You will make a careful examination of these men, and such of them as are, in your opinion, too ill to accomplish the journey to City Point you will send to the West Buildings Hospital, and make a full report to this office.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. SIMPSON,

Surgeon, U. S. Army, Medical Director.

[Second indorsement.]

OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS,

Washington, D. C., February 20, 1865.

Respectfully referred to Colonel B. F. Tracy for report.

The instructions from this office directing that invalids who were well enough to bear the journey should be forwarded does not appear to have been obeyed.

By order of Bvt. Brigadier General W. Hoffman, Commissary-General of Prisoners:

W. T. HARTZ,

Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General.

[Third indorsement.]

HEADQUARTERS DEPOT PRISONERS OF WAR,
Elmira, N. Y., February 25, 1865.

Respectfully returned to the Commissary-General of Prisoners with the following extracts from the report of Lieutenant-Colonel Trotter, in charge of the detachment, as to transportation:

The train left Elmira at 5 p. m. February 13 and reached Baltimore, via Northern Central Railroad, at 10 a. m. February 15, after many delays. During the night of February 14 neither water nor lights were provided for any car upon the train, as required by the terms of the contract, and three of the prisoners died from the continued exposure. The train consisted of seventeen cars, with only one brakeman for the entire number, to which ten or more cattle cars were added when the train left Williamsport. * * * I would beg leave to call attention to the indifference of the officials of the Northern Central Railroad, who paid not the least attention to repeated applications for lights for the cars, which I was finally compelled to purchase myself. Neither did they supply any water or fuel after the train left Elmira. * * *

The surgeon was strictly charged to send no one unable to endure the journey. It requires a pretty strong man, however, to endure a railroad journey of forty-one hours during such weather as prevailed at the time this party of prisoners was forwarded.

B. F. TRACY,

Colonel 127th U. S. Colored Troops, Commanding Depot.

HEADQUARTERS TRANS-MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT,
OFFICE ASSISTANT AGENT OF EXCHANGE,

Shreveport, La., February 15, 1865.

Colonel CHARLES C. DWIGHT,

Commissioner of Exchange, Mil. Div. of West Mississippi:

COLONEL: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your several communications by telegraph and other sources. I should have replied immediately, but that I wished in my answer to be able to appoint a day for our next exchange, which, if agreeable to you, shall be on the 24th instant and at our usual rendezvous, Red River Landing.