The obligations arising from the rights of humanity and claims of rank are universally binding and extensive, except in case of retaliation.

These, I should have hoped, would have dictated a more tender treatment of those individuals whom chance or war had put in your power.

Nor can I forbear suggesting its fatal tendency to widen that unhappy breach which you, and those ministers under whom you act, have repeatedly declared your wish is to see forever closed.
"My duty now makes it necessary to apprise you, that for the future I shall regulate all my conduct towards those gentlemen who are or may be in our possession, exactly by the rule you shall observe towards those of ours now in your custody.
"If severity and hardship mark the line of your conduct, painful as it may be to me, your prisoners will feel its effects.

But if kindness and humanity are shown to ours, I shall with pleasure consider those in our hands only as unfortunate, and they shall receive from me that treatment to which the unfortunate are ever entitled." This is a letter worthy of a little study.

The affair does not look very important now, but it went then to the roots of things; for this letter would go out to the world, and America and the American cause would be judged by their leader.