The class of citizens Usys to us
--The Richmond correspondent of the Charleston Courier in his letter of the 11th, thus alludes to that class of persons residing in the interior of our State who have shown a want of loyalty to our cause:
‘
As regards affairs at Fairfax Court House and vicinity, my informant states that they cannot be fully appreciated by one who is not upon the spot.
He represents our leaders as laboring under great disadvantage from the treachery of the people by whom they are surrounded.
While it cannot be said that the resident
Virginians there are opening disloyal, the truth is every day made apparent that, notwithstanding the presence in their midst of two powerful armies, they do not realize that the country is at war, or that their homes and firesides are endangered.
It is an unfortunate fact, however, that among these indifferent and unworthy citizens of the
State, there is a population of hundreds who avail themselves of every opportunity to betray our movements to the enemy, and thus prevent many of the a military enterprises, which our brave soldier a connect only to find defeated at the start.--This class is composed principality of
New England Yankees,
Pennsylvania Dutch and one horse off-hots from decent society generally.
Their business has been to supply he markets of
Washington and
Alexandria with garden truck and such other articles as are produced on their small farms.
Strange to say, the most adroit and dangerous of these individuals are the women, who, under the protection afforded them by their crinoline, penetrate both camps, in the capacity of pedlars, and are thus enabled to acquire much valuable information concerning means, men and position.
No instance has ever yet occurred where these feminine hucksters have imparted information to our officers, but numerous cases are known where they have given to the enemy intelligence of a valuable character.
The space between the lines of the two armies, which varies in width from two to five miles, as a sort of neutral ground.
Here it is that occur many of the skirmished which find their way into the public pitute, and here it is where reside these pott. sprees and their slab-sided families.
To give you an injustice of the shrewdness of these moral hermaphrodites, who are "neither fish, flesh, nor red heiring," one of our troopers; a few days ago, copied an object flitting into one of the cabins in the distance.
Uncertain whether it was a man, a child, or an animal, he put spur to his horse and rode to the door.
A short old lady came out to meet him. The trooper asked where the man was who had just gone inside.
She denied that any one had entered the house, and appeared determined by all the peculiar eloquence which a woman might be expected to exert under such circumstances to prevent the soldier from making any further examination.
She failed to satisfy him, however, and dismounting from his horse he entered the canin.
A brief search enabled him to produce from beneath a bed her "other half," who lay crouched there, say glass in hand, just as he had rushed in from a neighboring eminence, where he was in the habit of watching for the appearance of our accounting parties, information of which he then communicated to the enemy.
Singular as it may appear, no withstanding the proof of the men's villainy was found upon him, the trooper yielded to his entreaties and left him unmolested.
This is another evidence of that leniency and carelessness in the administration of justice which throughout this contest has characterized the conduct of
Virginians towards their known foes.
’
