What action was taken, if any there was, is not known to the writer. The thanks of the South, the kind wishes of all who honor the warm and generous impulses of our better nature, are due to the noble Chandler, who had the courage, the temerity, to expose the suffering condition at Andersonville, and to denounce the authors again and again at the peril of his life. It is known to the writer that Surgeons Bemis and Fluellen, of the rebel army medical staff, inspected the condition of the prison, and protested against the cruel management. One of the chief medical officers of the rebel army of the South informed the author that the medical men at this prison were without any influence whatever; and although the prison was within his department for a time, he had no more voice or influence in its management than the man in the moon; and that everything relating to the prison was _controlled and devised by the authorities at Richmond_. The refusal or the neglect of the rebel authorities, to whom these reports were submitted, to take notice of or remedy the exposed evils, is a tacit acknowledgment and approval of the system at work. XII. Northrop, the rebel commissary-general, whom Foote denounced in the rebel Congress as a monster, and incompetent, urged the secretary of war, Seddon, to reduce the rations to gruel and bread, in retaliation for alleged abuses to the rebel prisoners in our hands. Seddon declined to do it openly, on account of the technicalities of the law; but Northrop took the measure quietly into his own hands, and withheld meat so often and so long from the prisoners near Richmond as to call forth a yell of remonstrance from even the inhuman Winder. When the prisoners at Belle Isle--numbering from eight to thirteen thousand--were deprived of meat,--from the incompetency or the wilfulness of the commissary-general,--for a fortnight at a time, the secretary of war refused to allow compassionate parties to buy cattle in the neighborhood of the city, and bring them to the prison, stating that Northrop had informed him that the prisoners fared as well as the soldiers. And in pursuance of this diabolical plan of starvation, orders were given, in December, by the rebel war department, that no more supplies should be received from the United States for the prisoners, for which no apology or reason was ever given. Winder was denounced by members of Congress; but Davis tools no notice, because he was his personal friend. Seddon took sides with Northrop, and would not allow Captain Warner to buy cattle for the prisoners around Richmond, as he offered to do, and relieve their sufferings. The postmaster-general wanted to kill the prisoners taken in raiding; and Seddon, the secretary of war, stated that he was always in favor of fighting under the black flag.