--
The Fairfax Family.--The N. O.
Delta, in its comments upon the
Federal Fairfax, who boarded the
Trent, does unintentional injustice to the descendants of Lord Fairfax, when it says that ‘"they have always nourished the most bitter feelings of hostility against this State"’ (
Virginia) on account of the confiscation of their ancestor's possessions.
Whilst cordially agreeing with the
Delta in its emphatic condemnation of the recreant conduct of the
Federal lieutenant, we feel quite certain that he is as much a renegade from the
Fairfax family as he is from the
State of Virginia. --Whilst there is one
Lieutenant Fairfax in the
Federal Navy, we know of two certainly-- a Captain and
Lieutenant — who are in the Confederate Navy, one of them said to have been the best ordnance officer in the late U. S. service.
Another connexion of this family,
Captain Thomas T. Hunter, is also in our navy, and a more thorough seaman and accomplished officer never trod a quarter deck.
Besides these representatives in the naval service, we think that we are not wide of the mark when we state that from thirty to fifty of the descendants of Lord Fairfax are serving, most of them as privates, in the Confederate army.-- In one
Maryland battalion alone, there are about fifteen, two of whom, mere boys, swam the
Potomac river at
Leasburg, some months ago, to escape from despotism to freedom.
So far as the alleged hostility of old Lord Fairfax to the
American Revolution is concerned, we have never heard that it was shared by any of his descendants, although there are few Southern people in these days who would hesitate to prefer British constitutional Government to Black Republican despotism.
