While, therefore, believing the claims of our government, in matters of exchange, to be just, we are profoundly impressed with the conviction that the circ.u.mstances of the two cla.s.ses of soldiers are so widely different that the government can honorably consent to an exchange, waiving for a time the established principle justly claimed to be applicable in the case. Let thirty-five thousand suffering, starving, and enlisted men aid this appeal. By prompt and decided action in their behalf, thirty-five thousand heroes will be made happy. For the eighteen hundred commissioned officers now prisoners we urge nothing. Although desirous of returning to our duty, we can bear imprisonment with more fort.i.tude if the enlisted men, whose sufferings we know to be intolerable, were restored to liberty and life.
XVI.
The threatening manoeuvres of Sherman alone caused the rebel authorities to diminish the number of inmates of this stockade, and thereby lessen the dangers of recapture, and remove the temptation to the United States authorities to make an effort for their rescue. It has been stated that the rebels were anxious to exchange prisoners, man for man, and that the obstructions were caused by the Federal authorities, and that Mr. Stanton, in particular, was responsible for the stoppage of exchange and the consequent death of so many thousands of our fellow-citizens detained in the rebel prisons.
General Hitchc.o.c.k, the United States commissioner of exchange, however, denies most emphatically that Mr. Stanton was any way responsible for the refusal to make exchanges, man for man, officer for officer, according to grade, and he makes the following statement: "At no instance within my knowledge did Mr. Stanton refuse to acquiesce in any proposition looking to that result. There is not in my office, nor have I ever seen such a proposition from a rebel commissioner or the rebel authorities. Nor have I any reason to believe that any such proposition was ever made by Judge Ould, or any of his superiors, except in a letter from Judge Ould addressed to Major Mulford, which fell into the hands of Major-General Butler. This is true, emphatically, as a protection against the accusations levelled at Mr. Stanton. * * * * * Mr. Stanton has not only been willing, but anxious to make exchanges referred to, as I have abundant means of showing by indisputable doc.u.ments, the aim and purpose of Judge Ould was to draw from us all of the rebel prisoners held in exchange for white troops of the United States held as prisoners in the South, persistently refusing to exchange colored troops to a very late date; when, to carry a special purpose, he receded so far as to agree to exchange free colored men, leaving the general principle where it was on his side against the just claims of a large body of colored prisoners held in the South."
XVII.
The following letter from General Butler to the rebel commissioner of exchange will throw some light upon the subject, and give an idea as to whom the blame of non-exchange and non-intercourse belongs:--
_Letter of Major-General Butler, United States Commissioner of Exchange, to Colonel Ould, the Confederate Commissioner._
HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF VIRGINIA AND NORTH} CAROLINA, IN THE FIELD, AUGUST, 1864. }
HON. ROBERT OULD, _Commissioner of Exchange_.
SIR: Your note to Major Mulford, a.s.sistant agent of exchange, under date of 10th August, has been referred to me.
You therein state that Major Mulford has several times proposed "to exchange prisoners respectively held by the two belligerents--officer for officer, and man for man," and that "the offer has also been made by other officials having charge of matters connected with the exchange of prisoners," and that "this proposal has been heretofore declined by the Confederate authorities." That you now "consent to the above proposition, and agree to deliver to you (Major Mulford) the prisoners held in captivity by the Confederate authorities, provided you agree to deliver an equal number of officers and men. As equal numbers are delivered from time to time they will be declared exchanged. This proposal is made with the understanding that the officers and men on both sides who have been longest in captivity will be first delivered, where it is practicable."
From a slight ambiguity in your phraseology, but more perhaps from the antecedent action of your authorities, and because of your acceptance of it, I am in doubt whether you have stated the proposition with entire accuracy.
