I have consulted freely with your own Senators and Congressmen as to the character and capacity of any appointee in Georgia concerning whom there was question. My party advisers in the State have been Major Hanson of Macon, Mr. Walter Johnson of Atlanta—both of them ex-Confederate soldiers—and Mr. Harry Stillwell Edwards, also of Macon. I believe you will agree with me that in no State would it be possible to find gentlemen abler and more upright or better qualified to fill the positions they have filled with reference to me. In every instance where these gentlemen have united in making a recommendation I have been able to follow their advice. Am I not right in saying that the Federal office-holders whom I have appointed throughout your State are, as a body, men and women of a high order of efficiency and integrity? If you know of any Federal office-holder in Georgia of whom this is not true pray let me know at once. I will welcome testimony from you or from any other reputable citizen which will tend to show that a given public officer is unworthy; and, most emphatically, short will be the shrift of any one whose lack of worth is proven. Incidentally I may mention that a large percentage of the incumbents of Federal offices in Georgia under me are, as I understand it, of your own political faith. But they are supported by me in every way as long as they continue to render good and faithful service to the public. This is true of your own State; and by applying to Mr. Thomas Nelson Page of Virginia, to General Basil Duke of Kentucky, to Mr. George Crawford of Tennessee, to Mr. John McIlhenny of Louisiana, to Judge Jones of Alabama, and Mr. Edgar L. Wilson of Mississippi, all of them Democrats and all of them men of the highest standing in their respective communities, you will find that what I have done in Georgia stands not as the exception but as the rule for what I have done throughout the South. I have good reason to believe that my appointees in the different States mentioned—and as the sum of the parts is the whole, necessarily in the South at large—represent not merely an improvement upon those whose places they took, but upon the whole a higher standard of Federal service than has hitherto been attained in the communities in question. I may add that the proportion of colored men among these new appointees is only about one in a hundred.