But little at the Cabinet of special importance. Governor Dennison, the
new Postmaster-General, for the first time took his seat.
Late in the afternoon the President called upon me to inquire
respecting arrangements for a proposed exchange of naval prisoners which was
making some disturbance at the War Department and with General Butler. For some
fifteen months our naval officers and men who had been captured remained in
Rebel prisons. Their number was not large, but the omission to exchange,
whether from neglect or design, was justly causing dissatisfaction. For more
than a year I had, at various times, made inquiry of the Secretary of War and
at the War Department, generally oral, but sometimes by letter, and received
evasive answers, — of difficulties on
account of remoteness, of unusual prisoners, of refusal by the Rebels to
exchange negroes, — but with assurances that matters would be soon adjusted.
Some of our men we had learned were in irons and in close confinement, with
slight prospect of relief. I gave the President briefly the facts, – that there
had been no exchange of naval prisoners for fourteen or fifteen months, that in
the exchanges going on no naval prisoners were embraced, that appeals earnest
and touching had been made to me by our prisoners and by theirs, but I had been
able to afford no relief.
An informal correspondence after months of unavailing effort through
the War Department channel had sprung up between Mr. Fox and Webb, who
commanded the Atlanta, and was a prisoner in Fort Warren, they having been some
years ago shipmates. Fox had written Webb in reply to an application for
release that we were willing to exchange but the Rebel authorities would not.
This had led the Rebel prisoners in Fort Warren to write most earnestly to
Richmond. A few weeks since Lieutenant-Commander Williams had been
released at Charleston, and sent to our fleet under flag of truce with thirty
days' leave to effect an exchange, and brought me a letter from Mallory,
"Secretary Confederate Navy,” stating he had not received letters which
had been sent, but accepting a proposition to exchange naval officers, and
proposing himself to exchange all naval prisoners. This had been
assented to by us, and we now sent orders for the Circassian to proceed with a
hundred or two prisoners to Port Royal and bring home our men. But after
instructions had been sent to Boston for them to go by the Circassian, we had
received by telegram from Ould1 word that the yellow fever prevailed
at Charleston, with a suggestion that the proper exchange could take place on
the James River. When this suggestion was made, I objected to it from an
impression that it would come within the army cartel and cause difficulty, but
after discussing the subject with Mr. Fox, who dwelt on the infection, getting
yellow fever in the squadron and at Port Royal, and some conversation with
General Hitchcock, I reluctantly yielded assent. Word had been sent to our
senior officer, Melancthon Smith, on the James, who had communicated with
Butler, and hence the difficulty.
_______________
1 Acting for the Confederate government.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the
Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866,
p. 168-9
