which the Confederate Government is drawing all the tent cloth manufactured into tents at the State penitentiary, and from which the State has received the greatest quantity of the material for clothing her troops in the Confederate service.

From Tallassee to West Point is about sixty-five or seventy miles. Here are railroad depots and shops, and a long bridge across the Chattahoochee River. Returning to Selma we find a railroad extending up by Montevallo and Columbiana, and crossing the Coosa River over a magnificent bridge passes through the town of Talladega and up into Calhoun County, terminating not many miles from Jacksonville. The company are working rapidly for its extension to Rome, Ga. Along the line of this Alabama and Tennessee Rivers Railroad are located some of the most valuable iron establishment sin the Confederacy. They are in the counties of Bibb, Shelby, and Calhoun. Theys upply the iron for the shops at Selma, Montgomery, and Mobile. With the establishment at Rome, Ga., and their importance to the Confederacy, you are perhaps better advised than I am. Now, with the most of Alabama before you, and the date which I have suggested, you can readily appreciate the anxiety I feel for the disposition of a military force to secure adquate and certain protection against any future raids of the enemy from North Mississippi. The whole country between the valley of the Tennessee and Tuscaloosa and Talladega is thinly populated, and the people in the counties upon the respective routes have neither the men nor the means with which to rptoect their homes, much less to meet and repel an organized force suddenly precipitated upon them and dashing on in their savage crusade of rapine and plunder. Nor is it now in the power of the State of Alabama to raise and equip the troops sufficient for such an emergency. Nearly all of her arms-bearing population or ein the Confederate service, and to advance the common cause, the ultimate triumph of which she has from the beginning placed above and beyond all sectional or local interest, she has stripped her arsenals of all her munitions of war and cheefully surrendered them to the Confederate authorities, not doubting that in the terrible ordeals through which she would have to pass the Confederate Governmet would afford to her people all protection and security compatible with its means and the general welfare. Her population who are now at home, with some exceptions, around her towns and villages, who have purchased immunity from service, are engaged in legitimate employments for the benefit of the State, and necesssary for the maintenance of our armies in the field. They can at best organize only in small companies or squads in their respective neighborhoods, and in case of danger rally round some organized bands who are posted for the protection of the State. In no other way can our people be shielded from atack or the valuable property within the State, in which the Confederacy is so vitally interested, be preserved from destruction. The recent raids through Alabama and Mississippi afford mournful and conclusive evidence of this truth, and I have indulged the found hope that the brigade of troops now being raised in Alabama by an officer of experience and gallantry, whose name will attract to his ranks many who can scarcely be obtained in any other way, and whose presence within her limits will give confidence and repose to her people and afford a nucleus to rally around in case of invasion and peril, wouldhave been permitted to remain within her borders for her own defense at lest until the storm could which now threatens shall have passed away.

31 R R-VOL LIII, PT II