Correspondence of the Richmond Dispatch.
from North Carolina.
Charlotte, N. C., April 16th, 1861.
The excitement here consequent to the great number of fires which occurred in such rapid succession, has not yet died out, and the secret and public guards are still regularly posted every night.
This organized body of the most respectable gentlemen of the place will not relax their vigilance until after the 20th of May, as a notorious rascal, not now to be found, was heard to say the secession Convention shall not meet here on that day.
On Saturday, immediately after receiving the news from Charleston, our citizens held an enthusiastic meeting, unanimously passed strong secession resolutions, and then adjourned to fire a salute in honor of the Southern Confederacy.
Everybody is on the streets now, awaiting dispatches and discussing the surrender of Fort Sumter, and I often hear the question asked, Can old Virginia and North Carolina longer hesitate as to what they ought to do?
Oh! that the fires of resistance to oppression could be rekindled in the hearts of all our people, and be made to burn as they do here!
This morning, at reveille, the Cadets of our Military Institute threw to the breeze, from the top of their beautiful building, a large flag of the Confederate States, bearing on the white stripe the motto, ‘"We are ready,"’ and handsomely saluted the same with eight guns from their battery, amid loud and prolonged cheering. 