Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 6.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

Sir — I find on arrival in England that public attention is directed afresh to the accusation made by the Federal authorities that prisoners of war were cruelly treated by the Confederates--not merely in exceptional cases by subordinate officials, but systematically, and in conformity with a policy deliberately adopted by President Davis, General Lee and Mr. Seddon. As a member of the Cabinet of President Davis from the date of his first inauguration under the provisional constitution to the final overthrow of the Confederate Government by force of arms, as a personal friend whose relations with Jefferson Davis have been of the most intimate and confidential nature, I feel it imperatively to be my duty to request your insertion of this letter in vindication of honorable men, who, less [184] fortunate than myself, are now held in close confinement by their enemies, and are unable to utter an indignant word in self-defence.

A very material fact in relation to this charge of cruelty was omitted in the recent letter from your “Richmond correspondent,” who was probably not aware of it, but which I can attest from personal knowledge. During the difficulties which prevented the exchange of prisoners of war, cases arose which appealed so strongly to humanity that it was impossible for the most obdurate to remain insensible. The Federal authorities, therefore, empowered Colonel Mulford, their Commissioner of Exchange, to consent to a mutual delivery of such sick and disabled prisoners as were incapable of performing military service. To this class was the exchange of prisoners rigorously restricted. Colonel Ould, the Confederate Commissioner of Exchange (who has recently been honorably acquitted by the Federals themselves of the same false charge of cruelty to prisoners), made to the President, to the Secretary of War and to myself repeated complaints that prisoners on both sides were frequently delivered in a condition so prostrate as to render death certain from exposure during the transit between James river and Washington .or Annapolis. Efforts were made in vain to check this evil. In spite of surgeon's certificates that they were too ill for removal without imminent danger, sick men on both sides, wearied by long confinement, fearful that the exchange would again be interrupted, longing for the sight of home and friends, would either insist on their ability to endure the journey, or professing that recovery was hopeless, would piteously implore to be allowed to see their families before death. The lifeless bodies of numbers of Confederates, shipped from the North under these circumstances, were delivered to us at City Point, and the like results have attended the delivery from our side. Rigid care was taken by the authorities of the United States to exclude from the exchange all cases of slight illness, in accordance with their avowed policy of preventing our armies from being recruited by returned prisoners, this being our only resource for filling our thinned ranks, while they were able to procure unlimited recruits from this side of the Atlantic. From the class just mentioned the most emaciated specimens were chosen by our enemies, and exhibited as conclusive evidence that we exercised habitual cruelty toward prisoners of war. The most wretched and desperate cases were even mate the originals for “photographs which can not lie,” and the revolting pictures of human infirmity thus procured were affixed as embellishments to sensational reports, manipulated by Congressional committees and sanitary commissions.

It is not my purpose to examine in detail the question whether on us or on the Federals rests the responsibility of interrupting the exchange of prisoners, and thus producing a mass of human misery and anguish of which few examples can be found in history. The published correspondence of the Commissioner of Exchange, and certain revelations made by Federal officials in public speeches and in newspaper articles, will be sufficient to satisfy on this point the [185] few who take the pains to ascertain the truth; but in response to the allegations imputed, in the latest news from America to General Hitchcock, that “for the delays in exchanging and the consequent sufferings of the prisoners, the fault rested entirely with the Confederates,” I would recall the following facts:

The first effort to establish a cartel of exchange was made by the Confederates when I was temporarily in charge of the War Office, at Richmond, toward the close of the Provisional Government. General Howell Cobb on our part, and General Wool on the part of the United States, agreed on a cartel which was submitted to their respective governments for approval. In my instructions to General Cobb he was especially directed to propose that, after exhausting exchanges, the party having surplus prisoners in possession should allow them to go home on parole till the other belligerent should succeed in capturing an equivalent number for exchange. When this proposal was made by us, we held a larger number of prisoners than were in the hands of the enemy. It was accepted by General Wool as one of the terms of the cartel, but, unfortunately, some successes of our enemies intervened before ratification by their government. They obtained, in their turn, an excess of prisoners, and at once refused to ratify the cartel. In the ensuing year, when General Randolph was Secretary of War, the Confederates were a second time in posession of an excess of prisoners, and succeeded in negotiating a cartel under which they liberated many thousands of prisoners on parole, without any present equivalent, thus securing in advance the liberation of a like number of their own soldiers that might afterward fall into the enemy's hands. This cartel remained for many months in operation. No check or difficulty occurred as long as we made a majority of captures.

