overpowered, and liberty shall be driven from the land, we intend before she departs to take the flag of our country, with a stalwart arm, a patriotic heart, and an honest head, and place it upon the summit of the loftiest and most majestic, mountain. We intend to plant it there, and leave it, to indicate to the inquirer who may come in after times, the spot where the goddess of liberty lingered and wept for the last time, before she took her flight from a people once prosperous, free and happy.-Hon. Andrew Johnson, 1861. PAST AND PRESENT. WHEN the sunlight of the last autumn was supplanted by the premonitions of winter, by drifting clouds, and eddying leaves, and the flight of birds to a milder clime, our land was emphatically blessed. We were at peace with all the powers of the earth, and enjoying undisturbed domestic repose. A beneficient Providence had smiled upon the labors of the husbandman, and our granaries groaned under the burden of their golden treasures. Industry found labor and compensation, and the poor man's latch was never raised except in the sacred name of friendship, or by the authority of law. No taxation consumed, no destitution appalled, no sickness wasted, but health and joy beamed from every face. The fruits of toil, from the North and the South, the East and the West, were bringing to our feet contributions of the earth, and trade, which for a time had fallen back to recover breath from previous over-exertion, had resumed her place "where merchants most do congregate." The land was replete with gladness, and vocal with thanksgivings, of its sons and daughters, upon the vast prairies of the West, up its sunny hill-slopes, and through its smiling valleys, along its majestic rivers, and down its meandering streamlets, and its institutions of religion, and learning, and charity echoed back the sound: "But bringing up the rear of this bright host, His wings, like thunder clouds above some coast, And where he gazed, a gloom pervaded space." Yes, in the moment of our country's triumph, in the plenitude of its pride, in the hey-day of its hope, and in the ful ness of its beauty, the serpent which crawled into Eden, and whispered his glozing story of delusion to the unsuspecting victim of his guile, unable to rise from the original curse which rests upon him, sought to coil his snaky folds around it and sting it to the heart. From the arts and the enjoyments of peace we have been plunged deep into the horrors of civil war. Our once happy land resounds with the clangor of rebellious arms, and is polluted with the dead bodies of its children, some seeking to destroy, some struggling to maintain the common beneficent Government of all, as established by our fathers. This effort to divide the Union, and subvert the Govern ment, whatever may be the pretence, is, in fact, a daring and dangerous crusade against free institutions. It should be opposed by the whole power of a patriotic people, and crushed beyond the prospect of a resurrection; and to attain that end, the Government should be sustained in every just and reasonable effort to maintain the authority and integrity of the nation; to uphold and vindicate the supremacy of the Constitution, and the majesty of the laws by all lawful means; not grudgingly sustained, with one hesitating, shuffling, unwilling step forward to save appearances, and two stealthy ones backward to secure a seasonable retreat; nor with the shallow craft of a mercenary politician, calculating chances, and balancing between expedients, but with the generous alacrity and energy which have a meaning, and prove a loyal, a patriotic, and a willing heart. It is not a question of administration, but of a Government-not of politics, but of patriotism—not of policy, but of principles which uphold us all-a question too great for party-between the Constitution and the laws on one hand, and misrule and anarchy on the other. Hon. D. S. Dickinson, 1861. SECESSION ILLUSTRATED. MOST events of modern times find their parallel in early history, and this attempt to extemporize a government upon the elements of political disquietude, so that, like sets of dol lar jewelry, every person can have one of his own, does not form an exceptional case. When David swayed the seeptre of Judea, the comely Absalom, a bright star of the morning, whose moral was obscured by his intellectual light, finding such amusements as the slaying of his brother and burning the barley fields of Joab, too tame for his ambition, conceived the patriotic idea of driving his father from the throne, of usurping the regal authority, and relieving the people unasked from the oppressions under which he had discovered they were groaning. Like modern demagogues he commenced with disaffection, advised all who came with complaints that, from royal inattention, no one was deputed to hear them, and in greeting those who passed the king's gate with a kiss, that he might steal away their hearts, he lamented that he was not a judge in the land, so that any one who had a cause or suit, might come to him, and he would do him justice. Under pretence of going to Hebron, the royal residence in the early reign of David, to pay his vows, (for he was as conscientious as Herod in the matter of vows,) he raised a rebellious army, and sent spies through the land to proclaim him king, and reigning in Hebron, when the trumpet should sound upon the air. The conspiracy, says sacred history, was strong, and the rebellion was so artfully contrived, so stealthily inaugurated, that it gave high promise of success. The king, although in obedience to the stern dictates of duty, he sent forth his armies by hundreds and by thousands to assert