union refused to exchange with Andersonville even knowing the situation
look it up
dont need to lecture me on Vicksburg
I am from there......wandered that maze of granite monuments and kudzu as a boy.....replete with ghosts
my great great great and great great grandfathers were there
and I assume
paroled...... with Bolstons (sic) MS cavalry
I did, some of the details are here.
One of my ancestors was exchanged, and eventually went back to the fight.
That's one reason I have huge respect for all involved.
O.E.O.: "And prisoner exchanges were halted because the rebels refused to consider black Union - the ones they didn't murder first that is - to be soldiers."
I personally did not know those exchanges were at some point officially shut down, by Washington.
Various reasons were given, and if you read the link you'll see where even Ken Burns PBS series bought into one of them -- a cockamamie story about black Union soldiers.
The truth of the matter was brutal military necessity.
In military theory, the offensive army needed three-to-one superior numbers over defenders.
After 1863 the Union Army was typically on offense, Confederates defending, and so every Confederate prisoner released for defense was equivalent to three Union soldiers on offense.
That's why Washington shut down POW exchanges.
By the way, my ancestor was captured and paroled by that most offensive of all offensive Confederates, cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forest.
Forest did not consider my ancestor's unit as any more dangerous than boy-scouts at a campfire, probably more trouble to the Union that it could ever be to Confederates, so Forest was content to release them.
In the end, my guys proved Forest wrong, but it certainly did take years...