States. If they were the same terms as to treatment while prisoners and conditions of release and exchange must be exacted and had in the case of colored soldiers as of white soldiers.

Non-acquiescence by the Confederate authorities in both or either of these propositions will be regarded as a refusal on their part to agree to the further exchange of prisoners, and will be so treated by us.

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

U. S. GRANT,

Lieutenant-General.

HEADQUARTERS OF POST,
Andersonville, Ga., April 17, 1864.

General S. COOPER, Adjutant and Inspector General:

GENERAL: Your telegram of the 14th calling on me to report by letter why I was absent from my post is just at hand.

As directed I beg leave to submit the following statement of facts: By the want of tools, such as axes, spades, shovels, picks, &c., this post was greatly embarrassed. In the interior of the prison not an axe, hoe, spade, shovel, &c., could be had when in the same were quartered about 8,000 prisoners. The foul, fetid malaria and effluvia coming from the prison occasioned by filth and a pool of almost stagnant water acting in concert with same caused the diseases of the prison to spread fearfully, and carried home to the number there quartered a frightful mortality, at will more fully appear by reference to the hospital records. These contagious diseases, such as smallpox, &c., threatened not only the Confederate forces stationed at this post but the country generally. My medical board urged upon me the absolute importance of a thorough renovation of the whole encampment. Up to this time I had made every effort to secure such tools or implements as we then stood in need of. I had sent my quartermaster time and again, but to no avail, as the things we so much needed could not then be had. I wrote throughout the State and tried by proxy to supply the prison, all to no purpose. Up to my absence we did not have sufficient tools with which to bury the dead, and the day preceding the three days of my absence I learned authoritatively that I could be supplied with the things I so much needed in Augusta. I immediately went to my quartermaster, found him in bed sick with inflammatory rheumatism, where he had been a week previous, and has been since, scarcely able to turn himself over in his bed. The regimental quartermaster of the Fifty-fifth Georgia I had sent several days previous to Atlanta for tents for hospital purposes. The quartermaster of the Twenty-sixth Alabama Regiment was off getting a supply of clothing for his regiment. So I stood with this pressing case upon me without a quartermaster and without a man in whose hands I could safely and satisfactorily intrust the important business (made os by the surroundings) of my mission. From experience I had learned a lesson. I exercised an intelligent discretion in this case and acted under a conscientious conviction of duty. My mission was successful and the recent condition of the encampment with its improved health and the contagious diseases in abatement are witnesses in my favor.

The mob that maltreated Mr. Dillman during my absence could not have been quelled had I been present, for a sufficient force was not on the side of law and order to have dispersed same. I make no charge against officers being at the bottom of the whole affair, because I have no legal evidence of the fact, yet I wish shame own the fact (if evidence