Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 30.djvu/103

 Treatment and Exchange of Prisoners. 95

authorities prior to this time, and it was openly charged, and gene- rally believed, that this appointment was made solely to make com- munication between the belligerents the more difficult by embarrass- ing the Confederates, and consequently to throw this additional obstacle in the way of further exchange of prisoners.

Immediately on taking charge, General Butler says he saw Mr. Stanton, Secretary of War, and suggested that the Confederate prisoners in their hands should be sheltered, fed, clad and otherwise treated as Federal prisoners were being treated by us; and this sug- gestion, he says, Mr. Stanton at once assented to. (See Butler's Book, p. 585.) In other words, he says, in effect, that because the Confederates, in their exhaustion and poverty, could not adequately supply the needs of their men in our prisons, therefore, he and the Federal Secretary of War thought it right as an act of revenge and retaliation to withhold these comforts and supplies from our men in their prisons when they had adequate means of all kinds to supply the needs of these men. Surely comment on this statement is un- necessary.

After Mr. Lincoln's emancipation proclamation went into effect, as we have said, on January ist, 1863, the Federals enrolled a large number of slaves in their armies. This greatly embarrassed, as well as exasperated, the Confederates. We have heretofore stated the stand proposed by Mr. Davis, and recommended by him to the Confederate Congress, to turn over the officers of these colored troops to the State authorities in which any of them might be cap- tured, to be tried in the courts of such State for the crime of inciting servile insurrection, and that Congress refused to sustain him fully in that recommendation. The question then arose as to exchanging Negro prisoners. The Federal authorities contended that where slaves were captured by them, or when they deserted and came to them and enlisted in their armies, they thereby became free, and should be placed on the same footing with their white soldiers, in respect to exchanges, as well as in all other respects. The Con- federates, on the contrary, contended that whatever might be the effect on the status of the slave by going to the Federals and enlisting in their armies, yet should they be recaptured by the Confederates, that restored them to their former status as slaves, and they should then be returned to their masters or put to work by the Confederates, and their masters compensated for their labor. In those cases where the masters did not reside in the Confederacy,