previous next
[137] his communication to the War Department, and some matters to which he could merely make incidental reference, will now be specially noticed.

Arrangements for the exchange of prisoners taken on both sides during the recent engagements were entered into in the early part of August, but certain points in their execution gave rise to much reproach from General Gillmore, who even charged General Beauregard with a ‘breach of faith.’ The Federal Commander wrote as follows:

Department of the South, Headquarters in the field, Morris Island, S. C., August 5th, 1863.
Genl. G. T. Beauregard, Comdg. Confederate Forces, Charleston, S. C.:
General,—Your two letters of the 22d ultimo, one of them being in reply to mine of the 18th, have been received.

You express yourself at a loss to perceive the necessity for my statement that I should expect full compliance on your part with the usages of war among civilized nations “in their unrestricted application to all the forces under my command.” At that time I considered my remarks as pertinent and proper. Events that have since transpired show them to have been eminently so, for after having entered into a solemn agreement with me for mutually paroling and returning to their respective commanders the wounded prisoners in our hands, you declined to return the wounded officers and men belonging to my colored regiments, and your subordinate in charge of the exchange asserted that that question had been left for after-consideration. I can but regard this transaction as a palpable breach of faith on your part, and a flagrant violation of your pledges as an officer.

In your second letter of the 22d ultimo you request me to return to you Private Thomas Green, of Company H, 1st Regiment South Carolina Volunteers, for the alleged reason that he left your lines on the 19th, during the suspension of hostilities under a flag of truce. 1 beg leave to state that you are laboring under a misapprehension. Private Green did not enter my lines during the existence of a flag of truce. It is true that under a flag of truce on the day referred to I requested permission of the officer in command of Fort Wagner to receive and bury my own dead, a request that was refused me, and there the truce ended.

I refrained from opening my batteries on that day, because some of my own wounded were seen lying just outside the fort, in plain view, exposed to a burning sun throughout the entire day.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,


This necessitated the following letter, which further explains the point at issue between the two commanders, and reverses the

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Morris Island (South Carolina, United States) (2)
Charleston (South Carolina, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Thomas Green (2)
Q. A. Gillmore (2)
Comdg (2)
G. T. Beauregard (2)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
22nd (2)
August 5th, 1863 AD (1)
August (1)
19th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: