March 2, 1863, The Charleston Mercury
Our Northern enemies, says the Richmond Enquirer, have certainly used, without reserve or compunction, the advantage they possess in shutting us out, almost entirely, from the outside world. They have had the ear of mankind, and have poured into it what tale they please. They have had the telling of our story, as well as their own; and unhappily that […..] necessity, which excuses everything in theses days, has imperatively required them to rouse the indignation of the universe against us by a continuous system of falsehoods.
The special case in which the magnanimous Yankee nation is now bellowing forth the falsehood, while the truth is prudently blockaded, muffled and garrotted, is the matter of the exchanges of prisoners of war under the cartel, and the determination announced by our President in his message to retain – or deliver over to the several State authorities – such Federal commissioned officers as may be for the future made prisoners in arms within those States and parts of States embraced in Mr. LINCOLN’S Emancipation Proclamation. On these points it will be well to put on record a few facts. Our words, though frozen up by blockade at present, will be audible when the thaw comes.
On July 22d, 1862, we having then many more Yankee prisoners than the enemy had of Confederate, and this fact having disposed them, for the first time, to treat us as belligerents – a cartel for exchange of prisoners was agreed on by Gen. DIX, Federal, and Gen. D.H. HILL, Confederate. The fourth article of the cartel has these words: ‘All prisoners of war to be discharged on parole in ten days after their capture, and the prisoners now held, and those hereafter taken, to be transported to the points mutually agreed upon at the expense of the capturing party.’
By another article citizens were only to be exchanged for citizens, as soldiers for soldiers, rank for rank. By still another, ‘Local, State and militia rank held by persons not in actual military service, were not to be recognized, the basis of exchange being the grade actually held in the naval and military service of the respective parties.’
Under the cartel, Commissioners of Exchange were appointed by the two parties, and parole and exchange of prisoners regularly proceeded. On our part the conditions of the cartel were strictly complied with. It soon become known, however, through many channels, to our Commissioner, that large numbers of Confederate prisoners, in the hands of the enemy, who were entitled to be paroled, and many of them already paid for with Federal prisoners, were still kept in military prisons. That there has been a gross and constant violation of the cartel by the enemy, in a matter which will need to be not only asserted, but proved, and the proofs are at hand.
On the 4th October, 1862, Mr. Commissioner OULD, of Richmond, represented a number of these cases, by letter, to Col LUDLOW, the Federal Commissioner, and urged fulfilment of the contract. He received no reply, and no satisfaction was given.
Again, on the 20th November, Mr. OULD called the attention of the Federal Commissioner to the facts and grievances stated in his former communication, and added other instances, especially the cases of a number of officers and men (specifying names, ranks and regiments) of the Louisiana troops – men actually paroled, but afterwards seized by BUTLER and confined in prison – and still more especially the case of MUMFORD, a citizen executed for […..] in New Orleans, although by the terms of the cartel citizens held by either party disloyalty or other civil offences were to be exchanged for other citizens. To these repeated applications for specific fulfilment of the cartel no answer was returned, and it became known to our authorities that hundreds of our Confederate soldiers and officers were languishing in dungeons all over the enemycountry – many of them in irons.
For the sake of accuracy we give some names:
Capt. MORRISON, of the 15th Virginia, captured at Antietam, Capt. CHARLES COOPER, Lieut. MILAN and Capt. MARBURY, all of 5th Tennessee, captured at Harrodsburg in October last. These four officers are now confined in Fort McHenry. Lieut. Col. WRIGHT, Col. BENTON. Capt. FALUKNER, all of 37th Mississippi, with thirteen other officers captured at Perryville and Harrodsburg, now at Camp Chase: Capt. HARRIS, 5th Tennessee; Lieut. BUTLER, 1st Tennessee; Capt. TAYLOR, 27th Tennessee; all captured at Perryville, now at Harrodsburg; Capt. MARKS, of the Confederate States Commissary Department, captured on the steamer Union, now in prison at KEy West; WM. GLASS, arrested at Hopkinsville, Ky., now in Camp Chase; Col POINDEXTER, confined at St. Louis; Col. J.C. MOOREHEAD, Lieut. JAMES BAKER, and Lieut. WM. GARNETT, arrested between Hernando and Memphis last June, now confined at Jackson’s Island in Lake Erie. Every officer and soldier in this list (which we have materials to make much longer) was long since exchanged by the agreements between the Federal and Confederate Commissioners, and ought to have been, are now, in our active service again.
