your property, steal your slaves, abuse your wives and daughters, seize upon your lands, and hang all those who opposed them.

By these and other atrocious falsehoods they alarmed you and led many honest and unsuspecting citizens to vote for secession. Nighter threats, nor fabrications, nor intimidations sufficed to carry Western Virginia against the interests and wishes of its people into the arms of secession.

Enraged that you dared to disobey their behests, eastern Virginians who had been accustomed to rule you and to court your votes nd ambitious recreant from among yourselves, disappointed that you would not make good their promises, have compared to tie you to the desperate fortunes of the Confederacy or drive you from your homes.

Between submission ot them and subjugation or exclusion they leave you no alternative. You say you do not wish to destroy the old Government under which you have lived so long and peacefully; they say you shall break it up. You say you wish to remain citizens of the United States; they reply you shall join the Southern Confederacy to which the Richmond junta has transferred you, and to carry their will there, Jenkins, Wise, Jackson and the conspirators proclaim upon your soil a relentless and neighborhood war. Their misguided or unprincipled followers re-echo their cry, threatening fire and sword, hanging nd exile, to all who oppose their arbitrary designs. They have st neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend; they have introduced a warfare only known among savages. In violation of the laws of nations and humanity, they have proclaimed that private citizens may and ought to make war.

under this bloody code peaceful citizens, unarmed travelers, and single soldiers have been shot down, and even the wounded and defenseless have been killed; scalping their victims is all that this wanting to make their warfare like that which seventy or eighty years ago was waged by the Indians against he white race on this very ground.

You have no other alternative left you boat to unite so one man in the defense of your homes, for the restoration of law and order, or be subjugated or driven from the State.

I therefore earnestly exhort you to take the most prompt and vigorous measures to put a stop to neighborhood and privates wars. you must remember that eh laws are suspended din Eastern Virginia, which has transferred itself to the Southern Confederacy. The old constitution and laws of Virginia are only in force in Western Virginia. These laws you must maintain.

Let every citizen, without reference to past political opinions, unite with his neighbors to keep these laws in operation, and thus prevent he country from being desolated by plunder and violence, whether committed in the name of secessionist or Unionism.

I conjure all those who have hitherto advocated the doctrine of secessionist as a political opinion to consider that now its advocacy means was against the peace and interests of Western Virginia. It is an invitation to the Southern confederates to come in and subdue you, and proclaims that there can be no law or right until this is done.

My mission among you is that of a fellow-citizen, charged by the Government to expel the arbitrary force which domineered over you, to restore that law and order of which you have been robbed, and to maintain your right to govern yourselves under the constitution and laws of the Untied States.

To put an end to the savage war waged by individuals, who without warrant of military authority lurk int eh bushes and waylay messengers