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found my axioms and letter offensive to the disloyal men with whom you are associated, and you lacked the moral courage to sustain them; and, for fear of a suspected acquiescence, you incautiously, inconsiderately, and unnecessarily repudiated one and all in a breath. I say, moreover, that neither you nor any other man in the state, who has a reputation to lose or to make, dare go before the public upon these issues as made with me by your general repudiation.

When I was on a visit to Richmond, in the month of January last, I read my axioms to many of the members of the Legislature, who did me the honor to call upon me, and I said, "It is apparent to all that this Legislature is about to educate the people into the belief that treason to the United States is a virtue to be rewarded, and loyalty a crime to be punished; and if you do not exert yourselves, and make a stand-up fight with your adversaries, this will be the unavoidable consequence of your submission, and, as I do not mean to submit to any such state of things, I shall feel myself not only at liberty, but bound to present these axioms to the public, as containing the true solution of the status of those who are struggling to place us in a position of inferiority and degradation." Not a man made an objection to any one axiom presented except to that which related to the pardons, upon which some few remarks were made, to the effect that "We have got our pardons, and do not want to give them up, and do not mean to do so;" to which I replied, "The loss of your pardons is no consequence if my propositions are adopted, because neither your persons nor your property can be disturbed, under my propositions, without trial and conviction, and certainly no loyal man need stand in fear of that." But they all acquiesced in the necessity of making the fight, and that an issue should be presented. There are many witnesses to all this. I left Richmond, and waited for three weeks, and no issue was presented. The day for adjournment was drawing to a close, and I concluded that if I waited until after the adjournment it might be said that I had taken all the chances of an election to the Senate, and, being disappointed, I had made war upon the organization of the Legislature.

I determined, therefore, that while I was in "receipt of letters assuring me of my election before adjournment," to throw all chance of an election to the dogs, rather than remain passive and see my own inferiority and that of the whole class of loyal men in the state established, as if by law, and I resolved to hold back no longer.

I claim that we are entitled to occupy a position of superiority, but I

would have been content with equality; less than this I will not patiently or willingly submit to, and those who would are not political associates for me, and are welcome to go into the ranks of the other party; but let them make no farther pretensions to loyalty, or even to equality with rebels. Now, to show you how differently my views are regarded by others of the loyal class, I subjoin one or two extracts from numerous letters received.

The following is from a consistent and most respectable source, a Union man from first to last, who has not, at any time, been afraid to avow his sentiments. He says, "It is laughable to hear people, whose brains never gave them the headache, talk about the indiscretion of Botts. ** Your column of truth in the Republic, being copied into so many papers, must do some good, and must save us from a Democratic death or secession hell. I am delighted to hear the crack of your whip, and beg you not to spare the lash. The illegality of the Legislature and unconstitutionality of the pardons, and of all their proceedings, touches them on the raw; in fact, they feel deeply every word you have written." The following is from one of the most intelligent, respectable, and responsible Union men in the Southern States:

"I am greatly indebted to you for your masterly and indignant recital of the contumacious and disloyal conduct and aims of our Southern rulers. I hope it will arouse our friends every where. *** I would have preferred it should have been done by some other than yourself (so would I, but who was to do it?); by one who, like yourself, had the wisdom and courage of Hampden. * * * I could not feel otherwise than indignant at the supercilious repudiation of your opinions and feelings by your late friend and correspondent, Mr. Garnett. I could not have suspected any one of such meanness. You have had by far too many of such friends, and it is time for you to discard them, and be more wary of your confidence in the future. Such a man as Mr. Garnett should have a Roland for his Oliver," with many more such expressions of indignation.

I quote these passages from letters received, only to show you that all my friends do not concur with you in opinion. I repeat, I have no other object under the sun than to secure fairness and justice to the loyal men of the South generally, and those of this state in particular, and until it is obtained "I will fight it out on this line" to the last resort, for which, if you belong to that class, you should have given me your thanks instead of your rebuke.

I know of no man who has had so much reason as I to exclaim, "Save

me from my friends!" I am willing to bear, and have borne, a great deal from some of mine, but I am not willing to be sacrificed or slaughtered by them, or that they should make capital for themselves by endeavoring to bring odium upon me. This is asking too much, and a little more than I am willing to yield.

When you have given votes, or made speeches or reports that were of fensive to Union men, which you have frequently done during the session, did I make haste to repudiate you or your action? No! I did not approve of what you had said or done, but I offered a defense for you; I did not justify, but palliated, to reconcile those who distrusted you (as seven tenths of my friends did): and this you know, for you have been present when I did it, and you will recollect the acknowledgment you made, which I will not repeat, but which might apply as well to this case as to the one then under consideration.

