entire unanimity by all parties in the North, with a determination to maintain it in better faith than did those who first adopted it and then spat upon it at the dictation of the corrupt and profligate Democracy, who gave us timely notice that we should be hitched on and dragged in to the feast of ruin they were preparing for all in common; and so strong and universal has this sentiment of the Union and the enforcement of the laws become throughout the North, that you may rest assured that if Mr. Lincoln were to entertain the proposition for a moment of recognizing a foreign government that would run up to the banks of the Potomac, and within a mile of their capital, he would run great risk of being torn to pieces alive by men of all parties in the North. I speak of these things as facts, as I know them to exist.

I do not know what value may be attached to my opinions now, but certain it is that I have had no desire to obtrude them upon any one since this war broke out; for on more occasions than one, when they would have been of service to those with whom my own interests and happiness were entirely identified, they were repudiated and denounced. But your letter invites it, and I proceed to say:

From the day of the first battle of Manassas, if not from the time of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, I have regarded all compromises at an end; and that when the minority in the South madly broke up old compromises and repudiated all new ones, and thus brought up the issue, whether the absolute control of the government should be exercised by the minority or majority, that the fate of the South was sealed; and I said so at the time, unless the people would discard their treacherous leaders and return to that spirit of conciliation which had controlled their fathers in the formation of the government. And as this has not been done, I have looked upon all attempts at negotiation as a useless consumption of time. I have, therefore, been satisfied from the first that there could be no peace but a conquered peace; that there could be no negotiations but at the cannon's mouth; and that the only negotiators that could be recognized were those already appointed by their respective governments, General Grant and General Lee, and to their ultimate arbitrament all would be compelled to submit at last. IIow it is likely the matter will be adjusted under their negotiations, your means of information are at least as good as mine, though possibly we may draw different conclusions from the present and the past. Any other peace than such as I have described would be a delusion and a cheat, which would not last much longer than it would take to make it.

My opinions of the result of this war were formed long-very long before it commenced-and have been often laid before the public in a voice of warning to avoid it, but they were of no avail; but those opinions have never, under any success or defeat of either party, varied or wavered for a single moment, and I have never doubted that the terms now offered, of absolute and unconditional recognition of the authority of the Federal government, and of the supremacy of its laws, could alone lead to peace; and it appears to me that the only question to be determined is, whether they should be accepted at once, or postponed until they are forced upon you by still farther loss of life, sacrifice of property, and additional humiliation and defeat. As for all this villainous trash in the daily press, and not unfrequently to be found in the halls of legislation, about subjugation, Northern masters, and Southern white slaves, spoliation and distribution of our lands among the foreigners and blacks in the army, which may serve to keep up a war spirit and a feverish passion among a few who are deluded by it; and as for all the furor that certain officials may get up among their followers in the city by their public harangues, let me assure you that it has no effect upon the country, whose substance has been eaten up, and whose patriotism has subsided and given way to empty and hungry stomachs. They are for peace, and will not stop to inquire into terms whenever it is offered to them. The people have seen and know that among the leaders of this rebellion there has been, from first to last, nothing but miscalculation upon miscalculation, and blunder upon blunder, with every promise and prediction falsified, until they have lost all confidence in their calculations, promises, and predictions, and they see too many stragglers that are daily leaving the army with a determination never to be taken back to it alive, not to know something of its absolute demoralization and disorder.

Believe me, Mr. Gilmer, when I tell you that the feeling of the people is that the lives of their sons, brothers, and friends will be uselessly sacrificed by a farther prosecution of this war; and if the Confederate authoritics do not believe it, let it be submitted to a fair and untrammeled vote of the army and the people to decide it.

If the ruling men could see the matter in this light, then, in addition to the blood that might be saved, they would find a strong incentive to an early peace in the fact that, by prompt action in the Southern States, they might yet defeat the Amendment to the Constitution in prohibition of slavery. By a general vote in all the states, which can not be had during the war, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Gcor

gia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Kentucky might be carried against it, and thus defeat the measure; and if it had been made last fall, and the Southern States had been represented in Congress, two thirds of the two houses could not have been obtained in its favor. So

far as I am personally concerned, I have become quite indifferent to its defeat. Through the instrumentality of the secessionists I have lost all my most valuable slaves. What remain to me are a great convenience, but dreadfully expensive, and very worthless, as far as their labor is concerned.

