"While the poet was in Brooklyn, his brother George was captured on September 30, 1864, at Poplar Grove, Virginia, sent to prisons in Salisbury, North Carolina, and Richmond, and eventually placed in a Confederate military prison in Danville, Virginia...Jeff and Walt coordinated their efforts in sending food and clothing to George and attempting to secure his release. This was a period of great fear, anxiety, and frustration for the Whitman family. Daily they read lurid newspaper accounts of the barbarous conditions in Confederate prisons and hospitals...At the same time, the likelihood of a general prisoner exchange seemed ever more remote." (97)

I begin to think that after all that it is quite likely that Gen Grant is the one that does not want to give an exchange--do you think that is so--can it be that he is willing to let the men starve and die without result.  I have almost come to the conclusion that it is hardly possible that the things we send to George can reach him (yet I propose to keep sending, hoping that a proportion may do so.) and have for the last few days been trying to think of some other way in which he might be relieved--I see by the papers of to-day that a certain "Gen Haynes["] and another a first Lieut in a Michigan Reg had arrived at Richmond from Danville to be specially exchanged--I have heard that they are making such special exchanges every now and then when the right "axe to grind" influence can be brought to bear--. . ." (1/31/65; p. 100)

Did you see the tribune of to-day--It had a long letter from Mr Richardson about the exchange of prisoners--I thought strongly and well written--to-night's Evening Post extracts quite a long passage from it.  How horrible the whole thing is.  It does seem as if the Government could hardly dare to turn a deaf ear to the call for an exchange--I wish you could write upon the same subject and keep it before the reading public . . ." (2/3/65, pp. 102-103)

"On February 3, the New York Tribune devoted two and a half columns to Albert D. Richardson's "Our Prisoners in the South."  Richardson had been imprisoned at Salisbury, North Carolina, from February 3, 1864 to December 18, 1864, when he escaped.  Richardson not only argued that the Confederates were "deliberately killing" Union men, but he also attacked the inactivity of "well-fed and well-clothed Senators in their warm chamber . . . [and] cushioned chairs . . . I wish they would look into those foul pens at Salisbury, which by a perversion of the English tongue are called hospitals; . . . I wish they could look on the dead cart with its rigid forms, piled upon each other like logs--the stark swaying arms--the white, ghostly faces, with their dropped jaws and their staring, stony yes-- . . . I think a few hours in the stillness of that garrison . . . would change their view of the matter." (fn. 102-103)

"On February 22, 1865, George gained his freedom as part of a general prisoner exchange.  He was soon granted a thirty-day furlough, which was extended, because of his poor health, until about April 24.  On his return to military duty he was assigned command of a military prison in Alexandria, Virginia, where he remained until July 27, 1865."  (109)