Friday, January 23, 2015

January 24, 1865---Prisoner Exchanges resume

JANUARY 24, 1865:                   


After almost two years of refusing to abide by Northern demands to treat captured U.S.C.T. as regular Prisoners of War, the Confederate Congress agrees (“in principle”) to do so. This action reestablishes the suspended system of Prisoner Exchanges, potentially freeing tens of thousands of men from the hellish conditions of Civil War P.O.W. Camps.  The Confederate decision to do so is one born of desperation.
 
General Ulysses S. Grant U.S.A. had for two years been perfectly pleased to let Union prisoners stay where they were since they were acting as a drain on Southern resources. 

The Confederacy can no longer even take marginal care of its own wounded and needy, much less captured prisoners, and word of the ever-worsening conditions and the spiraling death rates at Southern P.O.W. Camps appalled the General to the point where he no longer felt the price was one worth paying. Hence, he accepted the Confederate offer. 

Northern camps were no better, in truth. 56,000 P.O.W.s died during the war, out of a total (North and South) of 425,000 men held captive.


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