757

"You possess the means of long resisting invasion; you have hopes of succor from abroad. Protract the struggle, and you

will surely receive the aid of nations who already deeply sympathize with you.

"Stand by your colors-maintain your discipline! The great resources of this department, its vast extent; the numbers, the discipline, and the efficiency of the army, will secure to our country terms that a

proud people can with honor accept, and may, under the providence of God, be the means of checking the triumph of our enemy and securing the final success of our E. KIRBY SMITH, General."

cause.

At a public meeting held at Shreveport on the receipt of news of President Lincoln's assassination,

26 Though the war on land ceased, and the Confederate flag utterly disappeared from this continent with the collapse and dispersion of Kirby Smith's command; it was yet displayed at sea by two of the British-built, British-armed, and (mainly) British manned cruisers engaged in the spoliation of our commerce; whereof the powerful iron-clad Stonewall, after having been for some time watched by the Niagara and the Sacramento in the Spanish port of Ferrol, finally ran across to Havana, where she arrived after the fall of the Confederacy, and was taken in charge by the Spanish authorities, who promptly handed her over, May 28, 1865, to Rear-Admiral Godon, who, with a formidable fleet, had been sent, May 16, to cruise among the West Indies in quest of her. Admiral Godon brought her into Hampton Roads June 12, and turned her over to the Navy Department.

There still remained afloat the swift steamer Shenandoah, Capt. Waddell, built at Glasgow in 1863, and which, as 'the Sea King,' put to sea from London, Oct. 8, 1864, in spite of the protests of our functionaries; having cleared for Bombay: but which was met at a barren islet off Madeira, Oct. 17, by the British steamer Laurel, from Liverpool, with officers and men, nearly all British, who, with guns and munitions, were promptly transferred to the henceforth Rebel corsair Shenandoah, which at once engaged in

28

The last actual collision" of forces in our struggle occurred" on the Rio Grande. Col. Barrett had set forth from Brazos Santiago to surprise a Rebel camp at Palmetto Ranche, some 15 miles above, and had succeeded in taking and burning the camp; but, lingering to horses, he was overtaken on his return by Gen. J. E. Slaughter, with 3 guns and a considerable force, and hunted back to Brazos with a loss of 80, mainly captured. Slaughter's loss was trifling.

secure

Gen. Sheridan had been sent to New Orleans, and was there fitting out a formidable expedition for the rethe capture, plunder, and destruction of our merchantmen; in due time, turning up at Melbourne, Australia, where she received a hearty and munificent welcome. Having left that port, Feb. 8, 1865, she was next heard of in the North Pacific, the Sea of Ochotsk, and northward nearly to Behring's straits, where she raided at will among our defenseless whalers, of which she: burned 25 and bonded 4-many of them after she had received the news of Lee's and Johnston's surrender and Davis's capture. Finally, having been assured by a British sea-captain that the Confederacy was no more, she desisted, four months after the collapse, from her work of destruction, and made her way directly to her native country; anchoring Nov. 6, 1865, in the Mersey; whence Waddell addressed a letter to the British Minister, surrendering her in due form to the British Government; by which she was in turn tendered to ours, and most unwisely accepted. As she had never attempted to enter a Confederate port, nor (so far as is known) any other than British, and as she had never been manned by any other than a (substantially) British crew, and as she still stood, up to a very late day, on the official registry of British shipping as the British steamship Sea King, she ought to have been left on the hands of her legitimate owners. May 13.

27

25 May 11.

THE treatment and exchange of prisoners during our great struggle deserves a fuller elucidation than is given in the preceding pages, or than I am enabled as yet to proffer. Each belligerent vehemently charged the other with violating the cartel which, at an early stage of the war, provided for regular and prompt exchanges at Richmond in the East and at Vicksburg in the West, and at these points only. The Confederates never admitted that Negroes came within the purview of this arrangement; and this of itself must have incited a serious collision. Having enrolled and called out Blacks as well as Whites for its defense, our Government could not recognize the right of the Confederates to treat our Black soldiers as fugitives from slavery -which some of them were, while others were not. Judicial proceedings under State law in Virginia in 1866 established beyond question the fact that at least one Black Union soldier, born free in Ohio and regularly enlisted into the National service, having been taken prisoner by the Rebels, was sold into slavery in Virginia, and held as a slave till months after the collapse of the Rebellion; when, having resisted and killed his 'master,' he was arraigned, tried, and executed therefor. And, while it is unquestionable that the Confederate authorities were more than willing, were even anxious, to effect a general exchange of prisoners during the last year of the contest, I lack proof that they ever offered to produce and hand over the Blacks whom they had captured and treated as culprits and fugitives rather than as soldiers.

When, in 1863, Gen. Lee had crossed the Potomac and was advancing into Pennsylvania, an order was issued on our side that such Union soldiers as he might capture should not give paroles, thereby relieving the enemy of the burden of guarding and depriving us of the chance of recapturing them. It was added that paroles so given would not be deemed valid on our side. The fortunes of war having, soon after, given us many thousands of prisoners, the Rebel authorities regarded the above order as justifying them in repudiating the paroles given by their soldiers captured at Vicksburg and Port Hudson; and it was charged that thousands of those soldiers, still unexchanged, were found fighting again in the Confederate ranks at Chickamauga. Hence paroles fell into discredit and disuse not long after exchanges had been discontinued.

That our War Department regarded this with complacency is intrinsically probable. Every

| Confederate soldier was conscripted to fight to the end; and, being released from captivity, was at once returned to the ranks; while our men, being exchanged, were often found to have served out their term of enlistment, or, at all events, to be so near its end that it was not advisable to return them to their respective regiments. Thus, an exchange of twenty thousand men on either side would add far more to both the positive and the relative strength of the Confederate than of the Union armies. Hence, the Rebel authorities became at last by far the more anxious to effect a general exchange; and it is alleged that they at one time offered to parole and release generally our men in their hands, requiring only a pledge that they should be put to no military use until regularly exchanged. It is not stated, however, that the Blacks were included in this offer, especially those whom they had sold into slavery.

Prisoners of war are apt to complain of harsh treatment, and not without reason; and such complaint was made by Rebel prisoners against our officers who held them in custody, especially at 'Camp Douglas' (Chicago), and on Rock Island, in the Mississippi-the former having been the focus of repeated conspiracies to overpower their guards, break out, and, in conjunction with secret allies outside, cut their way back to the Confederacy, liberating other prisoners by the way. In Missouri, Gen. John McNeil was charged with cruelty in shooting ten prisoners (bushwhackers), in retaliation for the secret taking off of one Unionist, who suddenly disappeared.

On the other hand, the treatment of Union prisoners by the Confederates, in the matter of food and shelter, was quite generally and unreasonably harsh. The Rebel soldiers, save in their fitful butchery of Blacks, deserve no part of this reproach. White captives were usually treated by them considerately, and even chival rously. But the Rebels' prisou-camps were mainly and inexcusably devoid of the comforts to which even captives are justly entitled. It was scarcely their fault that their prisoners were coarsely and scantily fed during the last year or more wherein their armies were on half rations, and when no one willingly gave grain or meat for their currency; but they at no time lacked either eligible sites or timber; and there is no excuse for their failure to provide ample and commodious shelter, with abundance of pure water and fuel; so that the horrors of An