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

[291] Army were put there by force, but whether their service was enforced or voluntary, the Confederate Government would have been recreant to its trust, and grossly neglectful of its rights and interests, to have allowed so large a proportion of its own population to be used by its enemy for the purpose of strengthening his armies, by recognizing the claim set up on the part of these slaves to the benefit of the rules of war. Most nations have denied the right of its citizens even to expatriate themselves, so as to be competent to serve in the ranks of its enemies. None permit that expatriation to take place after the commencement of hostilities, and it would be the blindest folly to do so. In the case of the recaptured slaves, our government did not propose to punish the slaves themselves, though those that had voluntarily entered the enemy's service had justly forfeited their lives, but merely returned them to their owners, to the great gratification of the negroes themselves in most cases.

It was a case in which the Federal Government had no rights whatever, any more than it could have had in the case of deserters. The claim therefore set up to have these slaves treated as other soldiers taken in battle was without the slightest foundation in the principles of international law, or the rules of civilized war; and the cessation of the exchange on that pretence was a most atrocious act of cruelty to its own prisoners by the Federal Government.

A great clamor was raised on this specious pretext in order to reconcile the soldiers and the people of the North to the discontinuance of the exchange, and blind their eyes as to the real reason. Not denying the right of the Federal Government to refuse to exchange prisoners, if it was its interest to do so, and the war could not be terminated favorably to itself in any other way, still it had no right to violate the faith pledged to the exchange by the cartel; and least of all did it have the right to deprive its own soldiers in our hands of the