The Loyalty of Watanga county Vindicates.
Auditors Dispatch:--In a recent number of the
Dispatch, in a communication giving an account of the disturbances in
East Tennessee, the number of traitors assembled at their several camps, &c., the writer remarks that five hundred men were expected to join them from Watanga county,
North Carolina.
That statement conveys an imputation upon the patriotism of the people of that county, an unjust and contrary to the facts in the care, that I ask to be permitted to correct it through your columns.
Watanga is a small county lying along the
Blue Ridge, giving only about six hundred votes, and although adjoining Last
Tennessee, has three fail companies in our army — a company of cavalry under
Capt. Folk, and two companies of infantry under
Captains Horton and
Farthing; and I will venture to say that no portion of the
Southern people are represented by a braver, hardier, or more patriotic hand of men. They are all marksmen, accustomed to take a fine sight upon their object, and death is sure to follow the report of their rifles.
A large portion of them have left their farms and young families in the care of the old folks, and gone to distant and sickly portions of the republic, determined to drive back the
Northern vandals, or perish in the attempt.
While lately at the house of
Amos Green, a citizen of Watanga, an honest and upright man, and a pure patriot, be told me that four of his five sons were in the army, and his wife joining in said, that if necessary the last one should go, and the women would do the work them selves, though they had the families of a son and son-in-law to take care of, and needed his help very much, as the old man was so afflicted with rheumatism, as to be scarcely able to get about.
And such instances of self-sacrificing devotion to the cause are common in the county.
The imaginary line dividing Watanga from
East Tennessee is a real fine of division in sentiment between her people and the traitors of that disaffected region.
And I am happy to be able to state, from personal knowledge, that they are as heartily united in the cause of the
South as any people in the
Confederacy; and are determined to meet and drive back the
Yankees and their allies, come they from
East Tennessee or from any other quarter.
Mountaineer.
Lenoir, Caldwell co., N. C., Nov. 20, '61.
