Men capable of doing all that the Secession leaders were guilty of—­both before and during the war—­were quite capable of revengefully destroying twenty-five thousand of their enemies by the most hideous means at their command.  That they did so set about destroying their enemies, wilfully, maliciously, and with malice prepense and aforethought, is susceptible of proof as conclusive as that which in a criminal court sends murderers to the gallows.

Let us examine some of these proofs: 

1.  The terrible mortality at Andersonville and elsewhere was a matter of as much notoriety throughout the Southern Confederacy as the military operations of Lee and Johnson.  No intelligent man—­much less the Rebel leaders—­was ignorant of it nor of its calamitous proportions.

2.  Had the Rebel leaders within a reasonable time after this matter became notorious made some show of inquiring into and alleviating the deadly misery, there might be some excuse for them on the ground of lack of information, and the plea that they did as well as they could would have some validity.  But this state of affairs was allowed to continue over a year—­in fact until the downfall of the Confederacy—­without a hand being raised to mitigate the horrors of those places—­without even an inquiry being made as to whether they were mitigable or not.  Still worse:  every month saw the horrors thicken, and the condition of the prisoners become more wretched.

The suffering in May, 1864, was more terrible than in April; June showed a frightful increase over May, while words fail to paint the horrors of July and August, and so the wretchedness waxed until the end, in April, 1865.

3.  The main causes of suffering and death were so obviously preventible that the Rebel leaders could not have been ignorant of the ease with which a remedy could be applied.  These main causes were three in number: 

a.  Improper and insufficient food. b.  Unheard-of crowding together. c.  Utter lack of shelter.

It is difficult to say which of these three was the most deadly.  Let us admit, for the sake of argument, that it was impossible for the Rebels to supply sufficient and proper food.  This admission, I know, will not stand for an instant in the face of the revelations made by Sherman’s March to the Sea; and through the Carolinas, but let that pass, that we may consider more easily demonstrable facts connected with the next two propositions, the first of which is as to the crowding together.  Was land so scarce in the Southern Confederacy that no more than sixteen acres could be spared for the use of thirty-five thousand prisoners?  The State of Georgia has a population of less than one-sixth that of New York, scattered over a territory one-quarter greater than that State’s, and yet a pitiful little tract—­less than the corn-patch “clearing” of the laziest “cracker” in the State—­was all that could be allotted to the use of three-and-a-half