O.R.--SERIES II--VOLUME V [S# 118]

UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, ETC., RELATING TO PRISONERS OF WAR AND STATE FROM DECEMBER 1, 1862, TO JUNE 10, 1863.--#9

RICHMOND, January 25, 1863.

Lieutenant-Colonel LUDLOW, Agent of Exchange.

SIR: Your letters of the 23d have been received.

1. J. A. Flagg will be sent off by to-morrow's boat.

2. I prefer to retain the sutlers until I see you. <ar118_213>

3. It is not true that many of your prisoners at Richmond and Salisbury are suffering from want of clothing. I will hereafter inform you whether any clothing for their use will be received.

4. I will make due inquiry into the alleged fact that parties belonging to the Fourth Regiment East Tennessee and other Tennessee and Ohio regiments have been detained in Atlanta and Castle Thunder for over eight months. I do not think that such is the fact. If it is so they shall be delivered to you.

5. You say "that all the men taken in arms against the United States who belonged to your (our) irregular organizations have been released and delivered at Vicksburg." The representations daily made to me are exactly to the contrary. If credible testimony can be believed you have now many hundreds of our officers and men in confinement. By the express terms of our last agreement all such are to be immediately released, to whatever organization they may have belonged. They heretofore have been refused a release because they were styled "bushwhackers." They were not so in any sense of the term. Will you release them?

6. Some few of the officers captured at Fredericksburg were paroled and sent to your lines. If any injustice has been done to you by our agreement about reducing officers to privates or in any other subject-matter I will promptly redress it. It will, however, be impossible to arrange that matter without an interview. There must be many officers in your and our possession who by our agreement made at the last interview were declared exchanged. Such certainly ought to be mutually delivered up. The excess is on our side but I will stand it because I have agreed to it. I must, however, insist upon the immediate delivery of such of our officers as are included in the agreement.

7. The letter to the widow of the late General D. R. Jones was sent to her in a few minutes after its receipt.

8. I have many subjects upon which I desire to have a conference with you. Inform me unless you yourself come when you will be at City Point.

9. Inform me by the next communication whether you have any of our non-commissioned officers and privates on hand and when you will send them; also whether you intend to keep in confinement the citizen prisoners whom you have arrested.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

RO. OULD,
Agent of Exchange.

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