men. His subsequent declarations, made at different periods, included, as it is believed, the whole of the Vicksburg prisoners known by Mr. Ould to have been surrender to General Grant by General Pemberton. I make this remark with no disposition to receive a past controversy, but inasmuch as the allusion in General Butler's communication to a certain "10,000 paroles" is calculated to leave the impression that Mr. Ould has declared exchanged only 10,000 of the Vicksburg prisoners, it is necessary and proper to state that Mr. Ould's first step with regard to those prisoners was to give a notice to General Meredith, then our agent of exchange at City Point, that on the next day (after the date of that notice) he would declare exchanged a portion of the Vicksburg prisoners, referring to them by corps, divisions, &c., without specifying any definite number. His declared purpose was executed September 12, 1863, as above stated. This declaration was made by Mr. Ould without any conference or agreement with our agent, General Meredith, who immediately protested against it and called upon Mr. Ould for specifications, but instead of making any satisfactory explanation in the course of the controversy that ensued Mr. Ould informed General Meredith by letter that he did not know how many were included in his declaration, not having received any rolls from Vicksburg, by which it became apparent that he had been guided simply by knowledge acquired from rumor rather than from official reports that certain corps and commanders were among the prisoners, thus giving us reasonable ground to suppose that his design was to liberate from parole all of the Vicksburg prisoners, and this became more apparent from the tenor of his subsequent declarations, apparently made to sweep in such of the remaining prisoners as were not included in his first declaration, he alleging that he held valid paroles against us more than sufficient to justify his declaration, he justify his declaration without doubt to refer to captures made by guerrilla parties in Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, &c., in addition to some few captures which would have been recognized by us made by Generals Lee and Bragg and perhaps some others.

I have just stated that his first declaration of exchange touching the Vicksburg prisoners covered over 29,000 men - to wit, 29,433, nearly three times 10,000 men. This was ascertained from the official reports of General Grant, who furnished to Colonel Hoffman, the Commissary-General of Prisoners, the exact lists of the prisoners paroled by him at Vicksburg.

In addition to the complications made by these irregular proceedings Mr. Ould published a letter, or a letter purporting to come from him was published in the Richmond papers, by which he assumed to release from the obligations of their parole all of the rebel prisoners of war discharged on parole by General Banks at Mobile, but this letter has never been communicated by Mr. Ould to our agent, so far as I have ever heard.

These Port Hudson prisoners were, however, included by Mr. Ould in a subsequent declaration of exchange made, like the first, without any conference or agreement with our agent, making in all thus informally declared exchanged, as determined from Colonel Hoffman's official records, 43,160 officers and men reduced to privates, without including an unknown number recently declared exchanged by Mr. Ould, who defines them as Vicksburg prisoners who had reported themselves at a certain place in Mississippi called Enterprise, prior to a certain date, a declaration so vague as to preclude the possibility of arriving at any results as to number.