Jubal Anderson Early, Ruth Hairston Early, Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early , C. S. A.

[289] is bound to respect in the interests of humanity, by the recognition of all civilized nations. It is not necessary for him to receive the permission of his government or his leader to give his parole. When he is a captive, he is beyond the power and protection of either and has a right to stipulate for his individual safety against the penalties of death, slavery, or imprisonment by neutralizing his services for the time being. If his contract is not respected by his government, what must be the consequence?

When two nations or parties are at war, the object of each is to destroy the physical power of the other, in order to obtain peace, or accomplish the object for which the war is undertaken. If one party is so situated that it cannot hold, or cannot support its prisoners, and the other will neither exchange nor recognize the validity of paroles, is it to be expected that the prisoners shall be turned loose to return again to augment the force of the antagonistic party, and thus perhaps insure the destruction of that party liberating them?

The very principle which justifies killing in battle, that is the universal principle of self-preservation, will justify the taking of no prisoners or the destruction of all those that may be taken, if they can be neutralized in no other way. It was on this principle that the great Napoleon, in his Egyptian campaign, killed a number of prisoners whom he did not have the means of feeding, and who would not recognize the validity of a parole. If he turned them loose they would have gone immediately into the ranks of his opponents, if he kept them he would have had to take the food from the mouths of his own soldiers to feed them, and the only way of getting rid of them was by killing them. It is true a clamor was raised by his enemies, whose interest it was to make him appear as a barbarian devoid of humanity, but now that the feelings of that day have subsided, impartial men do not doubt the conformity of the act to the principles of war.