted by wholesale. Many of the gentlemen on this floor
shared the grace conferred on those occasions. After these bills
had passed, with several smaller bills specifying individuals,
the Congress of the United States in 1872, still being two-thirds
Republican in both branches, passed this general law :
" That all political disabilities, imposed by the third section of the four
teenth article of amendments of the Constitution of the United States, are
hereby removed from all persons whomsoever, except Senators and Repre
sentatives of the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congresses, officers in the
judicial, military, and naval service of the United States, heads of depart
ments, and foreign ministers of the United States."
Since that measure passed, a very considerable number of the
gentlemen whom it still left under disability have been relieved
specially, by name, in separate Acts. But I believe, Mr.
Speaker, in no instance since the Act of May 22, 1872, have the
disabilities been removed, except upon respectful petition to
the Congress of the United States from the person interested.
I believe in no instance, except one, have they been refused
upon the petition being presented. I believe in no instance,
except one, has there been any other than a unanimous vote
for removing the disability.
I find there are widely varying opinions in regard to the
number that are still under disabilities in the South. By con-
NUMBER UNDER DISABILITY IN 1876. 153
ference with the Department of War and of the Navy, and
with the assistance of some records which I have caused to
be searched, I am able to state to the House, I believe with
substantial accuracy, the number of gentlemen in the South
still under disabilities. Those who were officers of the United
States army, educated at its own expense at West Point and
who joined the rebellion, and are still included under this Act,
number, as nearly as the War Department can state it, 325 ;
those in the Navy about 295. Those under the other heads
Senators and Representatives of the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-
seventh Congresses, officers in the judicial service of the
United States, heads of departments, and foreign ministers
of the United States make up a number somewhat more
difficult to state accurately, but estimated at 125 to 130.
The entire list, therefore, is about 750 persons now under
disabilities out of the great unnumbered host that engaged in
the rebellion.
I am very frank to say that in regard to all these gentlemen,
save one, I do not know any reason why amnesty should not
be granted, as it has been to many others of the same class. I
am not here to argue against it. The gentleman from Iowa
[Mr. Kasson] suggests "on their application." I agree with
him on that point. But in the absence of the respectful form
of application, which since May 22, 1872, has become a sort of
common law as preliminary to amnesty, I simply wish to make
it a condition that they shall go before a United States court,
and, with uplifted hand, swear that they will conduct them
selves as good and loyal citizens of the United States. That
is all.
Gentlemen may say that this is a foolish exaction. Possibly
it is. But I confess I have a prejudice in favor of it. I insist
upon it, because I do not want to impose citizenship on any
gentleman. If I am correctly informed, and I state it on ap
parently good authority, there are some gentlemen in this list
who have spoken contemptuously of resuming citizenship, and
have spoken still more contemptuously of applying for citizen
ship. I may state it erroneously, and if I do I am ready to
be corrected ; but I understand that Mr. Robert Toombs has,
on several occasions, at watering-places, both in this country
154 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS.
and in Europe, openly and publicly stated that he would not
ask the United States for citizenship.
I insist, therefore, that if Mr. Robert Toombs is not prepared
to go into a court of the United States, and swear that he hon
estly intends to be a good and loyal citizen, he may live and
die outside of that great privilege. I do not think that the
two Houses of Congress should convert themselves into a joint
convention for the purpose of embracing Mr. Robert Toombs,
and requesting him to favor us by coming back and accepting
the honors of citizenship. All we ask on this side of the House
is, that each of these gentlemen shall show his good faith by
coming forward and taking the oath, which all the members on
this floor take, and are proud to take. It is a very small exac
tion to make as a preliminary to full restoration to all the rights
of citizenship.
In my amendment, Mr. Speaker, I have excepted Jefferson
Davis from amnesty. I do not place his exclusion on the
ground that he was, as he has been commonly called, the head
and front of the rebellion, because I do not think the exception
would be tenable. Mr. Davis was in that respect as guilty,
no more so, no less so, than thousands of others who have
received the benefit and grace of amnesty. Probably he was less
efficient as an enemy of the United States, probably he was
more useful as a disturber of the councils of the Confeder
acy, than many who have already received amnesty. It is not
because of any particular and special damage that he above
others did to the Union, or because he was personally or espe
cially of consequence, that I except him. But I except him on
this ground : that he was the responsible author, knowingly,
deliberately, guiltily, of the great crime of Andersonville.
