In his examination touching this report, Colonel Chandler says:
“I noticed that General Winder seemed very indifferent to the welfare of the prisoners, indisposed to do anything, or to do as much as I thought he ought to do, to alleviate their sufferings. I remonstrated with him as well as I could, and he used that language which I reported to the Department with reference to it—the language stated in the report. When I spoke of the mortality existing among the prisoners, and pointed out to him that the sickly season was coming on, and that it must necessarily increase unless something was done for their relief—the swamp, for instance, drained, proper food furnished, and in better quality, and other sanitary suggestions which I made to him—he replied to me that he thought it was better to see half of them die than to take care of the men.”
This report proves two points. First that we had been living in Andersonville during the HEALTHY season, God save the mark, and second that Jeff Davis knew of the situation through his War Minister. But Davis was in favor of having the prisoners receive the terrible treatment to which they were subjected. He had, through his Commissary General of Prisoners, made demands upon the Federal Government in the matter of the exchange of prisoners, which no government possessing any self respect could entertain. He demanded an exchange of prisoners in bulk, that is, the Federal Government to give all the Confederate prisoners it held in exchange for all the Federal prisoners the Confederate Government held. The unfairness of such a proposition will be readily seen when the reader is informed that at that time the Federals held about twice as many prisoners as did the Confederates.
The Federal proposition was to exchange man for man and rank for rank. To this the Davis Government would not accede. Then followed the terrors of Andersonville and Florence of which hell itself in its palmiest days could not furnish a duplicate.
I am well aware that I have not expressed the same opinion as other authors, ex-prisoners, upon the subject of the complicity of the whole people of the South in these prison horrors, but the most of these authors wrote a short time subsequent to the close of the war, and while their blood was still hot upon the subject; and I confess that it has taken nearly a quarter of a century for my blood to cool sufficiently to arrive at the conclusions I have expressed in this chapter and which I candidly believe are correct.