A Western Governor And Somebody's Pretty Sister

The Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune relates the following:

A clerk in one of the Departments in Washington was lately detected in the act of communicating information to the rebels and was immediately discharged.  A few day[s] after he appeared at the Secretary’s office with a letter asking his re-appointment.  This letter was from a Governor of one of the Western States.  He writes to the Secretary that the ex-clerk is an old and intimate friend of his, a good and loyal citizen, has been most unjustly dealt by, and winds up by asking it as a particular personal favor that the ex-Clerk be reinstated in his office.  And the request was immediately complied with!  Directly after an acquaintance meeting Mr. Reinstated said to him:

“Where did you get acquainted with Governor _____?”

“I never was acquainted with him – never spoke to him in my life.”

“How then did you get such a strong letter from him to the Secretary?”

“Oh I have a pretty sister who went to Alexandria the other day with the Governor.  She procured the letter for me.”

The story is well authenticated and the writer believes it is true.  But what should be the punishment of a man who would thus betray his country or what is the same in effect protect those who would betray it?

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 1, 1862, p. 3