els back from thy cities, even in this
chamber, have sealed thy doom, and their own together.

"Woe to thee, Alabama! Ere five drear years have fled, thou
shalt sit as a widow, desolate.

"The staff from thy husband's hand shall be broken, the crown
plucked from his head, the sceptre rent from his grasp.

"Thy sons shall be slain, thy legislators mocked and bound
with the chains thou hast fastened on others.

"The blind ones, who have proscribed the spirits of love and
comfort from ministry in thy homes, shall be spirits
themselves, and ere those five years be passed, more spirits
than bodies shall wander in the streets of Alabama, homeless,
restless, and unripe, torn from their earthly tenements, and
unfit for their heavenly ones; until thy grass-grown streets
and thy moss-covered dwellings shall be the haunts of legions
of unbodied souls, whom thy crimes shall have violently thrust
into eternity!"

When this involuntary prophecy of evil import was read by the young
scribe to the disenthralled medium, her own horror and regret at its
utterance far exceeded that of any of her aghast listeners, not one of
whom, any more than herself, attached to it any other meaning than an
impression produced by temporary excitement and the sphere of the
unholy legislative chamber.

How deeply significant this fearful prophecy became during the ensuing
five years, all who were witnesses to its utterance, and many others,
to whom it was communicated in that same year, can bear witness of.

Swept into the red gulf of all-consuming war, many of the unhappy
gentlemen who had legislated against "the spirits in Alabama," became,
during the ensuing five years, spirits themselves, and have doubtless
realized the inestimable privileges which the communion they so rashly
denounced on earth was calculated to afford to the inhabitants of the
spheres.

In other respects, the fatal prophecy has been too literally
fulfilled. Many a regiment of brave men have marched out of the city
streets of Alabama, only to return as unbodied souls, and to behold
the streets grass-grown and deserted, and the thresholds which their
mortal feet might never again cross, overspread with the moss of
corruption and decay.

Alabama has truly sat "as a widow, desolate." Her strength has been
shorn, her beauty gone. No State has sent forth a greater number of
brave and devoted victims to the war than