THE CALL FOR REBEL VOTES.*

The hour is so late that I should decline to trespass upon your time to-night, had I not learned this afternoon at five o'clock of the publication in the Missouri Republican of this morning-my copy of which was not left at my residence, of a document, which is so extraordinary, so atrocious in its character, that it demands notice by some one on the first occasion when it can be brought before the public mind. Short as the time has been since it met my eye, I

what to it now.

propose to attend some

was published to

The document to which I refer day over the signatures of SAMUEL T. GLOVER, O. D. FILLEY, JOHN HOW, WILLIAM CARSON, AUSTIN A. KING, WILLIAM A. HALL, JOHN S. PHELPS and R. C. VAUGHAN. It is too long to read to you; but I advise all of you to obtain and read it, and say whether I have not spoken truly in pronouncing it one of the most atrocious publications ever made in Missouri. My friends the whole object of that document, addressed though it is to "the loyal people of Missouri," is to array the disloyal against the loyal people of this State. It is a bid, a shameless and defiant bid for the support * A speech delivered in St. Louis, October 17, 1863.

of the whole disloyal population of Missouri, in the election to take place on the 3d day of next month. And this bid is made by men who have heretofore been counted loyal-who have, indeed, in times past, done good service to the cause of their country! Time was when the Unconditional Union men of Missouri loved to honor some of the men whose names are signed to that paper; but now what is the position of those men? By that publication they have placed themselves in the van of Missouri disloyalty, and stand before the world as the leaders of that party which, with a small body of recognized Union men in it, embraces every Secessionist, bushwhacker, guerrilla, and rebel in Missouri! Those Union men are to screen from the world's view the hosts of disloyalty they are leading on against the true patriots, the Unconditional Union men of our State! Yes, it is that, and nothing else. I defy them to point to a single man in the Radical Union party in this State, whose hands are stained with loyal blood, or whose garments smell of the smoke and fire of loyal habitations. But this invocation is intended to reach thousands upon whom that stain rests; thousands who have been robbing and murdering Union men, and burning their houses, and turning their wives and children abroad upon the world's cold charity; thousands who in this cruel war have sympathized with rebellion; thousands who from the day Sumter fell to this, have never drawn a loyal breath, or done a seemingly loyal act, except under compulsion. Has anything like this been seen before? Who would have believed that it would ever have been seen in Missouri?

This document is a libel upon Missouri's loyal men, more infamous than ever was concocted in this State before. Let these men, and all who affiliate with them, beware! Let traitors of every hue beware! They talk about our being a revolutionary party: it is infamously false. But, though we But, though we are no revolutionary party, let them beware! There is a point beyond which the endurance of the most patriotic and lawabiding man, and that of the most earnest Christian will not go. Never have a loyal people endured more than have the loyal people of Missouri at the hands of her disloyal men. Traduced and vilified on every hand; hunted down in many quarters almost like criminals under the hue and cry; scanning every bush on the roadside, for fear it may conceal the fiend whose stealthy shot may be their death; going to bed at night with their doors barricaded and their guns laid beside them in their beds; persecuted by men in office, and almost proscribed by a Governor who claims to be loyal; and all because they are Radical Union men: such is a faint outline of what the patriots of Missouri have had to endure at the hands of those to whom this rallying cry has been this day addressed, by men who have in time past been held to be loyal! Again, I say, let them beware! The day may come, which many, with devilish purpose, have been seeking to bring on, when patriotism and duty can restrain no longer. They have pressed Union men on every side, with every form of aggression, indignity, and wrong, all the while howling that they were Jacobins and revolutionists, and all the time hoping that some retaliation, wrung

from Union men, would give them the opportunity of shouting "There, did we not tell you that this was a revolutionary party?" I hope in God that no such day will come; but if it does, let no man lay it to the charge of the Radical Union men of Missouri; but to that of the men who for more than a year past have carried on an infernal war upon them.

This document sets out with informing the loyal people of Missouri, that "in the present condition of our political affairs there is cause for both congratulation and alarm." You will see presently what is their cause for congratulation. Their cause for alarm is, that the day is at hand when the Radicals of Missouri will, at the polls, sweep away the disloyalty of Missouri like a cobweb; and hence they invoke the aid of every disloyal man, and of every man who has heretofore stayed away from the polls because he dared not perjure himself by taking the oath required of voter. This is the cause for their alarm. Let them tremble under it until the 3d of November, and then exchange it for despair.

every

This document goes on to say-"A few straggling and marauding guerrillas, formidable only by the smallness of their numbers and the siealth and rapidity of their movements, constitute all that remains of the great armed outbreak of 1861." "A few straggling and marauding guerrillas!" That is to say, twelve hundred men led by Coffey and Shelby, march from the southern border through the populous counties of the Southwest, to the city of Boonville, plunder it to their hearts' content, and march out of Cooper county with one

hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of booty! How did they get there? Who let them go there? Where were the militia to whom Governor Gamble has been so anxious to commit the keeping of Missouri's peace, and by which he declared "he could hold the State as quiet as a sleeping child in a nurse's arms?" Where were they? That twelve hundred men could march into the very center of Missouri, pillaging, burning and slaying, is a brilliant commentary upon this text of Messrs. Glover & Co. "A few straggling guerrillas" forsooth! If that is their estimate of the twelve hundred whose raid is the fresh event of yesterday, what would they say of twelve thousand? Perhaps they would count them a little bigger affair, but no great thing after all. And this is "all that remains of the great armed outbreak of 1861," is it? What has become of the lesser bands of guerrillas and bushwhackers, that prowl through large sections of our State? And what has become of the thousands, yea, tens of thousands of traitors that inhabit the State, more unmolested, more protected, more courted by certain classes of politicians, than ever true Union men were? What has become of the multitudes of them now swarmed into this city from exposed parts of the State? What has become of the thousands and thousands who, living in peace in every part of the State, are the feeders, guides, spies, informers, and protectors of those "few straggling and marauding guerrillas," those incarnate devils whose deeds are as dark as hell itself? They are still among us-the Secesh Home Guard of Missouri! They are here, too, to vote in answer to this