I thought paroles were for prisoners.

I mentioned in the last post that the unit Sharon's triple great grandfather belonged to was stationed in Marshall, Texas, at the end of the war and was told to report to Shreveport to obtain a parole before returning home.

But what does that mean, my astute wife asked? That's what I'll discuss today.

In today's thought, we'd most likely hear the word "parole" and think about prisoners in correctional institutions. We've seen the dramatizations of parole boards sitting to decide whether a  prisoner should be released before the end of his/her release. And we know that paroles come with conditions. 

The idea in war is not too different and seems mostly to be a way of managing prisoner of war populations. Maintaining prison camps demanded manpower and supplies, and if you can rid yourself of these detainees, all the better.

I remember an episode in a televised Horatio Hornblower series in which the good captain has been captured by the French. At one point the his expertise, along with that of the sailors he was imprisoned with, is needed to save French lives involved in a coastal accident. The French commandant offers Hornblower a parole in which he and his shipmates will be let out of their prison to effect a rescue if Hornblower promises not to try to escape and return to the prison. Not much of a parole, if you ask me. 

He agrees; the French are saved; and at the last moment, a British ship appears. The British sailors all set off to join the ship, but Hornblower tells his commanding office he has to return, per the agreement. The commander thinks he's overdoing it but lets him go.

Now that describes an "affair of honor," where gentlemen are bound by custom to keep their word, and a bit of that sneaks into the parole idea we're looking at today as well. 

The first paroles I could find for the Civil War came after Texas seceded from the Union. A federal commander, Major General David Twiggs, surrendered all the fed troops in Texas, but an agreement was worked out allowing them to head north as long as they promised not to join in the war until an equal number of Confederate troops had been released.

After Fort Sumter surrendered, the federal troops were paroled to their homes, and the Confederates provided transportation. Local commanders negotiated exchange agreements in the beginning of the war, but the talks sometime produced paltry results.

Other commanders simply returned prisoners without an agreement and were usually rewarded by the other side releasing an equal number. This was done mostly because the federal commanders were loathe to recognize the legitimacy of the Confederate government.

But the system eventually broke down. Sailors captured by federal forces would be considered to be pirates, and executions were ordered. When the South threatened to do the same, Lincoln intervened. Although popular sentiment cried out for a formal plan to create a federal plan for prisoner exchanges. An agreement was reached with reps from the Southern side.

This plan also broke down. Federal soldiers would not return to the field, opting to go home instead. Confederates would impress captured blacks and turn them into slaves. Attempts to fix the problems created new problems. Eventually exchanges dwindled and POW camps swelled.

Not until the final year of the war, under U.S. Grant's direction, did large-scale releases begin again. When Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. In the terms of surrender, the Southern troops had to surrender their arms, ammunition and supplies. Officers were allowed to keep their horses, side arms and personal belongings. Some enlisted men were also granted their horses and mules. 

For their part the Confederate troops had to promise to observe their parole -- meaning not taking up arms again against Federal forces -- and obey the law. Lee asked for printed proof of the troops' status and parole slips were printed up by the tens of thousands. Still, in many ways, the vanquished troops were simply pledging their honor. 

These slips provided immunity from prosecution and allowed Confederates to draw rations from the Federal government and obtain free passage on any federally operated railway or steam ship. All these provisions became part of the surrender across the nation.

What happened to the soldiers who refused to report to Federal forts as ordered? I couldn't find anything specific, so I suspect that as long as the defeated soldiers kept out of the limelight and kept their noses clean, not much at all happened to them. According to a summary of a book by William Blair, research professor of history at Penn State, "Northerners took a pragmatic approach to the war's end. They realized the impracticality of trying thousands of Southerners for disloyalty in states where juries were unlikely to deliver guilty verdicts, and that continued cries of treason would interfere with the more important task of nation-building." (See historian-explores-how-civil-war-northerners-reconciled-treason-leniency/)

Image: Parole slip issued to a Confederate soldier at the end of the Civil War.

More at: paroling-the-army-of-northern-virginia.htm