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sunset. (P. 150.) That order informed Morell "the battle works well on our right, and the enemy are said to be retiring up the pike.”

This reply has assumed dimensions greater than was anticipated. It was found unavoidable however, from the necessity of giving in detail many portions of the evidence. The object of the writer was to expose the injustice done Porter by the Judge Advocate-to rescue him from the influence of the reputation of that officer; and to demonstrate to the public the gross wrong done him by the Court, and unconsciously, as is thought, from misplaced confidence, by the President. In this he cannot have failed. He thinks that in the public judgment when the case is fully understood, the finding of the Court will be considered to be without explanation, except upon the ground of mental imbecility or blinding prejudice. The first, certainly did not exist. The latter is believed to be established.

With a view to avoid this last conclusion, one which the Judge Advocate appears to have anticipated, he ventures (and in so doing, greatly compromises his legal reputation) to say, "it is not believed that there remains upon the Record a single ruling of the Court to which exception could be seriously taken." Those rulings are on pages 17, 21, 24, 39, 41, 51, 71, 96, 214, 221.

There were several others which Porter's counsel considered erroneous but omitted to except to them, in order to save time, and from their then having no hope, that anything they could say, would change the rulings. These involve two propositions-1st, whether it is competent for a witness to state his opinion upon the meaning of orders written or verbal, and 2d, whether, when the prosecution with a view to show the alleged criminal animus of Porter, had given in evidence his telegrams and conduct, on the 27th, 28th, 29th and 30th of August, it was not competent to Porter, in order to disprove such animus, and to show his loyalty and his determination to do his full duty before getting, and after coming under Pope's command, to offer in evidence his telegrams, and conduct on the 25th, 26th, 31st of August, and the 1st, 2d, and 3d of September telegrams, constituting a series, of which those offered by the prosecution, were a part.

I. Without stopping to inquire if a decision on this head was correct, which either admitted or rejected the evidence, all will agree, that to admit it in some instances, and reject it in others, cannot but be erroneous. And that is just what was done by the Court. When Porter asked the opinion of a witness, the question was objected to and overruled. When the Judge Advocate, or any member of the Court, asked such a question, though objected to by Porter, because the same privilege was not allowed him,-the objection was overruled, and the evidence received.

The Record will show that this was uniformly the case. Its evident partiality and palpable injustice, renders further remark unnecessary.

II. To exclude statements and conduct made, and occuring a day or two before and after the date of those relied upon to establish Porter's criminal animus when offered to explain the latter, and to disprove such animus, is an error so gross, that it is amazing how the Court, though not lawyers, could have fallen into it, and more amazing how the Judge Advocate could sanction it. The admissibility of the evidence, is proved, clearly, it is thought, in Porter's protest, appendix, No. 1.

But notwithstanding the finding and sentence of the Court, and its approval, and the malignant and bitter assaults upon him, before and since, Porter will stand unharmed through the potent power of truth and the public judg ment. The latter ever cheers the patriot, and sooner or later frustrates the aim of the demagogue and palsies the arm of the traitor. In addition, too, to this support, he possesses in himself one even yet more potential. He is self-sustained in the consciousness of innocence, and conviction of duty fully performed.

What shield against injustice is more invulnerable? It abides with the injured at all times and everywhere; consoles him in adversity-enhances his prosperity. It is an adjunct to truth and justice, an antidote. to falsehood and calumny, and in the end is certain to bring their authors before the public in full relief, to be the scorn or the jest of the honest. The friends of Porter, therefore, need feel no further concern for him. He and his accusers stand for judgment before a just and enlightened tribunal, and what fair mind can doubt the issue?

But we must all feel deep solicitude for the country, now passing through a dreadful crisis. No people was ever subjected to a more perilous one. But this solicitude is not because we doubt the result, if the Government is true to its own duty. If it is, the danger will soon be over, and who can doubt that it will be. If keeping a single eye to the extinction of the rebellion in conducting the war, they discard mere party, cast off intrusive and ignorant politicians, observe in the loyal States, where the ordinary course of justice is unobstructed, all the constitutional guarantees of personal liberty, recognize every individual right, regard freedom of speech and of the press, (a freedom which the people will never suffer to be impaired,) restrain the excessive enthusiasm or madness of misjudging officers, instruct them that it is their duty to war with the rebel enemy alone, and to observe in so doing all the humane rules of the modern laws of war, suffering no harm to be done to private property, nor the appropriation of it for other than military purposes, cease to foster the incompetent, and in an enlarged and enlightened statesmanship, sword in one hand and the olive branch of forgiveness, conciliation and compromise in the other, (the enemies are our brothers,

and we but seek to bring them back to the common household,) all will ere long be well again. The rebellion now so shaking the land, like as

"Ocean's mighty swing,

When heaving on tempest's wing,

It breaks upon the shore,"

will have subsided, and before the historian shall have written its history, even its vast wrecks of material wealth, and its vaster and more distressing wrecks of former harmony and affection, will have been forgotten in the magnitude and universality of the blessings in which the whole land will then be rejoicing.

