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left utterly destitute. The very wearing apparel of our women
and children was seized by these ruffians, and carried out of our
houses. Our blankets and bed-clothing, everything that was
calculated to render the soldiers more comfortable, was seized
by the strong hand, and carried away. Our tanneries shared
the same fate. They had all been compelled, in the reign of
the rebels, to contribute sixty per cent, of their leather to the
government for the shoeing of their soldiers; but now, when
they were retreating from the State, they seized all the leather
in the vats, and bore it away, leaving our old men, women and
children, to meet the rigors of the passing winter bare-footed, as
well as almost naked.
Believe me, fellow-citizens, East Tennessee has drunk the full
cup of suffering, and nothing seems left her now but to drain its
bitterness to the very dregs. She has sacrificed everything
but loyalty and honor, she has suffered everything but dis¬
honor and death ; and now destitution and famine, followed by
despair and death, are trampling upon the thresholds of her sad
homes, are entering their very doors, ready to consummate the
sacrifice and complete the suffering. But, thank God, through
all her sufferings, she has been faithful. Persuasions, threats,
insults, imprisonments, wounds, stripes, privations, chains, con¬
fiscations, gibbets, and military murders, the clash of arms, the
" terribleness of armies with banners," and all the combined
and concentrated horrors of internecine war marshalled upon
her battle-torn bosom, and hurling sorrow and ruin into all her
homes, have never corrupted her loyalty, nor driven her a soli¬
tary line from her devotion to the government of our fathers.
[Great applause.] Left unprotected, when she ought to have
been protected by the government that she loved, interior and
isolated, disarmed before she could organize, she was seized and
pinioned by a power that overrode all law, and trampled con¬
stitutional liberty under its feet. Choked down, under a reign
of terror black as the night of Robespierean rule in Paris, her
proud neck has felt the heel of a despotism more heartless and
crushing than the power of an autocracy. Her loyal people,
because they could not do otherwise, have submitted, for more
than two dreadful years, to a bondage their inmost hearts have
abhorred—a bondage that fetters the soul, and seals the lips,,
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