May 5, 1863
The following notice of Mr. Price should have appeared in the issue of the week before last, when his announcement was first published, and has been delayed to the present issue in consequence of the want of space.
It will be seen by an announcement in another column that Samuel Price, Esq., of Greenbrier, has consented to become a candidate for the office of Lt. Governor.
As we have known him personally for a number of years, we can speak knowingly of his character and qualifications. We do not propose in this brief notice to bestow an eulogium upon his character:he is so well known throughout the State, and particularly in Western Virginia, by virtue of the different public trusts which have been confided to him, that we deem an extended notice unnecessary. He is a man of good sense and sound judgment, and of an irreproachable private character. He is a good citizen and a member of the church. He is loyal to the Confederacy, as has been clearly established by the fact that he preferred imprisonment to taking the oath to support the Government of [unreadable] were in Lewisburg at the time the oath was presented to him. We saw him an hour after, and had the pleasure of congratulating him on the firmness and loyalty displayed by him, in refusing to take the oath, with the remark to the Yankee General in command, "That the whole U. S. Army could not make him take that oath." He was under arrest, as a prisoner, when we spoke to him:soon after was taken from his home, and held under arrest in Charleston, Kanawha, till he was released by the capture of that place, by the forces under the command of Gen'l Loring.:He is a good lawyer, and has been quite successful in the practice of his profession. He has represented, with efficiency, the county of Greenbrier to the Legislature for a number of terms. He was elected a member of the State Convention to revise the Constitution in 1850, and was also a member of the Convention of 1861 which exhausted all the peaceful means of redress before resorting to the ultima ratio--the stern arbitrament of the sword. He, like to good people of this section, was in favor of preserving peace if it could be done consistently with honor, but when Lincoln trampled contemptuously upon the olive branch of peace and drew the sword to spill the hearts' blood of the Southern people, he, like our people, was for "war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt."
Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood: April 1863