The Daily Dispatch: August 4, 1863., [Electronic resource]

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Yankee faith and Yankee Cruelty

The Yankee authorities, since they have the advantage in prisoners, have kept our men in their hands confined in miserable, unhealthy prisons, and refused to exchange them for prisoners in our hands. Among the prisons in which they have been immured is Fort Delaware, on the Delaware river, below Philadelphia. It is represented to be one of the most uncomfortable and unhealthy places in which men ever were confined. It is a scene of mire and filth. The men lie on the muddy ground and drink water from the muddy cisterns, and are daily wasting away their health and strength. On Saturday the enemy sent by flag of truce near seven hundred wounded and sick — some of them from this loathsome prison. Nine of them died before they reached Petersburg.

What this nation is to do towards an enemy who has proved himself utterly unfeeling and brutal, it is difficult to say. The Yankee Government has violated the cartel for the exchange of prisoners whenever they could do so to our injury and their advantage, and their cruelties increase just in proportion to their power to inflict them. How they are to be brought to a sense of what is due to civilization and humanity is a question hard to answer. Retaliation is the only mode that suggests itself. But how, and to what extent, and when, are questions that require the gravest and wisest deliberation. One great victory, indeed, would enlighten the frigid and heartless Yankee not a little on the subject of humanity, and this we trust we shall have ere long.