Alexandria Gazette

To the editor of the Alexandria Gazette:

An article, over the signature of "D." appeared in your paper of the 21st inst., which referred to various topics of public interest in Virginia, among others to the public schools and to a communication signed "P." which the Gazette gave its readers a few days ago.

Now we quote entirely from memory with regard to this letter of "P.," but as far as we recollect it, no letter appearing in your paper, or in any other printed south of the Potomac, for many a long day, has a stronger claim upon the attention and the sympathy of the Southern people and their representatives in Congress or elsewhere. Your correspondent "P." was before the war an officer in the navy (as we believe) of the United States. He was also a Virginian. Religiously so instructed from his infancy, believing with all his soul that his primary allegiance was due to his native State when that State legally and solemnly withdrew from the Union, this officer abandoning with heroic self sacrifice all hope of preferment, for Virginia had no navy, offered his sword, all he had, to the defense of the Commonwealth.

The Commonwealth accepted it, along with the sword of many another gallant son similarly situated. The war ending disastrously your correspondent tells you that he had left a modest property in Washington from which he hoped to clothe and feed and educate his in Virginia girls and boys. But then he goes on to say that he was robbed of this little property by the partisan decisions of a federal judge and by the grasping avarice of a Washington lawyer. This is but a tale told too often. We have heard it before, and "true 'twas pity and pity 'twas true." But with regard to that matter of a personal character upon which your correspondent from Rappahannock commented, and he adverted to personal sacrifices with singular consideration and with touching patience, we are forced to believe that there is a demoniac mistake. He writes that his representative in Congress cannot be made to remember him long enough to have his political disabilities removed. It will take the strongest evidence to make us believe that General Hunter, himself a soldier who served with credit, can thus refuse to aid a comrade in distress.

So much for the statement of your correspondent from Rappahannock. Speaking for and of the public schools your correspondent "D." is pleased to remark: "The school at this place has on its rolls over fifty scholars, and among them are so called F. F. V.'s raised in luxury like your correspondent "P.," who is a fine gentleman, and who, were it not for schools, would be forced to raise their children in ignorance," We do not remember that for a long time we have ever read anything that grated upon us more harshly than this. It is a poor Virginia gentleman, not a "fine gentleman" by any means, who writes you a letter upon various subjects, and among others: the public schools, for which he is begging! He tells you that they are of very little use to him as the nearest school is so far off he cannot send his children. This and nothing more. If he has modest, tender little children, perhaps which he is unwilling to trust unprotected on long country roads. And for this he is animadverted upon as a fine gentleman and an "F.F. V.," Slang may do well enough for people who live outside of Virginia. It may amuse them and doesn't hurt us. But we may be permitted to say that it doesn't suit the people of this Commonwealth, and will be coldly received by those who dwell within its limits. The Virginia people can never be induced to forget the great deeds in her history, which have been performed by the innumerable throng of those who have been called F. F. V.'s,—of whom Washington was only one—those who have made the name of the State famous and respected in other lands and on other shores, even to the where alien peoples supplicate strange gods in unknown tongues. Nor are the simpler virtues neglected by those much-maligned F. F. V.'s Who of this generation can forget the example set to the people of this locality by the gallant Terrett? After near three score years passed in modest comfort in the service of the United States, he found himself suddenly beggared by the war and died with the plow handles almost literally in his hands, never more shining member of the F. F. V.'s than when, stricken at the plow by the fierce rays of the sun, he was borne unconscious into the house which his own hands had reared over the heads of his children.

Yes, this sort of people are the first families in Virginia—the first in courage, the first in endurance; in prosperity, the first in generous courtesy and hospitality; in adversity, the first in earnest endeavor, or in uncomplaining suffering; in peace, the first guardians of the Commonwealth: in war, the first to shed their blood in its defense. It takes something more to make a State than material prosperity. It is something more is beautifully described in certain famous lines by Sir Wm. Jones, which are doubtless entirely familiar to your accomplished correspondent, so we will not weary the readers by the repetition. After re-reading them the singular felicity of his strictures upon so called F. F. V.'s, particularly while he reads Virginia, will possibly occur to him,

With perfect diffidence we take it upon ourselves to remark that this battle scarred Commonwealth will not yet have to undergo the grave calamity with which your correspondent threatens it—that the lady immigrant from Minnesota will have to leave us if our public school system is abolished, We make so bold as to say that this system will not be done away with, even though in keeping it up the State is making as great an effort and as great a sacrifice as when—for principle, and knowing what she was doing—she bared her breast to the dogs of war. But in return we do beg from your correspondent "D," and from those of his ilk, a little consideration for such a man as, undoubtedly, is your other correspondent "P." In Virginia people could teach their children no better lesson, when this self sacrificing gentleman, and all such as he, pass along their streets. (who are only saved by their Anglo-Saxon pride from standing on the corners, hat in hand, and raising that sad old cry, the reproach of ancient Rome, "date obolum Belisario.") than to stand uncovered, with reverent gaze, as these wayfarers pass along plodding the weary road that lies between them and the grave beneath the sod of the State they gave their all to protect.

H.