Grant calls for end of prisoner exchanges

April 20--On April 17, 1864, Ulysses S. Grant, responding to an ongoing question of black prisoners of war, issued an order calling a halt to all exchanges until Confederates recognized "the validity of the paroles of the prisoners captured at Vicksburg and Port Hudson." In doing so, Grant called for the end of discrimination against "colored soldiers."

From the start of the Civil War, there was a question of what to do with prisoners captured on the battlefield. Exchanges were made but were usually up to the individual commanders. Such exchanges were usually hard luck cases of injured soldiers.

The issue of prisoner exchanges was solved on July 22, 1862, with the Dix-Hill Cartel. This agreement called for equal exchanges of all soldiers captured. These exchanged soldiers were free to return to their units but not take up arms until formally exchanged.

When Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation took effect in January 1863, open recruitment of black soldiers began in earnest. Some of the earliest examples of black soldiers fighting were at Milliken's Bend and Port Hudson during the Vicksburg campaign. Soon afterward, the 54th Massachusetts fought at Battery Wagner in South Carolina.

The Confederate government refused to parole and exchange black soldiers who were captured in battle. The South's stance was that these black soldiers were in all likelihood escaped slaves.

Even before that issue, exchanges had come to a halt in December 1862. Jefferson Davis suspended the parole of Union officers following the execution of a New Orleans citizen, William Mumford, by Benjamin Butler. In reaction to the actions of Davis, Union Secretary of War Edwin Stanton ordered the halt of all exchanges of commissioned officers.

By June 1863, exchanges had stopped between the North and South. Emissaries from each government worked to renew prisoner exchanges.

In spring 1864, Grant was named lieutenant general, giving him command of all armies in the Union. Part of Grant's early responsibilities of 1864 was to come to a decision about the prisoner exchange issue. When he ordered a stop to prisoner exchanges, Grant maintained that there would be no distinction between exchanges of white and black soldiers.

By August 1864, a Union proposal arose to make equal exchanges "officer for officer and man for man," with the first releases going to those "longest in captivity."

In a correspondence with Butler, Grant confided, "It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. Every man we hold, when released on parole or otherwise, becomes an active soldier against us at once either directly or indirectly. If we commence a system of exchange, which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the whole South is exterminated. If we hold those caught, they amount to no more than dead men. At this particular time to release all rebel prisoners in the North would insure Sherman's defeat and would compromise our safety here."

Grant echoed his sentiments in a letter to Secretary of State William Seward, "We have got to fight until the military power of the South is exhausted, and if we release or exchange prisoners captured, it simply becomes a war of extermination."

It wasn't until January 1865 that Grant agreed to a resumption of prisoner exchanges. This was, in part, because the South had agreed to the stipulation of no distinction between white and black prisoners.

___

(c)2014 The Sun Herald (Biloxi, Miss.)

Visit The Sun Herald (Biloxi, Miss.) at www.sunherald.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services