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?

Such preparation will not precipitate us upon the trial of secession,
for I hold now, as in 1850, that Mississippi's patriotism will hold
her to the Union as long as it is constitutional, but it will give to