Friday, April 17, 1964
Page 13
Prison Exchange Policy Turned Tide in Civil War
United Press International
A few small holes in the Union offense and defense remained to be plugged up as April, 1864 came to a close and the Civil War equivalent of D-day approached.
From now on until it ended the war for the Union was to be one of attition as well as of offense. One way to cripple the Confederacy, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, new commander of all the northern armies, decided, was to quit exchanging war prisoners.
Prisoner exchange in the Civil War was an on-again off-again affair. Sometimes prisoners were paroled on the spot when they signed up not to fight again until regularly exchanged. Grant had done that at Vicksburg, releasing the captured garrison rather then send them all the way north to prison camps. He believed, too, that many of them had enough of war and never would fight again.
BUT SOME OF the Confederate
Beginning of the End Awaits 1964 Seniors
May 22 will mark the beginning of the last set of final exams for many of the seniors of 64.
some of the graduates will enroll for graduate study, but most of them will have finished their formal education June 1, commencement day.
For all, this has meant passing the English proficiency and fulfilling the foreign language requirements.
STARTING WITH THE Relays today, there are many activities which will keep seniors and undergraduates busy until the end of the semester. They are:
April 17 Kansas Relays. Engineering Exposition Baseball, Colorado, there.
18 Kansas Relays.
International Festival.
Engineering Exposition.
Baseball, Colorado,
there.
Law School Admission Test
22 & 23 Speech I Potpourri,
University Theatre,
"Period of Adjustment."
24 "Period of Adjustment."
Baseball, Oklahoma - there.
25 SUA Jazz Festival.
Graduate Record Exams.
"Period of Adjustment."
Baseball, Oklahoma,
there.
French Ph.D. Reading Exam.
26 University Chorus Symphony Concert Museum of Art Exhibition Opening.
27 Accountants Day.
30 Bobby Fischer, world's chess champion.
Delta Sigma Rho Public Affairs Speaking Contest
May 1 Baseball, Iowa State,
here.
Model UN.
NDEA Loan Application deadline for summer session.
2 Baseball, Iowa State,
here.
College Board Exams.
Cervantes Day.
German Ph.D. Reading
Exam.
Victor DuBois, expert
on former French areas
of West Africa, American
Universities Field
Staff Speaker.
Model UM
3 Symposium of Contemporary American Music
4 AWS Honors Night. Symposium of Contemporary American
5 Symposium of Contemporary American music
18 Law School semester exams begin.
8 ROTC Chancellor's Review Baseball, Oklahoma State, there
17 Pops Concert.
Drama Symposium.
Baseball, Nebraska,
there.
Western Civilization Exam.
19 Baseball, Kansas State here
9 Kansan Board Dinner.
Baseball, Oklahoma
State, there.
Language Proficiency
Exam.
20 Baseball, Kansas State,
here.
10 Band Concert.
16 Big Eight Outdoor Championships in track, golf, tennis, Oklahoma State.
22-28 Final Exams.
14 Drama Symposium.
15 Drama Symposium.
parolees were captured in the fighting around Chattanooga without having been exchanged.
That turned the wrath of the North against Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and he prohibited any more paroles.
June 1 Commencement. Joint ROTC Commissioning. NDEA Loan Application deadline for 1964-65
15 Drama Symposium.
Baseball, Nebraska,
there.
land, Mai, Gen. Alfred Pleasanton who had been commanding the cavalry was sent to Missouri.
Sheridan arrived in Washington on April 4. Grant was the only officer he knew in the capital and their acquaintance had been short.
He went to see Stanton and "I could feel that (he) was eyeing me closely and searchingly, endeavoring to form some estimate about one he knew absolutely nothing . . ." Sheridan wrote 24 years later.
Summer enrollment and classes in the School of Law begin June 2. Summer enrollment in the other schools is June 5-6. Classes begin June 8. The English Proficiency Exam will be given June 13 during the summer school session.
Another complicating factor was the northern reluctance to do anything that might be construed as recognizing the Confederacy as a nation. Exchange of prisoners was stopped several times on that score.
Still another factor was the Confederate attitude on Negro soldiers who might be captured and their white officers. President Jefferson Davis warned that captured Negro soldiers would go back into slavery and their white officers would be turned over to the states to be treated as instigators of slave insurrection. That in effect meant death. President Lincoln promised prompt and equal retaliation.
Reports of starvation rations in southern war prisoner camps prompted Stanton at one point to reduce food for Confederate prisoners by 20 per cent and later to threaten to give imprisoned Southerners the same rations Union captives were getting in Confederate camps. The threat never was carried out.
When Grant was made general of the armies Stanton prepared a memorandum advocating stopping all prison exchanges, pointing out that the South benefited more than the North when captives were traded man for man because the manpower
AT ANOTHER TIME Stanton sent rations to Richmond for Union prisoners. False reports circulated in the North that the Confederates confiscated the rations for themselves. The South resented the accusations and stopped distribution of the food.
HE AND THE troops did.
On April 17 Grant ordered no more exchanges.
of the Confederacy was vanishing and the North still had plenty of material.
"It is hard on our men in southern prison camps not to exchange them." Grant said, "but it is humanity to those left in the ranks . . . Every man we hold, when released on parole or otherwise, becomes an active soldier against us at once, either directly or indirectly. If we commence a system of exchange which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the South is exterminated. If we hold those caught they will amount to no more than dead men."
GRANT COMBED OUT all the northern garrisons for men to fight in his spring offensives. Soldiers who had spent the whole war in soft garrisons suddenly were sent to the front. To replace them the governors of Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin and Indiana on April 23 offered 100,000 100-day men for guard duty. President Lincoln accepted them, giving Grant added strength.
Grant was dissatisfied with the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac. He and the President were discussing it one day and Grant said he wanted the best possible men for the job of leading the mounted troops.
Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, who had willingly stepped down to chief of staff when Grant became commander, was at the conference and said:
"I was rather young in appearance—looking even under than over thirty-three—but five feet, five inches in height, and thin almost to emaciation, weighing only 115 pounds. If I had ever possessed any self-assertion in manners or speech, it certainly vanished in the presence of the imperious secretary . . ."
"THE VERY MAN I want," Gran replied.
"How would Sheridan do?"
So Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan was summoned from the West. He was primarily an infant officer. At the time he was commanding a division in the Army of the Cumber-
They told the story about him at the time when the Union forces captured the rifle pits at the foot of the ridge—the objective—Sheridan borrowed a flask from a staff officer, took a long pull, waved it at the Confederate headquarters above and said: "Here's at you."
SHERIDAN CAME TO his new command with a reputation as a fighter. His division was one of those which broke the Confederate center at Missionary Ridge.
Two Confederate guns fired at the group, showering Sheridan with dirt. "That is ungenerous; I shall take those guns for that," Sheridan replied.
Sheridan would put the eastern cavalry to work in his western way. A cavalryman to Sheridan was "only an infantryman with four detachable legs," using repeating carbines and revolvers but not the ancient badge of the mounted man, the saber.