Greensborough Patriot

January 8, 1863

Page 2

A friend writing from Hamptonville says:

“There is an outrage being perpetrated in our neighboring County of Wilkes. Some 390 famished cavalry horses, in charge of some 40 men from Virginia, are pressing and eating out the Valley of the Yadkin. Corn is so scarce there that $3 per bushel is the current price, yet these men are pressing it at $1.50, and depriving the soldiers’ families of bread.”

We learn that Gov. Vance has very promptly, and properly instructed the Colonels of the militia in Wilkes to this stop impressments of corn, and to use force, if necessary, to stop it. The seizing of corn to support an army in the field, and in the presence of the enemy, is a very different thing from seizing it, at half price, to feed famished cavalry horses not actually in service. As long as there is a grain of corn in the country, or a pound of meat, let the families of absent soldiers come in for their share.

--Raleigh Standard—

If it is necessary to send these cavalry horses away from the army to be wintered, why, in the name of common sense, are they not sent to sections of the country where grain is cheap and plenty, and not to sections where there is hardly grain enough to keep alive the women and children? In the Eastern part of the State corn in plenty and cheap, and there horses, if properly manned, could be cheaply wintered and at the same time be of great advantage in protecting the citizens of that section from the raids of small Yankee parties who come out from Nowhere to murder, plunder and steal.

[Transcribed by Sharon Strout]