Letter to a traitor.
An officer at Camp Allen requests us to publish the following letter, addressed to an individual in Newark, New Jersey; though, as none of our papers go beyond Mason and Dixon's line with our consent, there is very little probability that it will ever reach its destination through this medium:
Having received from my wife (your niece) an extract from a letter recently written by you to her mother, in which this passage occurs: ‘"The North is fully aroused now, and we are pouring troops into Washington farther than they can receive them, and by the first of July will have two hundred thousand there. I am calm amidst the storm, and perhaps we will visit you when the storm blows over. Should there be a battle in or about the vicinity of Richmond, I may be along to take care of the wounded. What are they doing in your State? We hear but little from you"’
I will answer, (without saying anything of the insolence of your letter, or the meanness of the spirit which prompted it — and, as I consider it, an insult to your sister — or of the Yankee cunning by which you attempt to get information as to what Virginia is doing in the way of defence,) that I have the honor to command the sons of your former friends and school- mates, and one of your nephews, and expect to be in the battle which you anticipate in the vicinity of Richmond; and as we know you, should you have malignity sufficient against your native State, where in times past you've bought and sold for profit what you now so puritanically call human beings, we shall single you out, and shall consider it the crowning act in the history of our life to be able to rid the earth of a traitor to his native State.
W. W. T. Coghill.
