WILLIAM G. SWAN, of Knoxville, is next on the list of "Old Line Whigs"
who have gone over to the Foreign Catholic Democratic party, and of whose conversion the Democrats at a distance boast. Here they do not brag; but on the other hand, some of the leaders, whose names we can supply, authorize us to state that they do not want him, and will not receive him. This man was twice beaten for the Legislature in this county--never elected by the people to any position outside of Knoxville--and became soured at the Whig party. He went for _Johnson and Sag Nichtism_ last summer, and his loss is not regretted by the American party in this county.
But JOHN H. CROZIER, of Knoxville, has gone over to "Old Buck" and his admirers; and this is claimed as a change! This little man, _supremely selfish_, was turned out of Congress five years ago, by JOSIAH M.
ANDERSON, with the people at his back, for _taking too much mileage_, by several hundred dollars per session, for four years! He afterwards desired the Whig party to run him for Governor; but they were not willing to undertake the _load_. He became soured, and last summer paid a visit to some of the counties below, to avoid, as was believed, voting for Gentry for Governor, and Sneed for Congress. He was formerly very bitter in his opposition to Democracy; and on many a stump has he denounced _Buchanan_, and all others concerned in the "bargain and intrigue" slander of Clay, besides holding up "Buck" as a Blue-light Federalist! At a recent Buchanan Ratification meeting in Knoxville, he made a bitter speech against the American party!
These two men, Swan and Crozier, were active in getting up an organization against us, in 1849, by heading a company which purchased the "_Register Establishment_," of this city, at the head of which they placed one _john miller m"kee_, behind whom they and others concealed themselves and wrote violent and abusive articles, through a controversy of two years. Driving the whole of them to the wall, as we did, in the controversy, they determined to _mob and tear down our office_; and with a view to this, those concerned deposited their _guns_, and other "implements of husbandry," in the law office jointly occupied by these two men, who have operated as _twin brothers_ for several years--each sympathizing with the other in his political defeats! Those concerned were deterred from this contemplated and well-arranged a.s.sault upon our office, by COL. LUTTRELL, the Comptroller of the State, and other gentlemen of nerve, arming themselves with shot-guns, pistols, and hatchets, and taking their stand at our office!
Nothing daunted by this defeat, these _gallant_ lawyers, and _generous_--not to say _brave_--opponents betook themselves to the county of Anderson, in this Judicial Circuit, and with great difficulty got up an indictment against us, under an old statute, forgotten by gentlemen of the bar, for _advertising a Baltimore lottery scheme_; when they themselves, and their relatives, were dealing in the _Art Union lottery_ in this city! They were most signally defeated in that indictment; and, together with the two Williamses, brothers-in-law of Crozier, sought to drive the business men of the place, and others, from advertising in our paper, or subscribing for it. Failing in this, they sought to prevent us from getting the Government advertising under Fillmore"s administration; and in this they failed, though this is the ground of their hostility to Fillmore and his Cabinet, as well as to John Bell, M. P. Gentry, and C. H. Williams.
The _Register_ fell through--was sold under the hammer for _twenty-two hundred dollars_--McKee ran away--and the company have had about FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS to pay for him, which hurts prodigiously! Our WHIG has steadily increased in favor with the people, and its circulation is now THE RISE OF FIVE THOUSAND--being the largest circulation that any political or other journal ever attained in East Tennessee! Indeed, no political weekly in Tennessee now has, or ever did have, a circulation equal to "BROWNLOW"S KNOXVILLE WHIG."
A young man calling himself _Luther Patterson_, has been conducting a foreign Sag Nicht sheet at Kingston, called the "Gazetteer," and which has gone by the board for the want of patronage. This little eight by ten sheet has been editorially, and by means of anonymous communications, a.s.saulting the writer of this work, and the editor of the _Register_, MR. FLEMING. Patterson paid a recent visit to this place; at which time Fleming met with him on the street, and publicly chastised him, applying the toe of a stiff boot to the _west end_ of his person, with some force. Patterson turned about and boasted in his paper that he had the best of the fight. Our paper and Fleming"s corrected this false version of the affair, and gave the facts; whereupon Patterson sued out a writ in the Circuit Court for Fleming, for damages done to his person in said rencontre, laying his damages at $5,000!
Shortly after this he inst.i.tuted a civil action against the publishers of the paper we edit, and another against us for the article we wrote against him; and these suits are now pending.
