Opposition to the Halt of Prisoner Exchange

This is taken from the second link that @USS ALASKA provided giving further insight into motivations for halting of prisoner exchange:

"From the three-score years that preceded Bennett’s comments, there emerged a literary effusion of articles, expositions, and anecdotes about prisons. Veterans from the North and South were uniformly convinced “that their jailors had subjected them to treatment heinously designed to reduce their ranks by starvation and disease.” Moreover, ex-prisoners called into question, some in published form, the leaders and policies that had created and protracted their time in the valley of the shadow. Thus despite what Bennett held to be true in the twentieth century, few veterans believed to be true in the immediate postwar period of the nineteenth century.

The first published accounts of prison life in the South appeared in the late summer of 1862 following the exchange agreement between opposing governments. The initial accounts were written to incite a public outcry against the inhumane treatment of soldiers by southern “barbarians.” Yet because the very nature of an uninterrupted exchange reduced the overall time that individuals were held in captivity, the original published accounts failed to produce much response, humanitarian or otherwise, in the North.

When autumn approached a year later in 1863, however, Union policy regarding the cartel changed, and the exchange was halted. The Lincoln administration attributed their suspension of the cartel to several factors: the South’s refusal to validate its parole and exchange of the Port Hudson and Vicksburg prisoners; the desire of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and General Ulysses S. Grant to curb desertion and bounty jumping by federal soldiers; and most importantly, Grant’s belief that the most expeditious way to relieve all inhumane suffering and treatment was to end the war. The northern policy change, then, was in keeping with Grant’s desires to end the war, one he called “a military necessity.”

Secretary Stanton utilized the stoppage of the exchange, moreover, to inaugurate a renewed prison literature campaign on the national level to help deflect growing criticism from Washington onto Richmond. Stanton wanted to convince northerners, and the rest of the world, that the southern confederacy had erected and maintained a “deliberate system of savage and barbarous treatment and starvation” of northern prisoners. He prodded the U.S. House Committee on the Conduct and Expenditures of the War as well as aid societies like the United States Sanitary Commission and Christian Commissions to make public their interviews with former prisoners, audits of camps, and abstracts of their official reports and findings.

By the early summer of 1864, the U.S. House committee finished its investigation of ex-prisoners from an Annapolis hospital and made its official report. The report, containing thirty pages and eight photographs, summarized the testimony of prisoners held in Richmond’s Libby Prison and on nearby Belle Isle on the James River in Virginia. It was quickly distributed throughout the north among the various presses. The House committee said that the “evidence proves, beyond all matter of doubt . . . that the inhumane practices . . . are the result of the determination on the part of the rebel authorities to reduce our soldiers in their power, by privation of food and clothing, and by exposure.” Secretary of War Stanton added fuel to the report when he said, “The enormity of the crime committed by the rebels towards our prisoners for the last several months is not known or realized by our people . . . [as there] appears to have been a deliberate system of savage and barbarous treatment and starvation.” Thus heading into the fall elections of 1864, Stanton’s incendiary rhetoric, combined with the report of the House Committee on the Conduct and Expenditures of the War, served as the spark that helped inflame the northern populous behind the Union war effort and President Lincoln’s reelection bid. Northerners seemed to accept that the war must continue, and thus bolstered the decidedly Republican policy objectives."

(Sources are included in link)
 
Considering the Union’s segregated and often unbalanced treatment of USCT troops as opposed to white troops, it is difficult to discredit Grant’s 1864 quote as common sense approach to refighting the same Confederate troops after being captured and paroled.

Then too, by 1864 Grant was well aware that one Federal soldier didn't really equal one Confederate soldier.
 
I see, tens of thousands of POWs die began to die or confined in prolonged misery once the Confederate government made an announcement. You would have thought the Lincoln administration would have waited to see if the Confederate government actually carry through with the threat. If his government was trying to make some moral or political statement why didn't that government completely stop the exchange?

It was no different than what Jefferson Davis did when Lincoln threatened execution of any captured Confederate privateers. Davis didn't wait to see if Lincoln actually carried out the threat; he immediately responded with a threat of lex talionis.
 
It was no different than what Jefferson Davis did when Lincoln threatened execution of any captured Confederate privateers. Davis didn't wait to see if Lincoln actually carried out the threat; he immediately responded with a threat of lex talionis.

The difference, as I see it, is the US government cessation of the POW exchange was as much a threat to their own imprisoned men as it was to their enemy.
 
Then too, by 1864 Grant was well aware that one Federal soldier didn't really equal one Confederate soldier.
How do you come to that conclusion? Do you have proof of such? Do you have true sources, instead of an opinion on that?

Kevin Dally
 
Grant's official position on exchanges, after becoming LT GEN, was contained in this memo to Gen Butler, Union Agent for prisoner exchanges at that time (see Papers of US Grant Volume 10 pg 301):

To Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler
In field Culpeper C. H. Va.
Apr. 17th 1864
Maj. Gen. B. F. Butler, Com'd'g Dept. Va. & N. C. Fortress Monroe, Va.


