Hi Gerald:

My answer is no. There are a number of interesting and informative books out there on the subject of Civil War Prisons, but none of the authors have dug down into the issues that surrounded the Dix-Hill Cartel and the cause its collapse.

My personal research into the parole and exchange of the Vicksburg and Port Hudson garrisons in the summer of 1863 has led me to believe that most authors accept the Federal version of history on this issue and never dig any deeper. The Confederate threat to send captured black Union soldiers back into slavery was, and is, a wonderful smoke screen for avoiding a discussion of the Union war of attrition waged against the Confederates from 1863 through the end of the war. Offering up the notion that the Union government made policy decisions related to the exchange of POWs in the last two years of the war which were directly responsible for the camps at Andersonville and elsewhere is heresy and may get me "banned" to the News & Views board. But my conclusions are based upon what I have found in the records, and not some primal need to howl at the moon. Both Union and Confederate POWs who suffered and died from July 1863 until the end of the war paid the price of this "war of attrition" policy of the Union government. I fancy that my conclusions represent an "informed opinion" and not an "inflammed opinion".

I had hoped to post a response to your earlier question about the rules for allowing men to take the Oath of Allegiance during the war, but have not got around to looking over all the material I have collected on the subject. I don't have an answer to your specific question about the decisions made at the Louisville Military Prison which became a distribution center for Confederate POWs flowing north in 1864 and 1865. My observation has been that generally the able bodied POWs were sent to Camp Douglas (and Rock Island?) while the sick, convalescent wounded, and those otherwise disabled seemed to be sent to Camp Chase. It was from Camp Chase via Fort Delaware that many of the sick and disabled were sent for the special exchanges in the fall of 1864 and February/March 1865. These observations are based upon my 12th Louisiana Infantry research, as well as my on-going study of Fort Delaware POW records.

My sense is that the decision about who was allowed to take an Oath of Allegiance during the war was highly politicized and to a considerable extent tightly controlled personally by Secretary Edwin M. Stanton in the Federal War Department. But then there were exceptions. I just came across the record of a young soldier from West Virginia enrolled for less than three months in a Virginia cavalry regiment who was captured during the Gettysburg campaign and sent to Fort Delaware. The records indicate that the Post Commandant General Schoepf personally authorized his taking the Oath at Fort Delaware and his return to West Virginia with orders to report to the Union Governor at Charleston. This soldier wasn't from any well known political family.

My research on prisoners captured at Champion Hill and Big Black Bridge in May 1863 suggests that they were badgered throughout the trip North on the issue of taking the Oath. Many of these POWs asked to take the Oath, but only those who were able bodied were allowed to do so. They (about 750) were promptly enrolled in several "galvanized" units associated with Fort Delaware in the summer and fall of 1863. I do not yet understand why some others were not allowed to take the Oath. One of our Fort Delaware POW artists, apparently able bodied, was not allowed to take the Oath, but was allowed to roam about the post free to make sketches.

In response to another issue you rasied earlier, it was a requirement from as early as 1862, that those POWs who were allowed to take the Oath had to remain in the North (the Loyal States) until the war was over. The belief was that if they returned home to the Confederate States after taking the Oath, that the Confederates would eventually find them and force them back into service.

Your two postings have asked broad general questions. If you have any specific situation that doesn't make sense, I will be happy to offer my opinion based upon my own research and knowledge.

Hugh Simmons
Fort Delaware Society