very confident, long after you and I have passed away. ue it highly.

I val

I thank you also for your address. I have not had time to read it, but reserve that pleasure for the summer vacation, when I shall have time to peruse it deliberately and carefully. I have, however, taken some furtive glances at it, sufficient to assure me of a treat when I can take it up without interrup

tion.

I rejoice to see the energy with which you have denounced this most unprovoked and nefarious rebellion—a rebellion which has desolated this fair land, has filled it with mourning, desolation, and woe, has gladdened devils, despots, and aristocrats, and has brought reproach on the cause of self-government and free institutions. In spite of the malice and desperate efforts of the arch-traitors, and of the grave discouragements we encounter in the conduct of affairs at Washington, I trust that, through the mercy and favor of God, the spirit of the people will put it down in such a signal manner, that all patriots and friends of liberty will have cause for exultation and joy.

Yours truly,

MARSHALL S. BIDWELL.

MR. DICKINSON TO MISS NELLIE MYGATT.

THE ORCHARD, August 9, 1863.

MY DEAR NELLIE-Well, that jaunt or journey-or visit or excursion, has been taken-and it partook of all these characteristics, and we returned here last evening, and found your kind letter of Monday.

We took an easy carriage, and Mrs. Dickinson, our pet boys, two fowling-guns, two fishing-rods, myself and some other baggage started on Tuesday morning and went leisurely to Oxford, where we staid at the little hotel on the Governor Tracy side of the river, quite comfortably. We had a great many pleasant calls and cordial greetings from old family friends and acquaintances and strangers. Wednesday morning went to Guilford, dined at the little hotel, and spent the residue of the day with my sister, two and a half miles from there, on

the shore of a lovely little lake, where I astonished the boys by showing them that I knew how to row a skiff with power and skill, and was a true disciple of Izaak Walton in the "noble art of angling; "-feats which I had not attempted for thirty years.

Mr. and Mrs. Merchant, on our return to the village, insisted that we should exchange hotel quarters for their house, which we did, leaving the boys with their uncle on his farm to amuse themselves in gunning. On Thursday we assembled again, and started in earnest upon our "sentimental journey; visited my father's farm where I was reared, and all of its points of interest; and old friends, now "few and far between," I assure you; for of those of other days but few remain; the school-houses where we had attended separately and together; the place where Mrs. D. was reared, and where we were married; that where we commenced housekeeping, and the cemetery where our parents and other "loved and lost " ones repose; and you may well imagine, it was to us a season of deep interest and painful emotion. About 1814, I lost a lovely sister, aged five years. From that day to this, I have never thought seriously of that distressing bereavement without the tribute of bitter tears. My mother half borrowed, half adopted a little girl in her place of the same age, a loving child,-but she left the family at the age of fourteen, and I had never seen her since. She was especially near and dear to my mother, and tenderly beloved by all the family. To add to my emotion, I learned that this same child, now a widow-lady residing in Philadelphia, was in the neighborhood visiting her friends. It seemed as if it would wring out the last emotional grief of my heart to meet her, but I greatly desired to see her, and I did. She was yet a beautiful woman, with three little daughters, so like she was when I first knew her, that all the memories came back together in startling reality. She was very glad to see us, and greeted us as a sister. You can see now, dear Nellie, what the occasion was to us, from this mere hasty outline.

As soon as we reached Guilford, which is an agricultural town, with very little village, it was suggested that I should speak. I consented, of course; though I presumed that in the hurrying, haying and harvesting season at its highest pitch a meeting could not be gathered. Wednesday afternoon, by such

They sent out oral notices chances as offered, and on

Thursday evening, over a thousand persons, nearly one-half ladies, had assembled to hear me, and I made a long speech, to which I can only say they listened with great attention and apparent interest. You can see that circumstances had no little influence in the matter. They came in pairs and single; on horseback and on foot; but most of all by twenties and thirties, on farmers' wagons with the "hay rigging" on. On our way up (as we came for relaxation and repose), it was agreed I should speak at Oxford, on my return on Friday evening, and on Friday, after viewing some points of interest and dining, we went to Oxford, and stopped at Mrs. Clark's, where we were hospitably and pleasantly entertained. Had a fine and successful meeting, said to be the largest ever held there. I called at your uncle's, and they as well as all family friends inquired with much affectionate interest for you. We remained in O until yesterday and then came home.

