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The oath is unwise, unnatural, and unprecedented, because it
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is retroactive in its requirements. It does not seek to procure proper conduct in the officer while discharging the duties of his office; but does seek to exclude him from the office altogether by reason of something done or not done long before the office was conferred.

If Congress can prescribe one test it can prescribe another test; and thus, by legislation, destroy the right of representation.

I would vote for no man to represent Georgia who could take this oath, because it is the highest evidence of infidelity to the sentiments of the people of the State.

I would vote for no man, anywhere, who would take this oath, because it is the highest evidence of his infidelity to the Constitution. The man who takes that oath admits a power in Congress to destroy every department of the government as well as every right of representation.

I am a candidate for no office, and will seek none and desire none. The man who wishes now to be a representative in Congress from the South either does not comprehend the very unpleasant and very heavy duties of that position, or has made up his mind to hold the position without discharging the duties. In either case he is not fit to be trusted.

There is no danger now from any spirit of resistance in Geor gia. The only danger comes from an opposite direction, -- servility. I intend to be loyal myself, and I have not been faithless to any obligation I ever assumed, even when unwillingly assumed. I resisted secession until resistance was hopeless, and then I resisted subjugation until resistance was hopeless. I would not, if I could, change my record.

But I will help no man to represent Georgia whose fidelity to the State is doubted, or whose ability and willingness to maintain and vindicate the honor of her people, living and dead, is suspicious. I will vote for no man to administer the Constitution who, in the very beginning of his work, would take an oath which admits a power in Congress to subvert that Constitution.

Each house of Congress is sole judge as to whether persons seeking seats have the qualifications prescribed by the Constitution, and have been elected and returned according to the laws. The people are the sole judges of every other qualification. Otherwise, Congress can nullify or even destroy the right of election
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secured to the people alone, and thus make a congressional despotism.

The right of the States to representation in Congress is the clearest of all rights under the Constitution. It is the right without which no other right can exist and no obligation can be imposed. I have an abiding faith that the President will not permit its destruction by test oaths or otherwise. He was for the Union against the South; and it is my opinion that he will show himself for the Union against Massachusetts when the issue comes."

I have only to add that the italics of this remarkable letter are Mr. Hill's. I believe it expresses the feeling of four fifths of the men and of all the women of Georgia. If it is not a formal declaration of war against the nationality of the government I am unable to comprehend the force of its very plain and explicit language; and if it does not indicate an insolence and dictatorial spirit without precedent I have read history to little purpose.

Let Congress dispense with the test oath, and give us back the good old times! Let it admit all these Rebel generals and colonels and politicians, and so restore universal harmony! Let us all join hands and cover the nakedness of the land, and assure the world that it is not scarred with a million graves, and that there has been no war for lofty principles and the natural rights of man, but only a friendly contest of strength and endurance, in which the victors concede everything to the vanquished on the sole condition that the latter pronounce the former magnanimous!

Whether the North Carolina "dirt-eater," or the South Carolina "sand-hiller," or the Georgia "cracker," is lowest in the scale of human existence would be difficult to say. The ordinary plantation negro seemed to me, when I first saw him in any numbers, at the very bottom of not only probabilities, but also possibilities, so far as they affect human relations; but these specimens of the white race must
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be credited with having reached a yet lower depth of squalid and beastly wretchedness. However poor or ignorant or unclean or improvident he may be, I never yet found a negro who had not at least a vague desire for a better condition, an undefined longing for something called freedom, a shrewd instinct of self-preservation. These three ideas -- or, let me say, shadows of ideas -- do not make the creature a man, but they lift him out of the bounds of brutedom. The Georgia "cracker," as I have seen him since leaving Milledgeville, seems to me to lack not only all that the negro does, but also even the desire for a better condition and the vague longing for an enlargement of his liberties and his rights. Such filthy poverty, such foul ignorance, such idiotic imbecility, such bestial instincts, such grovelling desires, -- no trick of words can make plain the scene in and around one of these "cracker" habitations, no fertility of language can embody the simple facts for a Northern mind, and the case is one in which even seeing itself is scarcely believing. Time and effort will lead the negro up to intelligent manhood; but I almost doubt if they will be able to lead this "white trash" even up to respectability.