me proper to make an inquiry into the case before action upon it. " The plain inference that I took it for granted you would draw fromo this statement was that I did not believe the story of the prisoner; that I suspected it to be a trick to get out of prison, and I must confess that I wondered how you could attach any importance or credit to the tale of a man who was taken prisoner with the troops that had been sent to invade Florida from South Carolina coast, and who, notwithstanding his being captured in arms, represented himself as on a mission from the peace party of the Northwest. The report of General Winder shows that I was not mistaken in my estimate of the prisoner, and it was because I did not deem his tale at all probable, sir, that I judged it useless to enter into any exposition of the proper mode of treating with him until the result of the examination into his case was made known. This is my answer, and to the inferences that you draw from my omission to repeat to you in a private letter the desire that I had often publicly manifested for the only peace which we both declared to be possible, namely-peace with independence and eternal separation from the enemies whom, I doubt not, we equally desire to drive from our country.

Your second "point," sir, may be more summarily dismissed. I made a speech at Columbia, S. C., on the call of the citizens early in October last. Its contents I do not pretend accurately to remember, and I never saw a report of it until on receipt of your letter I caused search to be made for it, and it is now before me in the Charleston Mercury of the 7th of October.

You first say that you judged I "preferred Lincoln to McClellan" because in thiis speech I opposed the scheme of a conventioin of all the States, North and South, as a means of obtaining peace. I cannot spare the time to refute a conclusion so manifestly without warrant in the premises from which it is drawn. Your next reason, that "the tone and substance of your (my) speech there upon the subject of peace was, in short, that there was no prospect of peace but only by the sword; that a peace party of the North could only be made by a success of our armies over them; " that" the only way to make spanies civil is to whip them. " If my speech were really such as represented by you in this extract, if it had really been directed against the peace party at the North, this fact would not bear out your assertion that my "acts" showed a "preference for Lincoln over McClellan; " but my speech was not such as you represent it, and I now quote the passage from which you have torn a few words that from the latter half of a sentence. I said:

Does any one believe that Yankees are to obe conciliated by terms of concession? Does any man imagine that we can conquer the Yankees by retreating before them, or do you not know that the only way to make spaniels civil is to whip them?

And toward the close of the speech I plainly intimated my desire for the success of the peace party in the following words:

Let fresh victories crown our arms, and the peace party (if there be such) at the North can elect its can

These passages must suffice without comment to satisfy any fairjudging man whether you have correctly stated its "tone and substance. "

The truth is, sir, that your inferences fromo this speech are so strained and unnatural as to evince the difficulty you found in answering my simple question for a statement of any "acts" of mine on which you thought proper to base your published assertion.