E wW^M^ :l In Exotic .. - Brown University iO 1932 Noffolk, Apfil 15, 16/3, To Judge Clifford, Attorney General Sj)eed, Wm. M. Evarts, and, perhaps, '-'U'"Li a dozen otJiers, or those who survive. '■* ^: .. L. .; Gentlemen : — I have read carefully, in the Charleston Daily New? of March 29th ulto., an account of a dinner given in the seaport of South Carolina, (now under negro rule and whose capital, Columbia, was burnt by the Northern incendiary Sherman) by one Colonel Richard Lathers, (querv, is he white or black) to a number of distinguished Northern men and some leading ones of the State of John C. Calhoun, at which party the persons first named in this communication was present. This account has been already commented on by my old friend "Senex" with his accustomed ability and usual forbearance, and he has left me very little to add to his crushing, grinding reply. I have something, however, to say, and shall treat your "solemn, secret council, of the most able, lawyers of the North, held at Washington a few months after the end of the war" in the style of the hunted Indian Chief, Captain Jack, who, in this morning's paper, is reported to have buried his hatchet and war club, not in the bosom of mother earth, but in the skull of his enemy, one of them a Federal colonel somebody, once a military commander of the City of Richmond, after its fall and conflagration, and who, I am informed by another old friend of mine, (an Irishman, who went tJjrougli tlie whole war near the person of General Lee,) was a very great brute. You, Judge Clifford, are reported to have stated to the dinner party in Charleston, that the secret council of lawyers above mentioned, " had been selected from the whole Northern profes- sion, for their legal ability and acumen," and that the result of their deliberations was the sudden abandonment of the case by the Federal Government in view of the insurmontabie difficulties in the way of getting a final conviction in tlie Supreme Court (of Jefferson Davis,) which difKcuIties were revealed by their patient study of the law bearing on the case," now, I ask you, whether this confession, does not give up the whole case. The ablest lawyers of the North, upon consultation by the Rebel Government at Washington, advise it, that, under the Constitution and laws of the United States, it could not convict Davis of treason, even before a packed Supreme Court, with Judge Jeffry Salmon P. Chase (now struck down by paralysis, I will not say " under Providence,") at his head, and a Northern Justice at its tail? Why was this "council of Northern lawyers of learning and acumen" kept secret ? Secrecy is a badge of fraud, and the Rebel Government, at Washing- ton, dare not let the world know, that its legal advisers, selected from New England and the North, had given an opinion against its whole action and course of proceeding against the South. Is this not the naked truth? Is there a man living, or hereafter to be born, that can doubt it? You say that " the conference was long, learned and pro- found." T pause to ask, why was not such a conference of Northern lawyers called before the dead dog Lincoln began the war of invasion on the South ? But one answer can be given. He and his bandit party were afraid to call and consult even such a secret conclave. You say " The Federal Constitution, the law of nations, the decisions of the Supreme Court, in the trial of Aaron Burr, and other causes celebres, and the whole list of state trials, in the history <>f the whoTe civilized world (which latter I doubt) were studied, weighe(i^i,nalyzed and dis- sected" and the prosecution of Mr. Davis suddenly abandoned." Now I put it to the most learned lawyer in the world, to the whole bar of the United States and to every man and boy of the plainest under- standing, whether, after such a scrutiny and investigation and admis- sion and legal opinion, given by the ablest lawyers of the Radical party itself, any person with three grains of sense can say that Jefferson Davis committed treason ! and if he, the head and front of the South- ern Confederation did not, who did ? To those who call me and my ^countrymen traitors, I now and shall hereafter, as hitherto, simply hurl my curse. But I have not di)ue with your cabal, Mr. Attorney Geue- ral and Judge Clifford. I shall let the world know vour true reasons for saying and thinking that Jefferson Davis could not be convicted of treason even in the court below, at Richmond, before the microi^copic insect, Underwood and the paralytic Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio. Now the Constitution of the United States, formed by a convention of the twelve not thirteen states (little Rhode Island wa« not represented,) and presided over by General Washington, in the twelfth year of the In- dependence of the United States declares, Article 3, Section 3, § l,that "Treason against the United States shall consist onhj in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." and § 2, that " The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason." This is all the Constitution says on the sub- ject. You as a lawyer well know, or ought to know, that the convention which made the late Constitution (peace to its memory !) defned treamm, to prevent the introduction into this country from England, (whose laws the states adopted,) of the numerous acts and wicked decisions of the Parliament and Courts of Great Britain, in regard to this crime. A landlord, for instance, was hung, drawn and quartered for saying, by way of joke, that his son was heir to the crown, which was the sign of his hotel. You well know moreover, that the words "levying war and adhering to enemies, giving th»^ni aid and comfort " are legal terms, the meaning and definition of which are to be sought and ascer- tained 'i^J^>: common law of England and its reports of judicial decisioHCT^r Now I ask yo'^j^ fiiw plain (piestions, which history and every man and woman and child and negro in the North and South, can readily answer. Against whom did my State of Virginia wage war ? Against