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American Civil War
Volunteer Surgens
The inhuman treatment of the Union prisoners cannot be forgotten, nor the crime mitigated in the least on the plea that it was as good as that received by the rebel prisoners, for it has been well established that they were provided with the same shelter, rations, medicine and surgical aid as the Union army, and when released and sent to the rebel army were in good condition, the death percentage being comparatively small; while the Union prisoners were huddled together in filthy prisons, swarming with vermin and infected with disease, or
, placed purposely in camps of unhealthy location without shelter except the holes which their own emaciated and weak hands dug in the damp earth, where, without covering they burrowed like beasts, resulting in sickness, with but little, if any, medical aid; starving them by thousands to death by exposure and hunger, or reducing them to hideous skeletons, or to an idiotic condition worse than death.
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