HEADQUARTERS NINETEENTH ARMY CORPS,
OFFICE INSPECTOR-GENERAL,

In the Field, March 27, 1864.

Major WILLIAM M. LEVY, C. S. Army,

Commissioner of Exchange:

MAJOR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt, by flag of truce to-day, of your communication of the 25th instant, calling attention to the delay which has occurred in carrying out the provisions of our cartel of January 4, 1864.

In reply I have to say that failure on our part has been due as to those prisoners taken at "Fort Butler and elsewhere," who had been sent North, to the fact that although application was duly made for their return to this department to be exchanged, yet that up to this time it has been found impracticable to procure their return; and as to the smallpox has existed among them, and it was not deemed proper to forward any of them until all danger of the contagion of that disease should be at an end. I am happy to state that this disease is now wholly eradicated from among them, and it is only the immediate pendency of the present military movements which has prevented their being forwarded before this date.

I am now instructed by Major-General Banks to say that all the prisoners of war captured up to this time by him from the command of Major-General Taylor, and held by him within this department, including those taken at Fort De Russy and at James' Store, will be immediately collected and forwarded by steamer to be delivered to you at some point on Red River above Alexandria, if such arrangement shall be agreeable to Major-General Taylor, to be exchanged for those prisoners now held by that latter; and it is hoped that as we shall thus have in our hands prisoners exceeding in number those now held by you and those delivered by you as an excess under the cartel of December, 1863, it would be convenient for you to deliver to us at the same time, to be returned by the same steamer, all the prisoners now held by Major-General Taylor taken from the command of Major-General Banks. Captain C. LeD Elgee is in our hands, a prisoner of war, and unhurt; he will of course be included in the exchange above proposed.

The letter to his address inclosed in yours of the 25th shall be duly delivered.

I have also the honor to state that I have procured from the commissary of prisoners in New Orleans the information that the six enlisted men of the Twenty-sixth Louisiana Regiment, named in your communication of February 25, as having been arrested when upon their parole, given at Vicksburg" are now, and have been for sometime on their paroles, four at their homes in Thibodeaux and two in the city of New Orleans.

I am, major, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

CHAS. C. DWIGHT,

Colonel and Acting Assistant Inspector-General.

HEADQUARTERS EIGHTEENTH ARMY CORPS,
DEPARTMENT OF VIRGINIA AND NORTH CAROLINA,

Fortress Monroe, March 28, 1864.

Colonel HOFFMAN,

Commissary-General of Prisoners, Washington, D. C.:

COLONEL: I have the honor to call your attention to the fact that I have just received a communication from General Marston, command-

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