The way Virginia Traitors Lie.
The subjoined story from a Virginia Yankee is called by the Baltimore American ‘"Another Wail from a Victim of Virginia Secession:"’
Clearspring, Md., Oct. 8, 1861.
Messrs. Editors of the Baltimore American:
‘ As my first letter has found favor and acceptance in your sight, I am about to trespass upon your good nature by reciting a few more things done by Virginia's master and his minions upon the persons and property of the children of the "good old Common wealth." First, allow me to acquaint you of their modus operandi of impressment. They do not pursue the constitutional mode of drafting, thereby giving a few the privilege of remaining at home, but require that every man between the ages of 18 and 45 shall perform military duty and allow his own property to be wrecked, and his family to starve, giving his time and strength to his oppressors. They tell all that it is their duty thus to go, and if such persuasion fails they readily resort to the old Prussian argument, (the bayonet,) which generally convinces all refractory citizens that there must be an earnestness, if not a desperateness, in the "Call for Volunteers." They say that volunteers are needed, and so, when the people themselves cease to volunteer, Secession minions will save them the trouble and write their names for them. After being impressed they are taken to Winchester, where they are fed upon an unwholesome diet, with an abundance of hard labor, and are then told that if they will volunteer and go to Manassas Junction, that all labor will be at an end, and they will be enabled to reap some of the merits of a martial life without its pains and trials.
This has generally the desired effect, and men stake their lives upon a desperate issue, and take the chances of being killed by the bayonet in preference to "dying by inches" in these militia haunts. The patrollers, whose duty it is to gather in the militia, go about it in a sort of a "Capt. Kidd" way, and have no hesitancy about enforcing their demands. An old man named Penery, whose two sons had escaped to Maryland, was a subject for Secession ire. The patrollers having called for his sons were told by the aged father, with great enthusiasm, "that they had escaped to a free land," whereupon they seized the old man as a party to the son's escape, bound him hand and foot, and jolted him off to their camp, seven miles distant, where he is still held a prisoner. The men of this neighborhood who have thus far escaped their clutches have not slept within doors for six weeks, being compelled to sleep in the woods for fear their houses will be surrounded and they carried off. Whenever they (the Secessionists) wish horses and wagons to convey any stolen goods from one point to another — as in case of the contract between one sharper and the citizens of Winchester in regard to stealing the railroad iron and machinery from the workshops at Martinsburg — the Union men must invariably send their teams to do the labor. It does not remain optional with the owner of the teams if he sends or not, but it is compulsory upon him, as in the case of a farmer in the neighborhood of Bunker Hill, Va. His team being impressed, he, from certain circumstances, could not deliver it as soon as ordered, whereupon a guard was sent that cursed him, insulted his family, and took his entire team away and sent it to the Junction. Such, citizens of Maryland, are a few more of the blossoms of Secession; be ye careful lest ye taste the fruits which are just now ripening on Virginia's soil. M.
’
