Year: 1862

| One Of onr Army Chaplains, Rev. DIR. Tefst
in bis correspondence with the Christian Ad-
yocate at Fredericksburg, says:


| While sojourning in Virginia l have taken
special pains to become acquainted with that
part of the population who did not migrate
southwark with the southern army. Those ae-
lively engaged in the rebellion, as well as those
who had given it their unmixed sympaBy, re-
tired before the advance Of the union forces
and the people now on the soil are consequeBt
/ ly thUSe who approach nearest to being loyal;
but if there is really genuine loyal man a
mong the many have seen and coHversed
with, 1 must then say that he has taken partie.
ular pains to conceal virtue which he must
have known would have Been greatly to his ad,
vantage. Ny opinion is that in the Old Do
minion there is not one man to five hundness
| that has the slightest good feeling toward the
government and institutions of what was once
their country. l have heard no man profess
to be Union man. Ihaye heard no man us-
ter word Of disrespect, or even of discourte-
sy, toward the rebellion and its leaders. I
have heard no man say syllable in favor Of
the government Of the United States, or
syllable showing the smallest respect to our
cause or prospects. Their whole conversation
runs upon the terrible calamity brought upen
them by the war. They say they are ruined;
that the State is overrun with soldiers; that
their property is taken from them without re-
muneration; and that the negroes are fleeing
to get rid of work, "the lazy, idle, good-fo
nothing dogs"


1t must be confessed that this last complaint
is founded on fact. Their negroes are running
away from them, not by the hundred, but by
the thousand. A few days since had occasion
TO ride OF The Alexandria and Orange Rail
road from near the Rappannock to Washing
ton, and the train that followed me into the
city of Alexandria was a train of Fat open
cars, on which twelve hundred negroes, men,
women and children, were piled up, very much
as you see bees hanging to the limbs Of a tree
when swarming. In this style they are con-
stantly getting oul of Dixie, on every road Of
every description, every one with his bundle.
and with his face set northward. They are
flying from bondage TO liberty, and it the war
continues three months Virginia will be free
State, not perhaps by change of law, but
because there will be no population in the
State, which. in the language of the South,





be no negroes on the sacred soil.


This will be revolution certainly, and the |
prospect calls for deep reflection. The labor |
is running away from the capital of the South.
That is the simple operation. Soon there will |
be but little capital left and no labor. The
capital will have been spent in war raised to |
defend and spread the area of their labor, and /
the war thus raised will have used up the one
and given legs TO the other, so that in the end
there viii be a population that must cat and
live, but without capital, and with only the
poor capacity to labor which men unused to /
work may possess. so true it is that Meme
sis, though with bandaged eyes, takes no
sleep! t


This result may be thought to be just re-
for the sin of rebelliug against so
good government, and there win be enough |
of it certainly, do what we will; but it is not
We should permit the whole land to suffer as it /
must under such state of things. The labor
thus leaving the South is adapted to it and is
not needed at the North; but there is only one
process by which to keep the blacks in their
native country where their services are so
useful, and to hold them back from overwheI-
ming the North with a population which can
never thrive and prosper amid ice and snow
That process, strange TO say, is emancipation
The negroes understand their interests very
well. They are running uorthward, not be-
cause they relish ice and snow, nor because
they wish to leave the land that gave them
birth, for they dread the cold, and they love
The spot which they have called their home
with an affection deep and strong; but the
simple idea with them is that they are making |
their escape out of bondage into liberty. Now
give them liberty where they are and they will
stay there, and they viii labor as they never
did before. Strange as it may sound it has
come to this at last, that emancipation. so long
the reproached doctrine of ''aboItionists, J" has
become the only hope, the only salvation of
the slave hol ding States.