addressing you. I am persuaded nothing need be said to you touching the importance or desirableness of effecting this object.

Hoping to have an answer soon,

I am, with high respect, your obedient servant,

JAS. FARROW.

[First indorsement.]

Respectfully referred, by direction of the President, to the Honorable Secretary of War, who will please reply to Mr. Farrow.

BURTON N. HARRISON,

Private Secretary.

[Second indorsement.]

Answer that the Department is not aware on any means by which minister can be sent from the Presbytery of South Carolina to minister to the wants of our prisoners. It is not probable that the enemy will allow of such an indulgence, but the letter will be referred to the commissioner of exchange, and if he reports that it can be done information will be afforded to the writer.

[Third indorsement.]

OCTOBER 24, 1864.

Respectfully returned to Honorable Assistant Secretary of War.

The enemy will not allow us to send minister to our prisoners. They even refuse to permit us to send surgeons to attend to our sick.

RO. OULD,

Agent of Exchange.

WAR DEPARTMENT, Washington City, September 7, 1864.

His Excellency A. G. CURTIN,

Governor of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, Pa.:

SIR: I am instructed by the Secretary of War to say, in reply to the petition of twenty-six citizens of Pennsylvania confined at Salisbury, N. C., referred by Your Excellency to this Department on the 27 ultimo, that an equal number of rebel citizens of London County, Va., have been seized and are held as hostages for the Pennsylvanians is question. The hostages are to-day sent to Fort Delaware, where they are to be confined and to receive the same treatment and the same fare as are allotted by the rebel Government to your prisoners at Salisbury. Major-General Hitchcock, commissioner of exchange, has been instructed to notify the rebel authorities of these facts and to inform them that the men of London County will be delivered to them whenever they shall surrender to us the Pennsylvanians whose names are signed to the petition which you have submitted.

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

C. A. DANA,

Assistant Secretary of War.

FLAG-SHIP HARTFORD, Mobile Bay, September 7, 1864.

Colonel C. C. DWIGHT,

Agent for Exchange, Military Division of West Mississippi:

SIR: I am glad to learn from your letter of the 6th instant that you have arranged for the exchange of our Navy prisoners in Texas, but knowing that we had no one in the hands of the enemy of the rank even of