Weekly Standard

Our Eastern People.

A refugee from Newbern has written us a communication vindicating the loyalty of those who remained there for a time, but were at last compelled to leave or take the oath to the Lincoln government. No such vindication is necessary. It is true, the course of certain journals has led the unreflecting to believe that Eastern Carolina, as a general rule, is but a harbor for "Buffaloes"—that is, sympathizers with our enemies; but the facts are all the other way. No people could have been more devoted or loyal. Traitors and "Buffaloes" constitute the exceptions. Our Eastern people have suffered deeply and for a long time. The efforts made in the Convention and in the Legislature, to provide troops to defend them, failed through party manoeuverings and party opposition, and in many respects they have been left naked to their enemies; but the great mass of them have preferred the loss of all they had, and to become refugees and wanderers, to doing anything which would be regarded as an unmanly submission to a ruthless foe. All honor, we say, to such a people.

Thousands of our Eastern brethren, with their wives and children and servants, are now scattered throughout the interior of the State. In many instances they have lost all they had. They are entitled in their peculiar condition, not merely to be regarded as loyal citizens, but they should have the sympathy, manifested in unostentatious acts of substantial kindness, of all our people in the interior who have been fortunately shielded from the losses and evils which have befallen them. Let the fact that a person is a refugee and a wanderer for opinion's sake, be a sure passport to our kindest and best attentions. We are all North-Carolinians; and as we love the old State, the common mother of us all, let us be brethren indeed, especially towards those who have been driven, in many cases without means, from their once comfortable and happy homes.