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Chapter 26: treatment of prisoners, wounded and dead.
It was from the close of this campaign that the difficulties in regard to: the exchange of prisoners, and the consequent complaints about the maltreatment of those in our hands, dated.
The
fall of Vicksburg simultaneously with the
battle of Gettysburg, gave to the enemy the excess of prisoners, which had hitherto been on our side, and he now began to discover that we would be more damaged by a cessation in the exchange than he would:--our men when they came back would go into our army for the war, and we had no means of supplying their places while they remained prisoners.
Many of his prisoners in our hands had but limited terms to serve out, and the places of those whose terms were longer could be readily supplied by new drafts, while his high bounties, national, state and local, opened to him the whole civilized world as a recruiting ground.
He had no inducement, therefore, to continue the exchange as a matter of policy affecting the strength of his army, while a failure to do so would very much cripple us, by detaining from our army the men held as prisoners, by imposing on our already overtaxed resources the support of the prisoners themselves, as well as the diminution of the strength of our army by the detail of a force to guard them.
While we were in
Pennsylvania,
President Lincoln had issued an order, declaring that no paroles given, unless at some of the places specified for the exchange of prisoners in the cartel which had been adopted, or in cases of stipulation to that effect by a commanding officer in surrendering his forces, would be recognized.
I think the date of that order was the 1st of July, and it was evidently intended to embarrass us while in
Pennsylvania, with the guarding and sustenance of such prisoners
