though I cannot at this moment direct my mind from the gloomy contemplation of our once proud and noble States, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware, in their abject degradation and shame, still trembling beneath the rod upraised above them of the most ruthless, arrogant and shameless despotism which has ever imposed and fastened itself upon a trusting, confiding, and hoping people in ancient or modern times.

Each and all of these States, in accordance with the will of the majority of their people respectively, desired to be true to their Federal relations, and such will has been often and plainly expressed, or, to use a word harsh to ears of freemen, which has found conspicuous place in the news vocabulary of the existing despotism, and falls so flippantly from the lips of its despicable myrmidons, those States desired to be "loyal. " Contemplate their present aspect and condition, and you shall appreciate, to your supreme advantage, the sad consequences of their sublime confidence in the earliest avowed purposes of the power which affected their complete subjugation. Let your hearts be moved, and your stalwart arms be nerved by the mute eloquence of the black desolation which broods, like starless night, upon the once proud and cherished homes of Missouri, marked now by heaps of ashes and blackened, solitary chimney; of the fields, once resplendent in luxuriant beauty under the genial culturing hand of industry and taste, now the undisputed domain of the wild beasts of the forest; of the graves, not yet green, of her noble sons ruthlessly murdered in the very sight of the dear ones of their household by the vandal minions, chartered by the despotism to do such bloody work.

Listen! and your ears shall from every breeze and zephyr from West and South the wailing from hundreds of lips which were wont to express only the heart's pure joy and gladness, v from the cherished treasures of holier affections and sympathies, from lips of tender, lovely woman priceless virtue, ravished by unrestrained, and in many well-established instances, incited 'soldiers. "

Such notes daily salute our unwilling ears - they would move the hearts of fiends to pity - they fall in tones of thunder upon the ears of the despotism; yet it has no mercy, no sympathy with the miseries of its innocent victims, no emotions which exalt humanity above the level of the brute which perisheth. Such picture, gloomy, dark, and bloodmarked, the contemplation of which mantles with the blush of shame the cheek of manhood, is exhibited upon every spot of our once bright and beautiful land which has been pressed by the vandal feet of the "Federal Army. "

Brothers! you, the noble, gallant men, citizens of the great States within the bonds of our brotherhood which are yet unscathed by the flames of war, to you I appeal! Contemplate the picture thus but too dimly sketched and say, while you shall invoke the God of truth and justice to witness the sincerity of your vows: "This picture shall not be reproduced upon our homes and fair fields. " You may look upon this blood-stained desolation and see yourselves and yours reflected as in a glass, but not darkly, unless your vows shall be redeemed, for be assured the same power which has accomplished that fearful work designs a like achievement upon your as yet unstained soil.

There might be a despot in himself so endowed with high and noble attributes of manhood that even his despotism should be respectable, if not quite endurable, so that it should regard the progress and due elevation of his people, but our despotism affords us no such matter for consideration or consolation. It is moved and controlled in its terrible and even in its gentler energies by men who have aforetime floated