As to prolonging the war by arming the negroes to fight against their own race and their own kindred, who come to offer them immediate and unconditional freedom, to my mind it betrays a want of insight into the natural instincts of the human heart, as well as a degree of wild fanaticism and insanity that has had no parallel in modern times; even if they were willing to fight against what they have been taught to believe were their rights and interests, how will you manage to feed two hundred thousand negroes, with blockade-running suspended and rail communication with the more Southern States cut off, as it is sure to be, when you can barely make out to feed your present army, and then only by reducing the people to a state of starvation? If ever there was an occasion when the old Latin maxim of "Quem deus vult," ctc., could apply, I think it must be this. But did you ever see a willing negro worker with a short allowance of bread? If you have, your experience does not accord with mine. They can not and will not stand hunger and privation as the white soldier, who lives half his time on hope, and pride, and love of glory; and as sure as the experiment is made, just as sure will their arms be turned against you at the first opportunity that offers.

Moreover, mark what I tell you. If you put negroes in the field as soldiers, they must be put on equality with your white soldiers, for that is the condition of those they are expected to meet in the ranks of your opponents; and this will demoralize the army ten times more than it is already, and it will afford a pretext to thousands and thousands who only want one to quit, to lay down their arms and desort to the enemy, or return to their homes, upon the plea that they did not engago in this war to establish the equality of the negro or for the abolition of slavery, but against both; and if this had become a government of Abolitionists, it could have no claims upon them. Mark this well, I beg you.

And now, Mr. Gilmer, let me ask you to look this question full in the face as it really stands. It has been said that no man ever played the

game of "solitaire" that did not cheat himself; and it appears to me that this game of war is like the game of “solitaire," at which every body has tried to cheat himself first, and then cheat his neighbors; it is time this was done with, and men looked at things as they really are.

Four years ago your Vice-president, Mr. Stephens, said in the Georgia Convention, "When we and our posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by the demon war, which this act of yours will inevitably invite and call forth, when our green fields of waving harvest shall be trodden down by the murderous soldiery and fiery car of war sweeping over our land, our temples of justice laid in ashes, all the horrors and desolation of war upon us, who but this Convention will be held responsible for it? And who but him who shall have given his vote for this unwise and illtimed measure, as I honestly think and believe, shall be held to strict account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming time for the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now propose to perpetu atc? Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons you can give that will even satisfy yourselves in calmer moments. What reasons can you give to your fellow-sufferers in the calamity it will bring upon us? What reasons can you give to the nations of the earth to justify it? They will be the calm and deliberate judges in the case, and what cause or overt act can you name or point to on which to rest the plea of justification? What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied? And what claim, founded in justice and right, has been withheld? Can either of you to-day name one governmental act of wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the government at Washington, of which the South has a right to complain? I challenge the answer.

"Leaving out of view for the present the countless millions of dollars you must expend in a war with the North; with tons of thousands of your sons and brothers slain in battle, and offered up as sacrifices upon the altar of your ambition-and for what, we ask again? Is it for the overthrow of the American government, established by our common ancestry, cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, and founded on the broad principles of right, justice, and humanity? And, as such, I must declare here, as I have often done before, and which has been repeated by the greatest and wisest statesmen and patriots of this and other lands, that it is the best and freest government, the most equal in its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and the

most aspiring in its principles to clevate the race of men that the sun of Heaven ever shone upon. Now for you to attempt to overthrow such a government as this, under which we have lived for more than three quarters of a century, in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety, while the elements of peril are around us, with peace and tranquillity, accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed, is the height of madness, folly, and wickedness, to which I can neither lend my sanction nor my vote."

Such was the language, and such the testimony of this high official, who was within three weeks from that time, and now is the Vice-president of the Southern Confederacy; and it was at such a time, and under such circumstances that the South entered upon this war against the United States, then as now, and now as then, the richest and most powerful nation on the face of the globe, and before which, as your own papers almost daily assure us, both France and England now stand trembling in their shoes.

Four years ago, then, the South commenced this war for the establishment of their independence; and for four years has it been carried on with alternato victory and defeat; but now, at the expiration of these four years, ask yourself the questions, first, What advances have been made toward the accomplishment of the end? They have invaded your territory, and you have invaded theirs. How many of their states have you taken, and how many of yours have they taken? What portion of their territory do you hold, and what portion of yours do they hold? How many of their native population have you killed or disabled, and how many of your native population have they killed or disabled? (Some idea of this may be formed from the fact that the vote at the Presidential election last fall was every where larger than it was in 1860 before the war, and that the vote of the entire Army of the Potomac was only some eighteen thousand, showing that an overwhelming proportion of that army is composed of unnaturalized foreigners and negroes.) How near a state of exhaustion are their materials for war, and how near are yours, when you have to rely upon arming the slaves to fight against those who come to set them free?

Draw this contrast, and then ask yourself the one other question, whether the Southern Confederacy is in a condition to prosecute this war to a successful issue with a government whose resources are scarcely half developed, notwithstanding what may have been said to the contrary? There has not been, and will not be a real anxiety for an immediate peace