Daily State Sentinel

Yankee Prisoners Feted.

The following is from the Richmond Enquirer of May 21:

If capture in battle used to have any terrors for the Yankees, it seems to have lost them all. It is, in fact, their shortest and easiest way to get home, with a parole in their pockets; and while they stay they will have a good time. The Charleston Courier has this paragraph:

"At Atlanta and Augusta the officers of the robbers and marauders who were recently captured near Rome by Gen. Forrest were permitted to go about at will, taking their meals at the hotels, visiting the bar rooms in the latter city, and inspecting the condition and situation of affairs with almost as much freedom from restraint as if they were making their trip through our country a matter of business or pleasure, or as if they were never expected to return to their armies with all the information which it was one of the prime objects of their expedition into that section to obtain."

But this is not the worst of it. The Augusta papers describe—and with natural indignation—how the Yankee bandits were presented with bouquets by the ladies and with cigars by the gentlemen of that city; how they left in the evening in a state of high good humor and exultation as if they had been on a pic-nic party—hoping to visit again that hospitable and pleasant city; and how, amidst all this, the Confederate officers and soldiers who were guarding the "prisoners" were allowed to come and go without any notice.

It shames us to read these things. Those prisoners were the very same brigands who were captured on their marauding expedition through Alabama, burning and plundering as they went, the peaceful valleys among the North Alabama hills, and bent on the pillage of Rome and Atlanta. Will no angry public opinion rise to rebuke sternly such misplaced courtesies to thieves?