It is true, a proposition was made both by Major Mulford and myself, as agent of exchange, to exchange all prisoners of war taken by either belligerent party, man for man, officer for officer, of equal rank, or their equivalents. It was made by me as early as the first of the winter of 1863-4, and has not been accepted. In May last I forwarded to you a note, desiring to know whether the Confederate authorities intended to treat colored soldiers of the United States army as prisoners of war. To that inquiry no answer has yet been made. To avoid all possible misapprehension or mistake hereafter as to your offer now, will you now say whether you mean by "prisoners held in captivity" colored men, duly enrolled, and mustered into the service of the United States, who have been captured by the Confederate forces; and if your authorities are willing to exchange all soldiers so mustered into the United States army, whether colored or otherwise, and the officers commanding them, man for man, officer for officer?
At the interview which was held between yourself and the agent of exchange on the part of the United States at Fortress Monroe, in March last, you will do me the favor to remember the princ.i.p.al discussion turned upon this very point; you, on behalf of the Confederate government, claiming the right to hold all negroes who had heretofore been slaves, and not emanc.i.p.ated by their masters, enrolled and mustered into the service of the United States, when captured by your forces, not as prisoners of war, but upon capture to be turned over to their supposed masters or claimants, whoever they might be, to be held by them as slaves.
By the advertis.e.m.e.nts in your newspapers, calling upon masters to come forward and claim these men so captured, I suppose that your authorities still adhere to that claim--that is to say, that whenever a colored soldier of the United States is captured by you, upon whom any claim can be made by any person residing within the States now in insurrection, such soldier is not to be treated as a prisoner of war, but is to be turned over to his supposed owner or claimant, and put at such labor or service as that owner or claimant may choose, and the officers in command of such soldiers, in the language of a supposed act of the Confederate States, are to be turned over to the governors of States, upon requisitions, for the purpose of being punished by the laws of such States for acts done in war in the armies of the United States.
You must be aware that there is still a proclamation by Jefferson Davis, claiming to be chief executive of the Confederate States, declaring in substance that all officers of colored troops mustered into the service of the United States were not to be treated as prisoners of war, but were to be turned over for punishment to the governors of States.
I am reciting these public acts from memory, and will be pardoned for not giving the exact words, although I believe I do not vary the substance and effect.
These declarations on the part of those whom you represent yet remain unrepealed, unannulled, unrevoked, and must therefore be still supposed to be authoritative.
By your acceptance of our proposition, is the government of the United States to understand that these several claims, enactments, and proclaimed declarations are to be given up, set aside, revoked, and held for nought by the Confederate authorities, and that you are ready and willing to exchange, man for man, those colored soldiers of the United States, duly mustered and enrolled as such, who have heretofore been claimed as slaves by the Confederate States, as well as white soldiers?
If this be so, and you are so willing to exchange these colored men claimed as slaves, and you will so officially inform the government of the United States, then, as I am instructed, a princ.i.p.al difficulty in effecting exchanges will be removed.
As I informed you personally, in my judgment it is neither consistent with the policy, dignity, or honor of the United States, upon any consideration, to allow those who, by our laws solemnly enacted, are made soldiers of the Union, and who have been duly enlisted, enrolled, and mustered as such soldiers, who have borne arms in behalf of this country, and who have been captured while fighting in vindication of the rights of that country, not to be treated as prisoners of war, and remain unchanged and in the service of those who claim them as masters; and I cannot believe that the government of the United States will ever be found to consent to so gross a wrong.
Pardon me if I misunderstand you in supposing that your acceptance of our proposition does not in good faith mean to include all the soldiers of the Union, and that you still intend, if your acceptance is agreed to, to hold the colored soldiers of the Union unexchanged, and at labor or service, because I am informed that very lately, almost contemporaneously with this offer on your part to exchange prisoners, and which seems to include _all_ prisoners of war, the Confederate authorities have made a declaration that the negroes heretofore held to service by owners in the States of Delaware, Maryland, and Missouri are to be treated as prisoners of war, when captured in arms in the service of the United States.
Such declaration that a part of the colored soldiers of the United States were to be prisoners of war, would seem most strongly to imply that others were not to be so treated, or, in other words, that the colored men from the insurrectionary States are to be held to labor and returned to their masters, if captured by the Confederate forces while duly enrolled and mustered into and actually in the armies of the United States.
