and that "redress was impossib the papers in your files in Raleigh. I know that no complaint has ever been received from you on any subject without meeting respectful consideration and redress, as far as it was in my power to have justice done. I am sorry that the complaints of the citizens of North Carolina were addressed through a channel by which they failed to reach me. On what fact, then, do you base the assertion that redress was impossible for just complaint?

Fifth. You do not "hold me responsible for all the petty annoyances, the insolence of office under which our people lose heart and patience." I make no comment on this language, as I must suppose that you deem it becoming our mutual positions, and simply invite you to state what portion of these "petty annoyances" and this "insolence of office" you do impute to me, and the facts on which the imputation rests.

I cannot close without adverting to the singular misconstruction of my letter to you of the 8th ultimo which pervades the close of your reply. In that letter I expressed, for I felt, no distrust whatever of the noble people of North Carolina, nor did I allude to your efforts to conciliate them as injudicious, for it did not enter into my mind that they were at all in question. I warned you of the error of warming traitors into actual life by ill-timid concession instead of meeting their insidious attempts to deceive the people by tearing the masks from the faces of the conspirators. Your present letter is the first intimation I have had from any source that the people of North Carolina were suspected of disloyalty, and your needless defense of them takes me by surprise. In my letter of the 8th ultimo I spoke of attempts that would be made "by some bad men" to inaugurate treacherous movements, of the danger of suffering the "designs" of these traitors to make head, of your overearnest desire to reclaim by conciliation "men whom you believe to be sound at heart, but whose loyalty is more than suspected elsewhere," of your permitting "them" to gather strength, of the necessity of putting down the "promoters of unfounded discontent." I never did, and do not now, notwithstanding your misdirected defense of them, entertain aught but respect and admiration for the people of North Carolina and her gallant sons, who have on the battle-fields of this war won for her so glorious a name. I did and do suspect a knot of traitors, who have been conspiring at home while the mass of the State's true sons were at their posts of duty in the army. This was the import of my letter of the 8th ultimo, and I find in it nothing to justify your answering it as though I had counseled you to avoid conciliating the people of your State. I again express my regret at being compelled to send you this reply, extracted from me solely be a sense of duty to the country, not by personal considerations. Your arraingnment of my conduct would, I repeat, have been received in silence but for your position as Governor of a State, which seemed to me to impose the necessity of an answer.

In respect to your general recommendations touching the exercise of any extraordinary powers conferred on me by Congress, I can only say that they will be used, if at all, with a due regard to the rights of the citizens as well as to the public safety. Arbitrary measures are not more congenial to my nature than to the spirit of our institutions, but should the occasion unhappily arise when the public safety demands their employment, I would be derelict in duty if I hesitated to use them to the extent required by the exignecy. Shoud that contingency occur, I shall confidently rely for support on the mass of the good people of North Carolina, in spite of the threats or blandishments of those