SERIES II.-VOLUME VI. CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, ETC., RELATING TO PRISONERS OF WAR AND STATE FROM JUNE 11, 1863, TO MARCH 31, 1864. UNION AND CONFEDERATE CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. WAR DEPARTMENT, Washington, June 11, 1863. Hon. EDWARD BATES, Attorney-General, Washington, D. C.: SIR: I have the honor to transmit herewith papers* concerning Capt. William Gramm aud Lieut. Isaac A. Wade, Eighth Virginia Volunteers, who are confined in the Richmond penitentiary as hostages for Daniel Dusky and Jacob Varner, who were tried by a U. S. court in Western Virginia and sentenced to imprisonment for robbing a post-office, and to request that you will submit the cases of these last-named men to the President with a view to their being pardoned by him as a necessary preliminary to their being exchanged for Captain Gramm and Lieutenant Wade. Very respectfully, sir, your obedient servant, EDWIN M. STANTON, JUDGE-ADVOCATE-GENERAL'S OFFICE, Hon. E. M. STANTON, Secretary of War: The parties in question are two lieutenants and thirteen privates, &c., in the company of one Captain Hall, of Col. Adam Johnson's regiment of partisan rangers. They constituted part of a force which crossed the river from Kentucky into Indiana about November 1 last, for the purpose, as is alleged, of securing a hostage for a rebel surgeon who had been previously captured or detained by our forces. During this expedition a number of horses were taken. Shortly afterward the men in question were captured by our forces or by an organized party from Indiana and lodged in prison and placed under indictment for horse stealing. It is now urged on the part of the rebel authorities that these men should be exchanged as prisoners of war and released from their confinement as * Probably Ludlow to Hoffman May 14, 1863, with indorsements, Vol. V, this series, p. 610. (1) 1 R R-SERIES II, VOL VI on. criminals. In answer to this demand it is to be said in the first place that it is by no means clearly made out that these parties are officers and men of the rebel army and therefore proper subjects for exchange. It is not shown under what command this regiment was, in what brigade, division, or part of the rebel army, nor whether it has been stationed for any purpose in the part of Kentucky where its operations were carried The enemy has no post or garrison in that region and no regular force. The party which crossed into Indiana seems to have been acting independently, carrying on a border warfare or making a raid as frontiersmen. The very name of the regiment to which the company in question is alleged to have belonged, Colonel Johnson's partisan rangers, discloses the probable character of these troops and seems to fix their character as guerrillas or bushwhackers. It does not appear that these men were regularly mustered into the service of the enemy (as supposed by Colonel Ludlow), but only that they had been sworn in. But whether this formality was anything more than the administering of an oath or pledge to them as guerrillas or independent partisans is not made evident. Whether these men therefore should be regarded as engaged in regular warfare as officers and soldiers of the enemy's army is extremely questionable. Moreover it is not deemed advisable that the jurisdiction which the State of Indiana has assumed to exercise over these parties should be interfered with under the circumstances. The authorities of that State have had the best opportunity to determine the character of these men and their purposes, both of which were probably notorious along the border. They have known them as citizens of a loyal State, yet as operating themselves in the rebel interest or more probably as taking advantage of the existing hostilities to engage in raids on their own account and independently of any organized army in the field. With this knowledge the authorities of Indiana, who must also be presumed to have arrested these men with good grounds for believing that they had committed the crime in question, have confined and indicted the parties as felons. This action has been with them a measure of police regulation as well as a proceeding under law and statute, and it should not be interfered with except upon the strongest grounds of public or military policy. If the State of Indiana had been invaded by a regularly constituted army of the enemy, and afterward during the war her civil authorities had succeeded in arresting any rebel soldiers known to have taken and converted private property during the invasion, and had proceeded against them as for a felony, their acts would doubtless have been sanctioned by the non-interference of military authority. But in the present case the reasons for such non-interference are still more grave and cogent. If the parties in question can prove by legal testimony that they are officers or soldiers of the Confederate army and that the acts for which they are indicted were committed under the orders or sanction of superior officers of that army, such proof will operate as a good defense upon their trial and the validity of such a defense can be determined far more satisfactorily in the neighborhood where the offense was committed and by testimony given under oath before a formal tribunal, than upon the loose and irresponsible statements of enemies, which now constitute the only data in the case. Respectfully submitted. List of prisoners referred to.* J. HOLT, Judge-Advocate-General. * Omitted. INDIANAPOLIS, June 11, 1863. Colonel HOFFMAN, Commissary-General of Prisoners: Considering the state of things in Indiana and the small force at this place being required at other points, together with some signs of an attempted co-operation with traitors outside, it is highly impolitic that the rebel prisoners should remain here. Where shall I send them? O. B. WILLCOX, Brigadier-General. OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS, Brig. Gen. O. B. WILLCOX, Commanding, Indianapolis, Ind.: GENERAL: I have this moment received your telegram of this date requesting that the rebel prisoners might be removed from Camp Morton and I have replied to send them to Fort Delaware;* but if General Grant is as successful as we hope he will be it will probably be necessary again to send his prisoners to Camp Morton, and I hope you will be able in the meantime to make such arrangements for their security as will enable you to hold them without inconvenience. The accommodations for prisoners at Camp Morton are not good so far as their safekeeping is concerned, but they are about as good as at other camps, and as altogether they will not hold more than 12,000 to 15,000, it will hardly be possible to dispense with Camp Morton. The men of Streight's brigade are exchanged, partly with a view to furnish guards for prisoners. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, W. HOFFMAN, Colonel Third Infantry and Commissary-General of Prisoners. INDIANAPOLIS, June 11, 1863. Col. W. HOFFMAN: Prisoners had been started for Camp Chase before the receipt of your dispatch, but I have telegraphed General Mason to forward them to Fort Delaware. The rolls will be sent direct to Fort Delaware and one copy to you. Respectfully, O. B. WILLCOX. OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS, Brig. Gen. W. A. HAMMOND, Surgeon-General U. S. Army, Washington, D. C.: GENERAL: I have the honor to inform you that the QuartermasterGeneral has to-day given instructions for the erection at Fort Columbus of a hospital for the use of prisoners of war, calculated to accommodate as many sick as will probably be found among 8,000 to 10,000 prisoners. