Sunday, September 9, 2012

The Government Paying $30 Per Week For The Board Of Three Rebel Officers


The Louisville Journal says:  We understand that three rebel prisoners, on parole, are boarding at the U. S. Hotel, and that the Federal Government is paying for their board at the rate of ten dollars per week each.  Why is this?  By what arrangement and under whose authority is it done?

We have always supposed, that, when prisoners of war were permitted to leave their places of confinement on parole, they were expected to support themselves.  Surely it is enough, quite enough, for the U. S. Government to allow our rebel prisoners to go at large upon the pledge of their honor, without paying for their board at first-class hotels.  Has anybody ever heard of Union prisoners at Richmond or Charleston, or Columbia or Nashville or Memphis boarded at hotels at the expense of the Rebel Government?  Have not all the Union prisoners, officers as well as privates, been huddled and packed together in dirty, loathsome and stifling prisons, and fed at a cost to the Confederate Government of not more than ten cents per day each?

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 22, 1862, p. 3

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