Dix–Hill Cartel

The Dix–Hill Cartel was the first official system for exchanging prisoners during the American Civil War. It was signed by Union Major General John A. Dix and Confederate Major General D. H. Hill at Haxall's Landing on the James River in Virginia on July 22, 1862.

The agreement established a scale of equivalents for captured officers to be exchanged for fixed numbers of enlisted men, and agents from each side were appointed to conduct the exchanges at particular locations. Prisoners could also be released on parole.

The system began to break down when the Congress of the Confederate States of America classified African-American prisoners of war as fugitive slaves on May 1, 1863, who ought to be returned to their owners instead of being exchanged. In the same act, captured white officers of armed "negroes or mulattoes" were withheld as incitors of a "servile insurrection", being threatened with legal prosecution up to and including the death penalty. On July 30, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued General Orders 252, which effectively suspended the Dix–Hill Cartel until the Confederate forces agreed to treat black prisoners the same as white prisoners. In August 1864, General Grant refused to reinstate the full agreement because the Union by that time held many more Confederate soldiers as prisoners than there were Union soldiers held by the Confederacy, though some exchanges continued. Exchanges officially resumed in January 1865.