General: Your report of negotiations with Mr. Ould, Confederate States Agent, touching the exchange of prisoners, has been referred to me by the Secretary of War, with directions to furnish you such instructions on the subject, as I may deem proper.

After a careful examination of your report, the only points on which I deem instructions necessary, are—

1st.: Touching the validity of the paroles of the prisoners captured at Vicksburg and Port Hudson.

2nd.: The status of colored prisoners.

As to the first. No Arrangement for the exchange of prisoners will be acceded to that does not fully recognize the validity of these paroles, and provide for the release to us, of a sufficient number of prisoners now held by the Confederate Authorities to cancel any balance that may be in our favor by virtue of these paroles. Until there is released to us an equal number of officers and men as were captured and paroled at Vicksburg and Port Hudson, not another Confederate prisoner of war will be paroled or exchanged.

As to the second. No distinction whatever will be made in the exchange between white and colored prisoners; the only question being, were they, at the time of their capture, in the military service of the United States. If they were, the same terms as to treatment while prisoners and conditions of release and exchange must be exacted and had, in the case of colored soldiers as in the case of white soldiers. Non-acquiescence by the Confederate Authorities in both or either of these propositions, will be regarded as a refusal on their part to agree to the further exchange of prisoners, and will be so treated by us.

I am General Very Respectfully Your Obt. Servant
U. S. Grant Lieut. General


While this memo is dated about a week or so after Ft Pillow, troubles with the exchanges re: colored soldiers, were much discussed over the prior year, see Series 2 of the OR for correspondence on this topic beginning June 1863. Union accusations that the Confederates were not (or by policy would not) treating captured USCT soldiers as prisoners of war pre-date Ft Pillow by nearly a year.

The prisoner exchanges had been halted for some time before Grant became LT GEN.
 
Grant's official position on exchanges, after becoming LT GEN, was contained in this memo to Gen Butler, Union Agent for prisoner exchanges at that time (see Papers of US Grant Volume 10 pg 301):

To Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler
In field Culpeper C. H. Va.
Apr. 17th 1864
Maj. Gen. B. F. Butler, Com'd'g Dept. Va. & N. C. Fortress Monroe, Va.


General: Your report of negotiations with Mr. Ould, Confederate States Agent, touching the exchange of prisoners, has been referred to me by the Secretary of War, with directions to furnish you such instructions on the subject, as I may deem proper.

After a careful examination of your report, the only points on which I deem instructions necessary, are—

1st.: Touching the validity of the paroles of the prisoners captured at Vicksburg and Port Hudson.

2nd.: The status of colored prisoners.

As to the first. No Arrangement for the exchange of prisoners will be acceded to that does not fully recognize the validity of these paroles, and provide for the release to us, of a sufficient number of prisoners now held by the Confederate Authorities to cancel any balance that may be in our favor by virtue of these paroles. Until there is released to us an equal number of officers and men as were captured and paroled at Vicksburg and Port Hudson, not another Confederate prisoner of war will be paroled or exchanged.

As to the second. No distinction whatever will be made in the exchange between white and colored prisoners; the only question being, were they, at the time of their capture, in the military service of the United States. If they were, the same terms as to treatment while prisoners and conditions of release and exchange must be exacted and had, in the case of colored soldiers as in the case of white soldiers. Non-acquiescence by the Confederate Authorities in both or either of these propositions, will be regarded as a refusal on their part to agree to the further exchange of prisoners, and will be so treated by us.

I am General Very Respectfully Your Obt. Servant
U. S. Grant Lieut. General


While this memo is dated about a week or so after Ft Pillow, troubles with the exchanges re: colored soldiers, were much discussed over the prior year, see Series 2 of the OR for correspondence on this topic beginning June 1863. Union accusations that the Confederates were not (or by policy would not) treating captured USCT soldiers as prisoners of war pre-date Ft Pillow by nearly a year.

The prisoner exchanges had been halted for some time before Grant became LT GEN.
Right. Not sure why a few folks find it hard to factor in the treatment of Black soldiers by Confederates in the prisoner exchange equation.
 
Anyway, in response to the OP it is clear that at least in the North there was both organized and informal opposition to the ending of the cartel, particularly among Democrats. Was their similar opposition in the South to the treatment of blacks that precipitated suspension? I don’t know.
 
Yet there never seems to have been enough opposition in the North to change the decision. The Lincoln administration did not seem to suffer enough opposition to change course.
 
he immediately responded with a threat of lex talionis.
Well, I had to look that one up, but I see it is a retaliatory measure. Which is probably common during wartime. You do this and we'll do that, or if you don't do this we won't do that. Obviously there are complexities to be added, but ultimately it's about the rules of the 'game'. Which means strategy. Or moves and countermoves. I'm uncertain about the wisdom of the moves made when it came to the issue of prisoner exchange. Some men might have accepted to suffer in the circumstances. But there are elements of them being 'pawns' in this game which I find particularly difficult to come to terms with. A soldier on the field being moved into different positions to fight is one thing in my mind. A man being held captive with no means to defend himself is another.
 
Back
Top