Nor portentious of destruction as is the black cloud that lowers o'er us is there serious ground for despondency, much less despair. A beneficent Providence cannot design so to afflict us, and, through us, the world. Great as our national sins may have been, and deserving of punishment, as they no doubt are, it cannot be that such a Being will strike a nation like ours out of existence. Protected and regulated freedom is so important to human happiness, that, if we may, with reverence, speculate on such a subject, it must be within the scope of Heaven's design to secure it to all. And in the past what has contributed more to that result, than our example? With institutions resting as their sole foundation on individual liberty, we have by its inherent and almost magic power prospered as never people prospered before; so unexampled and striking has this been that all nations looked at us with wonder-the rulers of some with envy the oppressed, everywhere, with hope and gratitude. Is such an example to end forever? Believe it not. If, however, in the inscrutable dispositions of heaven it is so to be, and we are hereafter to live but in memory, of one thing we may rest assured, that that dire calamity will not be caused by the fulfillment of the object of this rebellion. That object, even ostentatiously and shamelessly avowed, is not to vindicate and maintain freedom, nor even to rescue human slavery as it at present exists, in some of the States, from the hazard of a possible early overthrow, but to extend and perpetuate it through all time. In the very City and State of their nativity, and which for so many years were guided, benefitted and honored by the wisdom and presence of MASON, JEFFERSON, MADISON, MARSHALL and WASHINGTON, in defiance of all the doctrines which they inculcated, and shocking the world by their astounding and iniquitous degeneracy, it is proclaimed, without rebuke, and no doubt by the authority of him who sacriligeously holds out Washington as his model, that the main object of the rebellion is to establish a Confederacy which will be "A DISTINCT REACTION AGAINST THE WHOLE COURSE OF THE MISTAKEN CIVILIZATION OF THE AGE." "THAT FOR LIBERTY, EQUALITY AND FRATERNITY THEY HAVE DELIBERATELY SUBSTITUTED SLAVERY, SUBORDI

NATION AND GOVERNMENT. THAT HOWEVER AMONG EQUALS EQUALITY IS RIGHT, AMONG THOSE WHO NATURALLY ARE UNEQUAL EQUALITY IS CHAOS." "THAT THERE ARE SLAVE RACES BORN TO SERVE, MASTER RACES BORN TO GOVERN." Such are the fundamental principles (what a profanation of the term,) which, addressing themselves to the universe of man, they say, "we inherit from the ancient world, which we lifted up in the face of a perverse generation, that has forgotten the wisdom of its fathers." (Spirits of the great departed, let us hope that you do not hear the vile calumny!) By these principles we live and by their defence we have shown ourselves ready to die; reverently we feel that our Confederacy is a God sent missionary to the nations with great truths to preach." "And who hath ears to hear let him hear."*

No, no. Through such an instrumentality God will never work our destruction. He libels deity who for a moment credits it. An honest man might as soon be suspected of effecting an end by fraud, perjury or murder.

There is then no reason for despair. The rebellion will not triumph. Its fate is already sealed. The lamentations over its anticipated early death are heard in the wailings of the conspirators. The much boasted army of Lee has been arrested in its recent invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania by the unsurpassed bravery of the Army of the Potomac, handled with consummate skill by MEADE, the gentleman and soldier, and driven back, with terrific slaughter, to its own impoverished and desolated Virginia, stealing away at night, under the cover of darkness and storm, in the demoralizing fear that the arm of the Union was approaching utterly to crush them. Vicksburg and Port Hudson have fallen, and the States of Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Western Virginia, Maryland and Mississippi are ours, and the Father of Waters knows no standard but the Stars and Stripes. The very leader of the conspiring band, for years the plotters of the treason, is losing heart. In the beginning of his wicked career, he ridiculed the power of the loyal States, and vauntingly threatened them with the feeling of "Southern steel" and "the smell of Southern powder." Now, he stands conscience stricken and appalled. He sees, and well he may, the finger of God in their dreadful reverses, and calls upon his deluded and ruined followers "to unite in prayer and humble submission under God's chastening hand." He tells them that they are to attribute their trials and afflictions to their forgetfulness of Him, and to their "love of lucre," (what an admission for proud chivalry,) which had "eaten like a gangrene into the very heart of the land, converting too many of them into worshippers of gain, and rendering them UNMINDFUL OF THEIR DUTY TO THEIR COUNTRY, TO THEIR FELLOW MEN, AND TO THEIR GOD."†

See Richmond Examiner, May, 1863.

Davis' Fast-day Proclamation of the 25th of July.

To their country! How could he have ever even dreamed that forgetfulness of duty to country, to fellow man and God would not meet with the chastening hand of heaven? Davis, the educated and often honored child of the Union, over and over gain pledged by solemn oath to support it, is at last aroused to a sense of the guilt of oaths violated and duty to country forgotten, and on his knees implores the forgiveness of Omnipotence. What stronger evidence could there be that despair of success of his criminal career now fills his very soul?

It has, too, in its very form of government, the seed of its own certain dissolution-secession is made the vital principle of its organism. No Government is certain of living a day, but, on the contrary, is certain of a speedy death under such chronic and ever active disease. Whilst it defies cure, it is certain sooner or later to produce death. And before a single nation has recognized its legitimate existence, the disease has manifested its fatal nature. GEORGIA and NORTH CAROLINA have already disputed the Confederate authority, and threatened withdrawal under the acknowledged theory of secession. So alarming has the threat become, and so obviously fatal to the Confederacy, that notwithstanding its constitutional recognition of the right, it has been denied in serious debate in their Congress, and the insubordinate members menaced with the exertion of the central military power. Our own downfall then, if ever, is not to be now. The rebellion will be put down. If not by force, as it may be, if our rulers are equal to the emergency, and as it is believed it will be, it will fall through the very feebleness of its form of Government. Fall it will. Fall it must, and the United States be restored to the condition in which our fathers left it. A nation of which its citizens can speak with an honest pride as being destined to make "the world its debtor by its discoveries of truth and example of virtuous freedom."

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