The Daily Dispatch: September 30, 1861., [Electronic resource]

---

---

[for the Richmond Dispatch.]
Maryland.

As a citizen of Maryland, we have hoped on and long for her deliverance; we have crossed the Potomac and traversed her soil five times since the blockade, and have always encouraged our friends to keep quiet, bide their time and have full faith in Jeff. Davis and the Confederacy. We foretold them of the defeat at Manassas, and of the invincibility of our troops whenever they come in contact with the Hessians. We promised them a speedy deliverance from their oppressors; but, alas! hope deferred maketh the heart sick. Weeks have lengthened into months, and month after month passed, until she has been overrun in every part and crushed in every joint by hordes of brutal mercenary barbarians. Her arms have been seized, her purest and best citizens imprisoned, their property plundered, and thousands driven suddenly from their families into the woods, and hunted down with gun and sabre, from point to point and thicket to thicket, like wild beasts. For what reason? Because they have loved liberty better than slavery, the South better than the North, the Confederacy better than a Black Republican Union. With thousands, we have left our families — fathers, mothers, sisters and he press wives and children; deserted our homes, farms, servants, &c., and crossed the Potomac to aid the South in defence of principles that we held sacred. We have run the risks of escape by land and blockade by water: we have received and can never forget the hospitality and kindness of the rural districts of Virginia, or the sharp practice and cold shoulder given us at Richmond. We are scattered, from necessity, in every regiment in the Confederacy, and from along the banks of the Potomac, from near its source to its mouth; we can hear the ringing cry for succor from a down-trodden, outraged, and deserted people, endeared to us by all the ties that are entwined by nature around suffering humanity. Our wives, sisters and daughters are at the mercy of a drunken, debauched soldiery. We hear of daily outrages upon our women, yet we are deprived of offering any aid, or of communicating in any form whatever. We are not allowed even to cross to bring over our families, or offer our lives in their defence. Yet, we are coolly told that we must wait — for what? To learn from European nations whether, under the circumstances, it's right and proper to cross into Maryland! Are there any mad-houses in Richmond? We have said that we had full faith in the President — and we have. All that is in his power we believe he will do to rescue our unfortunate State; but this is an outside pressure from selfish and timorous men, who would be willing in the hour of peril, for thirty pieces of silver, to sell a sister State to advance local interests, and to purchase an ignominious peace. We have faith in the Cabinet, and we do not desire to discover or find out more than is right and proper for them to disclose; but if the views shadowed forth in the Dispatch are correct it is but right and proper that the citizens and soldiers from Maryland in the Confederate States should know it. We ask for but one favor, and we have reason to demand it as a right: to let us in a body cross the Potomac to the rescue of our State, and even without other aid and assistance we will cast ‘"our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor"’ on the issue. This is the unanimous voice of her exiles. We have come here with a superabundance of patriotism; we may have to part with some, and look more to our homes and to the good old State of

Maryland.

Fredericksburg, Va., Sept. 26, 1861.