PRISONERS, EXCHANGE OF. 



763 



Of the* fate of the negroes captured at Fort 

 Wagner no certain intelligence reached the 

 Federal Government for several weeks, the 

 rebels maintaining a strict silence on the sub- 

 ject ; but Secretary Stanton, ascertaining soon 

 after that three colored men captured on 

 board the gunboat Isaac Smith in the Stono 

 river, had been placed in close confinement, 

 ordered three rebel prisoners of South Caroli- 

 na to be held as hostages for them, and directed 

 this fact to be communicated to the Confeder- 

 ate Government. The comments of the Rich- 

 mond papers show how this proceeding was 

 regarded in the rebellious States : 



It is not, said the "Examiner," merely the inso- 

 lent pretensions of a regular Government affecting 

 to deal with "rebels," but it is a deadly stab which 

 they are aiming at our institutions themselves be- 

 cause they know that if we were insane enough to 

 yield this point, to treat black men as the equals of 

 white, and insurgent slaves as equivalent to our brave 

 soldiers, the very foundation of slavery would be fatal- 

 ly wounded. 

 ******** 



Tinder these circumstances what hope is there of 

 the arrangement of the cartel upon a footing of equal- 

 ity? Will Lincoln's Government renounce that auda- 

 cious pretension to treat us as criminals? Or will it, 

 after deliberately enlisting our runaway negroes into its 

 military service, consent to give them up to be dealt 

 with by our State laws as insurgents ? We know very 

 well what these questions all tend to. We have long 

 perceived that the time is at hand when no more pris- 

 oners will be exchanged, and no more prisoners will be 

 taken. Our people and our troops are entitled at the 

 hands of their Government to such protection as a 

 Government can afford them. Our soldiers entered 

 the Confederate service as the soldiers of a regular 

 Government, and they cannot afford to meet the enemy 

 in the character of malefactors. If there is to be no 

 exchange on equal terms, better there should be no 

 exchange at all better that the enemy should un- 

 derstana there will be no quarter asked nor given; 

 and then at least there will be equality. 



Holding views like these, the rebels were 

 not likely to yield their point readily, and dur- 

 ing the whole year not a single instance has 

 occurred of a negro soldier or a commissioned 

 officer of a negro regiment being exchanged, or 

 recognized as a prisoner of war. On the other 

 hand no instance has come to light of the ex- 

 ecution by the Confederate authorities of the 

 death penalty upon prisoners of this class, and 

 there is reason to hope that the firm attitude 

 taken by the Federal Government may avert 

 the horrors which such an act would promote. 

 The complications, however, which the action 

 of the enemy has caused in the general subject 

 of exchanges, will be presently seen. 



In August, Gen. S. A. Meredith was appoint- 

 ed to succeed Col. Ludlow as United States 

 agent for exchanges at Fortress Monroe. "With 

 the arrival of this officer at his post commences 

 a voluminous correspondence between him and 

 the Confederate agent, in which occur so 

 many radical contradictions of matters of fact 

 that it is difficult to arrive at an exact state- 

 ment of the controversy between them. It ap- 

 pears from the principal communication of 

 Gen. Meredith that, while his predecessor, Col. 

 Ludlow, was on duty at Fortress Monroe, Mr. 



Ould at one time made a declaration of exchange 

 not in exact accordance with the cartel, and that 

 he invited Col. Ludlow to a corresponding dec- 

 laration of equivalents. The latter acceded to 

 the proposition in this specific case, and was 

 thus, according to Gen. Meredith, " without 

 anticipating the magnitude of the evil which 

 now appears as the result of that departure 

 from the cartel," enticed into the establish- 

 ment of a precedent whereby exchanges were 

 declared without designating the persons ex- 

 changed by name or descriptive list. The evil 

 effects of this loose method of procedure be- 

 came apparent when Mr. Ould, on September 

 12th, declared a large part of the officers and 

 men captured at Vicksburg, and a great num- 

 ber also who had been delivered at City Point, 

 to be duly exchanged. This declaration, cov- 

 ering an indeterminate number of troops, des- 

 ignated by commands, but not enumerated, 

 sent nearly 30,000 men back to the rebel ser- 

 vice, according to Gen. Meredith, and, as he 

 claims, with only a partial equivalent of Fed- 

 eral prisoners returned to him. He also charged 

 that proper lists of Federal prisoners had not 

 been furnished him. To this Mr. Ould rejoined 

 that he had furnished a "tabular statement," 

 covering all the Federal prisoners whose paroles 

 were cancelled by the declaration of September 

 12th. But the persons enumerated in this doc- 

 ument included, according to Gen. Hitchcock, 

 the chief commissioner of Exchanges at Wash- 

 ington, upward of 18,000 men, of whom a con- 

 siderable portion "were undoubtedly captured 

 by guerilla parties, and were not soldiers, but, 

 for the most part, peaceable citizens of the 

 country, probably known as friends to the 

 Union, who, for that reason, were seized and 

 eompelled to make an oath not to take up arms 

 against the Southern Confederacy; and this 

 class of persons Mr. Ould expects us to accept 

 in exchange for rebel troops, captured mostly 

 at Vicksburg, who, having been paroled in the 

 South, were " declared " exchanged by Mr. 

 Ould, without any conference or understanding 

 with our agent, in violation of the provisions 

 of the cartel, and in violation of the usages of 

 war." He adds : 



I do not mean to deny, in the reference just made to 

 the tabular statement prepared by Mr. Ould, but that 

 there were some men included in that statement who 

 had been legitimately made prisoners of war, though 

 not delivered according to the cartel ; but, for the most 

 part, the prisoners included in that tabular statement 

 were not set down as having been captured upon anv 

 known battle-field, or as having been taken from or with 

 any known Federal commander ; nor are they reported 

 as having been delivered to any Federal commander; 

 but they are set down as having been captured at large 

 in the State of Kentucky, nobody knows where; or in 

 the State of Tennessee, or in other States of the West 

 and South ; whilst, in no less than four instances, they 

 are reported as having been captured in " Kentucky 

 and Tennessee " the two States being thus coupled to- 

 gether making it impossible, from the tabular state- 

 ment itself, to determine where they were captured, or 

 whether, indeed, any military captures whatever were 

 made, except of a few at Chickamauga, and possibly a 

 few at one or two other places. 



