Prisoner exchange

“ Like a caged blackbird, or a rat in a trap, the felon who has lost his liberty will certainly escape whenever the opportunity is offered to him. To leave gates ajar, or to withdraw a customary guard, would supply a temptation as irresistible as a bone to a hungry dog; and a prisoner’s faculties are so sharp set by his confinement, that he sees chances which are invisible to his gaolers. A resolute and skilful man will brave all dangers, will exhibit untold patience and ingenuity, will endure pain and lengthened hardship, if he sees but a loophole for escape in the end. ”

“ An officer on parole who escapes, not only escapes, but he breaks his word of honour, and he therefore merits a more severe punishment than he who only breaks his prison bars and does nothing dishonourable.
Both the French and British Governments, to their credit, were ever ready to deal generously and even magnanimously in the way of exchange or release as a reward for some uncalled-for act of bravery or kindness on the part of prisoners in connection with their captors. ”

“ The great war has brought forth one outstanding fact in criminology—no 64 matter what his instincts may be in times of peace, the convict is a patriot, according to his lights, in time of war, and in all my investigations, covering practically every eastern, southern and middle western State, I have not learned of a single prisoner who violated a parole given him to engage in work that would help win the war. ”

“ Nihil says, in 1838, that he is in great hope that [284] by the thorough separation of the prisoners, important advantages in respect to the efficiency of imprisonment and the reformation of the convicts would ensue. “The more perfect isolation of the prisoner by non-intercourse with fellow-criminals, not only renders the punishment more effective, but places him in a condition more susceptible to the good influences with which we seek to visit him—now constantly frustrated by communication through the wards.” ”

“ General Grant said, when urged to agree to exchanges to prevent suffering and death in prison of his own men, "It is hard on our men confined in Southern prisons, but it would be harder on our soldiers in the field to consent to an exchange, because, if the 30,00 Rebel prisoners were released, they would go back to the army and fight, while our men would return to their homes." ”

“ Our cartel goes on, a second cargo of American prisoners, one hundred and nineteen in number, being arrived and exchanged. Our privateers have dismissed a great number at sea, taking their written paroles to be given up in exchange for so many of our people in their gaols. This is not yet quite agreed to on the other side, but some expectations are given me that it may take place. Certainly, humanity would find its account in the practice of exchanging on parole, as all the horrors of imprisonment, with the loss of time and health, might be prevented by it. ”

“ We have concerned ourselves with the prisoners themselves, not much with the history of the negotiations carried on to effect exchange, but have left this part of the subject to some abler hand. Only a very small part of the story has been told in this volume, and there is much room for future investigations. It is highly probable that if a systematic search is made many unpublished accounts may be discovered, and a great deal of light shed upon the horrors of the British prisons. ”

“ What, then, could be more tempting than to woo Fortune again? If she proved fickle, we would go back to the Stadtvogtei. Under the new arrangement the punishment for a “simple escape” by a military prisoner was to be a fortnight’s imprisonment. At first we interpreted the paragraph as applying to civilian prisoners also. Now we had become more doubtful about it. Our friends, who had been sent to prison after the 1st of August, had more than doubly exceeded the stipulated time before we left the camp. ”

“ The incarcerated criminal is a burden to himself and to society, to which he is only in the most exceptional cases restored improved by confinement. The charge of maintaining him increases year by year, without any return being made by utilizing the labour of the prisoner. In penal colonies, on the other hand, the convict works as much for his own benefit as for that of society. He throws open new immeasurable tracts of land to civilization, trade, and industry. ”

“ None have been so well fed, so plump, and so merry as they; and this generous treatment, it is said, they could not but remember. For when they were returned in the exchange of prisoners, and saw the miserable, famished, dying state of our prisoners, conscious of the treatment they had received, they could not refrain from tears.” Connecticut Journal, Jan. ”

“ The rebels now began demanding that the prisoners on both sides be exchanged—man for man—as far as they went, and the remainder paroled. Our Government offered to exchange man for man, but declined—on account of the previous bad faith of the Rebels—to release the balance on parole. ”

“ Such Prisoners as shall escape from Prison, and be re-taken, shall be put into the Black Hole, and kept on Half Allowance, until the expenses occasioned by p. 63their Escape are made good; and they shall moreover lose their Turn of Exchange, and all Officers of the Navy or Army so offending shall, from that time, be considered and treated in all respects as common men.
“5. Fighting, quarrelling, or exciting the least Disorder is strictly forbidden, under Pain of a Punishment proportionate to the Offence. ”

“ Their conduct with regard to the exchange of prisoners has been very unjust. After long suspense and affected delays for the purpose of wearing out our poor people, they have finally refused to deliver us a man in exchange for those set at liberty by our cruisers on parole. ”

“ But that in room number 60 of the Viennese Military Jail I should fall right into the arms of Dušek, was one of the happiest chances which have occurred to me in the course of my misfortunes.
A man prepares and equips himself with good resolutions, with a heroic spirit, with a most firm will; he says to himself: Prison,—good; loss of liberty,—never mind; a jailer,—there must be one: a warder,—there must be one also,—but the reality comes and the prison turns out to be a military jail, a cold and dismal room; loss of liberty turns out to be a complete loss of your own personality ”

“ Our lords of state are bound to do all in their power to keep a prisoner under the Leads, and on the other hand the prisoner, who is fortunately not on parole, is bound also to make his escape. Their right to act thus is founded on justice, while the prisoner follows the voice of nature; and since they have not asked him whether he will be put in prison, so he ought not to ask them leave to escape. ”