These two _gallant_ attorneys, as we are informed, are employed as counsel by Patterson--a young man who has no visible means of paying lawyers, but the _eagerness_ of these gentlemen to get after us would lead them to "work for nothing and find themselves." In addition to their several civil suits against several of us, they have sent their man before the Grand Jury of Knox county, and made a presentment against us for having _out-wrote_ their Sag Nicht editor! The object of these suits against the editors and publishers of the American papers here, is to _gag_ them, or to check their influence in this contest. But they have mistaken their men. Like other vipers, they will find, before these matters end, that they bite a file--a file of good _American_ steel, and tempered to that degree of hardness that all their malignity, intense and active as it is known to be, will not be able to prevail against it!
When we came to this city of Knoxville, in 1849, we sold our office at Jonesborough, at private sale, to pay a _security debt_, and purchased a new press and materials on a credit. These we sent on to the care of WILLIAMS & CO., the brothers-in-law of Crozier, who kept about the only commission and forwarding house in Knoxville. We were detained at Jonesborough four weeks by close confinement to our bed; and our materials arriving here, these "Old Line Whigs," who had always professed friendship toward us, refused to give them house-room; and had not JAMES W. NELSON and others stepped forward and paid the charges, and procured a house for them, the steamboat captain would have sold them out for the carriage!
These _magnanimous_ gentlemen, members of the learned profession of the law, next contrived, through certain influences they brought to bear, to turn us out of the only office we could rent in the city, and thus they drove us _without the limits of the Corporation_, and compelled us to erect a temporary office upon our own lot, which we had bought on a credit. They were now at the end of their row. One was a candidate for Congress, the other for a seat in the Legislature. We pitched into both, and they were both defeated; but we do not claim that it was through our influence. Like Cardinal Wolsey, however, they both had to bid "farewell, a long farewell, to all their greatness." From the pinnacle of Congressional and Legislative honors, they have been precipitated to the shades of private life, and to political obscurity. Their chief ambition now is, to play "fantastic tricks" in courts of justice, and before grand jurors, in the way of annoying those they have neither the _manliness_ nor _courage_ to call to an account upon their own hooks!
The established usage of _gentlemen_, when offended by a newspaper editor, is to exact personal satisfaction. To acknowledge that you are personally aggrieved, and then to retort in tricks behind the offender"s back, or words behind your privileges at the Bar, is to acknowledge that one is either a _fool_ or a _coward_--perhaps both. A chief object in this crusade against us is to gag us during this campaign, and kill us off from the stump and the press; but they have certainly studied our character to but little purpose. And whatever line of policy their prompters and a.s.sociates of the Locofoco school may urge upon them, let them be a.s.sured that they cannot muzzle criticism of their personal or political delinquencies. It is a sacred duty to unmask the _renegade_, to expose the _traitor_, and to hold up the _demagogue_ to public reprobation. That duty will be performed freely and fearlessly, by the author of this work, come weal or come woe. If these two "Knights of the Rueful Countenance" kill and eat a dozen Know Nothings, we know one member of the Order they will not affright into silence. For their cowardly a.s.saults and their officious intermeddlings they may bare their backs to the lash. We will be with them to the bitter end, and will only forsake them in the _Gethsemane_ of their retreat!
Had we come here with press and type, in 1849, and agreed to be controlled by these men and their particular friends, we could have been _the_ man for the times. Had we stooped to flirt and coquette and fawn and dance around these men, we could have had their endors.e.m.e.nt, their influence, and their money, to any reasonable extent. But we neither sought their friendship, nor coveted their adulations. We claim to have been made of such inflexible materials, as not readily to go through the trans.m.u.tations necessary to secure the kind regards of these men. We are no office-seeker, and desire no reward beyond the consciousness of having performed our duty, and of having served our country to the best of our ability.
We take this occasion to repeat what we have heretofore said in our journal, that nearly every prominent man in the country, calling himself an "Old Line Whig," and now opposed to Fillmore and Donelson, is influenced by personal grievances, or a desire to get office--matters with which the people have not the slightest concern. Their opposition to the American ticket proceeds from personal hostility, either to the candidates, some of the electoral candidates, or certain prominent advocates of the ticket, and from no less unworthy motives. Of course there are exceptions to this rule.