which, or what part of the Uniteurposes, of sovereign I)ower. The states however never parted with their sovereignty in whole, or even in part, but reserved the right completely to control and remodel or even destroy the Constitution which they had made, I mean collectively. This no one has doubted or ever denied. The Constitution itself expressly and explicitly declares that they may do so. How then could all or any of them commit treason against their creature, their joint agent? Treason can only be. committed by the violation of some law. What law of Congre^ did the Southern States violate ? Name it. Put your finger upon the chapter, the section and the page of the act which the " wildest enthusiast" ever said was violated by the Confederated States. What law of God or man forbade the o-allant citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, to fire in self defence, upon Fort Sumter when it was in the act of being provisioned and fortified in order to batter down the seaport town of that Sovereign State? Put your bloody finger on that law. The Confederated States adopted substantially the old Constitution of the United States, and carried with them, when they seoeded, all the laws of the United States, until formally repealed. If they committed no treason against the United States, nor against their creature Congress, did they commit that crime against their Co. states or any of them, who did not secede? Did they owe them fealty? No one will have the hardihood now to say they did. That was an offence which even the dead doo- Lincoln never charged them withal 1. He only said, that the Federal Rebel Government, the creature, had a right to defend its existence against its creator, upon the absurd and politically impious ground of self defence. Now the only offence the Seceding States committed, or could have committed, against their Co. States, who did not secede, was a violation of the compact of the Constitution, (which I denv that the South flid infract) and the proper remedy was for the legislatures of the injured or offended states, to have called conventions of the sovereign people within the limits of each, declared solemnly that, in their opinion the South had violated the Constitution and anthorized Con- gress to wage war against the Southern Confederation. This would have given Congress, or rather the dead dog Lincoln, some show or color of iiuthority ? But this they nev^r did. They were afraid to do so. They well knew that the states generally were fully committed to the doctrine of State Sovereignty and the right of secession, and that Massachusetts herself, had on thirteen several occasions proclaimed her fealty to State Rights and the whole doctrine of State Sovereignly. This has been shown by "A Son of Norfolk" in his work published last year entitled "The State Sovereignty Record of Massachusetts." You gentlemen, to whom I now address myself, or some of you, have doubtless read that able production and fearful record, and you know what I state, of your own knoioledge to be true. This it is that "flut- tered your voices at Corolr," and produced the negro dinner at Charlesto'n, with its barefaced, impudent disclosures. Why did not the dead dog Lincoln and his banditti cabinet get the sanction of even the sovereign people of Massachusetts to their war on the Southern States? Why did they not get the sanction, or the subsequent ratifi- cation of the sovereign people of the other mis-called free states, or even of their rabid. Radical Legislatures (who however, had no power to sanction such a war on state rights and the South) for the mere sake 8 of appearances ? This Lincoln and his cabinet of ruffians and robbers never did ! Will posterity credit this indisputable fact, which settles the whole question of that war of invasion on the South, as a war of murder, rapin, rape and arson, and condemns the memory of its perpe- trators, aiders and abettors (and among theui you or some of you, gentlemen), to eternal execration by the human race. But I have not yet done with treason and the real traitors. I now charge and shall prove, that the Northern people who joined heart and hand in the wicked war of invasion of Virginia, committed against that State, the crime of treason. Tate's digest of the statutes of Virginia p. 515, gives the act in regard to treason against the State, viz : " If a man do levy war against the Commonwealth in the same, or be an adherent to the enemies of the Commonwealth, within the same, giving them aid and comfort within the Commonwealth," or elsewhere, and be thereof con- victed of open deed, by the evidence of two sufficient and lawful witnesses or his own voluntary confession, the person so convicted, and his or her aiders, abettors and counsellors, shall suffer death by hanging by the neck, without benefit of clergy (Acts 177G, 1 792 and April 1, 1817) and so, "every person who shall erect or establish, or cause or produce to be erected or establislied, any government separate from, or independent of, the government of Virginia, or who shall, in any such usurjjed government, hold or execute any office, legislative, executive, judiciary or ministerial," &c., shall be adjudged guilty of high treason and punished as other traitors, (Acts 1785 and 1792, 1819, 1820,) and "the Governor shall in no wise exercise a right of granting pardon to any person convicted of treason against the Commonwealth, but may suspend the execution until the meeting of the Legislature," Acts 1776 and 1792. Do you doubt that this law is Constitutional ? Is not treason a crime committed against a sovereign and cannot it be committed against any state? Pennsylvania and every state has a law against treason, as I doubt not. This shows that tbe State of Virginia (as in truth did every other state) thought herself sovereign, and, ac-. cordingly, defined treason against herself and prescribed its penalty of death. Now it is a maxim of law, with which every Blackstone lawyer is fiuniliar, that the hand which bindg can alone unbind. A citizen of a state became bound