and feet, your muscles, limbs and senses, your body and mind, your
liberty and earnings, your free speech and rights of conscience, your
right to acquire knowledge, property and reputation, and yet you are
content to believe without question that men who do all this by their
slaves have soft hearts oozing out so lovingly toward their human
chattles that they always keep them well housed and well clad, never push
them too hard in the field, never make their dear backs smart, nor let
their dear stomachs get empty!"

In like manner we may ask, are not the cruelties and oppressions
described in the following pages what we should legitimately expect from
men who, all their lives, have used whip and thumb-screw, shot-gun and
bloodhound, to keep human beings subservient to their will? Are we to
expect nothing but chivalric tenderness and compassion from men who made
war on a tolerant government to make more secure their barbaric system of
oppression?

These things are written because they are true. Duty to the brave dead,
to the heroic living, who have endured the pangs of a hundred deaths for
their country's sake; duty to the government which depends on the wisdom
and constancy of its good citizens for its support and perpetuity, calls
for this "round, unvarnished tale" of suffering endured for freedom's
sake.

The publisher of this work urged his friend and associate in journalism
to write and send forth these sketches because the times demanded just
such an expose of the inner hell of the Southern prisons. The tender
mercies of oppressors are cruel. We must accept the truth and act in
view of it. Acting wisely on the warnings of the past, we shall be able
to prevent treason, with all its fearful concomitants, from being again