The idea of an Old Clay Whig supporting the Buchanan ticket is both absurd and ridiculous. To say nothing of the foul and malignant charge of "bargain, intrigue, and corruption," Buchanan labored to fasten upon Clay, the Platform upon which the Cincinnati Convention has placed Buchanan repudiates every principle Clay contended for, and held as sacred to the day of his death. On the contrary, the American party has not ignored one political tenet held by the Whig party, but has added new ones; none of which are at war with the creed of Clay, or the Const.i.tution of our country! To make short work of a long story, no man who ever was a _true Whig_, and acted with that party _from principle_, can consistently go over to the _bogus_ Democracy of this day, and vote for Buchanan and Breckenridge!
Talk about a Clay Whig turning Sag Nicht! What an idea! What principle does this Foreign Democratic party hold, that an Old Line Whig, or a conservative man, North or South, does not disapprove? What principles have they ever held, the evil effects of which are not now standing out in bold relief as a monument of their shame, and to which they have added the unpardonable sin of making war upon NATIVE AMERICAN PROTESTANTS?
In conclusion, the reader will please allow a few remarks PERSONAL to the writer, and he is done--leaving the public to make their own comments, and their own disposition of both this book and its author.
Our life has been a public life--our cause a public cause. We have our faults, as most men have; and we have committed some errors, as most men have. Our few acts of goodness and virtue, if any, we leave others to hunt up; our faults are subjects of criticism, and are viewed with a _jaundiced eye_ by our opponents. Through a course of _eighteen years_ of editorial invective, (whether right or wrong,) we claim to have been actuated by none other than the best of motives. We have never been prompted by ambition, malice, or a desire to make money. Our voice, which has echoed over many hills and through many valleys, has never been heard in extenuation of guilt; has never been heard to plead the cause of the gambler, the swearer, the drunkard, the robber, or the a.s.sa.s.sin. Wherever vice has lifted its "seven heads and ten horns"--wherever fraud has showed its thieving hand--wherever gambling has displayed its rotten heart--wherever demagogues have sought to impose on the honest people--there have we tried to be conspicuous; not as their aider and abettor, but as their scourge, their accuser, and their unrelenting foe. And among this cla.s.s of men are our most bitter foes. What friends we have are to be found at the fireside of virtue--among sober, sedate, and thinking men, and among the brave and honorable. We have never been the slave or sycophant of any man or party, as our immense band of subscribers, numbering thousands, will bear us witness.
And now, AMERICANS, while we look forward to the future with pleasing antic.i.p.ations--while we rejoice in prospect of the final triumph of wisdom, of reason, and of virtue, over audacious ignorance, palpable corruption, canting hypocrisy, and caballing Democracy--G.o.d forbid that we should indulge the vain idea that we have nothing to do! Let every friend of American rights and Protestant liberties take a bold, a decided stand, vowing most solemnly that he will have no fellowship at the ballot-box with the friends of that unpitying monster, a DEMOCRATIC PAPAL HIERARCHY! Be active, be vigilant, and persevering, and the day is ultimately ours!
"Strike till the last armed foe expires; Strike for your altars and your fires; Strike for the green graves of your sires, G.o.d, and your native land!"
TO STEPHEN TRIBBLE--LETTER No. 2.
SIR:--On the night of the 9th of June, 1856, you held forth in the Court-House in Charleston, Mo., taking myself, _Rev. Josiah McCrary_, the Methodist stationed preacher of that town, and Methodists generally, for your text. It would seem that the _touch_ I gave you, and a letter of mine read before a large congregation in Charleston, on Sabbath evening, June 8th, _have fully developed all the latent blackguardism of your early training and corrupt nature_! I will now place the record of your _infamy_ before the world in such a permanent form, and circulate it so extensively, that your low Billingsgate and vile blackguardism can never harm any man or sect. I will make such a showing of you that no persons of refined feelings or of any pride of character will hear you preach or entertain you in future! I will remind many readers of the showing up of your infamous character and conduct, by the editor of the Louisville Journal, ten or twelve years ago, and of the exposure of your villainous conduct by the _Rev. Mr. Mc.n.u.tt_, of Kentucky, through the Nashville Advocate, some eight or nine years ago.
I will only add the following article from my paper of the 21st June, 1856, as it completes your record, so far as Tennessee is concerned. I will only add, that you were driven out of McMinn County in East Tennessee, where you were preaching, lying, and drinking whiskey, years ago. There and then, too, the records of the Sullivan County affair, certified to by the Clerk, were produced against you! But to the article from my late paper:
STEPHEN TRIBBLE AGAIN.
