Supposing even, that the Rebels did not have the labor at hand to convert these forests into building material and fuel, the prisoners themselves would have gladly undertaken the work, as a means of promoting their own comfort, and for occupation and exercise.

No tools would have been too poor and clumsy for them to work with.

When logs were occasionally found or brought into prison, men tore them to pieces almost with their naked fingers.

Every prisoner will bear me out in the assertion that there was probably not a root as large as a bit of clothes-line in all the ground covered by the prisons, that eluded the faithfully eager search of freezing men for fuel.

What else than deliberate design can account for this systematic withholding from the prisoners of that which was so essential to their existence, and which it was so easy to give them?
This much for the circumstantial evidence connecting the Rebel authorities with the premeditated plan for destroying the prisoners.
Let us examine the direct evidence: The first feature is the assignment to the command of the prisons of "General" John H.Winder, the confidential friend of Mr.Jefferson Davis, and a man so unscrupulous, cruel and bloody-thirsty that at the time of his appointment he was the most hated and feared man in the Southern Confederacy.