The Daily Dispatch: August 13, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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The prisoners.

We have heard various suggestions recommending the removal of the large number of prisoners in this city from their present location, and their employment in some pursuit that may compensate for their support. If kept together in large numbers, disease may be engendered, and such a disease as ship fever would not only sweep them off, but prove equally destructive to our own citizens in that portion of the city. The employment of large numbers of them in the neighboring coal mines has been recommended, and would, no doubt, especially at this time, be a great public advantage. There are, also, no doubt, among them artisans of various crafts who might be put to some useful employment, either in this city or in other portions of the South. A number of them might be tingled out to be put in irons, equal to the number of our privateersmen whom the tyrannical scoundrel at Washington has ornamented in that manner. Our only regret is that more of the Congressmen and politicians were not taken prisoners, for it would be much more satisfactory to make examples of the ringleaders than of their brutal instruments.