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, W. HOFFMAN, Colonel Third Infantry and Commissary-General of Prisoners. OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS, Capt. JOSEPH A. POTTER, Assistant Quartermaster, Chicago, Ill.: CAPTAIN: The Quartermaster-General has directed the system of sewerage recommended for Camp Douglas last year to be constructed and you have probably already received his instructions. The plan referred to is one prepared by one of the city engineers and submitted to me. You no doubt remember the gentleman's name, but perhaps you have some record of his claim for making the plan which was not allowed. I recall these items to your mind to assist if possible in recovering the paper, as I have been urging for some time past that something should be done to improve the sanitary condition of the camp, and this system of sewerage is the only one that can be adopted with any hope of success. I am, very truly, W. HOFFMAN, Colonel Third Infantry and Commissary-General of Prisoners. EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, June 12, 1863. Hon. ERASTUS CORNING, and others: GENTLEMEN: Your letter of May 19,* inclosing the resolutions of a public meeting held at Albany, N. Y., on the 16th of the same month, was received several days ago. The resolutions as I understand them are resolvable into two propositions-first, the expression of a purpose to sustain the cause of the Union, to secure peace through victory, and to support the Administration in every constitutional and lawful measure to suppress the rebellion; and secondly, a declaration of censure upon the Administration for supposed unconstitutional action, such as the making of military arrests. And from the two propositions a third is deduced, which is that the gentlemen composing the meeting are resolved on doing their part to maintain our common Government and country despite the folly or wickedness, as they may conceive, of any Administration. This position is eminently patriotic, and as such I thank the meeting and congratulate the nation for it. My own purpose is the same; so that the meeting and myself have a common object, and can have no difference except in the choice of means or measures for effecting that object. And here I ought to close this paper and would close it if there was no apprehension that more injurious consequences than any merely personal to myself might follow the censures systematically cast upon me for doing what in my view of duty I could not forbear. The resolutions promise to support me in every constitutional and lawful meas ure to suppress the rebellion, and I have not knowingly employed nor shall I knowingly employ any other. But the meeting by their resolutions assert and argue that certain military arrests and proceedings following them for which I am ultimately responsible are unconstitutional. I think they are not. The resolutions quote from the Constitution the definition of treason, and also the limiting safeguards and guarantees therein provided for the citizen on trials of treason, and on his being held to answer for capital or otherwise infamous crimes, and in criminal prosecutions his right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury. *See Vol. V, this series, p. 654. They proceed to resolve "that these safeguards of the rights of the citizen against the pretensions of arbitrary power were intended more especially for his protection in times of civil commotion." And apparently to demonstrate the proposition the resolutions proceed: They were secured substantially to the English people after years of protracted civil war, and were adopted into our Constitution at the close of the Revolution. Would not the demonstration have been better if it could have been truly said that these safeguards had been adopted and applied during the civil wars and during our Revolution instead of after the one and at the close of the other? I, too, am devotedly for them after civil war and before civil war and at all times, "except when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require" their suspension. The resolutions proceed to tell us that these safeguards "have stood the test of seventy-six years of trial under our republican system under circumstances which show that while they constitute the foundation of all free government they are the elements of the enduring stability of the Republic." No one denies that they have so stood the test up to the beginning of the present rebellion if we except a certain occurrence at New Orleans, nor does any one question that they will stand the same test much longer after the rebellion closes. But these provisions of the Constitution have no application to the case we have in hand, because the arrests complained of were not made for treason-that is, not for the treason defined in the Constitution, and upon the conviction of which the punishment is death-nor yet were they made to hold persons to answer for any capital or otherwise infamous crimes, nor were the proceedings following in any constitutional or legal sense "criminal prosecutions." The arrests were made on totally different grounds and the proceedings following accorded with the grounds of the arrests. Let us consider the real case with which we are dealing and apply it to the parts of the Constitution plainly made for such cases. Prior to my installation here it had been inculcated that any State had a lawful right to secede from the National Union, and that it would be expedient to exercise the right whenever the devotees of the doctrine should fail to elect a President to their own liking. I was elected contrary to their liking, and accordingly so far as it was legally possible they had taken seven States out of the Union, had seized many of the U. S. forts, and had fired upon the U. S. flag, all before I was inaugu rated, and of course before I had done any official act whatever. The rebellion thus begun soon ran into the present civil war, and in certain respects it began on very unequal terms between the parties. The insurgents had been preparing for it for more than thirty years, while the Government had taken no steps to resist them. The former had carefully considered all the means which could be turned to their account. It undoubtedly was a well-pondered reliance with them that in their own unrestricted efforts to destroy Union, Constitution, and law all together the Government would in great degree be restrained by the same Constitution and law from arresting their progress. Their sympathizers pervaded all departments of the Government and nearly all communities of the people. From this material, under cover of "liberty of speech," "liberty of the press" and habeas corpus, they hoped to keep on foot amongst us a most efficient corps of spies, informers, suppliers, and aiders and abettors of their cause in a thousand ways. They knew that in times such as they were inaugurating by the Constitution itself the habeas corpus might be suspended, but they also knew that they had friends who would make a question as to who was to suspend it, meanwhile their spies and others might remain |