and maintain his prerogative, exhibited the heart of a good prince and an affectionate father, in beseeching them to deal gently with the young man, even Absalom; and when the conflict was over, the first inquiry with anxious solicitude was, "Is the young man safe?" And yet this ambitious rebel, in raising a numerous and powerful army, and endeavoring to wrest the government from the rightful monarch, would doubtless have claimed, according to modern acceptation, that he was acting from high convictions of duty, from a powerful necessity, and fighting purely in self-defence. And when the great battle was set in array in the wood of Ephraim, where twenty thousand were slaughtered, and the wood devoured that day more than the sword devoured, there was evidently nothing that he so much desired, when he saw exposure and overthrow inevitable, as to be let alone. But that short struggle subdued the aspirations, and closed forever the ignoble career of this ambitious leader in Israel-a warning to those who would become judges before their time, or be made kings upon the sound of a trumpet, blown by their own directions. Let all such remember the wood of Ephraim, the wide-spreading branches of the oak, the painful suspense which came over the author of the rebellion, the darts of Joab, and the dark pit into which this prince of the royal household was cast for his folly, his madness, and treachery. And when those charged with the administration of our Government send forth its armies by hundreds and by thousands to maintain and vindicate the Constitution and Union of our fathers, may they imitate the example of the wise king of Judea, and beseech the captains of the hosts to deal gently with the young Absaloms of Secession, and by all means inquire for their safety, when their armies have been completely routed and the rebellion put down forever. Hon. D. S. Dickinson, 1861. A LESSON FROM MEXICO. SECESSION, either peaceable or violent, if crowned with complete success, can furnish no remedy for sectional griev ances, real or imaginary. It would be as destructive of southern as of northern interests, for both are alike concerned in the maintenance and prosperity of the Union. It would increase every evil, aggravate every cause of disturbance, and render every acute complaint hopelessly chronic. Look at miserable, misguided, misgoverned Mexico, and receive a lesson of instruction. She has been seceding, and dividing, and pronouncing, and' fighting for her rights, and in the self-defence of aggressive leaders, from the day of her nominal independence, and she has reaped an abundant harvest of degradation and shame. No president of the Republic has ever served the full term for which he was elected, and generally, had his successor had more fitness than himself, it would have occasioned no detriment. When the population of the United States was three millions that of Mexico was five; and when that of the United States is thirty, the population of Mexico is only eight; and while the United States has gained the highest rank among the nations of the earth, by common consent, Mexico has descended to the lowest. Her people have been the dupes, and slaves, and footballs of aspiring leaders, mad with a reckless and mean ambition, inflated with self-importance and conceit, and destitute of patriotism or statesmanship. But as a clown with a pickaxe can demolish the choicest productions of art, so can the demagogues overthrow the loftiest institutions of wisdom. Thus has poor, despised, dwarfed, and down-trodden Mexico been crushed forever, under the iron heel of her own insane despoilers; a memorable but melancholy illustration of a people without a fixed and stable government: the sport of the profligate and designing, the victim of fraud and violence.-Hon. D. S. Dickinson, 1861. THE CIVIL WAR. THIS civil intestine war is one of the most fearful and ferocious that ever desolated earth; and its authors will be cursed, when the atrocities of Bajazet and Tamerlane, and the khans of Tartary and India, and other despoilers of the earth, shall be forgotten. It is a war between and among brethren. Those whose eyes should have beamed in friendship now gleam in war; those who close in the death-struggle upon the battle-field, were children of the same household and nurtured at the same gathering place of affection; baptized at the same font, and confirmed at the same chancel: . But, while we express deep humiliation for the depravity of our kind, and are shocked and sickened at a spectacle so revolting, we should not abandon the dear old mansion to the flames, even though kindled by brethren, who should have watched over it with us, and guarded it from harm. And, while we should not raise our hand to shed a brother's blood, we may turn aside his insane blow, aimed at the heart of the venerated mother of all. And, if a great power of Europe is disposed to sympathize with rebellion, and believes this Government and this people can be driven by the menace of foreign and domestic forces combined, to avoid the curses of war, let her try the experiment. But when they come, to save time and travel, let them bring with them a duly executed quit-claim to the Union for such portions of the North American continent as they have not surrendered to it in former conflicts, for they will have occasion for just such an instrument, whenever their impertinent interference is manifested practically in our domestic affairs. Hon. D. S. Dickinson, 1861. A WORD TO THE SECEDERS. A WORD to those who would labor to destroy the Union. You have widely mistaken both the temper and the purpose of the great body of people of the free States in the present |