Address to the people of North Carolina.
--The committee appointed by the North Carolina troops in Gen. Lee's army to prepare an address to the people of that State, counteracting the treacherous aims of a faction of designing men, has discharged its duty. The address appears in print. We have room for only the concluding portion of it:Let there is yet a consideration to which your attention has not been invited. The systematic violation of all the laws of civilized warfare by the enemy has not been without its natural influence in inflaming our resentment and exciting towards him extreme hatred. He has no respect to the inviolability of private property or the personal liberty of non-combatants. He has made war upon innocent and defenceless old men, women, and children, by driving them as refugees from their homes, burning their dwellings, and taking from them their means of subsistence. He has employed in his service — in command of his armies — beasts in human shape, who have not hesitated to inflict upon ladies of the greatest refinement the most cruel insults. His clarities to pure people have been limited only by his power. Surely there cannot be a man of honorable impulses or generous nature in our whole State who has not felt his heart swell with indignation at the recital of the inhuman barbarities of our foe. But it must occur to you as a matter exciting the greatest astonishment that the employment of the slaves of the South and the free negroes of the North to murder our citizens and oppose us. In honorable combst as soldiers should not have fired the soul of every man in the South, and raised every strong arm in her defence. He who bears this enormity with patience is a coward or a brute. "whom it would be bare flattery to call a man." And can be who counsels submission, or whose course of conduct tends to this result, escape this condemnation? And under such circumstances could we fail to transfer to our enemies at home and the main authors of our calamities the haired and revenge which we cherish for our public enemy?
But let us invite you to a policy which shall avoid all apprehensions of evil and disaster. Let all the good and patriotic people of the State unite in a public avowal of their opinions, in denunciation of the sentiments and designs of this faction. This cannot fall to destroy R. W errors in the conduct of our affairs have been committed, let us brush them from our memory or throw over them the mantle of charity. Let the disgusting bickering of partisans and politicians be once more banished from the arm. Let us, in the midst of the fearful dangers that surround us, renew our pledge of devotion to the came of the country and light upon her altars eternal blazing fires.