“ CHAPTER LXXXVII. PEACE’S DISCHARGE FROM PRISON—​THE RETURN HOME. We must pass over the period of Peace’s incarceration as a convict, and take up his history from the time of his discharge.
As the long looked-for day began to approach the prisoner, as is usual in such cases, was permitted to grow his hair.
Three months’ permission is given for this purpose; the regular once-a-week “clip” is no longer insisted on, as the prisoner has become what in common parlance is termed “a permission man.”
As the weeks pass by the hair grows. ”

“ One hundred and thirty convicts with terms ranging from 2 to 15 years, too busy with their day’s labor or their evening’s sports to think of evil, are building the new penitentiary or tilling the soil. Only nine hours a day, that time allotted for sleep, are the prisoners under lock and key. They go about their various duties under the direction of a guard or overseer, but the shotgun or rifle, usually accompanying such officer, is conspicuous by its absence.
The prison gives promise of being the ideal penal institution of the world.
The site is ideal for the work to be accomplished. ”

“ If we do this, the prisoner feels that he is persecuted, and that as society is doing its worst by him now, he will repay it upon his discharge. In effect, that as every man’s hand is against him, his hand shall be against every man. ”

“ In the latter the length of incarceration and the closeness of the application of the rule of separate confinement, seems to break up so entirely the relations of the prisoner with the world from which he is banished, that many seem willing to listen to the admonition of visiting friends, and to accept the invitation to review their lives and to form resolves of future amendment. ”

“ The status of military prisons the world over has been an indictment upon humanity. In England, the Hulks and Dartmoor; in France, Verdun and Bitche; in Russia, Peter and Paul and the Schlüsselburg; in the United States, Libby Prison, Andersonville and Fort Delaware are sad examples of the cruelties of war. Idleness, starvation and homesickness conspired to make the wretched captives prefer death or daring escape to indefinite torture. ”

“ And yet it is my firm conviction that I, or any other man possessing ordinary intelligence and insight into human character and experience of convict life, could, with the utmost ease, have selected from the inmates of our prisons a very large number for exportation, whom our colonists would have been glad to receive, and who would have been rescued from a life of ignominy or crime at home. The question may very naturally be asked—Why could not our prison officials have done the same? ”

“ When a prisoner fell ill, and was admitted into the prison hospital, he was treated as well as, or better than, the soldiers in the military hospital outside the prison walls.
We have already dealt with the reckless statement p. 168of the French while dealing with Mr. Pillet. They are wicked calumnies, which, even on a casual examination, carry with them their own contradiction. The British Government expended an enormous sum on the prisoners, and in 1817 made a claim on the French for the maintenance of French prisoners in England. ”

“ It is decided that the attack upon the management of the penitentiary is to be initiated from the 'outside." A released prisoner is to inform the press of the abuses, graft, and immorality rampant in Riverside. The public will demand an investigation. ”

“ THE EXCHANGE OF PRISONERS From first to last the question of the Exchange of Prisoners was a burning one between Great Britain and her enemies, and, despite all efforts to arrange it upon an equitable basis and to establish its practice, it was never satisfactorily settled. It is difficult for an Englishman, reviewing the evidence as a whole and in as impartial a spirit as possible, to arrive at any other conclusion than that we were not so fairly dealt with by others as we dealt with them. ”

“ Some cursed the day they were born; some, the day of their captivity; some attributed all their sufferings to the inattention of the Agent, and others, to the government of the United States. We retired to our hammocks, and gave vent to our feelings in sighs and tears.
The thought that we must forego all the endearments of life, and perish together, in a foreign country, among our enemies, was too much for our feelings to bear. The groans of the disconsolate and sick filled the whole prison. Our Agent not empowered to act, and without funds! ”

“ It is hard to refrain from the expression of passionate indignation at the treatment accorded to our non-commissioned officers and privates in those southern hells. For years we were accustomed to ask, "In what military prison of the north, in what common jail of Europe, in what dungeon of the civilized or savage world, have captives taken in war—nay, condemned criminals—been systematically exposed to a lingering [146] death by cold and hunger? The foulest felon—his soul black with sacrilege, his hands reeking with parricide—has enough of food, of clothing, of shelter ”

“ A more severe punishment was depriving a man of his chance of exchange by putting him at the bottom of the list; this was a fearful sentence, for although the actual chance of exchange was small, each man was daily longing and hoping for the arrival of the day when his cartel should come.
3rd. Imprisonment in the Black Hole, a veritable abode of misery, where solitude was added to the ills of imprisonment, was the penalty for serious offences, such as assaults on the staff, violent assaults on other prisoners, attempts to escape, and more heinous offences. ”

“ Some of these entries extend more than a mile out into the earth from the base of the shaft. As my fellow-prisoner and I were passing along one of these roadways to the place where I was to work, he asked me my name and the nature of my offense. At this place let me inform, the reader that the prisoners are given permission to converse with each other in the mines. Their instructions are to the effect that they are not to talk about anything but their work, but in the penitentiary the same rule holds good as on the outside: "Give a man an inch and he will take a yard." ”

“ In this way, the prisoner's destiny during his incarceration should be placed, measurably, in his own hands; he must be put into circumstances where he will be able, through his own exertions, to continually better his condition. ”

“ I cannot, however, forbear to notice the erroneous impression of the prisoners, that their detention so long has been owing to me. You are aware, sir, of my constant exertions during the war to effect their liberation. I immediately, on the signing of the treaty of peace at Ghent, renewed my instances on that subject; proposing, as a condition, that all prisoners who might be delivered over to me by the British government, should be considered as prisoners of war, and not at liberty to serve until regularly exchanged, in the event of the treaty not being ratified by the President. ”