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Union view of the Exchange of prisoners.
I have been a regular reader of the “Unwritten history of the late War,” as published in the weekly times.
I read the history of the exchange of prisoners by
Judge Ould the
Confederate Commissioner of Exchanges, in which
Secretary Stanton and other Federal officers are charged with violating the cartel, while the
Confederate authorities are represented as acting in good faith.
I believe that I will be able to show that all the obstructions to there exchange of prisoners during the late war were the result of bad faith in the
President of the Southern Confederacy.
On the 2d of July, 1862, a cartel was agreed upon by the belligerents, in which it was stipulated that all prisoners captured by either party should be paroled and delivered at certain points specified within ten days after their capture, or, as soon thereafter as practicable.
This was to be done in all cases except those in which commanding generals on the battle-field paroled their prisoners by agreement.
No other paroles were valid.
If a guerrilla chief captured a foraging party, and paroled those who composed it, it amounted to nothing, and if their officers ordered them into immediate service, it was no violation of the cartel.
In March, 1863, the gallant
General A. D. Streight, then
Colonel of the Fifty-first Indiana Infantry, by order of
General Rosecrans, made a raid at the head of a picked brigade, setting out from
Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and proceeding into the northern part of
Alabama, and thence into
Northern Georgia.
When he had advanced as far as
Rome, Georgia, he was intercepted by the
Confederate