General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was rapidly shrinking due to combat, illness, and desertion as it continued defending Petersburg and the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Lee therefore contacted Federal General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant to discuss the possibility of informally renewing the prisoner exchange cartel.
Grant had suspended prisoner exchanges because the Confederates had refused to exchange soldiers who had formerly been slaves. This suspension had caused a widespread manpower shortage in the Confederacy, but it also doomed thousands of Federal prisoners to disease and death in southern prison camps, where officials lacked the necessities to care for them. In all, about 100,000 Federal and Confederate soldiers currently languished in various makeshift prisons.
As fighting raged around Peebles’s Farm, Lee wrote Grant, “With a view of alleviating the sufferings of our soldiers, I have the honor to propose an exchange of prisoners of war belonging to the armies operating in Virginia, man for man, or upon the basis established by the cartel.” Grant replied on October 2:
“I could not of a right accept your proposition further than to exchange those prisoners captured within the last three days, and who have not yet been delivered to the commanding General of Prisoners. Among those lost by the armies operating against Richmond were a number of colored troops. Before further negotiations are had upon the subject I would ask if you propose delivering these men the same as white soldiers?”
Lee responded the next day:
“In my proposition of the 1st inst., to exchange the prisoners of war belonging to the armies operating in Virginia, I intended to include all captured soldiers of the United States, of whatever nation and color, under my control. Deserters from our service and Negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange, and were not included in my proposition. If there are any such among those stated by you to have been captured around Richmond, they can not be returned.”
Later that month, Major-General Benjamin F. Butler, commanding the Federal Army of the James, learned that Lee was using captured black Federal soldiers to build and repair the works around Fort Gilmer. Butler responded by using Confederate prisoners as forced labor on a canal project. Butler announced that he was doing this because of the way the Confederates were treating black prisoners.
Lee explained to Grant that there was legal and historical justification for punishing runaway slaves, but even so, Lee had not approved putting them to work at Fort Gilmer and had since sent them behind the lines, out of harm’s way, to work elsewhere. Grant responded by directing Butler to send the Confederate laborers to a prison camp. Grant then wrote Lee on the 20th:
“I shall always regret the necessity of retaliating for wrongs done our soldiers, but regard it my duty to protect all persons received into the Army of the United States, regardless of color or nationality. When acknowledged soldiers of the Government are captured they must be treated as prisoners of war, or such treatment as they receive inflicted upon an equal number of prisoners held by us.
“I have nothing to do with the discussion of the slavery question, therefore decline answering the arguments adduced to show the right to return to former owners such Negroes as are captured from our Army… All prisoners of war falling into my hands shall receive the kindest possible treatment consistent with securing them, unless I have good authority for believing any number of our men are being treated otherwise. Then, painful as it may be to me, I shall inflict like treatment on an equal number of Confederate prisoners.”
Though Grant most likely would have declined to renew the prisoner cartel in any event, the Confederacy gave him the moral high ground from which to negotiate. Thus, Grant and Lee were still at an impasse on whether former slaves now serving in the Federal army would be treated like all other soldiers.
Bibliography
- Catton, Bruce, Grant Takes Command. Open Road Media, Kindle Edition, 2015.
- Davis, Jefferson, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government: All Volumes. Heraklion Press, Kindle Edition 2013, 1889.
- McPherson, James M., Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford History of the United States Book 6, Oxford University Press (Kindle Edition), 1988.