Correspondence of the Richmond Dispatch.
from Yorktown.
The event I would refer to was the presentation of a most beautiful flag to the ‘"Peyton Artillery,"’ that gallant and patriotic band now here to yield their lives for the maintenance of their rights and the inviolate sanctity of their hearths. But not only in the action of presenting a flag lies the intense interest that this scene has excited. When we recollect that on the very ground on which our camp is placed, nay, on the very elevation, a stone was enacted upwards of three-quarters of a century since, which led to our glorious independence that is now threatened by the sordid spirits of the North, which has caused these noble sons of Virginia together, with many equally zealous patriots from sister States to congregate upon the hallowed spot, for the purpose of protecting their wives, their mothers and their sisters from the violent hands of a debauched rabble now invading their soil. The very reminiscences of the old town are calculated to inspire the citizen soldiery with a fire which can never be quenched but with death, and this spirit of loyalty to the South and war to the knife for all cowardly abolitionists is palpably written upon the countenance of every man in this command. It needed not the encouraging smile of the loyal daughters of the South, which has ever been given where justice was sought, nor the finding by some of our soldiers, autographs of Washington and Lee in the old house occupied by the former as his headquarters on the memorable occasion before alluded to, to raise the enthusiasm of American sons to a pitch that is indescribable. Let all feel the same spirit inwardly, and the South is safe. N. H. J.
