In January 1863, following issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, the United States began to actively recruit black soldiers. The following May, the Confederate Congress passed a joint resolution suspending exchange of black Union soldiers and their white officers, and ordering that they instead be put on trial and punished. On July 30, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln ordered suspension of exchanges of Confederate prisoners until the Confederacy agreed to treat black prisoners the same as white prisoners. On September 1, Lincoln approved 1,750 more Confederate recruits in order to bolster his election chances in Pennsylvania, enough to form two more regiments, to be sent to the frontier to fight American Indians. Due to doubts about their ultimate loyalty, galvanized Yankees in federal service were generally assigned to garrison forts far from the Civil War battlefields or in action against Indians in the west. However, desertion rates among the units of galvanized Yankees were little different from those of state volunteer units in Federal service. The final two regiments of U.S. Volunteers were recruited in the spring of 1865 to replace the 2nd and 3rd U.S.V.I., which had been enlisted as one-year regiments. Galvanized troops of the U.S. Volunteers on the frontier served as far west as Camp Douglas, Utah; as far south as Fort Union, New Mexico; and as far north as Fort Benton, Montana.