230 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
people, on their industries, their manners, their morals, their government, and their religion, are sober, fruitful, and suggestive, and may be read to-day with perhaps even more profit than fifty years ago.
Still, a pirate might be intelligent. Let us take other aspects of Semmes's character. How did he treat his prisoners, of whom, first and last, there must have been hundreds ? His own account and that of his officers is, of course, highly favorable. He admits that at first, as a measure of retaliation for Union treatment of captured '* pirates," he was unnecessarily rigid in the use of irons ; but in the main he asserts that captives were made as comfortable as circumstances permitted and he insists especially that at no time was there any pillaging of pri- vate personal property. ** We may as well state here," writes Lieutenant Sinclair, ** that all our prisoners were housed on deck from necessity, the berth-deck being crowded by our own men. But we made them as com- fortable as we could under the circumstances, spread awnings and tarpaulins over them in stormy weather, and in every way possible provided for their comfort. They were allowed full rations (less the spirit part) and their own cooks had the range of the galley in preparing their food to their taste. Indeed, when it is considered that our men had watch to keep and they none, they were better oil for comfort than ourselves." ^^ This, of course, refers only to the men. When women were brought on board, they were given the officers' own staterooms.
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