Shreveport Weekly News

Our Prisoners at Camp Douglas.

Among the prisoners brought up on the flag of truce-boat, on last Monday, were some from the West, who have been confined at Camp Douglas, at Chicago. The very sight of the poor fellows is enough to strike pity to the heart. We wish the government could hear their tales of suffering and distress, and we hope that they will take some steps to lay their grievances before the authorities.

Camp Douglas is worse than the Black Hole of Calcutta. Not satisfied with putting our men to death by suffering and torture, the Yankee demons have taken to poisoning them! The little things, such as pies and cakes, that our poor prisoners would buy out of their few remaining cents, had killed a number of our men, and on an investigation being ordered and the food being analyzed, poison was plainly detected, and its presence admitted by the Yankee surgeons: The authorities tried to exculpate themselves by laying it to an old fish woman, who was permitted to peddle cakes among the prisoners.

The death of our men at Camp Douglas has been appalling. One of our prisoners estimates that in the short space of three months there were over two hundred and fifty deaths. This was caused by a combination of causes--the low, wet and marshy situation of the Camp, built in water: the filth and vermin of the place, and the long and desolate confinement of our men.

In fact some of the prisoners who came by the last flag of truce had languished there for nearly two years and their dejected, sorrow stricken and emaciated face bore testimony of more than all they told of their suffering.

The suffering to which our brave men have been subjected by the demons is enough to melt the heart to tears. Even in the cold winter--in mid winter--they were thrown into prison, with nothing more than a pallet of straw as a bed and without a article of clothing to protect them from the cold and piercing blasts-- and one who knows anything of Western life knows how fearfully they sweep over the prairies. In all the cold our men lay exposed to the storm, cold and shivering and benumbed. A cold snow storm came, and the result was that twenty-five or thirty of our men actually froze to death. We have this on reliable authority, and the story is substantially confirmed in every particular, by an account which we published some time since from the Chicago Times.

On their way from the West, our prisoners were still subjects of persecution and malignity of the Yankees, and were made to travel two whole days without a morsel of food!

They left at Camp Douglas about two thousand prisoners, who were to be exchanged and were leaving in bodies of four and five hundred. It is hoped they would soon be out of the clutches of the demons who have lorded over them with a tyranny and cruelty worse than that of the dark ages (Richmond Examiner.