In the view which the government of the United States takes of the claim made by you to the persons and services of these negroes, it is not to be supported upon any principle of national and munic.i.p.al law.
Looking upon these men only as property upon your theory of property in them, we do not see how this claim can be made, certainly not how it can be yielded. It is believed to be a well-settled rule of public international law, and a custom and part of the laws of war, that the capture of movable property vests the t.i.tle to that property in the captor, and therefore where one belligerent gets into full possession property belonging to the subjects or citizens of the other belligerent, the owner of that property is at once divested of his t.i.tle, which rests in the belligerent government capturing and holding such possessions. Upon this rule of international law all civilized nations have acted, and by it both belligerents have dealt with all property, save slaves, taken from each other during the present war.
If the Confederate forces capture a number of horses from the United States, the animals are claimed to be, and, as we understand it, become the property of the Confederate authorities.
If the United States capture any movable property in the rebellion, by our regulations and laws, in conformity with international law and the laws of war, such property is turned over to our government as its property. Therefore, if we obtain possession of that species of property known to the laws of the insurrectionary States as slaves, why should there be any doubt that that property, like any other, vests in the United States?
If the property in the slave does so vest, then the _jus disponendi_, the right of disposing of that property, vests in the United States.
Now, the United States have disposed of the property which they have acquired by capture in slaves taken by them, i.e., by emanc.i.p.ating them, and declaring them free forever; so that, if we have not mistaken the principles of international law and the laws of war, we have no slaves in the armies of the United States. All are free men, being made so in such manner as we have chosen to dispose of our property in them which we acquired by capture.
Slaves being captured by us, and the right of property in them thereby vested in us, that right of property has been disposed of by us by manumitting them, as has already been the acknowledged right of the owner to do to his slave. The manner in which we dispose of our property while it is in our possession certainly cannot be questioned by you. Nor is the case altered if the property is not actually captured in battle, but comes either voluntarily or involuntarily from the belligerent owner into the possession of the other belligerent.
I take it no one would doubt the right of the United States to a drove of Confederate mules or a herd of Confederate cattle which should wander or rush across the Confederate lines into the lines of the United States army. So it seems to me, treating the negro as property merely, if that piece of property pa.s.ses the Confederate lines, and comes into the lines of the United States, that property is as much lost to its owner in the Confederate States as would be the mule or ox, the property of the resident of the Confederate States, which should fall into our hands.
If, therefore, the privilege of international law and the laws of war used in this discussion are correctly stated, then it would seem that the deduction logically flows therefrom in natural sequence, that the Confederate States can have no claim upon the negro soldiers captured by them from the armies of the United States because of the former ownership of them by their citizens or subjects, and only claim such as result, under the laws of war, from their captor merely.
Do the Confederate authorities claim the right to reduce to a state of slavery free men, prisoners of war captured by them? This claim our fathers fought against under Bainbridge and Decatur, when set up by the Barbary Powers on the northern sh.o.r.e of Africa, about the year 1800,--and in 1864 their children will hardly yield it upon their own soil.
This point I will not pursue further, because I understand you to repudiate the idea that you will reduce free men to slaves because of capture in war, and that you base the claim of the Confederate authorities to re-enslave our negro soldiers, when captured by you, upon the _jus postliminii_, or that principle of the law of nations which inhabilitates the former owner with his property taken by an enemy when such property is recovered by the forces of his own country. Or, in other words, you claim that, by the laws of nations and of war, when property of the subjects of one belligerent power, captured by the forces of the other belligerent, is recaptured by the armies of the former owner, then such property is to be restored to its prior possessor, as if it had never been captured; and, therefore, under this principle, your authorities propose to restore to their masters the slaves which heretofore belonged to them which you may capture from us.
But this postliminary right under which you claim to act, as understood and defined by all writers on national law, is applicable simply to _immovable property_, and that, too, only after complete resubjugation of that portion of the country in which the property is situated, upon which this right fastens itself. By the laws and customs of war, this right has never been applied to _movable_ property. True it is, I believe, that the Romans attempted to apply it to the case of slaves; but for two thousand years no other nation has attempted to set up this right as ground for treating slaves differently from other property.
