March 22, 1863, The New York Herald
CONDITION OF THE SOUTH – HOW UNION PRISONERS ARE TREATED BY THE REBELS.
WASHINGTON, March 21, 1863.
The Union prisoners who have been released, and arrived here last night from Richmond, on the steamer State of Maine, make some interesting statements in regard to the condition of affairs in the rebel confederacy. They represent that they were most cruelly treated, and suffered everything but death. The rebels treat citizen prisoners much worse than they do the prisoners of war. They were supplied with barely sufficient food to sustain life, and that of the worst possible quality. Latterly, those in Richmond have not been allowed to purchase anything – not even a loaf of bread. Provisions are very scarce and held at fabulous prices. Prices are systematically understated by the rebel papers. Flour is now selling in Richmond at forty to fifty dollars per barrel, although quoted in the Richmond papers at twenty- \eight dollars and a half; sweet potatoes, eight dollars per peck; eggs, two dollars per dozen, and other articles in proportion. In Mobile flour is selling at seventy-five to eighty dollars per barrel.
The poorer classes in Richmond are in a starving condition, and there have been a number of cases of actual starvation among them from inability to obtain the necessaries of life. Society throughout the confederacy is fearfully demoralized, women hitherto respectable being actually compelled to resort to prostitution to obtain the means of existence.
The utmost rigor and cruelty is exercised to keep the soldiers in the army. Soldiers absenting themselves from camps without leave are tried by court martial and punished by from twenty to one hundred lashes, according to the number of days they are gone. Deserters are frequently shot as examples to deter the soldiers from desertion. Many Union soldiers who have deserted to the enemy refuse to take the oath of allegiance and enter the rebel service after ascertaining the actual condition of things and learning what they must undergo, preferring to be returned as deserters and take their chances of punishment on their return.
Although the rebels generally pretend to have undiminished confidence in their ultimate success, yet the more intelligent among them are evidently becoming discouraged. Unless the next crop should be an average one, or if by the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson they should be cut off from the supplies which they have hitherto received from Texas, they know that they cannot continue the contest, but must be starved into submission.
These released prisoners state that all that buoys the rebels up now is the aid and comfort which they receive from the demonstration of the copperheads, and the belief that the Northwest is tired of the war, and will soon refuse to contribute further aid to its prosecution. If once convinced of the falsity of this belief, the rebel government could not long hold their army together. There is still a considerable Union feeling in the South. In North Carolina the Union men are in the majority, and the expulsion of the rebel forces from that State would be joyfully regarded by a majority of the citizens of the State, who would gladly return to the protection of the Union.
THE DEFENCES OF CHARLESTON.
A recent refugee from Charleston, who is well known by eminent gentlemen here, states that the city and harbor has all the defences that the best engineering ability can devise. There has been ample time for the purpose, and he regards the city as impregnable. The fact may or may not be important, for after all the sensation stories in abolition journals, that the city is already bombarded, and that it is to be the point of attack, it is by no means certain that such a thing is in the government budget. It would be refreshing to know that the rebels had been misled for once, and a crushing blow should fall upon a place or places less fortified, and better situated for opening trade with the interior.