to obey its agent, the General Governraeut, by, through and under the authority of his own state, and in no other way, or to any greater extent. The State of Virginia having bound her citizens to a qualified alle- giance to the Federal Government, afterwards, solemenly, in a sovereign convention of the whole people, unbound them and makes it treason to wage war against the Commonwealth or aid and abet thoee who do. Can one of her citizens therefore in obeying her laws commit treason against her faithless discarded agent, the Federal Rebel Government, wliose delegated powers siie had revoked ? If so, then the citizen is put in a fixed dilemma and commits treason, whether he obeys the principal or agent, a crime in each alternative and a thing impossible in fact and even in fancy. You and your secret council admit, that Jefi'erson Davis did not commit the crime of treason against the United States and I have demondrated that he did not. Did the two hundred thousand men, who at his call, laid down their lives for their country, on the field of battle commit legal or moral treason ? You youi-self, I repeat, admit and confess that they could not be convicted of treason under the Constitution and laws of the United States. There were witnesses enough to their acts. The world bears witness. History bears witness on her illuminated pages, bright with the fame of their noble actions, with the blaze of the battles of Fredericksburg, Spot- sylvania Courthouse, Chancellorsville, Manassas and Bull's Run, with the glory of Lee and of Stonewall Jackson, next to Washington (whom Boston has forgotten) first in the hearts of their countrymen. If the army of Virginia and hosts of the South did not commit treason against the vile reptile (which bit the hand that fed it,) the Federal Rebel Government, what crime did they commit against it, in defending their native soil, at the call of their old mother State, against its invasion by Northern barbarians ? Why was not Davis indicted, tried and convicted of some other minor offence or misde- meanor, and then pardoned by the President of the Rebel Government at Washinctou ? You mi^ht then have had color to the claim of 10 clemency, but what room fur magnanimity, is there iu not prosecuting an iunocent man for an offence, of which you confess you could not convict him. Is it magnanimous, in the New England code of morals, to restrain your hands from taking or seeking the lives of innocent men 't Whom the laws of the country and a jury of impartial men would acquit, even in the face of the charge of a corrupt judge? Is it mag- nanimity to take bribes like Vice Presidents Colfax and Wilson (Sena- tor Sumner's worthy coadjutor) and to steal silver spoons, bearing a family crest, like a certain representative from New England is believed to have done, although he has publicly denied the faet ? Is it magnanimity to take the lie publicly and to digest it in private? I have by no means exhausted the subject of the State Right of seces- sion, which I shall take up again, at some future day and regularly discuss in other aspects. I shall discuss the nature of sovereignly and the meaning of that much misunderst'iod word. The legal effects of seces- sion of the Federal Rebel Government, on the donation of jjiiblic lands made to it by Virginia for the use of the United and not disunited States, under the English common law doctrine of donor and donee. Whether a state must not return to the Union by the way she came in and went out, viz : by the vote of a convention of the people thereof who passed the ordinance of secession ; whether the Legislature of the State have any power in the premises, (I have read and studied all their several constitutions) and whether the amendments to the late Constitution of th*^ United States are not each and every one of them fraudulent, null and void, and should be treated so by all the seceding states. I content myself before concluding with one remark about the Virginia law of treason. Were I Prosecuting Attorney of the Commonwealth and the tan-yard bull dog Grant were to show his brazen, bloated face at Richmond, I would draw an indictment against him for high treason. As foreman of the Grand Jury I would endorse "a True Bill," as Judge I would charge the petit jury that he had committed treason, citing the passage from Rawle or the Constitution p. 302 which says : *' The secession of a state from the Union depends entirely o?i iliewill of the people of such states." 11 I would say that the prisoiipr at the bar caunot plead ignorance of the law, (which is no excused for he had learnt this law by heart, at West Point, where this learned author's work was a text book, made so b)^ the Federal Rebel Government itself down to 1861, and that he has con- fessed his guilt in his late Inaugural Speech. I would then read the Virginia act of secession and its law of treason and I would cite from Rawle, chapter 32, p. 297, this passage : "If a faction should attempt to subvert the government of a state, for the purpose of destroying its republican form, the paternal power of the Union could be called forth to subdue it. Yet it is not to be understood that its interposition would be justifiable if the people of a state should determine to retire from the Union, whether they adopted another or retained the same form of gov- ernment," adding that these doctiines were taught by the United States Government at West Point, to Lee, Davis, Beauregard, Jackson and the prisoner, and that the law and facts of the case were too plain for a doubt. As foreman of the jury or juryman I would say guilty, without leaving my seat. As Governor of the State I would not suspend the execution of the sentence until the meeting of the Legislature, and, as the sheriff of the County of Henrico, I would have him hung by the neck ou Capitol Hill, near the monument of Washington, (or, if the culprit preferred a private execution,) within the walls of the Libby prison and within hearing of the cries of the Richmond women who were raped by his soldiers. Hung, I say, with a