I am unqualifiedly against the retaliation resolutions concerning prisoners of war.

The provision that the Southerners in our hands shall be watched over by national soldiers who have been in Southern pens is unworthy of any great people or high-minded statesman.

I am not opposed to retaliation because it strikes those who are not or may not be guilty of the outrage we wish to put an end to.

I abhor this revenge on prisoners of war, because we would sink thereby to the level of the enemy’s shame and dishonor.

If we fight with Indians who slowly roast their prisoners, we cannot roast in turn the Indians whom we may capture.

And what is more, I defy Congress or Government to make the Northern people treat captured Southerners as our sons are treated by them.

God be thanked, you could not do it; and if you could, how it would brutalize our own people!

Revenge is passion, and ought never to enter the sphere of public action.

I believe that the ineffable cruelty practised against our men has been equalled in the history of our race by the Spanish treatment of the Indians, and by the Inquisition; but counter cruelty would not mend matters.

These cruelties, therefore, would be simply revenge, not retaliation; for retaliation, as an element of the Law of War, and of Nations in general, implies the idea of thereby stopping a certain evil.

I am, indeed, against all dainty treatment of the prisoners in our hands; but, for the love of our country and the great destiny of our people, do not sink, even in single cases, to the level of our unhappy, shameless enemy.

In other words, the Laws of War are essentially humane, and not to be changed by any spasm of barbarism in an enemy.

I expected those men who desire that the Rebellion should succeed to oppose retaliation, and to oppose it to the bitter end; but I did not expect the Senator from Massachusetts to come in here and say that it was inexpedient to protect our…

Are we not witnessing a similar process, to end, I trust, in a similar disappearance?

I said nothing against retaliation according to the laws and usages of civilized nations, for that I know is one of the terrible incidents of war; but I resisted a principle which civilization disowns.

It is not enough, on such an occasion, and especially after avowals made in this Chamber, to say that retaliation shall be according to the principles of Public Law.

The resolution, therefore, for the sake of certainty, and to give double assurance that humanity shall not suffer, ought to be still further amended, by limiting the retaliation to the usages of civilized society.

This amendment becomes the more needful since Senators argue that by the principles of public law the intolerable cruelties of the Rebellion may be retaliated.

I desire to repeat my unalterable conviction that these cruelties cannot be retaliated in kind.

I believe the best way in which we can retaliate upon the South for the cruel treatment of our prisoners is for us to continue to treat their prisoners with entire humanity and all reasonable kindness,--and not only so, but to seize every…

Indeed, it is no more than our duty to treat the prisoner well.

The Government that refuses or neglects it does not deserve the name of civilized.

If you are yourself so exhausted that you cannot supply your prisoner with a sufficient quantity of wholesome food, you are bound, with or without exchange, to set him free.

You have no more right to starve than to poison him.

He has had dear friends in those Southern pens, which have become the very symbols of revolting barbarity; but he desires, for this very reason, that the subject be weighed without passion, which never counsels well,--especially without…