Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/528

490 and civic reasons for the humane efforts so zealously put forth to relieve the brave men held in such prolonged and fatal bondage. This fact is sufficient answer to all statements that the South obstructed exchanges, just as a New England audience was once convinced that Southern planters did not use negroes in place of mules and mules could be bought for $150.

Senator Hill, of Georgia, in his crushing, unanswered reply to Senator Blaine in the House of Representatives January 11, 1876, collates the efforts to facilitate exchanges, and coming to this period of horrors, says: &quot;Then again in August, 1864, the Confederates made two more propositions. I will state that the cartel of exchange was broken by the Federal authorities for certain alleged reasons. Well, in August, 1864, prisoners accumulating on both sides to such an extent, and the Federal government having refused to provide for the comfort and treatment of these prisoners, the Confederates next proposed, in a letter from Colonel Ould dated the 10th of August, 1864, waiving every objection the Federal government had made, to agree to any and all terms to renew the exchange of prisoners, man for man and officer for officer, as the Federal government should prescribe. Yet, sir, the latter rejected that proposition. It took a second letter to bring an answer to that proposition. Then again in that same month of August, 1864, the Confederate authorities did this: Finding that the Federal government would not exchange prisoners at all, that it would not let surgeons go into the Confederacy, finding that it would not let medicines be sent into the Confederacy, meanwhile the ravages of war continuing and depleting the scant supplies of the South, which was already unable to feed adequately its own defenders, and much less able to properly feed and clothe the thousands of prisoners in Confederate prisons what did the Confederates propose? They proposed to send home the