days, unless within that time Second Lieutenant Jacob F. Kent, Third Infantry, shall be unconditionally released and set at liberty at Fort Monroe, Va. ; W. H. Ward, who is on parole for thirty days unless within that time Captain Frederick E. Prime, U. S. Engineers, shall be unconditionally released and set at liberty at Fort Monroe, Va. On the above conditions being complied with the parties interested will consider themselves discharged from their parole.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JOHN E. WOOL,

Major-General.

FORT WARREN, Boston Harbor, January 25, 1862.

General L. THOMAS, Adjutant-General U. S. Army.

SIR: I have just received the following answer by letter from General Huger* to the message I sent him relative to exchanging the North Carolina prisoners of war for the U. S. troops in Texas:

My Government is willing and anxious to exchange prisoners on fair terms, and as the authorities at Washington have permitted it in certain cases I beg your assistance in making it general and thus aid the cause of humanity and civilization.

In another part of his letter he says:

With your assistance, colonel, I hope we can do much to relieve needless suffering to our fellow-countrymen.

Being therefore certain of a reciprocal exchange of the prisoners of war now here I shall immediately require transportation for them by sea to Fort Monroe and to be sent to Norfolk for exchange--4 captains, 2 first lieutenants, 8 second lieutenants, 2 third lieutenants and about 370 rank and file. The four colored men are very desirous of returning to their families in North Carolina. I shall therefore send them unless I receive further instructions in relation to them. Three of them are certainly free and have families South. The fourth man is believed to be a slave yet he is very anxious to go home. He has been to me often begging me to send him home on the first opportunity.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. DIMICK,

Colonel First Artillery, Commanding Post.

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE POTOMAC,
January 25, 1862.

Mrs. JEANIE DEITZ,

307 West Thirty-fourth Street,

Between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, New York.

MADAM: I am directed by Major-General McClellan to acknowledge the receipt of your letter dated the 23rd instant asking him to procure the liberation of Lieutenant Campbell, Seventy-ninth New York Regiment, who was taken prisoner by the rebels at the battle of Bull Run.

General McClellan is fully alive to the suffering endured both by the prisoners of war and by their families, and as you are probably aware has in view arrangements for the exchange of prisoners which are to be carried out as rapidly as circumstances will admit. It is not in his power to make selections from those who are in the hands of the rebels and therefore he can only express the hope that the measures expected

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*Letter of January 20, p. 199.

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