A spy in the camp.
--The first leaf of the New York
Herald, of the 12th instant, is taken up with a long letter of a Yankee spy, containing a minute but grossly inaccurate description of this city and its localities; an account, characteristic of his class of Yankees news writers, of the state of feeling alleged to prevail here; and details of what the spy saw in his unobstructed journey hence to the
West.
through
Nashville and
Memphis, and up the
Mississippi river to
Columbus, whence we suppose he made his exit to
Lincoln realms; if indeed he ever left the news-rooms of the
Herald, in New York city, at all.
Under the lax discipline observed throughout the
South, it is not impossible that a cunning adventurer, born with a counterfeit face, capable of kissing the
Bible to false oaths a every moment, and of shouting false exclamations as he goes in praise of
Davis and the
South whom he affects to despise, and in denunciation of his own breed and race North of the
Potomac whom he professes to honor and love; it is not impossible, we say, that a professed spy and perjurer should make his way through the chief cities and over large districts of the
South.
Probably nobody can be justly blamed for the impunity which attends such accomplished and graceless perjurers.
They come amongst us, they go home, and they tell their story; and the only reflection we have, to relieve the annoyance we feel at their escape is, that persons whose trade is deception, and whose boast is their success in its practice at the
South, are not likely to command much believe at home.
They come for hire; they write for effect at the
North and their study is, not a truthful, plain and practical relation of what they actually observe; but how to render such a statement as will best suit the popular temper at home and best remunerate the newspaper manager who deputes them on their dishonorable and despised mission.
The narratives of such writers are, therefore, the grosseat caricatures; and instead of informing the popular mind at home of what they pretend to describe, serve only to confirm it in chronic errors and prejudices
Russell, of the
London Tones, is the most respectable of these caricaturists; and this poor, crawling spy, who pretends to have recently been to
Richmond, one of the most contemptible.
Even when these writers tell the truth to their distant readers it loses its value, being received with that distrust which is instinctively felt for all the emanations of scoundrels.
Without undertaking to distinguish the truthful from the untruthful, we make a few extracts elsewhere from the letter of this pretended spy in our camp — premising that the letter is illustrated by an elaborate map purporting to be that of
Richmond and its environs, showing various camp grounds, entrenchments, and principal buildings, on a ground plan, marked ‘ "
Richmond."’