In July, 1863, the fortune of war became very adverse to the Confederacy. The battle of Gettysburg checked the advance of General Lee on the Federal capital, while almost simultaneously the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson gave to our enemies a large preponderance in the number of prisoners. The authorities at Washington immediately issued general orders refusing to receive from General Lee the prisoners held by him, until they should be reduced to possession in Virginia, thus subjecting their own men to the terrible sufferings glanced at by Colonel Fremantle, in order to embarrass General Lee's movements. They further refused to restore to us the excess of prisoners held by them, after having received for nearly or quite a year the benefit of the special provision of the cartel when it operated in their favor; and during the entire war they never once consented to a delivery to us of any prisoners in excess of the number for which we were prepared to return an immediate equivalent.

It requires no sagacity to perceive that every motive of interest as well as of humanity operated to induce us to facilitate the exchange of prisoners and to submit even to unjust and unequal terms in order to recover soldiers whom we could replace from no other source. On the other hand, interest and humanity were at war in [186] their influence on the Federal officials. Others must judge of the humanity and justice of the policy which consigned hundreds of thousands of wretched men to captivity, apparently hopeless, but I can testify unhesitatingly to its sagacity and efficacy, and to the-pitiless sternness with which it was executed. Indeed, this refusal to exchange was one of the most fatal blows dealt us during the war, and contributed to our overthrow more, perhaps, than any-other single measure. I write not to make complaint of it, but simply to protest against the attempt of the Federals so to divide the consequences of their own conduct as to throw on us the odium attached to a cruelty plainly injurious to us, obviously beneficial to themselves.

The sense of duty which prompts this letter would be but imperfectly satisfied were I to withhold at this juncture the testimony which none so well as myself can offer in relation to the charge of inhumanity made against President Davis. For the four years during which I have been one of his most trusted advisers, the recipient of his confidence and the sharer to the best of my abilities in his labors and responsibilities, I have learned to know him, better, perhaps, than he is known by any other living man. Neither in private conversation nor in Cabinet council have I ever heard him utter one unworthy thought, one ungenerous sentiment. On repeated occasions, when the savage atrocities of such men as Butler, Turchin, McNeil and others were the subject of anxious consideration, and when it was urged upon Jefferson Davis, not only by friends in private letters, but by members of his Cabinet in council, that it was his duty to the people and to the army to endeavor to repress such outrages by retaliation, he was immovable in his resistance to such counsels, insisting that it was repugnant to every sentiment of justice and humanity that the innocent should be made victims for the crimes of such monsters. Without betraying the confidence of official intercourse, it may be permitted me to say that when the notorious expedition of Dahlgren against the city of Richmond had been defeated, and the leader killed in his flight, the papers found upon his body showed that he had been engaged in an attempt to assassinate the President and the heads of the Cabinet, to release the Federal prisoners confined in Richmond, to set fire to the city and to loose his men and the released prisoners, with full license to gratify their passions on the helpless inhabitants.

The instructions to his men had been elaborately prepared, and his designs communicated to them in an address; the incendiary materials for firing the town formed part of his equipment. The proof was complete and undeniable. In the action in which Dahlgren fell, some of his men were taken prisoners. They were brought to Richmond, and public opinion was unanimous that they were not entitled to be considered as prisoners of war; that they ought to be put on trial as brigands and assassins, and executed as such, if found guilty. In Cabinet council the conviction was expressed that these men had acquired no immunity from punishment for [187] their crimes, if guilty, by the fact of their having been admitted to surrender by their captors, before knowledge of their offences. A discussion ensued which became so heated as almost to create unfriendly feeling, by reason of the unshaken firmness of Mr. Davis in maintaining that although these men merited a refusal to grant them quarter in the heat of battle, they had been received to mercy by their captors as prisoners of war, and as such were sacred; and that we should be dishonored if harm should overtake them after their surrender, the acceptance of which constituted, in his judgment, a pledge that they should receive the treatment of prisoners of war. To Jefferson Davis alone, and to his constancy of purpose, did these men owe their safety in spite of hostile public opinion, and in opposition to two-thirds of the Cabinet.

I forbear from further trespass on your space, although I am in possession of numerous other facts bearing on the subject that could not fail to interest all who are desirous of seeing justice done to the illustrious man, of whose present condition I will not trust myself to speak.

I remain, sir, your obedient servant,