While the people of this State are true and loyal to our cause they are not unmindful of the great principles of constitutional liberty and State sovereignty upon which we entered into this struggle, and they will not hold guiltless those in power who, while charged with the guardianship of the liberties of the people, have subverted and trampled personal liberty under foot and disregarded the rights of private property and the judicial sanctions by which, in all free governments, they or protected. The course pursued by the Administration toward Georgia in her late hour of extreme peril has shown so conclusively as to require no further or illustration the wisdom of the reservation made by the States in the Constitution of the right to keep troops in time of war. Georgia has furnished over 100,000 of her gallant sons to the armies of the Confederacy. The great body of these men was organized into regiments and battalions of infantry and artillery, which have been sustained by recruits from hom from month to the extent of our ability. Those who survive of these regiments and battalions have become veterans in the service, who, if permitted, would have returned to their State and rendered Sherman's march across her territory and the escape of his army alike impossible. I asked that this be allowed, if assistance could not be otherwise afforded. It was denied us, and the State has been passed over by a large army of the enemy. Hundreds of miles of her railroads have been for the present rendered useless. A broad belt of her territory, nearly 400 miles in length, has been devastated. Within this belt most of the public property, including several court-house with the public records, and a vast amount of private property, including many dwellings, gin houses, much cotton, &c., have been destroyed. The city of Atlanta, with several of the village of the State, has been burnt, the capitol has been occupied and desecrated by the enemy, and Savannah, the seaport city of the State, is now in his possession. During the period of Sherman's march from Atlanta to Milledgeville there were not 1,000 men of all the veteran infantry regiments and battalions of Georgians now in Confederate service upon the soil of this State. Nor did troops from other States fill their places.

Thus "abandoned to her fate" by the President, Georgia's best reliance was her reserve militia and State Line, whom she had organized them much more property must have been destroyed, and the city of Macon, so important to the State and Confederacy, must have shared the fate of Atlanta and Savannah, while Augusta, with the small Confederate force by which she was saved divided with Macon, must also have fallen. These troops whom Georgia keeps have not only acted with distinguished gallantry upon many bloody battle-fields upon the soil of their own State, but they have, when an important service could be rendered by them, marched into the interior of other States. The noble conduct of the Troup County Militia in their march to Pollard, Ala., to aid in the protection of the people and property of that State against the devastions of the enemy, and the heroic valor displayed by Major General G. W. Smith and part of his command then with him at Honey Hill, in South Carolina, where he won-with the Georgia militia, her State Line, and a small number of gallant Confederate troops, most of whom were Georgians-one of the most signal victories of the war in proportion to the number engaged, fully attest the correctness of my assertions in their behalf. In view of these facts, with the late bitter experience of the people of this State fresh in his recollection, the Georgia statesman must indeed be a blind worshipper of the President who would advocate the policy of turning over to his