cotton rope, until he was dead, dead, dead! The hangman's cord should be manufactured of South Carolina and Louisiana cotton, mixed half and half, with Kentucky flax, picked by the fingers of a negro child, carded by his mother who had been violated by a Pennsylvania black-footed Dutch- man, spun by " the nurse of the village maiden " whose death bed I have painted (to the tune of a Methodist hymn) and twisted at a rope walk in the Monumental City, on the old Belair road, where was made (^as I remember) the halter with which Adam Horn was hung for killing, cutting up and burning in part, his encient wife's dead body. 12 A few days have passed since the Anniversary of the firing upon Fort Sumter and the death of the damned dead, cur dog Lincohi, killed by a Northern assassin. No Southern hand was found willing or base enough to strike at his wicked life, (even at the risk of his own,) though so much was to be, apparently, gained to his country by his violent removal. If it be written in the book of Fate that the monster Grant is to follow in the footsteps of the Patron Saint of Puritans and free negroes, let no Southern man defile his hand with his foul blood, but let the hired assassin come from the ranks of that congrega- tion whose clergyman preached that the Almighty Parent had raised up his chosen instruments to commit murder and violate all his Ten Commandments ! I wish him to be hung by a legal court and jury, or, if he live at all, to survive and drag out the remains and cons'ime the days of his miserable existence, in unvailing repentance, an eternity of which cannot atone for the injury he has done his fellow men. Let him live on and live forever, and in a future life, have his conscience fully awakened, his understanding enlightened and the record of his sins forever repeated to him by his Judge and Maker. Let him and his followers, far removed from the light and warmth of the sun of this our world, live in some remote, newly di.-overed planet, inhabited only by themselves and ferocious wild beasts of prey. Let them wage perpetual war on each other, delight in bloodshed, and in devouring each others flesh. The Northern people I see are begin ing to find out that their is a God of Heaven and Earth, who is not an indifferent spectator of the actions of men, and they are sending a part of their ill-gotten wealth (the plunder of fraudulent and oppressive legislation) to rebuild the churches of God which their armies (Sheridan at their head) burnt in the South. Let their parsons hereafter make an annual pilgrimage to Fredericksburg, and to St. George's Church, where Washington was taught by his mother (as I was by mine) to fear, to worship and to love his Creator. That bombarded town and its old church, in which their piety may gain fervor, if not purity, its field of modern Marathon, whence fled in terror, the cowardly and shattered legions of New England and the 13 North, to find shelter under the wing of Burnside ou the Heights of Chatham — its battle field, I say, in front of Willis's Hill, on which Southern patriotism will gain strength forever. Especially, let the blatant, blackguard, Puritan parson Beecher of Brooklin Heights, who laughs and snaps his fingers at St. Paul's letter to Philemon, returning a runaway slave; who sneers at Virginia's old families and abstractions (forgetting that the whole decalogue is an abstraction and the Sermon, on the Mount, as is every general principle of law, art and science) go to Fredericksburg, and, in its shattered town hall, (not Fanieul) on the 14th day of December next, the anniversary of the death of Washing- ton and of Xmas old style, (following the day on which its great and famous battle was fought,) and lecture about the early life of Washing- ton on his play ground and teach its simple, kind hearted and pious and refined people, the evils of slavery and see how many hearers he has with all his tinsel and clap-trap eloiiuence. Let him, on the after- noon of the same day, (which will be Sunday) preach, in the pulpit of venerable St. George, (in my day occupied by the truly Rev. E. C. McG,, who married a neice of General \V. and, at its bombardment, by my friend, Mr, Maury,) preach, in his most theatrical and oratorical style, on the text of " Glory to God on High, on earth peace and good will towards men," which words (of Scripture and of Boston) used to decorate its altar at the return of the birth day of our Savior, written in large letters of holly and of ivy, of running ivy, Turuished by a female member of thp congregation from Falmouth, my humble birth place. I will lay a wager of my copy of the septuagint (stolen fi-om my library,) against your Cambridge edition of the Greek prayer book (the language written by the Evangelists and Apostles, and one of those, probably spoken by them and their Master) that the joint author of Uncle Thomas" lying novel, with his brazen face and throat of brass, cannot do that thing, or, that if he attempts it, the word feace, will stick in his throat like a bone in a dog's. Let now this New England Puritan Parson return to lick up and fatten on his vomit of garbage and broken bones. Faugh ! How his reputation will stink under the 14 What though my native land is now a conquered province ! So was Judea, the Holy Land, at the birth and crucifixion of the Savior, whose example you laud, but whose precept, of doing unto others as you would be done by, you carefull}' eschew. "Would the South have invaded the North, had it seceded ? Would you have had it do so ? Could any amount of worldly wealth have induced them to do your work of murder, arson, rapine and rape? You know' it could not. The Jews had their Macabteus, the Hammerer, a surname given to Judas Asmonffius, (an acrostis which means " Who is like to Thee, Lord ?") whose noble and heroic exploits, and those of his illustrious brethren, in defence of his religion and native land, against the incursion of Eastern barbarians, have been recorded and immortalized in Scripture and in the Greek History of the devout, learned and eloquent