|ANOTHER class of cases brought before the provost-court at Alexandria related to disloyalty as affecting the property-rights of individuals. In the hasty evacuation of the city, when the Union troops were about coming in, many had left their carpets, furniture, pianos, bed? and bedding, cooking utensils, everything, indeed, except the clothing upon their persons and such few things as they could pack in trunks. In some cases, persons remaining in Alexandria had been given the keys of abandoned houses and stores and the goods within left in their charge; but in other cases, so great had been the fright and haste of the occupants, that even this precaution had not been observed. What was true of Alexandria was no less true of the country for several miles around. As regiment after regiment came over from Washington and encamped at points from one to five miles west and south of Alexandria, they found many farm-houses and gentlemen's residences abandoned, in which had been left the furniture, the pianos, the beds and bedding, and whatever else could not be carried away in trunks. Of course, all such abandoned residences were appropriated for headquarters of divisions, brigades, and regiments, so far as they were needed for such purposes; and, in Alexandria, such residences as were not needed for headquarters were quickly applied for (or taken possession of in many cases without any application to the General commanding) by those who came to the city for purposes of trade, and for other purposes. Thus far everything progressed with what seemed to be a sort of general consent; but pretty soon a new class of questions arose, in which there was a decided difference of opinion, not only as between Union citizens and secessionists, but between Union officers and Union soldiers as well. These questions arose from an assumed right, upon the part of some, to appropriate for their own individual use and profit whatever had been abandoned by those who had gone into the Confederate lines, and who thereby had openly declared themselves not only disloyal, but hostile, to the United States government. Those who assumed such right, attempted to justify their opinions and their acts by referring to the Act of the United States Congress of August, 1861, by which all property used for insurrectionary purposes was made liable to confiscation; and they further claimed that it was but a fair retaliation to the Act of the Confederate Congress, by which the property of all Union men, living within the Confederate lines, was made liable to sequestration.