sold your soul, as Faust sold his to Mephistopheles. Your Lieutenant became your master; you found it convenient to believe his version of every thing, and to justify him in every thing, and you ended in making all his devilments your own, and adopting the whole infernal spawn and brood, with additions of your own to the family.
You told me in August, that you had been prepared to judge me favorably, until you read my address to the Indians on resigning my command, but after that, you could not judge me fairly. I did not in the least doubt the fact; but I did not believe the reason. What, moreover, had you to judge in regard to me? You were not sent to judge any body. Hindman was the criminal you were to operate upon.
And, if you were sent, or had otherwise any right, to judge me, you administered the sort of justice that is in vogue in hell. Before you saw me, you heard him. You adopted all his views, and never asked me a question in regard to our controversy, or as to my own action, or the condition of things in the Indian Country. I had been infamously and assiduously slandered, from the moment when I began to resist his illegal, impolitic and outrageous attempts to deprive the Indian Department of every thing, to make it a mere appanage of, and appendix to, North-Western Arkansas, to take the Indians again out of their own country, and to compel me to unite in that insane and miserable "expedition into Missouri," which was projected and planned by Folly, mis-managed and misconducted by Imbecility and ended, as I knew it would, in disaster and disgrace. Lies of all varieties were ingeniously and laboriously invented at and about Head Quarters, and despatches, by special and fit agents, to be industriously circulated throughout the Indian Country and Texas, as well as Arkansas. The Indians were told that I had carried away into Texas the gold and silver belonging to them; while the Texans were made to believe that I was paying their moneys to the Indians. It was reported, in Bonham, Texas, by officers sent from Hindman's Head Quarters, that I was defaulter to the amount of $125,000 and at last there crawled out from the sewer under the throne, and sneaked about the Indian Country and Texas, the damnable lie, that an Indian had been taken, bearing letters from me to the Northern Indians, or, to the enemy in Kansas; or, as another version had it, from Gen. James H. Lane to me; and
three months ago it was whispered about that I was a member of the secret disloyal organization in Northern Texas. Such lies could have been counted by scores. Most of them are dead and rotten; but some still live, by means of assiduous nursing. And all these lies, and more either you or Hindman sent to the President at Richmond.
I say, sir, you never inquired into any thing. You never wished to hear any thing, whatever from me. You disobeyed the orders with which you were sent as a public curse and calamity into Arkansas, as if the State were not already sufficiently infested by Hindman. Is it true that he has lately, upon his single order, and without the ceremony of even a mock trial, caused three men "suspected of disloyalty" to be shot; and that, two of them being proven to him to be true Southern men, he sent a reprieve, which, either setting out too late, or lagging on the way, reached the scene of murder after their blood had bathed the desecrated soil of Arkansas? It has come to me so, from officers direct from Fort Smith. At any rate, he has put to death nine or ten persons, without any legal trial. Who is he, that he should do these things in this nineteenth century? And who are you, sir, that you should suffer, and by suffering, approve and adopt them? How many more murders will suffice to awaken public vengeance?
Was the Star Chamber any worse than Hindman's Military Commissions, that are ordered to preserve no records? Were the Lettres de Cachet of Louis XV, any greater outrage on the personal liberty of French subjects, than Hindman's arrests and committal to the Penitentiary of suspected persons? Was Tristan l'Hermite any more the minister of tyranny, than his Provost Marshals? or Caligula, Caesar Borgia or Colonel Kirke any more cruel and remorseless than he, that you have sustained all his acts, and made all his atrocities your own? Take care, sir! You are not so high, that you may not be reached by the arm of justice. The President is above you both, and God is above him, and sometimes interferes in human affairs.
Unless the late Secretary of War, through the President, sent an official falsehood to the Congress of the Confederate States, you were sent to Arkansas with positive and unconditional instructions, that, if Gen. Hindman had declared Martial Law in Arkansas, and adopted oppressive police regulations under it, you should rescind the
declarations of Martial Law, and the Regulations adopted to carry it into effect. You have not done so. You have not only not rescinded any thing; but you have, by a General Order, long ago, continued in force all orders of General Hindman, not specially revoked by you. That order could have no retroactive effect, to make his orders to have been valid in the past. It could only put them in force for the future; and you thereby made them your orders, as fully as if you had re-issued them. In so doing, you became the enemy of your country, if not of the Human race, and outlawed yourself.