Josephus. Virginia too had her host of noble suus, who laid down their lives in defending her soil from the invasion of the Puritan and the North- ern horde, and chiefly the pure and spotless hero Jackson, whose name and fame he has left as an inheritance to human nature, and over all that was mortal of whom, the nobility of Old England have decreed a monument ! Let burnt Boston and Chicago and Chickopee, too, con- tinue to sneer at his exploits and call him a traitor. Who are you, " members of a secret conclave of learned lawyers " that call Davis, my countrymen and myself traitors ? In your livid hearts the puddle blood of your Puritan fathers has stagnated for centuries. Through mine flows that of noble ancestors of a thousand years, the blood of Henry the VII, of England, of James the V, of Scotland, of William the Conquerer, and of "old John of Gaunt, time honored Lancastei*," nay of a hundred kings and queens and of an old King David of Scotland, who if not a descendant, was a namesake of the Divine Harpist. I was not born, it is true, at Boston, (self-styled the Athens of America,) but I was born at the falls of the Rappahannock, in a .^mall and obscure village, (whose name was imported from England and from Wales, like many of those of Massachusetts) in the County of Stafford and in the Northern neck of Virginia, which produced a Washington and Lee, and more great men than the whole of New England ever has, or will or can give birth to. Read Bishop Meade's history of the old churches and families in that j^art of my State and you will find their name to be legion, and you may find something more about myself. VINDEX. Norfolk, Friday, April 18, 1873. No. 5 CONTINUED BY VINDEX. Norfolk, June 4th, 1873. 7b the President of the United States. Sir :— JNIajor General Scbofield iinnounces the capture of the Modoc Chief and two warriors, with tl)eir families, and the world is impatient to know what you will do with iheni. Parson Baum, of Laramie, Wyo- ming Territory, is thirsting for Captain Jack's blood, so are the Northern friends and admirers of Colonel Canby, of whom General D. H. Hill, (ordered by Stonewall Jackson, on his death-bed and with his last breath, to advance,) does not seem to be one. If the assassination of that Federal officer (killed as he was running away from his men, and whose loss to the whole country was declared by General Sherman to be irreparable or terrible,) if the slaying of Canbv was done on the Territory of the United States, and in violation of its laws or the laws of war, I suppose that the Modoc Chief, who with a handful of men and women, squaws and pappooses, defied and resisted the power of the Government, on his own soil and was the last brave to surrender, will be tried by a "jury from the vicinage," or court-martialed and hung to j)k'ase " The Party" if not to satisfy justice. In case the latter mode of judicial murder should be adopted, I respectfully suggest, that the survivors, (if there be any " under Pi'ovidcnce" of that court-martial which tried, in time of |)r()f()U!id peace and hung, at Washington, for ])()Iiti('al eti'ect, theinuoccnt widow Surrat, (judicially murdered her, if Ben Butler's jjublic declaration on the floor of Congress is to be credited) be summoned and impanneled for the purpose, with half a dozen political pnr.sons (Bauuj, Beecher, Newman and Tiffany, &c.)to sit at the neighboring village of Colfax, (there is nothing like a good ir.ime) to try and hang, like a dog, the last surviving chieftain of his brave race. There are, I believe, no Unit^^d States or State courts for the trial of crimes and offences committed outside their jurisdiction, and within the Indian Territory, reservation or original domain, and therefore, I 24 suppose, that a drum-head court-martial for the speedy trying of an offence against the rules and regulations of the Army of the United States, to be the most efficient and prompt tribunal. A iury of civilians might have scruples ; one composed, partly, of men "accustomed to look on blood and carnage with composure" (I quote the words of the late and long lamented Andrew Jackson, the hero of New Orleans) would have no compunction and will be happy to do what you may command; thereby avoiding all responsibility themselves, and letting the blood of the Modoc Chief, as it will and ought, rest upon your own head. Poh ! poh ! a trip to Long Branch and a single plunge in the surf, will wash the foul deed from your memory, if not from your soul. The father and husband being hung, what will you do with the wives and children, the squaws (one of whom had to throw away the sucking baby, to be weaned and weep for its mother's breast, while she fled on the wings of fear from your white soldiers and the tomahawk, an Indian does not war against women), the squaws I say and pappooses, uow prisoners of war. Will you take their parole, (their baby pratling parole,) as you did that of General Lee and the men and officers who surrendered with him, " upon the one condition " that you insisted on and which was in these words, written and signed by yourself as Lieutenant General, viz: "that the men and officers (mutatis mutandis) surrendered, shall be disqualified from taking up arms against the United States, until properly exchanged" after which exchange, they of course, might have done so. This was your express agreement in your letter to Gener.il R. E. Lee, dated April 8th, 1865, and published by yourself, in your military report of your closing campaign, which lies open before me and all the worhl. As General Lee and President Davis were both afterwards indicted for treason against the United States, and against the express terms of tlieir capitulation (neither having broken that parole^ it might be a stroke of Radical policy, to have the Indian mothers and their little children tried for the same crime as aiders and abettors in arms of the Modoc fathers and husbands, and have them strung up as high as the widow Surrat. Before you do so, however, it might as well to consult Gov- ernor Phillips and "other of the most