had been appointed agent of exchange. At the same time I received a communication from him informing me that he had forwarded to City Point a certain number of officers and men who would be delivered on the condition that an equal number was released by our authorities. I informed the United States Government that we would not establish with General Butler such relations as properly pertained to an agent of exchange. In answer to the other communication relating to the mutual delivery of an equal number of officers and men, I wrote to Major John E. Mulford, assistant agent of exchange, in charge of truce-boat, as follows, viz: *

For more than a year after the adoption of the cartel we held an excess of prisoners. During the whole of that time we not only delivered them to the fullest capacity of the truce-boats, but frequently urged the Federal authorities to forward greater facilities for their removal. Just so soon, however, as the Federals acquired an excess they insisted that deliveries should be partial or special, officer for officer and man for man. From the beginning I protested against any such system, and vainly appealed to the provisions of the cartel, which required the delivery of all prisoners of war within ten days, when it war practicable. Rather, however, than send our officers and men back into a hated and cruel captivity, after they had been forwarded to City Point, equivalents were returned under protest. Many persons have supposed that these were special exchanges. In this they were mistaken. It was simply a surrender of equivalents.

It will be seen by my letter of December 27, 1863, to Major Mulford, what were the views of this Government. We only then demanded what we had constantly practiced when we held the excess. Acting under your instructions I continued to demand a general delivery, and when subsequently, in February of this year, it was unofficially announced that there was every reason to believe that the Federal authorities would consent, I was instructed by you again to inform them that we were prepared and would be pleased to resume the cartel, and that they had only to send forward the prisoners held by them and they would be promptly met by corresponding action on our part. Yet, in spite of our frank and honorable conduct the enemy has since persisted in offering these same partial exchanges unaccompanied with any official declaration of a purpose to make a general delivery. In order to prevent any possible imposition in these deliveries I took care to send in return a less number than were forwarded to me. So anxious was I, however, to secure the release of our people that I afterward lowered our just demands, and only insisted as an earnest of their purpose to comply with the cartel, that they should send all the captains or lieutenants in their possession, they numerous, promising at the same time to deliver all of the same class in our custody. They have declined to do even that. Seeing it was their fixed purpose by special or partial exchanges to secure the release of all their officers, while 1,000 of ours would remain in their hands, subject to any outrage which their cruelty might inflict upon them, at the last delivery, which occurred a few days ago, I refused to give officer for officer, and delivered only twenty-seven, while I received forty-seven. I had determined to refuse to receive these forty-seven officers if the condition of returning a like number should be imposed. Fortunately it was not. If it had been, I should have stated to our officers on board the Federal boat frankly and fully the course which had been pursued by the Government and appealed to their patriotism to

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* See December 27, 1863, Vol. VI, this series, p. 769.

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