OFFICE COMMISSARY-GENERAL OF PRISONERS,

Washington, D. C., October 29, 1862.

Colonel THOMAS T. GANTT,

Prov. March General Dist. of Missouri and Iowa, Saint Louis, Mo.

COLONEL: Your letter of the 15th and 18th are received. To obviate the in convenience which would arise from your not having authority to release prisoners from the Alton Prison I will direct the commanding officer to release on your order all such as may have been sent there by you on charges which on investigation prove to be informal. To prevent the necessity of sending up prisoners whose cases have not been decided on I wish as far as practicable you would hold such prisoners at the Gratiot Street Prison until a decision is had, and then if they are not to be released send them to Alton. That this prison may not be so much crowded I will direct that prisoners be transferred from time to time from there to the depot at Sandusky. I inclose herewith Orders,* Numbers 142, announcing the carte. You will perceive that by the supplementary article prisoners of war are to be sent with all reasonable dispatch (in the West) to Vicksburg where they will be exchanged or paroled. I have already given orders for them to be sent from Alton from time to time at the numbers justify it to Cairo, where the commanding officer is directed to take charge of them and forward them, and I wish you would send any that may ow be at the Gratiot Street Prison or that you may have in charge hereafter to that point with full rolls. I would not send less than ten at a time. A larger number would be better. It is the direction of the Secretary of War [illegible] Alton Prison.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. HOFFMAN,

Colonel Third Infantry, Commissary-General of Prisoners.

SPRINGFIELD, MO., October 29, 1862.

Major-General CURTIS:

Am I authorized to make exchange of prisoners held by us here for those taken and held by guerrilla bands? There are some cases where I would like to procure release of our friends if I am authorized to exchange. General Schofield is too far from the telegraph for me to communicate with him speedily.

WILLIAM W. ORME,

Colonel, Commanding.

GRATIOT STREET PRISON, October 29, 1862.

General CURTIS, Commanding Division of Missouri:

I wrote you on the 25th to which I have no reply and suppose you have not received my letter. It does not appear from your letter of the 23rd that General Holmes has refused to carry out the agreement between the two Governments except as to those which he claims were captured with armed negroes, and especially as to the exchange of privates. I now demand the exchange of privates belonging to the Twenty-first Texas Cavalry now confined at this prison, as well as my own exchange. I see from the newspapers that an officer of your army

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*Omitted here; see Cartel and Supplementary Articles, p. 266 et seq.

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