clothing, their bedding, and of the hospital, and for protection against the weather should be made as far as the buildings occupied and the means at command will allow.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

A. M. CLARK,

Surgeon and Acting Medical Inspector of Prisoners of War.

RICHMOND, April 23, 1864.

Honorable J. A. SEDDON, Secretary of War:

SIR: I have the honor to refer the Honorable Secretary to the accompanying copy of a communication, marked A, addressed by me to him on December 2, 1862,* in relation to an application substantially similar to that of General Schofield,+ though coming from our own people.

I still entertain the views therein expressed. I beg leave to urge, in addition, that the proposition of General Schofield stands upon no principle. I have constantly urged that the matter of the arrest and detention of non-combatants within the territory of the adverse party should be determined by some rule to be mutually observed. The only answer I have ever received has been an offer now and then for one or more special exchanges similar to the present. The men in Schofield's custody were unlawfully arrested. They are as unlawfully detained. They owe no allegiance to his Government. They are non-combatants, arrested in most instances to secure the discharge of disloyal people who had offended against our laws.

The Yankees, of course, are anxious to make some arrangement to relieve from punishment parties whom they have prompted to acts of disloyalty and treason. Their purpose in this very application is, in the event of its favorable consideration by the Confederate authorities, to incite unwilling conscripts to refuse obedience to our laws by showing that in the event of their arrest they will be released by means of hostages.

Moreover, this proposition is confined to only one military command. There is no guarantee that it will not be repudiated by the next military commander of the same district. Indeed, General Schofield himself gives no positive assurance that our friends whom he proposes to release will not again be arrested, even while he remains in command.

The Yankees have never yet kept faith in this matter. They have violated every promise they have made. So constantly has this been the case that now I begin to look upon every proposition of release which they make as a certain signal of new outrages. I venture the prediction that if this proposal is accepted they will immediately carry out in Tennessee what they have already begun elsewhere - the arrest of every man within conscript age who is believed or even suspected to be friendly to our cause.

Acting upon the spirit of the instructions received from you on the 21st of October, 1863, being the last time that the subject of the arrest and detention of non-combatants was under discussion between the agents of exchange, I wrote to General Meredith as follows:

As far as the arrest of citizens of the Confederate States by our authorities is concerned, we will submit to no interference in any way by the Federal Government. It is a matter with which you have nothing to do. The Confederate authorities do not interfere with your arrests of your own people, no matter what injustice has been done to them. Any attempt on the part of the Federal Government to interfere in cases which only concern our authorities and the people of these Confederate

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*See Ould to Seddon, Vol. V, this series, p. 776.

+See Schofield to Longstreet, March 23, Vol. VI, this series, p. 1083.

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