the regiments are thoroughly competent for their position, but we submit that there is gross negligence somewhere; for prisoners to have or get ladders and climb over prison walls within ten steps of a sentinel certainly argues a laxity of discipline which demands instant reform. This is not the first nor second escape, but we hope it will be the last.

LIBBY PRISON, Richmond, November 20, 1862.

Governor CURTIN:

I hope you will pardon me for trespassing on your valuable time about a question of vital importance to us. On the 4th day of October last two companies of the Fifty-fourth Regiment (Colonel J. M. Campbell), stationed on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, were captured by the First Regiment Virginia Partisan Rangers, under Colonel Imboden, consisting of 900 infantry, 500 cavalry, and three pieces of artillery. The companies captured were Company K, Captain Newhard, Lieutenant Wagner, and 58 men; Company B, Captain Hite, Lieutenants Cole and Baer, and 89 men, making in all 152 officers and men. Yesterday we were officially informed that we were not fit subjects for parole or exchange, accompanied with the following note:

All prisoners taken by our partisan rangers are held as hostages for our rangers, who are held by the Northern Government not as prisoners of war but outlaws.

T. P. TURNER,

Captain, Commanding C. S. Military Prison.

Believing that the number of rangers thus held by the Government is less than the number held by the rebels as hostages I have ventured to ask Your Excellency (if consistent with your views in regard to the matter) to ask the General Government for the release of those rangers so that we may be exchanged and be made useful to our country. A six months' treatment as ours has been will kill eight out of every ten men. Forty more Pennsylvanians captured by rangers arrived here to-day. I hope Your Excellency will pardon me for asking so much of you.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

HARRY G. BAER,

Lieutenant, Company B, Fifty-fourth Pennsylvania Volunteers.

[Indorsement.]

DECEMBER 2, 1862.

Respectfully referred to the Secretary of War.

A. G. CURTIN,

Governor of Pennsylvania.

HEADQUARTERS PROVOST-MARSHAL'S OFFICE,
Washington, D. C., November 20, 1862.

Colonel W. HOFFMAN, Commissary-General of Prisoners:

Your communication* of this date is received and in reply the provost-marshal directs me to state he does not fully understand what you mean by civil prisoners of war, but supposes it refers to what we term prisoners of state.

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*See Hoffman to Doster, p. 738.

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