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tion should be final. The fortune of war,
however, having proved inauspicious, they
are prepared, I believe, to submit to what
seems to be the will of God, and to return
{in good faith} unreservedly, to the connection which they
had observed, and henceforth "truth & faith to bear of
life & limb and terrene honour," to the U
States. This is, I confidently believe, the present disposition
of the great body of the citizens of Virga, & I
doubt not of the other states of the South also, although
I am not in a condition to judge of the
public sentiment elsewhere; Nor {They are} does
any reservation [ ] in this purpose, to bide
our time to feed fat an ancient grudge, or
to devise schemes, to be executed at formable
conjunctures, against the integrity of the
restored Union, which is in honesty designed
to maintain inviolate as far as depends on
us, henceforth forever. By the failure of the war & the
capitulation of our armies, our past grief are in the deep
bosom of the [ ] buried?

We are in no condition to prepare,
much less to exact terms, from the very nature
of war, which you cannot ignore, [were we [change?],
it is implied, {that} in order that we should
become attached anew, or that our old & ardent
attachment to the Union & the Constitution shd
be revived, that we must experience & share in its
blessings. If we are no permitted to participate
-(and by that I mean if the bulk of the people
are no permitted to participate,- for it is
immaterial comparatively what may happen to
me or to any other individuals-, if we are not permitted to participate in the {blessings} advantages
of Union, and of Constitutional liberty, - it would
tend only to [ ] [mis]erable delusion, for us to
promise, or for you to expect that we should
remain quiet longer than we {were} are constrained
by incaistble force. We are Anglo-Saxons,
like yourselves, and you have only to
consider what you would do under like
circumstances, in order to foreshadow the
actions of our people. How the liberties of the
South would survive, tied then to the dead
cause of {a} disfranchisement in one third
of the people of the Country, may well lead
a {Northern} Statesman to pause, ere he
converts [?],000,000 of a free-born & high-spirited
race from ailling citizens, into soured
surfs, always watching for occasions of convulsions
& strife.