Later reports were made by this inspector, and they were forwarded to the rebel executive, indorsed by the assistant-secretary of war, Campbell, that this condition was a reproach to the Confederates as a nation. But not the least notice was taken of these startling and heart-rending revelations, in which Winder was denounced as a murderer from the statements made by Winder himself. The wretch and the system of treatment were denounced by Stephens of South Carolina, by Foote of Tennessee; yet no response was obtained from the secretary of war, or from the executive, Davis. When Breckenridge became secretary of war, shortly before the downfall of the rebellion, the brave Chandler demanded that some notice, some action, should be taken on the reports he had submitted months before, or he would resign his commission; for his honor and humanity were involved.
What action was taken, if any there was, is not known to the writer. The thanks of the South, the kind wishes of all who honor the warm and generous impulses of our better nature, are due to the noble Chandler, who had the courage, the temerity, to expose the suffering condition at Andersonville, and to denounce the authors again and again at the peril of his life.
It is known to the writer that Surgeons Bemis and Fluellen, of the rebel army medical staff, inspected the condition of the prison, and protested against the cruel management.
One of the chief medical officers of the rebel army of the South informed the author that the medical men at this prison were without any influence whatever; and although the prison was within his department for a time, he had no more voice or influence in its management than the man in the moon; and that everything relating to the prison was _controlled and devised by the authorities at Richmond_.
The refusal or the neglect of the rebel authorities, to whom these reports were submitted, to take notice of or remedy the exposed evils, is a tacit acknowledgment and approval of the system at work.
Northrop, the rebel commissary-general, whom Foote denounced in the rebel Congress as a monster, and incompetent, urged the secretary of war, Seddon, to reduce the rations to gruel and bread, in retaliation for alleged abuses to the rebel prisoners in our hands. Seddon declined to do it openly, on account of the technicalities of the law; but Northrop took the measure quietly into his own hands, and withheld meat so often and so long from the prisoners near Richmond as to call forth a yell of remonstrance from even the inhuman Winder.