OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS,

Washington, D. C., February 5, 1864.

Major General B. F. BUTLER:

GENERAL: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 1st instant, inclosing a letter addressed to a rebel prisoner and inquiring as to the whereabouts of Private Anderson.

The letter will be forwarded to its address, as required; but I will not be able to answer the inquiry in relation to Private Patterson unless I am informed whether he is a Federal or rebel soldier, and his company and regiment be given, with time and place of capture.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. HOFFMAN,

Colonel Third Infantry and Commissary-General of Prisoners.

OFFICE COMMISSIONER FOR EXCHANGE,

Fort Monroe, Va., February 5, 1864.

Honorable ROBERT OULD, Agent for Exchange, Richmond, Va.:

SIR: You will please inform me whether Lieutenant R. W. Neff, Fourth Ohio Volunteers, who was wounded in the head on the 20th September, 1863, at the battle of Chickamauga, is still living and a prisoner. If he died, what disposition was made of his body?

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

BENJ. F. BUTLER,

Major-General and Commissioner for Exchange.

[UNOFFICIAL.] CONFED. STATES OF AMERICA, WAR DEPT.,

richmond, February 5, 1864.

Major JOHN E. MULFORD:

SIR: You are authorized in reply top the information conveyed by the letter* of Major-General Butler to yourself, submitted to my perusal, to say to him that the Confederate Government has always admitted and insisted on the obligation of the cartel according to its just and true construction, especially in reference to its cardinal principle, which requires the prompt return of all prisoners within ten days after their capture, and the settlement of prescribed equivalents, as the number respectively held, or subsequently captured, will allow the interruption in the regular execution of the cartel has, as my Government has throughout maintained, been due to no failure or disinclination of its part to comply with it, and we are prepared and will be pleased to resume its execution.

The authorities of the United States have only in pursuance of this cardinal provision of the cartel met by corresponding action on the part of my Government. Satisfactorily assured of the purpose of the Federal Government to observe and execute the cartel, my Government will proceed, as promptly as the location and condition of the prisoners held by it will allow, to forward them on parole in pursuance of the cartel. Some delay may be inevitable, as portions of the prisoners held by it will allow, to forward them on parole in pursuance of the cartel. Some delay may be inevitable, as portion s of the prisoners have been removed to distant parts of the Confederacy where supplies could be more readily furnished them. When deliveries have been

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*Not found.

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