General: In compliance with your verbal request, made at our interview this a.m., to express to you my opinions and impressions regarding the status of the people of South Carolina, and of such others of the insurrectionary States with whom I have come in contact, respecting a return to their allegiance to the federal government, and a willingness on their part to sustain and support the same in its efforts to restore and accomplish the actual union of the States, and also their probable adhesion to the several acts and proclamations which have been enacted and promulgated by the legislative and executive branches of the government, I beg to reply, that, as an officer of one of the departments, I have been enabled by constant intercourse with large numbers of this people to form an approximate estimate of the nature of their loyalty, and also to gain a knowledge of the prejudices which remain with them towards the forces, military and political, which have prevailed against them after the struggle of the last four years, and established the integrity and power of the republic. Whatever may be said upon the abstract question of voluntary or forcible State secession, the defeat of the insurrectionary forces has been so perfect and complete, that the most defiant have already avowed their allegiance to the national government. The first experience of the insurgents is a complete submission, followed by a promise to abstain from all further acts of rebellion--in fact, the nucleus of their loyalty is necessity, while perhaps some with still a sentiment of loyalty in their hearts for the old flag turn back, like the prodigal, with tearful eyes, wasted means, and exhausted energies. At the present time there can be but few loyal men in the State of South Carolina who, through evil and good report, have withstood the wiles of secession. South Carolina has been sown broadcast for the last thirty years with every conceivable form of literature which taught her children the divine right of State sovereignty, carrying with it all its accompanying evils. The sovereign State of South Carolina in her imperial majesty looked down upon the republic itself, and only through a grand condescension, remained to supervise and balance the power which, when not controlling, she had sworn to destroy. The works of Calhoun were the necessary companion of every man of culture and education. They were by no means confined to the libraries of the economist and politician. When the national troops pillaged the houses and deserted buildings of Charleston, the streets were strewn with the pamphlets, sermons and essays of politicians, clergymen, and belles-lettres scholars, all promulgating, according to the ability and tastes of their several authors, the rights of the sovereign State. No public occasion passed by which did not witness an assertion of these rights, and the gauntlet of defiance was ever upon the ground.