I base his exclusion on that ground ; and I believe to-day,
that so rapidly does one event follow on the heels of an
other in the age in which we live, that even those of us who
were contemporaneous with the war, and especially those who
have grown up since, fail to remember the crime at Ander
sonville.
Since the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Randall] intro
duced this bill last month, I have taken occasion to re-read
some of the historic cruelties of the world. I have read once
CRUELTY OF GENERAL WINDER. 155
more the details of those atrocious murders by the Duke of Alva
in the Low Countries, which are always mentioned with a thrill
of horror throughout Christendom. I have refreshed my mem
ory with the details of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, that
stands out in history as another of those atrocities beyond
imagination. I have read anew the horrors of the Spanish
Inquisition. But neither the deeds of the Duke of Alva in
the Low Countries, nor the massacre of Saint Bartholomew,
nor the thumb-screws of the Spanish Inquisition, surpass the
hideous crime of Anderson ville. This is not matter of mere pas
sion but of proof. Thank God, Mr. Speaker, that while this Con
gress was under different control from that which exists here
to-day, with a Committee composed of both sides and of both
branches, that tale of horror was placed where it cannot be
denied, and where it must remain as a warning.
I hold in my hand the story written out by a committee of
Congress. I state that Winder, who is dead, was sent to An-
dersonville with a full knowledge of his previous atrocities in
Richmond. These were so terrible, that Confederate papers,
the Richmond Examiner for one, after Winder had gone thanked
God that Richmond was rid of his presence. We in the North
knew from returning skeletons what Winder had accomplished
at Belle Isle and Libby ; and, fresh from those accursed cruel
ties to his fellow-men, lie was sent by Mr. Jefferson Davis,
against the protests of others in the Confederacy, to construct
this den of horrors at Andersonville.
It would be utterly beyond the scope of the occasion, and
beyond the limits of my hour, to go into full details. But in
arraigning Mr. Davis, I will not ask any one to take the testi
mony of a Union soldier. I ask gentlemen of this House to
take only the testimony of men who themselves were engaged
in and devoted to the Confederate cause. If that testimony
does not entirely justify the declaration I have made, then
I will take prompt occasion to state that I have been in error
in my reading.
After detailing the preparation of that prison, the arrange
ments made with studied cruelty for the victims, the report
which I hold in my hand, and which was concurred in by
Democratic members as well as Republican members of Con-
156 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS.
gress, gives a condensed description of the horrors and I
beg members to hear it, for it is far more impressive than
any thing I can say. After giving full details, the report
states :
" The subsequent history of Andersonville has startled and shocked the
world with a tale of horror, of woe, and death before unheard and unknown
to civilization. No pen can describe, no painter sketch, no imagination
comprehend its fearful and unutterable iniquity. It would seem as if the
concentrated madness of earth and hell had found its final lodgement in the
breast of those who inaugurated the rebellion and controlled the policy of
the Confederate government, and that the prison at Andersonville had been
selected for the most terrible human sacrifice which the world has ever seen.
Into its narrow walls were crowded thirty-five thousand enlisted men, many
of them the bravest and best, the most devoted and heroic of those grand
armies which carried the flag of their country to final victory. For long
and weary months here they suffered, maddened, were murdered, and died.
Here they lingered, unsheltered from the burning rays of a tropical sun by
day, and drenching and deadly dews by night, in every stage of mental and
physical disease, hungered, emaciated, starving, maddened; festering with
annealed wounds ; gnawed by the ravages of scurvy and gangrene ; with
swollen limb and distorted visage ; covered with vermin which they had no
power to extirpate ; exposed to the flooding rains which drove them drown
ing from the miserable holes in which, like swine, they burrowed ; parched
with thirst, and mad with hunger; racked with pain, or prostrated with the
weakness of dissolution; with naked limbs and matted hair; filthy with
smoke and mud ; soiled with the very excrement from which their weakness
would not permit them to escape ; eaten by the gnawing worms which their
own wounds had engendered; with no bed but the earth ; no covering save
the cloud or the sky ; these men, these heroes, born in the image of God,
thus crouching and writhing in their terrible torture and calculating barbar
ity, stand forth in history as a monument of the surpassing horrors of An
dersonville, as it shall be seen and read in all future time, realizing in the
studied torments of their prison-house the ideal of Dante s 4 Inferno and
Milton s Hell. "
I venture the assertion, from reading the testimony upon
which the report is based, that this description is not overdrawn.