This old hypocrite and scoundrel has been denying in the pulpit that he was ever convicted of manslaughter or branded! It turns out, also, that the old villain once joined the American party in West Tennessee! And last, but not least, it seems that he was turned out of both the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches before he became a Campbellite preacher. A pretty disciple to be abusing honest men! But to the law and to the testimony:
"ROANE COUNTY, June 3d, 1856.
"SIR:--In your issue of the 14th of May, you notice _Stephen Tribble_, and ask for information concerning him. He came to the lower end of Roane county from one of the upper counties of East Tennessee, and pa.s.sed himself for an Arian preacher. I objected to his preaching in a meeting-house, and came near getting myself into a sc.r.a.pe. About that time a gentleman came from our upper country, and said he had seen his father apply the branding-iron to Tribble, and the smoke rose ten feet high!
I then began to play on a harp of one string against him, and that was _a tribble_, whereupon he left between two days for Kentucky! He was once expelled from the Methodist Church, and afterwards he was expelled from the Presbyterian Church. If Tribble disputes what I say, all I ask is a chance to prove it.
I live ten miles south of Kingston, near Barnardsville. Yours truly,
"JOHN BLAIR."
"PARIS, TENN., June 6th, 1856.
"DEAR SIR:--I see in a late issue of yours that you are after a Reverend wolf, Stephen Tribble. I am personally acquainted with him, as I lived in Sullivan county when he was in the Blountville jail. I have heard him preach here, and deny from the stand ever having been in jail, when he and I had talked the whole matter over the day before. He is now about forty-eight years of age--has a scar on his cheek. He preached here monthly in 1846, and here it was that he joined the American party. He now resides either in Graves or Fulton county, Kentucky. One of his brothers told me last week that he now preaches at one point in Kentucky, and the rest of his time in Missouri. One of their preachers told me that he gets drunk and cuts up largely. Yours, with respect,
"A. J. HICKS."
To the foregoing letters we add a certified copy of the records of the Circuit Court of Sullivan county, and after this we shall leave this _old clerical debauchee_ to preach for such Sag Nichts as may feel edified by his ministry:
"MONDAY, Sept. 24, 1827.
"State of Tennessee, First Circuit, Sullivan County Court: met according to adjournment. Present, Honorable Samuel Powell, Judge, &c."
"FRIDAY, Sept. 28, 1827.
"STATE _vs._ STEPHEN TRIBBLE AND JOHN TRIBBLE.
"In this cause, the jury having retired yesterday to consider of their verdict, under the care of an officer, and the same jury, to wit: James Steele, Wm. Morgan, Joshua Miller, John Thomas, Wm. Hashman, John Wa.s.sum, Thomas Brown, Stephen B.
Cawood, John K. Arnold, Thomas Fain, William Hughes, and William H. Biggs, returning to the bar, do say, they find the defendants not guilty of the murder, but they find them guilty of manslaughter as charged in the bill of indictment. Whereupon the defendants moved the Court for a rule to show cause why a new trial should be had, which rule is granted, and on argument said rule is discharged. It is therefore considered by the Court that for such offence the said defendants be imprisoned for the term of four calendar months: that they be branded with the letter M in the brawn of the thumbs of their left hands on to-morrow morning, and that they pay the costs of this suit or remain in custody until the same is paid."
"STATE OF TENNESSEE, SULLIVAN COUNTY.
"I, Jno. W. c.o.x, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Sullivan County, do hereby certify that the foregoing is a full, true, and perfect copy of the final judgment in the case of State _vs._ Stephen Tribble and John Tribble, as appears of record in my office.
"Given under my hand at this office, the 10th of June, 1856.
"Jno. W. c.o.x, Clerk,
"By A. J. c.o.x, Dep. Clerk."
In conclusion, _Stephen_, I take my leave of you now, having introduced you to the 5,000 subscribers to the Whig, the 7,500 subscribers to our campaign paper, and the _tens of thousands of readers_ of this book--a work which will exist and be referred to when I am in my grave, and you are in the hot embraces of the Devil! You will at least agree with me that _that_ was an evil hour for you when you travelled out of your way to a.s.sail me before a strange audience in Missouri.
I am, &c.,
W. G. BROWNLOW.