Alexandria Gazette

THE TENTH LEGION

The failure of the citizens of the Counties of Rockingham and Shenandoah, to furnish a single Company to fight the battles of the President to whose election they contributed so many votes, has subjected them to an incessant flood of sarcasm and ridicule which pours in upon them from every quarter of the Union. Some, even of the Loco-foco editors have been unable to resist the strong temptation to have a joke at the expense of their phlegmatic co-laborers in the Loco-foco vineyard. By the way in speaking of a vineyard, we are suddenly reminded, that precious few of the grapes are ever distributed in that quarter. It is a remarkable fact that except a fat job thrown in the way of our old friends of the Register, a very small portion of the spoils has fallen to the share of the hard-working democracy of the Tenth Legion. This fact proves conclusively that they are no mercenaries; their labours in behalf of radicalism are "labours of love," and however we may deplore their infatuation, they certainly deserve credit for their sincerity.

Nor are they, as a body of men, destitute of personal courage. Let their homes be threatened with invasion, or let the country be engaged in a war in which their sympathies are enlisted, and our word for it, Old Rockingham will send forth as many, aye and as brave sons to bleed and die in the cause of the country as any other County from the Aroostook to the Nueces. We say their sympathies, for whilst they have a decided aversion to changing their politics—and are, most of them, as firmly persuaded that the present Loco-foco party, is the old Democratic party of Jefferson and Madison, as that manure fertilizes their soil, they have no heart for the annexation schemes of the progress men. In fact, if the proposition to annex Mexico by force of arms to this country, had been suggested to them as a Whig measure, nothing could exceed the unaffected horror with which they would have regarded it. As it is, they do not give their conscience fair play. They plough their fields and sow their seed—striving to forget that there is such a thing as a Mexican War and that they are partly responsible for the blood and tears it has caused to flow. We insist upon it, for we know the people that when they have cause there is to use a cant phrase, "no back out in old Rockingham."

—Martinsburg Gazette.