The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 7: Prisons and Hospitals.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

In spite of the suspension of the cartel, exchanges went on in the East by special agreements for more than a year longer. In the West, many thousands were exchanged by Colonel C. C. Dwight, on the part of the United States, and Lieutenant-Colonel N. G. Watts and Major Ignatius Szymanski, on the part of the Confederacy. Generals Sherman and Hood also exchanged some prisoners afterward taken by their respective commands, and other special agreements between commanders in the field were made.

Meanwhile, though the cartel of 1862 declared that all captures must be reduced to actual possession, and that all prisoners of war must be delivered at designated places for exchange or parole, unless by agreement of commanders of opposing armies, the custom of paroling prisoners at the point of capture had grown up by common consent. On the last day of the battle of Gettysburg, July 3, 1863, Secretary Stanton issued General Orders No. 207, declaring that all such paroles were in violation of general orders, and therefore null and void; declaring further that any soldier accepting such parole would be returned to duty and punished for disobedience of orders. Some provisions of General Orders No. 100 served upon Colonel Ould on May 23d also forbade parole without delivery. The reasons for the issuance of this order were probably to put an end to the accumulation of paroles by the irregular or guerilla Confederate forces in the West, which picked up prisoners here and there.

The capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, together with the battle of Gettysburg, threw the excess of prisoners very largely in favor of the Federals, and from this time on the number of Confederates in Northern prisons was larger than that of Federals in Southern prisons. It was next determined by the War Department to make no exchanges except for those actually held in confinement. This rendered useless, of course, a large number of paroles which Colonel Ould claimed to have, and if accepted would have