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.
