My impression is, that a prevalent, though not a universal fear, existed lest the negroes should rise in partial insurrections on or about the fourth of March. A Northern man, who had lived for several years in the back-country of South Carolina, had married there, and had lately travelled through a considerable portion of the South, informed me that many of the villages were lately forming Home Guards, as a measure of defence against the slave population. The Home Guard is frequently a cavalry corps, and is always composed of men who have passed the usual term of military service; for it is deemed necessary to reserve the youth of the country to meet the "Northern masses," the "Federal mercenaries," on the field of possible battle. By letters from Montgomery, Alabama, I learn that unusual precautions have been common during the last winter, many persons locking up their negroes over night in the quarters, and most sleeping with arms at hand, ready for nocturnal conflict. Whoever considers the necessarily horrible nature of a servile insurrection will find in it some palliation for Southern violence toward suspected incendiaries and Southern precipitation in matters of secession, however strongly he may still maintain that lynch-law should not usurp the place of justice, nor revolution the place of regular government If you live in a powder-magazine, you positively must feel inhospitably inclined towards a man who presents himself with a cigar in his mouth. Even if he shows you that it is but a tireless stump, it still makes you uneasy. And if you catch sight of a multitude of smokers, distant as yet, but apparently intent on approaching, you will be very apt to rush toward them, deprecate their advance, forbid it, or possibly threaten armed resistance, even at the risk of being considered aggressive.