The Daily Dispatch: August 7, 1862., [Electronic resource]

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Enlistments at the North.

Some of the exchanged prisoners from Fort Warren (Boston harbor) state that previous to their departure for the South, they had good opportunities of learning the facts in regard to enlistments in the Federal army, and they fully confirm the accounts heretofore received from various sources. In the city of Boston stupendous efforts have been made to stimulate volunteering, but thus far without practical result. Meetings of citizens are held almost daily, and money is liberally subscribed to the bounty fund; yet even this bait fails to tempt the poorer classes, who frequently answer the appeals to their patriotism by asking the wealthy men why they do not get an example by enlisting themselves! In some instances these meetings have broken up in regular rows. Criminals have been released from prison on condition of their joining the army, and every possible subterfuge is resorted to in the hope of avoiding a general draft; but the impression is that the quota of Massachusetts can not be furnished by any other means, and hence the newspapers are laboring to convince the public mind of the peculiar advantages of a measure which the masses universally condemn. A statement has been put in circulation that thirty thousand men have already volunteered in the several States, but this was so utterly at variance with the truth that a New York journal refused to give it currency, and came out with a flat contradiction.

The guard over the prisoners at Fort Warren is composed of paupers taken from the poor houses a Boston and vicinity.