THE IMMORTAL SIX HUNDRED
cause of right, even if death came to us in a Yankee prison. The charge that the Confederate Government had six hundred Union officers under fire in Charleston City was as false as the brain that conceived the story; as false as the tongue that uttered it; and Secretary Stanton and Gen. J. G. Foster, U. S. A., knew there were no prisoners of war under fire in Charleston City. They had the testimony of their own officers, who had been prisoners of war in Charleston City, that the story was false. Yet the testimony and word of these gentlemen was ignored by Stanton and Foster, and the word of niggers and Confederate deserters taken as gospel truth. The officers who had been prisoners of war in Charleston City: Generals H. W. Wessells, Seymour, Scammon, et al, over their own signatures, say they were not under fire, but, on the contrary, in no danger; with good quarters and plenty to eat, kindly and courteously treated. Yet they were not listened to as reliable witnesses, but ig-
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