A Queer Letter.
New York, May 28th, 1858.
Stephen H. Branch, Esq.—
Dear Sir,—As a reader of your rapacious Alligator, and a warm sympathiser with you throughout your misfortunes, I think I am entitled to make a suggestion, which I believe to be for your own good. I want to praise the manner in which you have conducted your Journal thus far, and it is because I do not, wish to see it unworthy of consideration that I have taken the liberty to write to you—a perfect stranger, as far as personal acquaintance goes. Your sanguinary and characteristic fearless attacks on the magnates of Tammany and the City Hall have won you great favor among the honest and peaceful citizens of New York, as well as elsewhere, but I am of opinion that an attack on the city press would only be productive of serious mischief to yourself. In your latest number, you mention the apparent slight of the Alligator by Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, and avow your intention to “let up” on them in your next. I seriously advise you not to do it. It will hurt you. Only a week since you spoke of your unwillingness to attack and expose Russell, because he is Bennett’s friend, who aided you in your misfortunes. It may hurt the man’s feelings somewhat to see his friends or relations calumniated or condemned, but it is much worse (and savors of ingratitude in the assailant) to be set upon himself. Besides, if you wake the wrath of these three Leviathans, it will take a bigger and stronger animal than the Alligator to extinguish it. It is therefore a matter of policy in you not to weaken yourself by entering into a war with the Herald, Times, or Tribune. You are yet weak, and need all the help you can possibly obtain. You know yourself that newspapers are not established in a day, however high their aim or select their contributions, and to be drawn into a controversy with the papers named, will be almost fatal to your editorial prospects.
Again: they may have reasons for not noticing your paper, as a press of business, neglect, overlooking, and so forth, and may, when a more convenient season presents itself, give you a highly flavored puff. Would it not be better to ask them privately to speak favorably of your new enterprise, than to attempt to force them to do it by a public attack in your paper?
Yours very respectfully, and with sincere wishes for your welfare,
R. P. C.
(Private.)
This letter came from the Herald, Times, and Tribune offices, and was the result of the deliberations of Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, through their Secretaries, Hudson, Dana, and Tuthill. My heart was moved while reading this production. The genial spirits of Houston and Hamilton, of the Herald, and of the equally meritorious dead in the Times and Tribune establishments, passed before my vision, and I was unmanly, and wept like a delicate female. And with electric flights of the imagination, I grasped the long and happy years I have passed in the Herald, Times, and Tribune offices, in the pleasing effort to improve the Fire and Police Departments. I thought, too, of the noble band of intellectual living giants connected with the Metropolitan Press in question, and I wept to know that we would be less friendly, and that my form and intellect were never more to be reflected by the leading Press of America. And why must this be so? Why must I pass in silence, in my whole journey to the grave, such men as Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, and their Secretaries, Hudson, Dana, and Tuthill? Is it because they have not noticed the Alligator? I would despise myself, if I could be governed by so mean a motive. A spark will light a flame that will defy a million men. Isolated snow will come silently from Heaven, and form mountains that will bury thousands. And I admit that after my gratuitous labors in the Herald, Times, and Tribune establishments for so many years, (in which I devoted the integrity and education that my father gave me,) the refusal of Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond to notice my feeble efforts to establish a truthful press, kindled a blaze in my bosom that they can never quench. For seven weeks I looked with solicitude for the mention of my Journal in their columns, and crushed to the earth with pain and disgust with my species, I resolved to dissect the bodies that were animated by such contracted souls. Their refusal to notice and encourage the efforts of an old and tried friend like me, (who has toiled so long and hard to give them important public documents and early valuable domestic and foreign intelligence,) aroused a million demons that have slumbered in my bosom, and yearned for years to expose the villainy of American editors, who hold the destinies of my country and of human liberty in their palms, and who trifle and play with the people, and sell them like cattle in the face of the morning sun. Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond never meet by daylight, but they do by night light in great emergencies. They fret and scold before the people, but they act in concert in subterranean caverns. And their Secretaries, Hudson, Dana, and Tuthill, daily walk arm-in-arm, plotting deeds of hell for their wicked masters, in which the people are invariably sold. And so with the money-article writers of these public journals. They see each other often, and act in concert, and spread terror in Wall street, and throughout the country, and desolate the hearth of many a happy domestic circle, in the journey of every sun. And shall I be silent, and go down to my grave, with these fatal secrets on my heart, that have depressed me for years? Shall I be recreant to my mission, and to the toiling millions, on whom their accursed treason falls? Shall I not tell the American people, that the evils and corruption that overshadow our land, and threaten to subvert our glorious institutions, have their source in the American Press? And shall I not adduce my proof and argument, and scathing analysis of their pernicious motives? And shall I be silenced by the threats in this letter, that I will be crushed by three Leviathans the instant I open my fatal batteries? No, no. All hell shall not deter me from my exposition of Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, and their vile Secretaries. For my honor I care every thing, and he who strives to deprive me of it, through unmerited detraction, shall die by my avenging hand. But for life I care nothing, only to be useful to my kind, and to adhere to integrity, and serve the God of my supreme adoration. Life! Take it! Take the poor, trembling, pining, mortal trunk and scabbard, but beware of the sword and soul! Look, but touch not them, lest the ground rock, and open, and yawn, and swallow, and cut, and dash, and burn your demon bones and nerves through undying ages. Beware! I say! O beware! and tremble! For I have a superstition, that a soul is sacred in the eyes of God, according to its love of truth, or its hatred and horror of such hypocrites, thieves, and traitors, as Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
STEPHEN H. BRANCH,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United
States for the Southern District of New York.