[CHAP, LXIV.

take them for their defense, to secure peaceful secession, shows your inckination to keep them for their coercion and to prevent peaceful secession. The frowning artillery and armed men brought to the unaccustomed view of the people of Maryland and Virginia, of Charleston and Pensacola, are just causes of offense to those who esteem themselves free citizens, not subjects, masters, or servants of government.

The free people of Alabama will not consent that places of power granted by them to Government for their defense againsts insurrection and invasion shall be used in aid of their invasion and subjugation. They regard the uses now made of Forts Pickens, Sumter, McHenry, and others in Southern State as a gross abuse of the people and trust, a plain usurpation of ungranted power. And be assured thet the men of the South will not long endure this constant menace of the power of your Government, or suffer it to stad sentinel over their doorways with presented arms, ready to challenge themselves or their friends or to dispute their ingress or egress. The instincts of mere brute nature, no less than the noblest sentiments of humanity, self - preservation, patriotesm, honor, and pride of independence, conspire against such deliberate insult and persistent menace of injury. If not surrendered for the defense of the people against your standing army, they mmust and will take them at every hazard and any sacrifice. Those States that have seceded will never unite with the Northern States under a common government - the idea is preposterous, the grounds is hopeless. There has been constant and incrasing strife bewteen them for more than a quarter of a century. They differ so widely in principles and sentiments, in morals, in manner, religion, and politics, as well as social institution and habits, that the world knows that they are different and uncongenial types of civilization.

They have long seen and felt it and cannot have a motive for living together that is not purely selfish and mercenary. I trust and believe they will hereafter form separate and district governments, in which they cannot love each other less or harm other more than under a common governmetn. The people of Alabama believe their rights will be better respected by the New England and other Northern States when out of this union than they have been in it. The common prevalence in the South of this opinion will forever prevent the rebuilding of the old Union. With your knowledge of the history of the United States and the unhomogeneous characters of the Northern and Southern peoples you must agree with me that man will never witness the reconstructon of the union. Then, why hold forts and keep troops in the seceded States if not to disturb us? Why not take the purchase money offerd for them? Left to yourself I think you would withdraw your garriisons and sell us the forts, for you pray for peace and protest against coercion. Take care that your councils do not compromise your honor and your character by evincing uses of those strongholds at variace with your prayers and protests. A superannuated soldier, whose vanity and ignorance have never failed to provoke contempt whenever he essays to play the statesman, is not competent to advise you. Neither is a mere jurist and scholer, who has lived a recluse and knows less of living and feeling men than of dead languages and abstract sciences. Trust your own judgment and feelings and I think you will correct the errors they have commited by transferring your troops from Southern States, wherexcite suspicion and heartburnings and make enemies of those who should be friends, to the Western fromtier, where war is being carried on against citizens of the United Sates.