Branding the Yankee troops.
--The "suggestion," officially made by the chief medical officer of the volunteer service, provost-marshal's bureau, that all accepted recruits should be marked with the letter I in the small of the back has created a good deal of indignation among some of the Yankee papers. The Chicago Times, commenting on it, says:‘ "The farmer brands his cipher upon his hog; the slave driver, in case of an incorrigible slave, brands a letter upon his hand; the French, in their days of barbarism, branded the infamous T. F. P. upon the shoulder of the galley slave; but to-day the only white men on earth who are forced to undergo what civilization long since rejected as too scandalous and ignominious are the people who call themselves Americans. Is it not utterly shameful that men to whom has descended the heritage of Washington and the Patriots of the Revolution should to- day be not only the abject slaves of a coarse, brutal tyrant, but that his minions should brand upon their backs marks which have ever distinguished the vilest criminals ? If the once proud sovereigns of this country must become impoverished, and lose their lives in obedience to the miscreant at Washington, can they not be allowed to seek poverty and find their graves without bearing upon their bodies the infamous brand of criminals ?"
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