RICHMOND, July 6,
1861.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
President and Commander-in-Chief
of the Army and Navy of the United States.
SIR: Having learned that the schooner Savannah, a private
armed vessel in the service and sailing under a commission issued by authority
of the Confederate States of America, had been captured by one of the vessels
forming the blockading squadron off Charleston Harbor I directed a proposition
to be made to the officer commanding that squadron for an exchange of the
officers and crew of the Savannah for prisoners of war held by this Government “according
to number and rank.” To this proposition
made on the 19th ultimo Captain Mercer, the officer in command of the
blockading squadron, made answer on the same day that “the prisoners (referred
to) are not on board of any of the vessels under my command.”
It now appears by statements made without contradiction in
newspapers published in New York that the prisoners above mentioned were
conveyed to that city, and have there been treated not as prisoners of war but
as criminals – that they have been put in irons, confined in jail, brought
before the courts of justice on charges of piracy and treason, and it is even
rumored that they have been actually convicted of the offenses charged – for no
other reason than that they bore arms in defense of the rights of this
Government and under the authority of its commission.
I could not without grave discourtesy have made the
newspaper statements above referred to the subject of this communication if the
threat of treating as pirates the citizens of this Confederacy armed for its
service on the high seas had not been contained in your proclamation* of April
last. That proclamation, however, seems to afford a sufficient justification
for considering these published statements as not devoid of probability.
It is the desire of this Government so to conduct the war
now existing as to mitigate its horrors as far as may be possible, and with
this intent its treatment of the prisoners captured by its forces has been
marked by the greatest humanity and leniency consistent with public obligation.
Some have been permitted to return home on parole; others to remain at large
under similar condition within this Confederacy, and all have been furnished
with rations for their subsistence such as are allowed to our own troops. It is
only since the news has been received of the treatment of the prisoners taken
on the Savannah that I have been compelled to withdraw these indulgences and to
hold the prisoners taken by us in strict confinement.
A just regard to humanity and to the honor of this Government
now requires me to state explicitly that painful as will be the necessity this
Government will deal out to the prisoners held by it the same treatment and the
same fate as shall be experienced by those captured in the Savannah; and if
driven to the terrible necessity of retaliation by your execution of any of the
officers or crew of the Savannah that retaliation will be extended so far as
shall be requisite to secure the abandonment by you of a practice unknown to
the warfare of civilized man and so barbarous as to disgrace the nation which
shall be guilty of inaugurating it.
With this view and because it may not have reached you I now
renew the proposition made to the commander of the blockading squadron to
exchange for the prisoners taken on the Savannah an equal number of those now
held by us according to rank.**
I am, sir, &c.,
JEFFERSON DAVIS,
President and
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy
of the Confederate
States of America.
_______________
* To appear in Series III.
** No answer to this letter found.
SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of
the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series II, Volume
3 (Serial No. 79), p. 116
