Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 1.
Frank Moore, Ed.

[177] all along the railroad line eager to hear the news, and to speed our glorious cause with their services. This is the fifth speech which I have made since I left home this evening at 6 o'clock. In my town, yesterday, a meeting was held, a company was organized, and their services tendered to our government. A flag was made in two hours by our patriotic ladies and presented to the company, and $2,200 was raised to equip the company and take care of the needy families of soldiers who may go off to fight for our country.

My friends, forget not the soldier! Send him contributions to make him comfortable while he is in the service. Take care of his family while he is absent. Employ your hands and your substance in doing works of charity in this day of your country's trial. If any should fall in the battle, remember the orphan and the widow, and take care of them. God will bless you in the noble performances of a patriotic duty.

My fellow-citizens, I must close these remarks. I am gratified to meet you to-night. I am gratified that Georgia and all the South is a unit. I rejoice to be able to tell you the welcome news that Virginia is a unit. Nearly every single member of her Convention will sign her Ordinance of Secession. And now, with my best wishes, I bid you good-night.

His speech was rapturously applauded throughout; and, as he retired, three cheers for Stephens were given with a will.

In a few moments, in response to earnest solicitations, he again came on the platform, and said:

The news from Washington is very interesting. It has been stated in the newspapers--first, that the Virginia troops had occupied Arlington Heights, just across the Potomac from the President's house; and again, that Lincoln's troops had occupied that point. My information is that both these statements are incorrect. Lincoln, however, has occupied Georgetown Heights. He has from fifteen to twenty thousand soldiers stationed in and about Washington. Troops are quartered in the capitol, who are defacing its walls and ornaments with grease and filth, like a set of vandal hordes. The new Senate chamber has been converted into a kitchen and quarters — cooking and sleeping apparatus having actually been erected and placed in that elegant apartment. The Patent Office is converted into soldiers' barracks, and is ruined with their filth. The Post-Office Department is made a storehouse for barrels of flour and bacon. All the departments are appropriated to base uses, and despoiled of their beauty by those treacherous destructive enemies of our country. Their filthy spoliations of the public buildings, and works of art at the Capital, and their preparations to destroy them, are strong evidence to my mind that they do not intend to hold or defend the place; but to abandon it, after having despoiled and laid it in ruins. Let them destroy it — savage-like — if they will. We will rebuild it. We will make the structures more glorious. Pl.oenix-like, new and more substantial structures will rise from its ashes. Planted anew, under the auspices of our superior institutions, it will live and flourish throughout all ages.

---Atlanta (Ga.) Confederacy, May 2.