practical reaffirmation of the dogma of State rights is something of every-day witness to any one travelling here. The people hold to it just as strongly to-day as they did five years ago; and the moral of this election is, that the supremacy of the State is above that of the nation.

A

XXXVII.

MATTERS IN WESTERN GEORGIA.

NEWNAN, November 20, 1865.

S I looked up the streets of Newnan from the windows

and platform of the railway car, it seemed a charming place, a gentle slope toward the east, three or four white stores, the corner of the court-house with its surroundings of luxuriant China trees, the hotel with its broad and high piazzas, a wealth of trees and shrubbery everywhere, on all sides handsome cottage houses embowered in greenness and rose blossoms, to the right and left numberless oaks with their crimson and golden frost-touched leaves, and then in the dim background the dreamy and uncertain outline of wooded hills with their blue beauty shimmering in the low sun of a glorious Indian summer afternoon!

Yet Newnan is just like every other Southern town, streets full of mud-holes and wallowing swine, fences in every stage of tumble-down ruin, sidewalks in every condition of break-neck disorder, yards full of sticks and stones and bits of every conceivable rubbish, everywhere a grand carnival of sloth and unthrift and untidiness and slovenliness, - everywhere that apathy of shiftlessness so pitiful to the soul of a New-Englander !

"T is n't Nature's fault. She is infinitely more bountiful

than under our Northern skies. Wild-flowers beautifying every grove and creek-side, and roses and half a dozen strange blossoms tempting into every garden, and snow on our Massachusetts hillsides! One may well say the war did not produce its full and proper fruitage if the year 1870 does not show this fair South-land redeemed from the careless mistreatment of all these long years, this Southern people educated to a love of order and cleanliness, and an appreciation of thrift, industry, and the royal dignity of labor! Newnan is the county seat of Coweta County, and has a population of about twenty-seven hundred. It is on the line of railroad from Atlanta to Montgomery, — forty miles below Atlanta, thirty miles from the western line of Georgia, and rather above the middle of the State north and south. It is the home of very many rich planters, boasts numerous handsome suburban residences, is said to have a more elegant and cultured society than any other place in the western part of the State, prides itself on its early and constant devotion to the cause of secession, and has just elected radical Secessionists and unconquered Rebels to the Legislature.

"If your party carries the day in the forthcoming elections in the North," said a Convention delegate to me at Milledgeville, three weeks ago, "I shall think it perfectly useless for us to send congressmen to Washington." These Georgians thought the President had gone over to the Democratic party, and one man assured me that he wished the success of their nominees in New York and New Jersey!

Surprised as most of them are at the result, not one man in fifty seems to have any true conception of the real significance of the late elections in the North. The merchant of Columbus who said in the public parlor of the hotel one evening so loudly that half a dozen persons heard him, “I'm in favor of having our men go to Congress and take their seats any way, whether the d-d Yankees are willing or not," only put in strong phrase an idea I have heard half a

dozen times in more cautious language. If there are fifty good Union men in all the towns where I have stopped within two weeks they live so quietly that neither observation nor inquiry can find them; and the great mass of the people characterize the result of the recent political campaign in the North as sectional.

Through this part of the State the moral standing of the citizen seems to be measured by his war record. The chief requirement in respect to any man is that he shall "go with the State." The supremacy of the Constitution of the United States is formally acknowledged, but the common conversation of all classes asserts the supremacy of the State. The Calhoun doctrine is pushed to its last conclusion. There is not merely a broad assertion of the rights of the States, but an open enunciation of the supremacy of the State over the general government, an enlarged reaffirmation of the doctrine declared in simply repealing the ordinance of secession. A gentleman whom I met in the eastern part of the State said to me: "If there had been three bold and true leaders in the winter of 1860-61, we could have saved the State from secession, in my judgment; but Benj. Hill forsook us, and then Alex. Stephens forsook us, and we had only Josh. Hill left, and the State swung into Rebellion."

Benjamin H. Hill lives at LaGrange, some twenty miles below here. He has long been one of the leading men of the State. He acquiesced in secession, but did not go into the army, I believe. Pending the recent election, he was asked his opinion as to the duty of the people in the present emergency, particularly with reference to the expediency of electing gentlemen to Congress who cannot take the test oath. The following letter is his answer:

"The oath is unconstitutional, because it adds to and varies from the oath required by the Constitution. This is settled by several adjudications.

"The oath is unwise, unnatural, and unprecedented, because it

is retroactive in its requirements. It does not seek to procure proper conduct in the officer while discharging the duties of his office; but does seek to exclude him from the office altogether by reason of something done or not done long before the office was conferred.

"If Congress can prescribe one test it can prescribe another test; and thus, by legislation, destroy the right of representation. "I would vote for no man to represent Georgia who could take this oath, because it is the highest evidence of infidelity to the sentiments of the people of the State.

"I would vote for no man, anywhere, who would take this oath, because it is the highest evidence of his infidelity to the Constitution. The man who takes that oath admits a power in Congress to destroy every department of the government as well as every right of representation.

none.

"I am a candidate for no office, and will seek none and desire The man who wishes now to be a representative in Congress from the South either does not comprehend the very unpleasant and very heavy duties of that position, or has made up his mind to hold the position without discharging the duties. In either case he is not fit to be trusted.

"There is no danger now from any spirit of resistance in Geor gia. The only danger comes from an opposite direction, - servility. intend to be loyal myself, and I have not been faithless to any obligation I ever assumed, even when unwillingly assumed. I resisted secession until resistance was hopeless, and then I resisted subjugation until resistance was hopeless. I would not, if I could, change my record.

"But I will help no man to represent Georgia whose fidelity to the State is doubted, or whose ability and willingness to maintain and vindicate the honor of her people, living and dead, is suspicious. I will vote for no man to administer the Constitution who, in the very beginning of his work, would take an oath which admits a power in Congress to subvert that Constitution.

"Each house of Congress is sole judge as to whether persons seeking seats have the qualifications prescribed by the Constitution, and have been elected and returned according to the laws. THE PEOPLE are the sole judges of every other qualification. Otherwise, Congress can nullify or even destroy the right of election

secured to the people alone, and thus make a congressional despotism.

"The right of the States to representation in Congress is the clearest of all rights under the Constitution. It is the right without which no other right can exist and no obligation can be imposed. I have an abiding faith that the President will not permit its destruction by test oaths or otherwise. He was for the Union against the South; and it is my opinion that he will show himself for the Union against Massachusetts when the issue comes."

I have only to add that the italics of this remarkable letter are Mr. Hill's. I believe it expresses the feeling of four fifths of the men and of all the women of Georgia. If it is not a formal declaration of war against the nationality of the government I am unable to comprehend the force of its very plain and explicit language; and if it does not indicate an insolence and dictatorial spirit without precedent I have read history to little purpose.

Let Congress dispense with the test oath, and give us back the good old times! Let it admit all these Rebel generals and colonels and politicians, and so restore universal harmony! Let us all join hands and cover the nakedness of the land, and assure the world that it is not scarred with a million graves, and that there has been no war for lofty principles and the natural rights of man, but only a friendly contest of strength and endurance, in which the victors concede everything to the vanquished on the sole condition that the latter pronounce the former magnanimous!

Whether the North Carolina "dirt-eater," or the South Carolina "sand-hiller," or the Georgia "cracker," is lowest in the scale of human existence would be difficult to say. The ordinary plantation negro seemed to me, when I first saw him in any numbers, at the very bottom of not only probabilities, but also possibilities, so far as they affect human relations; but these specimens of the white race must