did you refer to it, but made your declaration of exchange in such indefinite terms as made it next to certain that you did not intend to be governed by the cartel.

On referring to the data furnished by the reports of General Grant and now in the hands of the Commissary-General of Prisoners at Washington, it was ascertained that you had discharged from parole by your declaration a very considerable number of your men, over and above any claim you might pretend to, founded on receipts for prisoners of war delivered from the South according to the cartel. Without referring to fractions it appeared from the best data in our hands that you had discharged three for two, or one-third more than you were entitled to. You suggested that I should make a corresponding declaration of exchange, when, as I suppose you must have known, you had not delivered to me, nor had you valid paroles of our men sufficient to cover, the number declared exchanged by yourself; and when I proceeded to make the declaration extending to those men you had delivered and stated to you my objections to your proceedings, you insisted that you had valid paroles for more than the number that you had valid paroles for more than the number that you had declared exchanged, though you failed to produce those paroles or to give any account or history of them; and you then proceeded to make a further declaration of exchange, ignoring the cartel altogether, basing your action upon no data communicated to me, the whole proceeding resting, as I suppose you will say, upon your sense of right, as if you were the only party having a right to an opinion on the subject; acting evidently in anticipation of the formal declaration referred to at the commencement of this communication "that you will proceed to make declarations of exchanged for the purpose of putting troops into the field whenever you this proper; " and having now exhausted by a declaration of exchange the paroled prisoners in your hands you propose to me the delivery of prisoners of war in our hands for whom you no equivalents, or comparatively but very few, in order, as it were, that you may obtain possession of many thousands more men of your own, delivered or on parole, for the purpose of declaring them also exchanged and putting them into the field, not in conformity with the existing cartel nor in accordance with the usages of war, but whenever in your individual judgment you may think it proper to do so.

I have only to add that an easy inference from this statement is the answer I have to make to your proposal of the 20th instant, which is not accepted.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

S. A. MEREDITH,

Brigadier-General and Commissioner of Exchange.

OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS,

Washington, D. C., October 29, 1863.

Colonel J. K. BARNES,

Acting Surgeon-General, Washington, D. C.:

COLONEL: I have just received a report* from Surg. A. M. Clark, a medical inspector of prisoner, of his inspection at Camp Morton, ion which he says of the acting assistant surgeon in charge, Doctor Funkhauser: "This officer is utterly unfit for the pst he holds," and adds details which fully confirm this statement. I have, therefore, the honor

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* See p. 424.

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