of her Consti^tn rights, driven her to the necessity of a separation, and now raise their arm against her as an enemy, declaring either to subjugate her, to overrun her with their vandal hordes, or exterminate from her soil every living creature?—­& when, “Oh bloodiest picture in the book of time!” they are ready to repeat with a triple vengeance the untold horrors of the Spanish Inquisition?  They are madly, blindly rushing, they know not where.  The blame of dissolution rests upon her.  And the still more awful responsibility of a civil war will hang as an everlasting incubus upon her shoulders.  Then let her beware ere she “cross the Rubicon”—­let her “pause long upon its brink.”  And shall we all perish by her fratricidal hand?  Shall the blood, shed by brother in deadly war with brother, flow ignominiously through our rivers to the ocean & be carried by its waves to stain the shores of Nations that for long years have been centring their fond hopes on America as the grand ideal of the gov. they too would some day enjoy?  Shall such hopes be blasted as soon as fondly cherished? and now that Italy has trampled upon the tyrannical “Mitre”—­torn from her long subdued neck the yoke of Papal bondage—­passed from the darkness of superstitious bondage into the light of religious freedom, shall we sink back to what she was, by casting ourselves into the whirlpool of civil war?  Shall we not only put out, but shatter, the lamp of liberty, a lamp whose effulgence was beginning to scatter the shades of despotism from off the earth?  Shall we extinguish the brightest star in the constellation of human freedom?  The united voices of Humanity, Justice, & Reason answer, No! The cries of myriad free men living, & of millions yet unborn, rend the air with a universal negative! and from the vaulted canopy of heaven there swells back the solemn echo, “God forbid!” As if augmented by the mournful strain of 10,000 angels hovering in amazement over the conflicting scene! Oh! then let the North beware!

Mrs. Tompkins says that if you can justify your Bro.  Ulysses in drawing his sword against those connected by the ties of blood, and even boast of it, you are at liberty to do so, but she can not.  And should one of those kindred be stricken down by his sword the awful judgment of God will be meted out to him, &, if not repented of, the hot thunderbolts of His wrath will blaze round his soul through eternity.  On the contrary, if the vice versa should occur, she thinks “those kin” would be justified, because in self-defence.  As to Mr. John Marshall’s being promoted in the army of Lincoln, she thinks that fact explains itself: he spent much of his time previously seeking, or at least expecting, promotion, & failing in a laudable way,—­in defence of his own kindred & the home of his bosom companion!—­he resorted to Yankeedom, and sold as it were his birthright for a mess of Abolition pottage.  This helps confirm my view, that many take positions in Lincoln’s Army with the expectation of military promotion, & the hope of an easy conquest of the South.  Oh, how deluded!  But as for many of them, “God forgive them, for they know not what they do.”