Army of Richmond, June 20, 1862.
To the Editors of the Dispatch:
It had been my impression that the position occupied for so many years by the New Orleans Delta, would relieve its owners and late conductors from any suspicion of accountability for its course since it came into the hands of Gen. Butler.
A card recently published in Mobile by one of my partners, Mr. Henry J. Leroy, admonishes me of my error, and leads me to believe that there are some persons who imagine that the Delta has proved recreant to the great cause with which its existence was identified.
Moreover, the New York Herald, with a combined audacity and duplicity characteristic not only of that journal, but of the entire North, has ventured to quote the recent articles of the Delta as indications of Union feeling in New Orleans, and to refer to the paper itself as the representative of a Union party in Louisiana.
Permit me to state that since the 26th of last month the Delta has been issued under the auspices of the Federal authorities.
The office and all its types, fixtures, and appurtenances, were stolen by Gen. Butler, and appropriated to his fraudulent and infamous purposes.
To steal a bible and preach robbery from its pages, would be just as appropriate as to inculcate Unionism with the stolen types and through the perverted columns of the Delta. Yet Butler's purpose, and the purposes of his masters, would not have been achieved had he not usurped and retained the name of the stolen establishment.
The pleasure and the profit of the crime would have been sadly impaired had the means been wanting to add falsehood to robbery.
Hence it is not astonishing that the Northern papers, gifted with an unparalleled fecundity of mendacity, should appeal to the Delta as an accession to their cause, and pretend to regard its simulated conversion as an evidence of rejuvenated Unionism in Louisiana.
I may be pardoned for stating here that, of the proprietors and recent editors of the Delta, Mr. Henry J. Leroy, business manager, is now with Gen. Beauregard; Mr. D. C. Jenkins, to whose fertile and elegant pen the Delta owed so much of its reputation, is, I believe, with Gen. Van-Dorn; Mr. Alexander Walker, whom I left in charge of the paper, and who is so well known to newspaper readers, was elected by the Yankees, and the undersigned is now serving in this army. To the Editors of the Dispatch:
