The Northwest.
The traitors of the
Northwest are emboldened by the countenance and encouragement of
Lincoln and the presence of
McClellan. They are like all traitors, cruel when they have the power.
They are driving true men from their homes, pillaging their houses, stealing their property, destroying what they cannot carry away, and thus spreading desolation amongst all who are not branded traitors like themselves.
An intelligent gentleman who has just arrived from the
West represents their cruelties as of the most barbarous character.
Such is their brutality, that he thinks the
State will be compelled to carry a terrible retribution amongst them.
Nothing but the severest measures can take effect upon them, and put an end to their outrages.
They ought to be driven out of the
State.
This trouble in
Virginia is attributable to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which isolated the
Northwest from
Middle,
Eastern and
Southwestern Virginia.
That road has colonized its entire line with a population of the very worst description — entertaining opinions and morals at war with good order and Southern interests.
Nearly every little town upon it is rotten and deserves annihilation.
They are so many fortresses of the enemy, from which our true
Virginians, among the farmers and professional men, are harassed, and their lives and property imperilled.
They are the strong props of the contemptible Government gotten up by
Carlile. They have set the example of burning, and deserve to have the measure of their vindictiveness meted out to them.
It would be a social and political blessing if they were laid in ashes.
There are only a very few counties where there is unanimity against
Virginia and the
South.
The other counties may be brought back to a proper sense of their obligations to the
State by such measures as are now on foot.
The presence of two such men as
Wise and
Floyd, backed by a strong military force, will have a fine effect.
The traitors will disappear very rapidly like mist before the sun, as soon as they get fairly in the field.
There are a great many honest, but misled men — victims of the arts of the Submissionists of the Virginia Convention--who will come back to their true allegiance the moment they hear a little truth, (a commodity seldom offered them by their teachers,) and have the encouragement of a force sufficiently strong to protect them from the outrages of the followers of
Carlile. The proper disposition must be made of those hopeless traitors who, thoroughly abolitionized and demoralized, can neither be brought to a sense of duty, nor made to discontinue their brutalities.
The true
Virginians must be protected and enabled to return to their homes from whence they have fled to save their lives.
