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THE SKEDADDLERS. – One of the most disgraceful circumstances connected with the late invasion of this Valley by the Rebels, was the precipitate flight of hundreds of able-bodied men from their families and homes. Men who had boasted of their intense “loyalty,” and who had so often reminded the people, old and young, of the “duty they owed to themselves and families,” should the Rebels enter our Valley, suddenly turned pale and exhibited the white feather when they were told that the minions of JEFF DAVIS were approaching our town. Their loud professions for many days previous had failed to [nerve?] their hearts or strengthen their knees, had both failed them at the critical moment. They did not possess “loyalty” enough to stand by their own families when danger threatened, but, in violation of the marriage vow, they skedaddled from their homes, leaving their [swooning?] wives and screaming children to the mercy of EWELL’S rebels. The men who thus acted we say, have been loud in their professions, and had boasted of what they would do should a “grey back” show his face in our midst. We thought of these poor [illegible] during the shelling of our town; we thought of them when we heard the loud roar of cannon and the screams of the women and children they had basely forsaken. Thank fortune we had enough of men left in Carlisle during the time the rebels occupied it and shelled it, to protect, not only the women and children, but the town itself. Had our men all left, Carlisle would to day be smoldering ruins, and God knows what would have been the late of the women and children.
We may say in conclusion that the men who abandoned their families and their town when ruin and destruction threatened both, are not Democrats; they are the creatures who have spoken of Democrats as “Copperheads” and “cowards.” We leave them to their own reflections, and to the taunts they are receiving from the tender children they abandoned in the hour of peril.
