Should Forrest have been tried and hung for his torture of white POWs and murder of both white and black POWs?
What torture?
What murder? When were the trials held? I have never seen a conviction, and the seems to be your standard for attempted murder and rape, so why should this be any different?
[98]
With the grim prevalence of death and illness, a strange twist emerged at this juncture in the administrative thinking of the military. On October 3 Colonel Tracy issued what in retrospect became a most controversial edict-Special Orders No. 336. In stilted military prose, the order stated:
Whereas the fresh Beef now being furnished at this Post is in the opinion of the Col Comdg unfit for issue, and inferior in quality to that required by contract. Therefore: Col. S. Moore, 16th Regt. Vet. Reserve Corps and Major Henry V. Colt, 104th N.Y. Vols. [the officers in charge of the prison camp] are hereby designated to hold a survey upon said Beef and to reject such parts or the whole of the said Beef as to them appears to be unfit for issue, or of a quality inferior to that contracted for. [14]This order came at a time when the camp's rations had already been reduced by 20 percent and the sutler's shop had been forbidden to sell food to the prisoners. Now the stark reality was that limitations on rations became more acute, for cutting back ever so slightly on the supply of beef would escalate the probability of malnutrition. And a most intriguing ramification of Special Orders No. 336 is the fate of the rejected beef. The daily meat inspection frequently resulted in large amounts of beef being rejected for failing to meet the standards of the contract. The rejected beef was then sold to local meat markets and purchased by Elmira's citizens. [15]
* * *
[99]
In 1878 the shortcomings of Special Orders No. 336 were exposed, perhaps unwittingly, in the form of a letter to a local newspaper. In responding to an article written by a Confederate survivor of Elmira, Brig. Gen. Alexander S. Diven noted that on several occasions he accompanied Colonel Tracy to the slaughter yard where the beef was inspected. Diven was for a considerable time during the prison camp's existence the provost marshal of the Federal Draft Rendezvous of Western New York at Elmira. Control of the prison camp was distinct from his command. He recalled Tracy rejecting "beef, which, though it was such as I would often have been glad to have had for myself and my command, was not all of the quality contracted for, and such part was returned." [16] General Diven's observation that the rejected beef was good enough "for myself and my command" is a poignant revelation that goes well beyond the emotional memories of the camp's survivors.
FOOTNOTES:
14. Rochester (N.Y.) Daily Union and Advertiser, reprinted in the Elmira (N.Y.) Daily Advertiser, September 30, 1864.
15. Philadelphia Press; this is an 1884 newspaper account with a dateline "Elmira, July 16," file 404-B, Chemung County Historical Society.
16. Letter of Thomas C. Jones, January 26, 1904, file 500-320, Chemung County Historical Society.