Saturday, June 18, 1864.

Evidences of the inhuman treatment of our prisoners by the Confederate authorities at Richmond continue to multiply. We give on the preceding page two illustrations which afford indubitable proof on this point. These illustrations are made from photographs taken in the United States General Hospital, Division No. 1, Annapolis, Maryland, under charge of Dr. Z. VANDERKIEFT. They represent two of the unfortunate prisoners as then appeared upon their return from the Richmond prisons. Dr. ELLERSLIE WALLACE, in sending the photographs, writes as follows:

These two pictures are what may be called good specimens of the bad cases which are brought to the hospital from the prisons and Belle Isle. They are from the worst of the cases, and these worst cases form a numerous body. Both are dead.

Out of one hundred bad cases brought in by boat on May 3, thirty have since died. Dr. VANDERKIEFT said they died from the effects of neglect and cruel treatment at t he hands of the enemy." Dr. V. is an honorable, upright and warm-hearted gentleman. The question is asked, " Is the condition of the originals of these pictures entirely, due to starvation, or is there not some disease which has reduced them?" I answer this by giving the statements of two of the men, which are, with only a little variation of time and place, the statements of very many-of all, in fact, whom I questioned. The various ones whom I did question were in different parts of the hospital, had been brought in at different times, and could have had no collusion with each other in answering my questions.

I take from my note-book first the statement of Corporal W. M. SMITH, aged 22 years, Company D, Eighth Regiment Kentucky Infantry:

" I was captured in September, 1863: was on Belle Isle six days and nights without shelter. They took away my blanket and gum-cloth. It rained two or three days. I lay at night in the cold dew and frost. While in prison, after leaving Belle Isle, in December, I got small-pox. I wore the same summer clothes in which I was captured; I lay on the floor; I never had any thing to sleep on or any cover. After I got well of the small-pox I had to wash my clothes, for I had worn them all the time. I came in to this hospital in the same clothes. Diarrhea came on in February."

This poor fellow was so shriveled that his face looked like that of an ape - It was seamed and wrinkled and in folds. I had his picture taken; he asked me for one; I promised it to him, and inquired what he wanted for. He trembled, choked with emotion, calmed himself, again quivered, and, as tears gushed from his eyes, said, "To send it home to my mother." I rejoiced when I found that the picture was a failure, for a sight of that face in a picture, I really believe, might have killed his mother, or turned her brain.

Another statement, that of Private JACKSON BROSHERS, aged 20, Company D, Sixty-fifth Regiment Indiana Mounted Infantry, is as follows:

"I was captured December 16, 1863; was two months on Belle Isle; had a piece of a tent over me, but it was full of holes, and the water came through. A good many had no shelter at all; I don't know how many. They took from me my hat and cap, and gave me an old jeans rag hat. They took my overcoat, two blankets, and gum blanket. I had meat but three times on Belle Isle. I think it was mule meat, for I never saw such looking meat, and never tasted any of the same queer taste. I never had enough to eat while I was on Belle Isle; my ration was not near enough to satisfy my hunger. I got thinner and weaker every day, until in two months my stomach gave out: and then the weakness came on, oh, so badly. Well, I had to eat my ration or starve; so I chewed and nibbled it off and on as I could. Then in the last month of my imprisonment diarrhea came on. I came into this hospital on March 24, 1864. I am getting stronger and heavier every day. My weight was about 185 pounds. My height is.6 feet 1 inch"

This man (Broshers), who thus weighed originally 185 pounds, I carried-down stairs in my arms and weighed. He was 31/4 months in the rebels' hands, and had never been sick in his life. He weighed on May 19, 1864, 1081/2 pounds, and he had then been eight weeks in the enjoyment of abundant nutriment, with stimulation and every excellent care in the United States hospital. What must he have weighed when he first came from prison?

I saw one young man who had been a prisoner in the hands of the rebels for (I think? seven months. He had been released about a month before I saw him. Upon his entrance into the hospital the nurse and the surgeon both assured me that his fore-arm was so thin that it was transparent between the bones when held up to the sunlight. Certain it is that I have never seen a more emaciated human form, whether alive or dead, and yet he said that he was gaining flesh and strength every day. What must he have been one month before I saw him? For at this time he could not change his position in bed without assistance. His stomach was in such condition from starvation, not from disease, that when he was first admitted he was fed on milk, a teaspoonful every fifteen or twenty minutes. It was all that he could bear without vomiting. The kind and earnest efforts put forth day and night in his behalf failed to do more than support him for a time. He died shortly after I left Annapolis--.died of inanition.

The daily ration of these men in the prisons and on Belle Isle was, first, a piece of corn bread made of unbolted corn meal, dark and heavy. Its size is five inches long, four inches wide, and one inch and a half thick- I have seen these rations brought here as specimens- Second, as a further ration, they generally have two ounces of meat three times a week. Sometimes not nearly as often. A very few had two ounces of meat once every day. When sick with diarrhea they have the same ration with the addition of bean soup, coarse and dark, ill-taste and repulsive.

The process of these men's depletion is perfectly plain. Under the combined effects of bad and deficient food their "stomach gave out"; then came indigestion, loss of appetite, nausea, weakness; then diarrhea, and often congestion of the lungs of atonic character, the result of impoverished blood and deficient powers of circulation. So they suffer, and hence they die, or are returned to the care of those for whom, for whose country, for whose honor, as for themselves and their own, they have been thus sorely afflicted.

Some additional footnotes:

Libby Prison, high on Church Hill, was overflowing with Union prisoners of war by June 1862, so the enlisted men were separated out and sent to Belle Isle.

Belle Isle Prison during the Civil War with Richmond and the James River  in the distance.

The Confederates had found another way to use the river's topography, for the rushing waters sweeping around the island enforced its natural boundaries. During the summers, conditions were not too bad for the prisoners; at least there was ample water for drinking and bathing, an advantage the officers on the hill did not have. But winter, especially since as many as 6,000 men were crowded on the four acres of level ground and only two-thirds had the flimsy protection of tents, meant death from exposure. The island was no edenic Belle Isle for the total of 20,000 prisoners who were forced to live there, but rather a kind of human wilderness.

In February 1864, the Federal forces tried another scheme to liberate the thousands of Union prisoners in Richmond. The one-legged Colonel Ulrich Dahlgren was to strike the city with 400 troopers from the west, moving along the unprotected south side of the river above the Fall Line, and then join the 3,000 cavalry soldiers led by General Kilpatrick. The plan was that Richmond forces would be engaged with Kilpatrick's troops, leaving the river open to Dahlgren's liberation.

Nothing worked as planned, however, primarily because of the river. Dahlgren's men took advantage of their break behind enemy lines to destroy parts of the canal and railroads and freely plunder houses. But they had no boats to cross the James. A slave promised to guide them to a ford, but there could be no crossing since winter rain had swollen the waters. The guide was quickly hanged for the river's treachery. Dahlgren headed northeast, managing to cross the more docile Mattaponi, but by then Kilpatrick had been forced to withdraw his troops. When Confederate soldiers caught up with him, Dahlgren was shot, his body reportedly mutilated and then "lost."

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