From the Richmond Dispatch, 8/12/1861, p. 2

Hospitals Crowded.

Our hospitals are oppressed with the numbers of the sick and wounded soldiers. As if our own disabled warriors were not sufficient to employ the careful attention of our physicians and our nurses, a large number of the neglected wounded of the enemy at Manassas has been precipitated upon us to divide the means and comforts, at this sickly season, for the wants and necessities of the sick. There are some five hundred wounded Federalists from the field of Manassas in the hospitals of this city. That ruthless enemy, who thinks the Southern Confederacy of sufficient magnitude to call for immense armies and appropriations to subjugate it, with a mean and contemptible spirit refuses to recognize it as a belligerent power, and will not deign to communicate with our commanders in the usual forms of military etiquette. Standing upon this point, it will neither bury its dead nor take care of its wounded; but leaves both these offices of humanity and Christianity to we rebels, who have our own sick and wounded to take care of and our own dead to bury. This inhumanity of the brutal Northern Government, which merits the bitterest execrations of the civilized world, has given to the field of Manassas horrors barely excelled in the history of the after scenes of the great battles of past days.

We repeat, our hospitals are crowded. - Yesterday morning two hundred and thirty-two sick were added by the morning trains. - We want, therefore, more room, more nurses, more everything for the sick. Private houses, it is hoped, will yet be offered for the accommodation of a part of the increasing numbers. We beg our citizens to continue, and if possible extend, these good offices which, to their lasting praise be it spoken, they have so cheerfully and liberally performed towards the poor soldier. Those gallant men have left their homes and periled their lives, both by the hazards of the field and the greater dangers of disease, in the defence of their country. Not a few of them are those who stood on the field before the brutalized and drunken army of the North on its march "to Richmond," and drove it back, routed and terrified, to the den of the beast of the Northwest, who hounded them on to desolate our land. Let us cherish the recollection of the dead and minister to the sufferings of the wounded and sick who, in that struggle, contended with the worse than barbarian foe who meditated the most dreadful excesses as the reward of that victory which his weak vanity assured him he would achieve over our forces. To these especially our gratitude is due; but to all who go on to conquer or die in the cause of our country are we bound, in every possible way, to aid, comfort and console - to pour in oil and wine - to sooth pain and sorrow, and make them fell and know that their countrymen are neither unmindful nor ungrateful, and that both the cause and the people for whom they strive are worthy of their greatest exertions and their most daring deeds.

• Next