Arkansas true Democrat., 1861-07-18
RESPONSE OF CAPT. JOHN H. Dss.

| RESPONSE OF CAPT. JOHN H. DYa.
 Mss MoLLIE T. JERNIoAN, AND LAl~.- s | OF SULPHUR ROCK AND vICIN1TY-Perml
 me, in behalf of the "Pike Guards, to acknowledge the receipt of your beautiful, and by us, long aforementioned banner and whilst 1t has never been my happy lot to witness the presentation, much less acknowledge the reception of one, yet the assemblage of the intelligent and vast audi ence convinces me that they too, as we'll as myself, feel that this is no ordinary occa- sion. This universal out turn of feeble matrons and aged sires, leaning upon their staffS, associated with and surrounded, as they are, by all the youth and beauty of the land, and in whose every countenance was depicted an intense anxiety to hear your feeling charge and eloquent address to us, in behalf of an injured and outraged people, has coniointly, must confess, over whelmed me with emotions, both of feel ing and duty, which the language of this feeble heart and faltering tongue is made quete to express. And in attempting a feeble response, my mind Is necessarily driven back to the early history of our country; to the scenes and incidents with which, perhaps, many of this audience are more familiar than myself.
 When our fore fathers laid down that great declaration of rights for the main tainance and preservation of which many of them fought, bled and died, although there, in that declaration, they justly ad- mitted that governments long established should not be changed for light and tram sient causes, yet they emphatically declared " that when long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces design to reduce them un. der absolute despotism, it is their right, it Is their duty to throw off such governments and to provide new guards for their future security" doctrine which has since been in substance, if not in form, incorporated into the bill of rights of every northern State which has been formed, or whose constitution has been altered since its pro- mitigation. Yet, strange to tell, those who are enjoying the privileges and advantages of this glorious doctrine, seem to have for gotten that to southern statesmen and to southern arms, to Washington and his brave companions, are they indebted for their priceless heritage; that northern lands were saturated with southern blood before the roots of the tree of liberty could pene- trate or draw sustainence from her cold and barren soil; and yet no less strange than true, they now demand and receive almost its entire fruit, selfish, unequal and unjust as has been their divisions of the benefits and blessings of common government created by and deriving its only powers from the limited grants of sovereign and co-equal States; yet, with full knowledge that the legislation of congress and the patronage of the government had alike been used against their interest, have the south ern people scrupulously fulfilled, both in spirit and in letter, their sacred duties as embodied in their joint obligation, whilst many of the northern States, (as is well known to them as we'll as to you,) have not only deprived us of the protection of the State to rights and property, but have, by cruel, penal enactments, wholly preclud- ed their few remaining patriotic citizens from the performance of obligations sa- credly imposed by tho constitution of the late United States, and of laws made in pursuance thereof, yet with full knowl- edge of their great and accumulated wrongs, long and patiently endured by bave and magnanimous people. They were not sat- isied, but must add insult to injury, deny ing the right of protection to property by a common government within common territory known to have been acquired almost exclusively by southern diplomacy, southern treasure and southern blood, coup ] led with threat to reduce us, as they have themselves, to social and political equality with an inferior race, by using the whole power and patronage of the general go- vernment for the extinguishment of their legal and vested right of slave propertv within the States where it now exists; anu this added to their ability to carry the same into execution through their elevation of an intolerant and sectional fanatic to the presidential chair, self-respect and self pre- servation caused many of our gallant sis ters to withdraw from that unholy alliance
 Yet, so ardent was our people for the pre- servation of the government, that whilst there was faint hope left of so doing, her patriotic citizens differed as to the mode and measure of redress; but when that high. handed and tyrannical threat of coercion went forth, with it went the last hope and desire to remain connected with it's sectional and oppressive rulers-and upon the me- morahle 9th of May last, she went forth unit. through legally delegated authority, proclaiming to the world that she was free, sovereign and independent" for
 pally absolving her citizens from all alle- glance to the old oppressive government.
 And by subsequent enactments of her ,,ao,,1o ;c oocyoufion asaemhlad adootod