Year: 1866

EDITOR CITIzEN:-Permit me as an obser-
yer of passing events to call the attention of
your readers to the feelings and conduct of
the Confederate or Rebel soldiers of Giles
county, since their return to their homes.
So far as your correspondent has been able
to learn from observation aud other sources,
the whole Northern people, including the
so-called United States Congress and Recon.
struction Committee have been misinformed
and deceived as to the conduct of the late
"Rebels" and their feeling towards the
government and authority of the United
State. Considering the duration, heat and
bitterness of the late conflict between the
two sections Of this great country, it is un-
natural to suppose that the soldiers of the
South should all at once forgive and forget
the past. It is unreasonable to suppose
that the South, after having been overrun
with FIRE and sword, her people insulted,
imprisoned and impoverished, her young
men slain IN battle, and every family caused
to mourn the untimely end of some cherish
cd Jewel, should so soon forget the authors
of her wo and feel like taking them to her
bosom and treating them as friends. This
being the case, how much easier it is to
make the Northern people believe stories of
disloyalty, disafection and general disorder,
founded in falsehood and circulated for par
ty purposes, than it is to make them believe
the truth. The truth IS, so far as have
heen able to gather it, that the Southern
soldiers alluded to as having passed through
the war and returned to their homes, feel
an inward satisfaction arising from a con-
sciousness of duty well-performed, which
seems to buoy them up, and enables them
/ to endure with more equanimity the conse-
quences of defeat. For this reason they
! yield to the authority of government with
more alacrity and cheerfulness than persons
at a distance from the theatre of the -.
war would imagine. And while they


ready to submit With becoming grace ana
fortitude to the reasonable requirements Of
consistent Unionists-aye, mOre---while
they will submit, with suZlsn Indifference,
to the oppressive and unreasonable exac-
tions that a narrow minded and intolerant
Radical faction would impose upon them,
and inwardly detest the spirit by which such
factions are always governed, still they
look with confidence to a returning sense of
reason and justice among the Northern
people-when patriotism will be co-exten-
sive with the limits of the whole country
when the government will be administered
upon Constitutional principles and when
they will be allowed a voice in choosing
their rulers and making the laws By which
they are to be governed. Then, indeed


would these Southern soldiers begin to lOOl
upon the government as a government o
the peopls-as one in which all alike were


interested-and from which they might ex


pect to derive benefits while they were re


quired to bear the burdens. Then they
would soon learn to forget the people of th'


North as their enemies, and would be founC


as ready to take up arms in defence Of thei
common country, for the protection Of il


honor and its interests as they have been il


days past and gone.


But it was not in this strain that ha,


intended to speak of the Returned Rebels
> when this letter was commenced. You vii


remember very well, Mr.. Editor, At th


opening of hostilitjes between the two sec