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ck P.M. five of us took an impressed carriage and started for the Charleston Hotel, to attend a reception given by General Gilmore. On our arrival, we made a bargain with our negro driver to wait for us, say half an hour, more or less, and then take us over to the Battery, to General Hatch's grand military ball. But once inside, we became so much absorbed, like little Tommy Tucker, in the supper and the toasts, that we forgot all about our colored driver outside,--just as people do at parties still. The following are brief extracts from the remarks of two or three of the principal speakers. Judge-Advocate Holt, in responding to the toast, "General Robert Anderson," said: "It is not uncommon for organizations in treason or in crime, on a vast scale, to commit mistakes in the selection of agents to accomplish their work; and no man in all history committed a greater mistake than Floyd, in the selection of General Anderson, on the sole ground of his being a southern man, to command Fort Sumter. He thought to find in him a tool of treason, but he found instead a loyal, fearless, and true man. Those who have led great treasonable enterprises, or great crimes, have suffered most from mingled rage and angry fear when they discovered such mistakes in the selection of their agents, and none suffered more in this respect than Secretary Floyd, on hearing of the transfer of the small but devoted garrison from Fort Moultrie to the solid walls of Fort Sumter. There was one man, still in the service of the government, who was with Floyd, in the Cabinet, at the time, and could bear evidence to the rage of the defeated traitor, and that man, with giant brain and steadfast heart, has for three years presided at the head of the war Department--Edwin M. Stanton." Major-General Abner Doubleday was called out by some remarks referring to the part he took in the defense of Fort Sumter, and said: "I feel to-day as if I had been present at the birth of a new nation. I was most happy to have been present at the impressive ceremonies this day, and glad to remember that I dealt some blows against secession in the same place four years ago. I never doubted then the propriety of our resistance. I felt that the only answer to armed treason must come from the mouth of the cannon. There is one class of
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