CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, WAR DEPARTMENT,

Richmond, Va., April 28, 1864.

His Excellency JEFFERSON DAVIS,

President Confederate States of America:

SIR: I have the honor to submit to you the following report of the operations of this Department. *

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In natural connection with the maintenance of our armies the thought is attracted to the condition of numbers of our gallant soldiers now languishing in the prisons of the enemy. The sympathies of a grateful country are fixed upon them with the deepest interest, and the Department has but shared and responded to those feelings in making all the efforts consistent with dignity and honor for their relief and release. The protraction of their confinement has been due solely to the inhuman policy and perfidy of our enemies, whose Government has omitted and refused to maintain the faith pledged in the cartel of exchange. With the terms of that agreement our Government has ever been ready and earnest to comply, and in a variety of modes, even by an extraordinary mission of the second officer of the Government, has sought to re-establish its operation or to arrange satisfactory measures of exchange. Its remonstrances and its overtures have alike proved futile, and the Government of the United States must stand responsible before the world and in the sight of a just God for all the privations, sufferings, and loss of life by disease or otherwise entailed by confinement on the prisoners held on either side, not less on their own than ours. The latest among the shifts and subterfuges adopted by them to evade compliance with their plighted engagements has been the selection, with the ostensible purpose of renewing exchanges for the mission of treating on the subject with our authorities, of General Butler, the infamous author of so many atrocities in a former command as to have received the execration of the world and to have been banned by the proclamation of the President with the name and character of an outlaw and a felon to whom were to be extended none of the privileges of civilized warfare, but whose crimes, if he came into our power, were to be visited with the condign punishment of an infamous death. It may well excite surprise and indignation that the Government of the United States should select for any position of dignity and command a man so notoriously stigmatized by the common sentiment of enlightened nations. But it is not for us to deny their right to appreciate and select whom they may not inappropriately perhaps deem a fitting type and representative of their power and characteristics. While we maintain belligerent relations with them we must of course recognize the official character of whatever officers they may empower to act within their own limits and within the sphere of their separate action. We must therefore recognize the fact of official position being held by such a character, and this was done contemporaneously and subsequently to the issue of the President's proclamation by our generals in the field when compelled to [hold] necessary official relations with the Federal commander at New Orleans can be exercised by ourselves and within the limits of our own territory, or within the control of our armies, it is neither to be expected nor would it comport with the honor or dignity of the Confederacy that an outlaw and a felon should be received and admitted to the courtesies or privileges of civilized warfare or exempted from the liabilities of a criminal. It has held him up to the detestation of Christendom and obtained the

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*For portions here omitted see Series IV.

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