In late July 1862, the Richmond Examiner reported under the headline, "YANKEE DEPREDATIONS IN EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA," that during the previous month, there had been several mass escapes and outbreaks of violence. "The stampede of negroes from Eastern North Carolina is so great," claimed that newspaper, "that unless strong guerrilla parties are immediately formed and sent thither, it is thought that the country will be entirely drained of its slave population in a short time." Around the same time, another Richmond newspaper specifically claimed that there had been a group of 94 enslaved people in mid-July, who, "through the medium of Yankee inducement, stampeded from the upper part of the Pasquotank and fled into the Dismal Swamp." According to this account, the group "comprised whole families, old and young, male and female." The newspaper reported, "A number of the inhabitants of the county immediately followed in pursuit, and recovered fifty or sixty of the slaves, and found a considerable quantity of ammunition in their camp."