I will read but a single paragraph from the testimony of Rev.
William John Hamilton, a Catholic priest at Macon, who, I
believe, never was in the North. He is a Southern man, and
a Democrat, and a Catholic priest. And when you unite those
three qualities in one man, you will not find much testimony
that would be strained in favor of the Republican party,
or any member of it.
This man had gone to Andersonville on a mission of mercy to
the men of his own faith, to administer to them the rites of his
church in their last moments. That is the way in which he
happened to be a witness. I will read his answer under oath to
TESTIMONY OF REV. WILLIAM JOHN HAMILTON. 157
a question addressed to him in regard to the bodily condition of
the prisoners. He said,
" Well, as I said before, when I went there I was kept so busily engaged
in giving the sacrament to the dying men that I could not observe much, but
of course I could not keep my eyes closed as to what I saw there. I saw a
great many men perfectly naked [their clothes had been taken from them by
rebels, as other testimony shows], walking about the stockade perfectly nude.
They seemed to have lost all regard for delicacy, shame, morality, or any
thing else. I would frequently have to creep on my hands and knees into
the holes that the men had burrowed in the ground, and stretch myself out
alongside of them to hear their confessions. I found them almost living
in vermin in those holes; they could not be in any other condition but a filthy
one, because they got no soap, and no change of clothing, and were there all
huddled up together."
Let me read further, from the same witness, a personal de
scription :
" The first person T conversed with on entering the stockade was a coun
tryman of mine, a member of the Catholic Church, who recognized me as a
clergyman. I think his name was Farrell. He was from the north of Ire*
land." He came toward me and introduced himself. He was quite a boy.
I do not think, judging from his appearance, that he could have been more
than sixteen years old. I found him without a hat, and without any cover
ing on his feet, and without jacket or coat. He told me that his shoes had
been taken from him on the battle-field. I found the boy suffering very
much from a wound on his right foot, in fact, the foot was split open like
an oyster, and, on inquiring the cause, they told me it was from exposure
to the sun in the stockade, and not from any wound received in battle. I
took off my boots, and gave him a pair of socks to cover his feet, and told
him I would bring him some clothing, as 1 expected to return to Anderson-
ville the following week. I had to return to Macon to get another priest to
take my place on Sunday. When I returned, on the following week, on
inquiring for this man Farrell, his companions told me he had stepped
across the dead-line, and requested the guards to shoot him. He was not
insane at the time I was conversing with him."
Mr. Speaker, I do not desire to go into such horrible details
as these for any purpose of arousing bad feeling. I wish only
to say that the man who administered the affairs of that prison
went there by order of Mr. Davis, was sustained by him, and
the Rev. William John Hamilton, from whose testimony I have
read, states again that he went to General Howell Cobb, com
manding that department, and asked that intelligence as to the
condition of affairs there be transmitted to the Confederate gov
ernment at Richmond. There are many proofs to show that
Mr. Davis was thoroughly informed as to the condition of
affairs at Andersonville.
One word more, and I shall lay aside this book. When the
153 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS.
march of General Sherman in the Atlanta campaign was in
progress, there was danger, or supposed danger, that his army
might come into the neighborhood of Andersonville ; and the
following order, to which I invite the attention of the House,
a regular military order, Order No. 13, dated, Headquarters
Confederate States Military Prison, Andersonville, July 27,
1864, was issued by Brigadier-General John H. Winder :
" The officers on duty and in charge of the battery of Florida artillery at
the time will, upon receiving notice that the enemy have approached within
seven miles of this post, open fire upon the stockade with grape-shot, with
out reference to the situation beyond these lines of defence."
Here, within this horrible stockade, were thirty-five thgusand
poor, helpless, naked, starving, sickened, dying men ! The
Catholic priest to whom I have referred states that he begged
General Ho well Cobb to represent that, if these men could not
be exchanged, or could not be relieved in any other way, they
should be taken to the Union lines in Florida and paroled ; for
they were shadows, they were skeletons. Yet it was declared
in a regular order, issued by the commandant of the prison, who
had been specially selected by Mr. Davis, that if the Union
forces should come within seven miles, the battery of Florida
artillery should open fire with grape-shot on these shadows and
skeletons without the slightest possible regard to what was
going on outside. And they had stakes put up with flags in
order that the line of fire might be properly directed from the
battery of Florida artillery.
