ng Home Guards, as a measure of
defence against the slave population. The Home Guard is frequently a
cavalry corps, and is always composed of men who have passed the usual
term of military service; for it is deemed necessary to reserve the
youth of the country to meet the "Northern masses," the "Federal
mercenaries," on the field of possible battle. By letters from
Montgomery, Alabama, I learn that unusual precautions have been common
during the last winter, many persons locking up their negroes over
night in the quarters, and most sleeping with arms at hand, ready for
nocturnal conflict. Whoever considers the necessarily horrible nature
of a servile insurrection will find in it some palliation for Southern
violence toward suspected incendiaries and Southern precipitation in
matters of secession, however strongly he may still maintain that
lynch-law should not usurp the place of justice, nor revolution the
place of regular government If you live in a powder-magazine, you
positively must feel inhospitably inclined towards a man who presents
himself with a cigar in his mouth. Even if he shows you that it is but a
tireless stump, it still makes you uneasy. And if you catch sight of
a multitude of smokers, distant as yet, but apparently intent on
approaching, you will be very apt to rush toward them, deprecate their
advance, forbid it, or possibly threaten armed resistance, even at the
risk of being considered aggressive.

Are all the South Carolinians disunionists? It seemed so when I was
there in January, 1861, and yet it did not seem so when I was there in
1855 and '56. At that time you could find men in Charleston who held
that the right of secession was but the right of revolution, of
rebellion,--well enough, if successful, but inductive to hanging, if
unfortunate. Now those same men nearly all argue for the right of
peaceable secession, declaring that the State has a right to go out at
will, and that the Federal Government has no right to coerce or punish
it. These turncoats are the sympathetic, who are carried away by a
rush of popular enthusiasm, and the fearful or peaceable, who dread or
dislike violence. Let us see how a timid Unionist can be converted into
an advocate of the right of secession. Let us suppose a boat with three
men on board, which is hailed by a revenue-cutter, with a threat of
firing, if she does not come to. Two of these men believe that the
revenue-officer is performing a legal duty, and desire