STATESBURG, S. C., October 12, 1864.

DEAR SIR: Inclosed you will find an account of the terrible sufferings of the Yankee prisoners at Florence, S. C. In the name of all that is holy, is there nothing that can be done to relieve such dreadful suffering? If such things are allowed to continue they will most surely draw down some awful judgment upon our country. It is a most horrible national sin that cannot go unpunished. If we cannot give them food and shelter, for God's sake parole them and send them back to Yankee land, but don't starve the miserable creatures to death. Don't think that I have any liking for the Yankee; I have none. Those near and dear to me have suffered too much from their tyranny for me to have anything but hatred to them, but I have not yet become quite brute enough to know of such suffering without trying to do something, even for a Yankee.

Yours, respectfully,

SABINA DISMUKES.

(For the Sumter Watchman.)

THE PRISONERS AT FLORENCE.

Mr. EDITOR: It may not be uninteresting to your numerous readers to hear something from the Yankee camp at Florence. Your correspondent went over, upon the summons of one of those ominous O. B. 's which the times have made more familiar than agreeable, to take a drove of cattle to the camp. Our party had in charge animals of all sizes, sexes, and conditions, from the patriarch of the here, whose seamed and wrinkled front bore the marks of many a bloody battle, to "old crumpie," who had served her day at the milk pail, and whose constitution was evidently unable to stand the blasts of another March. We lost three on the way; two straggled and one fell from exhaustion. The buzzards after all were not cheated of their long expected prey. The country through which we traveled is "flat, stale, and unprofitable. " The corps are poor, and every cotton-field destroyed by the "army worm," as if in imitation of its more intelligent namesake. No object of curiosity was encountered on the way, unless we take into account the "long bridge," over what the natives call "Spawa Swamp. " Most of houses were uninhabited, with fences and outbuildings going to ruin.

No product now the barren fields afford

But men and steel, the soldier and his sword.

The camp we found full of what were once human beings, but who would scarcely now be recognized as such. In an old field, with no inclosure but the living wall of sentinels who guard them night and day, are several thousand filthy, diseased, famished men, with no hope of relief except by death. A few thirty rags stretched on poles give some of them a poor protection from the host sun and heavy dews. All were in rags and barefoot and crawling with vermin. As we passed around the kline of guards I saw one of them brought out from his miserable booth, by two of his companions, and laid upon the ground to die. He was nearly naked. His companions pulled his cap over his face and straightened out his limbs. Before they turned to leave him he was dead. A slight movement of the limbs and all was over. The captive was free! The commissary's tent was near one side of the square, and near it the beef was laid upon boards preparatory to its distribution. This sight seemed to excite the prisoners as the smell