Ethnic Cleansing Yankee Style

PREAMBLE TO HOUSE RESOLUTION #97*

{*Also known as the Retaliatory Orders because it was supposedly in response to the “atrocities” of Andersonville and other Southern POW camps. At that time, men released from incarceration by the Confederacy because of their extreme physical deterioration were photographed so that their condition could be used to stir up hatred against the Confederacy with the public at home and abroad. What is not mentioned is that the inhumane treatment acknowledged by the resolution was already of long standing throughout the Union and with few exceptions represented the ordinary treatment of captured Confederate soldiers.}

“Rebel prisoners in our hands are to be subjected to a treatment finding its parallels only in the conduct of savage tribes and resulting in the death of multitudes by the slow but designed process of starvation and by mortal diseases occasioned by insufficient and unhealthy food and wanton exposure of their persons to the inclemency of the weather.” ….passed by both houses, January 1865.

There is no more clear indicator of the mendacity of the present “history” of the War than the differing treatment accorded to the prisoner of war camps on both sides. All but the most ignorant have heard of Andersonville. Plays and books have been written and films produced on the horrors of this Southern “concentration camp” and the only man hanged for “war crimes” after the South’s surrender was its unfortunate commandant, Col. Henry Wirz. Yet, studies of Andersonville show that Commandant Wirz and the Confederate government made every effort to succor their prisoners (unlike their Union counterparts) and that at Wirz trial, Union prisoners wishing to testify on his behalf were denied the opportunity to do so.

On the other hand, the horrors of places like (H)Elmira, Camps Merton and Douglas, Point Lookout &tc. are unknown to the general public despite the many books that have been written about the cruelty and murder that took place in these gulags. In fact, the largest mass grave in the United States is located in Chicago and contains the bodies of Confederate soldiers who were murdered at Camp Douglas. Fairly recently the History Channel presented a program on Douglas entitled “80 Acres of Hell”. So the facts are indeed available on this subject, but during the upcoming sesquicentennial, when the treatment of prisoners and of POW camps is addressed, the chances are that the name of Andersonville will be by far the most prominent and its “coverage” will be what we have come to expect notwithstanding all the available evidence that makes nonsense of the prevailing “orthodox history”.