And now, Mr. Garnett, I have given you a Roland for your Oliver, and let me assure you I have said nothing here except to defend myself from your most extraordinary, unprovoked, and uncalled-for assault upon me. If I thought it proceeded from treachery or baseness of heart, as others do, I would drop you altogether; but I do not think this. I think you were put up to it, and in a moment of weakness you gave way to the bad counsels of interested men, who would rejoice at my discomfiture. It is for you now to say what shall be our relation in the future. I am willing to break even, let by-gones be by-gones, and let matters stand as before; but of this you must determine for yourself. But I am admonished by the little Dispatch that my letters are always long, and that the printers dread me, which I do not think concerns them much, as I am never permitted to trouble them in this way except in the form of a paid advertisement; and, to be frank, I could not be content with short paragraphs like one who has a paper always at his command, and writes for it every day. But for any thing I can now see, I shall be under no necessity of troubling any of them again very soon.

I am respectfully yours,

JOHN M. BOTTS.

THE THIRD LETTER.

In continuation, the two letters below are furnished, as serving to show the real condition of things as they now-spring of 1866-exist in Virginia, under Mr. Johnson's reconstruction policy.

To the Editor of the Republic:

Auburn, Culpepper County, February 26, 1866.

No doubt many of my friends will think it strange, and will probably condemn me for the position I have assumed in the "axioms" I have presented, and the letter following upon its heels, addressed to my friend, Muscoe Garnett, Esq.; and sometimes I think it a little strange myself, that in violation of what I thought was an absolute determination on my part, for the last five years of my life, never again to permit myself to take an active part in politics, that I should now have departed from it, and placed myself once more in the foreground, to receive all the abuse that misapprehension, ignorance, stupidity, and malevolence might direct against me; but when I saw the incontestible evidence of disloyalty displayed by the press and Legislature of this state daily exhibited and hourly increasing; when I saw Union men every where, and under all circumstances, overslaughed and turned out of office for those who had served in the rebellion; when I saw the people being rapidly educated to look upon treason as a virtue, and a passport to office, and loyalty a crime to be punished; when I saw, out of all the papers published in the state, only two or three, and those of a limited circulation, remonstrating or protesting against this injustice to those who alone could fill any office in this state according to the provisions of the Constitution, which I at first pronounced a second edition of the "Lecompton Swindle," but which has since been recognized by all, and under which the present Legislature professes to have met, and is now acting; when I saw that the late rebel Legislature was virtually and substantially declared a lawful government, when, on motion of a very active participant in the rebellion, in a bill that referred to the late state government, the words "de facto" were struck out, on the ground that many thought it a government “de jure," thereby virtually legalizing the rebellion; when I heard in Washington of the overwhelming testimony that had been given by the most respectable gentlemen from this state, and from almost every other Southern state, of the rapid increase of disaffection and disloyalty among the people; and when officers in command of Southern departments, of the highest respectability, and of the highest grade and distinction, testifying to this disloyalty, and on oath declaring their knowledge of a wide-spread conspiracy on foot among the leaders—not to embark in rebellion again, for of that they have had quite enough-but to involve the country in a foreign war, in order that the discontented and aspiring politicians might have a chance to cut their way to fortune, and wipe out the bitter mortification with which

they are devoured, but which for a time was smothered, all of which you will learn when this testimony is laid before the public. It is not in my nature to be quiet until the net was woven and the knot tied by which we were again to be plunged into a sea of calamities as we were in 1861, when it might be too late to resist it. Seeing all this, I hesitated long, I reflected maturely on what my duty required me to do, and I felt I should be no better than a traitor to my country and to my party-I mean to the Union sentiment of the South and of the country, for I belong to no party-if I did not endeavor to nip it in the bud.

So I "pitched in,” enlisted once again against the most mischievous, the most reckless, the most untiring and persevering, and the most wicked party, as I religiously believe, that the Almighty, in his infinite wisdom, ever permitted to exist on earth. I speak now of the leaders of that party as a political organization, many of whom seem to think the sun would cease to rise and shine if their infallible counsels were withheld from the nation. Of what materials are our people made, that they do not look more clearly to their own interests? Have they not suffered enough through the agency of this same Democratic party, that they must cling to it and worship it as if it had delivered them from misery and ruin, instead of having brought it upon them? Are my present propositions more obnoxious than were my admonitions against the twenty-first rule (by which the Abolition party was built up) in 1841? or my opposition to the annexation of Texas (the remote cause of the late rebellion) in 1844? or my opposition to the Mexican War in 1845, '6, and '7? or my warnings against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise (the immediate cause of the rebellion) in 1854? or my urgent entreaties against secession in 1861? Why, then, not listen to me now? I am only a little in the advance now, as I was on the above-named occasions when they respectively occurred. Then all condemned, but afterward, when too late, all approved. I am not silly enough to apprehend another rebellion; but I do fear the ascendency of this party to power, and I do fear that power, if the country should, by any misfortune, become involved in a foreign war, which I have every reason to believe is anxiously prayed for by many who have recently taken the oath of strict fidelity to the United States, as contained in the amnesty oath.

Now suppose, by any misfortune or any indiscrimination on the part of the civil or military authorities either in Washington or on the Rio Grande, we should be involved in difficulty with the French Empire, and these cxtremely loyal gentlemen were to invite the French authorities to land a

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