Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1888 — INTERESTING WAR HISTORY. [ARTICLE]

INTERESTING WAR HISTORY.

Butler Tells Why the Exchange of Prisoners Was Stopped by Grant. Gen. B. F. Butler,Boston, Maas.: Dear Sir—Pardon my seeming impertinence in addressing yon a letter of inquiry, but I know of no other source where I can obtain the information JI seek. You were United States Commissioner of Exchange part of the time during the dispute between the States, and I was one of the Andersonville victims. Now I have contended that our government might have continued to exchange prisoners, and thus have prevented the most of the horror of those pens, and my Republican friends c»ll me all sorts of names. You have never been a partisan. You are no coward. . You know, or at leiktyou were in a position to know, just why the exchange stopped and why it was not resumed. Will you please inform me upon those two points, that I may be the more bold or the more careful, as the case may be? I cannot find a word about the matter in Greeley’s “American Conflict,” nor in any other work to which I have access, and once wrote to the Century asking that, to complete its war papers, the prison business m’ght be discussed while General Butler was on but that magazine did not want matter of that sort. An early reply will confer a favor upon, yours tiuly. A. W. Cumins, Woodstock, 111., March 17, 1888. A. W. Cumins, Esq., Woodstock, Ill.; Dear Bir—l think I am amply paid by the new phrase which I find in your letter describing the war of the rebellion as a ‘ dispute between the States,” ior any pains that I might take in answering your question. The cause of the stoppage of exchange of prisoners was twofold: First, because the confederates refused to exchange the colored soldiers,claiming that they would keep them as property to be returned to their masters, and at first putting t b em in the trenches to work under tire. I stopped that by putting a lot of Richmond confederate prisoners to work under fire in Dutch Gap until Lee had the colored men released from such work, but they would not exchange them. The second, a strategic reason, why Gen. Grant desired to put an end to the exchange was tbii: We had a larger army in our hands as prisoners of war than any other army of the confederates. We felt it our duty to keep them in a proper manner, well clothed, well fed, well cared for, well treated, well warmed, and with all proper hospital service that we gave our own men, so that every man substantially that we had was fit to step right into the ranks the moment he was exchanged. On the contrary, as you, if yon were in Andersonville, as you say, know as well as anybody else, in their view of policy, as one of the methods of arguing their side of the “dispute,” they did not Clothe, did not feed, nay, did not even give water and wood to the prisoners of Andersonville when there was plenty of both of those that might be had. I do not take so much stock in the food question as tome people, because food was pretty scarce in the confederacy, and then our soldiers would starve on about what a confederate could live on. The consequence was, as you know, that our men, in the hands of the confederates, were none of them fit to go into service on exchange until three months’ recruitment, and a great many of them a much longer time than that, and many of them were never fit to return to for man, we put into the field another larger army than the confederates Could then reernit oven by conscription, and in the very best condition to fight us, and we got nobody that we could use in return to meet them. The wisdom of that policy you must discuss with those who enacted it With it I could have nothing to do in my position. But while it was very hard oil the poor fellows who were in Andersonville, Libby, Salisbury, and elsewhere as prisoners, yet they even, in their sufferings, were aiding their country more in l the war of the rebellion than they could have done if fighting in the ranks in the condition they were "put in by the other side in the “dispute.” I perceive you have fully overcome all feeling in regard to the conduct of the men toward you in Andersonville by the use of that term. But if you use it in discussion with yoar Republican friends, unless they are different from the class of men we have here who call themselves Republicans,' you will be likely to hear some pretty hard language, and perhaps some not justified by all of the Ten Commandments. Very respectfully, your obedient servant. Bcston, March 19. Benj. F. Butlerl