“Gentlemen, I thank you, especially that you have at last annihilated this accursed Union, [applause,] reeking with corruption, and insolent with excess of tyranny. Thank God, it is at last blasted and riven by the lightning wrath of an outraged and indignant people. [Loud applause.] Not only is it gone, but gone forever. [Cries of ‘You’re right,’ and applause.] In the expressive language of Scripture, it is water spilt upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up. [Applause.] Like Lucifer, son of the morning, it has fallen, never to rise again. [Continued applause.] _For my part, gentlemen, if Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to-morrow were to abdicate their offices and were to give me a blank sheet of paper to write the conditions of reannexation to the defunct Union, I would scornfully spurn the overture._ * * * I invoke you, and I make it in some sort a personal appeal—personal so far as it tends to our assistance in Virginia—I do invoke you, in your demonstrations of popular opinion, in your exhibitions of official intent, to give no countenance to this idea of reconstruction. [Many voices, emphatically, ‘Never,’ and applause.] In Virginia they all say, if reduced to the dread dilemma of this memorable alternative, they will espouse the cause of the South as against the interest of the Northern Confederacy, but they whisper of reconstruction, and they say Virginia must abide in the Union, with the idea of reconstructing the Union which you have annihilated. _I pray you, gentlemen, rob them of that idea._ Proclaim to the world that upon no condition, and under no circumstance, will South Carolina ever again enter into political association with the Abolitionists of New England. [Cries of ‘Never,’ and applause.] “Do not distrust Virginia. As sure as to-morrow’s sun will rise upon us, just so sure will Virginia be a member of this Southern Confederation. [Applause.] _And I will tell you, gentlemen, what will put her in the Southern Confederation in less than an hour by Shrewsbury clock_—STRIKE A BLOW! [Tremendous applause.] _The very moment that blood is shed, old Virginia will make common cause with her sisters of the South._ [Applause.] It is impossible she should do otherwise.” Warlike efforts were likewise used to keep some of the states firmly to their purpose. Hon. Jeremiah Clemens, formerly United States Senator from Alabama, and a member of the Alabama Seceding Convention who resisted the movement until adopted by the body, at an adjourned Reconstruction meeting held at Huntsville, Ala., March 13, 1864, made this significant statement:—