Unknown to Officer Commanding Guard on Board Steamer Metropolitan, November 23, 1862
Memphis, November 23, 1862.
The Officer Commanding Guard on Board Steamer Metropolitan :
Sim: I am officially advised by Lieut. Gen. J. C. Pemberton, commanding Confederate forces at Jackson, Tenn., that he holds four of our prisoners of war, viz, James E. Gaddy, Company E, Sixth Illinois Cavalry; Bernard Collins, Company EH, Thirty-ninth Ohio Infantry; A. W. Shipman, Company D, Forty-third Ohio Infantry, and Michael Hart, Company ©, Seventh Iowa Infantry, on whom he proposes,
by order of
the Confederate Government, to make retaliation for the killing of a
citizen named White, of De Soto County, Mississippi, in September last.
I have answered him at length by a flag of truce, and now inform you
that it is not a case for retaliation, and have the honor to request that,
on arrival at Vicksburg, you make specific demand for these prisoners,
and, if they be not forthcoming, that you withhold from exchange four of
like rank privates, to be ascertained by lot, and that you bring them to
Memphis to await the action of our Government. I regard this_as a