Year: 1863

views OF soldier IN virginia


HAMILTON. Feb. 3.


Editors Gazette: The following extract
from letter written by an officer in the
18th Ohio, shows what sort of feelings the
soldier entertains toward the traitors
whom he has left at home.


FAYETTEVILLE, Va. Jan. 14th.


Dear Brother: A great work of demor-
alization is progressing in the army, and
no wonder. The late reverses at Freder-
icksburg and Eicksburg, came upon our
men with stunning effect. This they
bore up under brayely but when they
see such filthy sheets as the Cincinnati
Enquirer and the Dayton Empire spouting
treason, and hear the Legislators and
Senators on the very floor of the Senate
Hall and House of Representatives, de-
nouncing the cause for which we are
fighting as unholy-cursing the Admins
tration, and openly applying the most
dastardly epithets to the President-pro-
posing to pass joint resolution declaring
that he who attempts to collect the very
tax assessed to furnish US with our daily
bread, Is guilty of felony--a crime pun
ishable with death-openly taking the
initiatory steps toward cut-throat prop
osition to separate the agricultural dis
tricts of the West from the manufactur-
ing districts of the East, if need be BY
open war, and this, too, when the men of
New York and other Eastern States, and
the patriots of Ohio and Indiana are
yielding up their lives by thousands, side
by side and hand in hand, on the distant
battle feld-I say, when our men see
such exhibitions of treason and sympathy
with the South, by the very hearthstone
they have left, is it any wonder that they
are disheartened and conclude that they
have not the sympathies of the mass at
home? In the name of God, why is all
! this permitted? Are there not strong
armed Union men in the North to subdue
treason in the very heart of Ohio and In
diana? If not, why need We spend our
best hearts blood trying to suppress it
abroad? Have the Union men of the
North no sympathy with US? Do they
not know that every copy of the Cincin-
natl Enquirer or Dayton Empire which is
read in camp engenders a feeling of dis
couragement in the heart of every SOL
dier who is able to read? Do they not
know that those papers reach the rebel
camps, and that they raise the spirits of
the Southern army in a proportionate de-
gree as they depress ours? Do they not
know that when Senators and Legislators
of the Northern houses spout open trea-
son, and the traitors not only live after,
but stalk abroad in the streets of our cit
les that every traitorous sentiment ut
tered unpunished, unrebuked, strikes a
chill of vague disquietude into the heart
of every Northern soldier1


Are the people of the North asleep
that they permit these things? Why do
they not arise in their might and hurl
from their positions those vile traitors
who are thus indirectly demoralizing our
army?


l am excited and indignant on this
subject, and so is every man of the rea-
soning faculties of a monkey, In the army.
If we have friends at home, let them
make it apparent by closing the mouths
of those who utter sentiments in our
Slate Houses,-and that while clothed in
the robes of Congressmen-State Senators
or Legislators they would not dare
to utter in the presence of the most
peaceable, enduring and unmurmuring
private of this army. Otherwise our men
must inevitably become suspicious, dis
heartened, and, worse than al, dem0rat-
ized! H. W.


To the Democracy of Indiana
| HAVING q daaD intarest in the future