learned and profound lawyers of the greatest legal acumen " in the Radical party north of the Potomac and get their interpretation of the opinion of Chief Justice John Mar- shall of Virginia, in the case of the sovereign State of-Georgia and the Cherokee Nation, within its territorial limits, and their advice in addi- tion, as to the most magnanimous cause of legal proceeding against 27 Osceola soon died in prison, mainly of a broken heart, I had the fact from a common friend, (a connexion of that one who perished on the Pidaski) who visited him in liis bonds, and whose eyes were moist when he described to me their parting. The Seminole Chief took from his course, black flowing hair, a feather from an American eagle's wing, and gave it to him, as a souvenir. The mighty Modoc's dream of life is over. He has seen a gibbet in his vista, but he has had a dreamy vision of the spirit land, where he shall meet his father (killed by white men twenty years ago) and friends fallen in battle and in evergreen prairies, by clear running streams and under the shade of oak trees, monarch of the forests, hunt the wild buffalo, which the Great Spirit gave him for food and raiment. There he trusts never again to see a pale face. Where are the unnumbered tribes of Red men, who from the early ages of the world people 1 this vast continent, multiplied and replen- ished the earth, and were happy in their rude state? In every valley of the whole land echo sighs, where are they ? Go now General Grant to L')ng Branch, eat, drink French brandy and water, smoke Havana segars and be merry, f)ryou are twelve years nearer your grave than you were when your " rusty sword, red with the rust of the Mexican much fine volcanic gold, at the price and rate of .0103 cents, or about one hun- dred aci'es for one cent !) That portion of the Modocs who joined in the treaty and went upon their reserv.ation, according to agreement, received none of the henefils [their share of tlie hundreth part of one cent,] promised by the Govern- ment, for more than two years after they continued, and still continue, to keep their promises. A majority of the Modocs claimed that they never sold their coun- try. Refusing to go upon the reservation, they remained upon the land coveted by the whites." For this and for fighting upon and defending their soil they were ordered hy the Bull-dog Grant and blood-hound Sherman, to be exterminated. Even Northern soldiers, with Sherman's Lieutenant Davis at their head, gave them (piarter to those whom the volunteers of Oregon, in cold blood and unarmed, massacred. The Federal Rebel Government employed the Warm Spring Indians, in fighting the Modocs. If this be not savage warfare [denounced in such burning eloquence by Lord Chatham, in the British House of Lords,] then I know not how to stigmatize it. The only recorded instance of the successful employment of the peace policy towards the Heathen, is to be found, (says the Fredericksburg News of the ninth inst.) in 1st Samuel, XV, 33, and "Samuel said, as thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women, and Samuel hewed A gag in pieces, before the Lord iuGilgal." Tiien Samuel went up to Ramah in which was heard the voice of mourning and lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted, because they were not. 28 war, leaped from its scabbard" at the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Go soul of the mighty Modoc Chief, (when your body has been hung on a gibbet,) ascend the Southern skies, and take the form and place of Sagittarius, the Archer ; fit type of your race of Red men, which once covered a continent, and now has nearly reached its goal ! Sagittarius, the ninth sign of the Zodiac, east of Scorpio, which the sun enters at the close of the year, and which occupies a large space in the Southern Hemisphere. A constellation readily seen by means of five large stars, called the milk-dipper (with the handle to the West) be- cause it is i^artly within the milky-way and comes to its meridian height, a few minutes after Lyra, before the Ides of August ; the star ill whose handle is called after the Greek letter. Lambda, and is placed in the bow, just within theVia Lactea. A constellation which commemo- rates the celebrated Centaur Chiron, famous for his knowledge of music, medicine and his mastery of the bent bow, and who taught mankind the use of plants and herbs medicinal ; to ^sculapius, physic, Apollo, music, and Hercules, astronomy; and was tutor to Achilles, Jason, and J^^aeas. Who rode so well that he seems to be a part of his fiery steed. " Midst golden stars he stands, refulgent now, And shoots the scorpion with his bended bow." Thereto stand and shine to the eyes of all men, until the name of the Virginia Indian maiden, Pochahontas, shall be erased from the illuminated pages of history, and Clio cease to drop a tear to the memory of her extinguished race of Red men. "And the fourth beast was like a flying Eagle." Trinitv Sundav morning, 1873. 25 " cowardly .-quaws and little pappooses " created by their Maker, andm- crusted like Cliristians with original sin. I have done what I could with my pen for the Indians, and have received sneers and ridicule for ray humanity, toward the most injured race of God's creatures, whom even some of his Christian clergy wish to become at once all-together like themselves, forgetting the Old Roman saying (of the stoic, senator and sage, Seneca, I suppose) that "]S"emo repente fuit turpissirtus." The mighty Modoc's name and fame (who is there that does not admire his courage and heroism, akin to that of the Grecian Leonidas, tinged through it be, with his native savage barba- rism in defence of his own soil and his people with their wives and children) his reputation has gone abroad throughout the land, and I have done what I could to extend it through Europe, Asia and South America, havingsent copies of my appeal in his behalf to all the foreign ministers at Washington, to be " filed away among the archives of their office," where ^intend this letter, likewise, shall be