Had a conversation with the Secretary today, on the policy of
sending Union men out of the Confederacy. I told him we had 15,000 sick in the
hospitals at Manassas, and this intelligence might embolden the enemy to
advance, capture the hospitals, and make our sick men prisoners. He said such
prisoners would be a burden to them, and a relief to us. I remarked that they
would count as prisoners in making exchanges; and to abandon them in that
manner, would have a discouraging effect on our troops. He said that sending
unfriendly persons out of the country was in conformity with the spirit of the
act of Congress, and recommended me to reperuse it and make explanations to the
people, who were becoming clamorous for some restriction on the egress of spies.
SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's
Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 81
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