Henry W. Halleck to E.R.S. Canby, September 6, 1864
Major-General CANBY, New Orleans:
GENERAL: Lieutenant-General Grant directs that all the sick and detailed men of the part of the Nineteenth Corps now North be returned to their regiments or sent to Northern hospitals. I presume that General Grant’s order to make no more exchanges of prisoners was based on the fact that they give us only such men as they have utterly broken down by starvation, receiving in return from us men fit for duty. Every exchange, therefore, gives them strength without any corresponding advantage to us. Not so, however, with exchanges made on the battle-field or immediately after an engagement. Exchanges of this kind, made man for man, as provided for in the cartel, General Grant did not intend to prohibit. You and the officers under your command are, therefore, at liberty to continue the exchanges in the field as provided for in last clause of article 7 of the cartel of July 22, 1862.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
Major-General and Chief of Staff.
SPECIAL ORDERS, ) Hpgrs. MIL. Div. oF WEST MISSISSIPPI,
No. 120. New Orleans, La., September 6, 1864.
4. Paragraph 3, of Special Orders, No. 108, from these headquarters,
is so far modified as not to include in the organization of the First
Louisiana Cavalry Companies H, I, K, and L of the Second Louisiana