I mention only one additional horror in this dark valley of
cruelty and death. When one of the tortured victims escaped
from its confines as was sometimes though not often the case
he was remorselessly hunted down by bloodhounds. In a
single month twenty-five escaped, but in the official record
kept by the notorious Wirz " they were taken by the doys before
the daily returns were made out"
Mr. Speaker, the Administration of Martin Van Buren, that
went down in a popular convulsion in 1840, had no little of ob
loquy thrown upon it because it was believed that the Seminoles
in the swamps of Florida had been hunted with bloodhounds.
Bloodthirsty dogs were sent after the hiding savages, and
the civilization and Christian feeling of the American people
BLOODHOUNDS AT ANDERSONVILLE. 159
revolted against the cruelty. I state here, upon the testimony
of witnesses as numerous as would require me all day to read,
that bloodhounds were used at Andersonville ; that large packs
of them were kept, and Confederate officers directed them on
the hunt; that they were sent after the poor unfortunate,
shrinking men who by any accident could get out of that hor
rible stockade.
I do not wish to be understood as arraigning the Southern
people for these inhumanities. God forbid that I should charge
sympathy with such wrongs upon the mass of any people.
There were many evidences of great uneasiness in the South
about the condition of Andersonville. I know that leading
officers of the Confederacy protested against it. I know that
many of the subordinate officers protested against it. I know
that a distinguished gentleman from North Carolina, now rep
resenting his State in the other end of the Capitol, protested
against it. But I regret to say that these wrongs were known
to the Confederate Congress, they were known at the doorway
of their Senate, along the corridors of their Capitol. A gen
tleman whom I see at this moment, who served in the Confed
erate Congress, and who had before served in the Senate of
the United States, brought them to the attention of the Confed
erate Congress, and I class him with those whose humanity was
never burned out by the angry fires of the rebellion. I allude
to the Honorable and now venerable Henry Stuart Foote.
It is one of the rank offenses of Jefferson Davis, Mr. Speaker,
that besides conniving at the cruelties at Andersonville, he
concealed them from the Southern people. He labored not
only to conceal them, but to make false statements about them.
We have obtained, and have now in the Congressional Library,
a complete series of Mr. Davis s messages the official imprint
from Richmond. I have looked over them, and I have an
extract here from his message of Nov. 7, 1864, at the very
time when these horrors were at their height and their worst.
Mr. Davis said :
" The solicitude of the Government for the relief of our captive fellow-
citizens has known no abatement, but has on the contrary been still more
deeply evoked by the additional sufferings to which they have been wantonly
subjected by deprivation of adequate food, clothing, and fuel, which they
were not even permitted to purchase from the prison sutler."
160 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS.
And he adds that the
" Enemy attempted to excuse their barbarous treatment by the unfounded allega
tion that it was retaliatory fur Like conduct on our part."
In answer to this atrocious slander by the Confederate Presi
dent, now become historic, I am justified in declaring that there
is not a Confederate soldier living who has any credit as a man
in his community, and who was a prisoner in the hands of the
Union forces, who will say that he ever was cruelly treated ;
that he ever was deprived of just such rations as the Union
soldiers had the same food and the same clothing.
Mr. COOK of Georgia. Thousands of them say it thou
sands of them ; men of as high character as any in this House.
Mr. BLAINE. I take issue upon that. There is not one who
can substantiate it not one, As for measures of retaliation,
although goaded by this terrific treatment of our friends im
prisoned by Mr. Davis, the Senate of the United States specifi
cally refused to pass a resolution of retaliation, as contrary to
modern civilization and to the first precepts of Christianity.
No retaliation was attempted or justified. It was forbidden,
and Mr. Davis knew it was forbidden as well as I knew it or
any other man, because what took place in Washington or what
took place at Richmond was known on either side of the line
within a day or two thereafter.
Mr. Speaker, this is not a proposition to punish Jefferson
Davis. Nobody is attempting that. I thought the indictment
of Mr. Davis at Richmond, under the administration of Presi
dent Johnson, was not justifiable, for he was indicted only for
that of which he was guilty in common with all others who
went into the Confederate revolt. But here and now I ex
press my firm conviction that there is not a government, not a
civilized government on the face of the globe I am very sure
there is not a European government that would not have