November 15, 1861
Moundsville, Marshal [sic] Co.,
Nov. 13th, 1861.
Editors Intelligencer:
Our town is all excitement, produced by the news from Guyandotte. The cold blooded murder of the Union soldiers at that town, by the land pirates, has set the blood of Union men here, to use your own expression, "hissing through the veins of our col[?]est loyalists." We received the news in your paper at 11 o'clock on yesterday. Soon our streets were filled with excited men and women. Four secessionists were knocked down and three of them put to jail. A committee of Union men, laboring under the wildest state of excitement, passed from one secession house to another, peremptorily ordering them to pack up and leave. At 12 o'clock to-day the prisoners will have a hearing.
The excitement still continues unabated. Nothing can be heard but "Guyandotte must and shall be revenged!" Many of the Union men here have near relatives in the Union army, and bad news from our army weighs heavily upon them. But it was plain to be seen that it pleased the secesh. It looks as if it will be impossible to ever restore kind feelings in this community between those who love our country and those who hate it.
Our Union citizens appear to take no notice of the good news from our fleet, the feeling produced by the butchery of our troops at Guyandotte appears to overwhelm every other kind of news. They say if secessionists did these things there they will do it here if we allow them to remain among us. The war commenced by the land pirates at Fort Sumter against the only good government under high Heaven will certainly end favorably for our government, but Union men have lost their property and their lives to subdue them; their lives cannot be restored, but the property of the rebels can be taken to replace the loss of property sustained by Union men. Land pirates, like pirates on the high seas, lose all their right to life, liberty and property; hence all they have should be taken and confiscated as our army moves on, the property owned by Union men only excepted.
Marshall.
Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood: November 1861