Confederatevets.com

Ruel Thomas and Leander Mank.-Common laborers who have been employed for several years in getting timber on the Pamunkey and Mattapony Rivers in Virginia for Yankee employers. They are Yankees from Maine and were arrested on the Rappahannock on the way home, as they say. One of them seems to be a shrewd fellow. Their employer has been permitted to go home, they say, by way of Nashville since they have been in prison, but he is ignorant of their confinement. No act of impropriety is alleged [against] the prisoners, and I see no reason for their detention unless the Government chooses to detain them as hostages. If discharged they should be paroled.