ARTICLE 7. All prisoners now being discharged are to be consider on parole, but each aprty may relieve of their men and officers on such parole to the extent of the prisoners discharged by it on the basis herein specified. All prisoners now on parole are included intheis arrangement and their names are to be placed upon the list of discharged prisoners herein provided for.

In reference to that portion of your lette in which you propose certain prisoners for exchange for officers of equal grade I would remark that in the event a cartel is adopted carrying out in good faith what your Government has proposed through you and to which my Government has agreed there will be no necessity to discuss the cases submitted by you; in any event I have no authority to consider the question of individual exchanges.

It is proper that I should repeat in this communication what I stated to you verbally in our interview of the 23rd instant, that the Secretar of War had directed me to say to you that the assurance contained in your letter of the 13th instant to General Huger that our privateers captured on the high seas would in the future be considered in the same light as prisoners taken in arms on land, and would consequently be exchanged like other prisoners, was entirely satisfactory; and I was also directed by him to inform you that as soon as this assurance was received orders were issed placing the officers hitherto held as hostages on the same footing of all other prisoners, and that they would be at once sent home on parole under the proposed arrangement for exchange.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

HOWELL COBB,

Brigadier-General, C. S. Army.

CAIRO, ILL., March 1, 1862.

Major General L. POLK, Commanding at Columbus, Ky.

GENERAL: We have just received the following telegram which we forward by Captain Phelps, U. S. Navy, under a flag of truce:

SAINT LOUIS, MO., February 28, 1862.

Brigadier-General CULLUM, Cairo, Ill.:

Send flag of truce to Columbus for Mrs. General Buckner, and the two other ladies and give them permission to visit friends within our lines, but they cannot for the present visit prisoners of war, that being forbidden by orders from Washington.

H. W. HALLECK,

Major-General.

Should you allow it and it be the desire of Mrs. Buckner, Mrs. hanson and Mrs. Madeira to avail themselves of the above permission Captain Phelps will be wait till the ladies can be sent on board, when he will escort them to this place.

Very respectfully, your obedient servants,

[A. H. FOOTE,

Flag-Officer, Commanding Naval Forces, &c.]

[GEO. W. CULLUM,

Chief of Staff and Engineers, Department of the Missouri.]

COLUMBUS, KY., March 1, 1862.

A. H. FOOTE,

Flag-Officer, Commanding Naval Forces, &c.

GENTLEMEN: In answer to your letter of this date I have the honor to say that I regret that the absence of the ladies referred to in that