Part 10:
Gillispie provides examples of the Lost Cause use of the breakdown of the exchange cartel. He writes:
Sometimes Southern writers of this period simply ignored the reason Federal officials gave for suspending the cartel, preferring to point out that the North halted exchanges and allow readers to infer that no justifiable basis could have existed for condemning thousands on both sides to extended periods of uncomfortable, potentially lethal, confinement in enemy prison pens. Those who did address it claimed it was not the real reason the cartel was suspended. By 1863 the North held more prisoners than the South, making it in its best interest at that point to quit exchanging prisoners. With this in mind, Union officials, one writer claimed, “invented every possible pretext” to keep from exchanging prisoners. The issue of black troops was nothing more, another informed readers, than a “subterfuge to prevent exchanges.” For the Yankees, humanitarian considerations were secondary to winning the war.
The Confederate apologists portray Jeff Davis and his underlings as shocked by the halt to exchanges. The Confederate leadership in this view did nothing wrong to precipitate the change in Union policy. Some later historians adopted this view.
In attacking the suspension of of the exchanges, writers argue that the North stopped trading men because the numbers were in the North's favor if prisoners remained where they were. Because the Confederates had fewer soldiers overall, one returned Confederate prisoner was worth more to the Confederate cause than one returned Union soldier. Grant is typically blamed for taking exchange off the table. Grant did support the suspension of exchanges, but Gillispie points out problems with the argument that he was responsible for them.
Gillispie points out that the suspension came in the Spring of 1863. Think of who Grant was at that point. Here is what the author writes:
There are some serious flaws with this characterization and Grant’s role in the decision. One major problem with laying the issue at Grant’s feet is that the decision was made without any input from him. At the time Grant had his hands quite full with the siege of Vicksburg and it is highly unlikely that he shifted his focus at this critical and decisive moment in the war to make prisoner of war policy changes. More importantly, there is not a scrap of wartime evidence to suggest or prove that he had any direct or indirect effect on the 1863 decision. Grant may well have understood the military advantages of halting exchanges, and no doubt he did, but at that point in the war he was strictly a field officer without much, if any, influence over policy decisions.
Also, let us recall what Grant did with the big catch of prisoners that he took at Vicksburg a couple of months after the exchange halted. Did a massive parole fit in with Grant being strictly opposed to exchanges?