which their loyalty had kept for months concealed. And as the army
tarried at Martinsburg, and reinforcements came in, the secret Unionists
avowed their real sentiments; the Union flag was displayed from many a
dwelling; and the fair hands of Martinsburg women stitched beautiful
banners, which, with words of eloquent loyalty, were presented to the
favorite Union regiments, and even now are cherished in Northern homes,
or in Union encampments, as mementos of the gratitude of Berkeley County
for its deliverance from the reign of terror. Yet how was the confidence
repaid which these loyal people thus reposed in Gen. Patterson? In less
than three weeks, not a Union soldier was left in Martinsburg, and
before the first of August they were withdrawn wholly from Berkeley and
Jefferson Counties. And the poor refugees who had returned to their
homes in good faith, and the loyalists who in equal good faith had
spoken out their true patriotism and their love of the Union, were left
to the tender mercies of the 'Berkeley Border Guard,' and such braves as
the Texan Rangers, the Mississippi Bowie-knives, and the Louisiana Tiger
Zouaves. Gray-headed men like Pendleton and Strother were dragged from
their homes to languish for weeks in Richmond jails, and the old reign
of terror was reëstablished with renewed virulence. Shall we ask these
poor, deceived Unionists of Northern Virginia what they think of Gen.
Patterson, and of the success of his campaign? How can we estimate the
injury to the cause of the Union inflicted in this way alone by a
grossly inefficient Federal general?

There were other reasons than those already enumerated why Patterson
should have occupied Harper's Ferry at an early day, and these were
reasons of economy, which commended themselves to the judgment of almost
every one except the commanding general. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
is the natural and only good thoroughfare along the valley of the upper
Potomac. Harper's Ferry, confessedly the strongest and best military