These things were becoming multiplied and aggravated, when our President, in December last, felt that something must be done in justice to our devoted soldiers, then pining in four dungeons, counting the hours and gazing wearily out through their bars over the Yankee clearings of Ohio or the gray waters of the Canadian Lakes. Their coulvalents in exchange (though far from their equivalents in any attribute of manhood) were long ago blazing again in blue and gold, and marching to the subjugation of their homes and country! This could not go on.
Accordingly, after Commissioner OULD had made his last representation, and furnished his last list, requiring a satisfactory adjustment in fifteen days – and, after twenty-five days had elapsed, and no adjustment and no answer – the President, evidently with reluctance, yielded for the first time to the pressure of public opinion in these States, and to his own feeling of the hard necessity of the case, and made proclamation, on December 23d, that in view of the numerous and grievous breaches of all the laws of war, and of express and positive agreements, the commissioned officers of the enemy thereafter to be taken should not be paroled for exchange.
They could still be, and they still have been, exchanged per capita, or, man for man, in actual presence on the line; but our Government was taught by painful experience that if we sent off our captives without payment in hand, the enemy would make pretexts to throw some of their prisoners into dungeons, or even neglect or decline to admit them to parole, without any pretext at all. In dealing with our Yankee brethren, we cannot altogether expect to be treated on the principles which regulate the usages of honorable war, or peace either, amongst other nations of the earth.
The next event in order, is the Proclamation of President LINCOLN, declaring that all our slaves are free, plainly inviting them to revolt and murder their masters, and commanding officers and soldiers of the United states to aid such insurrection and slaughter. (We do not give the words, but this is the thing.) Now let the human imagination try to conceive any atrocity so diabolical as this attempt. * * * * Future ages will hereafter point to the Proclamation of Mr. LINCOLN, that the waning may never be lost to the human race, when parents shall tell their incredulous children to what extremities philanthropy and […..] necessity once drove the Yankee nation.
Officers and soldiers, after the LINCOLN Proclamation, making war in the Confederate States under its instructions, are instigators of negro insurrection, and therefore felons by the laws of all the States. Accordingly, our President in his Message, read to Congress a few days after, announced that he should, if authorized by Congress, deliver up such criminals (being commissioned officers) to the authorities of the States respectively in which they should be taken in the perpetration of that crime – there to be dealt with according to law.
This was right, and was the only right thing, as we shall take occasion to demonstrate another day. Congress, however, has not yet acted upon it. As the case stands now, however, something has already been gained by the President Proclamation of December 23. The Federal Commissioner has now agreed to deliver up all those Confederate officers and soldiers who had been wrongfully detained previous to the Proclamation – whether belonging to the regular Confederate army, or to irregular organizations – also all non-combatants – also the officers detained by BUTLER, and such soldiers as have been tried by their military tribunals and sentenced. In short, all those cases which provoked the President Proclamation are now to be redressed; and if the Yankees act in good faith, every Confederate soldier and citizen confined in their prisons (except officers captured since the Proclamation) will be delivered within three weeks. This will include the brave and unfortunate ZARVONA. Mr Commissioner OULD, who has indefatigable negotiated this arrangement, will, however, do well to hold on to his prisoners until there is an actual delivery of the other.
So it stands with respect to all prisoners taken on either side before the President’s Proclamation of 23d December. The future begins a new score; and it demands the most anxious attention of the President and Congress. It may be interesting to know that the enemy has at this moment almost or quite as many officers of ours in their hands as we have of their officers. But of privates, we hold a much larger number than they. We shall again ask the reader’s attention to the matter; in the meantime we give the foregoing statement by way of a formal protest and remonstrance against the attempt being now made by the Yankee nation to persuade the world that we have broken faith with them.