their crimes, if guilty, by the fact of their having been admitted to surrender by their captors, before knowledge of their offences. A discussion ensued which became so heated as almost to create unfriendly feeling, by reason of the unshaken firmness of Mr. Davis in maintaining that although these men merited a refusal to grant them quarter in the heat of battle, they had been received to mercy by their captors as prisoners of war, and as such were sacred; and that we should be dishonored if harm should overtake them after their surrender, the acceptance of which constituted, in his judgment, a pledge that they should receive the treatment of prisoners of war. To Jefferson Davis alone, and to his constancy of purpose, did these men owe their safety in spite of hostile public opinion, and in opposition to two-thirds of the Cabinet.
I forbear from further trespass on your space, although I am in possession of numerous other facts bearing on the subject that could not fail to interest all who are desirous of seeing justice done to the illustrious man, of whose present condition I will not trust myself to speak.
I remain, sir, your obedient servant,
General Butler's Lowell Speech.
In a review of Butler's speech at Lowell, the New York World holds the following language:
Butler does not content himself with attempting to show that General Grant's military operations in Virginia are a total failure; he also tries to fasten on him the brutal indifference to the sufferings of the Union soldiers. He not only insinuates that General Grant is guilty of a useless and butcherly prodigality of their lives, but endeavors to fasten on him the responsibility for their lingering starvation in loathsome Southern prisons. Butler states that himself had made a successful arrangement with Mr. Ould, the Southern Commissioner, for the exchange of all our white soldiers against an equal number of the Rebel prisoners held by us, leaving the exchange of the negroes for a separate and subsequent arrangement. This, he says, would have left a balance of fifteen thousand Rebel prisoners in our possession, and about five hundred negro prisoners in the hands of the Rebels. When matters had reached this stage, General Butler was permitted to proceed no further. What then followed was so remarkable, and puts upon a painfully interesting and much mooted question a face so entirely new, that the account of it must be given in General Butler's own language:
"I reported the points of agreement between myself and the Rebel agent to the Secretary of War, and asked for power to adjust the other questions of difference, so as to have the question of enslaving negro soldiers stand alone, to be dealt with by itself; and that the whole power of the United States should be exerted to do justice to those who had fought the battles of the country and been captured
