FEINBERG/WHITMAN  
 Box 32 Folder 24

  LITERARY FILE 

Prose "Policy of the War Department in Not Exchanging Prisoners"    (DCN 24)       (1864).                       
   [*Editorial*]
The policy of the War Department is 
not exchanging prisoners

We print in another column a communication 
on the exchange of prisoners of war,
which has been sent us by Walt Whitman,
who, we understand, is a steadfast member of
a republican family, and therefore not likely to
find fault with the administration without
grounds. Our government seems to be desirous
of building itself a name for bad faith toward
its captured soldiers that will be a stain
on it forever & in both immediate and prospective
results will certainly lose it more than it will gain.

It is now well known by all in the inside
circles that the stick about exchanging the
blacks is only a pretense for popular effect, 
& that the [course] policy of the War Department
is to let the Union prisoners south die off,
while we retain the captured southerners.

Mr Whitman we think utters the 
general opinion of all the candid men of
his own & every party in the land, in
saying in plain terms that the wholesale
deaths of our sons & brethren in the southern
stockades the past year rest on  no
other than the heads of members of our own government.Friends of the Detroit Public Library, Inc.        
                                                                                                 #712

1864  Policy of the War Department Not to Exchange Prison-
ers; a note. A.M.S (1p. 26 X 20 cm.)

Whitman condemns "the policy of the War Department to let the Union 
prisoners South die off while we retain captured Southerners." {24}