disposed persons to desist from such base, cowardly, and treasonable conduct, and warning them that they will subject themselves to indictment and punishment in the civil courts of the Confederacy, as well as to the everlasting contempt and detestation of all good and honorable men. Certainly no crime could be greater, no cowardice more abject, no treason more base, than for a citizen of the State, enjoying its privileges and potection without its dangers, to persuade those who have had the courage to go fort in defense of their country vilely to desertes the colors which they have sworn to uphold, when a miserable death or a vile and ingominious existence must be the inevitable consequence. No pea can excuse it. The father or the brother who does it should be shot instead of his deluded victim, for he deliberately destroys the soul and manhood of his own flesh and blood. And the same is done by him who harbors and conceals the deserter, for who can respect either the one or the other? What honest man will ever wish or permit his own brave sons or patriotic daughters, who bore their parts with credit in this great struggle for independence, to associate, even to the third and fourth generations, with the vile wretch who skulked in the woods, or the still viler coward who aided him, while his bleeding country was calling in vain for his help? Both are enemies-dangerous enemies-to their country, before whom our open foes will be infinitely preferred.

Both are foes to their own kindred and noble contrymen who are electrifying the world by their galland deeds and pouring our their blood upon the field of battle to protect those very men who are sapping the vitals of our strength. And woe unto you, desertes, and your aiders and abettors, when, peace being made and independence secured, these brave comrades whom ye have desertes in the hour of their trial return honored and triumphant to their homes! Ye that hide your guilty faces by day and prowl like outhlaws about by night, robbing the wives and mothers of your noble defenders of their little means while they are far away facing the enemy, do you think ye can escape a just and damning vengeance when the day of reckoning comes? And ye that shelter, conceal, and feed these miserable depredators and stimulate them to their deeds, think you that ye will be spared? Nay! Rest assured, observing and never-failing eyes have marked you, every one. And when the overjoed wife welcomes once more her brave and honored husband to his home, and tell him how, in the long years of his absence, in the lonely hours of the night, ye who had been his comrades rudely entered her house, robbed her and her childred of their bread, and heaped insult and indignities upon her defenseless head, the wrath of that heroic husband will make you regret, in the bitterness of your cowardly terror, that you were ever born. Instead of a few scattered militia, the land will be full of veteran soldiers, before whose honest faces you will not have conrage to raise your eyes from the earth. If permitted to live in the State at all, you will be infamous. You will be hustled from the polls, insulted in the streets, a jury of your contrymen will not believe you on oath, and honest men everywhere will shun you as a pestilence; for he who lacks courage and patriotism can have no other good quality or redeeming virtue.

Though many of you rejected the pardon hertofore offered you, and I am not now authorized to promise it, yet I am assured that no man will be shot who shall voluntarily return to duty. This is the only chance to redeem yourselves from the disgrace and ignominy which you are incurring. Again our troops have met the enemy, and a great and glorious victory has been won. But several thousland of our soldiers