avowed their real sentiments; the Union flag was displayed from many a dwelling; and the fair hands of Martinsburg women stitched beautiful banners, which, with words of eloquent loyalty, were presented to the favorite Union regiments, and even now are cherished in Northern homes, or in Union encampments, as mementos of the gratitude of Berkeley County for its deliverance from the reign of terror. Yet how was the confidence repaid which these loyal people thus reposed in Gen. Patterson? In less than three weeks, not a Union soldier was left in Martinsburg, and before the first of August they were withdrawn wholly from Berkeley and Jefferson Counties. And the poor refugees who had returned to their homes in good faith, and the loyalists who in equal good faith had spoken out their true patriotism and their love of the Union, were left to the tender mercies of the 'Berkeley Border Guard,' and such braves as the Texan Rangers, the Mississippi Bowie-knives, and the Louisiana Tiger Zouaves. Gray-headed men like Pendleton and Strother were dragged from their homes to languish for weeks in Richmond jails, and the old reign of terror was reëstablished with renewed virulence. Shall we ask these poor, deceived Unionists of Northern Virginia what they think of Gen. Patterson, and of the success of his campaign? How can we estimate the injury to the cause of the Union inflicted in this way alone by a grossly inefficient Federal general? There were other reasons than those already enumerated why Patterson should have occupied Harper's Ferry at an early day, and these were reasons of economy, which commended themselves to the judgment of almost every one except the commanding general. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is the natural and only good thoroughfare along the valley of the upper Potomac. Harper's Ferry, confessedly the strongest and best military point in Northern Virginia, and the one best fitted for a base of offensive operations, is on this railroad, and, of course, of easy access from Baltimore and Washington. In June last the road was open from Baltimore to the Point of Rocks, between which last place and the Ferry were some rebel obstructions easy to be removed. Had Gen. Patterson occupied Harper's Ferry in June, and opened the railroad to that point, and from thence carried on the campaign like a brave general, worthy to command the brave men who filled the ranks of his army, the government might by this time have made the whole line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad of use, as a means of transporting troops and munitions between Cincinnati and Baltimore,--a desideratum then, as now, very strongly urged, as the shortest route between those points is the circuitous one _via_ Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. It could have been of great use, too, to Patterson's division of the army, in transporting supplies from Baltimore, by the most natural and expeditious route. But it was his plan to enter Virginia at Williamsport, so that all supplies