How the Prisoners are to Get their Pay

WAR DEPT., ADJ’T GENERAL’S OFFICE,

WASHINGTON, October 28, 1861

General Order No. 90

The following plan for paying the families of officers and soldiers in the service of the United States, who are, or may become prisoners of war, the sums due them by the Government, having been approved by the President, it is published for the information of all concerned.

Payments will be made to persons presenting written authority from a prisoner to draw his pay – or without such authority, to his wife, the guardian of his minor children, or his widowed mother or in the order named.

Applications for such pay must be made to the senior paymaster of the district in which the regiment of the prisoner is serving, and must be accompanied by the certificate of a judge of a court of the United States, of a District Attorney of the United States, or of some other party under the seal of a Court of Record of the State in which the applicant is a resident , setting forth that the said applicant is the wife of the prisoner, the guardian of his minor children, or his widowed mother, and if occupying either of the last two relationships towards him, there is no one who is more nearly related according to the above classification.

Payments will be made to parties thus authorized and identified, on their receipts made out in the manner that would be required of the prisoner himself, at least one month’s pay, being in all cases retained by the United States.  The officer making the payment will see that it is entered on the last previous muster roll for the payment of the prisoner’s or will report it, if those rolls are not in his possession, to the senior paymaster of the district; who will either attend to the entry or give notice to the payment to the Paymaster General, if the rolls have been forwarded to his office.  By order,

[Signed]

L. THOMAS

Adjutant General

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, June 7, 1862, p. 1