CONFEDERATE MILITARY HISTORY. 491 Prison Exchange Senator Hill, of Georgia, in his crushing, unanswered reply to Senator Blaine in the House of Representatives January 11, 1876, collates the efforts to facilitate exchanges, and coming to this period of horrors, says: "Then again in August, 1864, the Confederates made two more propositions. I will state that the cartel of exchange was broken by the Federal authorities for certain alleged reasons. Well, in August, 1864, prisoners accumulating on both sides to such an extent, and the Federal government having refused to provide for the comfort and treatment of these prisoners, the Confederates next proposed, in a letter from Colonel Ould dated the 10th of August, 1864, waiving every objection the Federal government had made, to agree to any and all terms to renew the exchange of prisoners, man for man and officer for officer, as the Federal government should prescribe. Yet, sir, the latter rejected that proposition. It took a second letter to bring an answer to that proposition. Then again in that same month of August, 1864, the Confederate authorities did this: Finding that the Federal government would not exchange prisoners at all, that it would not let surgeons go into the Confederacy, finding that it would not let mediciras be sent into the Confederacy, meanwhile the ravages of war continuing and depleting the scant supplies of the South, which was already unable to feed adequately its own defenders, and much less able to properly feed and clothe the thousands of prisoners in Confederate prisons-what did the Confederates propose? They proposed to send home the Federal sick and wounded prisoners without equivalent. Now, sir, I want the house and the country to understand this : That in August, 1864, the Confederate government officially proposed to Federal authorities that if they would send steamships or transportation in any form to Savannah, they should have their sick and wounded prisoners without equivalent. That proposition communicated to the Federal authorities in August, 1864, was not answered until December, 1864. In December, 1864, the Federal government sent ships to Savannah. Now the record will show that the chief suffering at Andersonville was between August and December. The Confederate government sought to avert it by asking the Federal government to come and take its prisoners without equivalent-without return, and it refused to do that until four or five months had elapsed." The efforts of the Confederate government to have the imprisoned soldiers of both armies released were strenuously supported by their friends at home and by the appeals of the prisoners themselves. The Richmond government was beset with communications from citizens inclosing distressing accounts of the treatment to which Confederate prisoners were subjected in Northern prisons, and violent censures of Mr. Davis became common because he did not enforce better treatment on Confederate soldiers in these Northern prisons by retaliation, since he was unable to effect the customary exchanges. In the same way the administration at Washington was besieged by the friends of Federal prisoners, and by appeals from prisoners themselves, urging that no party or military considerations should doom the Union troops to the continued horrors of prison life. The pressure grew as the summer came on and the numbers of these unfortunate heroes of both armies had increased until it became necessary for the Washington administration to give a reason for the refusal of these powerful appeals. The reason was given by the military chieftain, but a better should have been discovered and announced by the civil authority at Washington. General Grant was compelled to assume the responsibility and having no other ground to stand upon he placed the denial of all these appeals upon "military necessity." The same plea of military necessity having been used to excuse all the early measures which the conservative statesman at Washington had opposed, was now employed to defend a policy which according to Junius Henri Browne, a Northern gentleman, cost the Republic at least twelve or fifteen thousand heroic lives. He might have added the same number of equally heroic Confederates, and given 30,000 as the total life-loss by the cruelties of "military necessity." The reason given by General Grant was sound enough from the ferocious military idea that "war must be made terrible," and his justification rests upon his obligations as the lieutenant-general commanding all the armies of the Union to destroy the Con federate forces as quickly as possible. CON'TD Part II