Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood
October 21, 1863

Hon. Jacob B. Blair, the Union nominee for Congress, will address the people of this city and county at the Court House on Wednesday night next.

We hope that all Union men will stir up the minds of their friends and acquaintances to the importance of a full vote next Thursday, and also to the importance of the meeting at the Court House on Wednesday night.

MEETING AT THE COURT HOUSE. - Hon. Jacob B. Blair, the Union nominee, who will be triumphantly elected to Congress to-day, made a speech at the Court House last night. We have no spaces to given even an outline of his remarks. The speech was a good one and was well received. Mr. Blair pledged himself in the strongest possible manner to the fullest support of the efforts of the Government to put down the rebellion, even to the extent of "mortgaging the last acre of American soil." He paid a high compliment to the President, saying that if ever an honest man and single hearted patriot had sat in the Executive chair, Abraham Lincoln wasn't the man. He read the secret Copperhead circular which we publish in another column and commented very appropriately upon the principles of its disloyal authors and supporters. Mr. Blair took occasion to say that while he had differed somewhat with the Administration in the last Congress, as in the matter of the abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia, the enlistment of negroes, and the Proclamation, yet he now accepted them as a part and parcel of the grand plan of fate against the rebellion, and he meant to stand by them along side of the President .

At the close of Mr. Blair's speech, C. D. Hubbard, Esq., was called up, and he made some very excellent and practical remarks which elicited frequent and hearty applause. He spoke first of the election to day and of the good that a full vote would do; of Mr. Blair's efforts on behalf of the new State of Washington and his reliability as a man for the times. In alluding to the secret circular read by Mr. Blair he said that he rejoiced in the consciousness of the fact that the days of such demagoguery as it contained were about over; that the old regime with all its tricks of appealing to the people about Abolitionism was played out; that the old-hacknied issue of slavery would soon be out of politics, for the reason that slavery was now between the upper and the nether mill stone and would be ground into complete annihilation. For one he thanked God for the prospect of its destruction. When he saw the stars and stripes lowered from a Union pole in Richmond and ignobly dragged at the tail end of a cart drawn by a negro, while the stars and bars were floated from a buggy drawn by a negro trader, he experienced a conviction on the slavery question which had ripened into a conversion to what is called "Abolitionism." (Strong applause.)

The meeting broke up shortly after nine o'clock, and we think the spirit of all present was to do their duty at the polls to-day.

Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood: October 1863