From the Richmond Examiner, 6/9/1864
PRISONERS FROM THE FRONT TUESDAY. – Ninety-six prisoners
of war were received at the Libby prison Tuesday afternoon from General
Ewell’s front. They were captured in the retreat of Grant from his works. They
were dusty, dirty, dispirited and demoralized, and admitted that the game of
Grant was “gone up.” After the terrific slaughter at the last battle of
Spotsylvania, Grant had promised his troops that he would make no more direct
assaults upon Lee’s works, but he had not kept his word. They would trust him
no longer, and appeared glad at the prospect of Grant’s army getting into
Richmond by detail. – To the question of a spectator, as to where the
prisoners were taken, one of them spoke up, “In your Ewell’s front; what
makes your fellows stand up so?”
Later Tuesday evening thirty-eight more were marched into
the city, by way of the Provost Marshal’s office. Among them were several
commissioned officers, and one of them, a Captain who had fallen in the rear,
smoked a Confederate cigar with great gusto, rolling his eyes about all the
time, and surveying the local points of interest always to be found in the
“rebel capital.”
The following were the officers received Tuesday: Captain
John Rowe, Sixteenth Massachusetts; First Lieutenant John Mallison,
Ninety-fourth New York; Second Lieutenant J. W. Lucas, Seventh Michigan cavalry;
Lieutenant-Colonel Orsen Malten, Twenty-fifth, Massachusetts; Second Lieutenant
Thomas Saul, Twenty-fifth Massachusetts.
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