United States Colored Troops As Prisoners of War
Prisoner exchanges between the Union and Confederacy were suspended when the Confederacy refused to return black soldiers captured in uniform. In October 1862, the Confederate Congress issued a resolution declaring all Negroes, free and slave, that they should be delivered to their respective states "to be dealt with according to the present and future laws of such State or States". In a letter to General Beauregard on this issue, Secretary Seddon pointed out that "Slaves in flagrant rebellion are subject to death by the laws of every slave-holding State" but that "to guard, however, against possible abuse...the order of execution should be reposed in the general commanding the special locality of the capture."
However, Seddon, concerned about the "embarrassments attending this question", urged that former slaves be sent back to their owners. As for freemen, they would be handed over to Confederates for confinement and put to hard labor. Some have claimed that the experience of colored troops and their white officers in prison life was not significantly different than members of white units. However, African American prisoners of war were forced to construct entrenchments around Richmond in 1864. There are no reports of white prisoners doing such forced labor under fire.
When Ulysses S. Grant became Commander of the Union Army, all exchanges were ceased. Union General Benjamin Butler later stated that: "He (Grant) said that I would agree with him that by the exchange of prisoners we get no men fit to go into our army, and every soldier we gave the Confederates went immediately into theirs, so that the exchange was virtually so much aid to them and none to us."
Read more about this topic: Military History Of African Americans In The American Civil War
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