was that they were confined in Fort Norfolk under recent orders from the Secretary of War.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

RO. OULD,

Agent of Exchange.

WAR DEPARTMENT, Richmond, Va., June 5, 1863.

Lieutenant Colonel WILLIAM H. LUDLOW, Agent of Exchange.

SIR: You seem to have misunderstood me in relation to the cases of Captains Corbin and McGraw. I did not ask for detailed information to be "prepared. " I asked for the records. You refer to the case of Captain Webster. In his case I offered to produce the record for your inspection but you expressed no desire to see it. If you have any such desire now I will immediately produce it upon notice. I will not give you a copy but show you the original and furnish you a copy at the same time. I understood you were satisfied with our proceedings in his case. If you want the record say so and it will be furnished.

If any person in our Confederacy with its means of intercommunication is so unfortunate as to be subjected to the penalty of death by judgment of a court-martial and you call for the record I will not wait one month for "detailed information" to be "prepared. " More especially will it be so when the proceedings and findings are approved by our President and the record thus necessarily be brought under his notice.

I again respectfully ask you will you produce the records in the case of Captains Corbin and McGraw?

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

RO. OULD,

Agent of Exchange.

RICHMOND, June 5, 1863.

Lieutenant Colonel WILLIAM H. LUDLOW, Agent of Exchange.

SIR: In one of your communications of the 2nd you refer to the correspondents of the press and say it has been the practice "to treat them as non-combatants and not to retain them. " I have been struggling for nearly twelve months to establish just such a rule as to non-combatants without success. The only difficulty I meet was in your consent.

When was the rule established that non-combatants were not to be retained? What was the date of its adoption by Burnside or Rosecrans or Milroy? What peculiar immunity should the correspondents of the Tribune have over an old gray-headed grandfather who never shouldered a musket or followed in the wake of an army? Wherein are they privileged over delicate and noble-souled women who are either languishing in your prisons or "released" to the rigors and dangers of the wilderness?

It seems to me that if any exception be made as to any non-combatants it should be against such men as the Tribune correspondents who have had more share even than your soldiery in bringing rapine, pillage and desolation to our homes. I have no compassion for any such, even if their miseries were ten-fold greater. You ask why I will not release them. 'This because they are the worst and most obnoxious of all non-combatants. Yet bad as they are, deeply as they have wronged and outraged us, they will be released if you will only discharge from imprisonment men and women "the latches of whose shoes they are unworthy to unloose. "