--Every reader knows that
Brownlow, of the
Knoxville Whig, is not biassed in favor of the
South--in fact,
Brownlow is the most virulent enemy the
South or any Southern State has ever tolerated, and is far more obnoxious to the
South than any of the editors who have been accused and indicted in the
North have been to their own section.
Here is what
Brownlow says about exchanging prisoners:
‘
"The usages of civilized warfare, in all civilized countries, require a prompt exchange of prisoners, and this on all hands is declared to be the duty of belligerents.
Nay, to exchange prisoners without delay, is considered the highest act of humanity, as well as the duty of the
Government.
No matter how well a prisoner may be treated in the bands of an enemy, he prefers being released and sent back to the
Government in whose cause he had been engaged.
The Administration at
Washington has shown more weakness, vanity and presumption in its refusal to exchange prisoners, than we had supposed it capable of it has planted itself upon an abstraction — could not exchange prisoners because that not would be an acknowledgment of the existence of the Southern Confederacy.
This is tomfoolery, and a stickling for dignity and etiquette, that can only render them ridiculous.
There is such a thing as a Southern Confederacy, or Southern Party, or Southern Army, or whatever we may choose to call them, with 200,000 troops in the field, and they made themselves felt at
Manassas, to such an extent, as to at least entitle them to be regarded as belligerents, and an organization that the
Washington Government might afford to exchange prisoners with!"
’
There is some hope for
Brownlow.
With the aid of time, repentance, reflection,
Beauregard,
McCulloch and
Zollicoffer, he may be licked into decency.--
Charleston Courier. 
