Head-quarters, Seventh
Army Corps, Fort Monroe, Va.,
August 12, 1862.
Brigadier-General J. K. [F]. Mansfield, commanding at
Suffolk, Va.:
General,—I
have read your instructions to your Provost-marshal, and think them right and
proper.
I was yesterday at Fort Wool, and discharged a large number
of prisoners on parole. I found quite a number from Nansemond and Gates
Counties, and retain them for the purpose of communicating with you. I examined
several of them, and am satisfied that they have committed no act of hostility
against the United States. That they sympathize with the insurgents there is no
doubt; but if we undertake to arrest all such persons, our forts and prisons
would not contain a tithe of them. So long as they continue quietly about their
business they should not be molested.
The exercise of this power of arrest is at the same time the
most arbitrary and the most delicate which a state of war devolves on a
military commander, and it is one which should not be delegated to a
subordinate. I find that many of the persons imprisoned at Fort Wool were
arrested by Colonel Dodge, and some of them on suspicion. This must not be
repeated. Your subordinates may arrest persons detected in open nets of
hostility to the Government. But in every other instance, and in every case,
the order for arrest should come from you; or, if an arrest is made in an
emergency without your order, the case should be brought directly before you,
and the evidence taken before the party is sent here for imprisonment. Two of
the persons sent to Fort Wool by you have died within the last three days — one
of them Mr. Jordan, the most respectable of all in standing. His body goes to
his friends in Norfolk to-day. Imprisonment at Fort Wool is a most severe
punishment at this season. The water is bad, and the heat is intense; and no
citizen should be sent there for a light cause, and without pretty clear
evidence of guilt. If parties in your neighborhood need temporary restraint,
you must find some place of safe keeping there, unless the case is very marked.
My inclination is to discharge all these persons on a
stringent parole. But before doing so I await your reply, with your views on
any particular case or cases.
I am, very
respectfully, yours,
John A. Dix.
SOURCE: Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John Adams Dix,
Volume 2, p. 43-4
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