We are kindly permitted to make an extract from a private letter, from a gentleman in the South to his near relative in this State, the lesson of which we commend to that class of our fellow-citizens who feel a deep concern lest the action of the government, in vigorously prosecuting the war, should prejudice the Union men of the South, and lead them to make common cause with the rebels. Though we do not choose to give the name or exact locality of the writer, or to give any due to his present whereabouts, we will state that he is a native of Maine, of Democratic antecedents, a graduate of one of our New England colleges, that be studied a profession, went South where he engaged in teaching, finally married into the family of a wealthy cotton planter, and at the time the rebellion broke out, he was engaged in a lucrative legal practice.
During the campaign of 1800 lie was a zealous supporter of Mr. Douglas, never dreaming of being, politically, other than a Democrat. His State was not the last to secede; and though a Union man, without a particle of sympathy for secessionism, he found himself obliged to connect himself with the Home Guard of his adopted city, and to identify himself with the common interests of his State. Soon after this the legislature of that State passed an act transferring the Home Guards to the Confederate government, and he found himself holding a commission in the rebel army, and was in one of the most fearful battles that has yet occurred in the southwest. Sickness was the reason of his being at home when the federal troops captured his place of residence, and gladly did he welcome the old flag, and seek protection beneath its folds. Since then he has been to Washington and visited his old home in Maine, but at present he is in the South for temporary purposes, but where the Stars and Stripes continue to float. So much for his history. His name and precise locality we conceal only because his family are yet exposed to the raids that are liable to be made upon the city where they dwell. When the point is better guarded by federal bayonets, or when he shall accomplish the object of his present visit to that region, and shall have removed his family to a more congenial political atmosphere, the present injunction of secrecy in relation to his name and whereabouts will not exist. Here is the extract, which bears recent date :
“The true Union men of the South look with more Friendship to the Republicans than to the Democracy of the North. They are perfectly disgusted with the attempt of the “Peace Democrats” to build up their party at the expense of their country. Peace (on any other terms than a restoration of Federal authority) means for us (the Union men of the South) only disgrace, poverty, exile and death, and this is what the ‘Peace Democrats” at the North Would abandon us to, because they fear that armed traitors may be bezt by a continuance of the war. But God will never permit it. Reforms never go backward, and the party of the reactionists will find themselves overwhelmed and disgraced as the only result of their course.”
The Portland Daily Press, Portland, ME