The Exchange question.
The Washington correspondent of the Chicago Times gives that paper a long account of the results of his investigations into the subject of the exchange of prisoners. His account of the balance of exchange differs considerably from that of the Yankee Secretary of War. He says:‘ At present the number of prisoners on each side is about equal, namely: about 15,000 each, of Union and Confederate soldiers. From all that I can learn, it would appear that the Confederates hold two or three thousand more of our soldiers than we do of theirs. They are not all at Richmond. The accommodations there are entirely insufficient, and provisions are too scarce. A few weeks since arrangements were made to remove some five thousand of them to the interior of Georgia, and this removal, I am informed, had been made. It is also believed that between two and three thousand have been taken to Charleston, in order to deter Gen. Gillmore from burning the city with Greek fire.
’ I am satisfied that many of the stories of inhumanity to our prisoners are either gross fabrications or else willful exaggerations; and that, as a general thing, our prisoners at the South are as well treated as prisoners of war generally, with the exception, perhaps, of articles of food and medicine, and in that respect as well as the rebel soldiers themselves; the South is not just now a land flowing with milk and honey. Shocking instances of individual cruelty there have been, and the chief author of these cruelties, so disgraceful to humanity, is or was Mrs. Lincoln's own brother.--But, on the other hand, I know of instances of equal atrocity perpetrated on Confederate prisoners by Gen. Shoepf or his understrapper, and on Confederate Northern prisons.
The exchange of prisoners was proceeding regularly, under the terms of the cartel agreed upon by Maj. Ludlow and Col. Ould, under the sanction of both Governments, when it was suddenly stopped by Mr. Stanton, by the order, as he says, of the President; and, on this occasion, I believe he tells the truth. Why was this order promulgated? It was not promulgated until Mr. Lincoln had ascertained definitely that the Confederate Government did not recognize our niggers in uniform (or rather their niggers stolen from them) as soldiers; would not treat them, or their officers, on a perfect equality with our white officers and soldiers, and would not exchange either them or their officers if captured. These alarming facts were first discovered by the notorious Higginson and Montgomery, and sent by them to Senators Sumner and Wilson, and communicated by the latter, in turn, to Mr. Lincoln.
The President was unwilling to believe them, but satisfied himself finally that they were really true. The abolitionists and radicals who control him, and who are really the supreme power in the States, had in the meantime persuaded him to assure to the negroes who would enlist the same protection from the Federal Government which the latter extended to their white soldiers. In other words, they persuaded the Administration to authorize them to make the official declaration, and it has been made and officially promulgated, that negro soldiers and their officers are on a footing of perfect equality in all things with white men and their officers, and shall receive the same protection from the Government.
They also persuaded the President to communicate to the Confederate Government the assurance that the United States Government recognized no distinction between white and black soldiers (who might be taken prisoners) being regularly exchanged on the same footing as white soldiers. I have been unable to ascertain whether any formal reply was ever made by the Confederate Government to this extraordinary communication. Put it is certain that "the Government" received assurances, positive and definite enough to the effect that the Confederates did not, and would not, recognize negroes as soldiers. The Confederate Agent of Exchange, however, continued to send home our prisoners as before, until, as I have stated, our Agent of Exchange at Fortress Monroe received directions from the Secretary of War, "by order of the President," not to permit any more Confederate prisoners to be sent home, and to suspend the operation of the cartel of exchange.
This, of course, stopped the exchange on the part of the Confederates. The last lot of Union prisoners who were sent home from Richmond were a lot of sick and wounded men, who were humanely offered the alternative of remaining there or of going home. They chose the latter, hoping at least to die at home; but were candidly informed by the surgeons that the chances were that they would never reach home alive. They came, and were landed at Annapolis. A few will recover. Some did live to reach their homes, and died or will die there, surrounded by their friends. Some died at Annapolis, and some perished en route.
These facts have been much distorted by the Abolition papers. The facts as they bad enough, but if these poor men had been left at Richmond they would have all men mere, among strangers and without sympathy. Not one of them died merely in consequence of having had insufficient food. The blame lies upon the Administration and the Republican party--first, for causing the war at all; second, for investing it with its present features of ferocity; third, for preventing medicines being sent to the South; and fourth, for conducting the war in such a manner as to prolong it.
In the meantime 15,000 of our brave men, who left comfortable homes and happy families in order to fight, as they supposed, for the Union, are now languishing in Southern prisons, and there they will continue to languish. Why? Simply because the Administration is determined to adhere to its pet measure of making a negro as good as a white man. In order to indulge the whims of Greeley and Sumner on this point, those brave men will be left to languish and die by inches; fretting their lives away day by day, in-hopeless agony at the thought that the sight of home and kindred, and their best loved ones will never again be theirs.
But what does it all matter? What right have they to complain? What difference does it make that the hearts of the members of fifteen thousand families are wrung with anguish because their fathers and husbands, and sons and brothers, are thus to perish? This is a war for the negro. With that grand object in view, all such matters should be regarded as unconsidered trifles. Such is the decision of the Government, and it is treason to think otherwise.
