every one of us shall be overrun by the enemy. (Applause.) On that you may count. The Government, while it desires to carry on the war, establish your independence, and maintain the government, at the same time wishes to do it in such a way as not to cripple industry; and while our men are in the field fighting the battles of their country, their brethren at home are discharging an equal duty, so that no serious detriment to public property will be sustained; and we have the element to do this that no other people in the world have.

Now, then, if four millions of bales of cotton are made, upon an average price they will bring two hundred millions of dollars. If the cotton planter will but lend, not give-lend to the Government the proceeds of but one-half, that will be one hundred million of dollars, double what the Government wants, or did want when we adjourned-quite enough to keep two hundred thousand men in the field-the balance you can use as you please.

I now will read to you, just at this part of my address, the proposition upon which I shall make some comments, for I wish every gentleman to understand it. It is not asking a donation; the Government simply wishes to control the proceeds of your cotton. The Government proposes to give you a bond bearing eight per cent. interest, paying the interest semi-annually. It is not a gift or donation, but simply your surplus cotton, as much as you can spare. This is the proposition:

| the number of bales, but would like also to know the proportion it bears to your crop. Let everybody, therefore, put down a portion of their crop, if it be two bales, or fifty bales, or one hundred bales, or five hundred bales.

Inquiries have been made of me, and I take this opportunity to answer them: "Whether these bonds will circulate as money-will they pay debts?" On this point I wish no mistake. They are not intended as currency; they are unfitted to answer the purpose of circulation. The bonds are larger than this paper. (A letter sheet.) The obligation is on the upper part of it, and the whole of the lower part is divided into forty squares or checks. In each one of these checks the interest is counted for each six months for 20 years. The checks are called coupons, and all the party holding them has to do is every six months to clip off the lower coupon, send it to the Treasury and get his interest. The bond is not suitable to carry in your pocket-book and use. It would wear out. It is intended to represent a fixed capital or permanent investment-just so much as you can spare from your cotton crop. That is all. Instead of putting your surplus in lands, negroes, houses, furniture, useless extravagance, or luxuries, just put it in Confederate Bonds. But while I said it was not intended to circulate or to pay debts, I have not the least doubt that anybody who will sell his crop entire for bonds, will find no difficulty in getting the money for them, for they draw interest, and are better than money; and any man

Fix the day of sale as soon as you please; the first of January, the first of February, or the first of March, if you please; though I am aware the Government wishes you to sell it as soon as convenient; but let each planter consult his interest, and in the mean while consult the market. But to proceed:

:

for a note draws but seven per cent., and this draws eight. I have no doubt that all minors and trust property will soon be invested in it. The entire amount of private funds in the State of Georgia, on private loans, I suppose is ten or twenty millions of dollars at seven per cent. All that amount will immediately find its way into these bonds, and hence a planter who sells his entire crop, and needs money, can get it from the money-lenders on these bonds.

There is the whole of it. The cotton planter directs his cotton to be sent into the hands of his factor or his commission merchant. He only tells the Government in the subscription the portion he can lend. He directs it to be sold, and the proceeds to be invested in Confederate Bonds. I understand that a committee will be appointed before this meeting adjourns, to canvass this county. Every planter, therefore, of Richmond County will be waited upon and afforded an opportunity to subscribe. I wish, therefore, to say to that committee, and everybody, subscribe. I prefer your putting down first, your name, second, the number of bales, and I prefer you putting down the proportion of your crop. I want especially,

lish our independence, if we are not overridden, if we are not subjugated, I feel no hesitancy in telling you it is the best Government stock in the world that I know of. It is eight per cent. interest; and if we succeed in a short time, in a few years, if not more than one hundred millions or two hundred millions are issued, I have but little doubt they will command a considerable premium. The old United States stock (six per cent. bonds) five years ago commanded fifteen and sixteen per cent., and went as high as twenty per cent. Take the Central Railroad. The stock of that company commands fifteen per cent. premium now. These bonds pay eight per cent, semi-annually; therefore, if there is a short war, these bonds very soon will command fifteen or twenty per cent. But candor also compels me to state that if

