John William Jones

“ As we have in the archives of our Society the means of triumphantly vindicating the Confederate Government from the charge of cruelty to prisoners, as we have been appealed to by leading men North and South and in Europe to give the facts in reference to this matter, and as the present seems an opportune time, we have decided to enter upon the task. ”

“ The pulpits, the press, and the Government reports, which were so busy denouncing "Rebel barbarities" that they had no censure for the McNeils, the Turchins, the Butlers, the Milroys, the Hunters, the Shermans, and the Sheridans, who, under the flag of "Liberty," perpetrated crimes which disgrace the age, were not to be expected to be over scrupulous in originating and retailing slanders against the Government and people of the South. ”

“ James G. Blaine, uttered deliberately on the floor of the United States House of Representatives eleven years after the close of the war:
{{fine block|"Now I undertake here to say that there is not a Confederate soldier now living who has any credit as a man in his community, and who ever was a prisoner in the hands of the Union forces, who will say that he ever was cruelly treated; that he ever was deprived of the same rations that the Union soldiers had—the same food and the same clothing. ”

“ Their prison-hospitals were very far from being on the same footing with the hospitals for their own soldiers, and our men died by thousands from causes which the Federal authorities could have prevented.
6. But the real cause of the suffering on both sides was the stoppage of the exchange of prisoners, and for this the Federal authorities alone were responsible. The Confederates kept the cartel in good faith. It was broken on the other side.
The Confederates were anxious to exchange man for man. It was the settled policy on the other side not to exchange prisoners. ”

“ Cook.⁠Thousands of them say it—thousands of them; men of as high character as any in this House.
"Mr. Blaine.⁠ I take issue upon that. There is not one who can substantiate it—not one. As for measures of retaliation, although goaded by this terrific treatment of our friends imprisoned by Mr. Davis, the Congress of the United States specifically refused to pass a resolution of retaliation, as contrary to modern civilization and the first precepts of Christianity. ”