Staunton Spectator

Mr. Editor:--We, the people, have been informed by the members of the Court of Augusta county that the said Court had bought, through their agent, Mr. Davis, 12,000 bushels of salt for equal distribution among all the citizens giving to each individual 20 lbs. Now we, as tax-payers, and good and loyal citizens of the Confederacy, want to know, nay, we have a right to know, how the salt received, and being received has, and is being distributed, and why so many families have not been able to get a pound, and we also wish to know, whether or not, the horses, cattle, sheep, &c., of the sub agents of Mr. Davis were counted as inhabitants. Will our court, the guardians of the people, please inform the public.

INDEPENDENT.

The people of the North are begining [sic] to feel that the war, if not soon closed with success on their part, will not be a "paying job." As soon as this conviction shall become more general in that benighted part of the world, they will begin to take steps for a cessation of active hostilities. They have already expended more money in the prosecution of the war than all the property of the South, exclusive of slaves, is worth. If they do not succeed in the present campaign they will be forced, for the want of means, in the classic language of Lincoln, to "guv it up."

With the Richmond Examiner, we trust and believe that defeats are in store for them even more signal than any they have ever yet suffered; but, be this as it may, we have only to keep in good heart, make a stout resistance wherever they present themselves, and hold on to the bitter end. Mere time is a sword of destruction in our hands; every week they lose being equivalent to a new victory on our side. We may have a dark and gloomy winter, but if true to ourselves we cannot fail of success. The second six hundred thousand troops will be destroyed more easily and more rapidly than the first; and it is not probable that a third will ever be recruited. The war may nominally linger for a long time to come; but we can virtually end it within sixty days. No success of the enemy can bring them nearer their object. Mere failure of success on their part must conclude the war.

1. The call by the abolitionists for a second army of 600,000 men.

2. Their building of a larger Navy and a larger number of iron-clad boats, for operation against forts in harbors and upon rivers, and for the general purpose of destroying our coast and river banks.

3. Their systematic fortification of all prominent cities and strategic points now occupied on our soil, for permanent possession.

4. Their massing of troops at different points to be permanently held as bases of operations against the Confederate States.

5. Their avowed intention of conquering every seaboard city and blockading up all access to the sea, and fitting out expeditions for the same.

6. The inhuman and iniquitous proclamation of President Lincoln, looking towards the utter destruction of our country.

7. The support tendered him by the Governors of he thirteen States in this proclamation, and in the prosecution of the war.

8. The unity of the people of the North on the war. The Democratic party is coming into power again, but that party declares it will prosecute the war to our certain and entire subjugation and the restoration of the Union.

When the developments, now being made, of Yankee character, come to be duly appreciated by the world, they will be held by impartial history, to be the vilest race on the face of the earth. They are without the one redeeming virtue of which the Roman Historian speaks. Possessed of all the views, which distinguish the Chinese, they have the additional one of pretending to virtues which they do not possess. Bigotted [sic] and intolerant, rapacious and stingy, fraudulent and roguish, boastful and cowardly, ostentatious and vulgar, envious and spiteful--they are an exaggerated embodiment of all the vices of the Puritan and Blackleg. What particular cause, or combination of causes, conspired to produce this odious population, it is not our purpose now to inquire. But great as may be the calamity of war, we cannot resist the conviction, that it is an inappreciable blessing, and will so continue, until every Southern bosom is filled with detestation and loathing for this abominable race. To hate vice is the first step to virtue; and it may be that Providence, in its mysterious, but wise and beneficent ways, may have chosen to subject us to the ordeal of a disastrous war, in order to infuse into all our hearts a becoming abhorrence of these living representatives of all the vices. Had we continued in political connexion with them, we, too, in the lapse of time, must inevitably have fallen into the same deplorable state of moral degradation. A quiet and peaceful separation--continuing commercial and social relations--would not have been sufficient to save us. The rupture must be attended with violence and bloodshed, and pillage and devastation, to open our eyes to the monsters with whom we had been associated.--The God of Heaven, who, in former times, employed Satan to do his will, did not perhaps, deem Seward an unfit successor of the elder Mephistophiles, and prompted him to draw the sword, that the separation might be thorough and final, and ensure the cause of freedom and virtue throughout the world.--Rich. Whig.