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1 Report. Returned Prisoners 1864

handle is hein.trials/adfya0001 and id is 1 raw text is: :38TII CONGRESS, t HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE& REPORT let Session. H No: 67. RETURNED PRISONERS. MAY 9, 1864.-Laid on the table and ordered to be printed. Mr. GoocH, from the Joint Select Committee on the Conduct of the War, made the following REPORT. The Joint Committee on the Conduct and Expenditures of he War submitted the following report, with the accompanying testimony. On the 4th instant your committee received a communication of that date -from the Secretary of War, enclosing the report of Colonel Hoffman, commissary :general of prisoners, dated May 3, calling the attention of the committee to the ,condition, of returned Union prisoners, with the request that the committee would -immediately proceed to Annapolis and examine with their own eyes the con- dition of those who have been returned from rebel captivity. The committee -resolved that they would comply with the request of the Secretary of War on the first opportunity. The 5th of May was devoted by the committee to con- -cluding their labors upon the investigation of the Fort Pillow massacre. On the 6th of May, however, the committee proceeded to Annapolis and Baltimore, .and examined the condition of our returned soldiers, and took the testimony of ,several of them, together with the testimony of surgeons and other persons in attendance upon the hospitals. That testimony, with the communication of the -Secretary of War, and the report of Colonel Hoffnan, is herewith transmitted. The evidence proves, beyond all manner of doubt, a determination on the part of the rebel authorities, deliberately and persistently practiced for a long time past, to subject those of our soldiers who have been so unfortunate as to fall in their hands to a system of treatment which has resulted in reducing many of those who have survived and been permitted to return to us to a condition, both physically and mentally, which no language we can use can adequately describe. Though nearly all the patients now in the Naval Academy hospital -at Annapolis, and in the West hospital, in Baltimore, have been under the kindest and most intelligent treatment for about three weeks past, and many of them'for a greater length of time, still they present literally the appearance of living skeletons, many of them being nothing but skin and bone; some of them are maimed for life, having been frozen while exposed to the inclemency of thy, winter season on Belle Isle, being compelled to lie on the bare ground, -without tents or blank,.ts, some of them without overcoats or even coats, with but little fire to mitigate the severity of the winds and storms to which they were exposed. The testimony shows that the general practice of their captors was to rob them, as soon as they were taken prisoners, of all their monoy, valuables, blankets, and good clothing, for which they received nothing in exchange except, perhaps, some old worn-out rebel clothing hardly better than none at all. Upon their arrival at Richmond they have been confined, without blankets or other covering,

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