This visit was prompted by duty and affection. It was full of lights and shadows, but we thank our beneficent Father that we have been permitted to make it.

Your affectionate friend,

D. S. DICKINSON.

MR. DICKINSON DECLINING RENOMINATION AS ATTORNEY GENERAL.

BINGHAMTON, August 24, 1863.

As the sitting of the Union State Convention approaches, it is frequently inquired whether my name will be before it for a renomination. I answer, by no means, with my consent or approbation. I yielded to the popular voice two years since under a controlling sense of duty. I had strongly urged the ignoring of political divisions, and the united action of all who proposed to prostrate the Rebellion and vindicate the authority of the government by force of arms, as best suited to the emergency. The elements for such a movement were unorganized; those who had been accustomed to meet in conflict for years, though of kindred faith upon this vital question at the time, had not yet learned to act together conventionally; and, to insure harmonious counsels, the occasion required sacri

fices not now demanded. Being assured by indulgent friends that circumstances had given my name a relation of peculiar significance, and that it was necessary to the combination of the popular forces, I reversed a determination I had believed unalterable, and accepted the nomination."

The professional duties of the office of Attorney-General are congenial to my tastes, and I have found their discharge pleasing; but there are strong reasons, chiefly of a personal and domestic character, why I do not desire and cannot consent to incur their responsibilities longer. The stirring issues of the last twenty years, in official relations and otherwise, have so absorbed my time that private interests have been made secondary, and I have been withdrawn from my home until I am almost a stranger at my own fireside. I shrink not from any of the active duties of the citizen in this day of our country's peril, but I can discharge them with greater efficiency if left free from the weight of official obligation.

I entertain the same opinion of the Rebellion to-day that I did on its outbreak-that it must be put down absolutely and unconditionally, by force, if we would preserve the government of our fathers, and save our name from becoming a synonym for cowardice and baseness, wherever the history of the American Revolution has travelled or its fruits been realized. From the commencement of the rebellion I have urged the union of all true men, irrespective of political organizations, to aid the administration in crushing it. I have labored faithfully to that end, and such shall be my effort in the future. I propose to act and will act in the cause, with all whose views are the same, regardless of whence they came, or what have been their opinions upon other questions; and I will oppose all, whatever they may have been at other times, or may be called now, who are giving aid or comfort to the Rebellion, whether boldly, with arms in their hands, or through the cowardly and more insidious process of fomenting partisan strife, and encouraging resistance to the Administration in the prosecution of the war.

The rebellion has received its death-blow. It has now little power for mischief, save in its spasmodic struggles, as it gasps out its ignoble existence. It may, by galvanic applications from its friends in the loyal States, once or twice rise to its feet and stagger on a little further; but this will rather hasten than

postpone the hour of its final dissolution. As it passes away, and the law is preparing its halters and dungeons and banishment for conspiring leaders, let us pray for the forgiveness of the deluded masses who have been cheated or driven in this wholesale murder to minister to the unholy ambition of some of the most fiendish monsters who have ever desecrated earth. As for the mole-eyed politicians among us, whose poverty of intellect has not enabled them to comprehend the magnitude of the crisis, when they shall cease to encourage the murderers of our sons and brothers, let us endure their exhibitions of depravity and the ebullitions of their spite without a murmur, and in sheer pity measure out to them, as an antidote to their ineffectual virus, that scorn which is made most emphatic by expressive silence.

D. S. DICKINSON.

MR. DICKINSON TO MR. METCALF AND OTHERS.

BINGHAMTON, September 4, 1863.

GENTLEMEN-Official duties will not permit me to accept your generous invitation for the Union meeting of the 10th inst., I regret to say, for I sympathize with you in the struggle in which you are engaged, and in the objects of the meeting; besides it would give me unbounded satisfaction to meet your patriotic Governor Curtin, whose course I have greatly admired, and who deserves well of his State and of his whole country for his direct and manly energy in sustaining the cause of the Union.

The rebellion itself is in a state of rapid decay. If its foreign sympathizers are not in haste, they will scarcely find enough of it left to "recognize," and it will soon sink so low, a state of deep debasement truly, that the copperhead politicians will not employ it as stock in trade. Confederate shinplasters are already worth less by the peck than potatoes, and their armies are cut up and beaten by the federal forces, and demoralized and scattered by disaffection and desertion.

The last refuge of rebellion, and of its miserable accomplices in the loyal States, is the boast, that the President of the humVOL. II.--40