Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[590] because the Government had chosen to use the loyal negroes for military purposes, as the Conspirators had done, but ostensibly because the National Commander at New Orleans had punished a low gambler for overt acts of treason, and accepted the highly immoral conduct of certain women “of the better sort,” in that city, as fair evidence that they belonged to an immoral class of the community.¹ In that proclamation there was a tone of savagism, which made the rulers of other lands pause in their willingness to admit, by recognition as such, the “Confederacy” into the family of civilized nations. In it, Davis outlawed a major-general of the National army, and commander of a military department, speaking of him as “a felon, deserving of capital punishment,” and ordered that he should not be “treated simply as a public enemy of the Confederate States of America, but as an outlaw, and common enemy of mankind; and that in the event of his capture, the officer in command of the capturing force do cause him to be immediately executed by hanging.” ² He also ordered the same treatment for commanding officers serving under the outlawed general, and further directed that all negro soldiers who might be taken prisoners, and all commissioned officers serving in company with them, who should be captured, should be handed over to State governments for execution, the negroes as insurgent slaves, the white officers as inciters of servile insurrection.³

This savage position of the insurgent Chief made the Government pause and consider. It was morally bound to afford equal protection to all its citizen soldiers, irrespective of color. The proclamation produced wide-spread indignation throughout the country, and when, in January,

Jan. 12, 1863.

Davis, in a “message” to the Confederate Congress, announced his determination to deliver all officers of the National army commanding negro troops, captured after that date, to the respective State authorities to be hung, and to treat those troops as rebels against their masters, Congress took up the matter, and a joint resolution was offered providing for retaliation for any cruel treatment of Union prisoners, of whatever grade or hue. But in this, as in the matter of exchange, Humanity took precedence of Policy, and the National Executive and legislature were governed by the ethics involved in the following words of Charles Sumner, who opposed the measure, in the Senate: “I believe that this body will not undertake, in this age of Christian light, under any inducement, under any provocation, to counsel the Executive Government to enter into any such competition with barbarism. The thing is impossible; it cannot be entertained; we cannot be cruel, or barbarous, or savage, because the rebels, whom we are now meetign in warfare, are cruel, barbarous, .and savage! We cannot imitate that detested example.”

It was the proclamation and the “message” of Davis that first seriously interrupted the exchange of prisoners, these being followed by the refusal of Ould, the Confederate Commissioner, under the instructions of his Chief, to consider