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Letter: July 16, 1862 From a camp near Corinth, Mississippi, John B. Dorr wrote the following letter to Brigadier General Pleasant A. Hackleman, by order of Brigadier General Richard J. Oglesby, who then forwarded the letter with the enclosed message: ‘‘I inclose for the notice of the commanding generals of the post, district and department the official statement of Lieut. J. B. Dorr, Twelfth Iowa Infantry, in regard to the treatment and punishment of Union soldiers, prisoners of war at Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, by rebel authorities. I have asked for the communication that it may be officially known, as far as it is possible to make it official, the barbarous and inhuman treatment our soldiers receive as prisoners of war from the rebel army’’ (Official Records series 2, vol. 4, 230–232). Brig. Gen. P. A. Hackleman. General: I have already in the Missouri Republican of 18th June ultimo published an account of the condition and treatment of the Union soldiers captured at Shiloh by the rebels into whose hands they fell.82 But as Brigadier-General Oglesby, commanding this (Second) division, of the Army of the Mississippi, requested a written statement through you of the facts connected with the murder of Lieut. W. S. Bliss, of the Second Michigan Battery, and the treatment of the Federal soldiers taken with him, I comply with his request and send you the following, which came under my own personal observation, or as attested by my late fellowprisoners . Lieutenant Bliss was murdered on the 1st or 2d of May. He and other officers and others who had the means had been in the habit of buying cakes and milk at a house near a well whence we brought water and had on the morning of that day left his canteen at this house to be filled in the evening. At about 5 p.m. Lieutenant Bliss and Lieutenant Winslow of the Fifty-eighth Illinois, went to the well for water, under guard of course. Arrived at the well Lieutenant Bliss stepped to the back window of the house in question, distant about ten or twelve paces, to get his milk. Ordered by the guard to come away he replied that he merely wanted to get { 107 } his milk, at the same moment receiving it from the woman of the house and in return handing her a shinplaster83 in payment. The guard, standing about six paces from him, repeated the order. Lieutenant Bliss said, ‘‘In a minute,’’ and receiving his change stepped back some three feet. At this moment the guard raised his piece and Bliss perceiving the movement exclaimed, ‘‘Good God! you will not shoot me, will you?’’ Saying that he ‘‘must do his duty’’ the guard fired, shooting Bliss through the heart, who fell dead without a groan or motion. The guard although standing within reach of Lieutenant Bliss had made no effort to prevent him from going to the window nor could he have supposed he would escape, since all parties were in a yard, nor did he inform him that he was violating orders, nor had the prisoners been informed that the purchase of milk was prohibited. That this atrocious and most inhuman murder is not to be charged to the brutality of the individual soldier, although by no means innocent, is proved by the assertion of Capt. D. S. Troy, the highest Confederate officer in Montgomery, made to me that the shooting was ‘‘according to orders.’’ At Tuscaloosa two enlisted men were killed by the guard for looking out of the window of their prison, one of them being shot before any notice was given them prohibiting them the poor privilege of looking at their mother earth. After the first killing a written notice was posted up that the guard[s] were to discharge their pieces at any prisoner seen looking out of a window. Several were shot at but none wounded. At Tuscaloosa the prisoners were confined in close rooms; only a few were allowed to go out for water and to the sinks at a time, and although the diarrhea was prevailing in the prisons to a terrible extent the unhappy victims were obliged to use tubs during the night, which were often not removed until 9 a.m. Alive with vermin such prisons must rapidly develop every form of disease and death claim many a noble mark. At Montgomery upward of 500 privates and 100 commissioned officers were...

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