Correspondence of the Richmond Dispatch.
the murder of Samuel Pryor.
Charles City County, Virginia, June 20th, 1861
Almost simultaneous with the intelligence of the death of the lamented Wyatt, of your city, comes to our ears the news through an officer of the Charles City Troop of Cavalry of the death of Mr. Samuel Pryor, a member of that Troop.
He was shot by one of those infernal miscreants (slaves, I should say, of that rufflan Lincoln,) pirating upon our soil in the vicinity of Hampton.
Mr. Pryor was a useful mechanic of this county, and possessed many excellencies of character.
His murder, committed by a mean, skulking coward in ambush, continues to widen and deepen the hate (we may say the loathing) we have for Lincoln and his abettors.
Surely a just and holy God will pour forth his phials of indignation upon such flends in human shape.
Can we not pursue our peaceful occupations in quiet?
Can we not tread the soil our fathers purchased with their blood without having our lives perilied?
Can we not dissociate from an a dinity we insufferably loathe, without having an army of Devils, headed by Belzebub, to aim their rifles at our hearts?
Cowards as they are, they dare not use a bowie knife, unless in the cover of darkness.
They dare not meet us man to man; we defy them to do that; mean and craven as they are, they must have their thousands to meet our hundreds; or, like the stealthy savage, they execute their devilish deeds when the eye of their victim cannot freeze the blood in their hearts in gazing on them.
We feel degraded, dishonored, that the outpourings of jails and penitentaries, and of those who long ago (judging by their deeds) ought to have been in such receptacles of the vile, should continue their polluting tread upon our soil.
We repeat it, we loathe, we hate Lincoln and the Yankee hame We wish them every conceivable harm.
May our bullets and bowie-knives do their work for them speedily, we trust.
But they are penetrating very far into Old Virginia, our dear mother's bosom — the blessed old State, which emblazons an envenomed hate of tyranny in her crushing motto, ‘"Sic Samper Tyrannis."’ How far will they go?
how far have they the audacity to go?
We pause, but we do so with the thought which makes our heart also leap within us. Bonaparte reached Russia's metropolis in triumph, with all the pomp and panoply of war. But his retreat — ah!
how sad!
how mournful!
The pen of the historian lost all its power to describe the lamentation and misery which accompanied it in its frenzied efforts to get from the enemy's territory.
We safely confide our all to the direction of the sagacious and brave men administering our Government in its present difficulties; and above all, with a conviction which almost amounts to an assurance, we rest securely in the thought that our counsellors are influenced by Infinite wisdom in their course of action, that our cause is just and right, and that an Omnipotent hand is outstretched for our defence — that our cause must and will succeed.
I cannot close this paper without expressing a wish which I know will meet an affirmative response in every Southern heart.
May unusual efforts be made to take Praiter Scott.
Let a special arrangement be made for that purpose.
We would wish to see him again in Richmond, either in irons or in rags, or in any way; but, high above all, suspended from a lofty gallows, receiving the just reward which his felon act so deservedly merits.
May such be his doom.
Senex. 