The Daily Dispatch: December 17, 1863., [Electronic resource]

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Yankee deserters,

with parole papers in their pockets, are becoming so numerous in this city that the Mayor has determined to arrest and imprison all of them before a Yankee army has thus been accumulated in Richmond, under the auspices of the Confederate Government, sufficiently numerous to lay it in ashes, or to destroy most of its important factories. His Honor takes the ground that the Confederacy has no right to make citizens for Virginia, she being a sovereign and independent State, and that, under her laws, all persons coming here from Yankee land are alien enemies, and as such not entitled to go at large. He has determined to bring the subject to the notice of the Governor and the Legislature, and has promised to call the attention of President Davis to it. Many of these paroled Yankees have proved themselves to be thieves and murderers from the Northern cities, and it is not at all improbable-that some of them have been sent here from the United States to perform by stealth and under the guise of friendship what the Yankee Government has not been able to accomplish by force of arms.