From the Richmond Examiner, 6/27/1864
GREAT INFLUX OF PRISONERS. – During Friday, Saturday and
yesterday, over three thousand prisoners, including one hundred officers, were
received in Richmond from Petersburg, and sixteen hundred more were announced as
on their winding way, or ready to come. On Friday seven hundred and fifty six
were registered; on Saturday morning one thousand and eighty eight were added,
and during the afternoon, three hundred and forty-eight, three hundred and
forty-eight, with thirty officers, poured in a dusty, dirty blue stream through
the streets. None of the officers were above the rank of Major. The Libby and
prisons contiguous are again filled to overflowing. Yesterday, the cry was
“still they come,” and the shady retreat on Belle Isle had to be thrown open
for their accommodation. The appearance of the above two or three thousand
impudent wretches on our streets, demonstrates one fact that is as plain as a
park staff, and that is too many prisoners are taken, and the facility with
which Yankee thieves, murderers, woman ravishers and desolators generally,
convert themselves into prisoners of war, covering their craven heads with the
shield of mercy is working abominations, and bodes no good for the cause. Who
knows but that it is part of Grant’s great, comprehensive plan to send a
Trojan horse into the city of Richmond in the shape of prisoners of war, who
shall consume our food in the time of our necessity, and require strong guards
to keep them in subjection when the need of men is sorest at the front.
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