Correspondence of the Richmond Dispatch.
from Western Virginia.
June 7, 1861
White Sulphur Springs, June 4.
We have had a great many alarms here of the near approach of the invaders from Ohio, by way of Charleston and through Braxton and Nicholas counties. To-day all the rumors, except that of the crossing of troops into the Kanawha Valley, prove utterly unfounded. They excited a great deal of uneasiness among families, and a gratifying amount of patriotism among the men. The farmers and hunters in the mountains rallied most promptly with their rifles, and to-day a very formidable body of these men assembled in Lewisburg. A minister, who is an ardent Southern man, passed by to-day and assured me that there could not be less than two thousand men between Lewisburg and Meadow Bluff, all nearly armed with death-dealing rifles, which everyone who bore them could shoot with wonderful accuracy. If the enemy attempts to come thus far, he will have an awful time passing along the narrow defiles and beneath the steep cliffs that make the road between this place and Charleston.
To-day so many of the Stout and Hardy Mountain Boys are going by, en route for Lewisburg, and thence further towards the enemy, westwardly {sic}, that the alarm has subsided, and everyone feels satisfied that those brutal men from Ohio who dare to invade Virginia will never be able to penetrate this far. Those men live in a State of exceeding fertility, carved out of the princely domain given away by Virginia to the Federal Government. They are in the daily enjoyment of blessings which teem from the land thus bestowed without money and without price. Yet they show an alacrity to invade the State who thus parted with the empire they enjoy : a State which, apart from not having injured or wronged them in any manner, has been one of their best customers for the staples they produce. There is a brutal Maltese in this which deserves to be visited with the direct vengeance. I hope ardently that they will got their deserts. If they encounter the mountain riflemen in their raid they will rue it.
I am rejoiced at the patriotism displayed by the people generally here. The alarms have been of great service, and have added much to the means of defence {sic} of the West. C.
Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood: Undated: June 1861