Let us, then, come up and contribute what we can. I say to the planters that I do not wish to urge anybody, but let everybody discharge his duty to the country as he feels it. But upon this subject of the war I will detain you a few minutes, because it is a common inquiry with me, how long I think the war will last-whether or not it will be a short one? Well, my countrymen, I will tell you this, that it is known only to the Ruler of events. It is curtained from mortal knowledge and mortal vision. I know not; I would not know if I could. It is the mysterious future; but there is one thing I can tell you with confidence, and that is, it is going to last until the enemy is whipped and driven from our soil. (Tremendous applause.) And it will require men and money to do it, and the best way to make it a short war is to send men into the field, and to raise means enough to support them in the field to drive the enemy out. That is the best way. That is the way to make it a short war, and in this the cotton planters can contribute; and when I tell it is an uncertain war, I cannot account for its duration upon any rational principle. It is a fanatical war, and whenever fanaticism gets control of reason, you can make no speculation in regard to it.

This is a war against reason in every sense of the term. In the first place, many of those engaged in it are engaged in a crusade nominally to ameliorate the condition of a portion of our population. They are engaged in a crusade to make things better than the Creator made them, or to make things equal, which he made unequal. It is impious in that a great deal of the fanaticism of the war springs, I doubt not, from that source. Such an effort never could succeed were they to overrun us and drive us away. These very people would do as some are now reported to be doing in Virginia, (of which I neither affirm nor deny the truth,) capture the black population and send them off to Cuba for sale. But there is one thing certain that they can no more carry out their fanatical designs than they can make the Savannah run to the mountains; for the great Creator, the Ruler of the heavens and the earth, He that made man and fashioned him, made one inferior to the other, and made some to differ from others, as one star differs from others.

This fanatical sentiment of the North will no more make the negro equal to the white man than it will make the leopard change his spots or the Ethiopian his skin. It is a war against the interest of those who wage it, and of all the people who will suffer by it, the New England States will suffer the most. Their trade cut

We wished to continue to trade with them, but they would not perform their part of the compact, and carried out the old adage of the "man who cut off his nose to spoil his face," (laughter;) and I cannot account for it except on the old Roman maxim that he "whom the gods want to destroy, they first make mad." This is a war against the principles which their fathers and our fathers fought for-that every State Government derived its powers from the consent of the governed. These were the principles of Hancock, Jackson, Madison, Randolph, Pinckney, and others. They were the principles their fathers and our fathers united in fighting for; and now they have made them a mockery of all history, and the shame of their ancestors.

These people are now warring against that principle, and attempting to govern us just as King George did; it is, therefore, an unnatural and irrational, and a suicidal war, and you cannot count upon its duration. When a people become mad, there is no telling what they will do. It is so in the history of other empires; it was so in France. They say we are revolutionists; they call us rebels. I think it will be a revolution before it is over; but if a change of government makes revolution, the revolution is at the North.

At the South our movements from the beginning have been planted upon the principles, as I have told you, of our revolutionary fathers, and the Confederate States to-day rescued the Constitution with some improvements, some changes, all of which we think improvements. They stand to-day the defenders, supporters, and maintainers of that Constitution which was the admiration and devotion of us all. But a change of government has taken place at the North. The Constitution of our fathers has already been trampled in the dust. From the time Mr. Lincoln went into his office until today, it has been but one step after another, one stride after another, upon the Constitution of the country. The first thing he did was to call out seventy-five thousand militia. He had no power to do it. The Constitution that Madison and Washington, and the patriots of the South, as well as the North, gave their consent tothat Constitution that was our admirationthat Constitution the Southern States have rescued, declares that Congress alone shall raise armies.

His next act was to increase the army to 25,000 men. This he did by an edict. The Constitution says Congress shall increase the

army. After that he increased the navy to 25,000. Louis Napoleon or the Czar of Russia never assumed more dictatorial power. The North responded to it. That Constitution that had my admiration, (and many of you have doubtless heard me upon it, for if there was any thing upon which my whole soul rested, and for which I have devoted life and every thing dear, it was the Constitution of my country,) that Constitution that the Montgomery Government has rescued, declares that no man shall be deprived of his life, liberty, or of property, but by due process of law.

