the subjects of discussion between us in our interview at City Point. That interview took place two weeks ago. You stated that you were not prepared to accept or reject the proposition which I then made, but that you would immediately inform your Government of its nature and give me a speedy answer in person or by letter. Though two boats have been dispatched from Fort Monroe to City Point, and two weeks have elapsed since our meeting, no reference or allusion to the subjects of controversy has been made by you. At our interview you told me, in answer to my urgent request, that there should be no delay; that not more than a week would elapse before you would be prepared with your answer. Under these circumstances, if you were not ready, every consideration would seem to demand that some excuse should be furnished or the delay explained. As, however, you do not refer to the matter at all, I am left only to draw that you do not intend to give an answer to my proposition. I therefore inform you that the Confederate authorities will consider themselves entirely at liberty to pursue any course with reference to my written proposition to you which they may deem right and proper under all the circumstances of the case.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

RO. OULD,

Agent of Exchange.

RICHMOND, September 7, 1863.

Brigadier General S. A. MEREDITH, Agent of Exchange:

SIR: I respectfully decline your proposition to exchange Brigadier General Charles K. Graham for Brigadier General M. L. Smith. You seem to be laboring under some strange mistake in this matter. The last-named officer has already been exchanged and you have received the equivalents. I so notified your predecessor on the 13th of last July. The flag-of-truce boat will not be "detained at City Point for General Graham. "

Even if Brigadier-General Smith had not been exchanged, I should not be disposed to favor the proposal had not been exchanged, I should not be disposed to favor the proposal of an exchange of an officer in captivity for one released on parole when you have several officers of the same grade in confinement. The offer is so extraordinary in all of its aspects that I hope I do not transgress the bounds of propriety in stating that you knew it would be and ought to be rejected in consequence of its manifest inequality.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

RO. OULD,

Agent of Exchange.

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, WAR DEPARTMENT,

Richmond, September 7, 1863.

Brigadier General S. A. MEREDITH, Agent of Exchange:

SIR: Will you agree to furnish a list of all the officers whom you have in confinement in your different prisons if I do the same as to yours in confinement at the South? It will save us a great deal of trouble and enable us to give much satisfaction to our respective people. As it is now when any inquiry is made of either of us it has to be referred to the other. Considerable delay takes place before the information is obtained, and when it does come it is not always reliable. In two or three cases of papers received from you to-day where Colonel