HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE TENNESSEE,
La Grange, Tenn., November 19, 1862.

Major General EARL VAN DORN, Abberville, Miss.

GENERAL: Your note of yesterday* in relation to Haywood's cavalry and the release of Lieutenant Sulivane, your aide-de-camp, is just received. I will order the immediate release on parole of all of Captain Haywood's men now in our hands. You may regard the release of Lieutenant Sulivane as final and complete and I will so regard that of Captain Silence.

Accompanying your letter was one+ from Chief of Cavalry W. H. Jackson relative to the seizure of two horses by Colonel Lee from hospital steward and medical director to his command and making inquiry whether this is to be regarded as a precedent. To this I only have to reply that it is following every precedent that has come to my knowledge since the beginning of the war. There has been no instance to my knowledge where one of our surgeons has been permitted after capture to retain his horse or even his private pocket instruments. In the very last instance of the capture of one of our surgeons by Southern troops at Britton's Lane the surgeon was deprived of his horse. I am disposed, however, to deal as leniently as possible with all captives, and am willing in future to adopt as a rule of action that none of the necessary camp and garrison equipments or accompaniments of that class of persons who by agreement are exempted from arrest as prisoners of war shall be taken. This of course to be mutual by both parties.

I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

U. S. GRANT,

Major-General.

HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF MEMPHIS,
Memphis, November 19, 1862.

Major JOHN A. RAWLINS,

Assistant Adjutant-General, La Grange.

SIR: Inclosed is a communication+ of Lieutenant General J. C. Pemberton, Confederate Army, dated Jackson, Miss., November 12, 1862, received by me at the hands of a flag of truce night before last. I replied++ yesterday and send you herewith a copy. I ought not to have answered, but the time to be consumed in referring it to you would have endangered the safety of the four men enumerated by General Pemberton. It seems he acts on orders from the Government at Richmond, and I thought proper to show him how certain retaliation by them would entail on their own prisoners certain destruction. To enable you to answer fully and conclusively I subjoin a short history of the case.

On the 4th of September last I sent Colonel Grierson with a detachment of the Sixth Illinois Cavalry toward Hernando to break up a rendezvous of guerrillas, after accomplishing which his orders were to proceed over to the Pigeon Roost Road and break up certain other parties there forming near Coldwater. He accomplished the first-named purpose, taking ten prisoners, whom he dispatched back toward Memphis with an escort of fifteen of his men commanded by Lieutenant Nathaniel B.

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*See Van Dorn to Commanding Officer U. S. forces near La Grange, November 17, 1862, p. 946.

+Not found.

++Omitted here; Pemberton to General Commanding U. S. forces, p. 702, and Sherman to Pemberton, November 18, p. 723.

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