That was the old Constitution. It was the Constitution we rescued. The Constitution the Confederate States presents to all people, high or low, in the surety to defend them, (applause ;) but, fellow-citizens, Mr. Lincoln by his edict, has nullified, abrogated, destroyed, trampled under foot this great constitutional right. He has suspended the right of habeas corpus; and to-day, if any one in Maryland or Missouri is down-trodden, or overridden by his myrmidons or even in Massachusetts if any freeman rises up in the land of Hancock to-day, and says or affirms that the people of the South can govern themselves as they please,-that for which Massachusetts once upon a time pledged honor and fortune and every thing dear-if a freeman was to-day to announce the great truth upon which the Revolution was fought, he would be arrested, put in jail, immured in a dungeon, and the courts being closed, he would have no hearing except a court-martial, and be executed

for it.

I tell you tho revolution is at the North. There is where constitutional liberty has been destroyed; and if you wish to know my judgment about the history of this war, you may read it in the history of the French Jacobins. They have become a licentious and lawless mob, and I shall not at all be surprised if in less than three years the leaders in this war, Lincoln and his Cabinet, its head, come to the gallows or guillotine, just as those who led the French war, (applause ;) for human passions, when once aroused, are as uncontrollable as the elements about us. The only hope of mankind rests in the restraints of constitutional law, and the day they frained and ratified these lawless measures of Lincoln, they dug their own graves. They may talk of freedom and liberty, but I tell you no people without rulers sustained by constitutional law can be free. They may be nominally free, but they are vassals and slaves, and this unbridled mob, when they attempt to check it, Lincoln and the rest will be dealt with just as I tell you it was in France.

Why the conservative sentiment of the North is against this war. When I tell you it is fanatical, I do not mean that all men are fanatics. Just as the sturdiest trees of the forest yield to the blast of the storm, so have the friends of the Constitution yielded at the North. How is Lincoln to get those four hundred millions of dollars? I told you I might say something

more about it. They have not the money. That is true. I suppose the North now might raise one hundred millions in gold and silver. I have not seen the returns of the banks. But their money-lenders are not going to lend it. Some say that the war is going to be a short one. No, my friends, do not lay the flattering unction to your souls. How did the Jacobins raise their money? Why they laid their hands upon it; and this is the way they will do at the North. First, they will issue script; but the Secretary of the Treasury cannot come up and tell them that it is wrong. He has not the nerve; and he might lose his head if he were to do it. They may issue four hundred millions of Treasury notes, and thus get along for twelve months, or perhaps for two years, before they are too much depreciated. They will then issue script against the rich man's property.

What is to be the result of this war? I am not a prophet, but I look upon it as fraught with the most momentous consequences, not unto us, but to the people of the North. I have always believed that if the Union were destroyed the North would run into anarchy and despotism. We are the salt of the concern, and it is only questionable whether or not we have quit too soon. That is the only doubt I have. Where it will end I do not know, but never again will they enjoy Constitutional Government at the North. They never understood it. Constitutional liberty is a plant of Southern growth, watered by Southern hands, nurtured by Southern hands, and if it is to be maintained, to live to light the world, it is to be done in the Southern Confederacy. (Applause.) At the North there is anarchy. Property will migrate just as it did in France. That is the end.

How long will they be able to war against us? I tell you it will be until we drive them back. There is no hope for us, there is no prospect for an early and speedy termination of the war until we drive them back; and my idea, my wish, my desire, and my council would be to raise men enough immediately from the mountains to the seaboard to do it. Georgia has already done well. I was proud of my State-proud of her origin, of her history, of her resources, and proud of her achievements; and I am to-day prouder of her than ever. In this her country's call, I believe she stands number one in answering it, both in men and money. (Applause.) She has answered nobly; let her answer still. The other States, let them send up men to drive the enemy out; and to the cotton planters I would say, come up with cotton to-day. I do not want to embarrass any one, but I say to you, tell your debtors to wait until you are out of danger. (Applause.)

When men come to you crying “Debt, debt, debt!" tell them, as Patrick Henry did when they cried "Beef, beef, beef!" let your debts wait; let all the machinery of society stand still until independence is secured. I would