done and injuries inflicted upon her sister Southern States, and while it is true that her people have perhaps suffered less in some respects than the people of Maryland and the entire border Southern States, she no less makes their wrongs her wrongs and their cause her cause, and is prepared to take common action with her sister States for the preservation of their common liberties and the defense of their common rights at all hazards and to the last extremity.

The right of Georgia to secede from the Federal Union for existing causes she does not admit to be a debatable question. As a sovereign State she threw off her allegiance to Great Britain in 1776. As a sovereign independent State, in 1788, she ratified and adopted the Federal Constitution; and as a sovereign State she has now repealed and annulladoption and ratification of that Constitution and has set up for herself an independence and equality among the nations of the earth which she expects and demands shall be clearly and explicitly recognized and admitted. Still, recalling the blessings enjoyed, the wealth, power, and happiness conferred upon her people in the earlier days of the Republic under the operation of the Federal Union and the Constitution as expounded and enforced by the patriot fathers of those days, she is anxious to associate herself wit the slave-holding in a new confederated republic upon the basis of the old Union, and has elected delegates to represent her people in a Southern convention now assembled at the city of Montgomery, in the State of Alabama, for the purpose of organizing a provisional government for the seceding States and the adoption of a constitution and the establishment of a more perfect union among her several sister Southern States.

In this great work of reorganization she cordially invites the co-operation and assistance of the State of Maryland. She is not unmindful of the past history of your noble State, neither has she forgotten the proud names cluster in undying glory upon the broad PAGEs of your State's history. The people of Georgia feel a just and proper pride in the fame, the virtue, the intelligence, and patriotism of your statesmen, while the courage and bravery of your sons in the field have made their names as familiar to her people as "household words. " The past of Maryland gives strong encouragement to Georgia to hope that, in the present trying exigency in which she, with her Southern sisters, from no fault of their own, find themselves placed, your gallant State will, though slowly it may be, yet surely, be found side by side with the firmest in determined resistance to Black Republican rule. Maryland owes this to herself no less than to the other Southern States. The wealth, population, and commercial importance of her great metropolis, Baltimore, point out that city as the great commercial and financial center of the Southern Republic. Under the oppression and unequal administration of the present Federal Government she has maintained the third rank in the list of American cities. That she has natural and artificial advantages equal, if not superior, to New York and Philadelphia is plain to the commonest observer. Under a friendly, or even a fair, system of government, she would soon take rank among the first cities of the world. As long as Maryland continues a dependency upon the Northern Federal Government restrictions, limitations, and discriminations will continue to be made against her commercial interests and prosperity. Baltimore, from her natural advantages, no less than from her varied and extended commercial relations with the civilized world, will become the great importing agent for the entire