filed, when printed. The fame of Julius Cjiesar was tarnished with an indelible stigma by his inhuman treatment of a brave German warrior or Chief- tain, who, after the almost entire destruction of his tribe, rode boldly into the Roman cam}) and surrendered himself to the clemency of his conqueror. He was carried, a crushed captive, to Rome, to grace a triumphal procession, drawn through the public way by a hook and pitched, to perish by fiimine in a ])it filled with bones of criminals and patriots. The Gt'iinau muse will not let his memorv die. Hang the Modoc (,'hit'f, who surrendei'cd himself a prisoner of war, and your name and his will go down to posterity linked in a bond of eternal fame and infamy, like that of Dr. AVright of Norfolk, and his judicial murderers. For the purpose of having this communi- cation, laid up among the archives of the State Department and for none other, I address it, under care to Mr. Secretary Fish, and sign my own name thereto. JOHN M. GORDON. :postci^i:pttj:m:. What were the Modocs before the war and what are theynov/? *' twenty-three years ago, says a paper of the City of Brotherly Love, 26 they were a numerous and powerful tribe," and the few who are left, are now captives, "Their chief never drank liquor, and always pun- ished his tribe for any crimes committed, whether drunk or sober." Does the President of the United States imitate his savage example in this particular? The mighty Modoc, (a savage hardly less sublime than the Spartan Leonidas,) with more than Roman stoicism, did not stab himself to the heart, or having sung his last war song, throw himself from some tall cliff, into his lava bed below, butiyielded himself up to his conquerors and to his fate, determined to show his pale face enemies how the red-skinned warrior can suifer. Manacled to one of his braves, he sits in prison, like a caged eagle, and says never a word to the rude soldiers who peer into his face, and taunt him with their course ribal- dry. To no one will he speak but to his captive sister. His pent up soul burst forth once in a torrent of burning wrath and eloquence, portraying, in his strange tongue the wrongs suffered by himself and tribe for twenty years, from settlers and intruders. How he and his people had been treacherously surrounded by the soldiers of his Great Father, and some of them massacred and others conveyed to a settle- ment in the midst of his enemies, the Klamath and Snake Indians, and had received only a few cents for his vast territory, many thousand square miles, which a majority of his people never consented to sell.* His wife and children, his squaws and pappooses, he will not see. He is to be ti'ied by the common law of civilized warfare, as prepared by the German Dr. Francis Lolber, L. L. D., and practiced by the Grand Army of the Republic on their brethren, in the Southern States ; of which code he never heard. He knew not of the precedent set him by Colonel Jessup, in Vaa Buren's Seminole war, who invited the Florida Chief, Osceola, into his camp, under a flag of truce, and treacherously made him a captive; the war having been begun on his people by the wanton murder of four or five of his friends, surprised and cruelly slain for no offence whatever. * The Government Peace Commissioners of the Indians say in their report, May 6, 1873, q. v. "That the country of the Modoc's is in area, about 40 by 60 miles, (equal to 2,400 square miles, or one million five hundred and thirty-six thousand square acres.) Its sheltered position, its nutritious grasses, roots and berries, and the abundance of wocus and other seeds, and of small game and the ■wild fowl and fish, which abound in the lakes, make it a very choice home for the Indians. By treaty, the Indians (Klamath, Snakes and Modocs) ceded to the United States, from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand square miles of territory, for the comparitively small sum of seventeen thousand dollars, (twelve millions eight hundred ihousand acres of land, abounding in gold of Ophir and veins of TABLEAU, No. 31, Ths Virginia Maiden at he: Harp. March 25, 1873, — ^unday ^vening. She was a fair country woman of mine, and had been trained and educated, after the death of her mother, (a member of an old Virginia family) at the convent or nunnery of the " Sacred Heart," in Paris, celebrated justly, I believe, for the forming of female manners and combining the Heathen with the Christian graces. A mutual friend, from whom 1 had heard of lier rare beauty, elegance and musical talents, had otfercd me an introdueton, which I was glad to accept. I donned my best attire, being in the flower of my youth, •which " inestimable jewel," as my friend Willis used to call it, I have long since lost and do not regret. We found her seated in her parlor, practising on the harp and not expecting visitors. She rose from her chair when we entered the room, and acknowledged my salutation and some little impromptu compliment about St. Cecelia, with a gracious smile and reseated herself, ])ushing the instrument a little to one side. The conversation was opened by herself. (f(»r I was abashed in the presence of so lovely a young woman , with much ease and vivacity and soon put me at my ease. She was a little above the medium stature when standing, and did not hold herself very erect, though she carried her small head very finely, turned a little lowards her fair left shoulder. Her hair was of a golden yellow and let fall over her neck and reached down to her waist. She wore no curls, but small tufts of hair lying flat oji the temple and reaching nearly to the tip of the ear, which was neither large nor small, and its outlines in drawing with the con- tour of her oval f:ice. Her forehead was wide and its height concealed by the mode in which the glory of her head was adjusted in front. Her eye brows were gently arched and of uniform width, and did not terminate as is usual, in the female face, in fine thread like points. Her high, thin nose was not straight, but had the smallest imaginable curve or bend up- wards Her