find that you are fully up to the music, that you thoroughly comprehend our condition, and are resolved to do your whole duty. I find our people everywhere are alive to their interests and their duty in this crisis. Such a degree of popular enthusiasm was never before seen in this country. I find my fellow-citizens all along the railroad line eager to hear the news, and to speed our glorious cause with their services. This is the fifth speech which I have made since I left home this evening at 5 o'clock. In my town, yesterday, a meeting was held, a company was organized, and their services tendered to our government. A flag was made in two hours by our patriotic ladies and presented to the company, and $2,200 was raised to equip the company and take care of the needy families of soldiers who may go off to fight for their country.

་

My friends, forget not the soldier! Send him contributions to make him comfortable while he is in the service. Take care of his family while he is absent. Employ your hands and your substance in doing works of charity in this day of your country's trial. If any should fall in the battle, remember the orphan and the widow, and take care of them. God will bless you in the noble performances of a patriotic duty.

My fellow-citizens, I must close these remarks.

I am gratified to meet you to-night. I am gratified that Georgia and all the South is a unit. I rejoice to be able to tell you the welcome news that Virginia is a unit. Nearly every single meinber of her Convention will sign the Ordinance of Secession. And now, with my best wishes, I bid you good-night.

His speech was rapturously applauded throughout; and, as he retired, three cheers for Stephens were given with a will.

In a few moments, in response to earnest solicitations, he again came on the platform, and said :

The news from Washington is very interesting. It has been stated in the newspapers-first, that the Virginia troops had occupied Arlington Heights, just across the Potomac from the President's house; and again, that Lincoln's troops had occupied that point. My information is that both these statements are incorrect. Lincoln, however, has occupied Georgetown Heights. He has from fifteen to twenty thousand soldiers stationed in and about Washington. Troops are quartered in the Capitol, who are defacing its walls and ornaments with grease and filth, like a set of vandal hordes. The new Senate chamber has been converted into a kitchen and quarters -cooking and sleeping apparatus have actually been erected and placed in that elegant apartment.

The Patent Office is converted into soldiers' barracks, and is ruined with their filth. The Post-Office Department is made a storehouse for barrels of flour and bacon. All the departments are appropriated to base uses, and despoiled of their beauty by those treacherous, destructive enemies of our country. Their filthy spoliations of the public buildings, and works of art at the Capital, and their preparations to destroy them, are strong evidence to my mind that they do not intend to hold or defend the place ; but to abandon it, after having despoiled and laid it in ruins. Let them destroy it-savage-like-if they will. We will rebuild it. Phoenix-like, new and more substantial structures will rise from its ashes. Planted anew, under the auspices of our superior institutions, it will live and flourish throughout all ages.

SPEECH OF J. M. MASON.

AT RICHMOND, VA., JUNE 8, 1861.

SOLDIERS OF THE

MARYLAND LINE: I am

deputed to do a most grateful duty; first, in the name of Virginia, to give you an earnest and cordial welcome to the "Old Dominion;" and next, to present to you, in behalf of the ladies of Maryland, this flag. I see, soldiers of Maryland, that you are "rough and ready"-the highest honor of a soldier in revolutionary times. We all know who you are. We all know what brought you here, and we are all ready, as I trust you have experienced, to extend to you a soldier's welcome-the only welcome, indeed, that can be extended in times like these. Your own honored State is with us heart and soul in this great controversy. By your enterprise, your bravery, and your determined will, you have escaped from the thraldom of tyranny which envelopes that State; and you know, I know-for I

have been among its people-we all know, that the same spirit which brought you here, actuates thousands who remain at home. (Applause.) I welcome you, soldiers of Maryland, upon the threshold of the second great war of independence-a war that will be transmitted by history to the future as the greatest of two wars of independence; a war that is waged against the South with less provocation, less reason, less regard to humanity and honor, than was that waged by the mother country in 1776.

Your presence here is proof that you participate in this sentiment. And I tell you further, my countrymen, in view of these circumstances, there is not a man among you who will dare to return to Maryland with that flag dishonored. Not one. I tell you further, there is not a man among you who will dare to return to Maryland except as a soldier in victory. Do you ask me why? Because we are engaged in a great and holy war of self-defence. In after ages, when history records the transactions of this epoch-when the passions of men shall have subsided, and the historian can take a calm and philosophical view of the events which have led to the present collision between the two sections, he will write that the people of the Southern States understood and protected civil liberty, and that the misguided North either did not comprehend, or