The Daily Dispatch: February 17, 1864., [Electronic resource]

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The Yankee prisoners.

We understand that a good many of the Yankee prisoners are quite truculent and insulting, declaring that if they ever do get their freedom, they will slay, burn, and destroy in Richmond to their heart's content. The immediate provocation of these dire menaces is that they do not always have sugar in their coffee. They need sweetening, no doubt, and if they received their deserts, would have no cause to complain of any do ficiency in that particular. Some few of their number, officers we suppose of the old regular service, are not as furious as their companions, who, being civilians turned soldiers, are of course the most uncivil of the human race. We are not much alarmed by the threats of these fine fellows. They have been breathing blood and thunder against Richmond for the last three years, and it has all ended in the Libby. That is the only "On to Richmond" which has been realized as yet. We have no doubt the Yankees will behave a great deal worse hereafter, if that be possible, than they have ever done before. But perhaps we shall behave worse also. We confess that there is great room for improvement in our mode of treating these invaders, and there are certain indications that we shall hereafter make our treatment of them correspond more nearly to their treatment ourselves. We are not always going to have our prisoners murdered by inches and our houses burned over our heads without some attempt at retaliation. In the meantime, the sooner the Yankees now here are removed further South, the better for all parties.