WASHINGTON, D. C., April 19, 1864.

Major General B. F. BUTLER,

Commissioner for Exchange, Fort Monroe, Va.:

Your two telegrams of this date are received. I will consult the Secretary of War about the prisoners at Fort Delaware. Invalid prisoners at Johnson's Island were ordered on the 16th.

W. HOFFMAN,

Commissary-General of Prisoners.

RICHMOND, VA., April 19, 1864.

Honorable JAMES A. SEDDON, Secretary of War:

SIR: It was my earnest wish to see you in reference to the recent arrest by the Federal military authorities of the Rev. Mr. Boyd and of Messrs. Williams and Conrad, all of Winchester, Va.

It seems that Major O'Ferrall, of the Confederate Army, being in the neighborhood of Bath, in the county of Morgan, in this State, made a dash into that village and seized and brought off a Mr. Wheat, a Mr. Bechtol, and perhaps one or more other of its people. These men are said to be now in prison in this city, and the three gentlemen from Winchester whom I have first named have since been carried to Martinsburg, and it is understood are held as hostages for the men seized by O'Ferrall. These gentlemen, as you may know, are amongst our most worthy and influential citizens, and I had promised their friends to lay their case in person before you.

The persons taken by O'Ferrall were taken at a point where if they had influence they could not exert it injuriously, but the two whom I have named have not the smallest influence even over their immediate neighbors.

In this kind of warfare the South, as a general thing, is placed at the greatest disadvantage in the character of the persons arrested, and again because the inevitable consequence of these mutual arrests will be to remove or drive from our border nearly our entire male population.

The Federal authorities, in letters not long since addressed to the mayor and council of Winchester, professed an unwillingness to initiate such a condition of things, and declared that their action was merely retaliatory and adopted in self-defense.

Our difficulties along the border are sufficiently great as they are, and we feel that our freedom from arrest and imprisonment should not be dependent upon the action of every military officer, however young and indiscreet he may be; that if these civil arrests are to be continued (and there may be cases in which they may be proper) the power to make them should at least be restricted to some officer of rank, as the commander of the particular military department, for then they would not be ordered until after proper thought and consideration. But as matters now are there is not one of us who is secure for a day.

It is proper to add that Wheat and Bechtol are each of them said to be members of the Legislature of West Virginia, and so may be guilty of treason against our own State. Still, during the existence of a war to which the Confederate States Government is the sole party on one side, I presume it will not permit its action to be embarrassed by any question of this sort, and, moreover, the rights of Virginia cannot be lost by whatever course of action the Confederate Government may pursue toward the border population.