ited States Surgeon-General Joseph K. Barnes's Report that the
number of Federal prisoners in southern prisons was about 270,000, but
the number of Confederate prisoners in northern prisons was about
220,000; so that the percentage of deaths in southern prisons was under
nine, while the percentage of deaths in northern prisons was over
twelve![16]

Had there been, from the first, prompt exchanges of prisoners between
the north and the south, few of these forty-nine thousand lives would
have been lost. _Who, then, blocked the exchange?_

Stephens declares (_War between the States_, vol. ii):

"It is now well understood to have been a part of the settled policy
of the Washington authorities in conducting the war, not to exchange
prisoners. The grounds upon which this extraordinary course was
adopted were, that it was humanity to the northern men in the field
to let their captured comrades perish in prison rather than to let
an equal number of Confederate soldiers be released on exchange to
meet them in battle."

To the same effect our Secretary Stanton in one of his letters in 1864
pointed out "that it would not be good policy to send back to be placed
on the firing line 70,000 able-bodied Confederates, and to receive in
exchange men who, with but few exceptions, were not strong enough to
hold their muskets."

The responsibility, then, for this refusal and the consequent enormous
sacrifice of life with all the accompanying miseries, must rest in part
upon the Government of the United States.[17]

Blame not the tender-hearted Lincoln for this.

Did he not judge wisely? Was it not best for the nation that we
prisoners should starve and freeze?

The pivotal question for him and Grant and Stanton was, "Shall we
exchange and thereby enable the South to reinforce their armies with
fifty to a hundred thousand trained soldiers?

"If yes, then we must draft many more than that; for they being on the
defensive we must outnumber them in battle. If no, then we must either
stop their cruelties by equally cruel retaliation, as Washington hung
Andre for the execution of Hale, or we must, more cruelly still, leave
myriads of our soldiers to sink into imbecility and death."

The North had not the excuse of destitution which the South had, and it
could not bring itself to make reprisals in kind. To draft again, as
evinced in the terrible riots of July, 1863, would have been extremely
unpopular and pe