Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/530

492 better should have been discovered and announced by the civil authority at Washington. General Grant was compelled to assume the responsibility and having no other ground to stand upon he placed the denial of all these appeals upon &quot;military necessity.&quot; The same plea of military necessity having been used to excuse all the early measures which the conservative statesman at Washington had opposed, was now employed to defend a policy which according to Junius Henri Browne, a Northern gentleman, cost the Republic at least twelve or fifteen thousand heroic lives. He might have added the same number of equally heroic Confederates, and given 30,000 as the total life-loss by the cruelties of &quot;military necessity.&quot; The reason given by General Grant was sound enough from the ferocious military idea that &quot;war must be made terrible,&quot; and his justification rests upon his obligations as the lieutenant-general commanding all the armies of the Union to destroy the Confederate forces as quickly as possible. Influenced by this view of war General Grant sent a dispatch to General Butler August 18, 1864, in the midst of the Andersonville horrors, containing these words: &quot;It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. Every man released on parole or otherwise becomes an active soldier against us at once, either directly or in directly. If we commence a system of exchange which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the whole South is exterminated. If we hold those caught, they amount to no more than dead men. At this particular time to release all rebel prisoners north would insure Sherman s defeat and would compromise our safety here. &quot; This remarkable confession was made with thorough knowledge of the vast resources of the United States.

But General Grant did not assume this responsibility without the previous sanction of the civil government.