The writer gives some extracts from a correspondence between two ex-members of Congress from his state, explaining that they are interesting because they give the views of a statesman long since retired from participation in public affairs. The extracts The excongressman recalls that twenty years ago he and his friend would not have believed that the events of the last three years could happen. He is not surprised at the Republican party, for he had always believed it capable of anything from despotism to anarchy. He has always been a states-rights Democrat, believing the founders of the Union and the Constitution so understood it. The war could have been avoided if the North had opposed it openly and unitedly—a policy which saved the border states and brought back the gulf states. As to the future, he has a faith, but it is the opposite of administration's policy. He does not believe the South can be coerced back into the Union, it could have been coaxed back, but he fears the administration does not intend to let it come back. An admendment is no hope. The war has brought the nation just where he was afraid it would bring it. He has read McKesson's ? speech carefully and considers it a fair presentation of what the past would say of the unhappy present, but the future will be more severe, and History can say little of the past three years. He used to have faith in man's capacity for self-government, but he will no longer when Lincoln puts on his regimentals and gets his staff about him. The times upset a man's faith. The country is going headlong to destruction, the government is insane, the people are besides themselves, but some have neither heard no heeded those who cry for vigorous prosecution of this war of desolation and death. Those who read McKesson?'s speech are silenced under the uproar and confusion, for "E Pluribut Unum" is our motto no longer. None can be the same again, for the events of the past two years have made a revolution, and changed everything, so that none can say where it will lead. The south is in the hands of its thinking men, the North has discarded statesmen and substituted fanatics, enthusiasts, and visionaries. Louis Napoleon is a great man, who has his eye on the Latin countries, in Europe, and on South America and Mexico here. He could Latinize the Southern Confederacy, and then the Catholic Church would sweep over the nation. Puritanism has made the war and is the exponent of the North, which alone sets the South toward Catholicity and alliance with France. Napoleon has had these things in mind continually, as every other crowned head in Europe has. He will recognize the South as soon as it is wise to do so, and be her ally if necessary. The writer has faith in diplomatic assurances of friendship, but he has more faith in national interests. He is not a Catholic, and although he sometimes wishes he were one, thinks that perhaps he is not fit to be a Catholic. But he does hate Puritanism, and believes this is nothing but a Puritan War. :: I-2-e A.L. 3pp. 4to.