FIENDISH ATROCITIES IN TEXAS.-MURDER OF MR. MCKEES.

WE give below the particulars of some of the horrid barbarities that have been inflicted upon innocent Union people by the desperadoes of Texas, as related by G. Wilson Plummer, a refugee from Orange, Texas, who was robbed of all he possessed.

During the month of June, 1861, Jim Worsham, Ben Saxton, Charles Saxton, and Joe Jordan, all having been for years notorious thieves and murderers, were engaged by a chivalric party of Secessionists to murder a Mr. McKees, a native of Canada, on account of his antislavery views. Mr. McKees was an educated man, and his parents having been people of means, sent him to a military academy in Canada, where he acquired a thorough knowledge of military tactics.

Being of roving disposition, he left home, and after taking a trip to China and Australia, he came to Texas in reduced circumstances. He was soon employed by John Livingston, a shipbuilder in the lower part of the town of Orange, upon the west bank of the Sabine river.

The rebels of Orange, having learned accidentally, one day, that McKees understood military movements, applied to him in a body, and demanded that he should instruct them in the school of the soldier; when McKees said that he could not spare the time, they insisted upon his teaching them, making use of threatening language.

Finding resistance impossible, he yielded to their demands; but after drilling them six weeks, growing tired of the business, he was advised by his employer, Mr. John Livingston, to give it up, and devote his time to his trade, which was that of a ship-carpenter.

He feigned sickness, and was relieved from duty by the rebels. Wishing to escape the fate which he saw awaited him (the rebels talking of appointing him their Captain), he soon recovered from his illness, and pretended to be a rabid Secessionist; and in order to carry out his plans for an escape, said he was anxious to see some active service in the field, and intended to go to New Orleans, and join the Confederate army.

In part remuneration for his past services as drillmaster, the rebels had given him a fine horse, and watching the most favorable opportunity, he mounted, one stormy night, and started for New Orleans.

tree.

He had been gone but a few hours when they missed. him, and upon finding the horse gone, some of the rebels started off at daylight on the following day, and with fearful imprecations upon their lips, swore if they caught the d-d'Abolitionist, they would hang him on the first At Lafayette, a small town in the western part of Louisiana, thè ruffians overtook him, and conveyed him back to Orange, Texas, where they carried him before a civil court, on the charge of horse-stealing, accusing him of having stolen the identical horse they themselves had given him, in part payment for his services.

The court returned a verdict of not guilty, and ordered McKees to be discharged, as the evidence of intent to steal was not sufficient to warrant his committal. The decision, enraged the assassins, who were bent upon his destruction, and the mob seized him as he left the courtroom, and conveyed him to an old barn, half a mile distant, where, after taunting him with all manner of insults about his views upon slavery, they stripped him and administered a coat of tar and feathers.

Procuring a rail, they rode him into the town of Orange, followed by a brutal and insulting crowd, whom

they invited to shower insults of any kind upon the unhappy McKees. The rowdies spat tobacco juice in his eyes; and as they arrived in front of the bar-rooms, threw him violently on the ground for the amusement of the cruel and debased creatures who usually congregate about such places. After the mob had shouted their approbation, he was taken up and conveyed to the next shanty, where the same operation was performed. McKees fainted several times from complete prostration, and buckets of cold slops were thrown over him to restore consciousness.

He begged them to kill him, rather than to torment him in such a manner. Tiring of this, they took him to an old shanty, and securing an old dirty negro, they made McKees shake hands with him, and then, amid the jeers of the crowd, told him "to take a drink with his old Uncle," and compelled him to drink “Old Abe Lincoln's health." After this, they seemed to be satisfied with demoniac sport of this kind, and two of the ruffians prevailed upon the others to release him, on condition that if he was caught again attempting to escape, he should be hung.

McKees was no sooner out of their clutches, than he fell into the hands of others of the same party, who heaped all sorts of indignities upon him in the street, and hired boys to pelt him with rotten eggs, and call him a negro-lover. Being hourly in fear of his life, he resolved upon another attempt to escape from his persecutors, and started on foot for the mountains, hoping to reach Mexico.

When six miles from Orange, the excited band overtook him and completely surrounded him, and with cowhides and pistols in hand, swore if he made any attempt

to escape, or offered any resistance, they would blow his brains out.

Jim Worsham grabbed him by the throat, and accused him of being a d-d miserable Abolitionist, while Joe Jordan applied the lash to his back, and whipped him till his strength was exhausted. McKees, who was now speechless, motioned to them to spare his life, as he saw Joe Jordan take from his coat-pocket a clothes-line, well knowing that they intended to hang him. The gang, which consisted of the two Saxton brothers, Jim Worsham, Joe Jordan, and three others, seized the defenceless man, and placing the rope around his neck, carried him across the road to a large tree, where they hung him.

The news was soon circulated throughout Orange that one d-d nigger-stealing Abolitionist was taken care of, and the citizens saw the fiend, Jim Worsham, parading in the bar-rooms, infuriated with liquor, swearing boastingly of what he and his confederates bad accomplished for Texas by ridding her soil of an Abolitionist, while on his back they recognised poor McKees's clothing.

The next morning Mr. Hope Cooper, a farmer of Orange county, was driving to the town of Orange, when he was horrified at the sight of McKees's lifeless body suspended from a tree at the road-side. He drove back, and informed one of his neighbors, when they both returned and cut down the ghastly and terribly-mutilated form of the murdered man, and buried him in an adjoining field.

As soon as Jim Worsham, Joe Jordan, and their followers heard what Mr. Cooper had done, they swore with terrible oaths that they would cut the heart out of the Yankee sympathizer that had removed the body of an Abolitionist; but Mr. Cooper and his neighbors were

cautious, when questioned about the body, to plead entire ignorance of the whole affair.

MURDER OF MR. JAMES AND MR. MARSHALL.

IN the month of August, 1861, a man by the name of James arrived in the town of Orange, from Galveston, and put up at King's Hotel. He reported, in the course of his conversation with crowd in the bar-room of the house, that he had just arrived a few weeks previous at Galveston, from California. It is said that in the evening of the day of his arrival he was seen conversing with one or two negroes by Jim Worsham and his gang, who were lying in ambush for him.

In his interview with the negroes, it is asserted that he told them his mission was to liberate them, and that if they would prepare themselves the next night, he would secrete them on board a small schooner which belonged to him, and which was anchored in Sabine river, on the Louisiana side. One of the negroes to whom he revealed his plans, belonging to a Mr. Smith, a NewYorker, who had been in Texas about a year and a half, went to his master and narrated the full particulars of the conversation that had taken place between Mr. James and himself, telling his master that James wanted to meet him (the slave) that night at twelve o'clock, and that he had promised to do so. Smith, upon learning this, determined to ferret out the matter, and accordingly dressed himself in his slave's suit of clothes, and, blackening his face, sallied out at the appointed time to meet Mr. James.

So complete was the disguise, that with the knowledge