t claim for this volume any rare literary merit, I
trust a perusal of its pages may have afforded you some little pleasure,
and instruction. I can cheerfully place it in the hands of my old prison
associates, confident that they will testify to its truthfulness and
fairness.

While the language is my own, I can confidently claim that it conveys no
imaginary sufferings and privations. I have endeavored to speak of the
Southern prisons and of the treatment meted out to those whom the fortunes
of war compelled to endure and suffer the hardships, tortures and
privations of a lingering confinement in those loathsome pens of
starvation, provided by the self-styled Southern Confederacy, as a
punishment for loyalty to country and the flag, just as I found them. Not
to the _people of the South_ do I lay the blame of the frightful mortality
among prisoners, in those pens of starvation, but to Jeff. Davis and the
infamous Winder; who boasted that they were doing more execution among the
prisoners, than Lee's whole army was doing in the field; to them I say
that the blood of thirty-five thousand loyal hearted patriots, cry from
the ground of Andersonville, Salisbury, Florence and Belle Island, unto a
just God, for vengeance upon those who so cruelly, heartlessly and
fiendishly _murdered them_.

To them I say that should they flee to the uttermost parts of the earth,
they cannot escape the contempt of an outraged world, nor the curse of the
thousands of mothers, widows, and fatherless children, whom they have in
their fiendish hatred, robbed of their beloved sons, husbands and
fathers.

APPENDIX.

The author of this volume, Alonzo Cooper, was born in the town of Victory,
Cayuga Co., N. Y., April 30th, 1830. His father John Cooper, who was born
August 15th, A. D. 1794, enlisted from Scoharie County in the war of
1812-13-14, and during his term of service, was for a time employed on the
construction of the famous 110 Gun, line of battle ship "NEW ORLEANS" at
Sackets Harbor, which was built and all ready for caulking in six weeks
from the time the first tree was felled. Abraham Cooper, an older brother
of John, was also in the service during the war of 1812, serving as
Captain in a Militia company.

The mother of the author, Amanda Cochran, was a daughter of John Cochran,
a Revolutionary soldier. John Cochran was an Irishman by birth and as such
was claimed as a British subject, and was arrested by the "press gang" as
the