Let us, however, turn from the past to the present condition of affairs in Newbern.  Secession would never have originated there.  When South-Carolina passed its act of folly and madness, it met with a firm opposition from the old Whig party, which still had here a vital existence.  Every exertion was made throughout the State to repel the insidious influences of the demagogues of South-Carolina and Virginia, and but for the Jesuitical management of the politicians at Richmond, the ‘Old North’ would have remained loyal.  But all the efforts of the true Union men could not avail in warding off the storm that swept over the South; and the Convention at Raleigh passed, or rather was forced to assent to, the Act of Secession, on the twentieth of May, 1861.  In August the fortifications below Newbern were commenced, and continued for some months, and well garrisoned, till they were supposed capable of defending the town against any force that might be brought against it.  General Burnside, however, attacked them on the fourteenth of March, 1862, and after a sharp battle the rebels fled, and he occupied the old place as a military conquest.  All the wealthy and prominent citizens fled, and have not returned.

The present condition of things will not long continue; a more permanent government, either civil or military, will soon be established, and with it must come a new era which will settle for all time the destiny of Newbern.

Should the leading men of the town and all Eastern North-Carolina make an effort and throw off the incubus that slavery has for a century placed over it, a bright career of prosperity would open before them.  A new emigration, bringing energy and industry, would restore their worn-out lands, drain their swamps, educate their youth, and make Newbern echo with the hum of manufactures and commerce.  The enterprise of such a people would soon open a channel from the Neuse to Beaufort harbor, and so avoid the shoals and dangers of Ocracoke and Hatteras, and with the present railroads, make it the port of exchange for a wide extent of country.  The times are propitious; already the true men of the State—­and their name is legion—­are anxiously awaiting the fall of Richmond, when they will decide for the old flag and the Union, never again to repudiate it.

* * * * *

OUR BRAVE TIMES.

I wonder if we, as a people, have any conception of the grandeur and glory of the Times in which we are living; if we at all appreciate the importance of the history which is being lived all around us; if we feel the colossal magnitude of the every-day events which so crowd upon us that we have hardly time to grasp them; if we are fully aware of the infinite possibilities of what has been so well called this ’fearfully glorious present’?  I think not, and I do not know that it is possible for us to do so.  Only when we look back upon it from