mouth was not what is called a speaking, but I should rather term it a singing one, adorned bv very fine and regular teeth, the upper row of which she only shows in smiling and laughmg. Her chin was not marked, but what is better, very lovely, as was likewise her round and svraetrical neck. Tiie color of her eyes I could not ascer- tain for I was too much occupied in studying her other features to look ,nuch at them, and they dazzled me. Her arms were bare and the lower parts longer than is usual, so that her elbows did not reach as low down as is thought by some sculptors to be in good proportion, ihis made her form, of course, Diana shaped. Her skin was very smooth and white and approached slightly to the color of what is termed fle«h colored marble, I mean, that it was not snow white, but the proper mantle of lovely flesh and blood. Her hands were small and her taper fingers longer than usual. Their width exceeded that of her palm bv about the breadth of her little finger. Her dress was an elegant morning wrapper, fl think, a French calico) tied with a silken cord from which depende.l two lustrous t.ssels of the same matcna . A pearl necklace, hanging half way down the bosom, and a small black medallion with a very fine golden chain, fitting the neck closely an, reachino- to the center of the collar bones, (the graceful, outline oi which was barely visible near it,) were her ornaments, with the excep- tion of a diamond engagement ring, on the third finj^r of her left hand, the onlv ornaments, of my una.lorned beauty. Her foo . which peeped out when she afterwads placed its ball upon the pedal of the vuVwas very small and v>p11 shaped with a high instep, showing that she was of gentle blood. After some conversation, I begged to hear the music of hervoice hi singing, to which she promptly and cheerfully consented, showing that she was quite as amiable, as beautiful, a. my old friend Judge B. used to say. who loved a cheerfu singer. She asked what was my favorite. I said, the song she loved best her- self She sang " The Last Rose of Summer to the accompaniment of the harp, with, what seemed to me. the combined ski 1 «f Boscha and Miss Sheriffe. She sang then, at my request. <' The^ ale of Avoca ^ ^ favorite son<. of the Irish melodist Moore, by whom the words ami m ;^: ^- boUi composed, when I told her the following story of the Trlnslator of Anacreon : In his old age, when sunk into senility, at a musical party.some young female friend, sang this air to please and rouse rr^m his lethargy. He had entirely forgotten it! Whatsong is that aid the old man ? Who was the author ? I think I have heard it be ore. and now remember, it was in the Emerald Isle. What abeautifulthing it is. It conies across me lil;e a dream of my native land, or a recollec- tion of some former mysterious existence. The old man was in his dotage, and " The Harp that Once in Tara's Hall " toned celestial melody, is silent now ! My beauty grew silent too and her face lost for a moment its sunshine. Don't let us talk of old age said she, and let me i)lay something else and forget it. Then said I, if my Irish air does not suit you, play a Scotch one, " Ye banks and braes and streams around the Castle of Montgomery," for instance, or the Flower of Love lies Bleeding." No said she, they are very sad and I had as well sing a hymn at once. Then said I, play for me, if you can, a favorite one at the Episcopal Convention of our native State, which begins with the words " the voice oi free grace cries fly to the mountains' and has a fine chorus, in which all. the congregation used to join, "And We'll Pass Over Jordan." This grand air she never knew, nor had ever heard of, ami she performed instead, with great brilliancy of execution, a musical composition which had the homely title of " Cease your Funning," after which I arose and bade her good morn- ing. She died many years ago in a foreign land, far from her friends, unwept, unhonorc'l and unsung, except by my old and doating muse. I know not the grave nor the land where she was buried, but bv foreign hands her eyes were closed. The hymn alluded to was one which I used to hear sung in my vil- hige church at Fredericksburg, at the close of the Annual Convention of the Episcopal Cliurch, where were assembled representatives of nearly all the old families of Virginia, with their refined and beautiful daughters and oyi&r which, in my boyish days, the venerable Bishop Moore presided, wiio always reminded me of the Apostle St. John, " the disciple whom Jesus loved." In the bombardment of the town by the Northern miscreant Burn- side, that church was fired at, and its steeple and walls shattered. The two tablets of the Ten Commandments, on either side of the pulpit, facing the whole congregation, were printed in large Roman charac- ters on the eastern gable end, and were a point blank shot from the heights of Chatham, whence a pair of bomb shells would have reduced them to dust and powder. Bishop Moore (whom I knew and reverenced) sat for my picture of the " Great Archangel," magnified but not im- proved. I have made that personification for the benefit of the Bishop of London, who treated with silent contempt my prayer to him in be- half of the Orphan Boys and Girls of the Slave State of Alabama, children of Confederate officers and soldiers. The Harp of the Arch- 4 angel also had its original. It belonged to one of two sisters in my native village, daughters of an old Scotch gentleman, who bore the name of a celebrated battle, Greek scholar at Edinburgh and poet in the land of his and my ancestors. At her death, it remained standing on the landing of the stair case. A Scotch Ivy, which was allowed to enter a broken pain of glass, entwined its tendrils aruund its cords. I have made an apotheosis of that Harp to be published when " I am in the mood." The woman described in this and all my other Tableau?, have or had their originals, and are drawn as types of Southern females, of the Anglo Saxon race, now sougiit to be d-'gnuK-d by Noithern baiba- riaus, by being reduced to a ■■