Daily State Sentinel

Outrages by Negro Troops - How 'American Citizens of African Descent' Behave.

Correspondence of the Richmond Enquirer.

CHURCHVIEW, MIDDLESEX COUNTY, VA., April 6.

It is no longer an uncertainty, but a most shameful reality, more than confirmed ten thousandfold, by black atrocities, which would mar the pages of Pluto's infernal register, that we are dealing with an enemy utterly lost to all the ennobling and high-toned qualities of the human character. The late negro foray into the lower portion of this county was distinguished for the most brutal and outrageous proceedings known to ancient or modern warfare. Savages of the most abandoned and degraded complexion have never yet condescended to practice such inhuman treatment upon the weak and unprotected as that which followed in the wake of these demons. It is horrid even to contemplate - a brigade of ignorant and debased negroes, fired by the noxious poison poured into their ears by perjured commanders, turned loose upon a neighborhood of helpless non-combatants! The imagination dims and the head reels when the actual facts are introduced. Permitted to roam through the country at will, they marched from house to house, plundering and destroying everything which came within their grasp. Table ware of every description, furniture of every quality and cast, were dashed promiscuously from the doors and windows of the dwellings of the owners, and destroyed. Ladies' private apartments were forcibly entered; wardrobes broken open, ransacked, and the contents torn into shreds - such as were not appropriated to their own persons - and given to the winds. Houses were defaced in every conceivable manner, and then reduced to smoking ruins. Horses and mules were carried off, the implements of husbandry destroyed, and provisions of every kind devoured or wasted. Negroes were either enticed or forced away. Numbers of wealthy farmers were left with only a few children and aged, broken down men and women. The most unheard of abuse and indignity were heaped upon the persons of the unfortunate inhabitants. Two aged and respectable ladies were knocked down and badly injured; one for refusing to hold a horse while one of the demons plundered her house, the other because she did not prepare a meal, which they had ordered, with sufficient dispatch to suit their beastly appetites.

But not yet satisfied, the chambers of fair young maidens, in the bloom of youth and beauty, are entered by the subjects of base and sensual passion, and indignities committed which are too foul and degrading to record.

In the full knowledge of these astounding facts, will our government sit with folded hands, and make no attempt at retaliation? I feel well assured that each soldier in the Confederate army will know very well what proposal to make of these contraband enemies when they meet them - and may God speed the day when we shall meet them and give them a taste of Lee's veterans.