The Daily Dispatch: June 11, 1863., [Electronic resource]

The Western prisoners.

‘ I saw yesterday and the day before 272 Yankee prisoners, who were captured in and around Jackson. It makes them very mad to call them Yankees. They call themselves "Western men," and say if the d — d blue-bellied rascals in Virginia would only fight as they have fought, they would have whipped us long before this. They all seem confident of success in this State, and are very impertinent in their boasting. They say they intend to overrun and possess Mississippi; that they have 300,000 troops in that State to do it with; that they never saw or heard of such a place as Vicksburg, but that they intend to have it before long, as they have plenty of grape and canister shot. They seem to think that fighting on gunboats is nonsense, and are opposed to fighting on them. They were astonished to see us so well clothed, and said we look like gentlemen and not soldiers I never saw a set of men dressed so badly as they were. I saw a dozen or more of them who had no shoes on, and I should judge, from their appearance, that their army is in a much worse condition than ours.

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