EX-PRISONERS AND PENSIONERS.
The following is an Appeal to Congress in behalf of the ex-prisoners of war, issued by Felix LaBaume, President of the “National Ex-Prisoners of War Association,” and I hope that the united efforts of every one of the survivors will be concentrated with an object in view which shall substantially benefit those who performed a most valuable service in putting down the rebellion, suffering horrors and privations that cannot fully be described, and for which privations and sufferings they have never been recognized in the existing pension laws.
APPEAL TO CONGRESS.
It is a historical fact that in the early part of 1864, shortly after the battles of the wilderness, certain high officials of the Federal government decided that it was more economical to stop the exchange of prisoners of war entirely.
The policy of non-exchange was understood to be based on the following facts:
That a soldier counted for more in the Confederate army then acting on the defensive; that many of the Andersonville prisoners were men whose term of service had already expired, that all of them were disabled by starvation and exposure, and unfit for further service, while every Confederate was able-bodied and “in for the war” so that an exchange would have been a gratuitous strengthening of the armies of the Confederacy, which, at the same time, would have prevented the prisoners held in the South from falling into the hands of Sherman.
August 14th, 1864, General Grant telegraphed to General Butler: “It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons, not to exchange them, but it is humane to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. If we now commence a system of exchange which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on till the whole South is exterminated. If we hold those captured, they count for more than dead men.”