of the speech to which I have referred was received with more marked approbation by the Democracy there assembled than the sentiment which has just been cited.  I am happy also to state that during the past summer I heard in many places, what previously I had only heard from the late President Pierce, the declaration that whenever a Northern army should be assembled to march for the subjugation of the South, they would have a battle to fight at home before they passed the limits of their own State, and one in which our friends claim that the victory will at least be doubtful.

Now, as in 1851, I hold separation from the Union by the State of Mississippi to be the last remedy—­the final alternative.  In the language of the venerated Calhoun I consider the disruption of the Union as a great though not the greatest calamity.  I would cling tenaciously to our constitutional Government, seeing as I do in the fraternal Union of equal States the benefit to all and the fulfilment of that high destiny which our fathers hoped for and left it for their sons to attain.  I love the flag of my country with even more than a filial affection.  Mississippi gave me in my boyhood to her military service.  For many of the best years of my life I have followed that flag and upheld it on fields where if I had fallen it might have been claimed as my winding sheet.  When I have seen it surrounded by the flags of foreign countries, the pulsations of my heart have beat quicker with every breeze which displayed its honored stripes and brilliant constellation.  I have looked with veneration on those stripes as recording the original size of our political family and with pride upon that constellation as marking the family’s growth; I glory in the position which Mississippi’s star holds in the group; but sooner than see its lustre dimmed—­sooner than see it degraded from its present equality-would tear it from its place to be set even on the perilous ridge of battle as a sign round which Mississippi’s best and bravest should gather to the harvest-home of death.

As when I had the privilege of addressing the Legislature a year ago, so now do I urge you to the needful preparation to meet whatever contingency may befall us.  The maintenance of our rights against a hostile power is a physical problem and cannot be solved by mere resolutions.  Not doubtful of what the heart will prompt, it is not the less proper that due provision should be made for physical necessities.  Why should not the State have an armory for the repair of arms, for the alteration of old models so as to make them conform to the improved weapons of the present day, and for the manufacture on a limited scale of new arms, including cannon and their carriages; the casting of shot and shells, and the preparation of fixed ammunition?