a remedy. You have at this moment in your prisons Confederate officers whom you have held over twelve months without charges or trial. They have been fairly exchanged by our agreements and ought to have been delivered long ago.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

RO. OULD,

Agent of Exchange.

WAR DEPARTMENT, Richmond, Va., May 22, 1863.

Lieutenant Colonel WILLIAM H. LUDLOW, Agent of Exchanged.

SIR: I perceive by the Northern papers that Captains McGraw and Corbin were shot to death with musketry on Friday, the 15th instant, at or near Sandusky, Ohio.

These are the cases which I brought to your attention when last I saw you. These men were duly authorized to recruit within the limits of Kentucky. They were tried by a court-martial upon the charge of recruiting within your lines. They were sentenced to be shot and that sentence was approved by General Burnside and President Lincoln.

The Confederate Government has ordered that two captains now in our custody shall be selected for execution in retaliation for this gross barbarity. The order will be speedily executed.

Your papers refer to other cases of parties condemned to death upon the same charge. They are some five or six in number.

In view of the awful vortex into which things are plunging I give you notice that in the event of the execution of these retaliation to an equal extent at least will be visited upon your own officers, and if that is found ineffectual the number will be increased.

The Great Ruller of nations must judge who is responsible for the initiation of this chapter of horrors.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

RO. OULD,

Agent of Exchange.

WAR DEPARTMENT, Richmond, Va., May 22, 1863.

Lieutenant Colonel WILLIAM H. LUDLOW, Agent of Exchange.

SIR: In several of your late communications you have appealed to me for the release of political prisoners held by us. I am ready to deliver every one of them when you to the same charity. Until then not one of them shall be released except at our own pleasure. You asked in a late communication for the release of the sheriff of Barbour County. Are you aware that you now hold some half dozen or more of harmless and inoffensive old men as hostages whom you do not even pretend to release, and yet ask the sheriff's deliverance?

You have now thousands of helpless non-combatants in your prisons not arrested as dangerous persons to your army, but incarcerated because it is supposed they are loyal to their own country. Their number is increasing every day. I will listen to no proposition for the release of non-combatants that is not based upon the delivery of all whom you have in custody coupled with some distinct written understanding as to future conduct in respect to such captures. If this is not agreeable let God save the right. I hope there will be no further mistake between us in regard to this matter. I trust I have made myself sufficiently distinct.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

RO. OULD,

Agent of Exchange.