Centreville, Sept. 16, '63.
I had occasion to see Stanton to-day, — and introduced [the
subject of] coloured prisoners, of course. He said he had long ago ordered
General Gilmore to demand from the rebel General a statement of what
Fifty-Fourth prisoners he had, and what their treatment was; — he had had no
reply from Gilmore, and was proposing to send an officer to Charleston on that
special mission, — if no satisfactory reply could be got from Beauregard, we
should assume the worst, and should retaliate. The Government had no information
of what men or officers they had, or even of what they were believed to have.
We cannot insist upon their exchanging this or that officer
in this or that regiment, but we can rightly demand an acknowledgment of the
equal claims of all, and can compel this uniform treatment. He was in
favour of refusing exchanges until we had secured these two points, — he did
not pretend to say, however, that this would be the policy of the
Administration, though he himself had the matter very much at heart.
Governor Andrew saw Mr. Lincoln yesterday and urged the same
points again to him, — he had an impression that it would be "all
right" yet. Stanton recognizes entirely the injustice and the impolicy of
yielding a hair's-breadth in the matter.
SOURCE: Edward Waldo Emerson, Life and Letters of
Charles Russell Lowell, p. 305-6
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