But the Romans even refused to re-enslave men captured from opposing belligerents in a civil war, such as ours unhappily is.
Consistently, then, with any principle of the law of nations, treating slaves as property merely, it would seem to be impossible for the government of the United States to permit the negroes in their ranks to be re-enslaved when captured, or treated otherwise than as prisoners of war.
I have forborne, sir, in this discussion, to argue the question upon any other or different ground of right than those adopted by your authorities in claiming the negro as property, because I understand that your fabric of opposition to the government of the United States has the right of property in man as its corner-stone. Of course, it would not be profitable in settling a question of exchange of prisoners of war to attempt to argue the question of abandonment of the very corner-stone of their attempted political edifice. Therefore I have admitted all the considerations which should apply to the negro soldier as a man, and dealt with him upon the Confederate theory of property only.
I unite with you most cordially, sir, in desiring a speedy settlement of all these questions, in view of the great suffering endured by our prisoners in the hands of your authorities, of which you so feelingly speak. Let me ask, in view of that suffering, why you have delayed eight months to answer a proposition which by now accepting you admit to be right, just, and humane, allowing that suffering to continue so long? One cannot help thinking, even at the risk of being deemed uncharitable, that the benevolent sympathies of the Confederate authorities have been lately stirred by the depleted condition of their armies, and a desire to get into the field, to affect the present campaign, the hale, hearty, and well-fed prisoners held by the United States in exchange for the half-starved, sick, emaciated, and unserviceable soldiers of the United States now languishing in your prisons. The events of this war, if we did not know it before, have taught us that it is not the northern people alone who know how to drive sharp bargains.
The wrongs, indignities, and privations suffered by our soldiers would move me to consent to anything to procure their exchange, except to barter away the honor and faith of the government of the United States, which has been so solemnly pledged to the colored soldiers in its ranks.
Consistently with national faith and justice we cannot relinquish this position. With your authorities it is a question of property merely.
It seems to address itself to you in this form: Will you suffer your soldier, captured in fighting your battles, to be in confinement for months rather than release him by giving for him that which you call a piece of property, and which we are willing to accept as a man?
You certainly appear to place less value upon your soldier than you do upon your negro. I a.s.sure you, much as we of the North are accused of loving property, our citizens would have no difficulty in yielding up any piece of property they have in exchange for one of their brothers or sons languishing in your prisons. Certainly there could be no doubt that they would do so, were that piece of property less in value than five thousand dollars in Confederate money, which is believed to be the price of an able-bodied negro in the insurrectionary States.
Trusting that I may receive such a reply to the questions propounded in this note as will tend to a speedy resumption of the negotiations in a full exchange of all prisoners, and a delivery of them to their respective authorities,
I have the honor to be, Very respectfully, Your obedient servant, BENJAMIN F. BUTLER,
_Major-General and Commissioner of Exchange_.
XVIII.
The wretched "material" exchanged for healthy rebel soldiers called forth a note of joy from the rebel commissioner, Ould. The exchanged Federal soldiers were half-naked, "living skeletons," covered with filth and vermin; and nearly all of them were unfit for service or labor, and most of them physically ruined for the remainder of their lives. The flag-of-truce boats of the different parties presented terrible contrasts.
On the one were to be seen feeble, emaciated, ragged, filthy, and dying men from the rebel prisons; whilst on the other were the rebels returning from our prisons, well clad in our uniforms, strong and healthy from the abundance of food. We returned men who had been well treated, and who were then ready to take the field again; whilst we received in turn abused and decrepit soldiers, who were so much reduced and weakened that few, comparatively, ever again returned to service. Along the entire line of prison stockades, from Belle Isle in Virginia to Prison Tyler in Texas, the same story is told of fiendish cruelty.
More than thirty thousand of our soldiers have undoubtedly perished during, or in consequence of the barbarities of their prison life in the South. To ascertain the precise number will be a difficult task, for many of the returned prisoners have died since they have left the service; but when we consider the number of prisons, and the long period of occupation, we think that the estimate of thirty thousand is not too high.