Friday, September 5, 2014

Andersonville


From: regenstein@mindspring.com

Hi Chuck, thanks for all your good work. Here is some additional commentary on Andersonville.

Sincerely, Lew


James King is right that the food shortages afflicting Union POW's held by the Confederates were the fault of the policies of the Lincoln Administration.

This has been affirmed by My ancestor, Major Raphael Jacob Moses, who was General James Longstreet's Chief of Commissary, responsible for feeding and supplying his army of 40,000 men.

When Henry Wirz, the former commandant of the   Andersonville Prison in Georgia was put in trial for his life after the war, for starving and abusing his POW's, Moses came to his defense. Moses wrote to him, pointing out that the hungry federal prisoners at Andersonville were receiving the same provisions as the equally deprived Confederates in the field:

"I only heard a few days ago that you were in prison, charged with cruelty to the Andersonville prisoners. Heaven knows that if there was ever such a charge without a shadow of foundation, this is such. Major Allen can prove, and so can I, that the Andersonville prisoners were supplied from this post with precisely the same rations as our army in the field…"

As Jerrold Northrop Moore writes in "Confederate Commissary General,"

"Wirz was condemned to death. Just before his execution he was offered a reprieve in exchange for a statement to convict Jefferson Davis of cruelty to Federal prisoners of war. Wirz refused and was hanged."

It is shameful, but not surprising, that some in the news media will not allow the truth to be published about this historical issue.

Lewis Regenstein
Atlanta